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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#511

Post by b3morales »

asoneth wrote: post #101

Is there any good way to craft a message like this? If they outlined specific issues then it would invariably devolve into armchair quarterbacking of those issues rather than the the underlying question of what kinds of checks-and-balances should exist for the Core Team -- gossip, accusations, and political discussions are a lot more fun than debating governance structures. On the other hand, if no specific issues ar…

You're right, it's walking a tightrope. But they do put this at the end (on the Reddit post[0], not GitHub):

> we wish to ... focus on Constructive Criticism: how to improve the state of things, moving forward.

> There are many potential topics that are worth exploring: > What should the Rust Governance look like?

> How should the Rust Moderation Team be structured? What should be its responsibilities?

> How can we ensure accountability and integrity at the top? Who Watches The Watchers?

and I don't see how these can be meaningfully discussed by someone who doesn't know what went wrong. You can't diagnose and find a remedy for a problem that you can't even see. So while the sentiment "let's talk constructively" is fine, in public at least it seems like a non-starter.

Note that I'm not saying that this means they should publish a tell-all either -- but it needs to be recognized that, without that openness, the divide between insiders and outsiders remains. And the outsiders can't do anything constructive about these questions.

[0]:https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#512

Post by vbezhenar »

Moderators are nothing. Developers are everything. Moderators can resign all they want. The important thing is that developers do not resign. Those CoCs are getting out of hand. It was a terrible idea from the start.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#513

Post by teddyh »

Shoue wrote: post #385
teddyh wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If “accused” is the worst you could come up with, maybe you shouldn’t spread random accusations so wildly. Anyway, regarding Richard Stallman and those accusations of “various kinds of sexual misconduct”: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

What random accusations am I "spreading so wildly"? The fact that Stallman is being accused of various kinds of sexual misconduct is a fact. I did not anywhere claim they were true. I'm pointing it out because it makes the points above stand on shakier ground. The article you shared also fails to defend many of the accusations against Stallman and completely ignores them, for example the "Emacs virgin girl" situation…

Technically, what you did was to insinuate, not directly accuse. Which one is worse?

Since you seem to have a great interest in this, do have any concrete reference to the “Emacs virgin” situation? I have only a vague recollection that Stallman was referring to anyone who had not used Emacs yet as an “Emacs virgin”, and some people took it as meaning some kind of sex thing.

(Any other references to the “many of the accusations against Stallman” that wasn’t referenced in the linked article would also be interesting to see.)

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#514

Post by ziddoap »

donatj wrote: post #502
ziddoap wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persecution: hostility and ill-treatment, especially on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or political beliefs. What I read does not seem to fit this definition, but maybe to others it does.

That's one of the dictionary definitions. That's not how it's used in everyday parlance however. It's usually used to mean harassment, usually of a group. > To harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict

At this point I think we might just be talking past each other, but I fail to see how this resignation letter meets that definition either. I don't see the letter as harassment to the core team. It also doesn't strike me as a letter designed to injure or grieve.

Semantics aside, the letter may not give enough information to you, but it gives enough information that anyone privy to the internal team dynamics will understand the underlying issues and the logical progression of events that lead to the resignation.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#515

Post by jjk166 »

ziddoap wrote: post #436
jjk166 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

>I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done something wrong but refuse to clarify. I suppose we're of different opinion, as I considered the resignation letter to have enough clarity to the intended recipients to be acceptable. They didn't say "I quit, the end". They pointed at the specific areas of issue (accountability, structure) of which the core team is likely well aware of the minutiae. Just becaus…

They dropped a pretty beefy bombshell in the last paragraph that there were issues beyond accountability that they refuse to disclose. I'm absolutely certain that the core team has a good idea what they are talking about, the problem is this is a public letter, the intended audience is everyone, and they specifically attack the core team's credibility.

When I resign from a job, I send my resignation to my employer in private. I wouldn't put anything in it that I'm not comfortable with becoming public, and if they wish to share what I wrote that's fine, but the purpose of being discreet is to leave the level of disclosure up to the other party's discretion. You don't send a company wide email saying "management knows what they did, don't believe a word they say, I'm out, peace!"

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#516

Post by secondcoming »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #379
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…

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 h…

I found that quite funny.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#517

Post by segfaultbuserr »

chubot wrote: post #378
stackedinserter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> 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)

I strongly agree. I was reading the archive of an early infosec group the other day, the culture was extremely hostile. 70% of the posts were insightful technical discussions, the remaining 30% was full of personal attacks and name callings, merely reading those posts made me want to throw my computer out of the window.

I'm not saying HN is great, but to give a sense of scale: on HN, that type of posts would be flagged to death almost immediately.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#518

Post by strunz »

hintymad wrote: post #368

Curious, why did a project of programming language hire a multi-person moderation team in the first place? That's the OSS version of HR? Or is it equivalent to a team of diversity and inclusion?

People have made fun of Linux having Linus as the dictator on top, but it seems like that model might be the best for long term project success...

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#519

Post by Macha »

danShumway wrote: post #270
gdy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"viewable by others" And I'm sure that the authors of the message are aware of that but made the decision to write what they have written anyway.

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…

It was also posted by members of the outgoing mod team to the community subreddit and tagged with announcement, so it's not like someone outside this drama saw the ticket and decided to reshare it with a wider audience.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#520

Post by whatshisface »

phoe-krk wrote: post #501
nrabulinski wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Then don’t make a whole big public announcement about it. I don't understand. How do you resign from a public project without resigning from that public project? If it is not about the resignation but about the message, do you think that a "we are resigning as a whole team that was made pbulic and we do not provide any public reason for that" would work any better?

They could have resigned without making a post about it. Is that a good idea? Maybe, it depends on the details we don't know.
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