Rust Moderation Team Resigns • Hacker News Board

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#271

Post by sokoloff » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

bkirkby wrote: post #129

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 explaini…

It's overwhelmingly likely that the person did something that was fireable, even in the big bad, limited employee rights USA.

At the same time, professional discretion is the norm and so you might not know from the written/spoken language if someone was let go because of a specific acute incident or a pattern of under-performance. (Except that people usually know who the chronic under-performers are, so when one is let go, you tend to assume it was performance-related and if someone thought to be a high-performer is let go, you tend to assume a non-performance cause.)

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#272

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #257

mjburgess wrote: post #86

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…

> the immediate number of downvotes on this comment is interesting. I'd be interested in hearing from a down-voter on what their objection is Did you edit your comment at some point after publishing to be a little more mild (e.g. remove the word "childish" or something)? I apparently downvoted you at some point, although I don't see anything currently in your comment that would have caused me to do that. I'm not sure…

Thank you for your reply. I did make a minor edit for tone, but I only added my downvote-edit when several downvotes came in after this -- as I then assumed it was a content issue.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#273

Post by Ticklee » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

medeshago wrote: post #169

tapirl wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.?

In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want as long as they contribute good code.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#274

Post by earthnail » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

jgrant27 wrote: post #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.

I hope you don’t mind me asking; I might just be missing a reference here.

Is Comrade Klabnik a person, or is it a saying?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#275

Post by poszlem » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #197

quotemstr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But seems like there is a new drama every week That's what happens when you elevate micromanagement of language to a task of equal or greater importance than the creation of code.

What a strange way of looking at it. At any functioning company, toxic employees get fired because the cost of them pushing out other employees is usually higher than the cost of firing them. Open source projects do not hire and fire people but do have the ability to censure toxic contributors. I know nothing about this particular case, but the general idea of moderating contributors to a project is not wacky as you…

Except in those situations you never weight the amount of people you lose by adding a significant level of "cultural oversight" to a project. I actively avoid projects that spend a lot of time talking about "inclusivity" because to me it's a symptom of a (ironically) toxic environment full of people looking for drama (I am an ethnic and sexual minority myself in case someone wants to throw privilege in my face). The end result is that you replace one group of people with another group of people, you push away some to gain some. Except people like myself are rarely mentioned when there is a discussion about toxic environments.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#276

Post by MR4D » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #231

MR4D wrote: post #143

Out of curiosity, to whom is the Moderation Team accountable? Seems like they and the Core Team should be accountable to the same oversight board. I don’t know the inner workings of the organization, so apologies if I’m asking a dumb question.

It's an excellent question, and I would like to know as well. The big question is whether the Moderation Team is formally appointed by the Rust Foundation. If that's the case, or if it becomes the case in the future, then it depends under which governance provisions the team's writ is created. It could be that the team is created by an act of the board of directors, and then either made accountable to the board itsel…

I had similar thoughts.

It seems to me that a better choice than resigning would be to get that part figured out. (Maybe they did, but I couldn't tell from their post).

Either way, I wasn't there, so I probably shouldn't make too many assumptions here.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#277

Post by anandrew » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

tinco wrote: post #90

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…

I feel it's a bit of a tautology, the fact that they're resigning already clearly communicates there's an irreconcilable difference between the mod team and the core team. If the core team comes with an explanation that would make light of the situation surely the new mod team would be skeptical. That said, there is still a bit of a game left to be played. The mod team just played their trump card, by instantly makin…

> but the person(s) who caused offence probably have no bad intentions

I'd give the mod team the benefit of the doubt that the offense they've all resigned over is not so mild that it could be committed unintentionally.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#278

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

gdy wrote: post #227

cycomanic wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not every public information is written for everyone. Just because arxiv papers are publically available does not mean that a posted string theory paper should be written for you so that you can understand it (or I for that matter).

Are you suggesting that the substance of the accusation is as complex and cannot be explained without years of preparation?

I'm simply refuting the statement that just because something is public it is aimed at everyone. That statement is clearly wrong.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#279

Post by throwawaygh » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #266

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…

With most OSS projects nowadays I don't think you have to use a mailing list or anything that would have an MOTD in order to contribute. Contributions nowadays are often done entirely through the repository, so it makes sense to put in them the things that people contemplating contribution should be cognizant of. Repositories for most projects are more project repositories than mere code repositories.

> Repositories for most projects are more project repositories than mere code repositories.

Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I've acknowledged I'm getting old, right? ;-)

Also, there is some rational justification to my feeling. It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions. But if they made a technically meritorious merge request via SCM the contribution would still get due consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers, after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me. Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in communities I moderated.

So, what? I guess this: Bundling the CoC into the repo violates this expectation. Just because someone couldn't get along doesn't mean we kick them out of the hobby. I think that's why it makes me uncomfortable.

In a hobby org, you don't let the known jerk on the board. You definitely don't let him man the booth at community outreach events! However, you also don't usually kick him out of the core activity. In a non-OSS hobby context, I've had folks steal things but still allowed them to stay in the community while taking away unsupervised physical access to common property. Measured tolerance and forgiveness are both important virtues, and sticking around in a community after public humiliation shows a commendable level of commitment to the hobby/community. The social bonding that happens via the process of apology and forgiveness often does far more good for the community than the harm of the infraction.

But, also, I've always considered OSS a hobby scene rather than a business model or resume booster. I guess if an OSS project is just a way for companies to commodify complements and for contributors to get jobs, then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes sense. But I'm not interested in those types of communities; I have hobbies, and programming can be a hobby for me, but I charge a lot for my labor and would never, ever work in a corporate environment for free.

I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils down to this split in people's perception of what OSS projects are.

Again, getting old I guess.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#280

Post by devwastaken » Mon, Nov 22, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

No reasons or substance given. This is how bad orgs continue to operate. Everyone is afraid of pointing fingers at the aggressor. Name and shame. Then If the rust org refuses to fix it, we know who to not involve in the fork.