
Organizations can now block abusive users - mparlane
https://github.com/blog/2146-organizations-can-now-block-abusive-users
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twctek43a
"Organization owners now have the ability to block abusive users from public
repositories. This feature allows project owners to block users, and prevents
blocked users from opening or commenting on issues or pull requests, forking
repositories, and adding or editing wiki pages."

I get blocking users from opening/commenting/sending PRs/editing the wiki, but
why block them from forking a public project?

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wtbob
That seems very, very dangerous to me. I think GitHub needs to preserve the
ability for anyone to fork a project.

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Animats
That bothers me, too. This could be used to prevent forking.

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mskierkowski
Would be great to have some transparency, perhaps a "# of users banned in this
repo". That'd be one way to see where the balance of "abuse" lies, with the
repo/org or the contributors. In other words, another indicator for health of
the community, just like # of stars, forks, contributors, and watchers.

~~~
Sanddancer
Giving a number of banned users is something that, counterintuitively, is very
abuseable. Someone with an axe to grind could pretty easily create a bunch of
sockpuppet accounts with the sheer purpose of getting accounts banned and that
number inflated, thus giving an appearance of a community being unwelcome.

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spriggan3
> This feature allows project owners to block users, and prevents blocked
> users from(...) forking repositories ...

People here don't get that some organisations and individuals will use it to
push block lists, unrelated to any Github activity, and depending on your
actions on Twitter, Facebook G+ or whatever you'll be blocked in advance from
forking, contributing, interacting with a large range or repositories ... same
as Twitter Block lists ...

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TorKlingberg
If a project on Github blocks you for something you said on Twitter, why do
you want to contribute to that project anyway?

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clevernickname
Good projects can be infiltrated by overzealous politickers. The @freebsdgirl
debacle is a particularly good example of this, as she was also responsible
for a certain block bot.

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z1mm32m4n
I could see this being both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, it's easy to see how this is a powerful tool respectful
developers can use to moderate their community positively.

But from the other, I've heard a few too many stories along the lines of
"passionate contributor breaks into argument with passionate repo owner" and
chaos ensues. I could see feature a way for people to step on toes and divide
rather than encourage positive community.

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geofft
I think a better long-term solution for the problem you describe is community
norms around shared maintenance, where a passionate repo owner can step back
and ask other repo owners to moderate and cool down the discussion, or a
passionate contributor can ask other people with authority in the project to
step in and intervene, either just with words or with semi-binding decisions.

This has a fairly long history in the F/OSS community, partly out of necessity
before tools like GitHub existed. If your project is owned by some
organization like Apache instead of by you personally, you still get to be a
maintainer, but there are well-defined procedures for you not being the _only_
maintainer. And one of the primary benefits of Linux distros is that it
essentially forces a moderator (the distro packager) between users and the
upstream maintainer, who can step in and choose to side with the user or the
maintainer (or neither!) if there's a contentious discussion. Again, taking
Linux distros as an example, all the major distros have some form of appellate
group of developers -- Debian's technical committee, Fedora's steering
committee, etc. -- who are encouraged to moderate important and difficult
discussions, and empowered to overrule package maintainers if it ever becomes
necessary.

Preventing the repo owner from having the block tool wouldn't force them to
come to an agreement with the contributor. They'd either keep yelling, use the
(existing) close-and-lock-conversation button, ignore the contributor, or give
up and get frustrated and burn out. I think it would be better to encourage
social norms that allow handling these disagreements productively (and
expecting that acrimonious disagreements will probably happen at some point,)
than to expect to solve this by limiting technical tools.

By the way, note that blocking users is a feature that already exists for
individual accounts. Extending it to organizations makes it ever-so-slightly
easier for those norms to grow, by removing essentially the only disadvantage
of maintaining your project in an organization instead of in your personal
account.

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wcummings
GitHub is severely lacking in moderation tools, this is a good move.

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meursault334
I assume existing forks will still remain in the blocked users account but
will no longer appear in the fork graph.

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mankash666
Censorship now moves to source code revision control. Regardless of the good
intentions, this make me queasy.

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parent5446
This is not at all censorship. Daily reminder:
[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

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molecule
This comment seems to be a misconception regarding a misconception: the cited
xkcd addresses Freedom of Speech, not censorship. Censorship can be applied by
any medium owner. _E.g._ if Y Combinator deletes comments or articles on
Hacker News regarding a certain topic or from a specific user, without being
or acquiescing to a government organization, it may still be reasonably said
that they are censoring that topic or user.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship)

~~~
om2
The cited xkcd also does not do a good job of addressing freedom of speech.
Many writers have used "free of speech" to refer to a broad social and
cultural principle, not merely a legal doctrine, and defended it on grounds
that apply just as much against private censorship and social ostracism as
much as against government censorship. The idea that free speech is a concept
that is applicable only to government restrictions is of fairly recent
vintage, and historically was most used by libertarians rather than the
progressives who more often promote it now. In summary, John Stuart Mill had
much clearer and sounder ideas about free speech than Randall Munroe.

~~~
novembermike
The comic doesn't actually address freedom of speech, it addresses the First
Amendment of the United States Constitution (and conflates it with free
speech). The first is an amendment to a contract between the people of the
United States and the government of the United States and the second is a
philosophical principle. The concept of Free Speech did not start with the
United States constitution and any reference to the First Amendment when
referencing Free Speech kind of misses the point.

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z5h
Read another way, abusive organizations and project maintainers can now block
users.

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hacknat
It's a marketplace of ideas, no? Talent will generally avoid abuse...

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woodman
I wonder where that rug ever ended up.

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pigpaws
YAY!!! CENSORSHIP MADE EASY!!!

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pigpaws
It's a bit ironic that I've been 'down voted' for a sarcastic comment about
censorship...

