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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#121

Post by nixpulvis »

randyrand wrote: post #32

Programming Language authors love to formalize everything , but did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin with?

I used to believe good ideas were self-evident, thus less structure was a good thing. Now however, I'm very conflicted. Those with enough previous influence can remain unchecked and sway the popular interpretations of the language and development.

Remaining small and consistent is still a nobel goal, but new features can be a boon to the community.

What do you do indeed?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#122

Post by babyblueblanket »

zozbot234 wrote: post #112
iamed2 wrote: post #84

There are two statements here regarding things that have happened: > the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves > we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the standards the community expects of us and to the standards we hold ourselves to It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g…

> they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member If that was the case, the obvious response would be a formal statement of rebuke and censure wrt. the offending member's behavior, which would clarify that such things aren't welcome in the project. The fact that we aren't getting anything close to that extreme suggests that this is in fact a big fat nothingburger. (Unless you think th…

It might be that they cannot censure the offending member in any capacity, due to their core team member status. In that case, resignation is the only thing they have to effectively rebuke behavior.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#123

Post by capableweb »

mumblemumble wrote: post #99
capableweb wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions, when what is supposed to have exemplified the problem is kept in the dark.

> I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions Perhaps you aren't? This is still an internal Rust team issue; it's not a problem for us, a bunch of randos on the Internet, to solve. Our job is just to gawp from a distance, maybe gossip on Hacker News a bit.

It doesn't look like an internal Rust issue when the moderation team disappears while saying "If the Core Team says anything about us/the situation, be careful about trusting it without verifying first" in a very public venue.

If they really wanted to keep it internal, it would require even less effort to just remove themselves from the moderation list with a "We resign" message without further detail.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#124

Post by Zababa »

Things are happening behind closed doors in Rust's leadership. First there was a post from Steve Klabnik, a member from the Core team, about how Amazon is taking too much power in the Rust leadership (discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130). Then that post, that seems against the Core team. I would appreciate some transparency and clarity about what's happening. Lots of people are currently wonder about whether or not to invest in Rust, me included. Stuff like that is a clear negative signal for me.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#125

Post by q1w2 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #120
q1w2 wrote: post #92

Is there any tech consequence to this immature drama? I'm confused as to whether I should care or not. If there are consequences on the tech, people need to spell that out. Right now this all seems like some middle-school playground emotional drama. I'm too old to care about that.

To me, this line of thought is backwards. It stems from seeing the people issues as small stuff and the tech issues as the "real deal"... At the end of the day new features for popular language X are not that life-or-death (although I'm sure some Rust evangelist will claim the safety of it means it could save lives, ignoring things like MISRA) - If someone is being an asshole and damaging moral for real "meatspace" h…

You see - this comment is so vague, I still have no idea what (in the tech) they're fighting about.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#126

Post by foldr »

jturpin wrote: post #100
codys wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternately, there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306

I love Rust the language, and the community is generally good, but for whatever reason modern identity politics has always been looming around its key members. Maybe just because it spun out of Mozilla and the Brendan Eich debacle, who knows.

I'm not seeing any connection between the linked discussions and identity politics, and I'm certainly not seeing any connection with Brendan Eich. Hopefully not every thread that involves reference to a CoC has to automatically turn in to a grievance bin for people who have a bone to pick with identity politics.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#127

Post by quotemstr »

couchand wrote: post #118
quotemstr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterexample: Linux, GCC, Python, and practically the entire free software ecosystem from before the current crazy for hall-monitory-y supervision from above. It is simply demonstrably, factually, clearly not true that a growing community needs the kind of structures that Rust imposed on itself. It really makes me sad that a certain kind of person these days sees some kind of censorious overlord as essential for th…

Perhaps no user avoided it (though that seems unlikely), but can't you imagine why some contributors may have avoided it? Wouldn't that lack of potential contributions be a material loss for the project?

Who's to say that more contributors are turned off by Rust-style behavioral micromanagement? It's impossible to prove counterfactuals.

All we can say for sure is that dozens of critical projects in the past reached an amazing level of quality and importance to humanity without tone police lurking in the background and supervising it all.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#128

Post by throwawaygh »

simion314 wrote: post #96
throwawaygh wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally in favor of enforcing high-level "behave professionally" norms in OSS communities. And not as a new phenomenon, either. I've been kick-banning disruptive people from IRC channels for several decades, I've run forums where I appointed mods, and I've always avoided participating in completely unmoderated communities beyond N=20 or so (not worth the headache). But for some reason, the formalization of cond…

>But for some reason, the formalization of conduct enforcement stuff around OSS projects still feels weird, off-putting, and very "Corporate HR"-y to me. But if a community already approved such rules is it OK that those would not apply equally for all? Before joining a new community I always check and see if there is a lot of toxicity or just low effort contributions and I am avoiding those, it would suck to join a…

Maybe it will help to explicate what rubs me the wrong way about "corporate HR".

The facade of process masking Machiavellian reality is what rubs me the wrong way.

I'm always astounded by folks who don't understand that companies are feudal kingdoms and that all the stuff about processes and protecting people who are innocent/do the right thing is just hot air. And I've never been on the wrong side of HR, so this isn't a personal issue per se. But when I mentor new grads, I do make sure to find some time to explain how companies really work and stress that "getting along" with people is the most important skill.

I've always felt like the world would be a better place -- and workplaces would function better -- if Corporate HR was just honest: "this company is someone else's property, you have no rights to that property, we do what we want, so play nice and don't piss off the wrong folks unless you're ok leaving."

Most OSS projects aren't so dissimilar. I don't know about Rust, and suspect "Core" might have a different meaning here. But in most projects the core (aka primary) developers effectively own the project. Rules to the contrary are at best aspirational and at worst lies. If you disagree with the primary developers, it's much better the just fork the project than to imagine that there's some fair and rational process by which you will be able to plead your case and over-ride their edicts. Again, this isn't a value judgement. It's just a description of how reality works.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#129

Post by bkirkby »

scandox wrote: post #16

> In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion and confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation. Isn't that a kind of scorched earth statement? I read it as "we will be discreet and…

it's very similar to working in a corporation and seeing someone get fired. the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why the person was fired, which leaves everyone else wondering if the person had done something fireable or if the company was playing politics with power.

i've heard netflix does things a bit differently. when people are asked to leave, their manager sends an email out to everyone explaining exactly why that person was asked to leave. i assume their generous severance package contains a legal release for netflix to be able to do that.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#130

Post by specialp »

Subsentient wrote: post #114

Good. If Rust's management falls apart, the language will become more decentralized, like it should be. I was always very, very nervous having a systems language totally controlled by only one organization. Hopefully this will result in a fork of rustc and some new interest in gccrs.

The problem with decentralization as nice as it sounds is a decentralized group of people doesn't pick up all the work that is done by the core person/group. If that person or group is no longer doing a good job, a competing person or group can fork the project.
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