[Council] 2015-11-03 Meeting Minutes

[CommunityCouncil]

Meeting held 2015-11-03 on FreeNode, channel #maemo-meeting (logs (http://mg.pov.lt/maemo-meeting-irclog/%23maemo-meeting.2015-11-03.log.html))

Attending: Bernardo Reino (reinob), Jussi Ohenoja (juiceme), Peter Leinchen (peterleinchen)

Partial: Rudiger Schiller (chem|st)

Absent: Halit Bal (HtheB), Gido Griese (Win7Mac)

Summary of topics (ordered by discussion):



TMO forum swearword filter
Maemo Coding Competition 2015

(Topic TMO forum swearword filter):


General feeling is that there should be no need for filters like that, unless for example mandated in some countries/locations.
There however seem to be some people who like to have it, so we should have an election to decide what to do about it.
This would also be a nice pretext to have a test election to train new Councillors to handle elections.
(Topic Maemo Coding Competition 2015):


Discussion on competition basic rules, whether to have categories based on device type or application type or something between..
The Council will continue to refine the idea further before presenting to the community.

Action Items:

old items:

The selected Code of Conduct (KDE (https://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/)) still needs to be published on TMO.
Looking into automatic calculation of election results ...

new items:

Arrange Council status on TMO for new Council members




Link: Original article. (http://maemo.org/community/council/2015-11-03_meeting_minutes/)

[szopin]

Wow, who would've thought you can have normal CoC without involving microaggressions and reverse racisms and stuff after the whole github fiasco, kudos

[pichlo]

(Topic TMO forum swearword filter):
General feeling is that there should be no need for filters like that, unless for example mandated in some countries/locations.


Yeeeeey! :)

[minimos]

Yeeeeey! :)

Topic for next Council:
TMO swearword Competition 2015: to train new Councillors to handle elections.

:D

[nokiabot]

this is unacceptable i.e swearword termination
swearword is to be there to keep forum clean it helps by moderating automatically so posts are better to read anywhere

i know we all are adults here and we can moderate ourselves but i think the swearword system is not ment for that purpose i.e censorship or related it is there to weed out unnecessary words typed in exitement hype rage and the likes so it is not restricting freedom of speech too

people who feel SWEARWORD should remain please holler and point out some good points :)

thats all i can type at 6 am chilly morning

next task for the council //
improve the tmo login system it simply refuses to login at times and ....

[endsormeans]

+1 to that nokiabot

The odd time it is a humorous diversion in a sandbox-like environment ...on discussing swear words.

But I believe that talk of doing away with ...even a flawed profanity check system in place that cannot catch all words of questionable intent...is not an answer.
Fixing it is...adding words to the list is....
getting rid of the profanity check isn't.

Many would self police themselves well here without it.
Many would not.
The numbers of either are irrelevant.
What is relevant is the shock value of even a few people using profanity so easily to derail, sabotage, and otherwise harm meaningful dialogue and discourse ...far far too easily.
What is relevant is that it would only take a few people to poison this place.
In the end it is about having a welcoming and comfortable environment that people can participate in.
If profanity is simply allowed casually here...
I believe it won't take long for things to go sour ...
If such flawed filter systems as we have are kicked to the side...
or we end up having people in minority or majority subverting the profanity checks to vent in an ugly way upon one another...
then I for one would have to seriously consider leaving this place.
It would be... I think... the only reason why I would leave...
Proper considerate behavior for one another is essential here.
The swear filter and our moderators are the only preventative tools we have here...taking out of the equation .. half our tools to keep the place clean, welcoming and friendly...doesn't help.

[pichlo]

-1 for nokiabot and endsormeans. The filter is unnecessary and counterproductive. If we want to keep it in some form, how about a popup when you hit Send. "You used the word donkey. Are you sure you want to post it?"

[reinob]

+1 to pichlo.

We might also want to consider an opt-in/opt-out filter. People who haven't opted-out (and possible not logged in users, e.g. search engines) will get swearwods filtered out *on-the-fly*, i.e. while serving the page.

Users who have opted-out of the filter will get the "raw" content.

I think we'll soon be ready to organize an election, if only for the fück of it. Oops.

[juiceme]

We might also want to consider an opt-in/opt-out filter. People who haven't opted-out (and possible not logged in users, e.g. search engines) will get swearwods filtered out *on-the-fly*, i.e. while serving the page.

Users who have opted-out of the filter will get the "raw" content.

Interesting idea, however I fear that the forum SW does not fold to that easily... :D
It sure is possible to do something like that but might require rewriting a lot of code!


I think we'll soon be ready to organize an election, if only for the fück of it. Oops.

Based on the strong reaction of community to this topic I know we now need an election.

[minimos]

Half joking proposal:
would it possible to train the swearword engine to detect words combinations that often generate controversies and OT (like "Silica" and "opensource" ;) ) and put up a gentle warning like "Please reconsider to submit your comment if it's going to lead the thread to OT" ?

[reinob]

Half joking proposal:
would it possible to train the swearword engine to detect words combinations that often generate controversies and OT (like "Silica" and "opensource" ;) ) and put up a gentle warning like "Please reconsider to submit your comment if it's going to lead the thread to OT" ?

Nah. This would go more in the direction of nannying.
I'd tend to go full-freedom-of-speech (because *we* can!).

(For everything else, and when/as needed, we have our moderators..)

[pichlo]

I say, ditch the moderators too! :p

(I have to say, there has been much less moderation in the past 6 months than in the 6 months before and I have to say, it was for the best.)

[HtheB]

I say, ditch the moderators too!

(I have to say, there has been much less moderation in the past 6 months than in the 6 months before and I have to say, it was for the best.)

Ditch yourself !

(I'm doing my job well, be sure that mods do not have rights in all categories)

[pichlo]

Ditch yourself !

Believe me, I would if I could.

(ALL moderators have been doing their job well recently, by staying well out of the way.)

[HtheB]

Believe me, I would if I could.

(ALL moderators have been doing their job well recently, by staying well out of the way.)

Oh I could lend you a hand if you want :p

[Android_808]

One thing I noted was the lack off toolchain updates as part of the old items. Is this something still being looked at?

[Wikiwide]

We might also want to consider an opt-in/opt-out filter. People who haven't opted-out (and possible not logged in users, e.g. search engines) will get swearwods filtered out *on-the-fly*, i.e. while serving the page.

Users who have opted-out of the filter will get the "raw" content.

Interesting idea, however I fear that the forum SW does not fold to that easily... :D
It sure is possible to do something like that but might require rewriting a lot of code!

I think we'll soon be ready to organize an election, if only for the fück of it. Oops.


Based on the strong reaction of community to this topic I know we now need an election.

Agree. I would vote for optional filter. However, I would prefer to have the swear words filtered on server-side, not on client side, to avoid browser-compatibility issues. Besides, in case of server-side filtering, we do not need to re-write the swear-word-filter-code: was on server, stays on server. We just need to make sure that the opt-in-or-opt-out works.

The "optimal" way to do it, would when message is taken from database and converted into webpage by server: depending on the request (opted in or opted out), a different swearwords list would be applied. Switching between different lists (empty list and full-list) would be easier than switching off filter altogether. And would allow for more flexibility, should some time in the future users request to have personal swearwords lists.

Of course, I don't know how current server-side code works. If it applies filter before saving message to database (en route from writer to database), old swears may never be recovered (alas, sarcastic), and (more importantly) it would be difficult to change server-side code to apply filter to message en route from database to reader.

Thank you. Best wishes.
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Per aspera ad astra...