Possibly controversial things to say in regards to the dwindling packaging base

The Water Cooler
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I do have a couple of possibly controversial things to say in regards to the dwindling packaging base. The current incentives for new packagers to enter the Fedora Project, for instance, the idea that upcoming packagers must report any bugs within, may lead to bad outcomes. If new packagers are fully focused on patching bugs, rather than maintaining packages which are already mostly functioning, this may lead to those packagers manufacturing new bugs via various means, which would otherwise not exist for any reason. AI makes this particularly easy to do.

Hence, many current packagers, who must review those packages with manufactured bugs, will inevitably become over-burdened, and end up becoming burnt out, due to this outcome.

The words I’m about to say are my personal opinion. I don’t expect anyone to take it seriously, however, I do have an urge to say it, so I will.

I get the feeling that the current Fedora old guard, has the tendency to gatekeep the Fedora Project itself, by preventing newcomers from gaining any sort of responsibility over the project. I won’t name any names, or state any reasons as to why I think this way, however, I think it is an important thing to note, since it may be contributing heavily to the dwindling packager base, if true.

F46 Change Proposal: Changes Discussion Only On Devel List
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I’ve mostly been silent in this thread, because I can’t stand the platform, but I’m definitely going to object to your characterization.

(for instance, it just took me like 20 seconds to remember where the heck it is to add your post as a quote)

What in the name of all the happy dancing gods are you on about? I don’t maintain a lot in Fedora, but I’m not seeing a bunch of “manufactured bugs”, LLM generated or not.

I’ve not experienced this attitude that you’re claiming, in any part of the project I’ve interacted with. Honestly, it’s mostly been the opposite, where the “Old Guard” is all too happy to have fresh eyes on things, and having people step up to maintain things.

That being said (I’m not a moderator) but almost none of this has anything to do with the point of this thread, discussing the relative merits, or lack thereof, of unifying the communications platform for change proposals.

For what it’s worth, I’m heavily in favour of moving the change proposal discussion off of discourse.

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I also think that it is important that certain non-technical communication is carried out, between the technical and non-technical portions of the Fedora community. I think it would be fine if some discussion over a set of changes happens on Discourse, since this is likely where most of the non-technical portion of the community will reside. I believe communication with them is important, especially if the Fedora Project wants to know what real world problems exist.

I don’t expect long-time contributors to read discourse threads, however, I also don’t expect random non-technical community members to hop onto a mailing list, and start blabbering on in 7-bit ASCII, which is missing all of their favorite emoticons :smiley:. There are merits to both, especially as it pertains to the expected audience who will view and post on these mediums. Discourse offers an easy way for the non-technical to communicate with each other about Fedora, whether it is the good, or the bad. And it appears that they will continue to do so, so long as moderators don’t interrupt them.

Leveraging this platform will likely be necessary for the future of the project, especially if it is preferred that the technical portion of the community does not end up in a communication silo, which would be bad for obvious reasons.

I have seen many large tech companies fall into such a communication silo (NVIDIA, Meta, Microsoft, Etc.), where they lose touch with the general population, who don’t really care about the technicalities of how a GPU renders to the screen, or how hard it is to make an Operating System, for instance. Even if those companies have their reasons to do what they do, those reasons are unjustifiable to a population that they cannot, or will not communicate with.

The intricacies of RPM packaging, toolchain management, package repository hosting, Etc., will be lost upon the non-technical, who don’t really care about these things, and likely never will.

If the ideas that the non-technical present are taken into account the first time, even if they may be a bit stupid at times, it will be easier to maintain the Fedora Project in a manner which is satisfactory to the community at large, and it will prevent technical decisions which would otherwise make taking those ideas into account impossible.

For instance, if Microsoft noted the Windows users’ wishes on wanting a quality operating system, which is not riddled with Ads, they wouldn’t have decided to go down the path which eventually lead to a great number of Windows users’ dissatisfaction with the quality of their operating system.

These decisions that Microsoft has made, will be extremely hard to backtrack on, as they have likely outlined a significant several-year plan, which results in a lower quality operating system for everyone.

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I get a feeling that this may be a generational thing. I’m younger, however, I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to communication – I actually like using mailing lists; yet I end up communicating with individuals who are likely far older than myself, which basically separates me from my peers, although with the added benefit that I get more technical feedback than I otherwise would. However, many people from my generation like to use Instagram, X, and TikTok, which involves a very different style from older internet communication methods, the former of which is perhaps overly curated to one’s personal preferences, which is the primary reason why I personally avoid these platforms.

With the benefits and drawbacks of these platforms aside, I think it is important to note these differing communication styles within the newer generations. I don’t necessarily believe that these differences are a good thing, as they may be in large part be effects of curated communication (or algorithm) bubbles, and I’m sure everyone who’s been paying attention knows who’s responsible. However, the individuals who have these differences are the next generation, who will inevitably be responsible for running society in the future.

I believe that something must be done about this issue, although I don’t expect the Fedora Project to go in and solve it on their own. However, I don’t believe that pretending that this issue won’t have significant societal impacts in the future, is good for anyone. And neither do I believe that the current status quo will help, either.

I think that having a pipeline for establishing technical & other necessary knowledge, and a culture which promotes proper debate and discussion, will go a long way.

As for having Fedora use Discord; Matrix is a chatting platform, which I think may suit Fedora’s purpose far better than non-free Discord. Since we already have it, we may as well use it to some extent.

F46 Change Proposal: Changes Discussion Only On Devel List
F46 Change Proposal: Changes Discussion Only On Devel List
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Is putting the topic in slow mode really a good idea? It seems to be causing more trouble than its worth, and it also appears to be shutting down discussion.

What is the purpose of this?

F46 Change Proposal: Changes Discussion Only On Devel List
Replys [answers by email] to change discussion, when slow mode active
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Yes

As soon as you help to moderate, you will realize that it is useful.

It slows the discussion down that users have time to read, think and make conclusions, before they create a disput and react overheated. The purpose of that is that is also, that users which have to manage the topic, not get insane.
:zany_face:

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Are disputes always a bad thing? It would be better to iron out any issues community members may have, rather than enable a 4 hour slow mode, and prevent community members from speaking about topics that they are passionate about.

Enabling slow mode, especially a slow mode of 4 hours, seems to be a bit much IMO. Why not have it be 5 minutes? Wouldn’t that be far better for the purpose of making disputes less heated? Who made this decision, and why?

edit: I must also note that the slow mode was initially 2 hours, which is still more reasonable.

What it may seem like to some outside the moderation team, is that the moderation team is power tripping. I don’t mean this to say that the moderation team is being malicious. However, I surmise that many will come to that conclusion nonetheless.

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Are you answering by email? If not then you are off topic, and I have again to move your “dispute” to the off topic section.

You make the moderation/TL4 a lot of work :frowning:

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You’re giving yourself a lot of work.

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If you not answer to what users ask you, you will be moved around the whole day. Sorry

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You’re rude.

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I am going to be rather direct.

I think the moderators currently are extremely generous in trying to preserve your comments and provide you the space to express you thoughts.

It takes time and effort to find a destination to move a thread to, to glue stuff together, to explain the decisions made and so on.

In two previous forums I have personally moderated we had much stronger rules which would lead to immediate removal of posts which derail the conversation or confront the moderators outside of the dedicated area for moderation discussions.

I am actually going to work on a proposal to make the current forum moderation rules more strict in that regard.

Anyway, the situation is that you repeatedly miss the point of the conversation and bring topics not relevant to the main discussion to it. It is generally OK to make such mistakes. I, myself am guilty of that sometimes. But when it happens, I usually say “thank you, the mods, for handling this for me”.

What is important though is to reflect on why people are not actually willing to engage in the discussion with you in your way.

Maybe you need to learn a bit more how the project runs? Maybe you need to study a bit how other folks interact?

But what you definitely should not do is to get hostile towards the feedback your are getting.

Have a conversation, ask questions, use the option to appeal through the correct channels if needed, but follow the rules and learn from the feedback.

7 Likes
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I yhink this back and forward moving and censorship has to stop… Seriously people can say what they think for fedora change proposals or is that now moderated and can’t speak their minds here… What is going on in here… Wake up users and mods and think how all this affects the community and opinions

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This is a direct violation of the CoC rules as you should already know. (it is a personal attack aimed at another user)

In the post by Akeksandra are several things that you should consider.

When opening a topic the title sets the subject and comments should remain on topic as defined by the title. You have drifted far off topic by shifting to an attack on moderator policies and actions so your own posts are also a violation of the rules.

While I am leaving your comment in post 11 in place, please note that it was flagged as inappropriate and is the only reason at the moment for a moderator to even note this topic.

As noted by @ilikelinux above, slow mode is to encourage users to reduce the number of posts, think before posting, and have substance to their comments instead of spur-of-the-moment content.

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This is not censorship. It is enforcing the CoC rules and following moderation guidelines.

Certainly users are encouraged to voice their opinions, but they are not allowed to violate the rules while doing so. The general and overriding concept is to Be nice to everyone while conducting a productive discussion.

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This is likely what a significant portion of the community really thinks.

I dare you to bring other non-moderation team community members, and dispute me with their opinions, as well. Putting on slowmode, in an already diverged thread, makes absolutely no sense.

The posts I have made were not entirely off-topic. They merely diverged in a manner that the moderation team doesn’t like. The community doesn’t care if the topic diverges slightly in a certain manner manner, so long as the overall topic returns back to what the original poster intended. If they did care, non-moderating community members would more often bring it upon themselves to warn the person who’s diverging the topic. It is at this point when the moderation team should act to suspend the member, so that they don’t cause real world disruption of discussions. Acting preemptively, again, makes it akin to power tripping, or censorship, in the case of the quote above.

You’re the ones harming the community by disrupting what would otherwise be organic communication. I don’t need to say anything else on this topic, so I will no longer post in regards to this topic, or the topic regarding discourse change proposal discussions.

You don’t know who you’re fighting against. I advise you to stop as soon as possible, before you receive a significant amount of blowback.

I dislike how moderators pose as the community opinions expert, when they don’t seem to understand the whole point of Fedora in the first place (yes, I’m saying this as someone who has only been here for ~two months, and I don’t care). Packagers are not here for a fun and relaxed time when communicating with each other, they’re here to do work.

Direct, organic communication, is at the crux of engineering work. A topic that slightly diverges, isn’t something that moderators should be worried about. They should be worried when the community finds out someone has been feeding them false information, or when that person starts swearing at other members, or decreases other members’ morale.

I rest my case. Thank you.

I’ll go ahead and humor Jeff, as well.

Yes. I’m well aware that anything can be regarded as a violation under those vague rules. That’s like saying I’m in violation of a law that states that I shouldn’t “walk on grounds that I don’t own.” Who gets to decide which “grounds” are owned by who?

Of course, modern trespass laws take those into account, which renders a direct, modern interpretation of the analogy I’ve just made for the purposes of this discussion, moot. However, Fedora doesn’t have the equivalent rule set which may dictate which speech is against the CoC. “Abusive” speech is still too vague, and could be left to various interpretations, all of which could be correct at the same time.

I could very well make the case that you stating that what I’ve said being in violation of the CoC, is in fact, in violation of the CoC, and that you are a harasser who likes to harass me on the forums, just for the sake of harassment, which wouldn’t hold up as a real argument, but for some reason works as one through CoCs, more often than not.

Who’s more right, you, or me?

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Change discussions (at least in the current implementation) are not a social gathering the way Water-Cooler topics are. It is a tool to do the work in the Fedora Project.

We have plenty of other places for engineers who wish to socialize, when they wish to socialize. Change discussions are not such places. And you can NOT post random thoughts in those discussions.

You are not being judged by your opinion about the Change. There is no censorship. You can express agreements or disagreements with the Change Proposal, provide arguments and so on. But you should and will be judged by the relevance of your comment and usefulness of it to the work which needs to be done on that particular Change.

Does your comment help to make a decision on the proposed change? - is the key question you should be considering when you post a comment in the Change discussion thread.

Again, it is ok to slip sometimes and let the mods fix it. And it is never a black and white situation. It is also ok to disagree with the mods sometimes and appeal their decision through the proper channels. And the proper channel is not a Water-Cooler category, btw.

But it is not OK to expect that any random thought has place in the Change discussion thread. And it is not ok to be hostile to the mods for trying to make Change discussions focused and productive.

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Define “hostility.”

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Read the dictionary.

Hostile means unfriendly, showing bad feelings like an enemy, or being very hard to live in. It describes people who act against you, places that are dangerous, or ideas that fight back.
Common Meanings
Unfriendly: Acting mean or angry toward someone.
Enemy: Belonging to an opposing side in a war.
Hard to live in: A place with bad weather or conditions where plants and animals cannot grow easily.
Against your wish: An unwanted business action, like a company buy-out that the leaders do not want.

According to that definition hostility can easily be interpreted as almost anything that creates a negative atmosphere, which your actions clearly do.

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According to this definition here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hostile –

it also characterizes one who may have ill will towards another.