Dear Lazarus forum users and developers,
I've been a a user of FPC and Lazarus, as well as a member of this online community, for only a relatively short while. Today I do feel the need to speak up due to continued injustice and, I would argue, even active malice that is going on in an adjacent venue to this web-based forum here, that should concern the Lazarus and FPC projects both.
I am a decades-long user of Internet Relay Chat (IRC), which happens to include the official Lazarus- and FPC-related channels on the libera.chat IRC network. The user who opened and registered these channels when the libera network split away from Freenode in 2021 is nicknamed
Joanna (who is registered by the same name on these forums). Joanna had once spoken up about trolls infesting the old project-related channel on the Freenode network in a thread on these forums:
https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,51491.0.html and had, I assume, been equipped with moderative powers on the #lazarus and #fpc channels some time after that.
As a consequence, Joanna has been engaging in a McCarthy-esque witch hunt for "trolls" in these libera.chat-channels for at least since September 2022.
Today, because of Joanna's excessive moderation policies, I finally lost the ability to participate in #lazarus, as I am now permanently banned, after complaining about my unfounded ban from #fpc a month prior.
According to libera's network policy, it's fair for moderators to enforce whichever standard (within the boundaries of legality and surrounding IRC network policy) they wish in channels governed by them, but I would encourage you to think about whether or not Joanna's conduct as the steward of these channels is in the best interest of the communities of Laz+FPC.
To facilitate, I will post excerpts of channel logs (some edited for clarity) that, I think, underline why Joanna needs to either find a new moderation style to apply to the channel, or to step aside and let someone else take over. Since these excerpts are too long for the forum to accept it (posts are limited to 20.000 chars), I will link to them stored on Debian's pastebin.
https://paste.debian.net/plainh/d44c50e3 - Joanna banning "Furor" (aka "sauvin") after he'd gotten rather excited about his rekindled interest for FPC (2022-09-20)
https://paste.debian.net/plainh/fdc31280 - Joanna interrogating "Khaytsus" about his FPC usage, making him leave. Later interacting with "Bahhumbug" (a libera.chat operator) in a similar way (2022-09-24)
https://paste.debian.net/plainh/cdfe4953 - I try to convince Joanna that this moderation style is doing harm in a private exchange (2022-09-27)
https://paste.debian.net/plain/1273023 - Joanna bans an innocent user over quite literally nothing, and I question that decision. Joanna makes a number of, in my view, questionable statements and even gets called out by libera network opers for it, who call this "toxic" and "running this channel with unnecessary and arbitrary use of power" (2022-10-02)
https://paste.debian.net/plainh/b71773ed - I am trying to find out if anyone's familiar with someone administering the Lazarus forums; Joanna permanently bans me because of that a few hours later (2023-02-01 - 2023-02-02)
There are
many more instances where Joanna drove away or outright banned users that dropped by to ask an innocent question, or just to get their feet wet with that part of FPC and/or Lazarus communities, or the projects themselves. I have many of these exchanges logged, but filtering and presenting them is tediuous work (that I would be willing to put in if things can be expected to improve as a consequence).
Thanks for your time reading all this. I sincerely hope any and all ramifications of this thread will make the Laz/FPC communities a more welcoming, more inclusive place.