[FFmpeg-devel] The Concept for the CC Installment is broken by Design

[Soft Works <softworkz-at-hotmail.com@ffmpeg.org>]

Hello everybody,

this is not the kind of e-mail you might be expecting from the title. I think we had enough of those. Nobody will be blamed; nobody will be criticized. This is meant to address everybody equally, specifically not meant to be supportive of those who had brought up doubts about the CC before and it’s also not against those who believe the CC is a reasonable idea. Even less is it about any past or current members of the CC. The error is not on their side. 


The Community Committee Concept is broken by Design
===================================================

A BUG REPORT
============


1. Principles of Operation

The core procedure in the CC operations is designed as follows:

- A community member X can file a complaint to the CC about 
  inappropriate behavior of another user Y
- The CC looks at the case and decides about whether to take certain actions
- The decision and the applied actions are made public

There is hardly any precedent for this type of procedure in democratic countries. It is a fundamental element of justice that a defendant knows who is suing him and that the trial is public. Anonymous tips only have a place when it comes to crimes, but not in civil law.
In companies and other organizations, there are sometimes procedures in place where hints and complaints can be made privately, but in those cases, these are managed and resolved privately, not publicly.

Private accusations followed by public punishment are more common in totalitarian systems.
Experience has shown that such systems lead to high distrust among people. Everybody needs to be careful and watching out continuously for making no mistakes, as anybody could denunciate you for something.


Evaluation in our context:

- Community Members:   => loses
			     (causes bad atmosphere and public appearance)
- Complainer:          Neutral
  Privacy may sometimes protect the complainer, but in most cases it's   obvious anyway, and playing/acting as if it wouldn't be the case, creates an 
  atmosphere of dishonesty on top of the trouble.



2. Expectations


So, you are upset about another community member that is very unfriendly to you or making accusations and the whole range of bad behavior (and maybe you did similar but think you did right and the other one did wrong).

You heard about the CC and you think it's really time that some action is being taken, so you file a complaint to the CC right away. 
But nothing happens. The CC is not like police that you can call. It's rather made up to work as a kind of court, working on one case after another. And when it gets to your case, you might either have forgotten about it already - or waiting really desperately for it to look into the case.
But why did you actually complain at the CC in the first place?
What do you want to achieve? That the other person changes mind? Unlikely to happen. The other person been given a formal warning? Sounds not much exciting neither resolving anything.

What you really want (almost always) is that someone officially says you were right and the other one wrong - which is unlikely to happen as the CC shall aim for equalization, not dividing.


Evaluation:   Case 1: CC is in favor of yours

- Defendant:  Gets a formal warning issued, 
              shrugs with his shoulders,
              will care about CC even less in the future
- Community:  => loses              
- Complainer: The CC didn't say you were right, 
              the defendant doesn't care about the warning
		  You're frustrated, even though you won
              => loses


Evaluation:   Case 2: CC rejects your complaint 

- Complainer: Is more frustrated than ever about everything
              => loses



3. Blame


The fact that the CC is set up like a kind of court is one of the primary flaws. You cannot install a kind of court which doesn't have appropriate powers like a court has. Without such powers, nobody will ever respect it in the way that would be needed.

Also, a court cannot have judges elected by the community. Would you want the politicians that you elect be your judge on court? Or some of your friends suddenly being your judge?
Judges need to be neutral - ideally unknown and independent persons. Nobody in the ffmpeg community would qualify for such a position.
But that's what we have: elected community members which were keen and crazy enough to volunteer for such a position.

Evaluation

As a result of the CCs verdict on an issue between two members, there's usually a winning (even if it's a nuance, one would think to have "won").

Now, simple Math: 

- Winning Member: Might be happy for a short time
                  Then realizing that the relationship with the
                  losing member might have received irreparable damage
			=> lose
- Losing Member:  Starts hating the Winning member
                  Starts hating the CC and its members
			=> lose
- CC Members:     No matter what they do and how they judge
                  Almost always at least one of the combatants will start 
                  hating (the cc, its members or both)



4. Distrust


But it's not only hatred that is caused by the CC installment (not its members). It has created a high amount of distrust. From what I've read, it's been like that in the last year already and in the past few months it has been a frequently repeating pattern that people have voiced distrust towards the CC, to all of its members or to individual members, often alluding to conspiracies, forming of groups, etc.
Distrust lead to questions about transparency, which actions or consultations should be public or private. 
Such distrust is lethal poison for a community. While the CC installment (not its members) is not the only source of distrust, it still takes a substantial part as many conversations in this new year have shown.

Evaluation

- CC Members:     => lose
- Community:      => lose



5. Verdict: Everybody loses


The CC installment in its current form has turned out to be creating a lose-lose-lose-lose situation.

There are no winners in this game, but it makes all of us lose, if not directly then indirectly at least. 
This is doing no good to the community and further damages the public appearance of the project.

Kudos to those who have volunteered to be CC members, you have taken a position where there's nothing much to gain but a lot to lose, and the more you engage, the worse it gets, so it's natural that its members are trying to be careful.

In the first section I said there's nothing like the model we have for the CC when looking at democratic countries, but there's actually something where complaints can be made in-private but punishment is usually public.

I'm talking about kindergarten and elementary school. The difference is that Kids are forgetting and forgiving quickly, but we grown-ups, we keep chewing the same old bone until its broken 😊

When you think about it: that's really what we have: a child-level system applied to grown-ups. I don't think that this is something we need or something that can help this community.
Which benefits does it really provide? Does it have a positive influence on this community? I don't see that, but I see a lot of the opposite.


6. What's needed?

What I see though is which problem it doesn't solve: it doesn't improve much regarding the mailing list. When there's a heated discussion, it's normal in all communities that those are moderated in some form. Since there's so much distrust - maybe an AI based auto moderation could help.
This would allow preventing bad e-mails from being distributed in the first place. 

What's for sure at least is that what we have at the moment is totally unsuitable to solve that problem. Instead of preventing the mess early, we are letting it happen, long chains of despicable ML conversations are flowing through the ML system.
And what are we doing then? We are letting people do another endless conversation which criticizes what happened, but does that by repeating the same content once again in another long conversation. 

After all this has happened already, we are starting a tribunal where the CC needs to judge about who did say what and what was bad and what not. 
Then, warnings are issued (or not), but in either case, everybody is dissatisfied anyway.

So, my conclusion is: the CC is an unsuitable solution to a problem we don't even have, and the way of how its sole existence is negatively impacting the community is alarming IMO.

Let's end this chapter and try to find something that solves the actual problems.

Regards,
sw




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