Hello everybody,
this is not the kind of e-mail you might be expecting from the title. I think
we had enough of those. Nobody will be blamed; nobody will be criticized. This
is meant to address everybody equally, specifically not meant to be supportive
of those who had brought up doubts about the CC before and itโs also not
against those who believe the CC is a reasonable idea. Even less is it about
any past or current members of the CC. The error is not on their side.
The Community Committee Concept is broken by Design
===================================================
A BUG REPORT
============
1. Principles of Operation
The core procedure in the CC operations is designed as follows:
- A community member X can file a complaint to the CC about
inappropriate behavior of another user Y
- The CC looks at the case and decides about whether to take certain actions
- The decision and the applied actions are made public
There is hardly any precedent for this type of procedure in democratic
countries. It is a fundamental element of justice that a defendant knows who is
suing him and that the trial is public. Anonymous tips only have a place when
it comes to crimes, but not in civil law.
In companies and other organizations, there are sometimes procedures in place
where hints and complaints can be made privately, but in those cases, these are
managed and resolved privately, not publicly.
Private accusations followed by public punishment are more common in
totalitarian systems.
Experience has shown that such systems lead to high distrust among people.
Everybody needs to be careful and watching out continuously for making no
mistakes, as anybody could denunciate you for something.
Evaluation in our context:
- Community Members: => loses
(causes bad atmosphere and public appearance)
- Complainer: Neutral
Privacy may sometimes protect the complainer, but in most cases it's
obvious anyway, and playing/acting as if it wouldn't be the case, creates an
atmosphere of dishonesty on top of the trouble.
2. Expectations
So, you are upset about another community member that is very unfriendly to you
or making accusations and the whole range of bad behavior (and maybe you did
similar but think you did right and the other one did wrong).
You heard about the CC and you think it's really time that some action is being
taken, so you file a complaint to the CC right away.
But nothing happens. The CC is not like police that you can call. It's rather
made up to work as a kind of court, working on one case after another. And when
it gets to your case, you might either have forgotten about it already - or
waiting really desperately for it to look into the case.
But why did you actually complain at the CC in the first place?
What do you want to achieve? That the other person changes mind? Unlikely to
happen. The other person been given a formal warning? Sounds not much exciting
neither resolving anything.
What you really want (almost always) is that someone officially says you were
right and the other one wrong - which is unlikely to happen as the CC shall aim
for equalization, not dividing.
Evaluation: Case 1: CC is in favor of yours
- Defendant: Gets a formal warning issued,
shrugs with his shoulders,
will care about CC even less in the future
- Community: => loses
- Complainer: The CC didn't say you were right,
the defendant doesn't care about the warning
You're frustrated, even though you won
=> loses
Evaluation: Case 2: CC rejects your complaint
- Complainer: Is more frustrated than ever about everything
=> loses
3. Blame
The fact that the CC is set up like a kind of court is one of the primary
flaws. You cannot install a kind of court which doesn't have appropriate powers
like a court has. Without such powers, nobody will ever respect it in the way
that would be needed.
Also, a court cannot have judges elected by the community. Would you want the
politicians that you elect be your judge on court? Or some of your friends
suddenly being your judge?
Judges need to be neutral - ideally unknown and independent persons. Nobody in
the ffmpeg community would qualify for such a position.
But that's what we have: elected community members which were keen and crazy
enough to volunteer for such a position.
Evaluation
As a result of the CCs verdict on an issue between two members, there's usually
a winning (even if it's a nuance, one would think to have "won").
Now, simple Math:
- Winning Member: Might be happy for a short time
Then realizing that the relationship with the
losing member might have received irreparable damage
=> lose
- Losing Member: Starts hating the Winning member
Starts hating the CC and its members
=> lose
- CC Members: No matter what they do and how they judge
Almost always at least one of the combatants will start
hating (the cc, its members or both)
4. Distrust
But it's not only hatred that is caused by the CC installment (not its
members). It has created a high amount of distrust. From what I've read, it's
been like that in the last year already and in the past few months it has been
a frequently repeating pattern that people have voiced distrust towards the CC,
to all of its members or to individual members, often alluding to conspiracies,
forming of groups, etc.
Distrust lead to questions about transparency, which actions or consultations
should be public or private.
Such distrust is lethal poison for a community. While the CC installment (not
its members) is not the only source of distrust, it still takes a substantial
part as many conversations in this new year have shown.
Evaluation
- CC Members: => lose
- Community: => lose
5. Verdict: Everybody loses
The CC installment in its current form has turned out to be creating a
lose-lose-lose-lose situation.
There are no winners in this game, but it makes all of us lose, if not directly
then indirectly at least.
This is doing no good to the community and further damages the public
appearance of the project.
Kudos to those who have volunteered to be CC members, you have taken a position
where there's nothing much to gain but a lot to lose, and the more you engage,
the worse it gets, so it's natural that its members are trying to be careful.
In the first section I said there's nothing like the model we have for the CC
when looking at democratic countries, but there's actually something where
complaints can be made in-private but punishment is usually public.
I'm talking about kindergarten and elementary school. The difference is that
Kids are forgetting and forgiving quickly, but we grown-ups, we keep chewing
the same old bone until its broken ๐
When you think about it: that's really what we have: a child-level system
applied to grown-ups. I don't think that this is something we need or something
that can help this community.
Which benefits does it really provide? Does it have a positive influence on
this community? I don't see that, but I see a lot of the opposite.
6. What's needed?
What I see though is which problem it doesn't solve: it doesn't improve much
regarding the mailing list. When there's a heated discussion, it's normal in
all communities that those are moderated in some form. Since there's so much
distrust - maybe an AI based auto moderation could help.
This would allow preventing bad e-mails from being distributed in the first
place.
What's for sure at least is that what we have at the moment is totally
unsuitable to solve that problem. Instead of preventing the mess early, we are
letting it happen, long chains of despicable ML conversations are flowing
through the ML system.
And what are we doing then? We are letting people do another endless
conversation which criticizes what happened, but does that by repeating the
same content once again in another long conversation.
After all this has happened already, we are starting a tribunal where the CC
needs to judge about who did say what and what was bad and what not.
Then, warnings are issued (or not), but in either case, everybody is
dissatisfied anyway.
So, my conclusion is: the CC is an unsuitable solution to a problem we don't
even have, and the way of how its sole existence is negatively impacting the
community is alarming IMO.
Let's end this chapter and try to find something that solves the actual
problems.
Regards,
sw
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