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Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

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Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#61

Post by syshum »

peoplewindow wrote: post #37
jamescostian wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and what some call daring, others call scary. One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group shows distaste for CoCs, one can see how that might mean the group's CoC may be threatened. Without CoCs, many people in the Node community wouldn't feel as safe. You may still feel just as safe, and that's great for you. But it's not very hard to understand why people a…

What's so special about the Node community then? I've been doing open source work for 15+ years and I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC. Nor did it ever come up as an issue. I did see aggressive list moderation be abused to distort the technical path of a project though. You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim. If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC…

>> I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC

you can thank GitHub for this. GitHub is a big Advocate for aggressive anti-free speech codes of Conduct

More and more Projects are being pushed to Adopt them, and many are.

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#62

Post by strken »

AaronFriel wrote: post #41

I think that everyone would be well served by stepping back from this and thinking carefully about commenting, before inserting snark and derision at either side. I see a number of comments that trot out a lot of tired "anti-SJW" talking points, and these do not add to the dialogue and only create unnecessary animosity. I didn't see any negativity on the "pro-SJW" side yet - the responses to the former seem calm but…

It's a bit worrying that the steering committee for such a widely used technology, one which billion-dollar companies have built stacks around, could fracture because of a twitter fight.

Without knowing the facts, the fact that we even know this happened and that it briefly ended up on the front page of HN is concerning.

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#63

Post by curtisblaine »

geofft wrote: post #42
curtisblaine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, he's a member of the Technical Steering Committee, which is a group "of key Collaborators who have demonstrated both technical expertise critical to the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the project and a long term commitment to driving the project and community forward"[1], not "a committee whose job is to maintain and enforce the CoC", as you put it. It's not inconceivable that an member of such a group co…

The committee has lots of jobs, yes. One of them is the maintaining and enforcing the Code of Conduct: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md I think it's totally fine for a member of the group to disagree privately with the decided goals of the group, whether this is "CoCs are good" or "this promises spec is good" or whatever, and recuse themselves from that goal and contribute productively to…

Which is a clause written on the CoC itself. The CoC must be respected because the CoC says so. Anyone who has doubts about the CoC, must be expelled from the TSC, because it's written on the CoC. This ensures that the CoC can't be touched ever.

A good example of catch-22. They shouldn't have approved it in the first place.

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#65

Post by peoplewindow »

jamescostian wrote: post #54
peoplewindow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so special about the Node community then? I've been doing open source work for 15+ years and I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC. Nor did it ever come up as an issue. I did see aggressive list moderation be abused to distort the technical path of a project though. You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim. If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC…

> I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC [...] I did see aggressive list moderation be abused Right, no CoC, just random moderators who abused their power. I don't see how that's a good thing. I think having a CoC can limit the explicit powers given to moderators so that moderators can only moderate very bad behavior like X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C. Of course, this depends on moderators bei…

You don't need a CoC to deal with 'poisonous people' as the old talk by the Subversion guys named them. You just need a maintainer with common sense who treats list bans as a last resort, but is willing to use them if things get out of hand. If the maintainer can't be trusted to do such things properly, they probably can't be trusted to exercise common sense in other areas too, but in practice I've not seen that be an issue. Normally trolls go away if ignored.

Also as far as I can tell CoCs are invariably so vague that they just trigger more fighting. Now there's a formal excuse to do it, you see.

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#66

Post by strictnein »

ebola1717 wrote: post #57
strictnein wrote: post #34

The unredacted details still feel like they're missing something: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821212745/https://github.co... "...Rod’s first action was to apologize to a contributor who had been repeatedly moderated. Rod did not discuss the issue with other members of the CTC/TSC first. The result undermined the moderation process as it was occurring" "Rod did not moderate himself when asked by another foundatio…

What do you think you're missing? He undermined the processes he's meant to support, which sends a mixed message about the org's commitment to its Code of Conduct, and in fact his behavior undermined its authority. In addition, he explicitly violated some policies. Out of his 13 peers (other Node TSC members), 4 felt strongly enough about this that they have resigned.

I guess you and I just have different gauges in judging the severity of the above actions.

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#67

Post by jamescostian »

syshum wrote: post #45
jamescostian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society has been telling people to shut up for a very, very long time. Stepping down from a position because you disagree with someone != "Free Speech" If you really think disagreeing with someone and expressing it constitutes as limiting Free Speech, then aren't you limiting Free Speech right now?

>>Society has been telling people to shut up for a very, very long time. Does not make it right when it occurs >Stepping down from a position because you disagree with someone != "Free Speech" Attempting to, or actually forcing someone out of a project on the basis they liked a article on the web you believe they should not have liked, then responded with "incorrect words" is in fact a Free Speech issue >If you reall…

Your original post was against Myles voicing his disagreement. Why were you against Myles voicing his disagreement? Isn't that like restricting freedom of speech, or telling someone (Myles) to shut up?

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#69

Post by curtisblaine »

ebola1717 wrote: post #57
strictnein wrote: post #34

The unredacted details still feel like they're missing something: https://web.archive.org/web/20170821212745/https://github.co... "...Rod’s first action was to apologize to a contributor who had been repeatedly moderated. Rod did not discuss the issue with other members of the CTC/TSC first. The result undermined the moderation process as it was occurring" "Rod did not moderate himself when asked by another foundatio…

What do you think you're missing? He undermined the processes he's meant to support, which sends a mixed message about the org's commitment to its Code of Conduct, and in fact his behavior undermined its authority. In addition, he explicitly violated some policies. Out of his 13 peers (other Node TSC members), 4 felt strongly enough about this that they have resigned.

Six of them voted for no sanctions, though. And two abstained. Who lost the vote resigned, which is a way to say "we couldn't expel you by voting, now we're trying to create as much drama as possible because we just can't accept the decision, even if voted democratically by our peers"

Re: Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC

#70

Post by geofft »

AaronFriel wrote: post #53
koolba wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a democratic system. My understanding of how it's organized is that it's more of a politburo. Election of a new member, or eviction of an existing one, is done by existing membership and there's no public voting to elect any of the members. I see nothing wrong with having a private vote for something as sensitive as kicking someone out. It's no different than keeping jury deliberations private.

Hm. Perhaps you're right. I think it's fair for people to wonder this question aloud without being thought "scary", though, don't you? I mean, from the perspective of say, folks that feel they were harassed (hypothetically), they would want to know who they should feel comfortable expressing their concerns to in the future, and who is or is not sympathetic to those concerns. Private votes that don't align with public…

> I mean, from the perspective of say, folks that feel they were harassed (hypothetically), they would want to know who they should feel comfortable expressing their concerns to in the future, and who is or is not sympathetic to those concerns. Private votes that don't align with public behavior would also be concerning, and private votes encourage deceptive acts.

I think that this is an extremely important point, given that the CoC says that the reporting path is an email alias that goes to the entire TSC.

If the CoC's reporting path were some other group, I think it'd be a very different situation. (There are of course downsides to having a separate antiharassment group that has different power in the project from the core team, and may end up disagreeing with the core team, but it would avoid this particular problem.)

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