Live data from Hacker News

Rust Moderation Team Resigns

github.com

241–250 of 912 posts

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why the person was fired I think this is a fairly common misconception. While you might sign an anti disparagement agreement when you were hired, those tend to be one-way and designed to protect the company. And the bar to prove a defamation case is extremely high . AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on firings as a matter of policy, not law.

You're correct in that there is no law saying that employers are prohibited from disclosing why a person was fired. But the policies are a result of laws that could open them up to legal action if they were to disclose any specifics. However unlikely that legal action may be, and probably even more unlikely to succeed, they still gain nothing from any such disclosures so it makes perfect sense to prohibit them.

It's not that simple. Arbitrary firings are bad for morale, so it's in management's interest for the remaining employees to understand what happened.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 explaini…

> the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why the person was fired I think this is a fairly common misconception. While you might sign an anti disparagement agreement when you were hired, those tend to be one-way and designed to protect the company. And the bar to prove a defamation case is extremely high . AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on firings as a matter of policy, not law.

> AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on firings as a matter of policy, not law.

Note that this isn't true in much of Europe, where in many countries firing someone beyond their probationary period requires due cause. I kinda suspect this is largely a function of at-will employment?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#243
post #228

I don't believe proper free software projects require significant moderation of behavior between individuals. If someone says something that rises to the level of a crime, report it to your local authorities. Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be worked around. Note that expelling a person from a project for being a jerk in one or more instances may do more harm than good. What is the value o…

> Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be worked around.

While this is generally true the workarounds can and do take time, and while all this is happening there's a lot of space for a person to do significant damage to the project in the meantime.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#244
Further information might be gleaned from the associated Reddit thread, where one of the mod team who resigned in this post has offered to answer questions surrounding the departure, although not relating to any specific incidents: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#245
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more them saying be skeptical of anything the accused says about the situation, which is common sense in that the "wrongdoer" will more than likely spin the story to save face. Unlike a court of law, they're under no oath. They may make a statement about the situation if the core team decides to release details on the situation, but they don't want to be the first to do so, so they're simply saying be skeptical…

Without knowing details, I can say from experience that those who feel they are the most righteous are often the most wrong. I’ve been on both sides of this. If this has to be aired publicly, then we need to be able to objectively assess. Otherwise, I’m reading this as ‘we don’t get along with those guys and gals on the core team and vice versa’, which is, fine, it’s just humans not getting along. Which reminds me, I…

Not really, the mod-teams grievance is with the structure (and accountability) of the rust organisation (in particular the core-team). Likely they were triggered by a specific instance, but we can assess the problems with accountability, e.g. the power of the core-team to ignore rules that apply to everyone else quite objectively by looking at the power structures of the organisation.

I think if you want to highlight problems with a process/structure it is much better not to get into specifics of one instance. This is what the (former) mod-team is doing.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#246
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the core team took her side even though she said those inappropriate and offensive things then it makes sense that the Rust Moderation team felt that they couldn't do their job and resigned because of it. Note that she is a part of the core team.

Sure, maybe. But what evidence is there that this is what happened?

As you can see this sub thread is just speculation from the first post. The evidence are the links provided in the posts above and the rest is speculation how that could potentially related to what happened today.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#247
post #49

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

To give folks who are privileged and well connected but have not put in the time and effort to be able to make technical contributions a chance to put participation in a trendy OSS community on their resume.

Are you serious? Do you know anything about the Rust community and ecosystem? The lead author of the resignation post is BurntSushi (Andrew Gallant). He is a systems engineer at Salesforce and a long-time technical and social contributor to Rust. He has taken the lead on the big parsers for Rust, many of which are still in his personal GitHub namespace. ripgrep has 28k stars, for example.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#248
Comrade Klabnik has been as toxic for the Rust community as he was for the Ruby on Rails community. This could actually turn out to be a positive for the future of the language and community. I'm not a fan of Amazon but if they took over as it's stewards it would be a lot better.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#249
post #168
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The core team refused to kick out a misandrist member" would lead to a lot of drama if they said it publicly. If that is why they are quitting then it makes sense that they refused to say anything about it.

It's not like she would be the first or the only team member with rather controversial political views. As long as these views don't meaningfully impact her work on Rust, why shouldn't she be on the team? Why can't we just learn to be more tolerant of dissenting views?

Well, then there's the other accusation: that she applied for a job at Amazon and was rejected and since then her partner, also a part of the core team, has been publicly negative about the relationship between Rust and Amazon (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130)

There would seem to be a massive conflict of interest there, if true.

Post reply on HN