NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

HA, wow, thanks for posting. It’s hard to recall another instance of someone writing something so confident that they’ll come off well, while clearly coming off as self-centered; “our (unelected) team was being steered by the (elected) steering committee” and “they kept annoyingly fighting for objective moderation practices” are pretty damning complaints, especially when given without any actual context! The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t is a delectable cherry on top of the other drama.

This really is like a very strange, petty version of last year’s (ongoing?) Python Foundation moderation debacle, which is quite fitting for one of the goofiest online communities I’ve ever interacted with. NixOS is probably great and laboring to improve OSS is always laudable, but they’re quite a… confident bunch.

Some random thoughts from the thread:

1. “Rust has a different rule; who are you to say you know better than the rust charter writers?” is a hilarious and very Rustian point to make.

2. Describing forum moderation as some arcane art that only experts can truly understand is something I never expected to see outside of political science textbooks. Like a hyperbolic thought experiment criticizing Technocracy, but real…

3. I referenced this above, but the idea that true objectivity is impossible and thus should be forgotten applies equally as much to truth more broadly, good, and unity (i.e. definitions of terms). It’s something we must strive for in order to make society work, knowing that perfect success is inherently unreachable! ISTG, our society really needs to make philosophy courses more accessible+popular…

P.S. anyone know what the political left/right split here is? I don’t want to litigate that part on HN ofc, but there’s quite a few vague allusions that make think it’s there, just like it was for the Python debacle. Sadly, no one in the linked thread has made it clear yet for us unlookers, if so.

The unelected mods who resigned were refusing accountability being enforced by the elected steering committee, which tells you what you need to know about how the mods ran things.

Good riddance, and easily enough replaced.

> I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy.

I don't think the term "false flag" works that way, but it 110% is exactly that.

Consider how they frame the proposal to add other mods:

> intially phrased as a suggestion, with a stated goal of adding “diversity of opinion” and “tension” to the moderation team

> apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments

> despite this suggestion being immediately rejected as destructive and misguided by the moderation team

Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics.

This is what you get when you have an unelected body that appoints its own successors and give it the power to enforce "conduct".

... Incidentally, this also perfectly describes the Python Software Foundation's "work groups" for their Code of Conduct (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter) and for "diversity and inclusion" (https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG). (Actually, it seems like most of the work groups work this way.) I'm also amused at how both of these charters refer to "Folks" rather than, say "People". Seems to me like a clear signal of the intended culture, frankly.

I'm sorry, but I don't really buy into these arguments.

If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters.

Unfortunately, people being people, political and social views will emerge. Also, people being people, any attempt by moderators to check these discussions will result in complaints, by one side or the other, about being silenced over "correct speak". It does not much matter which side of the social or political spectrum a person falls on.

> Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics.

My reading of that is they think it's inherently wrong to add people to the mod team because they disagree with their political views. Which seems reasonable to me.