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NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

discourse.nixos.org

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Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#51

Post by ranger_danger »

squigz wrote: post #19
zahlman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 “diversit…

> 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.

Are you saying moderators should be chosen based on their political beliefs?

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#52

Post by squigz »

zahlman wrote: post #47
squigz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also notably, you will find people with similar beliefs using expressions like "y'all" and other Southern US regionalisms, even if they're white Northerners. From my observations this seems to be intended as an act of solidarity. "Folks" arguably also belongs in this category. This is uh... well, seems a bit of a stretch to me. Not once in all my years saying "ya'll" have I ever even remotely put it in this framing…

I was speaking from personal experience, but see e.g. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211119-why-more-peopl... and https://www.npr.org/2025/07/16/nx-s1-5467295/yall-word-histo... .

I like when the news takes a simple trend in a community and blows it out of proportion.

I bet there's news stories talking about how the finger guns meme is actually an act of silent protest or some such.

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#53

Post by bhy »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #10
pizlonator wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a lot of political baggage for an open source project and a recipe for drama. Is any of this overhead really needed? What does it accomplish? (Serious question, maybe I’m just too dim to get it)

It seems to be a combination of a lot of corporations using NixOS and a lot of community members using it as their personal distro. Nix is pretty flexible as a package manager but there are tensions that do crop up and you get arguments over really unimportant things that just sort of escalate because people bring in politics and all sorts of other stuff. And my understanding is that the moderation team was cooling o…

How does your private fork work? Does that mean some flakes and packages for your own use, or you maintain patches that touch deeper into the system?

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#54

Post by edoceo »

Modified3019 wrote: post #13

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.

It kind of doesn't tell us what we need (or want) to know. Or at least, its not clear to me what conclusion is right from that.

On its face, none of these players have accountability. With enough noise individuals could be pressured out from either group. And if either group makes wrong choices, the penalty is just removal.

It's messy; I don't see any obvious answers or conclusions.

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#55

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

zahlman wrote: post #20
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #12

1) this is not the entire moderation team 2) this post is a good summary of the entire situation: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th... 3) as someone with a bit of a horse in this race, I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best. The past moderation team has done thankless work for a long time, but has struggled to keep up with the community growth. I t…

> this is not the entire moderation team I see five names. Who's remaining? > [the SC response] is a good summary of the entire situation It's unfathomable to me that they're even considering this: > Are you asking for an elected body to be accountable to an unelected people. I don’t think this is entirely impossible, but it at least needs more thought put into it, and before taking any sort of bureaucratic approach,…

> I see five names.

The website lists 7: https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/

It feels inaccurate to say "the team resigns" when it's ~70%.

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#58

Post by perching_aix »

squigz wrote: post #52
zahlman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was speaking from personal experience, but see e.g. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211119-why-more-peopl... and https://www.npr.org/2025/07/16/nx-s1-5467295/yall-word-histo... .

I like when the news takes a simple trend in a community and blows it out of proportion. I bet there's news stories talking about how the finger guns meme is actually an act of silent protest or some such.

It's like the ok emoji being an "alt right hidden signal" all over again.

Came across a so-far hopefully untainted, different memetic phrase yesterday: "millenial grey".

The girl in her video [0] successfully identified that it is largely rooted in a 2023 media campaign. She then proceeded to feature two supposedly "completely average" friends of hers as definitely unbiased anchors, and held a community poll, also supposedly unbiased. Predictably, everyone knew what "millenial grey" was, and quickly agreed it was the worst thing ever.

She even made a fun little browser-based pixel art minigame where people could customize a room with a number of colorful options, and an extra bland rendition of "millenial grey". I especially appreciated the false implication that your choices in dressing up a pixel art room definitely translates to your taste in real-life house décor; just like watching gangbangs on pornhub means you'd be interested in taking part in one, of course.

Considering this was the very first time I've ever heard this phrase uttered, to see it being used as if it was something you learned after saying mum and dad as an infant, it was approximately the most living-in-a-bubble type thing I've ever laid my eyes upon. She somehow managed to socialize so perfectly tuned around this, she had absolutely zero chance of actually recognizing it for what she clocked otherwise immediately: a manufactured outrage over basically nothing.

But then I do also keep my own - so far, rather short - list of political dogwhistles, so maybe I'm just being uncharitable with my parallels.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NyeK_Vi0Kc

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#59

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

taink wrote: post #23
zahlman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 “diversit…

Can you elaborate on using "folks" instead of "people"? I'm unfamiliar with the difference as english is not my first language. For reference, to my knowledge these words are pretty much interchangeable with "folks" being less formal I guess.

[flagged]

Re: NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference

#60

Post by perching_aix »

cantrecallmypwd wrote: post #59
taink wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on using "folks" instead of "people"? I'm unfamiliar with the difference as english is not my first language. For reference, to my knowledge these words are pretty much interchangeable with "folks" being less formal I guess.

[flagged]

> Stay curious.

You're certainly out to help them with that by not actually addressing what they asked, but nitpicking everything else to dust, huh?

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