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> telling maintainers how to act will not fix anything.

That depends. In this case it's good actionable advice that should hopefully lower cognitive load. Politely suggest a fork, then if the nagging persists block and move on. Sure if you're in a position of authority you have a responsibility to the community but cutting ties with a stranger who is flagrantly violating social norms is perfectly acceptable. There's no expectation that you indefinitely burden yourself with their poor behavior.

Sometimes dropping the ban hammer really is in the best interests of both yourself and the project.

I don't really think it's actionable. It's like all those campaigns trying to steer behavior, pretty useless. Don't do drugs. Don't speed. Don't drink and drive. You can't just tell people something and expect it to happen. You need systems and guard rails in place.

Relying on maintainers to always do the right thing to ensure our security by telling them what to do is not the way.

> It's like all those campaigns trying to steer behavior, pretty useless. Don't do drugs. Don't speed. Don't drink and drive.

They're not useless. They just don't work on the individual level but on the collective. It's a numbers game …

It's not an attempt to steer behavior but rather intended as helpful advice. There are certainly cases of organizations disseminating "helpful advice" with the underhanded intent of steering behavior but that doesn't mean we should assume bad faith by default.

The advice is actionable because it is a concrete change that could be made. I believe it to be relevant to the context because someone in a position of authority who is badgered into accepting something would most likely benefit from reevaluating how he is interacting with the general public.

I have a feeling the thing triggering this guy is the responsibility of "the security of all our computers depends on maintainers".

A lot of people don't want to be responsible for that. It's not fun to carry that weight.