mailing list administration

[Vincent Delecroix]

Hello,

The mail of Nathann posted on 24 Aug. 2016 [1], [2] cross posted on
sage-support and sage-devel did not reach sage-devel. My answer to him
did not reach sage-devel either.

It was clearly not spam. Possibly considered as flame (but the thread
was not moved to sage-flame). I would be happy to know what happend...
And it would be better to take this kind of hard decision with a minimum
of common agreement (unless google had a bug in its mailing-list
software ;-).

Best,
Vincent

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-support/Sn_yMvyfmNg
[2] (dead link)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-devel/uMKrfulyAzw

************************
from Nathann:

Quote from William Stein, CEO of SageMath Inc (private for-profit
Delaware company) [1]

So there is no confusion, my top priority right now is to **make a lot
of money** by building a profitable company on open source software
(Latex, Linux, Sage, Octave, R, etc.)

(full post)
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/B3WnJr6S1bw/JQ_jvOITBAAJ

This post being entirely factual, I shouldn't be held responsible for
its content.

Nathann

[1]
http://www.edgarcompany.sec.gov/servlet/CompanyDBSearch?page=detailed&cik=0001634867&main_back=23
************************
from me:

Hi Nathann,

But you are responsible for hiding the rest of the message...

- William's strategy is: making money with SageMath Inc and use this
money to continue (i.e. after having started Sage) building an open
source ecosystem for mathematical computations.

- Not every Sage developer thinks that SageMath Inc is a good way for
improving SageMath.

Argued e-mails are much more fruitful than "factual" ones hiding calumnies.

Cheers,
Vincent
************************

[Johan S. H. Rosenkilde]

The mails seems to have been correctly sent out to subscribers (of
sage-devel). At least a few of us here at SD75 got it. I can't explain
why it's not showing up on the google groups web site.

Best,
Johan

[William Stein]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 11:09 AM, Vincent Delecroix

<20100.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The mail of Nathann posted on 24 Aug. 2016 [1], [2] cross posted on
> sage-support and sage-devel did not reach sage-devel. My answer to him did
> not reach sage-devel either.
>
> It was clearly not spam. Possibly considered as flame (but the thread was
> not moved to sage-flame). I would be happy to know what happend... And

I deleted it as flame bait. I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
forum to attack others.

William

[Luca De Feo]

> I deleted it as flame bait.   I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
> forum to attack others

I'm sick of it too. But this kind of unilateral actions only fuels the flame, it does not extinguish it.

Especially given your position as a CEO of a for profit company, William. Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage as what just happened with MariaDB, the community is entitled with a legitimate (unfounded, I believe) fear of SageMath Inc. trying to do something similar at some point. This kind of unilateral censorship, although well intentioned, can only spark more of those flames.

Any long lived community on the net has moderators, be they elected or co-opted. No one moderator takes this kind of decisions alone. Can we try, once again, to start a process to become a well behaved community? There is no shortage of very good examples of well behaved, long lived, FOSS communities. Think Debian, think Software carpentry, ...

Luca

[William Stein]

On Wednesday, August 24, 2016, Luca De Feo <de...@lix.polytechnique.fr> wrote:

> I deleted it as flame bait.   I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
> forum to attack others

I'm sick of it too. But this kind of unilateral actions only fuels the flame, it does not extinguish it.

Especially given your position as a CEO of a for profit company, William. Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage as what just happened with MariaDB, the community is entitled with a legitimate (unfounded, I believe) fear of SageMath Inc. trying to do something similar at some point. This kind of unilateral censorship, although well intentioned, can only spark more of those flames.

If people really want flame bait on this list, then I am going to stop reading sage-devel. 

  - William

 

Any long lived community on the net has moderators, be they elected or co-opted. No one moderator takes this kind of decisions alone. Can we try, once again, to start a process to become a well behaved community? There is no shortage of very good examples of well behaved, long lived, FOSS communities. Think Debian, think Software carpentry, ...

Luca

 

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[Erik Bray]

On Aug 25, 2016 10:18, "William Stein" <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, August 24, 2016, Luca De Feo <de...@lix.polytechnique.fr> wrote:
>>
>> > I deleted it as flame bait.   I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
>> > forum to attack others
>>
>> I'm sick of it too. But this kind of unilateral actions only fuels the flame, it does not extinguish it.
>>
>> Especially given your position as a CEO of a for profit company, William. Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage as what just happened with MariaDB, the community is entitled with a legitimate (unfounded, I believe) fear of SageMath Inc. trying to do something similar at some point. This kind of unilateral censorship, although well intentioned, can only spark more of those flames.
>
>
> If people really want flame bait on this list, then I am going to stop reading sage-devel. 

I'm inclined to agree. I think that characterizations like "unilateral" and "censorship" are needlessly pejorative in this case. Sometimes swift and unforgiving action against ill-willed and toxic trolling is justified. *Especially* given a lack of better moderation standards. That said, while I think the lack of community standards justifies it, that lack still isn't excused.

>> Any long lived community on the net has moderators, be they elected or co-opted. No one moderator takes this kind of decisions alone. Can we try, once again, to start a process to become a well behaved community? There is no shortage of very good examples of well behaved, long lived, FOSS communities. Think Debian, think Software carpentry, ...

Here I agree with Luca. I think this is desperately needed this community. I've been wanting very much to bring it up for a while but as I know from personal experience it takes a lot of work and I'm already spread too thin. Also being rather new to this community I don't feel comfortable taking the lead on such a discussion. But I think it does need to happen. (Just not starting in this thread of course).

Best,
Erik

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Thursday, August 25, 2016 at 9:01:54 AM UTC+1, Luca De Feo wrote:

> I deleted it as flame bait.   I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
> forum to attack others

I'm sick of it too. But this kind of unilateral actions only fuels the flame, it does not extinguish it.

Especially given your position as a CEO of a for profit company, William. Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage as what just happened with MariaDB, the community is entitled with a legitimate (unfounded, I believe) fear of SageMath Inc. trying to do something similar at some point. This kind of unilateral censorship, although well intentioned, can only spark more of those flames.

Removing obvious flamebaits and spam really should not require a long consultation process.

(Censorship is a different story; while there cannot be a clear border between a flamebait and a good argument; intentional misquoting, as in the case we are talking about,

does qualify as an obvious flamebait, IMHO)

Having said that, I would like to see a more regular setup on "official" sagemath googlegroups; more people should be able to moderate posts/posters.

Repeated posting of flamebaits or/and other obviously damaging things should result in placing the poster under moderation (i.e. posts by this posters are held in

a moderation queue, and released only upon moderator's approval).

Should we start a process of nominating/electing moderators?

Dima

[kcrisman]

> I deleted it as flame bait.   I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
> forum to attack others

I'm sick of it too. But this kind of unilateral actions only fuels the flame, it does not extinguish it.

Especially given your position as a CEO of a for profit company, William. Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage as what just happened with MariaDB, the community is entitled with a legitimate (unfounded, I believe) fear of SageMath Inc. trying to do something similar at some point. This kind of unilateral censorship, although well intentioned, can only spark more of those flames.

If people really want flame bait on this list, then I am going to stop reading sage-devel.

It's a tough call here, because in a technical sense it was accurate and not attacking, so I would be inclined to have handled it via a "This is flame bait" response message (and indeed perhaps moving to sage-flame, if that's possible).  Even though I think regular readers of this know it was probably intended in some manner as an attack, for a first-time reader this might not have been clear.  But the lack of context (despite the link provided) is definitely problematic.  It would have been nice if someone other than the intended victim had been able to deal with the post, though, as it shouldn't have been his job. If having more moderators helps with that it's fine.  But will there be enough moderators?

 

[David Joyner]

On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 10:33 AM, kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> > I deleted it as flame bait. I'm sick of people using sage-devel as a
>>> > forum to attack others
>>>

I have set Nathann to moderated posting on sage-devel.

IMHO, his last several posts were flame-bait and go in sage-flame not
sage-devel.

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[Daniel Krenn]

On 2016-08-25 10:01, Luca De Feo wrote:
> [...] Even though you do not have the power to do the same with Sage
> as what just happened with MariaDB [...]

What did just happen to MariaDB? (I am asking as I have no glue what you
speak about; Google brings up something, but this all seems not relate
with your "just".)

Daniel

[Luca De Feo]

> Should we start a process of nominating/electing moderators?

Before that, we should decide what the process is. That's something
that might be complicated to do via email (remember what happened with
the code of conduct).

In my opinion, a Sage Days completely dedicated to this kind of issues
would be a better venue to have this kind of discussion, provided we
manage to get enough people to come.

> What did just happen to MariaDB? (I am asking as I have no glue what you
> speak about; Google brings up something, but this all seems not relate
> with your "just".)

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-tools/open-source-uproar-as-mariadb-goes-commercial.html

But see also:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/24/monty_interview/

Luca