[Pkg-privacy-maintainers] Offer to help with the Privacy Maintainers group

[intrigeri]

Hi Loïc, hi pkg-privacy team mates,

Loïc Dachary:
> On 05/25/2018 08:55 AM, Ulrike Uhlig wrote:
>> Loïc Dachary:
>>> On 05/24/2018 10:30 AM, intrigeri wrote:
>>>>> Could you please explain why?
>>>>
>>>> You already have all the info you need to understand why
>>>> but if needed I can resend it to you off-list.
>>>>
>>>> Given this, I find it very awkward, at the very least, that you've
>>>> requested to join this team in the first place, and that you're asking
>>>> this question now.
>>>
>>> I opened a RFH for pdf-redact-tools a few months ago and someone kindly suggested
>>> it is a good fit. It is common practice for debian developers to collaborate with
>>> each other when packages are in the same realm.
>>>
>>> In the Debian project, where we value collaboration and assume good faith, it is
>>> nt awkward to ask for a reason when being rejected publicly.

First of all, after requesting to join the team on Salsa, you've
followed-up on it publicly
(<72d06bc6-c19c-dda1-8e4c-1a6256ec4f8f at dachary.org>) so it's no
surprise to me that the rejection was public as well.

Regarding the reasons behind the rejection: I have already offered to
resend you off-list the information that I hope should be enough for
you to understand it. I've also personally reached out to you
privately, three months ago, to discuss another similar exclusion
decision and help you understand the (very same) reasons behind it; to
this day, AFAICT I got no answer to my offer. Instead you've submitted
the very same request a few months later, in a slightly different
context (Debian), and you're asking for an explanation once your
request to join this team is rejected. I am still ready to explain
these rejection to you and I hereby reiterate my offer to discuss this
privately with you.

Regarding your request to be explained the reasons publicly: this is
not going to work. It's awkward to have to explain this on a mailing
list that has "privacy" in its name but oh well, here we go: someone
may not want to describe their feelings publicly. When someone insists
to get someone else do that, there's a red light blinking in my head
that says something's wrong. If that's not obvious to you then I'd
rather not work with you on this team as I'd be afraid you're going to
pressure other team members again in the future to publicly disclose
information they'd rather keep private, which that's absolutely not
part of the team dynamics / collective relationships I'd personally
like to build and nurture here (or anywhere else by the way).

Regarding the awkwardness of having to go through this process again,
in a slightly different context: I find it awkward (at best) because
to me what you're doing here is called insisting. And more than
awkward, I find it problematic because you had the info you needed to
know before you sent this request that it had a good chance to hurt
people. That's not OK with me.

> By strongly opposing my application you are telling everyone in the
> team (and the general public) that, in your opinion, accepting me as
> a member would be very detrimental.

Your question was addressed to Ulrike but in *my* opinion, given what
happened on this thread and in another conflict resolution process
we've been part of a few months ago, accepting you as a member of this
team would be too risky a decision and I would not be comfortable
making it, regardless of Ulrike's own reasons. These two processes
have exposed a big gap between how you and I relate to the notion of
relationships between consenting individuals, to the effects of using
the "insisting" technique in social relationships, to taking into
account individuals' feelings as being part of what makes a collective
work or not, and more generally to how desirable social relationships
look like, up to a point that I personally don't feel comfortable
working with you, regardless of the potential amount and quality of
technical contributions you would put into our team's packages. I can
explain this in more details either publicly on this thread or
privately (your call) if you wish.

> Would you be so kind as to explain why?

FTR I call this insisting: you've already asked once and you have the
information (plus an open offer to explain it) to understand why you
did not get said explanation here and why you won't get it.

> I would not ask for an explanation if you just told me that you do not
> like me: personal and subjective preferences do not need to be
> justified: they are what they are ;-) 

I'm glad you're acknowledging this. It's a change I welcome compared
to how I was able to understand your position during our last
discussion on a similar topic.

Now, the pkg-privacy team is not an affinity group. I'm fine working
with people I subjectively "do not like" and I greatly value the fact
we manage to do it in the Debian project. What's going on here has
nothing to do with "subjective preferences" nor with liking each
other. To understand what's going on:

 - Please re-read the information that I have sent you privately (in
   the name of another collective) on February 27. And if that's not
   enough, my offer to explain this off-list still stands.

 - At the meta level, as explained above this whole thread convinced
   me that having you on the team would introduce dynamics I'd rather
   not see in this group. It simply costs me too much time and
   emotional energy to deal with what's at best a culture clash, and
   I'd rather leave the team than having to keep doing that.

Cheers,
-- 
intrigeri