I am opening a new thread because the original one has been closed, so there is no way to reply on it.
I would like to point out an asymmetry. The thread was closed on the grounds that the discussion belongs on the HaikuPorts mailing list, which is a legitimate redirection. After closure, however, a reply was posted on the closed thread in defense of the moderation decision, with no one able to respond on the same channel. That is, by definition, a comment without right of reply.
If the topic belongs to the mailing list, the rule should apply symmetrically to everyone, moderators included. Otherwise closure becomes a convenient way to secure the last word for one position.
There is a second aspect worth naming. Part of the community has already started voicing discomfort with these practices, on the Telegram group and elsewhere. Waddlesplash himself acknowledged this in his reply on the closed thread, attributing it however to the internal consensus of the moderators. The issue is not whether the moderators agree with each other, I have no doubt that they do. The issue is the perception now forming in the community: a one-way mechanism in which you can speak as long as you are aligned with the prevailing position, while dissent is redirected outside the forum or shut down procedurally. For a project that depends on voluntary community participation, this dynamic deserves to be addressed openly, not removed from view.
I am not contesting the moderators’ authority to manage discussions. I am contesting the form and the effects it produces on participation. Closing a thread and then commenting on it after closure is difficult to read as anything other than locking in a framing.
Since this is not an attempt to discuss LLM and HaikuPorts specifically, but the forum and its policies, I am leaving this thread open for now. If it devolves, that decision may change quickly…
Correct: moderators have the authority to end discussions. Those decisions can only be overturned by other moderators.
And my reply on the thread you linked to does not say anything about the original topic, but only about the moderation decision. So what is your complaint here?
Assent in this case would also be redirected outside the forum. We don’t need two parallel threads in two different places to discuss the same thing. So it’s not about what position one is “aligned” with, here.
Which practices? Migrating discussion from one medium to another? I like the forum better than mailing lists, sure, but the fact is that we still use mailing lists for certain key discussions, and migrating off that is something which has not happened yet. So, that is where the discussion shall be.
The Haiku forum icon may be a bikeshed, but even bikeshed-painting discussions have to end at some point, even if some people aren’t happy with whatever color was chosen.
If someone has interesting arguments about “AI”, they are still free to make them; we have not banned all discussion on this point, or even raising objections to the project’s policies on these points. But if a discussion is not actually being productive but rather just wasting time? Then yes, you can expect the moderators to make a decision about that. And by definition the moderators will then have the “last word”.
The discussion is about a HaikuPorts policy, so why not starting it on GitHub in the first place? That’s the location where all of the HaikuPorts contributors are, and where they spent quite some time. GitHub allows for a structured discussion, with upvotes and downvotes for suggestions and comments. So, why force HaikuPorts contributors to use that relic of the past, a mailing list?
Because HaikuPorts policy has been to have discussions like these on the mailing list. I agree it would be nice to move, but that would be a discussion in of itself (and honestly, if that gets brought up, I suspect the broader question of whether we should stay on GitHub at all will come up too, and discussed at the same time.)
There has been more than enough opportunities to say everything that there is to say, and more, about LLM policies. So, there is no need for more forum threads about this.
It makes sense that the justification for closing a thread is inside that same thread. It is not part of the original discussion, but more meta-information about it. But sure, we could stop doing that, and instead close forum threads without any justification from now on. I doubt that makes anyone happier.
So, what do you suggest? I only see the following options:
That the moderators are never allowed to close a thread. In which case, the forum will be unmoderated, essentially, and I don’t think that will go well
That the justification for closing a thread should be in a separate place than the thread, where people can publicly complain against it. I don’t see the point, unless the goal is to destabilize the moderation team by having all their decisions open to further discussion
That the decision of closing threads should not come with any justification, which makes the problem worse.
I don’t post on the forum very often, but I’ll still express my personal opinion on everything that’s been going on lately. My words shouldn’t be taken as an attack or an attempt at confrontation; rather, they’re a cry from the heart and disappointment.
I live in a country where the number of prohibitions, rules, and restrictions probably outnumbers the population by a hundredfold. For me, Haiku has always been a breath of freedom. I’ve always enjoyed writing code, designing icons, porting programs, and until recently, everything was going well with the project, with minimal conflicts, arguments, and misunderstandings (this is my personal opinion; I may be wrong). And I never imagined that this cozy little world would literally turn into something resembling a Gulag in the last year. Suddenly, taboo words, topics, people, programs, and technologies have appeared.
One of the things that turned me off Haiku was the terrifying monopoly on the correct opinion of a small group of people. If Beos was a step forward, Haiku has become ossified, which is two steps back…
I was planning to refrain from speaking on this topic again because I need to focus on finishing my work and learning a new coding language, but the discussion on how forum moderation should function caught my attention when I was scrolling through my gmail
In my opinion, allowing only moderators to constantly have the final word without a right of reply feels a bit like a stratocracy where only the ruling authority holds all the power which is unfair especially when a mod doesn’t want to close a thread or it has gone fully off topic.
Not to mention, in a truly open source community users should have more control over the threads to make it feel like a democracy, they create including the ability to close or manage them themselves or having more control over a thread to put everyone on a equal playing field, It should function more like a democracy rather than a stratocracy.
Finally, having all topic that are community rules should be in the forum as it give everyone an equal chance or ruling out a good percentage of people and there an opinion that. Or a basic yes or no google form posted in Haiku asking about the topic should also work when it comes to rule since it just a percentage based test.
What does policing thought have to do with development?
In the music industry, when an artist starts preaching their politics at their concerts, people yell “Shut up and sing!”
It’s tempting to say “Shut up and develop” but that would be rude. As rude as policing thought is.
The people here are tired of the thought police. Almost every response in this thread and many others points to that. Why are developers spending time moderating a forum anyway? Contribute to the discussion yes, but moderating is it’s own job that should be assigned to non-developers. A way for someone who wants to contribute but lacks the skills of development to participate. Can we all please go back to the work of developing the OS and allow the discussion to be what it is- a discussion.
No bans, no throttling, just talk. (30 minutes between responses? Really? Childish. This group of people is better than that.)
Really? “Literally” into a Gulag. People are starved to death, raped and murdered?
Please, people, let’s calm down a bit and not try to out-hyperbole each other.
“Constantly”? Locking threads is done only very infrequently, and mostly by request of the thread starter. One could count the number of threads of, say, the last 3 months and see how many have a little lock-icon. I don’t have that time to waste, but from a quick scroll, it’s close to “none”.
Also, a little reminder of the thread title. Bringing “AI” up once again is off-topic.
I hope this thread doesn’t devolve into chaos. It is important (I believe) for us as moderators to be given feedback like this. It also lets us communicate some of the challenges that we deal with when moderating. Ideally we come away understanding each other better, and maybe it will give us moderators new ideas of how to deal with things.
Regarding LLM threads, there are two competing goals at play as far as I can tell: we want to be able to discuss things, but we would rather avoid endless, unproductive discussions and flamewars. My perception then is that most LLM-related threads have been closed to try to avoid endless, unproductive discussions that drain everyone’s energy. But in doing so, we lose having the ability to discuss LLMs openly much at all.
What do you think? Might there be a way to have productive discussions about LLMs? Is there a way to moderate them effectively so that we can talk about it without wasting people’s energy? Or maybe we should allow LLM discussions a few days per month and accept that they aren’t going to be quite as productive as we would like? Or close them only by popular demand? I’m interested in hearing your ideas and new ways of doing things. Hopefully we can keep this thread productive
Once a forum reaches a certain size, you can no longer leave it unmoderated. Moderation is important and useful, not least for the selfprotection of the operators and the community itself. However, it feels like it has increased in recent years, either we as a group used to be more liberal in the past or the topics didn’t get people’s tempers so flared up, idk. ;-).
But still things here are generally very civilized and above all community-minded/friendly. Of course sometimes there is arguing, but thats fine too, as long as we keep it the way we did it in the past.
But back to the topic, I consider moderation for LLM topics to be ineffective, there will always be multiple groups who are either for or against it. If you moderate a topic and close it, another one pops up and the People start to get angrier, this is a fight no one can win. We should never forget the fact that LLM are tools. They are extremely powerful, but not infallible. The hype will probably decrease to the enormous costs of all this soon. But one thing is clear: Pandora’s box has been opened, and we can no longer close it.
live long and prosper
Addendum: Why there is a notifcation saying " Please wait 30 minutes before posting again in this thread."? Isnt that a bit to much time between posts?
I am not on the mailing list, only this forum. So when a discussion is a duplicate of the mailing list I should think it sufficient to notify everyone of that fact and provide such pointers as needed to find that discussion in the mailing list archive. Anyone wishing to discuss that topic in the forum thread should be free to do so, knowing that it is not the official discussion. From that unofficial forum discussion thoughts may be formed and matured then submitted to the mailing list for consideration.
You might even have a means to tag a forum topic as being “unofficial” or similar to denote that discussion may continue freely, but the official discussion is elsewhere.
Closing a topic to direct people to a mailing list is simply silly. It’s also indirect silencing, people should be free to talk about whatever they want, including criticising the development team, sans personal insults.
I have also been noticing that certain members of the development team is going out of their ways to play the police here; without making any constructive additions to the discourse, resembling a child’s toy. I agree with @shaka444, development team should strive on limiting their communication to the mailing list, and let the extended community manage the forum here.
I said constantly as it happened a considerable number of times for it to be questionable weather it because of the thread itself or the actual fact it being up ai?
Allowing moderator to only decide what is good or bad doesn’t make sense since everyone has a different viewpoint on what is good and bad in the thread so only giving the moderator the power to do that defeat the whole point as multiple moderator could have the same viewpoint(which they do) rather than being different with other view point
Also I don’t know what you mean by this, I don’t know if you asking or telling me this is off topic but shown in the thread multiple people have brought up the same point on how the forum should been wrong so I need a bit of clarification if you telling me I’m being off topic or if I’m on topic?
