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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

#71

Post by ebola1717 »

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…

Also, this article comes from another TSC member, meaning one of his peers. If 4 of your 12 peers resign because you weren't removed, there is almost certainly some merit to these complaints.

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

#72

Post by gedy »

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…

I think the issue is a number of us have built our livelihood on node, and to see it stumble (in both PR and technical quality) is concerning. Especially if the stumbles are due to non-technical matters. Merging the CTC and TSC sounds like a smart approach to balance this: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/312

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

#73

Post by jamescostian »

peoplewindow wrote: post #65
jamescostian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Again, you're arguing in favor of trusting mods (or just one sole maintainer). I'm arguing that mods will abuse power unless their power is restricted, which is why I think CoCs are good.

One could argue that all you need is a single maintainer, like North Korea has, and I get it, that does sound simpler. But I prefer it when there are more rules to prevent dictators - I think those rules can limit the powers of the overrulers and simultaneously put a wrench in harassment.

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

#74

Post by Grue3 »

jamescostian wrote: post #21
curtisblaine wrote: post #12

So he dared to be in favour of anti-CoC article in one of his Twitter posts and thus unleashed the SJW brigade? What an heinous crime.

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…

>One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group [demonstrates a different opinion], one can see how [they deserve to be kicked out].

Ok.

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

#75

Post by ebola1717 »

curtisblaine wrote: post #63
geofft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The CoC must be respected because the CoC says so.

That's... how laws and rules work...

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

#76

Post by geofft »

curtisblaine wrote: post #63
geofft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> They shouldn't have approved it in the first place.

I agree with this argument - if the TSC does not intend to uphold the CoC, they should either not have approved it or should have made someone else the contact point (and given them meaningful enforcement power).

> 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.

I don't agree with this, and I don't understand how you conclude this. An easy way to change it is for the TSC to vote "We no longer want to have a CoC." Done. Nothing in the CoC says that it's a CoC violation to want to get rid of the CoC. (Of course, you have to express your desire to get rid of it without trolling, harassment, doxing, etc., but that doesn't really seem hard: you say "I think we should stop having a CoC.")

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

#77

Post by mcphage »

strken wrote: post #62
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.

> 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.

Any group of people leading an organization can fracture because of a fight; it's nothing new, and the fact that it happened on twitter is immaterial.

> 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.

Agreed. Given the list of problems was removed from the GH issue, I have no idea what this is about, and no way of forming an opinion on any of it. I at least will flag it.

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

#78

Post by gwrhgwrg »

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…

This reads like "I don't like his politics, so I searched for things I can pretend are offences and put them first in the list to pretend it's not about his politics".

Then they remove the list out of pretend concern for his privacy, so that readers can unleash their lurid imaginations ("OMG, must be a terrible guy! How many babies did he eat???")

By the way, web archive sites are fascist, haven't you heard? http://i.magaimg.net/img/w17.jpg

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

#79

Post by fixermark »

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…

Of everything in there, this one is probably the most problematic.

""" His tweeting of screen captures of immature responses suggests pleasure at having upset members of the JavaScript community and others. As a perceived leader, such behavior reflects poorly on the project. https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887790865766268928 """

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

#80

Post by shkkmo »

jamescostian wrote: post #21
curtisblaine wrote: post #12

So he dared to be in favour of anti-CoC article in one of his Twitter posts and thus unleashed the SJW brigade? What an heinous crime.

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…

Have you read the article that was linked to? While I may not agree with the author's solution "use the ADA to eliminate campus speech codes that discriminate against neurominorities", I think he raises a very fair point about speech codes and how they can impact with poor social and people skills.

The solution in my mind is not to eliminate CoCs but to start a discussion about how to improve them to mitigate this impact. This appears to be what the original tweet was doing "If you've never considered the potential downsides of codes of conduct, here's a good place to start"

Apparently this is not a conversation it is ok to have if you are on a committee that is responsible for managing and enforcing the CoC? It seems to me like these are exactly the people who should be having this conversation.

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