NixOS moderators ban member having a meatloaf image as profile background | Hacker News Reader

NixOS moderators ban member having a meatloaf image as profile background

github.com

6 pointskreetx11 comments

Seems like the bigger reason is "Srid derailed discussions into a general political/philosophical debate"

There was apparently a list of three conditions on the Discord profile: (1) remove link to homepage, (2) remove the steak background image, (3) don't participate in toxic threads.

We've yet to see any links to these toxic threads. There must have been quite a few of these when you get a ban, no?

And then remove background image and remove link to homepage? Don't visit the profile page and don't visit the homepage would be my advice :).

> Several posts have been hidden/deleted because they also contained inflammatory speech. Several community members have reported their discomfort with Srid. In that context, his Discourse profile was seen as yet another provocation.

Not sure you can link to them then?

Considering the contents of the page seem to support their conclusion that the image was just another way to intentionally provoke others in the community I guess they figured the banned member had no intention of following the intention of the warning, but skirting it as close as possible. And now when that failed and they got banned they're instead trying to get people to rally to their support.

But there is literally no trace of wrongdoing. If you're going to sanction somebody, keep at least some screenshots around. Briefly digging in NixOS repo and the Discord I could find nothing even questionable the banned person did.

Regarding the image/homepage being provocative, again my suggestion would be those be. The fact that you don't agree with some person on an issue is no grounds for a ban.

> If you're going to sanction somebody, keep at least some screenshots around.

That might not've been a consideration when the offending posts were removed. The ones doing the removal might not even be the same people handling suspensions.

> I could find nothing even questionable the banned person did.

That might be an issue of legitimacy. I'm involved in some discord modding, and we got admin-only channels mirroring the others to keep logs of everything. I have no idea how suspensions are handled in the NixOS community though, maybe moderators are picked to handle things in their own discretion.

> The fact that you don't agree with some person on an issue is no grounds for a ban.

That's not what's happening here though, it's the intentionally provocative behaviour?

Say some person argues that Israel is a nazi state dehumanizingly enough to get a warning, and gets told to stop derailing everything into a discussion about that since it's a detriment to a community that in itself has no connection to the issue. Agreeing to this they instead start sporting a green flag, or a little image with a free country between a river and a sea - maybe with a green flag on it - while linking to a page about how Israel is a nazi state. Then the issue the moderators have to consider isn't whether they agree on how to describe Israel, but if the actions of the warned person are still acting inflammatory and derailing the community.

A bit over the top example to make it clearer, if you find it an incomparable situation just tone down the actions in it accordingly.

Right, I get that there are topics that are more sensitive than others and there are links and images which I guess are forbidden to use (a swastika for example). But if the issue at hand is about eating meat (?), then is having a meat loaf as the background image (or even a profile image which one would see involuntarily) reason to ban anyone? It is maybe provocative, but the thing to do there is ignore it, not ban it.

The point seems to escape you, it isn't about the sensitivity of the issue, but about if the behaviour is changed or not.

If the issue is about preferences then what behavior is there to change? He's just supporting his case. Looks to me like the moderators have decided that their preference is "right" and the banned person is wrong, and then go on to abuse their power.

You're better than this - if you are a moderator then learn to ignore these (it won't be the last one you see in life :)).

I'm a NixOS user, and having seen ideologically-charged members (on both sides of the aisle) maliciously edit package manifests, I'm glad these dick-swingers get kicked to the curb. There isn't room for your politics when designing open source software, and if anyone disagrees with that it's their prerogative to fork the software.

If it was my call, I'd go even further. If you're unwilling to put your love of software development before your arbitrary personal opinions, you shouldn't be trusted in the SDLC. It's a petty rabbit hole that ends in people writing overly restrictive CoCs instead of pounding down the offending users with a mallet. Make an example out of them.

AFAIK, srid hasn't "maliciously edited package manifests" as you put it. It's more like the moderators and srid don't agree on some off-topic topic, so the moderators (IMO) abused their power and banned him.

Also, apparently the discussion forum post (or github PR?) has been removed so there doesn't seem to be any good evidence either way. Looking at srid's PRs, mentions, discourse etc, it seems all ok, can't find any of these toxic derailments and what not.

In this case mods just found a convenient excuse to ban the "outgroup" member based on ideological lines of demarcation (specifically the unwoke link in the bio). It is never about the facts. If a convenient argument exists, it will be made, if it doesn't, it or the facts for it will be made up soon enough.

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