Von: Sven Neumann

Whoever controls the bots on the #gimp channel, can you please remove the rule that gives carol a channel operator status? It's evil enough that she's around harassing newbies. With this status it looks as if she was somehow official.

Other networks have policies that encourage people to not have operator status until needed. Usually, a bot is the only one to have op status.

IMO this is useful - it does reduce the "us vs. them" partitioning by at least one magnitude. Also, any action that does become necessary can be performed more stealthily (per hit-and-run, maybe even through the bot).

It does not solve the problem of who should have ops, but it could be a move into the right direction (that anyone who has ops should have a good reason for it).

My 2c, Michael

Sven Neumann (sven@gimp.org) wrote:

I don't know if everyone of the GIMP development team is as annoyed of Carol as I am, but I know that there are quite a few people who are.

I for sure am annoyed as well. I absolutely hate the idea of driving someone out of the project and still worry about doing it, but I am out of alternatives.

Bye,
Simon

We will have to do something about this situation. Or even more developers, including myself, will leave the project.

My stance on the issue:

People have different strengths and I think that sometimes it is necessary to overlook negative attributes of a person if the person does valuable contributions.

I'm not really sure in what way carol contributes though, so letting her have traits of an "official" GIMP:er (like IRC op status) does indeed not really make sense.

However, if a person does *negative* contributions, like confuse newcomers and add noise to mailing lists and bug trackers, one has to consider more serious actions, like first asking the person to leave (already done in this case), and if he/she doesn't, ban him/her.

I absolutely hate the idea of banning people, but if I have to choose between keeping carol and one of the most contributing people to the GIMP, the choice is obvious...

Carol, I want to stress that I have nothing personal against you, I think you have an interesting personality (maybe it's because I haven't been around so long yet :d), but in situations like this; I have no choice, sorry.

- Martin Nordholts

Hi

Sven Neumann wrote:

We will have to do something about this situation. Or even more developers, including myself, will leave the project. As a start, I ask everyone who feels harrassed by Carol to tell her that she is not welcome and to ask her to leave. Perhaps then she realizes that this is not just a personal threat from me.

I'd hate to do this to any other, but this situation has gone unchecked for a long time. Having been a target of her somehow scornful and insane behavior several times, I also ask for her removal, but more than that, I also think she's genuinely insane and needs to seek medical attention (seriously). She may not be doing all of this on purpose for fun, but maybe because she has mental issues.

#gimp is not your average IRC room. Similar to other rooms on GimpNet, developers get together there and there's mutual respect. Among the things I remember:

- She `attacks' people in the channel, such as this one time when she was annoyed with akk and she tried to drag me into the conversation --- I had just quit my job of 5 years and when I refused to participate in her attacks and wanted to be left alone, she points out my employment situation on IRC to tick me off and made me quit the channel.

- She has claimed crazy things in channel to undermine me, such as that I wanted to marry a US citizen to get a H-1B visa.

- She claimed in a nonsense `apology email' that GIMP project and #gimp are `homo-erotic love fests' due to something that a GIMP developer told her (I am not going to disclose that email here for it'd hurt that person). This was irritating to read as GIMP is not an erotic love fest, at least not to its contributors. She also claimed that this GIMP developer told her that we were all trying to get sexually involved with her. All this this shows her lack of respect towards her co-contributors.

- I had tried to talk sense into her, tried to explain that nobody is out to get her or ill treat her in any way. We're just trying to run a project. But nothing works and she just replies with nonsense. Reasoning with her has no effect.

- She does not speak rationally. In a lot of cases, it's simply nonsense which nobody can understand or a mockery of her co-developers.

- If I'm not mistaken, bolsh (Dave Neary) left the GIMP project due to inaction on Carol's behaviour.

- Even today she claimed something silly, that I had sent a person this morning into the channel to ask her about my authoring a plug-in, when I had had absolutely no communication with her in the recent past whatsoever. I have her on ignore nowadays, but her message got through because I was IRC'ing from a new place.

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Kind regards,

Mukund

Sven Neumann wrote:

We will have to do something about this situation. Or even more developers, including myself, will leave the project. As a start, I ask everyone who feels harrassed by Carol to tell her that she is not welcome and to ask her to leave. Perhaps then she realizes that this is not just a personal threat from me.

Forcing someone to leave is a terrible thing. But as Simon and Mukund said, we have tried everything else we could think about (and I've not even been here from the beginnning).

It took me one year to finally ignore Carol's comments and personal attacks, and to stop considering leaving the project. Nobody should have to put up with that to contribute, our energy is better used contributing. Nowadays nothing she says can hurt me anymore, and it's sad to ignore someone to that point. Nevertheless, there are reasons why I'm not contributing much to the project and the channel talking anymore, and Carol is one of those.

I know one new contributor who left after a few weeks because she was attacked by Carol for being a woman, and couldn't believe the team would let such attacks go through and barely react. We are all used to ignore her to be able to go on with the project, but that can be really harmful.

Karine

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:02:19 +0200, Mukund Sivaraman wrote:

I also think she's genuinely insane and needs to seek medical attention (seriously). She may not be doing all of this on purpose for fun, but maybe because she has mental issues.

I think she indicated in one post last year that she had been through a "very, very difficult" period. She is certainly getting help. But there's a limit as to how much understanding and lee way can be given and even whether this is helpful.

I dont think that allowing her to continue her "drama" here is in anyway helping her therapy. Allowing her behaviour to continue by lack of action is probably even giving her the illusion that it is someway acceptable.

She has obviously created enough frustration and ill-will to necessitate action. It seems improper that she has a gimp.org email since that will automatically mean those who dont know her will associate her comments with the project. That clearly is unacceptable.

/gg

Hi all!

On Tuesday 19 June 2007, Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

I don't know if everyone of the GIMP development team is as annoyed of Carol as I am, but I know that there are quite a few people who are.

It has been a pleasure for me to notice that she stopped mailing to gimp-developer and gimp-user a while ago. In my opinion, the quality of the lists has improved and participating has become a lot more fun since she's gone.

However she is still permanently around in #gimp and probably also in other GIMP related IRC channels. And she also hasn't stopped posting to our bug-tracker. I have asked her to stop doing that. I have asked her to leave the GIMP channels. But she doesn't respect this.

I should note that I have had my own share of bad experiences dealing with Carol, and seeing her harass people who are trying to learn or contribute to GIMP, although they weren't as bad as what some people here have described.

So I support all actions that are necessary to keep her in control. She still seems to be doing much more harm than good.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish shlomif@iglu.org.il Homepage: http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer. -- An Israeli Linuxer

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:01:46 +0200, Sven Neumann wrote:

I don't know if everyone of the GIMP development team is as annoyed of Carol as I am, but I know that there are quite a few people who are.

As I have been involved in several incidents with Carol some years ago, I should probably comment on this. For a while, I felt responsible for all the bad things happening to Carol. I still feel sorry about what happened in 2003. But I cannot feel responsible for what Carol has been doing since then (which is not very different from what she did before anyway). Also, I used to be upset whenever Carol was posting nasty comments on IRC or on the GIMP mailing lists. I have learned to ignore the negative comments and only pay attention to her useful contributions, but newcomers and casual contributors do not have the opportunity to know this in advance.

It was a pleasure for me to meet Carol at LGM last year and discover that we can have friendly face-to-face conversations. This is something that I appreciated very much. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case online: her negative messages or gibberish on IRC or by e-mail have discouraged more than one contributor. So while I thank Carol for her contributions to the GIMP web site or for her own web site and tutorials, I think that her behavior online has brought more harm than good and has seriously hurt the project.

I am not sure about the best way to handle this because I hate excluding people, but preventing her from harrassing others on IRC and removing her op access would certainly be a good start.

-Raphaël

On 6/19/07, Sven Neumann wrote:

I don't know if everyone of the GIMP development team is as annoyed of Carol as I am, but I know that there are quite a few people who are.

[...]

We will have to do something about this situation. Or even more developers, including myself, will leave the project. As a start, I ask everyone who feels harrassed by Carol to tell her that she is not welcome and to ask her to leave. Perhaps then she realizes that this is not just a personal threat from me.

She has caused a lot of noise in the GIMP project. People have left the project and potential new contributors navigated away upon encountering her. A lot of the cognitive load of monitoring the #gimp IRC channel is spent dechipering her hidden meanings and presumed contexts. Spending the time of contributors and potential contributors in non-constructive ways makes enjoying the enhancement of GIMP harder than it should need to be. For some time the suggested work around for the issue has been to put carol on /ignore. This temporary work around might work for individual developers, but it has just been a postponement
of a broader issue. This issue is in my opinion best fixed for GIMP by carol ceasing to interfere and socialize with the project.

/Øyvind K.

Mukund Sivaraman mukund.org> writes:

I also think she's genuinely insane and needs to seek medical attention (seriously). She may not be doing all of this on purpose for fun, but maybe because she has mental issues.

Having been a target of one of her episodes in 2004 myself, I went at great, exhaustive length to explain her obvious and serious condition of codependence to her using a series of many small and simple arguments building up to my notion of her problem.

This was only met at first with more insults and aggression, and once she learned that I would not budge from my position, subsequently was met with utter silence. I think I got lucky, considering all that has happened since.

I believe that she is in dire need of professional help.

But nothing works and she just replies with nonsense. Reasoning with her has no effect.

This statement matches my own observation completely.

- Even today she claimed something silly, that I had sent a person this morning into the channel to ask her about my authoring a plug-in, when I had had absolutely no communication with her in the recent past whatsoever. I have her on ignore nowadays, but her message got through because I was IRC'ing from a new place.

One of her methods to involve people into playing along to her mind games and hence feed the requirements of her condition is the declaration of false statements as to force people to react.

Another is to provide unsolicited "help" so that people receiving it would "thank her later" for it.

Wikipedia has an entry on "Codependence". I suggest considering this to beher problem.

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Yes, please. Her condition is serious.

greetings,

Daniel Pisano

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:51:50 +0000 (UTC), Daniel Pisano wrote:

Mukund Sivaraman mukund.org> writes:

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Yes, please. Her condition is serious.

You both raised several valid points about Carol's unacceptable behavior. However, it would have been better to avoid stating on a public mailing list that she needs medical attention (regardless of whether it is true or not). These comments should have been private. They can easily be perceived as an insult and they weaken your other arguments because you are attacking her person instead of her behavior.

I still have some respect for Carol as a person and her medical condition is none of my business. However, her behavior is not acceptable and it has a negative impact on the project and its developers, as can be seen from the comments posted here.

I just want her to stop doing what she is doing to the project; I do not care about the rest of her life. Considering that she did not stop despite numerous requests over the years, Sven is right in that some administrative action is required now. And as sad as it might be, she should also understand that her actions resulted in her not being welcome anymore. She used to be a member of the GIMP community, but not anymore. She should try to find some other people who welcome her, preferably in real life and not online.

-Raphaël

P.S.: I'll stop patronizing now. I also have my bad habits...

Hi Raphael

Raphaël Quinet wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:51:50 +0000 (UTC), Daniel Pisano wrote:

Mukund Sivaraman mukund.org> writes:

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Yes, please. Her condition is serious.

You both raised several valid points about Carol's unacceptable behavior. However, it would have been better to avoid stating on a public mailing list that she needs medical attention (regardless of whether it is true or not). These comments should have been private. They can easily be perceived as an insult and they weaken your other arguments because you are attacking her person instead of her behavior.

I was not attacking at all. It was something I suggested for her own good, as a trained professional like a psychiatrist can understand her problems better and suggest activities which can make her feel better. This is clearly my personal opinion from observation. I should not have said she's insane as I have no real idea of what her medical condition is, or if she needs treatment, and I am not a doctor. I apologize for that comment, but it was really my opinion.

Kind regards,

Mukund

Raphaël Quinet gimp.org> writes:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:51:50 +0000 (UTC), Daniel Pisano

web.de> wrote:

Mukund Sivaraman mukund.org> writes:

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Yes, please. Her condition is serious.

You both raised several valid points about Carol's unacceptable behavior. However, it would have been better to avoid stating on a public mailing list that she needs medical attention (regardless of whether it is true or not).

I have no reason to withhold a justifiable personal opinion or evaluation. The collected written evidence of the personal harassment which I endured speaks for itself and is available for inspection by anyone with a legit interest anytime.

These comments should have been private.

They have been in my case since 2004. Yet it appears that the situation has not improved in at least the last three years.

The reported desensitization, the trained mild tolerance and the resulting indifference in the IRC channels of many plainly onlooking members of the community leads me to believe that most people have not grasped the seriousness or nature of her condition yet. Otherwise, the community would have behaved and reacted differently and much earlier.

Hers is not a bad habit, it is a serious problem or maybe even a mental illness.

Many people out there keep being alcoholics or regularly exert domestic violence against their wives and children because their environment excuses their behavior as being just a bad habit or ignores what in reality requires professional attention.
This should not happen to the GIMP community.

It is by voicing this opinion of mine that I can contribute towards a higher alertness and indicate a possible source of the problem that the community has been quite unable to recognize and handle so far. Looking away never helps anyone.

They can easily be perceived as an insult and they weaken your other arguments because you are attacking her person instead of her behavior.

Quite the contrary. A person with a serious psychological condition is unable to help herself any more once they exceeded a certain point, and thus she has to rely on well-meaning external input, recognition and professional assistance in order to get a chance of regaining normality.

What you think of as an insult may be the only really useful statement alerting her unaware social environment of her need for help.

It is indeed by not saying anything that we would insult or even endanger her person in her current situation.

I just want her to stop doing what she is doing to the project; I do not care about the rest of her life.

I agree on the first statement, but I strongly object to the second.

Indeed, every person is responsible for leading her own life. Carol's problem is that she not only is unable to lead her own life, but that she tries to take massive influence on other people's lives, messing with them inappropriately.

While I could not care less about carol, the offensive character in an online community, but I _do_ care indirectly about Carol, the human being, since I care about the well-being of any fellow human being, no matter who he is. My contribution towards that premise is my public statement of what I believe to be the problem and then relying on those who actually are in the position to help her to do their part. So while I am not going to spend any special effort in actually saving her, I opt to do the utmost that I can do under the circumstances without incurring a loss myself. If what is left of her social environment then is motivated or alerted to help her, then I have made a useful contribution. If not, then I have at least tried to fight indifference.

Hence my motivation to speak out in this thread. And I have no more to say about this matter, since all that I could do, I have done.

over and out, and kind regards,

Daniel

On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 05:29:15PM +0000, Daniel Pisano wrote:

Hence my motivation to speak out in this thread. And I have no more to say about this matter, since all that I could do, I have done.

I haven't read all the postings in this thread yet, as this week is busy for me, but I have to say that your posting about this is extremely hypocritical, as *your* tendency to blather on ridiculously, especially on IRC, as driven people from the project as well.

Perhaps you should seek help for your mental illness yourself before talking about others.

I'll comment on the rest of this thread later, since the other postings aren't by disturbed hypocrites and merit constructive responses.

-Yosh

On Tuesday, June 19, 2007, 9:01:46, Sven Neumann wrote:

I don't know if everyone of the GIMP development team is as annoyed of Carol as I am, but I know that there are quite a few people who are.

I personally haven't had much interaction with Carol, but that was because I saw her behaviour towards others, and avoided her intentionally. I have on several occasions saw her torment newbies on IRC, and I have in some cases advised them in private to just ignore her.

2007/6/21, Mukund Sivaraman :

Hi Raphael

Raphaël Quinet wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:51:50 +0000 (UTC), Daniel Pisano

wrote:

Mukund Sivaraman mukund.org> writes:

If there are anyone who know her personally and are nearby, please get her medical attention.

Yes, please. Her condition is serious.

You both raised several valid points about Carol's unacceptable behavior. However, it would have been better to avoid stating on a public mailing list that she needs medical attention (regardless of whether it is true or not). These comments should have been private. They can easily be perceived as an insult and they weaken your other arguments because you are attacking her person instead of her behavior.

I was not attacking at all. It was something I suggested for her own good, as a trained professional like a psychiatrist can understand her problems better and suggest activities which can make her feel better. This is clearly my personal opinion from observation. I should not have said she's insane as I have no real idea of what her medical condition is, or if she needs treatment, and I am not a doctor. I apologize for that comment, but it was really my opinion.

Kind regards,

Mukund

Good day to all reading this thread with interest and feeding it with the best intentions.

Carol was at LGM this year and she was not hiding away, at least from what I saw. Anyone could meet her face to face. I had the chance to have a few short conversations with her but being the organiser time has not allowed us to discuss as much as we did in Lyon last year. I am not aware if anybody has discussed with her on the particular subject of her threads on IRC but in any event it would have been of course a nice occasion to do so.

I cannot discuss the reasons of each and everyone talking here in their personal name as I barely show up on IRC on the gimp channel. I believe each has good reasons to express what they feel regarding Carol's behavior. At the same time, I for one feel pretty unconfortable with where this discussion is heading now that it has deviated on medical "diagnostic"... and still being made public. I strongly believe the advice on Carol's condition is completely out of the purpose of this list — of any list, I should say. This is private matter. A public discussion on an archived list is not the same as a kitchen discussion with whoever about whatever or whoever. I am really unconfortable now and I believe I am not alone in this situation.

I suggest to stop this thread and refrain from commenting further on personnal things such as the health of somebody. At the same time, I think that once the heat will be down a few degrees, the case should be discussed among the team on a private channel and preferably including Carol so she can express herself or at least understand what is going on and if exclusion is voted, at the very least the accused person knows exaclty what are the reproaches made to her, from an official point of view, with objective rules that anyone can understand and agree upon. I guess that before getting this far, an official warning should take place. If nothing changes, then a final warning and then, the consequences of being banned from the various gimp channels or monitored or whatever measures the team decides. The incremental consequences of a specific bad behavior should be publicly known. The bad behavior should be clearly identified too, and described. These rules are necessary for any kind of human community.

The gimp officials have to discuss about the facts going on the gimp channels. Nothing less. Nothing more. And take action on these facts, leaving behind any further considerations and suppositions.

I did not intend to offend anybody here. If I did, I apologize in advance.

Peace to everyone.

Louis

Hi Louis

Louis Desjardins wrote:

I did not intend to offend anybody here. If I did, I apologize in advance.

You do not offend. You probably wrote this email with the best intentions, but you seem unaware of many things that have happened.

I cannot discuss the reasons of each and everyone talking here in their personal name as I barely show up on IRC on the gimp channel. I believe each has good reasons to express what they feel regarding Carol's behavior. At the same time, I for one feel pretty unconfortable with where this discussion is heading now that it has deviated on medical "diagnostic"... and still being made public. I strongly believe the advice on Carol's condition is completely out of the purpose of this list — of any list, I should say. This is private matter. A public discussion on an archived list is not the same as a kitchen discussion with whoever about whatever or whoever. I am really unconfortable now and I believe I am not alone in this situation.

Firstly this `medical help' criticism has gone way overboard. I did not reveal some secret file about Carol, or something that was actually diagnosed by a doctor who confided in me. My _opinion_ was from her public behaviour towards me and others in the IRC channel and emails. This opinion is not irrational or random, and I am entitled to say it having been publicly harassed and I have proof to back it up. When I say she should seek help, I say that out of sympathy.

Almost every GIMP developer is aware of her eccentric behaviour and my email was written out of frustration, having read something that very day on IRC.

It pretty much concerns this list, because developers will leave unless this topic is solved (there is a limit to tolerating harassment), and this thread was started by the maintainer of GIMP. This thread _is_ about Carol's behaviour.

I suggest to stop this thread and refrain from commenting further on personnal things such as the health of somebody. At the same time, I think that once the heat will be down a few degrees, the case should be discussed among the team on a private channel and preferably including Carol so she can express herself or at least understand what is going on and if exclusion is voted, at the very least the accused person knows exaclty what are the reproaches made to her, from an official point of view, with objective rules that anyone can understand and agree upon. I guess that before getting this far, an official warning should take place. If nothing changes, then a final warning and then, the consequences of being banned from the various gimp channels or monitored or whatever measures the team decides. The incremental consequences of a specific bad behavior should be publicly known. The bad behavior should be clearly identified too, and described. These rules are necessary for any kind of human community.

You seem to talk of ideal conditions, which haven't existed. Who is `official' exactly? Yosh? Sven? You and me? So far there have been disagreements, and complaints have gone unanswered, and I guess this thread was started out of frustration by Sven. You talk of these official methods---do you know of our complaints so far? Carol has been asked politely several times to leave the project, and has been explained the reasons for it which she is well aware of. Nobody is prejudiced here. If she is to change today completely and turn a new leaf, she will be welcome. But that seems very unlikely, going by how she doesn't seem to care. She had received her `final warning' several times from Sven.

Discussions should be public. This is a public project, people were harassed in public on IRC. IMHO, the discussion should be public so that everyone including Carol knows what progressed, and we can all say what we have to say.

The gimp officials have to discuss about the facts going on the gimp channels. Nothing less. Nothing more. And take action on these facts, leaving behind any further considerations and suppositions.

This is exactly what was discussed. And when you have a person speaking like a nutcase in public, it's not entirely unexpected if someone calls him/her a nutcase. It's not a secret or some private data made public. Linus called the Subversion developers stupid in his Git talk and meant it, for just getting merging wrong.

I am not exactly prejudiced as I think somewhere inside she is probably a good person, but I have sure been irritated by her (and it seems that that's continuing, considering what happened yesterday morning which was out of the blue having had her on /ignore for a long time).

Kind regards,

Mukund

2007/6/22, Sven Neumann :

She has stopped her contributions long ago and she has been asked to leave several times now. It is about time that this finally happens.

Hi Sven,

Isn't there a way on the channels (IRC, bugtracker, mailing list) to simply restrain the access to a specific individual when things get to a point where repetitive demands and persuasion don't seem to give any results?

Let's face it, I realize this is pretty unusual and must very rarely happen but there is a possibility that someone else steps in one day with the same behavior. While there are of course no ways to prevent this upstream can we at least make sure there are ways to prevent this person from being in contact with the community once the problem has been clearly identified?

I really wish we can sort this out because this might happen elsewhere in any other project. It is not an exclusivity of the gimp team!

Louis

Sven

Louis Desjardins wrote:

2007/6/22, Sven Neumann >:

She has stopped her contributions long ago and she has been asked to leave several times now. It is about time that this finally happens.

Hi Sven,

Isn't there a way on the channels (IRC, bugtracker, mailing list) to simply restrain the access to a specific individual when things get to a point where repetitive demands and persuasion don't seem to give any results?

Let's face it, I realize this is pretty unusual and must very rarely happen but there is a possibility that someone else steps in one day with the same behavior. While there are of course no ways to prevent this upstream can we at least make sure there are ways to prevent this person from being in contact with the community once the problem has been clearly identified?

I really wish we can sort this out because this might happen elsewhere in any other project. It is not an exclusivity of the gimp team!

Louis

Sven

From my experience in a few OSS community's, this would seem to be a fairly rare incident.

Some developers can probably come over snobby or arrogant but to be abusive (thats what I gather has happened) is something I havnt seen before.

If I ever acted in a way that hurt the Blender3D community, I would be kicked out before I did too much damage. Its most surprising this behavior has been this tolerated for so long.

Since carol had the composure to be civil with people face-to-face makes me think that she does KNOW BETTER... and that her behavior is something she allows herself online where one can have less inhabitation's saying offensive stuff.

Its not like you are being unreasonable, Sven has said he wanted the old Carol back and if one day Carol decides she is ready to come back into the community - She could could earn back some respect and contribute again.

I have know people to go through mental illness and have sympathy for her if this is the case, but that dosnt mean you let her hurt a project thats important to many people and the linux community at large.

PS. I dont know what homo-erotic means exactly but hey- Whatever helps coders, and is safer then rugby.

Campbell Barton writes:
> Since carol had the composure to be civil with people face-to-face makes > me think that she does KNOW BETTER...

I am not so sure. At LGM2007 there was at least one occasion where I was present when carol started her typical carol-speak, and (predictably) directing odd insinuative questions to one of the female developers present. I guess most of us others just thought "oh. here we go again" and tried to pretend we didn't listen (at least I did). Luckily the subject of carol's harrassment this time understoof what was going on and didn't bother feeding the troll, so nothing more serious happened.

--tml

It would be helpful to get more input from yosh.

-- Bill

______________ ______________ ______________ ______________ Sent via the CNPRC Email system at primate.ucdavis.edu

Hi Louis,

On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 08:38:59 -0400, "Louis Desjardins" wrote:

Isn't there a way on the channels (IRC, bugtracker, mailing list) to simply restrain the access to a specific individual when things get to a point where repetitive demands and persuasion don't seem to give any results?

This is not so simple, in part due to the way the GIMP project is organized (or not) :-). Short recap for those who are not familiar with the project:

- When it comes to the code, neo (Sven Neumann) and mitch (Michael Natterer) are by far the most active developers. They have the final say on most technical decisions. Have a quick look at the ChangeLog and you will see which names appear frequently. Like many free software projects, GIMP is like an informal meritocracy, so those who contribute more have more authority over the technical aspects of the project.

- But when it comes to the infrastructure such as the IRC server ircd.gimp.org, the web servers, the mailing lists and the gimp.org mail server and user accounts, yosh (Manish Singh) owns or operates most of it. He is also an active developer. Since he is the administrator of these servers or services, he is the only one who can restrain access to these channels.

- In the past, we had several proposals for setting up some kind of code of conduct or guidelines for participation in the project. There were also some proposals about what to do when someone misbehaved. But these proposals were never formally approved and were never enforced. I think that the last attempt was initiated by bolsh (Dave Neary) before he decided to quit the project, mostly because of Carol. Of course we have some guidelines such as the List Etiquette published on our web site (http://www.gimp.org/mail_lists.html) and some IRC rules on our wiki (http://wiki.gimp.org/gimp/Irc). But these are recommendations and they are rarely enforced.

Usually, Yosh has been swift in blocking access to people who misbehaved on this mailing list or on IRC, except for Carol. There are several reasons for that, including some that are related to Carol's past situation, but I don't think that it is up to me to explain them. I probably do not know half of these reasons anyway.

Yosh has mentioned in a previous message that it will take him a bit more time to state his opinion on this matter and I respect that. Since he is the only one who can enforce any decision, there is not much point in arguing about Carol and continuing this discussion until he explains what he intends to do (and why, maybe).

Let's face it, I realize this is pretty unusual and must very rarely happen but there is a possibility that someone else steps in one day with the same behavior. While there are of course no ways to prevent this upstream can we at least make sure there are ways to prevent this person from being in contact with the community once the problem has been clearly identified?

I really wish we can sort this out because this might happen elsewhere in any other project. It is not an exclusivity of the gimp team!

The problem that we have been facing with Carol for several years is quite unusual, and as far as I know, exclusive to the GIMP team (alas!). In part because Carol's behavior is rather unusual: sometimes she tries to help, sometimes she tries to mislead people, sometimes she harrasses people. And in part because we never took any effective measures against her, contrary to other annoying people who disturbed the project and were quickly excluded from this list or kicked from IRC.

-Raphaël