Ok I wrote a long thing but answered all my questions myself. There's a whole chorus of people backing Mr. Peters up in these comments, so I thought it would be interesting to share the other side from Ms. Wages, the current Python Czar/Queen/Big Boss. The defenses from her colleagues in the actual ban thread on the specifics of the case are... not flattering, I'd say.
BTW, is it weird to anyone else that Microsoft was allowed to hire the person who runs Python as a "Python Community Advocate" only a month after they took office...? Seems like something that the web working groups would cry foul over; maybe Python isn't to that point yet, b/c there hasn't been a Python browser war? Anyway;
Membership is by far, to me, the most important work group among the bunch. From this past year, I've seen a disconnect between the community having valid concerns and getting them across to the "powers that be" to have them enacted. From the way I hear people talk about the PSF board, it feels like people see the board as a group of people far away from the membership that may not understand what everyone else wants in their community-driven organization. For what it's worth, these are common growing pains of any organization going from medium to large, or small to medium (depending on your vantage the PSF could be either; but regardless is that we are growing along with the language).
I can say confidently that is not the case that we are far away from the desires of the membership. We are boots on the ground organizers who love the community and challenge our own beliefs constantly in our meetings. Clearly, we're not sharing the effort we take to learn about our membership and how much we debate in our meetings to reach our goal of voting consensus in our board resolutions; a goal we reach more often than not.
Without a solid conversation with our membership, we are reliant upon the urgency and rhetoric to get across a point, which leaves a lot to be desired to say the least. And the membership is left inferring our opinions from a one-line resolution (although our communications team on staff are helping with this). In points where the membership on opposite sides would otherwise agree, we lose the plot with hyperbole, metaphors and analogies. The last thing I will do is tone police, period. The goal is to make it easier to communicate between the board, staff and membership so we don't feel the need to use strong rhetoric. I have faith that if other methods to communicate are felt to be abundantly available and effective, they will be employed before we get to the harsh and derisive communications.
https://dawnwages.info/bajoran-engineer/2024/08/09/2024-pyth...:shrug: That clearly reads as good faith and well reasoned to me, so I have faith it'll all get sorted -- I'm sure their office hours on the 8th this month will be quite lively! Though I'm not sure they'll ever get Mr. Peters back fully. Some of these moderating decisions have been ridiculous, namely banning someone for life for "questioning moderating decisions" and banning this fella for 3 months (?) when "there was no singular incident or sentence that comprised an offense" (??), but the post above gives me hope for a course correct there, and hope for the org in general.
TIL they hand out $600K+ annually for Python development, that's incredible! Maybe Microsoft should kick in a mil or two...
ETA: this is the fabled code of conduct, which I think is objectively reasonable. That is, of course, until you get to the last forbidden behavior:
Other conduct that is inappropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds
https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/ I appreciate the attempt to cover their bases, but in an org that is seemingly so proud of their democratic processes, that's a classic opening for judicial overreach.