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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be worked around. This often puts a considerable drag on the whole project, one that can easily climb to way above the contributions of that person. Even worse, this is often not visible at the project level, as multiple people start independently avoiding this person, even finding technical work-arounds to avoid working with them; while their direct contr…

Well, we know it’s not zero. Several major contributors have cited it specifically as reasons they have quit or backed off.

Do you mind sending me in the right direction for more info?

I was around for the infancy of Linux (I remember a friend was running ~2.1.98 because it came out before Win 98 or something like that, even though it was occasionally unstable for them), and then went in another direction, and have recently gotten back in.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#372

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?

[dead]

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#373
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? This is posted to the Rust Org's issue tracker: that is an appropriate place to post a resignation notice for an open org with heavy community interactions, and it's an appropriate place to inform the Rust community in general about their decision. That it happens to be public outside of those groups is beside the point. Do you often show up on Open Source projects complaining that their public scrum boards or p…

"just telling you what their decision already is" That's not the only thing that they did. As the Russian saying goes, 'if you said A, say B'. I'd have no problem with the message 'We are resigning because we had a conflict with a certain team and it didn't get resolved in our way', but they have said more, just enough to make a public accusation without any chance for the accused party to refute it.

The accused party can say anything they want, including airing out the relevant grievances in a more public way if they want to.

Giving someone the option of privacy is not the same as denying them justice. Quite the opposite, it's a mature way of allowing the org (and whichever people are involved in the incident in particular) to choose how public they want to be, and to choose how they want to respond.

But that's the extent of what they would owe, the mod team doesn't owe arbitrary people in the public an explanation that's detailed enough for them to form a hot-take immediately within the space of a few hours.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#375
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously I was talking about "Black Lives Matter".

Generally speaking, organizations providing statements in favor of human rights have been in fairly safe territory. Historically, businesses supporting desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, LGBTQ inclusivity, or other human rights issues have been either unharmed or benefitted from the stance, even if there's no material contribution to the cause, and even if the fight for human rights is partisan (it almost always is…

No one disputes the human rights of black people. What is disputed is whether police killings are racially motivated or whether American police are too often heavy handed irrespective of race (94% of Americans believe that some police reform is needed[0]).

Of course, virtually everyone understands that blacks are killed disproportionately by police, but that doesn't imply a racial motive when we know for fact that there are disparities in the commission of violent crime, rates of police interaction, etc which could also explain the disparity in shootings.

And of course, the particular remedial policies depend significantly on the answers to these questions. In particular, people who identify strongly with BLM are much more likely to advocate defunding or abolishing the police (but are also the least happy that inadequate policing led citizens to defend themselves during various BLM riots in 2020, including the Rittenhouse case).

Further still, there's a lot of controversy over whether violence or non-violence are the appropriate way to seek the reforms one desires, with virtually the whole of the media downplaying or actively justifying political violence (even invoking MLK's "riots are the language of the oppressed" out of context[1]) right up until January 6th, 2021 when political violence abruptly and rightly regained its "reprehensible" designation.

Further still, contrary to the media portrait, a majority of black Americans don't support violent protest or the abolition or defunding of police--like most other Americans, they want sensible police reform[0].

So yes, BLM is quite controversial in American politics for reasons which have little to do with clear cut advocacy for human rights.

[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-n... [1]: One of the more memorable examples was CNN adding the "fiery but mostly peaceful" caption as a journalist sporting a gas mask reported against a backdrop of a dozen burning vehicles.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any good way to craft a message like this? "We are resigning and our reasons have been shared privately with X group. " But since the goal of the whole exercise is to generate publicity and drama, the above was an unacceptable approach and the approach actually taken was highly effective.

They're committing to sharing these reasons with other Rust Team members, though. Just not the broader dev community.

Then don’t make a whole big public announcement about it. As someone from the outside this just reads like a post specifically to generate drama and attention but not giving details as to direct it at anyone in particular.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#377
post #331
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

Here is the Rust code of conduct: https://www.rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct

Can you provide an example of something in the code of conduct that you think makes people walk on eggshells?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, yes. A growing community needs healthy management in order to avoid reputational damage to the core language. There's no shortage of guidance to "stay away from X tech because the community is toxic and non-serious"

Examples? EDIT: it's remarkable that there's none, aside of "someone said something"

Rich Hickey specifically said that some Lisp groups were extraordinarily toxic, and it's something he wanted to avoid in Clojure. (I think it was in his HOPL talk).

Also, I would say that help-bash@ and the bash IRC channel are pretty toxic.

By "toxic" I mean that there's just a general culture of negativity, insults, hazing, and assuming the worst. There's definitely a thing where computer nerds try to one-up each other, and highly technical or obscure topics like Lisp and bash tend to bring that out.

I have a memory of comp.lang.c being pretty bad too, but I didn't participate for that long, and this was long ago.

Honestly it's funny to me that people think HN is toxic, because it's not even close to those forums in my mind. (well maybe that's because I almost never read the politics threads on HN, but still)

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#379
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…

I'm reminded of this mid-2000s example of toxic behavior from Richard Stallman on Emacs, in response to a contributor who didn't have time to work on something because he just had a baby girl: https://tess.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms

> It doesn’t take special talents to reproduce—even plants can do it. On the other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill. That is really something to be proud of.

> It helps more people, too.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The problem is that people want the facade. I generally expect managers to present themselves as first among equals, even though I understand in extremis that's not true, and I wouldn't work in an organization where they do a bad job at pretending. It's my understanding that my mindset is pretty common, although I have to admit that I'm not sure because this isn't the kind of thing I'm comfortable polling my coworkers about.
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