Subreddit

[David Christiansen]

Dear Board,

I'm now a moderator on /r/haskell. I'm going to be transitioning the moderation responsibilities to a new team, who can then re-open the subreddit. I believe Emily was interested in being a mod, but it would be good to have people in other time zones as well.

Let me know if you want to volunteer. I can also recruit out in the community, of course. It's a bit time-sensitive at this point, so I'll figure out the process and get it going tomorrow.

David

[Tom Ellis]

Great news! I volunteer, if you want me (you may well be
oversubscribed with volunteers).

Tom

[Chris Dornan]

As I said, happy to help out.

Chris

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Haskell Foundation Board" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to board+un...@haskell.foundation.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/haskell.foundation/d/msgid/board/CAK7U1%3D087XCcC_vLDyRvxDouvOSYVkzc-E_T%3DH8d1CFWuiFBTA%40mail.gmail.com.

[David Christiansen]

Hi Glyn,

The board has discussed this topic. There was not an official resolution on the matter, so I don't want to put words in their mouths, but it was a topic of conversation. I'll let board members chime in if they want to talk about your query from their own perspectives.

I'll tell you my thoughts here, as Executive Director, about why I decided to handle the situation as I did.

I think that the Haskell Foundation should not take sides in a dispute between a group of Haskell users and a company. If a Haskell user group in City X were demonstrating against a company that changed the conditions for their meeting space, I don't think it would be a good idea for the HF to get involved on either side - doing so would be time-intensive (requiring careful reading and weighing of all the arguments), risky (because it makes enemies of at least one side), and of questionable value - our support or lack thereof is unlikely to make any difference in the dispute, no matter which side we would pick. If there were some way we could facilitate an end to a conflict, however, then it might make sense, depending on how big the group was and the time and effort required to facilitate. Here, we essentially received the keys from one volunteer, and are holding them while we find someone to take them over and run the group.

I also think that the HF should not be in the business of dictating to the Haskell community where they should meet - providing resources to enable meetings is definitely a part of our mission, but that would be done following a cost/benefit analysis. Also, I don't think that the Haskell Reddit community would start using kbin just because the HF tells them to - people's website preferences are fairly sticky. One point to consider is that while discourse.haskell.org was more active while Reddit was read-only and linked to it, its increase in activity was smaller than the decrease in activity on the subreddit, which means that there were fewer total Haskell-related online interactions.

Whether we like it or not (the HF has no position on whether we like it or not), the Haskell subreddit is something that many Haskellers want to use and that brings them great value. When Taylor expressed that he'd be willing to transfer it to a new set of moderators, we offered to help by running the process and temporarily moderating while new mods are found. Taking the load off the shoulders of community members who contribute so much, like Taylor, is also something that the HF will do when possible.

HF is active on Mastodon in addition to other social networks, and I'll keep an eye on your link to see if it seems active enough to make sense as another venue for public communication from us. The Fediverse has a lot of potential as a place where open-source and technical discussion can happen.

I totally get that you would have liked to see a different outcome here - it's very understandable. Thank you for getting in touch, and please feel free to write back if you have further concerns.

David Thrane Christiansen

Executive Director

The Haskell Foundation

On Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 4:21 AM Glyn Normington <glyn.normi...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm sure rebooting /r/haskell is being done with the best intentions, but has the Board discussed the ethics of this and whether this might not be an opportune time to switch platforms? https://kbin.social/m/haskell would be one reasonable option.

Glyn

[Glyn Normington]

I'm sure rebooting /r/haskell is being done with the best intentions, but has the Board discussed the ethics of this and whether this might not be an opportune time to switch platforms? https://kbin.social/m/haskell would be one reasonable option.

Glyn

On Thursday, 6 July 2023 at 21:06:14 UTC+1 David Christiansen wrote:

[Glyn Normington]

Hi David

Thank you for your detailed reply. It's good to know that the HF is neutral. This will become clearer if non-Board moderators of /r/haskell can take the reins.

Regards,

Glyn