On kernel mailing list behavior

Sarah is right in one aspect. There is another way of handling this, a way can guarantee mostly civil discourse.

In fact it is the way most projects end up doing it. In the end they have a gut full of the abuse and trolls, so they take advantage of their position of power and appoint themselves as the projects censors. In the some cases, this ends up meaning some people are thrown out of the project by the ruling cabal.

As others here have pointed out, Linus doesn't appoint himself head of anything beyond his own tree, so he is unlikely to take that approach. As far as I can tell, he takes only the other way that works: nominate some principles and defend them with all the vigor you can muster, and encourage everyone to ignore anything else. People who agree with your principles tend to follow. Anybody who doesn't spend their time focusing on them is ignored, withering into obscurity.

There is no doubt in my mind the second approach produces the best projects, technically. But as I said, most projects end up taking the first approach. The difficulty of the second approach is it requires someone with outstanding technical ability and social skills without an ego to match. A rare bird indeed.