The D Programming Language Vision Document

[Mike Parker]

On Monday, 4 July 2022 at 07:28:23 UTC, StarCanopy wrote:
> On Sunday, 3 July 2022 at 08:46:31 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>> [...]
>>
> Given the desire to reduce GC usage in PhobosV2, would it be 
> fair to say this implies changing error handling schemes found 
> therein, i.e. avoiding exceptions as they are implemented now, 
> where reasonable? And if so, have core members mentioned any 
> alternatives?

Walter and Atila have both talked about rethinking exceptions.

Atila brought it up in his DConf Online 2021 talk here:

https://youtu.be/UqW42_8kn0s?t=1429

You can see Walter's comments about it in the subsequent Q & A 
session here:

https://youtu.be/g26eJcs2QB0?t=1809

>
> With regards to moderation policy, are there specific issues; 
> about which you feel comfortable speaking; that prompted this 
> item's inclusion in the vision document?

We've had a very, very lax moderation policy for years. Sometimes 
threads get derailed and posts become overly aggressive, but 
we've tended to let things slide as long as commenters avoid 
blatantly direct personal attacks, racist remarks, etc. I've 
always felt we have a great forum community compared to some 
others I've experienced, and I've found the need to delete forum 
posts, given the existing policy, to be relatively rare.

The flip side of that is that the larger internet community has 
evolved over the past couple of decades. What I consider 
tolerable if annoying behavior, others view as toxic. What I view 
as sarcasm or biting wit or some such, others view as personal 
attacks. We've received a number of complaints in recent months, 
directly and indirectly, about our forums being toxic. And that's 
not the image we want out there. And we definitely don't want 
people to actively choose not to participate in the forums just 
to avoid what they see as toxicity.

So we want to tighten the screws a little bit. In terms of 
directly deleting posts unprompted, the policy isn't changing. If 
I wouldn't have deleted a post before, I won't delete it now. 
What *is* changing is that we're going to be a bit more active in 
nudging threads back on topic when they stray too far off, and 
asking people to keep things toned down if their remarks become 
aggressive to the extent that it looks like they're going to 
derail the thread. We've had incidents in the past where one or 
two people upset a number of other forum users, and we didn't act 
as soon as we should have to keep things from getting out of hand.

In the past, forum users have sometimes reported posts to me 
indicating that they felt it was a direct personal attack. 
Usually, if *I* didn't see it as a direct attack, I wouldn't 
delete it. I'd explain how I see it and explain my reason for 
letting it stand. Going forward, I'll instead give a warning to 
the author of the post in question, and ask them to refrain from 
such remarks in future posts.

And once a warning is given (stay on topic, please tone it down, 
please avoid remarks like this one, etc.), any further posts in 
that thread that ignore the warning will be deleted.

I think that's a reasonable policy. The last thing any of us want 
is to stifle debate or censor opinions, but we feel that it's 
reasonable to ask people to participate in debates and express 
their opinions without upsetting others. So we're going to do our 
best to find a middle ground.