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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#331

Post by azth »

zemo wrote: post #303
dolni wrote: 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…

> Linux has changed the world -- in a very substantial way and much for the better -- even though Linus flew off the handle at people for years. That doesn't mean he is completely beyond criticism, but it does indicate to me that we need to put a significant check in place against these "feelings committees." Their sensibilities are becoming ever more delicate. I think that's a pretty bad example, considering Linus t…

There's a difference between how very bold Linus was with his insults to today's "cocs" which makes people walk on eggshells being too afraid to say or insinuate something that may be perceived as "incorrect".

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#332

Post by ziddoap »

nopcode wrote: post #301
Ticklee wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, and this is the policy of many long-running and successful FOSS projects (e.g. kernel developers). Rust however wanted something different and attracted a lot of "snowflakes" because of it.

Can you explain to me what your definition of snowflake is?

Is it anyone who doesn't agree with the ethos "In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want as long as they contribute good code."?

Genuinely asking, as it seems to appear several times throughout this topic and the only thing I can settle on is that it's used as a derogatory term for anyone who cares more about X or Y than the person calling them a snowflake. (Does asking make me a snowflake?)

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#333

Post by jjk166 »

ectopod wrote: post #241
jaywalk wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Employers airing dirty laundry is way worse for morale. Typically the people who work in close proximity have a good idea of why their colleague may have been fired, or can reach out to them privately to get details. If the fired employee doesn't want to talk about it, it's presumably something private, and the employer probably shouldn't either.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#334

Post by Kla_usLa22 »

Politics are part of human behaviour. To some extend we need to accept politics.

However, I'm concerned that recently quite some politics seem to be going on with the Rust core team. First the nebolous "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust" tweet. And now this resignment accompanied by another nebolous statement .

Rust is still very fragile and only very scarcly used in business contexts. I'm using it for APIs, love it and want it to succeed. Politics and drama does not support its adoption.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#335

Post by avianlyric »

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…

Of the CoC is written and approved by the core team, then I see no issue with enforcement being delegated to a mod team. That’s no different to having separate judicial and legislative bodies. One writes the rules, the other enforces them, including enforcing them against the authors of such rules.

While the core team could modify the CoC to make their non-compliant behaviour compliant, that would require them to effectively admit to engaging in behaviour that violates the CoC. The rest of the community can vote with their feet on if they believe the CoC is fair, and equally if they believe modifications are fair. But importantly all of these changes happen out in open where they can be scrutinised.

> Suppose a member who contributes 90% of new features to the project is "sacked" for an otherwise trivial CoC violation. This subsumes the project into an ideological purity-testing game.

Punishment doesn’t have to be all or nothing. A CoC can provide guidance on how moderation is performed, and how punishment is meted out. The CoC should be equally binding on the mod team, as it is anyone else, and the mod team should seek to ensure due process or face replacement.

> Accountability here is just that the wider community has visibility on the actions of the core team, and will be up-in-arms if they are seriously unethical.

We don’t know the nature of the offence. It quite possible that the victim or victims have requested that the nature of the offence is kept private to prevent retaliation from others. For the mod team to publicly list the offence might cause more injury to the already injured parties.

> The innuendo and insistence on their own power above that of the people leading the project... this "is a bad look".

If the CoC delegates power of enforcement to them, and CoC has been agreed to by the core team, then the mod team does have power over the core team. But importantly, only in matters covered by the CoC. Just like how members of congress are still subject to law enforcement by the police (or should be).

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#336

Post by jacquesm »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #308
pyrale wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I expect our contributions to the community would be improved by less information. When you're resigning from a position but you don't want to say why, you're supposed to gesture vaguely at personal obligations or career opportunities and leave it at that. "You guys should be mad, but we won't tell you why" makes it impossible for the organization to function. How can the core team lead the project or even appoint ne…

Exactly, this throws a giant spanner in the works and casts a shadow over whatever comes next. If they wanted to damage Rust in the eyes of the general public they couldn't have done a much more effective job. The lack of maturity on display must be particularly galling to those that give up a substantial chunk of their time to move Rust forward. Dirty laundry is best kept in-house, lest you damage the house.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#337

Post by honkycat »

dolni wrote: 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.

No. If a person is toxic enough, people will leave until that person has total power or that person is removed.

This is what I have seen happen at companies over and over again.

It can be a painful process because that person may not be actively mean or bad. The way I have seen it happen most often is that the person talks endlessly, and are control freaks that do not allow anyone else to make decisions about any project they are involved in. They don't mind arguing for hours, so the team quits trying to communicate with them over time and ends up leaving.

Also, you act as if toxic == productive, which is absolutely not the case. Smart people tend to be T shaped, which means they also have good social skills. The myth of the "toxic genius" is just that: a myth. Most of the best developers I have met are extremely nice people.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#338

Post by [deleted] »

cycomanic wrote: post #278
gdy wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#339

Post by omegaworks »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #283
throwaway894345 wrote: post #235

> You'll never get everyone to settle on the same moral values so it's inevitable that you'll get someone who is unapologetic about some value they hold. I'm less familiar with Rust community moderation, but as an example of what not to do, I would offer up the Go maintainers' strategy of advertising unrelated, partisan, ideological content on their web pages and then shutting down any kind of critical conversation a…

> Providing legal representation to those who may have been denied a fair trial This is partisan?

In a political environment where one party openly allies with those that seek a white ethnostate[1] and the other sees a compromise solution that normalizes and rationalizes the existence of its opposition[2], the fair and equal application of the law is not just partisan, it is increasingly countercultural.

1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres-h...

2. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/joe-biden-america-ne...

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#340

Post by cormacrelf »

couchand wrote: post #165
capableweb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't mean it does not affect anyone outside leadership. It's government, they make decisions that affect participants. There's no such thing as a completely 'inside baseball' issue in government, unless you aren't a citizen. If you don't use Rust at all, you are free to feel like you do not need to think about solutions.
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