Live data from Hacker News

Rust Moderation Team Resigns

github.com

411–420 of 912 posts

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#411

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"

In my personal experience such statements are pretty rare actually.

have you seen a thread discussing OCaml recently?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#412
I think Rust is a great programming language, but to be honest all this drama discourages me from using it as much.

I worry about whether using the language will become a political statement. I worry whether people who can't get along are making the best decisions for the language. And I worry whether a total team meltdown will cause it to become defunct or forked at some point.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#414
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…

> we need to put a significant check in place against these "feelings committees." Their sensibilities are becoming ever more delicate.

I think this is the bigger problem.

There is a real danger of the line between "socially acceptable" and "strongly disagree" or "strongly dislike" being blurred by these groups... it needs to be ok to have people disagree with each other, or not like each other, or not like their opinion, or not like their personality in these open source projects without that leading to being ejected or punished for it.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#415
post #295
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. Even Linux admits his behaviour was unproductive and has…

> There is this trope of the "genius asshole" who is too valuable to lose. I suspect that in a lot of cases these people are too valuable precisely because they drive away other contributors that would otherwise lead to a more healthy project.

I have seen this many a time.

It's quite hard to watch someone tear themselves apart, even if it is just the internet. The emotional burden of it gets a bit too much, and walking away seems like the best option.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#416
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you're going to accuse someone of something, have details.

It's a resignation, not a prosecution. Edit: If it helps, imagine a time you quit your job. Did you provide a datestamped list of incidents that lead to your decision to quit? Or were you, by chance, slightly more vague and provide something along the lines of: "The culture/fit/hours/goals/growth do not align with mine so I am resigning."?

I've always written out what specific issues I had that led me to resign. If you don't say anything, nothing changes. A resignation letter is a professional curtesy, the point is to provide useful, professional information. Of course in some instances there were personal factors that influenced my decision, and I didn't list those out in detail, but I let them know that those were issues on my end that the employer didn't need to address. There's no need to beat a dead horse and bring up every single grievance, and you can be diplomatic, but if an issue is bad enough to warrant resignation, it really should be mentioned in the resignation letter.

I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done something wrong but refuse to clarify.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#417
post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Games are played over multiple rounds. That may be so, but these people are no longer playing the game.

They're not dead.

No, but when you resign you are no longer in a position to influence anything. Resignation is an act of last resort, you throw yourself on your sword in the hope that someone notices and that's that. You can do it exactly once.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#418
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…

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

Yes, they will. For 25 or so years, the workaround has been others leaving and the project/site dies. There's nothing original about your argument, and it's been proven to be a destructive strategy. (Ironically, you are posting your comment on HN, which is heavily moderated.)

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#419
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…

> You can't have a complex technical project that is successful without some minimum level of competency. For better or worse, competency often makes people a little rougher around the edges. This is just nonsense. Plenty of intelligent and capable people are perfectly friendly and non-toxic. Your philosophy demonstrably doesn't work. Its failures are so obvious that even Linus Torvalds, who people always seem to bri…

Given the context, I suspect the parent was referring to the overhead caused by managing incompetents. Given the choice between working with an asshat who knows what they're doing and a moron who doesn't understand the basics _and can't be taught_, which would you take?

I assume in the open source world the latter is easier to ignore, but in business it can take years to get rid of an incompetent, and the longer they're there, the greater the drag on the team and the harder it is to hang on to talented people. By contrast, letting a talented and productive asshat go is much easier; just introduce them to HR!

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#420
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me like any time there's a controversy surrounding code of conducts (and just bad behavior in general) with open source projects, it's always on Github. Conversations on Gitlab by comparison always feel a lot more serious and professional.

That could just be due to numbers, since Github has way more people. The low barrier of entry to Github probably also contributes, since it attracts younger/less mature people. The social media features might also cause people to treat it like reddit or twitter, where being an asshole for no reason is normal behavior.

Post reply on HN