Request: ban Harald Reindl from devel@

[Adam Williamson]

You know, I think it's time for this.

Harald Reindl is a permanently poisonous presence on devel at . He seems to
trigger or be involved in the majority of the flame wars on there. He is
rude and disrespectful to other list participants and has behaved in
this way for years, despite multiple attempts by multiple parties to
persuade him to amend his approach.

As I understand it, he is already on permanent moderation; none of his
mails go directly to the list, all are moderated, and some of his mails
do appear not to be allowed to reach the list. However, it seems he has
started CCing his messages directly to the person to whom he is
replying. The copy of the mail directed to the list is held for
moderation and, if it is too offensive, blocked, but the copy sent
directly to the other party of course is delivered directly. Sometimes,
these mails will be still look a lot like they are part of the list to
the recipient, who will reply to them - including the list address - and
hence Harald's crap reaches the list despite the moderation. We saw an
example of this yesterday (the "take your bullshit from public mailing
lists" mail) - particularly damaging as it was also sent to users@ - and
I've seen other examples in the past (it may even have happened to me).
I don't blame Richard Vickery and the other recipients for this, I blame
Harald.

Frankly, I've had enough of this crap, and I think a lot of others have
too. I would like to formally propose that we permanently ban him from
devel@, and possibly other lists as well, at least high profile ones. I
would be happy to see him kicked out of the project entirely, but I
thought a more limited proposal would be better.

This has nothing to do with Red Hat vs. 'the community', of course.
Harald is rude and disrespectful to just about everyone else, RHers or
non-RHers. Non-RHers, by my estimation, are as sick of him as everyone
else. He is poisoning our community as a whole, I am sure he is part of
the reason our lists can look unfriendly to many, and we should not
allow this to continue. He clearly has no intention of reforming his
behaviour, and the moderation solution is not working well enough. It's
time for more drastic measures.

I don't think this sets any kind of worrying precedent. We have plenty
of personalities who are somewhat abrasive and we manage that well
enough. I'm not advocating some sort of purge. But I think Harald's is
an extreme and ongoing case that is causing significant damage to
Fedora, and we would be justified in banning him - and only him - from
the list or the community as a whole.

Thanks!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net