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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

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Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#821

Post by jbjohns »

jacquesm wrote: post #455
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be that the details would also damage the core team and The Rust community much worse with a flood of people leaving or people being targeted for harassment/abuse.

I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but if that is the case then Rust is dead because if the core team can't be trusted to handle something like this then probably Rust as an experiment has failed, you won't get further corporates taking a gamble on Rust if this sort of cloud is hanging over the core team.

Well I think Amazon has a vested interest in the language at this point. Does the core team even matter that much now? If the core team falls apart could Amazon not simply pick up the reins? It doesn't seem to have hurt C# or Swift to be driven by a company.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#822

Post by rhn_mk1 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #714
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand this reasoning when it comes to personal insults. I understand it less when it comes to tolerating baiting, which takes time and attention from the original reason (work, fun, etc.) of the social space. Why is being offended by not being able to communicate unreasonable? I'm also interested in your take in the kind of communication that's intended to falsely undermine your reputation. I guess it's si…

re: baiting, if you take the bait, it's on you. If you don't think someone is being genuine, you're free to disengage. No one is forcing anyone into a conversation, especially online. > communication that's intended to falsely undermine your reputation If a claim is false, that's the most damning thing that can be said about it. Whether it's "offensive" (or whether you're offended) or not is irrelevant.

I see where we differ now: I've experienced that when you are being barraged with mud, some will usually stick, with the exception of maybe groups of close friends.

As such, I don't mean that you are the one who takes the bait, but other members of the group. Bikeshedding is so popular it even has a special name, and it affects the performance of the group relative to the original goal even if you're not the one who took the bait.

So while I agree that baiting/insulting it's not something to be offended about, I think the response should be effectively the same as if it was.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#823

Post by raxxorrax »

politician wrote: post #682
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate. It's not…

This kind of drama is already a defining feature of the Rust community. They can’t go 6 months without some kind of incident like this. It would be a positive if they could have a BDFL or corporate sponsorship to structure the community going forward because it doesn’t seem like the current community approach really works in practice. I realize that’s probably not possible at this point though.. unless maybe Microsof…

> unless maybe Microsoft steps in.

I believe that would very quickly kill the community. Corporate MS cannot be patron here. You will never find me in a development community that puts compliance over people. I accept that in my job because it makes sense there and is necessary. But there are current sensibilities about conduct I do not share and I am not ready to keep up with the newest etiquette to be honest. I think moderators should go against obvious trolls and spammers, but aren't fit to mediate in conflicts.

HN has a strong moderation, but I think these are rules that the community accepts because everyone profits. It could just be a power grab by some mods that feel neglected, at least that is what they seem to display here.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#824

Post by llogiq »

fragile_frogs wrote: post #543
baseballdork wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that I'd call a PR a "whole big public announcement". Sure, it wound up here, but I don't think you can blame that on the mod team.

They also posted the resignation on the Rust subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...

If matthieum hadn't done it, someone else would have (and has; some dupes have appeared and were subsequently removed).

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#825

Post by raxxorrax »

jacquesm wrote: post #342
loeg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public shaming by respected community members is probably somewhat effective. However, they chose not to do that here. Without knowing more, I have to trust their judgment. But I recognize that it’s unsatisfying.

This has a much worse effect though. Instead of damaging a single member they are now damaging the whole core team by leaving it unspecific, and they are damaging Rust as well.

I think the only thing damaged is the concept to follow a COC to the letter. This was expected, people complained about it thoroughly and I think communities work better with a flexible approach as I don't think any personal conflicts have caused problems anywhere to a relevant degree. There are neither judges nor attorneys here.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#826

Post by native_samples »

samhw wrote: post #757
native_samples wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I have the same impression. Other languages don't seem to have the same drama issues. Rust came out of Mozilla, which is super steeped in SF social justice culture (see the antics of their CEO). It seems like that culture was carried into Rust.

> Mozilla, which is super steeped in SF social justice culture (see the antics of their CEO) Who do you mean? The only Mozilla CEO I can remember being involved in any controversy was Brendan Eich, and that controversy was over his funding a campaign against gay marriage. I can hardly imagine calling that 'social justice culture'. (I'm hoping this comment doesn't summon him, like the last time I mentioned him on here…

Mitchell Baker has repeatedly embarrassed Mozilla and failed in almost every way a CEO can fail. She is very obviously uninterested in Firefox and sees it just as a way to further her own influence amongst the Washington set she wishes she was really a part of. Mozilla not only has a "social justice" culture but openly talks about it all the time: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozilla-racia...

"We granted 33% of Mozilla Foundation funds to black-led tech and social justice initiatives. Unfortunately, we fell short of our 40% target."

The Mozilla Foundation is meant to be funding Firefox. That is its purpose. Instead it is using money raised for that purpose to perpetuate SJW culture and overt racism against white people.

The type of insidious and dishonourable mind games the Rust moderation team are playing here is exactly the sort of thing I've come to expect from Mozilla-associated projects. The apologetics for it in this thread are just wrong. My weapon of choice is Kotlin, made by Russians. Guess what: there's no moderation team, the community is fine and in the 10 years the project has existed I recall exactly zero community related dramas. None. Zero. Nada. This sort of thing isn't normal for programming languages and people trying to claim it is are wrong: it's normal for languages controlled by a very specific kind of person in a very specific region and subculture of America.

In contrast, Brendan Eich kept his politics private and actually cared about Firefox as a product and technology.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#827

Post by raxxorrax »

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.?

I have yet to see significant sexism/racism in open source, but I have seen an insurmountable amount of drama, bad behavior, prosecution and prejudice from people proclaiming to fight against it.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#828

Post by native_samples »

oscargrouch wrote: post #556
r053bud wrote: post #369

I feel like there is always drama or issues surrounding the governance of Rust. It has definitely made me wary to adopt it as a long-term language. Maybe I have recency bias or something.

I'm not sure what the real problem is, but we live in a economical system that have a tendency to hijack governance of things that are important to 'them' (whoever the contextual them are) and re-purpose it's goals and direction working as a effective power-grab strategy. You can see this happening with browsers for instance, where the companies now are the ones who define the standards with things that are important…

I disagree, it's the opposite - capitalism is the fix and the lack of it is the cause. The problem is the way Rust is run and the sort of people who were invited into it in the early days.

Consider Kotlin. It originates from one large company - JetBrains have over 1000 employees and the Kotlin team alone has over 100 people on it - and has been adopted by another much larger company (Google) as an official language. There are no dramas. Why, because the Russians are mission focused and don't feel any need to constantly virtue signal.

Consider Swift. It originates from a large company. I don't remember reading about any political dramas in the Swift world. That's because Apple are mission focused.

Now look at Node or Rust. Both have attempted to build some sort of non-corporate governance system, they're based out of the Bay Area, and all of them seem to be absolutely beset by internal conflicts and strife.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#829

Post by raxxorrax »

throwawaygh wrote: post #258
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact no, benevolent dictator is not significantly worse. In fact historical evidence when it comes to OSS projects points to the benevolent dictator model being the most effective. It may not satisfy social justice activists pretending to be competent programmers demanding a seat at a table that they never earned, but most successful projects are not ruled by committee until they reach a significant le…

> benevolent dictator is not significantly worse I think your normative justification for project dictatorship misses the more important point: there's probably a dictatorship either way. In these cases, the main advantage of the overt dictatorship model over the layer of indirection dictatorship model is that you at least know who's really in charge. In some odd sense, the mod team that just resigned is in agreement…

The benevolent dictator might have too much sway in some project, although in most cases it literary is his project. Problem with enforcing compliance of behavior is that this becomes the raison d'être. This will always fail in any configuration at some point. We are talking about people and if their rulings don't find acceptance, they will interpret it as a personal attack. I am not above that, you are not above that and nobody really is. I have no info about this case, but it fits the profile.

I only take active part in smaller OSS projects and corporate rules in general do suck the fun out of it. Maybe Rust is beyond that, but I would vastly prefer the eccentric dictator to corporate HR, because the latter is nothing else. The dictator or developer has other ambitions aside from behavior enforcement, so it is easier to cooperate.

And if you do not like the dictator, you might be able to fork the project and make it conform to your personal views to the same (overbearing) degree. Win-win.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#830

Post by smarnach »

queuebert wrote: post #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.

Rust overall has a nice and welcoming community. If you want to get an impression, look at the "help" section on https://users.rust-lang.org/. I'm a (currently inactive) member of the crates.io team, and haven't experienced any drama so far.
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