Re: Potential Launch of Boost Website: Request for Final Feedback

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-02-15 17:48:22

Andrey Semashev wrote:
> On 2/15/24 19:41, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
> > Andrey Semashev wrote:
> >> For user-generated content, such as forum and blog posts, videos,
> >> comments, issues on the trackers, discussions, etc., as well as
> >> personal information provided through account registration, that
> >> content belongs to its authors, but Boost Foundation may reserve some
> >> rights, such as to be able to moderate and publish it.
> >
> > I'm not sure we want that.
> >
> > It's been my impression that the current leadership of the Boost
> > Foundation would like to foster a more inclusive environment for
> > discussions, by way of having an appropriate code of conduct and its
> corresponding enforcement.
> > This, while commendable, is at odds with our traditional culture of
> > frank and merciless technical discussion. So I'm not sure I'd like the
> > new BF moderated forum you seem to propose.
> 
> I think, part of why this discussion culture have succeeded in Boost is the
> mailing lists, which required registration and pre-moderation of the first post.
> Most of the time, this was enough of a barrier against spammers and trolls. I'm
> afraid, a more open platform for user communication will remove that barrier
> and reduce the discussion quality. I think, some moderation will be inevitable,
> if we want our discussions to be more productive than e.g. Reddit. But I'm
> happy to be wrong on this.

Some moderation will certainly be necessary. The question is who will be
doing the moderating.

Just because the Boost Foundation has the magic word Boost in its name
doesn't mean we necessarily want to give it any power over the day to day
operations of the Boost project. Traditionally, the steering committee had
none, and didn't even own anything (because it wasn't a legal entity.)

Hardware and services were provided by people and companies willing to
help Boost, for free (e.g. Michael Caisse and Ciere Consulting, but there
are many others.)

(We're all familiar with what happened the last time the steering committee
tried to interfere by announcing that Boost will be switching to CMake -
Rene ragequit and nobody switched to CMake.)

The primary activity of the Boost Foundation is to organize and run C++Now,
and running a conference in 2024 does require codes of conduct, banning
people deemed to make others feel unsafe, and other similar things. But
we the project have never had to conform to these rules.

In the old days, the SC would probably just say "thank you Vinnie, very nice,
do run the site for us and let the community appoint the moderators, we're
very thankful for your eating the substantial costs", but this may not be
possible today.