[fpc-other] I thought it was going to get better, but no

[Nikolay Nikolov]

On 4/26/23 21:27, Jacob Kroon via fpc-other wrote:
> On 4/26/23 13:58, HSN via fpc-other wrote:
>> Hi Nickolay
>> Thanks for helping explain.
>> I imagine that his new channel is now thriving with the list of 
>> excellent prospects in the ban list that I provided.
>> It’s always good to see a new irc channel get off to a good start 
>> with some talented people on board ;)
>>
>
> ^^^
> The comment above says it all. I understand why no fpc developer wants 
> to be associated with #fpc.

This is not true. The *real* reason is that none of the current FPC 
developers has the time and dedication to moderate an IRC channel. Note 
that there are two people from the FPC team (me and Karoly) who were 
given moderator access by Joanna, who registered the channel. That's how 
it became an official channel. However, unfortunately, it turned out 
that in practice neither me, nor Karoly has the time to moderate the 
channel, so it's de facto not moderated by the FPC team. That was the 
reason for the decision to no longer list it as an "official" channel.

Note that if someone from the FPC team (e.g. fpk, oliebol, Tomas Hajny, 
etc.) wants to moderate the channel, I will give them access. However, I 
will not remove Joanna's access, because this will make the channel 
effectively unmoderated and we saw how well that worked in 2020 on 
freenode, when the channel was turned into a burning trash can by trolls 
and it was impossible to talk about Pascal at all. Back then, I had to 
intervene and ban a few people, because the FPC moderators back then 
weren't doing their job, due to lack of time. Now, at least, there is a 
group of people, who talk about Pascal. In fact, I looked at the channel 
logs. There were people (not Joanna!), who cheered after your ban. 
Apparently people in the channel were discussing something else 
(Pascal-related) and overall weren't very interested in talking about 
using C-style bitwise operators in Pascal. I'm sorry to say that, but 
when there are people, who are happy about your ban, this shows it's not 
just Joanna, but also others, so maybe #fpc was not the best place to 
discuss your problem anyway and it's good that you found help on the 
mailing lists. Maybe a ban was an overreaction, but you probably 
wouldn't have found much help on the channel anyway. To be fair, I will 
say that there were also people, who questioned your ban, and I probably 
wouldn't have banned you, if I were there, moderating the channel (I'm 
online, but most of time I'm afk, just recording logs). However, there's 
a majority of people, who are happy with Joanna's moderation and are not 
disgruntled and eager to leave.

Maybe #fpc-alt will become a better unofficial IRC channel? So far, I've 
joined the #fpc-alt channel (without leaving #fpc), to support an 
alternative channel as well, but I'm not very impressed, not only due to 
the lack of people (only 3 people, including me), but also due to the 
fact that there's not even a topic. I know growing a channel takes time, 
but if you're serious about providing an alternative channel, you should 
at least set the topic. It doesn't take that much effort. Of course, 
there are only first impressions, and in the long term, they can turn 
out to be wrong, and maybe #fpc-alt will grow a large community as well, 
and will allow a more free and welcoming to newcomers environment.

And of course, there's also #lazarus, where moderation was taken up by 
giantm (a Lazarus developer).

So, plenty of alternative places to talk, if you're not happy about #fpc.

> As already mentioned, better to use the mailing list for technical 
> questions.
Sure! The mailing lists are great! I'm happy to hear that they are 
working for you!
>
> I think the bigger problem is that #pascal, which is more general, has 
> *also* been hijacked by "Joanna".

Technically speaking, she didn't "hijack" the channel. She is the 
channel owner, by virtue of being the first person to register it on 
this IRC network. That's how IRC works. I don't think #pascal was ever 
an official FPC channel. In fact, I got founder access there too, just 
by asking her nicely. Many times, this approach works much better, 
compared to the confrontational approach. Once again, if someone wants 
to moderate the channel, I can give them access to #pascal. The only 
condition is, it needs to be someone trusted, from the FPC community, 
and not some newcomer (we're talking channel operator access here).

Best regards,

Nikolay

>
> Jacob
> _______________________________________________
> fpc-other maillist  -  fpc-other at lists.freepascal.org
> https://lists.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fpc-other