Rust Moderation Team Resigns • Hacker News Board

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#841

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 12:19 PM UTC

zionic wrote: post #801

Sharlin wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think more likely all the drama and more is still there without a CoC or a team to enforce it, it’s just hush-hushed and allowed to fester. The world is chock full of examples of communities quietly condoning horribly toxic and outright criminal deeds and abuses, often toward less privileged people, that have continued for decades because ignoring, suppressing and silencing is easier than the alternative.

Strong disagree. The CoC, by design, creates more conflict than it resolves. You have now painted a target on your project, every activist that finds your CoC in non-compliance now has: 1) a means to proposition your submission 2) a cudgel to bang you with should you reject #1 A far saner solution is to ban CoC and those who request a CoC. The CoC then becomes “don’t request a CoC”. Tolerance paradox in action.

Sounds like speculation. Every community needs rules, and those can be either tacit or codified. The former way is really pronlematic. Are you opposed to laws at a nation-state level as well?

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#842

Post by no_time » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 12:29 PM UTC

randyrand wrote: post #32

Programming Language authors love to formalize everything , but did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin with?

>Programming Language authors love to formalize everything

Everything but writing a formal specification for some reason.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#843

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

no_time wrote: post #842

randyrand wrote: post #32

Programming Language authors love to formalize everything , but did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin with?

>Programming Language authors love to formalize everything Everything but writing a formal specification for some reason.

There are programming language theorists and practitioners who love writing formal specifications. They are just too busy doing that to author many languages. Formal specs are expensive.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#844

Post by vikarti » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #638

medeshago wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is. What if a contributor is harassing another team member? What if he/she is being openly racist/sexist/etc.?

what IF a person in a responsibility position is openly accused of being XYZ-phobic by attention-seeking, emotionally unstable netizens?

What if accusation is proven (and this person agrees with it) but said person does eir work really good. Should ey be forcefully removed from this position? What if there is no good replacement candidate at this time?

p.s. pronouns used are from https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/495360fba7a46 , I don't think singular they is correct thing.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#845

Post by jbjohns » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

reshlo wrote: post #833

jbjohns wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There have been many points of friction in the history of C# and Swift caused by company-driven goals influencing the development of the language ecosystem in ways that some of their communities disagreed with. Leaving that aside, those languages were purpose-built by those companies for their use. Amazon didn’t create Rust, and it’s hard to imagine a hostile takeover would be received well.

Friction points are unavoidable. The point is they survived and have flourished under the direction of these companies who benefit from their continued existence.

I agree a hostile takeover would not be good for anyone but if the existing management structure turns out to be a roadblock maybe stewardship from a big tech company wouldn't be so bad.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#846

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #561

dom96 wrote: post #207

> The Rust Moderation Team (Andre, Andrew and Matthieu) Is the Rust mod team really just 3 people? I'm really surprised to see this coming from Rust. I've viewed Rust's governance as one of the best amongst open source projects. Coincidentally we have very recently put together a mod team in Nim[1] that is significantly larger than just 3, it would be really great to hear more details so we can learn from this. 1 - h…

It was 4 people until very recently. But it was only 4 for a long time. It's inaugural size (of which I was a part) was bigger than that. People leave over time and it's hard to get new members. We acknowledged this in our statement. We suggested that the future mod team do a better job recruiting new members than we did.

I very much dislike COCs and overbearing moderation teams in open source communities. Good on you that you didn't publicize anything, that is probably the hardest for you than for anyone else.

The Rust leadership doesn't make a good impression to be honest. I like the language itself but it isn't really an open source community I would want to engage in aside from the technical aspects (my involvement is limited in any communities because I mostly write commercial software, just dabble here and there, although I am clearly dependent on open source and try to point that out to those less positively inclined to the concept).

What really interests me is why you believe such COCs are necessary. Do you believe they improve open source communities? It is a necessary evil if a certain popularity is reached? Is formalization an attempt at transparency? As I said I dislike COCs, but the Rust one has less than 300 words. Does this reach any target audiences? Is "professionalism" worth striving for?

In my capacity as a developer I have professional exchange in a corporate setting. Sure that every corporation has their own behavior rules, but there is never a formal framework for such engagements that mostly involves people from different companies. Perhaps people behave better because otherwise their job is on the line, but why does it work here? And I believe for many working in such a setting a more "direct" method of mutual engagement seems kind of refreshing. Would be sad if open source tried to mimic the corporate work. There is no greener grass here.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#847

Post by politician » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #814

politician wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently? Linux, Amazon, “turbofish”. Between Oct 2018 and Oct 2021... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1635638400&dateRange=custom&...

You searched "Rust" and "Drama", this is not exactly compelling. First comment is referring to something that happened years ago. Second comment isn't about Rust at all. Third post is about Steve not liking something that came out of Amazon. Reading on it appears to be more references to Actix, Amazon, totally unrelated/ irrelevant results, etc.

No kidding. It’s not a curated dataset, obviously. I looked through a few pages and filtered out the most recent few actual dramas:

1) Rust in the Linux kernel 2) Amazon MUST NOT define Rust 3) Turbofish issue

So, yeah, you have to do a bit more work to pull events from Algolia. It’s better than a feeling though and it’s real timestamped data. It’s not Google or Wikipedia though- the most relevant results aren’t just on page 1.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#848

Post by sbergot » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #827

medeshago wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The author of the message is BurntSushi. I have seen him communicate multiple times before and he seems to be a reasonable and intelligent person.

I cannot imagine that this action is frivolous.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#849

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

ferdowsi wrote: post #48

randyrand wrote: post #32

Programming Language authors love to formalize everything , but did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin with?

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"

I have never seen that on the table to be honest, certainly not on implementation language topics. There was some uncertainty with Java and licencing that I remember, but it is mostly about the issue on how to acquire talent.

People tend to be careful with Rust because it is a relatively young language. Many medium sized business don't have much capacity to experiment but would still try it without too much convincing.

Far more relevant it access to professionals that have experience with the language. That is something that grows very slowly. The JS community is pretty "expressive", but it is still a popular choice because you find a lot of people with experience here. My boss would expect all these nerds to behave badly anyway. I doubt he will ever change his opinion but the next generation might.

Re: Rust Moderation Team Resigns

#850

Post by samhw » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #764

samhw wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I'm hoping this comment doesn't summon him This is extremely odious. HN is a public forum and everyone has the right to reply to your comments, especially if you mention them.

Fair enough, I didn't mean to be too nasty. He has a right to his opinions, even if I consider them by turns a menace to society (in the vax case) and not terribly enlightened (in the gay marriage case, considering I'm gay myself). And I obviously respect the guy tremendously for his life's work and contributions to the world, which are far more than my own.

I was just looking at it through a slightly different frame since he's a (relatively) public figure. It's one thing to tag your Facebook acquaintance in a post and have them respond, it's another to make an offhand, slightly pejorative reference to Beyoncé and then see that Beyoncé herself sent you an angry reply. It's certainly his right, but it's a bit unexpected, and I don't think 'summon' was a particularly bad word for it.

But I suppose this is a tech forum, and Eich is not Beyoncé, so it's a bit hazy.