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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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161–170 of 912 posts

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#161
post #49

Why does a language need a “moderation team”? C++ seems to do fine without one.

People tend to behave better in in-person meetings and on conference calls than on the internet in general. The Penny Arcade comic was too optimistic about the conditions for virtual communities to break down.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#162
post #49

Why does a language need a “moderation team”? C++ seems to do fine without one.

Does the C++ core committee have central forums for public discussion of features or is it exclusively a design-by-committee thing with mostly closed-door meetings?

I believe it has both. As far as I know, there are public discussions taken as advisory. Then the actual standards are written in a design-by-committee process. I believe those design meetings have public minutes, but participation requires being a member of the standards committee. I believer membership of the committee is possible through sponsorship with some seats being reserved for community members with high standing. How those seats are filled exactly I do not know.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#163
post #106
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the Elm breakdown? I don't remember reading about it.

There's been a longstanding issue that a lot of people are unhappy with the level of control that Evan exercises over the development of the language. On top of that, a lot of the development of the core language happens behind closed doors, which has given the impression of stagnation over the past few years. As I understand it, the fundamental reason for this situation is technical. It is really difficult to enforc…

Thanks!

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#164

Absent some form of democracy, what does it mean for a leadership to be "accountable"? Power extends from whoever has the authority to hold others to account. So this just reads like a power-grab from the moderation team. What would it mean for them to have the power to hold the core team to account? That they could sack people from it? The goals of the project are set by the core team; not by a moderation team enfor…

This exactly. You have summed up my thoughts better than I could. I am also interested to hear from the downvoters.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They didn't send you a personal e-mail. They made a PR changing their team status to "alumni" and included the requisite justification in the PR message.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#166

Absent some form of democracy, what does it mean for a leadership to be "accountable"? Power extends from whoever has the authority to hold others to account. So this just reads like a power-grab from the moderation team. What would it mean for them to have the power to hold the core team to account? That they could sack people from it? The goals of the project are set by the core team; not by a moderation team enfor…

It's not a power grab, because they just relinquished power, even going to the point of leaving instructions for the next group of people that would take over. Just this flaw in your logic probably landed you your first downvotes.

Second, the CoC is not arbitrary, there's a link to it merged into the repository which means the core team (or at least a majority of it) agreed to it. Their resigning is just a signal that the CoC that they publicly announce is not actually being followed. It's nothing more than that.

For a leadership to be accountable means that they follow the rules of the system, and should they not follow them they are ejected from it. It's as simple as that, no need for democracy, the system is clearly defined and agreed upon.

I don't really get what you mean with "a bad look" for the moderation team. It's a bad look in the sense that it shows they actually had no power all along. But I don't think they were in it for the glory. A worse look is that of the core team, who have publicly stated their support of a CoC, and now when shit hit the fan show they won't actually abide by their own rules.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#168
post #119
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, an immature drama would have people slinging feces. This is a highly mature drama where the arguments are dry, generic and adhere to a strict code of values. No fingers were pointed, and the offended party is taking the high road by resigning. It's not often that people behave in a mature fashion, so I fully understand you did not recognise it for what it is.

You call it mature but an outsider would have no idea about what's happening. I have no way of forming an idea whether it's utter bs or if there is something actually going wrong.

Moderating a community is not meant to entertain outsiders, but to prevent escalation within the community.

No offense, but what do you expect to be able to contribute to this situation as an outsider? Would your contribution to the community be improved by additional information?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#169
post #137

I have used Rust for years, but I never bothered with looking into the governance structure. How are team members selected? Who has authority to kick someone off a team? How are team leads selected? Who can remove team leads? Is it the core team? If so, who picks the core team? I can't find anything online, except this very bare-bones WIP stub. [1] This seems to be a glaring and surprising oversight. Especially at th…

kick off? Is this necessary for an open source non-profit project?

Of course it is. What if a contributor is harassing another team member? What if he/she is being openly racist/sexist/etc.?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your greatest concern is some technical artifact and not the human beings in the community around you, kindly go touch grass.
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