[HN Gopher] Rust Moderation Team Resigns
___________________________________________________________________
Rust Moderation Team Resigns
Author : hasheddan
Score : 783 points
Date : 2021-11-22 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| MR4D wrote:
| Out of curiosity, to whom is the Moderation Team accountable?
|
| Seems like they and the Core Team should be accountable to the
| same oversight board.
|
| I don't know the inner workings of the organization, so apologies
| if I'm asking a dumb question.
| rectang wrote:
| It's an excellent question, and I would like to know as well.
|
| The big question is whether the Moderation Team is formally
| appointed by the Rust Foundation. If that's the case, or if it
| becomes the case in the future, then it depends under which
| governance provisions the team's writ is created. It could be
| that the team is created by an act of the board of directors,
| and then either made accountable to the board itself, or to a
| specific officer or some other entity. The composition of the
| team could be left to an officer, or it could be that adding a
| member requires board action. But I'm speculating here.
| MR4D wrote:
| I had similar thoughts.
|
| It seems to me that a better choice than resigning would be
| to get that part figured out. (Maybe they did, but I couldn't
| tell from their post).
|
| Either way, I wasn't there, so I probably shouldn't make too
| many assumptions here.
| porker wrote:
| This is a real shame. From the early days of Rust (pre-2018?) I
| built up this mental picture of it having a considerably better
| run and governed community, with people putting time into
| thinking about _how_ a community should work rather than it being
| something that 's ignored because "we're here to write code and
| managing a product is a waste of time".
|
| I lost touch (the last video I watched which might be the one
| that give me the feels for it was
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9OFQm8Qf1I, I do recall Ashley
| Williams & her ideas were a big part of why the community looked
| so good from outside; contrasted with the "do-ocracy" one I'm in)
| so I don't know what happened - but it's sad it's become like
| other projects now.
| [deleted]
| mlindner wrote:
| Ashley Williams is maybe one of the causes of this as she's on
| the core team and has said horrible CoC violating things in the
| past (but it was for a different CoC).
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| I know very little about the Rust community or who Ashley
| Williams is, but since what you're suggesting sounds pretty
| serious - perhaps you could be more specific?
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive.
| skinkestek wrote:
| You can use the search field on the bottom of the page here
| on HN.
|
| Seems like she's pretty well known for saying things that
| others wouldn't get away with, and there is lots of
| evidence for it.
| mlindner wrote:
| https://archive.fo/f10KK There's some quotes.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| There is no substantiations of the claims of bad process by the
| mod team. There is nothing to be sad about except that the mod
| team has succeeded in creating noise with no signal.
| swebs wrote:
| This person? https://archive.fo/f10KK
| kbenson wrote:
| Ew. At the beginning I was expecting it to be somewhat
| interpretive, but some of those statements are indefensible
| to me, and there's quite a lot.
|
| Some might attempt to explain it away as Twitter's model and
| ecosystem encouraging ill considered statements, but the
| adult response to that is to take more care in what you say
| or stop using the medium that encourages you to say horrible
| things you regret.
|
| Edit: I will acknowledge the data I was looking at is a few
| years old, and I don't know if the person in question has
| since recanted on those views. I believe people change and
| should be given the chance to leave their past misdeeds
| behind, and I have no knowledge one way or the other if that
| happened here, and that would be important to know to have an
| informed opinion.
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| Relevantly enough, given this is about moderating the rust
| technical team, Rod Vagg had this to say about moderating the
| nodejs technical team:
|
| "My assessment of the claim that I am a hindrance to
| inclusivity efforts is that it hinges on the singular matter
| of moderation and control of discourse that occurs amongst
| the technical team. From the beginning I have strongly
| maintained that the technical team should retain authority
| over its own space. That its independence also involves its
| ability to enforce the rules of social interaction and
| discussion as it sees fit. This has lead to disagreements
| with individuals that would rather insert external arbiters
| into the moderation process; arbiters who have not earned the
| right to stand in judgement of technical team members, and
| have not been held to the same standards by which technical
| team members are judged to earn their place in the project.
| On this matter I remain staunchly opposed to the dilution of
| independence of the technical team and will continue to
| advocate for its ability to make such critical decisions for
| itself. This is not only a question of moral (earned)
| authority, but of the risk of subversion of our
| organisational structures by individuals who are attracted to
| the project by the possibility of pursuing a personal agenda,
| regardless of the impact this has on the project itself. I
| see current moves in this direction, as in this week's
| moderation policy proposal at nodejs/TSC#276, as presenting
| such a risk. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on
| this, but I have just as much right as everyone else to make
| my case and not be vilified in my attempts to convince enough
| of the TSC to prevent such changes."
| ramchip wrote:
| This website always return a "could not reach server" error
| for me (in Japan). Is there another source?
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20170829180041/https://www.reddi
| t...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Cloudflare seems only to be giving the IPV6 address for
| archive.fo - try using quad9 or something else. Or hop on
| mobile.
| wyager wrote:
| > with people putting time into thinking about how a community
| should work
|
| The sort of people who try to intentionally "plan" (I.e.
| socially engineer) community dynamics do not have a great
| historical record of actually creating good communities.
| History is littered with failed inorganic communities - from
| cults and communes to web forums with overzealous mods.
|
| Not saying that's necessarily what happened here, just that
| people putting a lot of thought into how to control/manage a
| community might be more of a negative sign than a positive one.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| > people putting a lot of thought into how to control/manage
| a community might be more of a negative sign than a positive
| one.
|
| A counterexample is Hacker News itself. We all like Hacker
| News (presumably, otherwise we wouldn't be here) and it
| wouldn't be what it is without the intentions of the original
| creator and the current moderation team.
| staticassertion wrote:
| > We all like Hacker News
|
| That can't be true, right? Everyone shits so hard on HN all
| the time. Personally I only post here because it's "the
| place" for people in my field, but HN has given me a more
| negative view of my field than positive.
| robocat wrote:
| > Everyone shits so hard on HN all the time.
|
| Do they? Or is it just some minority of shit stirrers? Or
| is it that HN is more likely to have people that can
| healthily laugh at themselves - a la Monty Python? I mean
| you can love HN and n-gate.com at the same time right?
|
| Back on topic: The very public "we quit" message seems
| like a very clear message to try and effect change for a
| cause they deeply care about.
|
| I presume the mod team had multiple other options on how
| to deal with the core issue. For example, they could have
| internally suggested a quiet rollover to a new mod team
| over a few months. Say modelled on how CEO leadership is
| changed, avoiding public drama, when a CEO is rolled by
| their board.
|
| Deciding on a very public option just causes all the
| drama to play out with every Internet and Hackernews
| (including me) adding their own spit into the mix.
|
| Edit: added colour.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Yeah, they definitely do, or at least virtually everyone
| I know feels that HN is a place mostly to go to laugh at
| the terrible opinions or, much less frequently, a good
| comment.
| jmull wrote:
| History is also littered with failed organically formed
| communities, right?
| hitekker wrote:
| I think the phenomena you're getting at is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectualization and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology).
| The first is thinking to _prevent_ feeling, and the second is
| thinking to _soften_ the feeling.
|
| Both kinds of thinking are natural. Defense mechanisms are
| always present in the process of making up our minds. But if
| defense mechanisms are allowed to dominate our thought
| process-- to kill feelings before they can provoke new
| thoughts-- the result will be indecisive, ambiguous writing
| that implicitly dumps the burden of resolving the anxiety,
| resentments and other dark feelings, onto the author's
| audience.
|
| An elite who publishes their overthinking signals their
| inability to resolve their feelings or the feelings of the
| people they have power over.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| Well, what a wonderful community.
|
| On the other hand, this is what happens when core developers of a
| previously beloved project get "contacted" by Big tech players.
| iamed2 wrote:
| There are two statements here regarding things that have
| happened:
|
| > the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but
| themselves
|
| > we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the
| standards the community expects of us and to the standards we
| hold ourselves to
|
| 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.
|
| Seems to be a wide variety of possibilities and leaving the
| nature of the situation ambiguous* will likely make it difficult
| for a new mod team. I hope the now-former mod team are open and
| direct with new or potential mod team members about the
| environment they're entering.
|
| * I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the
| specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted
| harassment and make the situation much worse
| pg_1234 wrote:
| Sounds like the people trying to play social politics had a
| hissy fit because they couldn't control the people doing the
| actual work.
|
| Fantastic.
| stouset wrote:
| You might care to notice that the resignation was announced
| by Andrew Gallant--more commonly known as BurntSushi[1]--who
| is one of the most well-respected, talented, and prolific
| contributors in the wider Rust community. Amongst other
| things, they are the author of ripgrep[2], the regex[3]
| crate, and the byteorder[4] crate. They have multiple
| projects which are amongst the most-downloaded crates[5] in
| the Rust ecosystem.
|
| One would struggle to find more than a handful of people who
| have done more "actual work" for Rust than Andrew.
|
| [1]: https://blog.burntsushi.net/about
|
| [2]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
|
| [3]: https://github.com/rust-lang/regex
|
| [4]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder
|
| [5]: https://crates.io/crates?sort=recent-downloads
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| As well as xsv and the csv crate.
| stouset wrote:
| And, apparently, volunteering to be on the moderation
| team.
| mzs wrote:
| The same mod team member is strongly implying elsewhere that
| such a potential violation did occur:
|
| >burntsushi ripgrep * rust 31 points 2 hours ago
|
| >If we had an answer to your implied question it will
| necessarily reveal things (via obvious logical inferences) that
| we carefully avoided revealing in our statement.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
| mlindner wrote:
| Well this person is on the core team and has said many horrible
| things in the past and so it's possible this is indicative of
| the culture of members of the core team.
| https://archive.md/VEtHu (from 2017)
|
| But this is trying to imply that past crimes are evidence of
| future crimes, which I'm not a huge fan of, so take it with a
| grain of salt. But it's a useful data point at least for me.
| hintymad wrote:
| It seems there is an internal communication channel for the
| Rust team? I thought that the moderation team would moderate
| discussions in open forums like mailing list or issue trackers,
| but in this case we don't know what happened behind closed
| doors.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban
| a core team member
|
| If that was the case, the obvious response would be a formal
| statement of rebuke and censure wrt. the offending member's
| behavior, which would clarify that such things aren't welcome
| in the project. The fact that we aren't getting anything close
| to that extreme suggests that this is in fact a big fat
| nothingburger. (Unless you think that CoC violations are so
| widespread in the Rust Core Team that naming the specific
| people involved would have made no discernible difference, but
| so far we've seen nothing to indicate that.)
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| It might be that they cannot censure the offending member in
| any capacity, due to their core team member status. In that
| case, resignation is the only thing they have to effectively
| rebuke behavior.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| As pointed out on r/rust, the approved Governance RFC
| states quite unambiguously that the Core Team _is_
| accountable to the community wrt. their behavior:
|
| > _Subteam, and especially core team members are also held
| to a high standard of behavior. Part of the reason to
| separate the moderation subteam is to ensure that CoC
| violations by Rust 's leadership be addressed through the
| same independent body of moderators._
|
| https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html
| loeg wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I suspect that doing it this way puts pressure on the
| core team members who don't subscribe to the behaviors
| moderate the people on the core team who are problems.
| But one can never know.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's how I read it too. At a guess, if the threat
| to resign didn't change anything the resignation also
| won't change anything and strongly suggesting the core
| team can not be trusted not to lie is a very harsh move
| that has the power to destabilize the whole Rust
| experiment. Massively dumb move this.
| loeg wrote:
| Whether it's better or worse is unknowable.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, because if you accuse a group when you should be
| accusing an individual you are doing all of the people in
| the group a disservice. Then you should just say nothing.
| 'wie A zegt moet ook B zeggen'. If there are major
| upsides to this approach then I'm not aware of them, do
| tell.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Is there any possibility they are under formal legal
| contract ie. NDA? Don't know how formal the Rust
| organization is setup/whether that would be a part in the
| process of joining the moderation team.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A moderation team under NDA might as well not exist.
| Moderators should _always_ be free to speak their minds.
| Jensson wrote:
| Is HR on the employees side? No. Same thing here, the
| moderation team didn't realize that their job was to
| protect the core team from the rest, holding the core
| team accountable wasn't a part of their job even if it
| was warranted.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| An NDA for an open-source project? I sincerely hope no
| one tried that, but if they did, that's a radical idea
| and the effects must be studied (never let someone doing
| something weird go to waste, science can learn from it!)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I don't know what changes when formal structures like a
| foundation start getting involved.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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 clear to me that they're claiming a violation
| occurred.
|
| The wording is vague, but one interpretation is that they
| simply wanted more control over the core team but the core team
| didn't want it structured that way, so the mod team resigned.
|
| IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest
| authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree
| with their demand to be the ultimate authority over _everyone_.
|
| Violation or not, I wish they could have come to an agreement
| without throwing ambiguous accusations out into public as they
| quit. Between this and the "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust"
| post a few months ago we're getting a lot of drama with few, if
| any, details. There's a lot of "just trust me, but don't listen
| to what anyone else says about the situation" in this post.
|
| Their closing statement asking everyone to not trust anything
| the core team says makes this feel particularly petty:
|
| > We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future
| Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the
| Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the
| situation.
|
| I really hope that drama like this doesn't become one of the
| defining features of the Rust community.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I _wish_ they were saying "trust me." What they're actually
| saying is, "I won't tell you anything, and don't trust anyone
| who does."
| politician wrote:
| 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
| Microsoft steps in.
|
| Disclosure: I am an outside observer, and I find Rust to be
| excessively syntax dense. Take my opinion with a grain of
| salt.
| smarnach wrote:
| I don't think the Rust community is particularly prone to
| public drama. What other events are you thinking of?
| staticassertion wrote:
| Having been a part of the community since a bit before 1.0,
| no this does not happen every 6 months.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| > I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the
| specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted
| harassment and make the situation much worse
|
| Instead, we have countless people bantering and taking "sides"
| about hypotheticals. In a world mostly devoid of secrets on the
| web, I think they could have, at the least, masked identities
| and summarized the issue.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Absent some form of democracy, what does it mean for a leadership
| to be "accountable"?
|
| Power extends from whoever has the authority to hold others to
| account. So this just reads like a power-grab from the moderation
| team. What would it mean for them to have the power to hold the
| core team to account? That they could sack people from it?
|
| The goals of the project are set by the core team; not by a
| moderation team enforcing some abitrary CoC. Suppose a member who
| contributes 90% of new features to the project is "sacked" for an
| otherwise trivial CoC violation. This subsumes the project into
| an ideological purity-testing game.
|
| Accountability here is just that the wider community has
| visibility on the actions of the core team, and will be up-in-
| arms if they are seriously unethical.
|
| This is, in my reading, deeply bad press for the moderation team.
| The innuendo and insistence on their own power _above_ that of
| the people leading the project... this "is a bad look".
|
| EDIT: the immediate number of downvotes on this comment is
| interesting. I'd be interested in hearing from a down-voter on
| what their objection is.
| daze42 wrote:
| This exactly. You have summed up my thoughts better than I
| could. I am also interested to hear from the downvoters.
| tinco wrote:
| It's not a power grab, because they just relinquished power,
| even going to the point of leaving instructions for the next
| group of people that would take over. Just this flaw in your
| logic probably landed you your first downvotes.
|
| Second, the CoC is not arbitrary, there's a link to it merged
| into the repository which means the core team (or at least a
| majority of it) agreed to it. Their resigning is just a signal
| that the CoC that they publicly announce is not actually being
| followed. It's nothing more than that.
|
| For a leadership to be accountable means that they follow the
| rules of the system, and should they not follow them they are
| ejected from it. It's as simple as that, no need for democracy,
| the system is clearly defined and agreed upon.
|
| I don't really get what you mean with "a bad look" for the
| moderation team. It's a bad look in the sense that it shows
| they actually had no power all along. But I don't think they
| were in it for the glory. A worse look is that of the core
| team, who have publicly stated their support of a CoC, and now
| when shit hit the fan show they won't actually abide by their
| own rules.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Sure, in round one, they've resigned. Games are played over
| multiple rounds. We're yet to see how it plays out.
|
| Though I don't really expect those individuals to comeback,
| this may well just be a move to subsume the projects
| "technical goals" (ie., those of the core team) under the
| "ethical goals" of the moderation team. As a technical
| project, to me, this isnt that sensible.
|
| > leadership to be accountable means that they follow the
| rules of the system
|
| This misunderstands power. There are no (enforced) rules
| prior to power. Power is the mechanism by which there are
| rules. This resignation isn't to establish rules in the
| abstract -- the CoC exists. Its for a team to have the power
| to enforce them.
|
| And "Rules" here arent rules at all. They are principals. And
| pricipals trade-off against each other, and against other
| goals. When we say the core team has "agreed" that does not
| imply theyve agreed to all views the moderation team takes.
|
| I have no idea who is in the "right", to be clear, on the
| ethical issue. Perhaps a member of the core team has done
| something severely unethical (in which case, presumably the
| ethical thing to do is tell people...). However the phrasing
| of this _as an explicit demand for power_... to me reads a
| little off.
|
| It reads like they wish to be part of a project where an
| ethical ideology reins decisively above the technical goals.
|
| Eg., consider the core team will give a member "more
| latitude" to, say, rehabilitate if they've done something
| wrong. You might say they shouldnt. But it this a technical
| project, or a political-ethical one? Are its leaders meant to
| be morally excellent or excellent software developers?
|
| The reality is that technical projects require technical
| excellence, not moral excellence. A "moderation team" set-up
| to demand moral excellence can easily go too far and ruin a
| project. Of course, if a core member is deeply unethical one
| hopes the community & core-team will do something about it.
|
| My sense here is that if someone was "deeply unethical" they
| can be held to account by _telling people about it_. And if
| they weren 't, then I imagine the core team have made the
| right decision for the project.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Games are played over multiple rounds.
|
| That may be so, but these people are no longer playing the
| game.
| ncmncm wrote:
| They're not dead.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, but when you resign you are no longer in a position
| to influence anything. Resignation is an act of last
| resort, you throw yourself on your sword in the hope that
| someone notices and that's that. You can do it exactly
| once.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Until they join something else. Resigning is a principled
| stand, and principles are respected in some places.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Until this has been completely cleared up I highly doubt
| these moderators will be welcome anywhere else. For now
| they are _almost_ (but not quite) as tainted as the core
| team because there is of course a chance that the core
| team is right and they are wrong.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If this wasn't about power, they wouldn't be airing their
| dirty laundry in public. The only reason you do that is
| because you're hoping to stir up some sort of shitstorm to
| (threaten to) damage the public perception of the project.
| It's juvenile he-said-she-said behavior that's barely above
| storming to your bedroom shouting "screw you, mom!" and
| slamming the door so hard a few shingles fall off the roof.
|
| Of course what you inevitably get isn't an internet shitstorm
| at all, but a bunch of rubberneckers gleefully gawking at the
| high school drama publicly unfolding in your organization.
| PKop wrote:
| >It's not a power grab, because they just relinquished power
|
| Relinquished _what_ power? If they had said power, surely
| they would have gotten their way yes? Perhaps this is just an
| incremental iteration of the ongoing fight for power, a last
| ditch effort to get public sentiment behind them.
|
| >agreed to it
|
| This could have been a tactical choice to avoid fighting head
| on in that battle, waging the larger war against the CoC by
| simply ignoring it over time. It is just as likely to assume
| many who "agreed" to it didn't really agree with it,
| evidenced by them not following it. And here we are, it seems
| these people have "won" as they didn't follow it and the the
| team pushing it/enforcing it lost. So perhaps this strategy
| was the optimal one. "Agree" to a thing to move on with more
| important matters and ignore those who nominally are tasked
| with enforcing it but have no real power, if ignored.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Of the CoC is written and approved by the core team, then I see
| no issue with enforcement being delegated to a mod team. That's
| no different to having separate judicial and legislative
| bodies. One writes the rules, the other enforces them,
| including enforcing them against the authors of such rules.
|
| While the core team could modify the CoC to make their non-
| compliant behaviour compliant, that would require them to
| effectively admit to engaging in behaviour that violates the
| CoC. The rest of the community can vote with their feet on if
| they believe the CoC is fair, and equally if they believe
| modifications are fair. But importantly all of these changes
| happen out in open where they can be scrutinised.
|
| > Suppose a member who contributes 90% of new features to the
| project is "sacked" for an otherwise trivial CoC violation.
| This subsumes the project into an ideological purity-testing
| game.
|
| Punishment doesn't have to be all or nothing. A CoC can provide
| guidance on how moderation is performed, and how punishment is
| meted out. The CoC should be equally binding on the mod team,
| as it is anyone else, and the mod team should seek to ensure
| due process or face replacement.
|
| > Accountability here is just that the wider community has
| visibility on the actions of the core team, and will be up-in-
| arms if they are seriously unethical.
|
| We don't know the nature of the offence. It quite possible that
| the victim or victims have requested that the nature of the
| offence is kept private to prevent retaliation from others. For
| the mod team to publicly list the offence might cause more
| injury to the already injured parties.
|
| > The innuendo and insistence on their own power above that of
| the people leading the project... this "is a bad look".
|
| If the CoC delegates power of enforcement to them, and CoC has
| been agreed to by the core team, then the mod team does have
| power over the core team. But importantly, only in matters
| covered by the CoC. Just like how members of congress are still
| subject to law enforcement by the police (or should be).
| jmeister wrote:
| In these cases, you are supposed to automatically align with
| the less powerful.
|
| People don't distinguish between earned power(authority ) and
| unearned power anymore.
| CivBase wrote:
| > I'd be interested in hearing from a down-voter on what their
| objection is.
|
| Firstly, you alleged the mod team was engaging in a "power
| grab" by resigning immediately. Others have pointed out that is
| illogical. At best a resignation could earn them some level of
| sympathy, but it eliminates their current power along with any
| potential for them to acquire power in the future. If there is
| any way for the mod team's resignation to increase there power,
| you have not shared it.
|
| Secondly, your claim seems to be baseless. Nobody in this HN
| thread has shared any details beyond what is in the resignation
| PR - much less enough to suggest a power grab. I consider
| baseless allegations like that to be harmful to the overall
| discussion. Until additional details regarding the conflict are
| made public, we should not encourage people to form character
| judgements on either party.
| [deleted]
| mmacvicarprett wrote:
| It means the leadership is willing to accept responsibility,
| not just accepting negative feedback but also working with
| others to correct the behaviors. In this case I would say it
| would involve admitting a violation happened and to say what
| will be done differently in the future.
|
| I can see how this can be extremely complicated, depending on
| the type of CoC violation people tend to be extremists, forget
| about being constructive (to assume good intentions) and
| immediately grab the pitchforks.
| jmull wrote:
| > The goals of the project are set by the core team; not by a
| moderation team enforcing some abitrary CoC.
|
| It's dishonest to publish a CoC that -- silently -- doesn't
| apply to those with power. Why does that matter?
|
| Don't forget that a language with a strong core team but no
| community of users, contributors, documenters, enthusiasts,
| etc., is hardly more than nothing -- people making
| specifications that aren't implemented and if implemented, not
| used.
|
| The purpose of a CoC is to set ground rules to allow the
| community around the language -- the community that must exist
| for the language to have any real value or purpose -- to grow
| as strong as possible.
|
| You're granting the core team all the power in rust, but they
| are kings of very little if people don't chose to adopt rust.
|
| Some people or companies may choose to invest -- or not invest
| -- in rust based at least partially on the code of conduct.
|
| Other people may choose to invest -- or not invest -- in rust
| based at least partially on their confidence in the long-term
| capability of the core team. Does "accountable to no one"
| instill that confidence?
|
| Also: you really are misunderstanding what the mod team did
| here. Resigning is a single-shot ploy. There's literally
| nothing left that they can do. Whether this is a "bad look" for
| them is entirely irrelevant.
|
| At this point the rust core team has to decide if they would
| prefer to more forward with or without a code of conduct, and
| whether they will be honest about it or not.
|
| The rest of us can watch and decide if/how we'd like to
| continue to participate with rust. Those making long term plans
| should watch especially carefully.
| coldpie wrote:
| > the immediate number of downvotes on this comment is
| interesting. I'd be interested in hearing from a down-voter on
| what their objection is
|
| Did you edit your comment at some point after publishing to be
| a little more mild (e.g. remove the word "childish" or
| something)? I apparently downvoted you at some point, although
| I don't see anything currently in your comment that would have
| caused me to do that.
|
| I'm not sure where I land on COC-style stuff myself, but I have
| zero patience for people who are insulting to those in favor of
| them with words like "childish." If you had something like that
| in your comment at one point, I would have downvoted it. (TBH
| your comment is borderline with claiming COCs are "arbitrary,"
| but I wouldn't have downvoted just for that.)
| mjburgess wrote:
| Thank you for your reply. I did make a minor edit for tone,
| but I only added my downvote-edit when several downvotes came
| in after this -- as I then assumed it was a content issue.
| robocat wrote:
| Fixing poor tone is definitely great, although I suggest if
| you edit, then make that clear, as otherwise you confuse
| people and people will silently assume you are acting in
| bad faith.
|
| Note that I often downvote any mention of the word
| "downvote": I am sure you asked in good faith, but as a
| sweeping generalisation, commenting on voting doesn't
| improve conversation. Not knowing why you get downvotes is
| a "make you think" feature IMHO. I also believe excessively
| caring about votes is a red flag: some of the best
| commenters seem to be fairly neutral about caring what the
| HN voters think.
|
| Not trying to start a conversation about voting and maybe
| my comment deserves downvotes. I am answering your implied
| question about why you might get a downvote even after your
| corrections to "tone".
| dom96 wrote:
| > 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 - https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/8629
| [deleted]
| couchand wrote:
| They do suggest that the next mod team spend more time
| recruiting...
| burntsushi wrote:
| 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.
| nabakin wrote:
| Thanks for your contribution burntsushi. I'm sorry it has
| come to this.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| Thanking the political commissars?
|
| I'm glad to see them resign, and I hope open source can
| ultimately route around the unearned power grab that the
| "CoC" movement represents.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| Since they don't say what happened, I can only speculate.
|
| The usual CoC violation: probably someone in the Core Team made a
| statement (outside the Rust community and not speaking
| officially) that does not align with the progressive political
| thinking.
|
| You say that the larger number of men in tech with respect to
| women might be due to biological reasons? CoC violation, fire the
| enemy of the people!
|
| You say you voted for Trump? CoC violation, fire the enemy of the
| people!
|
| You say only biological women are actual women? CoC violation,
| fire the enemy of the people!
|
| When there was a huge push to adopt CoCs I warned everyone I knew
| about the clear potential for abuse by the leftist (who also
| incidentally happen to be the ones to back CoCs). In particular a
| CoC should cover only actions performed in a community, no-one
| should be banned to contributing to a project because of what
| they write on Twitter, for instance!
| gumps4pres wrote:
| Rust's community is composed of the following types of people:
|
| * SJWs like Bryan Cantrill
|
| * Commies like Steve Klabnik
|
| * Furries
|
| * Straight up Pedos
| Animats wrote:
| After reading through all this, I have no idea what the real
| underlying issue is. Someone seems to be angry with someone over
| some incident, but we don't know what the incident was.
| hintymad wrote:
| Curious, why did a project of programming language hire a multi-
| person moderation team in the first place? That's the OSS version
| of HR? Or is it equivalent to a team of diversity and inclusion?
| strunz wrote:
| People have made fun of Linux having Linus as the dictator on
| top, but it seems like that model might be the best for long
| term project success...
| xtracto wrote:
| Right, and Ruby has had Matz, Python had Guido and to a
| certain degree PHP had Rasmus. As soon as you have more than
| one captain in the ship, politics and drama seems
| unavoidable.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Didn't Guido resign due to politics[0]? I think politics is
| an issue of organization size more so than structure.
|
| [0] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-
| committers/2018-Jul...
| nwsm wrote:
| I think the case of Rust is a bit unique with heavy
| interest in the future of the language from powerful
| companies [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
| azornathogron wrote:
| Not sure that's unique; Linux surely also has powerful
| companies interested in influencing its future.
| swagonomixxx wrote:
| Agreed, a single point of authority is useful.
|
| Although in this scenario, isn't code of conduct something
| much more "local" that the ringleader doesn't really need
| to step in every time to enforce?
|
| CoC is just something I expect everybody to enforce when
| needed. Having a dedicated team to do that seems odd to me.
| I guess you still need someone to issue bans and to wield
| the ban hammer, but it _should_ happen infrequently that
| simply informing the violator of their violation should be
| enough (unless they're a troll and will continue violating,
| in which case they can be kicked).
| sgift wrote:
| Postgres has a core team, FreeBSD has one, C++ has a steering
| committee. You can find examples for whatever variant of
| governance you want. The "one person calls all the shots"
| model certainly can work. It can also fail and it often has
| (usually when said person has no interest anymore, but no
| successor is available or has the clout needed to succeed
| them).
| dathinab wrote:
| > hire
|
| Not hired, but voluntary.
|
| > moderation team in the first place
|
| Because a community of any larger size needs moderation (small
| communities tend to self moderate, larger communities without
| any form of moderation are at serve risk of becoming toxic
| and/or unwelcoming places).
|
| > OSS version of HR
|
| Oversimplified it's a Team which steps in when the Code of
| Conduct is (potentially) violated to moderate (i.e. resolve)
| the situation with the goal of keeping the community open,
| friendly and well coming.
| isoskeles wrote:
| More likely the latter. HR usually has a mission to protect the
| company (project in this case). CoC and its moderation usually
| just serve the purpose of virtue signaling or maybe even
| carrying out a digital version of a struggle session, so D&I
| seems like a good analog.
| bogwog wrote:
| Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me like any time there's a
| controversy surrounding code of conducts (and just bad behavior
| in general) with open source projects, it's always on Github.
| Conversations on Gitlab by comparison always feel a lot more
| serious and professional.
|
| That could just be due to numbers, since Github has way more
| people. The low barrier of entry to Github probably also
| contributes, since it attracts younger/less mature people. The
| social media features might also cause people to treat it like
| reddit or twitter, where being an asshole for no reason is normal
| behavior.
| dathinab wrote:
| > Conversations on Gitlab by comparison always feel a lot more
| serious and professional.
|
| I doubt it, at least in my experience this has little to do
| with GitLab or GitHub.
|
| > The low barrier of entry to Github
|
| In this case no low barrier of entry is involved. There is no
| low barrier of entry to join the core Team. This is not drama
| because of a random person posting some random bs on GitHub.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| you've missed the shitshow about renaming GIMP a year or two
| ago.
|
| I tried looking for it now, but it seems the threads got purged
| salmonellaeater wrote:
| There's an article on The Register about it [1], which
| includes a helpful link to the archived threads [2].
|
| A quote from the article:
|
| > "I have, on two occasions now, recommended this program to
| photography and graphic design educators (as an alternative
| to Photoshop) who told me that they considered it and found
| it good as software but weren't permitted by their
| institution to use it in the classroom because of the name."
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/28/gimp_open_source_i
| mag...
|
| [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190705030057/https://gitlab
| .gn...
| r053bud wrote:
| 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.
| oscargrouch wrote:
| 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 to them, like DRM or showing ads,
| embellishing the pill with things nerds and hackers also like,
| where once this governance where in the hands of Tim-Berners-
| Lee et al.
|
| And that's because we are talking about technologies that born
| more free of corporation oversight, which is the minority..
| (Think Java first with Sun and now with Oracle for instance)
|
| This Rust thing is just because powerful corporations are
| adopting it, and defining board members, so they can define
| more the direction of the platform and the technology.
|
| For those corporations corrupt board members that know who owns
| them and what interests they should defend are more important
| than the personal character of that board member..
|
| It's always like this and it will always be like this.
| Capitalism is a amoral system and it will turn everything it
| touch into its own image..
|
| Until we don't stop and fix the root cause of the system that
| is corrupting everything that we value its like thinking you
| can stop a ocean wave by resisting it while on front of it.
|
| Note: I'm not advocating to just destroying capitalism as a
| solution, but to acknowledge that this is actually systemic and
| happen all over and instead to try to fix the specific problem
| caused by it, we should get back some steps and try to fix the
| problem, which is systemic, for everything while preventing it
| from happening all over again in the future.
| Angius wrote:
| This person being a prominent part of the Rust community
| definitely does not make me want to engage with it and does
| make me wary of the stability of the language as well:
| https://archive.fo/f10KK
| dbt00 wrote:
| She's not?
| skinkestek wrote:
| I don't know what was originally written, but here is from
| Ashley Williams (@ag_dubs) Twitter bio:
|
| > a mess like this is easily five to ten years ahead of its
| time. @rustlang core team. slinging open source strategy at
| @pubstruct . she/they
| Angius wrote:
| You're right, seems I was misinformed and didn't do as much
| reading as I had to. Edited my comment to stop the
| misinformation from propagating.
| junon wrote:
| She definitely is part of Rust Core. Check her github
| profile bio.
| native_samples wrote:
| 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.
| unanswered wrote:
| Goodbye and good riddance. Rust is growing up, and it absolutely
| does not need a cadre of petulant preteens claiming moral
| authority over every user of the language (or at least every user
| who wants to discuss the language with others in public).
| lukebitts wrote:
| You don't know what you talking about if you think the mod team
| is "petulant preteens" and not professionals who have moved the
| language forward in leaps and bounds.
| covidpositive wrote:
| Why are the vast majority of Rust devs furries?
|
| Showcasing your sexual kinks wrt a project that has nothing to do
| with sex is pretty off-putting to begin with but the fact that
| most furries are also pedophiles makes it insane that any self-
| respecting company wants to be associated with Rust.
| spedru wrote:
| I can understand the moderation team not going object-level in
| the name of professionalism, especially given that [whoever this
| really means something to] probably already know exactly what's
| up. That doesn't make it any less strange or jarring to someone
| on the outside looking in. Can anyone provide context?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Moderators are nothing. Developers are everything. Moderators can
| resign all they want. The important thing is that developers do
| not resign. Those CoCs are getting out of hand. It was a terrible
| idea from the start.
| dathinab wrote:
| Many of the Moderator are also developers.
|
| BurntSushi (who made the PR) while also being a moderate is
| more widely known of his technical excellence and grate
| contributions, like the regex crate and ripgrep.
|
| Developer do resign over non technical topics, no one wants to
| contribute to a project where they don't feel welcome.
|
| Toxicity in the internet is getting out of hand, CoCs are just
| a consequence of this.
|
| It's basically impossible to run a larger community without a
| CoC (weather or not it's written down or implied). I have yet
| to see any larger community which doesn't have a CoC and
| doesn't has problems with toxicity, sexism and/or
| discrimination.
|
| I have seen more then one or two highly talented people leaving
| the tech sector because of them encountering too much toxicity,
| sexism and/or discrimination on their first contacts with the
| sector (both open source and in companies).
| bitwize wrote:
| Sounds like the core team wants to get shit done, and the kind of
| people in the Rust community who open bugs on the philosophers in
| the dining philosophers example not being gender- and ethnically
| diverse enough are assmad about it.
| fastasucan wrote:
| Is this related to this, where of member of the core team is in
| some drama in the node community?
|
| https://archive.md/f10KK
|
| Also:
|
| https://archive.md/xaa5v
| q1w2 wrote:
| Is there any tech consequence to this immature drama?
|
| I'm confused as to whether I should care or not. If there are
| consequences on the tech, people need to spell that out.
|
| Right now this all seems like some middle-school playground
| emotional drama. I'm too old to care about that.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307395.
| tinco wrote:
| No, an immature drama would have people slinging feces. This is
| a highly mature drama where the arguments are dry, generic and
| adhere to a strict code of values. No fingers were pointed, and
| the offended party is taking the high road by resigning.
|
| It's not often that people behave in a mature fashion, so I
| fully understand you did not recognise it for what it is.
| gdy wrote:
| What exactly is 'mature' about making a vague accusation,
| refusing to substantiate it and claiming that if the other
| side says anything it would be a lie?
| mcguire wrote:
| What, exactly, would you do with the information?
| tinco wrote:
| The accusation is not vague and it was substantiated. Just
| not to you. Not to me either, and I think that's a good
| thing for now. No doubt whoever steps up to become the next
| mod team will be fully informed by both sides, and
| hopefully they can make an objective decision about what
| should and what should not be public. It is _probably_ none
| of our business anyway.
|
| And it's not a claim that everything they would say would
| be a lie, it's just a warning. Given the severity of their
| actions, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt
| and accept that the warning is probably warranted or at
| least it feels warranted to them.
| bitwize wrote:
| > The accusation is not vague and it was substantiated.
| Just not to you. Not to me either, and I think that's a
| good thing for now.
|
| Of course it's a good thing. It's part of the strategy
| behind this move.
|
| If (when) the accusation turns out to be a relative
| nothingburger, the Moderation Team would lose the moral
| authority and hence the power they think they command by
| going "well fine, we'll take our ball and go home".
|
| Better to let it be vague, so that the public can imagine
| serious violations that cast the Core Team's legitimacy
| into doubt.
| torstenvl wrote:
| An accusation substantiated in secret is not an
| accusation substantiated. This is a fundamental principle
| of justice, dating back centuries.
| tinco wrote:
| Justice requires due process. This announcement was made
| two hours ago. Everyone just wants to instant
| gratification and to know which party is right or wrong
| so they can feel good about their minds being made up. We
| are not the jury here, we're just a tool in their power
| struggle. They're explicitly not asking us to pass
| judgement, they're just asking for a new jury.
| gdy wrote:
| "they're just asking for a new jury"
|
| That's not what they did, obviously.
| [deleted]
| juancb wrote:
| Your argument is flawed since some amount of
| secrecy/discretion in judicial proceedings is allowed and
| necessary. For examples look to investigators and DAs who
| refuse to provide details for ongoing investigations, and
| closed proceedings.
|
| More importantly this is a problem in a private
| organization and not a public entity or court proceeding.
| delusional wrote:
| You're neither the judge not the jury. They aren't trying
| to make the case to you. The case has (it seems) been
| made and resolved elsewhere. This is just a public
| statement saying they do not accept the resolution and
| therefore resign.
| [deleted]
| gdy wrote:
| "just a public statement saying they do not accept the
| resolution and therefore resign"
|
| The statement is much more than that.
| delusional wrote:
| Is it? How would you respond if you were asked to take on
| a responsibility that you didn't have the authority to
| uphold? I think this is very sober and professional.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Protecting people's privacy is a fundamental principle of
| justice, too. It's extremely common for court records in
| cases regarding people's conduct to be sealed.
|
| Forcing people to air all their dirty laundry in public,
| as the Puritans did, is not just, and tends to severely
| limit already-marginalized people's access to justice.
| torstenvl wrote:
| I have been a lawyer for over a decade. In exactly _one_
| case that I 've ever litigated or supervised has any of
| the evidence been placed under seal. What jurisdiction do
| you practice in, that you're seeing this so commonly?
| [deleted]
| onedognight wrote:
| Juvenile court?
| [deleted]
| dogleash wrote:
| Using an innocuous sounding request for more information
| as a sly zinger? This guy lawyers.
| gdy wrote:
| "The accusation is not vague and it was substantiated"
|
| The public accusation is vague and is not substantiated.
| What is the reason for it to exist in the first place if
| not to put blame without giving a chance to refute it?
| aeturnum wrote:
| I can understand why this looks odd if you are not used to
| how professionals interact over process questions. This
| strikes me as very similar to how public companies 'fail'
| audits - which is to say that companies never really fail
| audits, they just have their auditors resign.
|
| The reason for this is that, when you hire people to
| validate a process, most of the failure states come from
| processes that you are unable to verify as good or bad.
| This doesn't always mean that something is wrong - it just
| means that the validation team (or the code of conduct team
| in this case) does not feel, in their opinion, that they
| can confidently render an opinion. This is important
| because, at the end of the day, all these teams can do is
| produce opinions.
|
| The obvious reaction is to suggest changes to the process
| that would allow you confidence in validation (these are
| called 'controls' in the auditing world). However, if the
| group you are trying to validate won't make your changes,
| then you are left in a situation where you can't be
| confident about doing your job. You aren't sure that
| anything is wrong exactly, but you are sure that the
| current setup won't allow you to be sure. You're faced with
| sitting in a situation where people expect you to validate
| a process, but you feel you can't - and so the only path is
| to resign.
|
| However, as you can tell, there's a chance that the problem
| is the process verification team. Maybe they are dumb, or
| jerks, or whatever. If they are jerks, then you both
| wouldn't be able to rely on their specific accusations
| _and_ it is possible that they missed things because of
| rudeness or incompetence, etc. So either way the sensible
| thing to do is not make specific accusations aside from
| "we don't think we can verify this process and we would
| recommend you take what others say about why with a grain
| of salt."
| cxr wrote:
| (Aside: if the moderation team themselves treat pull request
| messages like a message board fit for announcements and
| general discussion, how good can they be at moderating?
| Making sure people stay on topic and post in the appropriate
| venue is something like a base-level expectation for even
| mediocre moderators.)
|
| > This is a highly mature drama where the arguments are dry,
| generic and adhere to a strict code of values. No fingers
| were pointed, and the offended party is taking the high road
| by resigning.
|
| As an outsider, I see Twitter-esque levels of grandstanding
| in the linked "post"--hardly mature. Based on observing the
| Rust community from afar over the last few years, this
| unfortunately is not something that is surprising.
|
| (FWIW, I agree with all the comments pointing out that zero-
| context outsiders should not expect to be brought up to speed
| from a pull request message alone--anyone arguing the
| opposite is guilty of the same sort of mindset that I'm
| chiding here. If this announcement(!) weren't deliberately
| crafted to give the effect it does, supporters of the
| resigners might actually have a point. The fact that
| something that should be as boring as a pull request--no
| matter how controversial the subject--is being discussed in
| terms of "high roads" taken by any side, however, really
| throws that argument into the mud.)
|
| Go hole up in a cabin in the woods and decompress by hacking
| on personal stuff or something and stay away from social
| media. For some, it has poisoned everything to the point that
| it has given rise to a new breed of vague status updates that
| pervade even _project infrastructure_.
| zionic wrote:
| Absolutely nothing about this team's behavior is mature, or
| reasoned.
|
| This appears to be a big win for the rust community.
| znpy wrote:
| You call it mature but an outsider would have no idea about
| what's happening.
|
| I have no way of forming an idea whether it's utter bs or if
| there is something actually going wrong.
| pyrale wrote:
| Moderating a community is not meant to entertain outsiders,
| but to prevent escalation within the community.
|
| No offense, but what do you expect to be able to contribute
| to this situation as an outsider? Would your contribution
| to the community be improved by additional information?
| znpy wrote:
| > No offense, but what do you expect to be able to
| contribute to this situation as an outsider?
|
| That's a pointless question.
|
| I might want to understand what's going on to understand
| if it's even worth it to be contributing to the community
| at all.
| pyrale wrote:
| I'm not saying a post-mortem once the situation is
| resolved wouldn't be a good thing.
|
| I'm saying that public awareness is not a priority while
| the issue isn't resolved, and that it may actually be
| detrimental.
|
| > I might want to understand what's going on to
| understand if it's even worth it to be contributing to
| the community at all.
|
| Usually, when moderation happens, information is best
| delayed until the problem is solved. That avoids
| uninvolved parties fanning flames on an ongoing conflict,
| and when information comes, it's structured rather than a
| stream of instant reactions.
|
| Note that this is true whether the conflict finds a
| satisfactory resolution or not. If the team that leaves
| sees that no good resolution is found, they can disclose
| information later, once resolution attempts have been
| exhausted.
|
| Note that this is from my past mod experience, I'm not
| involved in moderating the rust community.
| abernard1 wrote:
| > No offense, but what do you expect to be able to
| contribute to this situation as an outsider?
|
| Who are the "insiders" here? A couple dozen people?
|
| Rust is supposed to cater to their user base, not the
| dramas of a few people who need attention and something
| to do with their life.
| GolDDranks wrote:
| They say in the post that they are open for Rust team
| members to discuss this. So the "insiders" would be Rust
| team members, I think there would be some hundreds of
| people. (There are multiple Rust teams, not just Core and
| Moderation.) Together, they also would have considerable
| power over the Core team, as the teams have some power in
| a do-o-cracy sense of the word.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I expect our contributions to the community would be
| improved by _less_ information. When you 're resigning
| from a position but you don't want to say why, you're
| supposed to gesture vaguely at personal obligations or
| career opportunities and leave it at that. "You guys
| should be mad, but we won't tell you why" makes it
| impossible for the organization to function. How can the
| core team lead the project or even appoint new moderators
| without putting this controversy to rest?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly, this throws a giant spanner in the works and
| casts a shadow over whatever comes next. If they wanted
| to damage Rust in the eyes of the general public they
| couldn't have done a much more effective job. The lack of
| maturity on display must be particularly galling to those
| that give up a substantial chunk of their time to move
| Rust forward. Dirty laundry is best kept in-house, lest
| you damage the house.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Exactly, this throws a giant spanner in the works and
| casts a shadow over whatever comes next.
|
| Sometimes, throwing a spanner in the works is the good
| way forward. That's core to stop-the-line manufacturing,
| for instance. Without more information, it's hard to
| assess whether that team exhausted other escalation
| means, so I would wait for more details before judging
| their decision.
| [deleted]
| sp332 wrote:
| This is a message from the moderation team to the Rust
| community that they've been moderating about the core devs.
| I would not expect it to be intelligible let alone
| accessible to "outsiders".
| couchand wrote:
| Perhaps this message was not written for you?
| gdy wrote:
| It's written publicly, so by definition it is written for
| everyone.
| cycomanic wrote:
| No, not every public information is written for everyone.
| Just because arxiv papers are publically available does
| not mean that a posted string theory paper should be
| written for you so that you can understand it (or I for
| that matter).
| gdy wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the substance of the accusation
| is as complex and cannot be explained without years of
| preparation?
| cycomanic wrote:
| I'm simply refuting the statement that just because
| something is public it is aimed at everyone. That
| statement is clearly wrong.
| [deleted]
| gdy wrote:
| Well, in the context of this discussion I interpret
| 'written for everyone' as 'author was aware that everyone
| can read this and still wrote what he wrote'.
|
| An author of a paper on string theory published on arxive
| is aware that everyone can read it and almost no one will
| understand that except for a few from the intended
| audience. He or she is fine with that and so does
| everyone else.
|
| The authors of the resignation letter are similarly aware
| of the publicity, but decided to go ahead with their
| vague and unsubstantiated accusations and their appeal
| not to believe if the accused party says anything. They
| are aware of the effect and are fine with that. Some
| people are not.
| znpy wrote:
| Nice example, arxiv papers (and any decent paper in
| general) contains an abstract to provide context about
| the contents of the papers as well as references to other
| papers cited within.
|
| Arxiv papers might not be written for me _now_ , but if I
| got interested in a paper (and had time to spare, of
| course) I would probably have most of the content I need
| to at least grasp the general content of the paper.
|
| Thanks for the example, it fits perfectly.
| cycomanic wrote:
| No offense, but you don't seem to have read many
| specialized scientific articles.
|
| The time investment to even grasp the general idea of
| very specialized papers would be significantly longer
| than the investment you need to make to become a
| respected member of the rust community and apply for the
| next mod-team. Then you could also ask the members of the
| previous mod-team about the specifics of their
| complaints.
|
| Maybe you are right, maybe the example fits perfectly.
| znpy wrote:
| That sounds like low-key elitism to support your point.
|
| My point is that arxiv papers (like most papers) come
| with an abstract to set the stage and have references to
| other papers cited therein.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Apologies, you are correct that was a snarkish response.
| I stand by my point though, we don't have any right to
| see "details" of the accusation. In particular the
| moderator team seems to resign not because of the
| particular case but because of structural issues. That is
| what they pointing towards.
|
| Now regarding the structural issues, I actually could
| find very scarce information about the governance of
| Rust. I certainly could not find any information on how
| the core-team gets selected and what the processes are
| around being added or removed from the team. I also did
| not find much about their duties. So in that sense there
| seems to be verifiable information about lack of
| transparency (if not accountability).
| couchand wrote:
| It is possible for a message to have an intended audience
| and still be viewable by others...
| gdy wrote:
| "viewable by others"
|
| And I'm sure that the authors of the message are aware of
| that but made the decision to write what they have
| written anyway.
| danShumway wrote:
| Yes? This is posted to the Rust Org's issue tracker: that
| is an appropriate place to post a resignation notice for
| an open org with heavy community interactions, and it's
| an appropriate place to inform the Rust community in
| general about their decision. That it happens to be
| public outside of those groups is beside the point. Do
| you often show up on Open Source projects complaining
| that their public scrum boards or pull requests don't
| document their entire decision-making process? Do you
| show up in people's IRC logs demanding that they provide
| context for everything they say?
|
| The mod team isn't asking for public debate, they're
| informing the org about their resignation and briefly
| listing out why. They don't need to convince you of
| anything, they're just telling you what their decision
| already is. This isn't a persuasive essay, this is a
| notification.
|
| I swear, this kind of "if anything is public, you're now
| suddenly accountable to me, and I should have full access
| to everything" attitude is exactly why so few
| organizations are open about any of their internal
| processes or decisions. It shows up in a lot of places:
| Open Source and game development in particular. Sometimes
| people have public conversations in forums/groups that
| are still intended for specific recipients. Sometimes
| people share a small part of a process or decision, and
| not all of it. Sometimes people muse about decisions
| openly, and their musings aren't intended to be a formal
| essay to be picked apart or debated. It's fine.
| Macha wrote:
| It was also posted by members of the outgoing mod team to
| the community subreddit and tagged with announcement, so
| it's not like someone outside this drama saw the ticket
| and decided to reshare it with a wider audience.
| danShumway wrote:
| > to the community subreddit and tagged with announcement
|
| I'm not sure this really changes anything, it is a
| community announcement. I think this is something a
| community would want to know even independent of any
| other drama, even if they were resigning on good terms.
|
| I guess I should clarify that I don't see letting the
| community know about something as necessarily equivalent
| to volunteering to debate or even to fully explain. I
| don't think this stuff is a binary category between never
| intending a message be read by the public (even if it's
| technically public) and doing something like a national
| TV news interview. Rust has a community issue
| tracker/repo that it uses for organization; posting
| notifications there (and in other community hubs like
| Reddit) feels very appropriate to me.
| gdy wrote:
| "just telling you what their decision already is"
|
| That's not the only thing that they did. As the Russian
| saying goes, 'if you said A, say B'. I'd have no problem
| with the message 'We are resigning because we had a
| conflict with a certain team and it didn't get resolved
| in our way', but they have said more, just enough to make
| a public accusation without any chance for the accused
| party to refute it.
| danShumway wrote:
| The accused party can say anything they want, including
| airing out the relevant grievances in a more public way
| if they want to.
|
| Giving someone the option of privacy is not the same as
| denying them justice. Quite the opposite, it's a mature
| way of allowing the org (and whichever people are
| involved in the incident in particular) to choose how
| public they want to be, and to choose how they want to
| respond.
|
| But that's the extent of what they would owe, the mod
| team doesn't owe arbitrary people in the public an
| explanation that's detailed enough for them to form a
| hot-take immediately within the space of a few hours.
| deltaonesix wrote:
| This is true. Often people form opinions with limited
| information. We aren't sure what's true or what isn't true
| so without this information we should not logically even
| form an opinion.
|
| The decision is "mature" if and only if what the moderation
| team claims to have occurred actually occurred, and we
| don't know the full details behind this.
| caffeine wrote:
| Sort of agree, but it does have consequences. It raises
| questions about long-term governance and decision making in
| Rust, especially as Rust transitions out of Mozilla ownership
| into a purely public project.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| To me, this line of thought is backwards.
|
| It stems from seeing the people issues as small stuff and the
| tech issues as the "real deal"...
|
| At the end of the day new features for popular language X are
| not that life-or-death (although I'm sure some Rust evangelist
| will claim the safety of it means it could save lives, ignoring
| things like MISRA)
|
| -
|
| If someone is being an asshole and damaging moral for real
| "meatspace" humans, that's way more of a problem than any loss
| of productivity that might result from dealing with them head
| on.
|
| Contrary to popular belief, the world will not end if language
| X doesn't do Y right this second. So it's better to clean house
| as needed, rather than let things get to the point where
| everyone is burned out on interacting with your fiefdom .
| tialaramex wrote:
| > ignoring things like MISRA
|
| Not so much ignoring, as recognising that much of what MISRA
| requires _mechanically_ (ie that MISRA tools will let you
| check for a Continuous Integration setup automatically) is
| baked into Rust itself, and much of what MISRA asks beyond
| that is built into Rust 's way of doing things.
|
| My favourite this week: MISRA tells you never to use the
| _result_ of an assignment operator. In Rust you can 't
| because the assignment operators don't have a result.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| MISRA goes further than Rust can and still be a widely
| useful language.
|
| You'd need to define a very specific subset of Rust to
| approach its level of regulation and the additional layers
| added by ISO standards where it's often used
| tialaramex wrote:
| Do you have some examples of MISRA _rules_ you think
| would need "a very specific subset of Rust" rather than
| for example, #![forbid(unused)] to obey MISRA's rejection
| of unused stuff ?
|
| A lot of MISRA is concerned with defects in C - or in its
| standard library and the usual C idiom - that simply
| aren't present in Rust and so need zero work to
| eliminate. For example MISRA forbids trigraphs. Rust of
| course doesn't have trigraphs.
|
| A bunch more is stuff Rust warns about, that you can tell
| it to outright forbid, such as #![forbid(unused)] to obey
| various MISRA rules about using things.
|
| In a few places MISRA obliges you to either squint hard
| at the rules, or agree that it is contradictory and you
| must grant yourself a deviation from the rules, while
| Rust just solves the underlying conundrum entirely. For
| example MISRA wants exhaustive matching, it has rules for
| switches to try to achieve that but in the process it
| introduces dead code it has already forbidden. Rust only
| has exhaustive matching anyway - if your match compiles
| it was exhaustive - thus there is no need to introduce
| dead code "just in case".
| q1w2 wrote:
| You see - this comment is so vague, I still have no idea what
| (in the tech) they're fighting about.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| What?
|
| My comment is vague because this is a common line of
| thought:
|
| "Project X is having people problems"
|
| "What is this childish drama distracting from the technical
| stuff they should be accomplishing"
|
| -
|
| Their post is vague because they're mature enough to not
| want to turn this into a public lynching. It's on their
| replacements to handle it.
|
| There's a certain irony in the fact you don't realize
| that...
| api wrote:
| Knowing how mature it is seems to require that we know what the
| issues were, since there are issues and then there is dumb
| drama.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This seems suspiciously similar to the drama that hit node a
| while ago.
| j56no wrote:
| agreed, and if you intersects the two groups of people, someone
| easily stands out.
| ww520 wrote:
| Sounds like a failed political power grab.
| randyrand wrote:
| Programming Language authors love to formalize _everything_ , but
| did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin
| with?
| sharklazer wrote:
| No. Guessing they were self-elected. The fact that they won't
| disclose what the issue is or the nature of the issue, it's
| likely they were being little whiney kids.
|
| To me, it looks like moderators somehow want to usurp power
| that the ACTUAL devs should have.
| carreau wrote:
| You realize that the author of those posts are also devs
| right?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| You realize that the moderation team were all rust
| contributors/developers, right?
| LanceH wrote:
| And without any details at all, it sounds like some people
| want to bend others to a code of conduct that they never
| agreed to.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| They agreed to the code of conduct by agreeing to be
| members. Also, regardless of the lack of details, they
| clearly want the core team to be held to the same
| standards as every other Rust team.
| salawat wrote:
| Just because I put a brick through your window with
| template EULA language stating you accept and hereby
| authorize me to have hurled the brick through your window
| and that you, the recipient, now indemnify me, the
| thrower from any damages caused in the process of the
| message on said brick making it's way to you for
| recipient, does not mean you can go around chucking
| bricks through folks' windows. Despite what the tech
| sector really, really, REALLY hopes people never become
| irritated enough to actually bother to read up and hold
| them accountable to.
|
| Meeting of the minds, people. It means something damnit.
| Just because a bunch of you shoved some boilerplate in
| the repo doesn't make it binding, and the fact you did,
| like it or not, alienates a bunch of people who would
| otherwise be more than happy to extend a helping hand if
| the extent of the relationship was only the proposed
| contribution.
|
| t. someone very selective and wary of contractual
| language when they can afford to be
| ferdowsi wrote:
| 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"
| quotemstr wrote:
| Counterexample: Linux, GCC, Python, and practically the
| entire free software ecosystem from before the current crazy
| for hall-monitory-y supervision from above.
|
| It is simply demonstrably, factually, clearly not true that a
| growing community _needs_ the kind of structures that Rust
| imposed on itself.
|
| It really makes me sad that a certain kind of person these
| days sees some kind of censorious overlord as _essential_ for
| the formation of healthy communities.
|
| > There's no shortage of guidance to "stay away from X tech
| because the community is toxic and non-serious"
|
| A disaffected and loud minority says things like that, and
| the rest of the world goes right on ignoring them. Zero
| people in the real world avoided using the Linux kernel
| because Linus was brusque.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Zero people in the real world avoided using the Linux
| kernel because Linus was brusque.
|
| Actually, the best example of a project where the
| leadership of the project was so toxic as to drive away
| potential contributors would probably be glibc under Ulrich
| Drepper, which got so bad that most distributions abandoned
| glibc for the eglibc fork. (See
| https://lwn.net/Articles/488847/ for a high-level
| discussion).
| quotemstr wrote:
| Drepper was an asshole and people eventually routed
| around him, yes. The system worked. What people forget,
| too, is that Drepper's problem wasn't just an obnoxious
| personal style, but a ridiculous level of technical
| conservativism that led to critical bugs remaining
| unfixed for years. It was the latter problem that
| eventually prompted people to fork glibc, not the former.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, I think ReiserFS deserves an honorary mention.
| worik wrote:
| NetBSD -> OpenBSD
|
| I know very little about NetBSD and am a great fan of
| OpenBSD.
|
| But Theo is a very horrible person who often attacks
| people in a personal way for disagreeing with him. I got
| into a stupid argument with him over fundraising - a
| subject where I have deep experience - and it was quite
| bizarre. He had a set of assumptions and disagreeing with
| them got abuse from him, and some of his minions on the
| OpenBSD-Misc list, and (I was astonished) abuse in my
| INBOX from throw away accounts.
|
| What an arsewipe!
| Shoue wrote:
| Linux with Linus, who famously had to change his abusive
| tone? GCC with Richard Stallman, accused of various kinds
| of sexual misconduct? Python, which felt it necessary to
| impose a CoC eventually?
|
| Your counter examples are questionable at best.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > accused of various kinds of sexual misconduct
|
| I don't think this is a fair counter example, he's been
| accused for expressing personal opinions, on his personal
| blog.
|
| The accusations led to nothing.
|
| Linus changed his tones just recently, now that he's
| older and have children, the "previous version" of Linus
| brought Linux to where it is though.
|
| He's still very harsh when things get highly technical,
| because he's one of the few people that know at heart
| what's best for Linux.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| But Linux had ~20 million lines of code and billions of
| installs before Linus' change of tone, so I think it is a
| good counter example.
| teddyh wrote:
| If "accused" is the worst you could come up with, maybe
| you shouldn't spread random accusations so wildly.
|
| Anyway, regarding Richard Stallman and those accusations
| of "various kinds of sexual misconduct":
|
| https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
| Shoue wrote:
| What random accusations am I "spreading so wildly"? The
| fact that Stallman is being accused of various kinds of
| sexual misconduct is a fact. I did not anywhere claim
| they were true. I'm pointing it out because it makes the
| points above stand on shakier ground.
|
| The article you shared also fails to defend many of the
| accusations against Stallman and completely ignores them,
| for example the "Emacs virgin girl" situation.
| teddyh wrote:
| Technically, what you did was to insinuate, not directly
| accuse. Which one is worse?
|
| Since you seem to have a great interest in this, do have
| any concrete reference to the "Emacs virgin" situation? I
| have only a vague recollection that Stallman was
| referring to anyone who had not used Emacs yet as an
| "Emacs virgin", and some people took it as meaning some
| kind of sex thing.
|
| (Any other references to the "many of the accusations
| against Stallman" that wasn't referenced in the linked
| article would also be interesting to see.)
| maccolgan wrote:
| Richard Stallman was accused of ""sexual misconduct"" ?
| azth wrote:
| He changed his tone, he wasn't "cancelled" as how it is a
| fad to do today. There are no "cocs" for a very long time
| now. It's only after pandering to the SJW's that are
| unfortunately causing harm to everything they touch.
| dralley wrote:
| ...I think many people would disagree with you about Linux.
| And perhaps GCC as well.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yeah it's comical because Linux has so obviously driven a
| lot of people away from kernel development. Tech is male-
| skewed, and OSS more so, but Linux kernel dev is even
| then still at the far end of the gender disparity
| spectrum.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| >gender
|
| sex - sure, but gender? we got plenty of females in OSS!
| whimsicalism wrote:
| More so in Rust than in many other communities was my
| perception. Far more trans women per capita in that
| community than Linux kernel dev.
|
| Still a general underrep of women.
|
| e: Oh I see - your comment wasn't in good faith at all.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| >More so in Rust than in many other communities was my
| perception
|
| not just yours :)
| emptycan wrote:
| > Yeah it's comical because Linux has so obviously driven
| a lot of people away from kernel development.
|
| I hear this "a lot" very often, but then it seems to be
| from people who have no real interest in technical work
| of kernel/OS core development. Linux is not the only way
| to scratch your itch for interest in low-level system
| dev. Like, this is just personal experience, but I have
| heard this on the order of 50-100 times: someone
| parroting how toxic Linux kernel dev is because of drama
| they heard -- but then you kind of dig a little bit and
| see what kinds of software stuff interests them, what do
| they work on -- probably only once or twice has it been
| anything embedded, hardware related, close to the metal.
| I would need compelling evidence to change my opinion
| that most of the complainers have no interest in the work
| being done by the community they are complaining about --
| and I am fully aware that a number of people have
| departed Linux development, but we are talking about a
| tiny number of the thousands of contributors over the
| years -- you can't please everyone.
|
| The hobby OS, emulation and demo scene is a pretty good
| indicator for "natural"* gender breakdown. These tend to
| be tight, tiny communities or often lone wolves working
| on projects. It is male dominated. This can't be
| explained by any systemic or community gatekeeping -
| because there is no system nor any mandatory community
| for participation or distribution. Nothing prevents
| anyone from putting their work out there.
|
| * I am not discounting there may be other systemic
| reasons that set up this condition - but it has to be
| societal conditions that are in place in early childhood
| -- something that happens a bit before one considers
| contributing to the Linux kernel.
| couchand wrote:
| Perhaps no user avoided it (though that seems unlikely),
| but can't you imagine why some contributors may have
| avoided it? Wouldn't that lack of potential contributions
| be a material loss for the project?
| quotemstr wrote:
| Who's to say that more contributors are turned off by
| Rust-style behavioral micromanagement? It's impossible to
| prove counterfactuals.
|
| All we can say for sure is that dozens of critical
| projects in the past reached an amazing level of quality
| and importance to humanity without tone police lurking in
| the background and supervising it all.
| maxk42 wrote:
| I do wonder whether there's not some implicit benefit to
| this kind of management. Is it possible that by
| dissuading all but the most confident committers the
| project's contribution team self-selected for stronger
| devs? That would probably be bad for small OSS projects
| and good for kernels.
| couchand wrote:
| If your greatest concern is some technical artifact and
| not the human beings in the community around you, kindly
| go touch grass.
| quotemstr wrote:
| It is more important to produce great works than it is to
| adhere to the behavioral strictures of internet
| activists.
|
| 100 years from now, people will recognize the name "Linux
| Torvalds". Who will remember the tone police?
|
| Linux is a major accomplishment and a boon for all
| humanity. All I see the hall monitors accomplishing is
| the production of drama.
| couchand wrote:
| These "internet activists" you spend so much effort
| maligning are simply reminding you that there is a human
| being on the other side of that screen.
|
| I'm not inside the Linux developers' world, but from the
| outside it seems like a much healthier, more vibrant
| place since Linus realized that he works with human
| beings.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| > These "internet activists" you spend so much effort
| maligning are simply reminding you that there is a human
| being on the other side of that screen.
|
| Actually, primarily they're reminding me that there's a
| human being on the other side of the screen watching
| everything I do in case I fuck up. How this is supposed
| to make anyone want to participate is a mystery to me.
|
| edit: The weird thing to me is that these people are so
| hyper-vigilant to the damage bad behavior can do, and
| utterly blind to the idea that their own behavior can
| also be damaging. If I _ever_ read a sentence like "we
| know that overmoderation and tone-policing can create
| toxic communities, and we're watching out for that" from
| a moderation team, I will know that this is a community
| that I can trust to be administered in an even-handed and
| fair manner. So far I have seen this once.
| canaus wrote:
| What is a "fuck up" to you?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Well, the question is rather- what is a "fuck up" to
| them?
|
| And to that- who knows? Certainly the point of a CoC is
| _supposed_ to be to codify this, but I believe experience
| shows that its interpretation tends to be expansive, when
| the wording is not already expansive to begin with.
|
| At the end of the day, events like Curtis Yarvin, a
| person who has never harmed a fly, almost getting banned
| from Lambdaconf over "safety" concerns, demonstrate that
| the fuck-up may just be having a political difference of
| opinion with the group in question.
|
| (Analogously, and I say this as somebody who would vote
| Dems every time if they lived in the US, a moderation
| team that included at least one Trump voter would also
| assuage such concerns. Consider it a commitment to
| diversity.)
|
| edit: To be clear, I am not asking for anything
| resembling quotas; just _any_ demonstration of the
| ability of the team to coexist with a person they have
| serious ideological disagreements with.
| canaus wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with Curtis Yarvin, but in looking him
| up, you can't be serious, right?
|
| >Yarvin's online writings, many under his pseudonym
| Mencius Moldbug, convey blatantly racist views. He
| expresses the belief that white people are genetically
| endowed with higher IQs than black people. He has
| suggested race may determine whether individuals are
| better suited for slavery, and his writing has been
| interpreted as supportive of the institution of slavery.
|
| https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/why-it-matters-that-an-
| obs...
|
| You're upset that a Eugenics-lite writer was _almost_
| banned from a conference?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I am completely serious.
|
| Curtis Yarvin is a bellwether - the sort of person that
| any group that starts excluding people for ideological
| disagreements, would probably exclude first precisely
| because his position is so problematic. So any group that
| accepts his technical contribution can obviously be
| trusted to tolerate any less-severe ideological
| disagreement. Conversely, any group that doesn't,
| especially when they have to make up nonexistent concerns
| to do it because their rules didn't cover this "obvious"
| reason to kick someone out and couldn't be hastily
| adjusted, must be viewed with caution.
|
| I personally don't hold any beliefs nearly as
| objectionable as that. But I do hold objectionable
| beliefs - as I believe any halfway interesting person
| does. And those who don't, probably will eventually. Just
| stand by your convictions and give it time.
|
| See also LambdaConf's conclusion on why they should allow
| him to participate anyway:
| https://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-inclusion I agree
| with this article fully.
| canaus wrote:
| What a stupid argument.
|
| Call me crazy, but I believe that you don't have to
| actively champion and invite openly racist people to
| conferences to show that you tolerate difference of
| _opinion_.
|
| If you're protecting personnel, even after a number of
| others in your community have shown disagreement with the
| person's actions (and protections afterwards), just admit
| you agree with those thoughts. If not, your entire
| organization is cowardly and hiding behind a scapegoat
| and mouthpiece.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| > Call me crazy, but I believe that you don't have to
| actively champion and invite openly racist people to
| conferences to show that you tolerate difference of
| opinion.
|
| Sure you don't have to, but if you do, it's a hell of a
| signal. (At any rate, Curtis Yarvin was invited for his
| semi-esoteric functional-based distributed operating
| platform, Urbit.)
|
| > If you're protecting personnel, even after a number of
| others in your community have shown disagreement with the
| person's actions (and protections afterwards), just admit
| you agree with those thoughts.
|
| Sorry, I don't. Of course, you'll believe that I do
| anyway, and that's fine. I do think it's a bit sad that
| you think that the only reason someone could want
| somebody to be included, is because they were your
| ideological compatriots.
|
| In fact, the only reason I want anyone to be included in
| a conference is if they have contributions to the
| conference's topic.
| canaus wrote:
| No, I think someone should be *excluded* from talking at
| a conference because they literally write Eugenics
| theory, regardless of the brackets, semicolons and spaces
| they write in a text editor.
|
| It sounds like we just have a difference in moral
| standards.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Since moral standards vary a lot across cultures and
| time, statements like your last line have dubious
| longevity.
|
| Even when it comes to unpleasant people like Moldbug I
| try to avoid talk of moral standards beyond the really
| clear-cut ones...
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Well - at least if I ever run a conference, you can be
| confident that you will be welcome to it anyways. :)
| [deleted]
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I just disagree that standing in his presence is a matter
| of _safety_ for anyone. It 's possible to hold abhorrent
| views and still be a useful contributor.
| worik wrote:
| It is hyperbole
|
| Not evil, an exaggeration but still: would you want to be
| in the presence of some body so bigoted? Who thought you
| inferior because because because?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Yes? They might have other useful ideas or opinions that
| I may benefit from being exposed to. People are
| multidimensional.
|
| If there is a conference being organized about some
| technology, I'd like to see speakers who have the most to
| contribute, on that merit only. I couldn't care less if
| they march around with armbands on in their spare time.
| I'm suggesting that more people learn to
| compartmentalize.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| To me, if they can keep it to themselves, they can
| believe whatever they want. Up to and including that I
| shouldn't have been born, though I may draw a line at
| believing I should be killed, depending on how mentally
| stable I believe them to be.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Right, and the suggestion is that this human being (and
| all the other ones) should be responsible for managing
| their own emotional state, instead of shifting the burden
| onto everyone else.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The purpose and greatest concern of a development team is
| and should be the development of a technical artifact.
| claytonjy wrote:
| One of the biggest contributors to R's success over the
| past decade is folks having negative experiences with the
| Python community, particularly folks who are women, non-
| white, or come from non-CS background. The R community (and
| RStudio in particular) has worked hard to be much more
| inclusive and you can see this clearly reflected in the
| diversity of users and package authors.
| mbesto wrote:
| Linux and Python (not aware of GCC) effectively have BDFLs
| that can just nix anything (hence the "dictator" in BDFL).
| So these aren't just really comparable.
| lostcolony wrote:
| And they absolutely turn people off. The thing is, as
| long as it doesn't turn everyone off, it allows the
| project to move forward, because even with burned
| bridges, it leaves ownership clear.
|
| Communal decision making, however, does not have that
| advantage. If both sides of an issue, so to speak, become
| turned off of one another, you are more likely to have an
| abandoned project. There are, of course, other advantages
| (you don't miss generally accepted "good ideas" because
| of the particular vision of one person, and you can apply
| community standards to everyone, rather than having to
| weigh "continued participation in this project that is
| important to you" vs "dealing with -that- asshole
| again"), but that is definitely one con.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, which is why Rust has been such a failure.
| Angius wrote:
| > A growing community needs healthy management
|
| Like this person being the executive director?
| https://archive.fo/f10KK
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I mean with this, the rust evangelical strike force, and the
| drama around actix-web - I'm not getting great vibes from the
| rust community.
| devmunchies wrote:
| in my short experience in software (7 years), it almost feels
| like there is _more_ drama when a CoC mod team is involved.
|
| without a mod team, you will still boot trolls or resolve a
| dispute. I think it's better to have a judge who can step in
| and resolve a situation than proactive police when it comes
| to OSS moderation.
| nice_byte wrote:
| in general, i believe in the effectiveness of running
| communities via benevolent dictatorship. a group that has
| good reputation among the rest of the members, gets to
| decide how disputes are resolved / who gets silenced, etc.,
| without having to justify themselves against a byzantine
| set of rules. for many open source projects that hope to be
| used by the wider world, this governance model is
| unacceptable though.
| worik wrote:
| Depends on your POV
|
| My POV is one of privilege (I hate that word and concept,
| but it fits here). Being part of the majority most of the
| ways you can slice IT - except I am older but that one was
| a change!
|
| In other fields I was made aware of what it is like to be
| part of other groups, and it can suck. I got married. My
| spouse took me on a tour playing "spot the detective". They
| got followed around shops in a way that never happens to
| me. When we stood together at a bar, they were served after
| me, every time.
|
| A lot of people here know this from personal experience, a
| lot of people here it is academic reality, a lot of people
| here simply do not understand. OK. Believe me, it is real
|
| I have been involved in groups that make efforts to embrace
| people from outside the main dominant (majority) slices
| (how ever you choose to slice it) and groups that do not.
| The former is much better.
|
| Rust has truly benefited from it. Those in the comfy
| majority, it turns out, benefit too. I do.
|
| Compare Rust and Swift (I use Swift professionally, Rust
| for fun) There is no comparison. Swift has so many corners
| that have not been rounded off. The ergonomics is mostly
| much worse (unwrap V ! is an exception). Memory management
| in Swift is almost non-existent, the threading model is
| appallingly bad. I could go on, but on one side is a
| vibrant community, on the other is a bunch of alphas,
| astroturf, and the weeds rolling through almost empty Apple
| forums.
|
| The mod teams are a very important part of making the
| community a good place, making the community a good place
| is crucial for making the technology good.
| Sharlin wrote:
| 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.
| zionic wrote:
| In my experience the people who, when asked about the
| technical merits of X, immediately dive into value judgements
| of a "community" around it are best ignored.
|
| If these types of people are in leadership positions, it's
| too late and you need to move. If they're below you, then you
| need to limit their reach and upward mobility.
|
| Usually fair application of performance standards will flush
| them out anyways. Often people like that in your organization
| are shielded by a manager that's protecting them.
| [deleted]
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Examples?
|
| EDIT: it's remarkable that there's none, aside of "someone
| said something"
| chubot wrote:
| Rich Hickey specifically said that some Lisp groups were
| extraordinarily toxic, and it's something he wanted to
| avoid in Clojure. (I think it was in his HOPL talk).
|
| Also, I would say that help-bash@ and the bash IRC channel
| are pretty toxic.
|
| By "toxic" I mean that there's just a general culture of
| negativity, insults, hazing, and assuming the worst.
| There's definitely a thing where computer nerds try to one-
| up each other, and highly technical or obscure topics like
| Lisp and bash tend to bring that out.
|
| I have a memory of comp.lang.c being pretty bad too, but I
| didn't participate for that long, and this was long ago.
|
| Honestly it's funny to me that people think HN is toxic,
| because it's not even close to those forums in my mind.
| (well maybe that's because I almost never read the politics
| threads on HN, but still)
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Rich Hickey specifically said that some Lisp groups
| were extraordinarily toxic
|
| This is an interesting topic I try to stay away from
| here, for obvious reasons, but so many lisp communities
| I've seen seem to form around these cult of personalities
| or have the most, err.. eccentric members. More so than
| any language I've seen. People like to joke about Haskell
| programmers being cult like, but I've been down some
| really wild rabbit holes with lisp.
|
| Ironically I recall some allegations against Hickey a
| while back that if true would land him in that category.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Well, as the saying goes...it takes one to know one ;-)
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _Honestly it 's funny to me that people think HN is
| toxic, because it's not even close to those forums in my
| mind. (well maybe that's because I almost never read the
| politics threads on HN, but still)_
|
| I strongly agree. I was reading the archive of an early
| infosec group the other day, the culture was extremely
| hostile. 70% of the posts were insightful technical
| discussions, the remaining 30% was full of personal
| attacks and name callings, merely reading those posts
| made me want to throw my computer out of the window.
|
| I'm not saying HN is great, but to give a sense of scale:
| on HN, that type of posts would be flagged to death
| almost immediately.
| nice_byte wrote:
| I think what people sometimes mean when they say "HN is
| toxic", is raging incompetence paraded with confidence
| (and getting upvoted), which I've seen many a time here.
| Similar to reddit.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Infosec seems to have its share of angry people in
| general. One notable blog you'll see on here from time to
| time generally has informative or moderate content, but
| the comments always seem to be a bunch of pointless
| shouting at things not really related to the post.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| That's interesting, I also came to the conclusion that
| lisp communities skewed unpleasant. I think it's because
| they tend to be people (men as it happens) who are older
| and were around at the time of the original IRC culture,
| which was quite aggressive / countercultural /
| unprofessional compared to modern professional standards
| in tech.
| s_m wrote:
| Scala's community has a reputation for toxicity. I don't
| write Scala, so I don't know how deserved this is, but
| nevertheless the reputation exists.
| nopcode wrote:
| I've seen this being said about Elm, OpenBSD, ToxChat
| ocschwar wrote:
| Emacs and Elisp.
| canaus wrote:
| Hacker News. There's an entire subreddit based off of the
| comments on here.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| In my personal experience such statements are pretty rare
| actually.
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| In my personal experience such statements are actually not
| rare among specific minorities, and only in spaces between
| those minorities. They will never be said in a public way,
| because it makes them targets. I've been pulled aside by
| fellow minorities and warned against communities I had
| expressed interest in in the past, always in private in
| confidential spaces.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| But what you're saying is that people will disagree about
| what communities are "toxic and non-serious". I might
| think that, e.g. much of the blockchain space easily
| matches that sort of description, but it would be harder
| to say whether that's a majority or minority viewpoint.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The fact that people disagree is a reason to not have
| moderation... why?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Because it's good for people to have and to share diverse
| opinions. The point of moderation is to prevent fringe
| elements from ruining something for everyone else, not to
| enforce homogeneity where consensus has yet to be formed.
| worik wrote:
| OpenBSD
| yeputons wrote:
| I openly advise my students to stay away from posting
| questions on StackOverflow and ask for help among their
| peers and teachers. At least until they're able to clearly
| grasp what the "Minimal Complete Verifiable Example" is,
| how to minimize code, and how to google problems with
| slight variations, which are not easy skills.
|
| It's not to say that StackOverflow is generally toxic. It
| is, though, unusable by beginners, and it's mostly by
| design. And I don't think there is a good way to
| communicate this to a beginner whose question has been just
| closed because it lacks details.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Oh, I think they are not as rare as you think. People are
| actively deterred from, say, Linux kernel development
| because of the community.
| cjaybo wrote:
| Yet the kernel is one of the most successful OSS projects
| of all time. I'm not sure it makes your point very well.
| OOPMan wrote:
| Turns out asshole can make good software!
|
| It's almost as though software development skills aren't
| correlated with social skills...
| skavi wrote:
| have you seen a thread discussing OCaml recently?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| no, link?
| Aeolun wrote:
| Have you ever tried learning PHP? Even the people that
| don't actively work with it are toxic :P
| tharne wrote:
| On average I've found projects with explicit CoC's to be more
| toxic than those projects without Coc's.
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| This could be Berkson's paradox
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox) in
| action. Larger projects probably have more toxicity than
| smaller projects and are more likely to have a CoC. The
| result is that the two factors appear to be correlated even
| if they are independent variables.
| worik wrote:
| It would be illuminating if you could back that up with
| examples
| [deleted]
| s9w wrote:
| In the real world, people stay away from rust _because_ of
| the politics and the coc
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I used to believe good ideas were self-evident, thus less
| structure was a good thing. Now however, I'm very conflicted.
| Those with enough previous influence can remain unchecked and
| sway the popular interpretations of the language and
| development.
|
| Remaining small and consistent is still a nobel goal, but new
| features can be a boon to the community.
|
| What do you do indeed?
| asoneth wrote:
| Is there any good way to craft a message like this?
|
| If they outlined specific issues then it would invariably devolve
| into armchair quarterbacking of those issues rather than the the
| underlying question of what kinds of checks-and-balances should
| exist for the Core Team -- gossip, accusations, and political
| discussions are a lot more fun than debating governance
| structures.
|
| On the other hand, if no specific issues are raised then people
| are frustrated by having only a partial understanding. Because
| it's a lot simpler to evaluate an argument if you already know
| whose side you're on.
| b3morales wrote:
| You're right, it's walking a tightrope. But they do put this at
| the end (on the Reddit post[0], not GitHub):
|
| > we wish to ... focus on Constructive Criticism: how to
| improve the state of things, moving forward.
|
| > There are many potential topics that are worth exploring: >
| What should the Rust Governance look like?
|
| > How should the Rust Moderation Team be structured? What
| should be its responsibilities?
|
| > How can we ensure accountability and integrity at the top?
| Who Watches The Watchers?
|
| and I don't see how these can be meaningfully discussed by
| someone who doesn't know what went wrong. You can't diagnose
| and find a remedy for a problem that you can't even see. So
| while the sentiment "let's talk constructively" is fine, in
| public at least it seems like a non-starter.
|
| Note that I'm not saying that this means they _should_ publish
| a tell-all either -- but it needs to be recognized that,
| without that openness, the divide between insiders and
| outsiders remains. And the outsiders can 't do anything
| constructive about these questions.
|
| [0]:https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_te
| a...
| bluGill wrote:
| I think the people who can fix this - the core team - know
| what is going on. The ball is in their court.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > and I don't see how these can be meaningfully discussed by
| someone who doesn't know what went wrong.
|
| The "what went wrong" appears to be an organizational
| dispute, at least if we're to believe the statement.
|
| Moderation team wanted authority over the core team. Core
| team disagreed. Moderation team resigned.
|
| It's not clear that there was a violation, though their
| intentional vagueness does tend to push the reader to that
| assumption.
| dwild wrote:
| > You can't diagnose and find a remedy for a problem that you
| can't even see
|
| The problem seems clear to me when I read the Github pull
| request, they can't enforce their moderation over the Core
| team. The remedy they suggest is for the community to decide
| how the moderation team should enforce moderation on the Core
| team (or if they should at all).
|
| What would talking about the issue give more? It will just
| polarize people and push toward a specific solution for that
| specific issue, while the actual issue is over being able to
| moderate.
| unanswered wrote:
| > Is there any good way to craft a message like this?
|
| "We are resigning and our reasons have been shared privately
| with X group. <eom>"
|
| But since the goal of the whole exercise is to generate
| publicity and drama, the above was an unacceptable approach and
| the approach actually taken was highly effective.
| kbenson wrote:
| I think that's an uncharitable interpretation. If your remit
| is to deal with issues like this, but you find the structure
| is broken enough that you can't do what you see as your job,
| what do you do?
|
| Going public may be against the point of the group, but it
| might also be the only way seen to fix the problem and
| address the problems that prevent your group from doing its
| job.
|
| So you're left with the unenviable option of explicitly doing
| what your team is not supposed to do in order to try to fix
| the team so it can function in the future. The responsible
| thing to do at that point would be to resign, so someone else
| can come in and gain the benefits you fought for, and your
| prior breaking of the rules does not taint the team.
|
| I think that's the charitable view. I don't know if it's
| correct, but I do think it's worth considering.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| They're committing to sharing these reasons with other Rust
| Team members, though. Just not the broader dev community.
| unanswered wrote:
| So set `X = "other Rust team members"`. Everything else in
| the comment was just for drama.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| I don't think it was overly dramatic, but otherwise I
| agree with your point about pointing out another group
| with whom it has been shared, specifically a neutral
| party, if public muck-raking must be avoided at all
| costs. I made a similar point below:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308197
| nrabulinski wrote:
| Then don't make a whole big public announcement about it.
| As someone from the outside this just reads like a post
| specifically to generate drama and attention but not giving
| details as to direct it at anyone in particular.
| quacker wrote:
| There's a community of external contributors that deserve
| (or would appreciate) some notification about it though.
| pdpi wrote:
| Alternative: They step down without an announcement, get
| replaced, somebody pieces it together and posts it on HN
| or reddit or something, and now you have all the same
| drama from announcing it publicly, plus all the added
| drama from the "secret step down".
| baseballdork wrote:
| 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.
| fragile_frogs wrote:
| They also posted the resignation on the Rust subreddit: h
| ttps://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_t
| ea...
| phoe-krk wrote:
| > Then don't make a whole big public announcement about
| it.
|
| I don't understand. How do you resign from a public
| project without resigning from that public project? If it
| is not about the resignation but about the message, do
| you think that a "we are resigning as a whole team that
| was made pbulic and we do not provide _any_ public reason
| for that " would work any better?
| whatshisface wrote:
| They could have resigned without making a post about it.
| Is that a good idea? Maybe, it depends on the details we
| don't know.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| This isn't a post, it's a PR. If your names are listed in
| a public Git repository, then you need to have them
| removed if you resign. This means a PR and a review of
| that PR, which is exactly what happened here.
| kbenson wrote:
| And what, leave the Rust community not knowing that
| there's no CoC team because they've all resigned over
| something, but the community wasn't informed?
|
| It's not like there's some membership card with paid
| dues. Their responsibility was to anyone that viewed
| themselves as part of the Rust community, and consumes
| anything to do with that community (whether or not they
| put anything into it).
|
| Not informing all the people of that community because it
| appeases random public commenters would be a far worse
| failure of their duties than letting the general public
| gossip.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _leave the Rust community not knowing that there 's no
| CoC team_
|
| They did have the option of finding replacements before
| leaving.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Employees have no duty to find replacements for their
| employer. There's especially no moral duty if your bosses
| are being jerks. I'd say that logic applies to this
| situation as well.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If they outlined specific issues...
|
| I can't tell if a specific issue occurred, or if everyone is
| just assuming that there was an issue because the post is so
| vague.
|
| They seem to make it clear that their primary complaint was
| about the organizational structure: They wanted to have
| authority over the core team, but they weren't given authority
| over the core team.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances
| beyond unaccountability.
|
| That makes it very clear that they had some specific
| grievances beyond unaccountability, otherwise it wouldn't
| sense to say they've avoided airing them.
| lovecg wrote:
| That just begs the question, authority to do what? If there
| are no specific incidents on which they disagree today, then
| is this just an attempt to position themselves better should
| any such incidents occur in the future? If there's no problem
| today, why all the fireworks?
| nouveaux wrote:
| The other shoe is that if they let the core team be above
| the law, when an incident happens, there will be all sorts
| of accusations of impropriety.
| mjburgess wrote:
| They should provide a timeline against which their actions will
| be explained.
|
| A resignation is a public action, and as this team knows very
| well, such actions need to be held to account.
| ferdowsi wrote:
| These organizational breakdowns in tech communities (recently
| Rust,.NET, Elm) make me much more appreciative of long-running,
| relatively healthy communities.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Technical communities are formed around common purpose. They
| are not goals in themselves. Community needs only to be healthy
| enough to get things done.
|
| Take for example OpenBSD. Theo de Raadt may be an asshole
| sometimes, but he knows stuff can still steer the technology.
| OpenBSD is extremely opinionated even technologically, but it's
| really good.
| DominikD wrote:
| This doesn't scale though, and OpenBSD - as much as I love it
| - is a clear example of that. Compare Theo who remains
| abrasive at times, and Linus, who realized that project the
| size of Linux cannot be handled with complete disregard for
| safe, inviting environment. Toxic leaders are the reason
| there's this idea that projects that are built on merit
| somehow must be ruthless and uninviting. It's really easy to
| e.g. confuse critique and criticism and in result give
| project the "avoid whenever possible" badge.
| nzach wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the Elm breakdown? I don't remember
| reading about it.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| some examples https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27808306
| https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/why-im-leaving-elm/ and
| there's also the elm-pine issue, where an independent package
| manager was shunned by the core developers (note that the
| official package manager doesn't support basic features as
| repos not on Github)
| foldr wrote:
| There's been a longstanding issue that a lot of people are
| unhappy with the level of control that Evan exercises over
| the development of the language. On top of that, a lot of the
| development of the core language happens behind closed doors,
| which has given the impression of stagnation over the past
| few years.
|
| As I understand it, the fundamental reason for this situation
| is technical. It is really difficult to enforce purity in a
| strict language with an FFI, because the behavior of side-
| effecting functions would be predictable and they'd be easy
| to use. In contrast, while someone certainly could release a
| Haskell library that made pervasive use of side-effecting
| functions, the resulting library would be horribly brittle
| and no-one would want to use it.
|
| Evan really wants Elm to be pure. To ensure it stays that
| way, he's banned community packages from using the Javascript
| FFI. This has been unpopular, but I think he's probably right
| that this is the only way of keeping the language pure.
|
| It comes back to the usual open source entitlement debate. A
| lot of people seem to really deeply believe that Evan owes
| them something, and is required to manage his project along
| the lines of some kind of standard 'open source' model. He
| doesn't see it that way.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Evan also wants to prevent people from making packages that
| solve certain types of problems so that he'll be able to
| make a better package in the future without needing to
| worry people might not want to switch because of backwards
| compatibility. I think that's entirely his right, but I'm
| skeptical it'll work.
| azeirah wrote:
| Clojure and Common Lisp managed to have super stable
| community-built libraries. I'm not entirely sure what
| contributed to this (ie did this happen because of a
| stable core? Did this happen because lisps are somehow
| naturally conducive to stable extension?) but it's
| possible to have this happen without preventing community
| built-libraries.. :<
| iudqnolq wrote:
| My impression is that Evan thinks a stable community
| built library that he doesn't like the feel of would ruin
| his language, so he'd rather have an unstable library he
| controls (because he doesn't have the bandwidth for
| everything). If this eventually leads to lots of stable
| great libraries written by Evan that would be nice, but
| until then it doesn't seem worth investing in. Here's
| what the author of a parsing library had to say
|
| > Of all the changes in 0.19, this is the one that most
| hurt my code: I have parser combinator library, and used
| just two custom operators, for the very reasons that Evan
| points out in at the top.
|
| > Now I learn that elm/parser can, and does, define two
| operators for parsing, for the same reasons my library
| had done so. There are indeed times when custom embedded
| languages with custom operators are worth the mental
| effort on the programming staff. Parsing is one of them,
| which Evan acknowledges, and indeed uses in elm/parser.
|
| > However, it is not realistic to assume that elm/parser
| will become the only parsing package we ever need. For
| one, it only works on String. Parsing over byte arrays is
| quite common, (and what mine did). Even if elm/parse had
| been parameterized on the stream type - there are still
| differing implementation and functionality tradeoffs in
| parsers (backtracking, error tracking, error recovery,
| etc..) that make different parser libraries useful even
| they support the same stream type.
| nzach wrote:
| Thanks!
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > As I understand it, the fundamental reason for this
| situation is technical. It is really difficult to enforce
| purity in a strict language with an FFI, because the
| behavior of side-effecting functions would be predictable
| and they'd be easy to use.
|
| My understanding is that
|
| 1. FFIs are still available to NoRedInk, Evan's employer.
|
| 2. The change was partly justified as a way to manage the
| Elm ecosystem.
|
| In general, Evan seems to have a history of changing the
| language in response to changes in the ecosystem that he
| does not like e.g. he did not like to kinds of custom infix
| operators people were defining so he removed the ability to
| define custom infix operators.
|
| > A lot of people seem to really deeply believe that Evan
| owes them something, and is required to manage his project
| along the lines of some kind of standard 'open source'
| model.
|
| I think this is slightly uncharitable. While I haven't
| followed his activities recently, Evan spent time trying to
| build community around Elm. People contributed to the
| ecosystem based on a combination of implicit and explicit
| promises that the community's needs would matter, I've
| chatted with a few people who say Evan gave them personal
| assurances about long term usability. Evan benefitted from
| some of these contributions, in prestige, bug reports, etc.
| Then Evan broke almost everyone's code and was unapologetic
| about it. I don't think it's unreasonable to feel like some
| kind of social contract was broken.
| foldr wrote:
| I think the revealing term here is 'implicit promise'. A
| lot of people seem to have very fixed expectations about
| how open source projects should be run, and feel that
| they've been betrayed if a project isn't run in that way.
| I don't think Evan is to blame for that, though.
|
| The bottom line is that no project that's run by one
| person in their free time is able to give assurances of
| anything over the long term. I do think that if half of
| Evan's critics had the experience of running a reasonably
| popular open source project, they'd realize how
| meaningless any long-term 'assurance' is.
|
| I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say that
| Evan broke everyone's code. I was writing Elm code as
| part of my day job during the 0.18-0.19 transition, and
| it was not particularly painful.
|
| But this is all by the by. The fundamental question is
| the following. How would you propose to keep Elm pure
| while still allowing community libraries to access the
| FFI?
| smitop wrote:
| The compiler literally checks what GitHub org originated
| the package. If you fork a package that uses FFI, it won't
| work unless you remove the check from the compiler or use a
| hacky workaround to trick the compiler: https://github.com/
| elm/compiler/blob/770071accf791e817144070...
| oleganza wrote:
| Please don't confuse the breakdowns in specific political
| groups with overall community. In any realm there are 10-100s
| of quiet participants for each loud person who takes on some
| public role and tries to organize things. Enthusiastic
| bureaucrats often clash unless there's de-fact dictatorship
| that suppresses such conflicts before they create too much
| noise. But their problems are not representative of everyone
| else's work and participation.
| vegai_ wrote:
| What was their responsibility?
| rust-throwaway1 wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe the rust moderation team even though they
| haven't disclosed any specifics. The way the core team exercises
| absolute authority in spite of community complaints has always
| rubbed me the wrong way. They present a facade of caring while
| crushing dissent.
|
| I do not recognize most of the core team these days, but Steve
| Klabnik and Ashley Williams stand out as likely culprits. I have
| personally submitted an email with the Rust moderation team to
| complain about Klabnik (and also mod-team member Andrew Gallant)
| and their abrasive behavior on reddit. Several months later I
| received a response stating they agreed that Klabnik went over
| the line and that they would warn him. Meanwhile Ashley "kill all
| men" Williams has an extremely lengthy reputation for her
| behavior in open source[1]. When it was announced she was joining
| the rust community team, there was a large push back from the
| community but the reddit/discourse mods censored everything[2][3]
| and the core team chose to let Williams join despite the
| complaints about her history of racism, sexism, and antagonism.
|
| [1]: https://archive.fo/f10KK
|
| [2]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_a...
| (https://archive.fo/ISXJF)
|
| [3]: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-ashley-
| willia... (https://archive.fo/9yW9I)
| [deleted]
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _They present a facade of caring while crushing dissent._
|
| This is a rampant tactic on Wikipedia usually employed by
| experienced gatekeepers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CRUSH
| and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SQS
| unanswered wrote:
| The problem with this theory is that the moderation team has
| been entirely supportive of Ms. 'Kill' so far, and actively
| works to silence dissent about her position in public Rust
| spaces. (Maybe not so much as the unofficial mods, but I
| personally was on the receiving end of llogiq's overreaction in
| /r/rust to any dissent.) I believe they would take her side in
| the dispute which Klabnik vaguebooked about a few months ago.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The Rust Moderation Team is not the same as the r/rust
| "mods". Yes, this is confusing.
| unanswered wrote:
| They aren't the same, but llogiq is both. (Now just an
| /r/rust mod.)
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| But the mod team who resigned were precisely the ones behind
| moderating those Reddit/Discourse threads though. So I don't
| think there was animosity between the two teams from the start,
| but rather that tensions grew over the years until it became
| unmanageable.
|
| My interpretation is that the drama happening around the core
| team (like the things you've mentioned) gets increasingly
| overwhelming for the mod team to handle, leading to complaints
| against the core team for causing such drama (which they do not
| have the sufficient resources nor actual power to handle). This
| further escalates and devolves into a worse relationship
| between the two, leading to the resignation.
|
| From the thread on /r/rust one of the mods (different from the
| Rust's mods) talked about the relationship between the Core and
| the Mod team: Bans. We do not directly
| enforce bans, instead we ask Core to enforce them for us, and
| Core will double-check our work (though without access to the
| case, unless complainants are OK with that) -- essentially
| ensuring that we've done our due diligence, given a fair chance
| to the person, and that we're following the "escalation"
| procedure. Bans (bis). Core may enforce bans by
| themselves, then let us know. Involvement. When a Core
| Team Member is involved in a complaint, or a difficult
| relationship, we play our mediator/arbitrator role, stepping in
| and attempting to figure out the bottom of the issue and
| resolve it peacefully -- much like we do with any other Rust
| Team Member, really.
|
| This is maybe a workable agreement if the Core and the Mod team
| went along well, but currently it seems like that's not the
| case. The last clause (Involvement) basically tells that "we
| really don't want the two teams to fight, and things should be
| resolved with common sense". Now that this is way out of the
| window, perhaps it would be a good time for the Rust
| contributors to reevaluate their team structure.
| avinassh wrote:
| > But the mod team who resigned were precisely the ones
| behind moderating those Reddit/Discourse threads though.
|
| I thought same as well, but seems reddit mods are different:
|
| > Please note that the official Rust moderation team is not
| the same organization as the team that moderates the
| subreddit here on /r/rust. The subreddit is an unofficial
| space, and though it is frequented by many who are affiliated
| with the project, it remains independent from the Rust
| project. The /r/rust mod team is not resigning from
| moderating the subreddit.
|
| > In the interest of disclosure, two of the moderators who
| are resigning from the official mod team are moderators here
| on this subreddit (matthieum and llogiq). They appear to have
| not resigned their position here, which I appreciate, since
| they're rather excellent moderators. However, in the interest
| of impartiality I am asking them to recuse themselves from
| taking moderator action in this thread (they may still
| comment as usual if they wish, of course).
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea.
| ..
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Yes, as you've said, some of the mods in the Mod team were
| also the subreddit mods, and they deleted the comments and
| locked the threads by their own volition (even without
| requirement from the Core team, so this reinforces my
| interpretation). It's likely that the Mod team wasn't
| adversarial with the Core team from the start, but tensions
| gradually grew as the drama surrounding the core team got
| unmanageable.
| mdoms wrote:
| None of the links you have provided shed any light because it's
| all deleted comments. Would you mind elaborating on Ashley
| Williams and her supposed "racism, sexism and antagonism"?
| Angius wrote:
| Here's the archived version: https://archive.fo/f10KK
| pzo wrote:
| link doesn't work - return 403 Forbidden
| Angius wrote:
| Alternatively, from archive.org: https://web.archive.org/
| web/20170828212225/https://www.reddi...
| Angius wrote:
| Weird, it does work for me... Perhaps try other
| snapshots? https://archive.fo/https://www.reddit.com/r/no
| de/comments/6w...
| [deleted]
| Angius wrote:
| The r/node thread has been deleted, but here's the archived
| version of it: https://archive.fo/f10KK
|
| Archive.org version for good measure:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170828212225/https://www.reddi...
| rust-throwaway1 wrote:
| Wow, I swear the r/node link worked when I posted it. Thanks
| for the archived version; I updated my comment.
| timeon wrote:
| Does it have something to do with this:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437441118745071617 ?
| CryZe wrote:
| No, that has been deconfirmed on Reddit: Edit 2 https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/comment/hlne24...
| mlindner wrote:
| That wasn't quite what they said. They basically said that
| this isn't about Amazon, not that it's about these specific
| people.
| chias wrote:
| For what it's worth, Andrew Gallant ("BurntSushi", the author
| of that post) is probably the voice I most trust on the
| Internet today. For a long time now, he has demonstrated that
| he is extremely judicious, level-headed, and well-thought-out
| on any position I've ever seen him take. People are not always
| polite / nice to him, and he unfailingly responds kindly and
| honestly with a level of effort that is truly amazing. He
| consistently demonstrates that he truly cares on a personal
| level, even when the situation is "unfair" or that level of
| care isn't being reciprocated.
|
| All that to say: this message came from Andrew, and I believe
| it without question.
| paulgdp wrote:
| Having read a great deal from him, I just want to confirm
| everything said about Andrew Gallant, and I absolutely trust
| him too!
|
| This blog post is a great testament to his human skills:
| https://blog.burntsushi.net/foss/
| mperham wrote:
| In case you are curious, here is the Core Team:
|
| https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
| thrower123 wrote:
| Anywhere in any of this is there any indication of what
| specifically they are fussed up about this time?
| ehutch79 wrote:
| Sooooo. Should we not use rust then?
| Shish2k wrote:
| Every non-trivial collection of humans contains drama;
| personally I'll be sticking with Rust for as long as the
| language itself continues being great.
| wtf_is_up wrote:
| I would hold off until the Core Team is disbanded.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| What a silly statement. Rust is, for many reasons, what you
| should be writing your future projects in. It has many
| forward-thinking features that represent where the field of
| SWE is heading.
|
| Letting political disagreements dictate what tech you choose
| is absolutely the silliest thing you can do (except Oracle,
| which can affect your bottom line). Use the best tool for the
| job and ignore the noise.
| dapids wrote:
| yea? And I have some swampland in Florida to sell, you
| buying?
| bluGill wrote:
| So take the good parts of Rust and put them into some other
| language.
|
| Some C++ committee members have expressed interest in
| figuring out how the borrow checker can fit in. Right now
| nobody as a good idea, but if you do please write a paper.
|
| There are lots of languages to choose from. Each has pros
| and cons. My company has seen bad results with rust - this
| is a reflection on the type of programmers who got on the
| rust project and not rust itself.
| devwastaken wrote:
| No reasons or substance given. This is how bad orgs continue to
| operate. Everyone is afraid of pointing fingers at the aggressor.
| Name and shame. Then If the rust org refuses to fix it, we know
| who to not involve in the fork.
| dathinab wrote:
| > No reasons or substance given.
|
| All reason needed was given:
|
| - Unacceptability of the core Team wrt. the CoC.
|
| - A too small (maybe not diverse enough) moderation not being
| able to upkeep their own standards even ignoring the issues of
| the core Team.
|
| Both are structural issues. There might have been person-
| specific issues too, but in the grater picture they don't
| matter and would just diverge the attention form the structural
| issues which need to be solved.
| papreclip wrote:
| >"In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances
| beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion and
| confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust community and
| the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements
| by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the
| situation."
|
| I guess these are the juicy details they are choosing to omit -
| https://archive.fo/f10KK
| bb010g wrote:
| That is an extremely GamerGate-smelling list. Quotes are
| misinterpreted, overreacted to, and/or taken out of context.
|
| That list does not contain juicy details; it does contain a
| level of grime that I figured would mean it would be left in
| the past as a historical GamerGate artifact and not pulled up
| in the Rust community in 2021.
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| >overreacted to, and/or taken out of context.
|
| change the race and/or sex in those quotes
| bb010g wrote:
| that's not how minorities and/or affirmitive action work?
|
| thank you for your bold take, throwaway2077
| throwaway2077 wrote:
| so those quotations would be unacceptable if they were
| aimed at any other group, regardless of context and
| without statute of limitation, correct?
|
| I could make a point by citing some examples here, but I
| would probably get banned.
| capableweb wrote:
| That happen 2017, one could assume the ex moderation team was
| already aware who people in the organization are/were at that
| point.
| avl999 wrote:
| That seems to be node.js drama... not sure what it has to do
| with rust.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| Does this moderation team even contributes to the code base to
| feel that the members of the _core_ team have to adapt to follow
| some stupid code of conduct?
| twa999 wrote:
| Of course, it's not known what really went on internally, but
| something like this doesn't really come as a surprise.
|
| This is what you can expect when you put people with a
| questionable history of adhering to CoCs or are activists rather
| than developers in critical leadership positions.
| surrealize wrote:
| Some interesting context from one of the resigning mod team
| members:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Makes me wonder if it's a "who's watching the watchers"
| situation.
|
| Once, in my fraternity, someone was unhappy with something.
| (Politics, basically.) They proposed an entirely new board to
| watch the existing elected executive council. Basically all of
| the brotherhood would have been involved in some form of
| administration and oversight.
|
| At this point, one of our more politically knowledgeable
| brothers laughed, and said, "But who's watching the watchers."
| The movement quickly failed.
| rStar wrote:
| how is it interesting?
| viro wrote:
| Because it effectively confirms that the mod team wanted to
| be able to set and enforce CoC rules on the core team. If the
| core team can set CoC rules they can't effectively be
| moderated since they can change the rules.
| Kla_usLa22 wrote:
| Politics are part of human behaviour. To some extend we need to
| accept politics.
|
| However, I'm concerned that recently quite some politics seem to
| be going on with the Rust core team. First the nebolous "I refuse
| to let Amazon define Rust" tweet. And now this resignment
| accompanied by another nebolous statement .
|
| Rust is still very fragile and only very scarcly used in business
| contexts. I'm using it for APIs, love it and want it to succeed.
| Politics and drama does not support its adoption.
| dolni wrote:
| I don't believe proper free software projects require significant
| moderation of behavior between individuals.
|
| If someone says something that rises to the level of a crime,
| report it to your local authorities.
|
| Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be
| worked around.
|
| Note that expelling a person from a project for being a jerk in
| one or more instances may do more harm than good. What is the
| value of their technical contributions? Just how much of a jerk
| were they?
|
| Unfortunately, some snowflakes like to believe that everyone
| contributes equally. That is simply not the case. And, in fact,
| some people contribute a _negative_ amount overall. Which is to
| say, the project is better off without their participation.
|
| Linux has changed the world -- in a very substantial way and much
| for the better -- even though Linus flew off the handle at people
| for years. That doesn't mean he is completely beyond criticism,
| but it does indicate to me that we need to put a significant
| check in place against these "feelings committees." Their
| sensibilities are becoming ever more delicate.
|
| You can't have a complex technical project that is successful
| without some minimum level of competency. For better or worse,
| competency often makes people a little rougher around the edges.
|
| Choose your tradeoff carefully.
|
| edit: Adding an addendum here because of a lot of people seem
| quite triggered by the use of the word toxic and frankly, I don't
| have time to reply to all of you.
|
| I used the word toxic in this post precisely once, to say that
| people who are toxic enough will be worked around.
|
| Toxicity is not a yes/no question. It's a matter of degree and
| context. So is technical contribution.
|
| Everyone is capable of saying things they will regret later. Some
| people are capable of saying things that everyone else will
| regret, frequently.
|
| With regards to "competency" and "rough around the edges" -- note
| I used the phrase "rough around the edges" and NOT toxic. Many of
| you seem to be making that substitution.
|
| Have the lot of you never worked with someone who knows their
| shit, is opinionated, and isn't afraid to let you know it?
| They're often intimidating, even if they don't mean to be.
| Submitting a PR for review to them can be nervewracking even if
| they are entirely nice about it. Sometimes a fair critique will
| cut a little deeper because the code is your baby, and they
| didn't sugarcoat it enough for your liking. And, once in a while,
| they're willing to get in a heated debate because they feel
| strongly about something.
|
| The very nature of being critical (which is required for quality
| code) is enough to provoke some unwanted emotions in other
| people. Even if those negative emotions aren't intended. And
| sometimes, getting into a heated argument about something is
| justified if it saves a lot of pain later.
|
| Somehow, there is a lot of triggering going on here, and not a
| lot of acknowledgement of nuance.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > if a person is generally toxic enough, they will be worked
| around
|
| Yes, they will. For 25 or so years, the workaround has been
| others leaving and the project/site dies. There's nothing
| original about your argument, and it's been proven to be a
| destructive strategy. (Ironically, you are posting your comment
| on HN, which is heavily moderated.)
| canaus wrote:
| The classic "free market will decide if being an asshole is
| worth it to them". This notion is ironic seeing how an entire
| moderation team resigned. Sounds like they decided it wasn't
| worth it.
|
| Outing toxic contributors so they don't actively corrupt and
| corrode the project is tantamount to the long-term success of a
| project. And you don't need to break the law to be deemed too
| negative to be necessary.
|
| > Choose your tradeoff carefully.
|
| What an unsettling comment.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I'm reminded of this mid-2000s example of toxic behavior from
| Richard Stallman on Emacs, in response to a contributor who
| didn't have time to work on something because he just had a
| baby girl: https://tess.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms
|
| > It doesn't take special talents to reproduce--even plants can
| do it. On the other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs
| takes real skill. That is really something to be proud of.
|
| > It helps more people, too.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I found that quite funny.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I find it factually correct.
|
| One can be proud of their children and what they accomplish,
| but having them?
|
| Happy would be more appropriate IMO.
| DanHulton wrote:
| And how many incredibly-productive people have been chased off
| of products by the toxic individuals that were being "worked
| around?" We may never know. You act as if we can have perfect
| knowledge into what the tradeoffs will be, but that just isn't
| the case.
|
| Also, I don't think there are very many people who match your
| strawman -- "snowflakes [who] like to believe that everyone
| contributes equally." If you've worked in software (or really
| in any industry) for any time at all, you know that everyone is
| an individual performer with their own individual pace. But if
| you believe that that pace is solely a factor of their own
| productivity and isn't influenced by the environment they're
| in, you're being incredibly naive. Those toxic individuals are
| usually the ones that contribute the "negative amount overall"
| you mention, due to how they poison the atmosphere and reduce
| everyone else's output.
|
| Which is to say, the project is indeed better off without their
| participation.
| BongoMcCat wrote:
| I don't really understand your comment.
|
| Are the group that you are calling "snowflakes" people who want
| there to be a system in place to remove people from a project,
| or is it the opposite?
| danShumway wrote:
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| This comes at a large cost of a lack of any kind of formal
| consensus process or coordination. It is very hard to run a
| large ship when it's not organized, and that decision often
| ends up reflected in how projects evolve.
|
| Compare and contrast programs like Krita/Blender that have
| formal processes that keep them aligned with artist interests
| with either free-for-all or "benevolent dictator" Open Source
| projects that much have less direction. You give something up
| when you decide that your design/contribution process is going
| to be totally anarchistic; you lose the ability to keep a
| program/project focused on a singular goal and to plan for the
| future.
|
| > Linux has changed the world -- in a very substantial way and
| much for the better -- even though Linus flew off the handle at
| people for years.
|
| Note that Linus being toxic doesn't mean he wasn't _heavily_
| moderating Linux. Linus 's personality problems weren't a
| problem of lack of moderation, they were a problem of how Linus
| moderated and what he moderated. In many ways, Linus's toxic
| behavior was a form of moderation/gatekeeping: it demanded a
| certain style of contribution and interaction when you entered
| into the mailing lists. Far from being a free-for-all, Linus
| demanded (and still does, although he's trying to be better
| about the way he demands it) a lot of focus on code quality,
| standards, and communication style when submitting and
| describing contributions.
|
| But make no mistake, Linux moderates:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/22/22398156/university-minne...
|
| ----
|
| > For better or worse, competency often makes people a little
| rougher around the edges.
|
| I think we would save some time if we recognized that
| opposition to moderation policies often comes down to
| disagreements about specific social debates (is it OK to be a
| jerk if you're good at your job, are certain words OK to use,
| what communication styles should people use), rather than
| philosophical disagreements about the nature of moderation in
| general.
|
| It's also worth noting that the assumption here that the mod
| team's complaint is about people being rough around the edges
| is just an assumption. The mod team has not given a public
| complaint other than that there were incidents that they felt
| were mishandled, and that they felt they were out of alignment
| with the core team on moderation direction. We don't know what
| happened.
| lkey wrote:
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| Echoing simiones, 'worked around' here means that other
| productive members of the community will become disillusioned
| and leave. The toxic person will become a 'known problem' that
| is talked about in hushed tones. People will devise small scale
| strategies for avoiding the bad behaviour.
|
| > Note that expelling a person from a project for being a jerk
| in one or more instances may do more harm than good. What is
| the value of their technical contributions? Just how much of a
| jerk were they?
|
| We had a publicly 'productive' architect for many years that
| loved to talk about his technical contributions to the
| President and CTO, but the actual effect of his contributions
| was negative.
|
| He refused to coordinate with other teams, and everyone who had
| to interface with his work were forced to rework APIs according
| to his current whims.
|
| He belittled people publicly when they weren't present, and I
| watched him steal credit for other's achievements. He would
| then complain that no one appreciated what a hard worker he was
| to anyone who would listen.
|
| On top of all of this, his actual architectural decisions were
| unsound, as they centralized his work, that only he could
| maintain, as a core component of the system. In 10 years, he
| only had one direct report that could tolerate him enough to
| help with his codebase.
|
| > For better or worse, competency often makes people a little
| rougher around the edges.
|
| An unsupported assertion. I've personally found that toxic
| people are much more willing to aggrandize and lie about their
| competency to people who don't know better. The best
| programmers I've worked with were all cooperative and positive
| 95+% of the time, focused on the product and not their ego.
| simiones wrote:
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| This often puts a considerable drag on the whole project, one
| that can easily climb to way above the contributions of that
| person. Even worse, this is often not visible at the project
| level, as multiple people start independently avoiding this
| person, even finding technical work-arounds to avoid working
| with them; while their direct contributions are visible to
| everyone, making it seem like they are indispensable.
|
| The situation with Linus is even more interesting: for years
| people have worked with him knowing that they sometimes have to
| endure his abrasive manners. Then, one day, enough people seem
| to have discussed this with him, and he decided to accept their
| feedback and change his ways. How much more successful could
| Linux have been had this discussion happened 10 years earlier?
| How many developers have quit or never started working on Linus
| out of social anxiety? Perhaps it's 0, perhaps it's not.
| morelisp wrote:
| Well, we know it's not zero. Several major contributors have
| cited it specifically as reasons they have quit or backed
| off.
| skylanh wrote:
| Do you mind sending me in the right direction for more
| info?
|
| I was around for the infancy of Linux (I remember a friend
| was running ~2.1.98 because it came out before Win 98 or
| something like that, even though it was occasionally
| unstable for them), and then went in another direction, and
| have recently gotten back in.
| coldpie wrote:
| Sage (previously Sarah) Sharp is the most public one for
| the Linux project specifically. You could probably find
| more by starting your search there (and enjoy wading
| through all the invective aimed their way 'cause oh boy
| was there a lot).
| honkycat wrote:
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| No. If a person is toxic enough, people will leave until that
| person has total power or that person is removed.
|
| This is what I have seen happen at companies over and over
| again.
|
| It can be a painful process because that person may not be
| actively mean or bad. The way I have seen it happen most often
| is that the person talks endlessly, and are control freaks that
| do not allow anyone else to make decisions about any project
| they are involved in. They don't mind arguing for hours, so the
| team quits trying to communicate with them over time and ends
| up leaving.
|
| Also, you act as if toxic == productive, which is absolutely
| not the case. Smart people tend to be T shaped, which means
| they also have good social skills. The myth of the "toxic
| genius" is just that: a myth. Most of the best developers I
| have met are extremely nice people.
| [deleted]
| Latty wrote:
| > Linux has changed the world -- in a very substantial way and
| much for the better -- even though Linus flew off the handle at
| people for years. That doesn't mean he is completely beyond
| criticism, but it does indicate to me that we need to put a
| significant check in place against these "feelings committees."
| Their sensibilities are becoming ever more delicate.
|
| Even Linux admits his behaviour was unproductive and has
| apologised and improved his communication.
|
| Personally, I think an expectation of a little professionalism
| from people is hardly "ever more delicate". Rather, it's people
| who feel entitled to spout any profanity or insult they want
| without reaction who seem unable to deal with the consequences
| of their actions.
|
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| What you are describing is that if you are "valuable enough",
| you get to be toxic to people without consequence. That's a
| good way to breed toxicity.
|
| There is this trope of the "genius asshole" who is too valuable
| to lose. I suspect that in a lot of cases these people are too
| valuable precisely because they drive away other contributors
| that would otherwise lead to a more healthy project.
|
| > Unfortunately, some snowflakes like to believe that everyone
| contributes equally. That is simply not the case. And, in fact,
| some people contribute a _negative_ amount overall. Which is to
| say, the project is better off without their participation.
|
| You intended this to support your argument, but it seems to
| undermine it. The odds are that one individual is going to
| contribute less than all the people they are likely to drive
| away with toxicity. Toxic developers are likely to be the net
| negative contributors as you describe.
|
| It really seems like your whole argument is predicated on
| capability and toxicity being directly correlated, which in my
| experience--while something toxic people want to believe--is a
| nonsense excuse for enabling bad behaviour.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > There is this trope of the "genius asshole" who is too
| valuable to lose. I suspect that in a lot of cases these
| people are too valuable precisely because they drive away
| other contributors that would otherwise lead to a more
| healthy project.
|
| I have seen this many a time.
|
| It's quite hard to watch someone tear themselves apart, even
| if it is _just the internet_. The emotional burden of it gets
| a bit too much, and walking away seems like the best option.
| acomjean wrote:
| I work at a volunteer and we had someone with some skills come
| in but they were pretty toxic. We had a some of volunteers
| leave or contribute less. We've sometimes had disagreements on
| this project before (a website.. not super technical), but this
| was a new level of bad.
|
| Skilled people have lots of options for volunteering and
| they'll just leave and volunteer somewhere else.
| zemo wrote:
| > Linux has changed the world -- in a very substantial way and
| much for the better -- even though Linus flew off the handle at
| people for years. That doesn't mean he is completely beyond
| criticism, but it does indicate to me that we need to put a
| significant check in place against these "feelings committees."
| Their sensibilities are becoming ever more delicate.
|
| I think that's a pretty bad example, considering Linus took
| time off and reevaluated, publicly apologized and acknowledged
| how his behavior was harming Linux.
|
| > competency often makes people a little rougher around the
| edges.
|
| That seems pretty unsubstantiated.
| azth wrote:
| There's a difference between how very bold Linus was with his
| insults to today's "cocs" which makes people walk on
| eggshells being too afraid to say or insinuate something that
| may be perceived as "incorrect".
| zemo wrote:
| Here is the Rust code of conduct: https://www.rust-
| lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct
|
| Can you provide an example of something in the code of
| conduct that you think makes people walk on eggshells?
| hu3 wrote:
| Acording to the link I have to be friendly, safety
| inducing, welcoming, kind (non rude), keep unstructured
| critique to a minimum, non-insulting and be careful not
| to demean or harass anyone.
|
| This is ripe for misinterpretation and witch-hunting. It
| will get people to walk on eggshells.
|
| In my circles these rules are called comon sense. We
| don't have to write things down because every adult knows
| the rule: Don't be an asshole.
| astrange wrote:
| Most of this is the accepted behavior for white people in
| San Francisco (somewhere on the scale from nice to
| passive aggressive), but not so much outside the West
| Coast. Although, many British insults read as compliments
| to Americans, so maybe it's possible to maliciously
| comply.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| From the CoC:
|
| > Please be kind and courteous. There's no need to be
| mean or rude.
|
| > Even if you feel you were misinterpreted or unfairly
| accused, chances are good there was something you
| could've communicated better -- remember that it's your
| responsibility to make your fellow Rustaceans
| comfortable.
|
| Us Norwegians are well known for coming across as rude.
| And especially since being mean or rude is a subjective
| thing, I feel it's highly likely I could come across as
| unintentionally rude to others. And according to that
| it's my fault if I do.
|
| I definitely think twice before interacting with a
| community that has a CoC like that, because I don't need
| such drama in my life.
| tigerlily wrote:
| They say if you feel like you're walking on eggshells, it
| means you're in an abusive relationship.
|
| In the olden days of forums we had none of this nonsense.
| The community would agree a user was toxic and the mods
| would kick. It seemed like there were better controls, or
| that this was a better design.
|
| Maybe because GitHub is so centralized, and every action so
| public it feels like there is some kind of global audience,
| so there are all these wasteful airs and graces? Idk
| remus wrote:
| > Otherwise, if a person is generally toxic enough, they will
| be worked around.
|
| While this is generally true the workarounds can and do take
| time, and while all this is happening there's a lot of space
| for a person to do significant damage to the project in the
| meantime.
| dolni wrote:
| > the workarounds can and do take time
|
| That's a feature, not a bug. Most big decisions can and
| should take time. Usually because it's not a simple matter of
| "this guy is a massive dick to everyone and contributes
| hardly anything."
|
| More often it's "this guy carries this project, and he is an
| asshole when people show up and run their mouth because they
| think they're smarter than they are." Which is to say - it's
| a shade of gray, not black or white.
|
| In the truly dire situations, movements happen quickly. See
| the recent collapse of FreeNode IRC.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Usually because it 's not a simple matter of "this guy
| is a massive dick to everyone and contributes hardly
| anything."_
|
| No, but if someone _is_ a massive dick to everyone, the
| quality and quantity of their contributions shouldn 't
| matter. Being a dick is being a dick. Doesn't matter what
| they contribute.
| Latty wrote:
| Is it coincidence that it is so common toxic people end up
| being the ones "carrying the project", or is it that
| because they are toxic, they push away other contributors
| and create a fragile project with a bus factor of one?
|
| Seems to me getting rid of those people sooner rather than
| later is better for the health of the project overall.
|
| Of course, I'm sure some will argue that it's no
| coincidence because being effective and being toxic are
| inherently positively linked, but that's simply untrue in
| my experience, wishful thinking on the part of toxic people
| who want an excuse for their behaviour. Linus himself has
| said he was wrong to act as he did, and has worked to
| change that, and seen improvements for doing so.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Note that expelling a person from a project for being a jerk
| in one or more instances may do more harm than good. What is
| the value of their technical contributions? Just how much of a
| jerk were they?_
|
| The way we used to deal with this was by divorcing
| communication from contribution. Someone might be banned from a
| mailing list or IRC channel but their contributions could still
| be merged (and they might even have write access to the main
| repo, in extremely rare cases).
|
| I think it's still the case that a lot of the "pro vs con"
| debates around mod teams could be addressed by divorcing the
| social aspects of development from willingness to consider PRs.
| And I've never seen a cogent justification for not making this
| split.
|
| _> For better or worse, competency often makes people a little
| rougher around the edges._
|
| I don't buy the causal link at all. I think it's more likely
| that competency in software often used to let OSS contributors
| get away with being assholes because there was so little free-
| as-in-beer competent labor available. Programmers, even ones
| who will work for free, aren't such hot shit anymore.
|
| _> snowflakes_
|
| I think we've gotten to the point where we can
| s/snowflakes/meany-face/. It's juvenile name calling that
| distracts from your point and makes people take you less
| seriously.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| > You can't have a complex technical project that is successful
| without some minimum level of competency. For better or worse,
| competency often makes people a little rougher around the
| edges.
|
| This is just nonsense. Plenty of intelligent and capable people
| are perfectly friendly and non-toxic.
|
| Your philosophy demonstrably doesn't work. Its failures are so
| obvious that even Linus Torvalds, who people always seem to
| bring up in these conversations, has repudiated it[0].
|
| > And, in fact, some people contribute a _negative_ amount
| overall. Which is to say, the project is better off without
| their participation.
|
| This is true. Toxic people aren't worth the effort to keep them
| in, no matter how good their skilled contributions are. There
| can and should be a way to remove them.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-
| apolo...
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| Given the context, I suspect the parent was referring to the
| overhead caused by managing incompetents. Given the choice
| between working with an asshat who knows what they're doing
| and a moron who doesn't understand the basics _and can't be
| taught_, which would you take?
|
| I assume in the open source world the latter is easier to
| ignore, but in business it can take years to get rid of an
| incompetent, and the longer they're there, the greater the
| drag on the team and the harder it is to hang on to talented
| people. By contrast, letting a talented and productive asshat
| go is much easier; just introduce them to HR!
| Gwarzo wrote:
| "Toxic people aren't worth the effort to keep them in, no
| matter how good their skilled contributions are. There can
| and should be a way to remove them."
|
| This is your utopian ideal - it is NOT indicative of the real
| world. Sometimes, there are horribly toxic people who are so
| competent and requisite to a project that their removal would
| cause immediate and irrecoverable failure.
|
| You made your statement as matter of fact - it is absolutely
| wrong. There may be times, perhaps even a majority of times
| that you can simply remove a toxic person - but to state it
| as the hard rule without exceptions is wrong.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I'd call my statement an opinion, not a fact, but we can
| add an "In general," in front of what I said and note that
| there'll be exceptions from certain standpoints.
|
| I think those exceptions are very limited, though. There
| seems to be an implicit judgment here that the success of
| the project is usually more valuable than the well-being of
| the people who are helping to complete it, and in the vast
| majority cases of I disagree. Unless literal life and death
| are on the line, it's hard for me to see it as worth it.
|
| As an individual, my rule is pretty hard and fast and
| that's why I phrased it so definitively. I don't really
| care how much money is being offered to me or how cool or
| important the project is, and I don't really care how
| critical the person is to the project. If the choice is
| "allow the toxic person to be toxic or allow the project to
| fail," I'll vote with my feet and I'll leave.
| diegocg wrote:
| Back in the day, Linux (and other FOSS projects) where for
| geeks only. You invested your free time on it because you liked
| it. People could be aggressive against you, you would leave and
| nobody gave a shit.
|
| Modern FOSS projects such as Linux or Rust are more than
| something for geeks. Lot of people gets paid to work on it. For
| many, being an expert in an important project is a career, not
| just a job. People are "forced" to spend a lot of time working
| with the community. And modern open source projects just have
| far more people than they used to. I guess that the standards
| have been raised.
|
| That said, I think you are completely right on this point:
|
| > some snowflakes like to believe that everyone contributes
| equally
|
| This is absolutely right. The people who are being accused of
| being nasty are the _core_ team. Rust just can not exist
| without them. Unfortunately, they seem to be abusing their
| power.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. Whether or not everyone
| contributes equally is irrelevant (and I agree with you that
| all contributions are far from equal). But no one deserves to
| be treated with disrespect, and no one deserves a pass for
| treating others poorly just because their technical
| contributions are rated so highly.
|
| If a project can't survive without its toxic people, then
| perhaps it shouldn't survive.
| tomxor wrote:
| > we need to put a significant check in place against these
| "feelings committees." Their sensibilities are becoming ever
| more delicate.
|
| I think this is the bigger problem.
|
| There is a real danger of the line between "socially
| acceptable" and "strongly disagree" or "strongly dislike" being
| blurred by these groups... it needs to be ok to have people
| disagree with each other, or not like each other, or not like
| their opinion, or not like their personality in these open
| source projects without that leading to being ejected or
| punished for it.
| Subsentient wrote:
| Good. If Rust's management falls apart, the language will become
| more decentralized, like it should be. I was always very, very
| nervous having a systems language totally controlled by only one
| organization. Hopefully this will result in a fork of rustc and
| some new interest in gccrs.
| specialp wrote:
| The problem with decentralization as nice as it sounds is a
| decentralized group of people doesn't pick up all the work that
| is done by the core person/group. If that person or group is no
| longer doing a good job, a competing person or group can fork
| the project.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > You'll never get everyone to settle on the same moral values so
| it's inevitable that you'll get someone who is unapologetic about
| some value they hold.
|
| I'm less familiar with Rust community moderation, but as an
| example of what _not_ to do, I would offer up the Go maintainers
| ' strategy of advertising unrelated, partisan, ideological
| content on their web pages and then shutting down any kind of
| critical conversation about it. To be clear (if only so people
| know what they're downvoting!), I'm an avid Go enthusiast--the
| language is great and the maintainers are generally good at
| designing a language; however, I sharply disagree with their
| approach to managing the community.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307409.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| It's sad that the Equal Justice Initiative[0] (linked by the Go
| homepage) is considered partisan.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Justice_Initiative
| ptsneves wrote:
| It is also completely unrelated to a programing language, so
| the commenter's grievance seems founded.
| anandrew wrote:
| The full statement on golang.org is:
|
| "Black Lives Matter. Support the Equal Justice Initiative."
|
| Perhaps the poster was referring to the first half?
| malaya_zemlya wrote:
| i think the parent was referring to
| https://github.com/golang/go/issues/45970
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yes, this is what I was talking about. Shame on me for
| thinking people wouldn't overlook the first three words of
| the banner. (:
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt. It still
| surprises me that the phrase "black lives matter" is
| partisan.
| makomk wrote:
| At this point, the slogan "black lives matter" seems to
| be more of a partisan talking point than any kind of
| indication that the person using it does, in fact,
| consider black lives to actually matter. Up to and
| including shooting white people somehow being more of an
| attack on the notion that black lives matter than
| shooting and killing a black teenager, just because of
| the perceived partisan affiliation of the shooters...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It really shouldn't:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308714
| pc86 wrote:
| I mean they certainly have a partisan stance re: prisons and
| incarceration. Not to say whether it's a good stance or not,
| but it's certainly partisan. Partisan doesn't mean "I
| disagree with this."
|
| But whatever it is and whatever your opinion of it, it's hard
| to make a cogent argument that it belongs as a banner on the
| front page of a programming language website.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > I mean they certainly have a partisan stance re: prisons
| and incarceration.
|
| I did not realize that providing counsel to inmates was a
| partisan issue.
|
| > But whatever it is and whatever your opinion of it, it's
| hard to make a cogent argument that it belongs as a banner
| on the front page of a programming language website.
|
| This is unrelated to my comment.
| pc86 wrote:
| Unrelated to your comment maybe, but not the thread. It's
| certainly germane whether your choose to acknowledge it
| or not.
|
| I'm clearly not referring to "providing counsel" and it
| takes only 10-15 seconds of reading their homepage to see
| policy positions that any reasonable person could
| consider partisan. But nice straw man. Let me know when
| you're interested in an actual discussion and not this
| nonsense.
| [deleted]
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| > Providing legal representation to those who may have been
| denied a fair trial
|
| This is partisan?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| _Obviously_ I was talking about "Black Lives Matter".
| badRNG wrote:
| Generally speaking, organizations providing statements in
| favor of human rights have been in fairly safe territory.
| Historically, businesses supporting desegregation, the
| Civil Rights Act, LGBTQ inclusivity, or other human rights
| issues have been either unharmed or benefitted from the
| stance, even if there's no material contribution to the
| cause, and even if the fight for human rights is partisan
| (it almost always is.)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No one disputes the human rights of black people. What
| _is_ disputed is whether police killings are racially
| motivated or whether American police are too often heavy
| handed irrespective of race (94% of Americans believe
| that some police reform is needed[0]).
|
| Of course, virtually everyone understands that blacks are
| killed disproportionately by police, but that doesn't
| imply a racial motive when we know for fact that there
| are disparities in the commission of violent crime, rates
| of police interaction, etc which could also explain the
| disparity in shootings.
|
| And of course, the particular remedial policies depend
| significantly on the answers to these questions. In
| particular, people who identify strongly with BLM are
| much more likely to advocate defunding or abolishing the
| police (but are also the least happy that inadequate
| policing led citizens to defend themselves during various
| BLM riots in 2020, including the Rittenhouse case).
|
| Further still, there's a lot of controversy over whether
| violence or non-violence are the appropriate way to seek
| the reforms one desires, with virtually the whole of the
| media downplaying or actively justifying political
| violence (even invoking MLK's "riots are the language of
| the oppressed" out of context[1]) right up until January
| 6th, 2021 when political violence abruptly _and rightly_
| regained its "reprehensible" designation.
|
| Further _still_ , contrary to the media portrait, a
| majority of black Americans don't support violent protest
| or the abolition or defunding of police--like most other
| Americans, they want sensible police reform[0].
|
| So yes, BLM is quite controversial in American politics
| for reasons which have little to do with clear cut
| advocacy for human rights.
|
| [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-
| policing-n... [1]: One of the more memorable examples was
| CNN adding the "fiery but mostly peaceful" caption as a
| journalist sporting a gas mask reported against a
| backdrop of a dozen burning vehicles.
| badRNG wrote:
| Black Lives Matter is a slogan used by disparate groups
| for a variety of causes. The slogan "Black Lives Matter"
| is necessarily one focused on the human rights of black
| people.
|
| The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the
| US also involved violent riots by some actors, and there
| was public debate between sides on whether segregation
| was intrinsically a cause of inequality, similar to how
| there is debate today between sides on whether our
| criminal justice system is intrinsically a cause of
| racial inequality. If one didn't view segregation as
| intrinsically unequal, they might claim that the Civil
| Rights Movement (though focused on many other issues as
| is BLM) had "little to do with human rights." Supporting
| the Civil Rights Movement, a movement that contained
| numerous groups, goals, and actors (both violent and non-
| violent), was still a position that doesn't seem to have
| harmed organizations of the day, and may have even
| benefitted them.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Black Lives Matter is a slogan used by disparate groups
| for a variety of causes. The slogan "Black Lives Matter"
| is necessarily one focused on the human rights of black
| people.
|
| If we can agree that this slogan is controversial, then
| it seems like we should be able to agree that the Go
| project could make its points better by avoiding a
| controversial slogan and instead using an unambiguous
| statement. Certainly this should be open for discussion.
|
| Moreover, I could make a similar statement about "All
| Lives Matter", which is necessarily focused on human
| rights, but most people steer clear of the slogan because
| the media has worked to associate it with right-wing
| groups and now it is only used by right-wing groups--good
| faith people strive to make their points in ways which
| are unambiguously good faith; bad faith people use motte
| and bailey rhetoric which is what the Go team appears to
| be doing (they are certainly aware of the controversial
| nature of the slogan and refuse to discuss it).
|
| > The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the
| US also involved violent riots by some actors
|
| Right, and we collectively rebuked those actors and
| raised up non-violent actors as exemplars for social
| change.
|
| > there was public debate between sides on whether
| segregation was intrinsically a cause of inequality,
| similar to how there is debate today between sides on
| whether our criminal justice system is intrinsically a
| cause of racial inequality.
|
| Public debate is fine. Burning and looting neighborhoods,
| attacking innocent people, etc is not.
|
| > If one didn't view segregation as intrinsically
| unequal, they might claim that the Civil Rights Movement
| (though focused on many other issues as is BLM) had
| "little to do with human rights."
|
| Right, but through _public debate_ and other non-violent
| means, we made the case that segregation is intrinsically
| unequal. With respect to BLM, note that there was an
| enormous effort to punish people for criticizing BLM.
|
| > Supporting the Civil Rights Movement, a movement that
| contained numerous groups, goals, and actors (both
| violent and non-violent), was still a position that
| doesn't seem to have harmed organizations of the day, and
| may have even benefitted them.
|
| We supported the Civil Rights Movement because it largely
| emphasized non-violence. We supported the movement _in
| spite of_ its violent elements, and the violent and
| nationalist figures remained controversial right up until
| BLM folks made them popular.
| shkkmo wrote:
| EJI has fought against the death penalty and taken sides on
| other partisan issues. I wouldn't call it a partisan
| organization myself, but I can see how someone could
| reasonably form that opinion.
| omegaworks wrote:
| In a political environment where one party openly allies with
| those that seek a white ethnostate[1] and the other sees a
| compromise solution that normalizes and rationalizes the
| existence of its opposition[2], the fair and equal
| application of the law is not just partisan, it is
| increasingly countercultural.
|
| 1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/heres
| -h...
|
| 2. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/joe-biden-america-
| ne...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Only a small minority of Americans-- _including ~80% of
| black Americans_ --even accept your framing of the problem.
| In particular, by all appearances, police shootings aren't
| unequally distributed by race when we account for even the
| most obvious relevant factors (e.g., violent crime rates),
| but your whole framing depends on this. In other words, if
| this isn't true, then the Republicans and a significant
| minority (if not majority) of Democrats aren't white
| nationalists but rather opposed to police reforms which
| _can 't work* because the problem is misstated.
|
| For more details, see my other comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29308714_
| omegaworks wrote:
| "Framing" is irrelevant to my statement. I provided
| concrete evidence of the two mainstream political parties
| doing exactly what I said they were doing.
|
| How a particular slogan like "defund the police" polls is
| not relevant to the impact of moving $193 billion annual
| local dollars of police funding to better structured,
| community-centered alternatives.
|
| Conflating evidence-based policy goals and research with
| how people feel about them in the current present moment
| is classic misdirection.
| threatofrain wrote:
| IMO it makes sense that the Rust moderation team should _also_ be
| the Rust core team, and that losing the confidence of your peers
| is the scope and magnitude of wrong that should trigger action.
| This will allow some modicum of abuse per the culture of any core
| team, but it will also align power with incentive and avoid power
| paradoxes like "who watches the watchmen".
|
| This is similar to how some legislative / deliberative bodies
| administer themselves.
| ufo wrote:
| I'm not very familiar with these Rust institutions. What are the
| moderation team and core teams? What places are the moderation
| team tasked with moderating, and what powers do they have?
| znpy wrote:
| Some months ago somebody else was complaining about the fact that
| most of the rust core team was being hired by big corps (mostly
| Amazon iirc).
|
| In my opinion these people resigning will have the effect of just
| making core team's life (read: Amazon's and other big corps'
| life) easier in doing whatever they want.
| neysofu wrote:
| Not a single member of the Rust Core team is currently employed
| by Amazon IIRC, you're probably thinking about the
| lang/compiler folks.
| znpy wrote:
| I was talking about this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
| lovecg wrote:
| Why does a language need a "moderation team"? C++ seems to do
| fine without one.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Does the C++ core committee have central forums for public
| discussion of features or is it exclusively a design-by-
| committee thing with mostly closed-door meetings?
| rocqua wrote:
| I believe it has both. As far as I know, there are public
| discussions taken as advisory. Then the actual standards are
| written in a design-by-committee process. I believe those
| design meetings have public minutes, but participation
| requires being a member of the standards committee. I
| believer membership of the committee is possible through
| sponsorship with some seats being reserved for community
| members with high standing. How those seats are filled
| exactly I do not know.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It has a five-member "Directions Committee", vacancies
| filled by invitation. The group's minutes are not public,
| but they have no authority beyond their persuasiveness. The
| members are there because they were already respected.
| swebs wrote:
| It has public mailing lists.
|
| https://lists.isocpp.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/
| bluGill wrote:
| Which meetings? Some are more closed door than others. The
| big committee meetings are open door, anyone can come (pre
| covid). There are official ISO votes where you need to have
| your countries' blessing to vote (one vote per country), but
| most votes are just straw polls and anyone who shows up can
| vote.
|
| There are also core teams that are closed door. And sub
| committees, some of which are more welcoming of outsiders
| than others. In the end though, if you submit a paper the
| relevant committee will read it and then invite you to come
| talk about it (at your expense to get there, but they will
| find a sponsor if needed).
| phtrivier wrote:
| In this case, this a moderation of the community of human
| beings developing the rust compiler and its eco-system.
|
| This is a team of human beings, who are going to have human
| interactions - tensions are bound to arise, and rules /
| traditions / taboos will develop to handle / resolve / hide
| them.
|
| The Rust community seems to be having debates about those rules
| - not being part of the community, and not knowing anything
| about the situation, I have to brush it up as "someone else
| drama."
|
| I suppose you can compare it to either the human interaction in
| the team of human beings developing `clang` (no idea how this
| is organized, or wether it has public politics / drama) ; and
| the C++ ISO community (which I'm pretty sure has loooooots of
| drama, but keeps it corporate and private.)
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| To give folks who are privileged and well connected but have
| not put in the time and effort to be able to make technical
| contributions a chance to put participation in a trendy OSS
| community on their resume.
| [deleted]
| humanistbot wrote:
| Are you serious? Do you know anything about the Rust
| community and ecosystem? The lead author of the resignation
| post is BurntSushi (Andrew Gallant). He is a systems engineer
| at Salesforce and a long-time technical and social
| contributor to Rust. He has taken the lead on the big parsers
| for Rust, many of which are still in his personal GitHub
| namespace. ripgrep has 28k stars, for example.
| mmastrac wrote:
| People tend to behave better in in-person meetings and on
| conference calls than on the internet in general. The Penny
| Arcade comic was too optimistic about the conditions for
| virtual communities to break down.
| kzrdude wrote:
| C++ does also not have a compiler team nor any C++ day-to-day
| development team.
| junon wrote:
| Sure it does, just not one centralized one. LLVM and GCC are
| very actively maintained and both main teams have many active
| C++ committee members. Unless you want to split hairs and
| argue semantics, they are the closest thing to a day-to-day
| development team and are quite underappreciated if you ask
| me.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I appreciate them but that's also the difference between
| Rust and C++ - the implementations are separable from the
| language itself. GCC is not C++ and vice versa.
| Angius wrote:
| Not to prevent people like this from becoming the executive
| director, that's for sure: https://archive.fo/f10KK
| fulafel wrote:
| Arguably there's too much of it.
| dralley wrote:
| It absolutely does not, according to /r/cpp. There have been
| disputes that nearly led to physical violence, racial slurs,
| and more. It's just all more "private" by nature of happening
| in conference rooms and private mailing lists.
| fivelessminutes wrote:
| 'Core team' as a concept naturally leads to elitism.
| maydup-nem wrote:
| > elitism
|
| You are saying it like as if it were something bad.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Almost anything in the real world that works and is not
| dysfunctional is built on hierarchies. Where hierarchies are
| not explicitly spelled out they are implicit and without
| accountability - "some animals are more equal than others".
|
| How to promote on merit and not nepotism or corruption is the
| hard problem.
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Do you want a competence hierarchy or a political hierarchy?
|
| That's the question our society is facing.
| pornel wrote:
| Thinking they can be separated long term is very naive.
|
| First, competence itself is subjective and hard to measure,
| especially for the very broad task of language design and
| stewardship. Which skills and credentials are considered
| most relevant and who's judging them is already "political"
| (e.g. do "hackers" get stuff done, or are winging it? Is
| someone with a PhD in PLT the most qualified, or an ivory-
| tower academic?)
|
| Then there are human factors. Programmers aren't
| deterministic stateless coffee2code transformers.
|
| Some people will dislike other people, for a broad range of
| reasons that may be valid or not, and that will affect
| their judgement. Also many projects and companies have to
| deal with "asshole geniuses". It's very "political" to
| decide whether you kick out someone who writes good code,
| but scares away other contributors.
|
| "Corporate politics" is not thing set up on purpose, but
| it's a meta-game that emerges even in organizations that
| are supposed to be purely meritocratic. There are people
| who will consciously play this game, and have an advantage
| over people who naively think the game doesn't exist (I'm
| not endorsing it, but saying it's a phenomenon that orgs
| need to be aware of and actively deal with instead of
| declaring they're apolitical).
| Bayart wrote:
| It also leads to getting things done.
| choeger wrote:
| Does it? I am not familiar with the Rust language development
| but I read it as "team that takes care of the core (of the
| language)".
| tester34 wrote:
| When it comes to naming, then from time to time I tend to
| look at C# and I got impression that there are:
|
| "Language Design Team"
|
| "Compiler/Roslyn Team(?)"
|
| "CLR Team(?)" yada yada
|
| so more product/role-driven naming schema
| crate_barre wrote:
| Have you talked to people that evangelize Rust? The whole
| community is elitist, starts at the top I guess.
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, you either have a explicit hierarchy of people working
| on something, and then the people who are a part of the "top
| layer" can sometimes start to look down on the ones who
| belong to the layer below, seeing them as less knowledgeable
| or not producing useful output. Sometimes that leads to
| people starting to close down into their current layer, and
| forms "us-vs-them" groups. Or, you have a implicit hierarchy
| and basically the same thing happen but the layers don't have
| names.
| maydup-nem wrote:
| > "top layer" can sometimes start to look down on the ones
| who belong to the layer below, seeing them as less
| knowledgeable or not producing useful output
|
| So? Are you going to blame them for seeing the reality as
| it truly is?
| dboreham wrote:
| This is what humans do.
| [deleted]
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| What is the core of a language? Is it the specification?
| (excluding the standard library?) Is it the compiler frontend
| or the backend? Or both?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| From the website[0]:
|
| > Managing the overall direction of Rust, subteam leadership,
| and any cross-cutting issues
|
| This sounds to be more of an "executive team", but I am also
| unfamiliar with Rust development, so I don't know how
| accurate that is in practice.
|
| 0: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Equally well read as "all others are non-essential" --
| tantamount to "subordinate". Guaranteed to seed resentments
| among those outside the "core".
|
| The social fix would be to change the name "Core" to "Base
| Language" or some such. Perhaps fork off a separate
| "Ecosystem" committee with broader representation.
|
| Bona fide: Was once myself on the other side of a "Core" team
| boundary.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I think it's ridiculous a programming language needs a _whole
| team to make sure people are being nice_ anyway.
| [deleted]
| nikivi wrote:
| I wonder if it's related to this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
| kristoff_it wrote:
| How does the opinion expressed in that tweet map to a violation
| of the CoC? I personally don't see it, but I'm asking
| genuinely.
| jamincan wrote:
| I don't think it does; it's just one of the recent bits of
| drama within the Rust Team that has leaked out to the public,
| so people naturally wonder if they are connected somehow. At
| this point in time, everything in here is just idle
| speculation at best.
| alexarnesen wrote:
| The author of that piece is on the core team. https://www.rust-
| lang.org/governance/teams/core
| OJFord wrote:
| That confused me at first, so just to elaborate for anyone
| else - the _moderation_ team is stepping down, having
| grievances including an unaccountable _core_ team. Steve
| Klabnik is on the latter, not the former, so not resigning.
|
| So unless GP is suggesting that the moderation team felt SK's
| post airing grievances with Amazon was against CoC/whatever
| standards they expected of him, not related.
|
| (Edit: oh, perhaps tangentially related after all. See codys'
| comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307113)
| rocqua wrote:
| I can imagine friction over this piece causing conflict
| between members of the core team. It could also be that
| Amazon tried to respond to SK's piece in ways that were
| against the CoC.
| codys wrote:
| Alternately, there's this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306
| jturpin wrote:
| I love Rust the language, and the community is generally
| good, but for whatever reason modern identity politics has
| always been looming around its key members. Maybe just
| because it spun out of Mozilla and the Brendan Eich debacle,
| who knows.
| foldr wrote:
| I'm not seeing any connection between the linked
| discussions and identity politics, and I'm _certainly_ not
| seeing any connection with Brendan Eich. Hopefully not
| every thread that involves reference to a CoC has to
| automatically turn in to a grievance bin for people who
| have a bone to pick with identity politics.
| rocqua wrote:
| The second link in this thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306) includes
| multiple alleged statements that are about identity
| politics. One example being: "saying incredibly horrible
| sexist and racist things such as 'kill all men', and
| actively trying to prevent white men from speaking at
| tech conferences" Which seems to be connected to identity
| politics.
| foldr wrote:
| This seems to be a case of one person who's said some
| things that pretty much everyone would regard as
| inappropriate and potentially offensive (probably
| regardless of where they stand on CoCs or their views
| regarding identity politics). I see no evidence of a
| connection between this person and the resignation of the
| Rust Moderation Team.
|
| I'd also add that making white men feel unwelcome in an
| open source software project is _very_ hard work. I am a
| white man, and would not for a moment feel uncomfortable
| about trying to contribute to node or Rust because of the
| indelicate mode of expression of this one individual.
| Jensson wrote:
| If the core team took her side even though she said those
| inappropriate and offensive things then it makes sense
| that the Rust Moderation team felt that they couldn't do
| their job and resigned because of it. Note that she is a
| part of the core team.
| foldr wrote:
| Sure, maybe. But what evidence is there that this is what
| happened?
| Jensson wrote:
| As you can see this sub thread is just speculation from
| the first post. The evidence are the links provided in
| the posts above and the rest is speculation how that
| could potentially related to what happened today.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I encourage everyone to read the actual links in that
| post. I'm in no way associated with any party, but the
| links that supposedly give evidence for specific
| statements are not as clear cut as it's made out to be.
|
| E.g. with respect to the wasm-pack both sides have
| reasonable arguments in the thread how I read it.
|
| With respect to unsubstantiated accusation, that very
| post makes accusations of nepotism without any proof.
| busterarm wrote:
| It's actually the opposite. In a repeat of what happened
| previously in the NPM community, people are asking for
| the CoC to actually be enforced _because of_ identity
| politics, rather than associating CoCs with identity
| politics.
|
| Going around saying things like "Kill all men" is just
| about as obvious as a CoC violation can get.
|
| Additionally, having members of the same governance body
| that are romantically involved probably isn't very
| effective strategically.
| Jensson wrote:
| "The core team refused to kick out a misandrist member"
| would lead to a lot of drama if they said it publicly. If
| that is why they are quitting then it makes sense that
| they refused to say anything about it.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's not like she would be the first or the only team
| member with rather controversial political views. As long
| as these views don't meaningfully impact her work on
| Rust, why shouldn't she be on the team? Why can't we just
| learn to be more tolerant of dissenting views?
| Jensson wrote:
| I didn't said that she should get expelled, however since
| the moderation team cannot do their job to enforce the
| CoC when such blatant violations goes unpunished it makes
| sense for them to disband the moderation team. Why have a
| moderation team if it is just for show?
| busterarm wrote:
| Also...from the first line of Rust's CoC:
| We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and
| welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of
| experience, gender identity and expression, sexual
| orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size,
| race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other
| similar characteristic.
|
| And the first line from the Moderation section of that
| same document: Remarks that violate the
| Rust standards of conduct, including hateful, hurtful,
| oppressive, or exclusionary remarks, are not allowed.
|
| It's not just that it's a controversial political view --
| it's a clear violation of the first rule of participating
| in the community. It's rules for thee but not for me.
|
| If you're a man, I don't see how it would be possible to
| feel safe or welcome in _any_ association with the Rust
| community when a prominent Core team member is advocating
| for you to be killed.
|
| It's like saying that Hitler's position on Jews is just a
| controversial political view.
| throwawaymcxv wrote:
| > If you're a man, I don't see how it would be possible
| to feel safe or welcome in _any_ association with the
| Rust community when a prominent Core team member is
| advocating for you to be killed.
|
| Being a man I don't see how anyone would feel unsafe by a
| prominent Core team member advocating for all men to be
| killed.
| [deleted]
| busterarm wrote:
| Well, then there's the other accusation: that she applied
| for a job at Amazon and was rejected and since then her
| partner, also a part of the core team, has been publicly
| negative about the relationship between Rust and Amazon
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130)
|
| There would seem to be a massive conflict of interest
| there, if true.
| bigwavedave wrote:
| > It's not like she would be the first or the only team
| member with rather controversial political views. As long
| as these views don't meaningfully impact her work on
| Rust, why shouldn't she be on the team? Why can't we just
| learn to be more tolerant of dissenting views?
|
| The link goes into detail about her effect on wasm-pack,
| the official Rust wasm project. Her personal views and
| behavior at npm aside, this alone should be enough to
| remove her from being part of Rust in any official
| capacity. I guess being in a relationship with Steve
| Klabnik has its benefits.
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| Obviously there is a story behind this ("the Core Team placing
| themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves"), but it's not
| entirely evident from the PR itself what actions led down to this
| happening. I guess somewhere a Core Team member broke the Code of
| Conduct but the deed went unpunished? I was expecting some
| references or links to where this actually happened, but couldn't
| find anything. Anyone know what happened for this action to be
| taken by the moderation team?
|
| Not part of the general Rust community, just an outsider, so
| maybe I'm missing something obvious.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| I just hope it's not about either something silly (like tabs vs
| spaces) or something important but unrelated (like BLM).
| xondono wrote:
| Honestly speaking, the fact that they are not giving any
| details makes me think that it's either something minor (but
| sides were taken) or it's something political and divisive.
|
| One would assume that the Mod team would be the first to air
| something egregious. The fact that they aren't tells me they
| don't like the optics of the issue and they'd rather stay
| silent.
| willvarfar wrote:
| They explicitly say they are not saying:
|
| > In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances
| beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion
| and confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust
| community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism
| of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof)
| claiming to illuminate the situation.
|
| With the earlier bit about the Core Team not having to adhere
| to the Code of Conduct, it could mean something awful has
| happened and a Rust Core Member is above justice or pressuring
| the mod team's investigation?
| capableweb wrote:
| Which is a pity. I always saw the Rust organization as one
| that acted in public and with transparency, I guess that's
| why I expected something more clear instead of a resignation
| of a full team without any further clarification about why.
|
| But, of course up to them what they feel comfortable sharing
| with the public, if it's something that has to stay private I
| guess that's the way it will be.
| DominikD wrote:
| There are always types of events that are not suitable for
| public discourse (pretty much any form of harassment or
| abuse, where victims are still subject to pressure or were
| yet unable to process what happened falls into this
| category). I have no insight into what happened but it's
| not hard for me to imagine what could prompt moderation
| team to resign w/o disclosing specific instances.
| sambe wrote:
| Right. It may also be possible that there is some hope of
| this action restoring normality. i.e. as a result of this
| protest, the Core Team become more accountable. At that
| point, I assume the specific incident(s) may be dealt
| with according to the Code of Conduct, which may or may
| not involve transparency. Either way, it could be
| premature and possibly prejudicial to air those now.
| [deleted]
| simion314 wrote:
| Maybe is better that no single action is emphasized or a single
| person and focus on the actual problem, the fact that there
| might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible
| solutions.
|
| Edit: I think if some action will be made public then everyone
| will focus on debating why that action was correct/incorrect ,
| then a lot of mostly politics dirt will be thrown around etc.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Without knowing exactly what went wrong it won't be possible
| for the community to know if their changes have gone far
| enough (or too far) to address the actual problem.
|
| This stinks. I wonder if the moderators are concerned they'll
| be found culpable as well, if the problem is revealed.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Being a moderator is a thankless job, and when you don't
| have any power to do that job, it also becomes soul-
| sucking.
|
| I don't think the moderators are concerned about
| culpability. I think they're concerned that what appears to
| be an internal debate is going to get dragged out for
| months on end, in public, with all context loss, and with
| even less ability on their part to do anything useful or
| constructive.
|
| If I were in their position, I would very likely do the
| same thing and try to learn some lessons and move on with
| my life.
| capableweb wrote:
| > focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a
| group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions
|
| I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to
| see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any
| possible solutions, when what is supposed to have exemplified
| the problem is kept in the dark.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| They are saying that if those people keep it up, they can't
| have a Mod Team. It is an expression of an incompatibility
| between expansive power residing in the Core Team and the
| existence of a Mod Team. You don't really need a specific
| situation to see how that could obviously happen (classic
| power struggle), or to believe it has recently happened.
| Story as old as time.
|
| At its height, this resignation constitutes (a) a plea for
| people in power to exercise it better, and (b) for those
| people to voluntarily become more accountable for some
| pattern of behaviour. (A) might be effective, if only
| because Rust governance so far prides itself on all the
| things that come with having a Mod Team. Not having one is
| embarrassing.
|
| But point (b), which is indeed the focus of the resignation
| message, is plain magical thinking to my eye.
| Accountability I understand it is the acceptance of
| responsibility, by someone, for some thing. Someone else
| fundamentally needs to know what that something is for that
| to happen. It cannot happen if the thing is kept
| _completely_ under wraps, but it can be approximated with
| limited but trustworthy disclosure, and this is the basis
| for the levels upon levels of that in e.g. national
| security regulation. That is a very difficult problem in
| its specifics, but the theory is simple: inform someone
| trustworthy and neutral, and then tell everyone else that
| you informed them.
|
| What this message lacks is any indication of which people
| _do_ know what the specific acts by Core Team members were
| and who did them, and what position those people are in to
| verify if anything is done about it. If you are unwilling
| to muck-rake in public, you need to give everyone else a
| proxy by which to gauge your generic claims. In normal
| governments this takes many many forms, including
| ministers, Inspectors-General, privileged parliamentary
| committees, etc. But you do not need a formal role, you
| simply have to nominate someone outside your group and your
| opposition (ie appears neutral on the face of it) that is
| aware of the facts. Without that, everybody who sees this
| will have to gauge your claims on the extremely minimal
| information provided plus your own reputation, but with no
| credible claim to neutrality on the issue. Even one such
| person would be better than all of the co-signatures on
| that letter combined.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose
| to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find
| any possible solutions
|
| Perhaps you aren't?
|
| This is still an internal Rust team issue; it's not a
| problem for us, a bunch of randos on the Internet, to
| solve. Our job is just to gawp from a distance, maybe
| gossip on Hacker News a bit.
| capableweb wrote:
| It doesn't look like an internal Rust issue when the
| moderation team disappears while saying "If the Core Team
| says anything about us/the situation, be careful about
| trusting it without verifying first" in a very public
| venue.
|
| If they really wanted to keep it internal, it would
| require even less effort to just remove themselves from
| the moderation list with a "We resign" message without
| further detail.
| couchand wrote:
| They didn't send you a personal e-mail. They made a PR
| changing their team status to "alumni" and included the
| requisite justification in the PR message.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| That doesn't mean it does not affect anyone outside
| leadership. It's government, they make decisions that
| affect participants. There's no such thing as a
| completely 'inside baseball' issue in government, unless
| you aren't a citizen. If you don't use Rust at all, you
| are free to feel like you do not need to think about
| solutions.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I would argue that it's governance, not government.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| It was a metaphor, for the citizen analogy. There is
| ultimately very little difference in terms of the shape
| of these problems.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| True. But what differences there are, are critical.
| [deleted]
| jpfed wrote:
| A group being "above the rules" is, I think, a statement
| about what the rules are and how they are enforced. It
| doesn't really hinge on whether any members of that group
| have, up to this point, violated the rules.
| simion314 wrote:
| Probably by the rules, say if the existing rules have
| exceptions for the core team so making this core team above
| the existing laws.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| The people who own the project, own the project.
|
| The people who own your employer, own your employer.
|
| Does that sometimes suck? Sure. Is it often unjust?
| Absolutely. Do you sometimes need to switch jobs or fork a
| project? Yup (see: mod team resigning).
|
| But don't ever get confused and think that an HR process
| can save you from the whims of your master, and don't ever
| believe a "rule" that says the owner of something is
| constrained. Unless there's a higher power that can enforce
| that rule (e.g., a government or a market). And even then,
| the rule isn't doing any of the lifting.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I'm generally in favor of enforcing high-level "behave
| professionally" norms in OSS communities. And not as a new
| phenomenon, either. I've been kick-banning disruptive people
| from IRC channels for several decades, I've run forums where
| I appointed mods, and I've always avoided participating in
| completely unmoderated communities beyond N=20 or so (not
| worth the headache).
|
| But for some reason, the formalization of conduct enforcement
| stuff around OSS projects still feels weird, off-putting, and
| very "Corporate HR"-y to me. I still get a kinda awkward
| feeling every time I see a code of conduct in a freaking
| _code repository_ as opposed to an MOTD or mailing list
| welcome email or the like. The contents is normally
| reasonable and if it were in one of those other formats it 'd
| feel normal, but checked into a code repo just feels wildly
| out of place and needlessly in-your-face?
|
| Maybe I'm just getting old.
| tzs wrote:
| With most OSS projects nowadays I don't think you have to
| use a mailing list or anything that would have an MOTD in
| order to contribute. Contributions nowadays are often done
| entirely through the repository, so it makes sense to put
| in them the things that people contemplating contribution
| should be cognizant of.
|
| Repositories for most projects are more _project_
| repositories than mere _code_ repositories.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Repositories for most projects are more project
| repositories than mere code repositories._
|
| Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd. I've
| acknowledged I'm getting old, right? ;-)
|
| Also, there is some rational justification to my feeling.
| It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a
| channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions.
| But if they made a technically meritorious merge request
| via SCM the contribution would still get due
| consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers,
| after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me.
| Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without
| exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good
| community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in
| communities I moderated.
|
| So, what? I guess this: _Bundling the CoC into the repo
| violates this expectation. Just because someone couldn 't
| get along doesn't mean we kick them out of the hobby. I
| think that's why it makes me uncomfortable._
|
| In a hobby org, you don't let the known jerk on the
| board. You definitely don't let him man the booth at
| community outreach events! However, you also don't
| usually kick him out of the core activity. In a non-OSS
| hobby context, I've had folks steal things but still
| allowed them to stay in the community while taking away
| unsupervised physical access to common property. Measured
| tolerance and forgiveness are both important virtues, and
| sticking around in a community after public humiliation
| shows a commendable level of commitment to the
| hobby/community. The social bonding that happens via the
| process of apology and forgiveness often does far more
| good for the community than the harm of the infraction.
|
| But, also, I've always considered OSS a hobby scene
| rather than a business model or resume booster. I guess
| if an OSS project is just a way for companies to
| commodify complements and for contributors to get jobs,
| then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes
| sense. But I'm not interested in those types of
| communities; I have hobbies, and programming can be a
| hobby for me, but I charge a lot for my labor and would
| never, ever work in a corporate environment for free.
|
| I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils down
| to this split in people's perception of what OSS projects
| are.
|
| Again, getting old I guess.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Indeed, but for some reason it still feels odd._
|
| I think putting the CoC into the repo is mainly to
| clarify that it applies to discussions on the issue
| tracker. If GitHub didn't also do issue tracking and
| other things where actual discussions occur, there would
| probably be fewer CoCs in repos.
|
| _> Measured tolerance and forgiveness are both important
| virtues_
|
| There are a small number of extremely toxic people in
| positions of power who will abuse "forgiveness" in order
| to deliberately commit an unending series of abuses on a
| string of people. People kept "forgiving" Harvey
| Weinstein for decades. The line between tolerance and
| enabling can get hard to distinguish, especially when
| someone has enough power to control the narrative.
|
| So a community must be aware that its tolerance
| mechanisms can themselves be maliciously abused. But the
| alternative--intolerance and being unwilling to forgive--
| ends up harming the larger number of people who are
| fallible, do hurtful things, but can be remediated. It
| gives less room for people to be human.
|
| Finding the balance between these opposing forces is
| hard. A maximally efficient and happy community is one of
| complete trust between all participants. But that is also
| the definition of a maximally vulnerable and exploitable
| one.
|
| _> But, also, I 've always considered OSS a hobby scene
| rather than a business model or resume booster._
|
| That line got really blurry when open source ate the
| world and many large tech companies now work heavily with
| open source. You have many employees (like myself) who
| work on open source projects full time at work. And you
| have others who work on open source because it helps them
| find employment at companies that use that code.
| dogleash wrote:
| I'm 30 and that paragraph about OSS vs F500 resonates
| with me. I don't know how far it goes towards explaining
| all of my own tastes in OSS community, but the corporate
| sterility is definitely showing up to different levels in
| various places. It's the kind of thing I find offputting
| in and of itself, without even knowing what it's being
| used to enforce.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is a super mature, nuanced post so thanks for that.
|
| > It used to be that you might kick-ban someone from a
| channel or /dev/null their mailing list contributions.
| But if they made a technically meritorious merge request
| via SCM the contribution would still get due
| consideration. Even assholes can be good programmers,
| after all. That always felt healthy & mature to me.
| Finding a way to protect the masses from assholes without
| exiling the asshole always felt like a sign of good
| community stewardship. It's something I strived to do in
| communities I moderated.
|
| To some extent I think this is because GitHub doesn't
| offer the same tools that running your own mailing list
| would. A mailing list can do what you said, /dev/null ML
| contributions while still letting patches through. That's
| not something you can do easily in GitHub.
|
| > I guess if an OSS project is just a way for companies
| to commodify complements and for contributors to get
| jobs, then treating it like a Fortune 500 all-hands makes
| sense.
|
| Rust has a pretty friendly community (from what I've
| encountered at least), but a lot of its core stakeholders
| do have a lot of corporate obligations, and many of them
| Rust related. It makes sense to me that the Rust
| community would be more interested in treating
| interaction with Rust like a corporate project instead of
| a hobby club given that many of them are hacking on Rust
| for their actual job.
|
| > I wonder how much of the conflict around CoCs boils
| down to this split in people's perception of what OSS
| projects are.
|
| Github is part of it, but in general I think a lot of
| today's OSS projects don't have a strict separation of
| "community" and "code" in the way that projects in the
| past used to. Part of that is modern tools (Git forges
| like Gitea, sr.ht, etc) don't really enforce that
| separation, and that older tools like mailing lists are
| cumbersome enough to maintain that newer developers don't
| actually explore using them very often.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> [Moderation is] not something you can do easily in
| GitHub_
|
| That seems like a pretty significant design flaw :(
|
| _> Part of that is modern tools (Git forges like Gitea,
| sr.ht, etc) don 't really enforce that separation
| [between "community" and "code"]_
|
| Indeed, this makes perfect sense.
|
| _> It makes sense to me that the Rust community would be
| more interested in treating interaction with Rust like a
| corporate project instead of a hobby club given that many
| of them are hacking on Rust for their actual job._
|
| Yup, totally fair and makes sense.
| couchand wrote:
| How exactly are the groups of people working on various
| parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate
| their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a
| benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a
| number of reasons.
|
| Edit: it looks like you've removed the part about
| Teams/Committees.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| 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 level of maturation, and it's
| arguable their development slows down quite a bit at that
| point.
| couchand wrote:
| Far too many promising open source projects have
| disappeared because the benevolent dictator lost interest
| and disappeared without leaving an empowered community.
| Far too many promising open source projects withered and
| died because the not-actually-benevolent dictator turned
| off every would-be contributor.
|
| In the scope of things, these are much more common that
| the few examples of projects that succeeded in spite of
| low bus factor and toxicity.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The code doesn't cease to exist. If one person is doing
| all the heavy lifting and decides to stop, it isn't their
| fault for not creating a social hierarchy.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> 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: their resignation lays vare exactly who's in
| charge.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| yea, sorry, I tend to over-use the "edit" button and
| treat "submit" as "save draft".
|
| _> How exactly are the groups of people working on
| various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to
| coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I 've seen
| is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse
| for a number of reasons._
|
| Yeah, I guess I'm just getting old. The idea of an open
| source project with enough people to form an entire
| committee of moderators also feels weird, but is
| apparently fairly normal these days.
| couchand wrote:
| It's our industry that's getting old. You used to be able
| to start a big project like a compiler or a browser and
| have some hope of producing a functional result
| "organically" (for lack of a better word). But we've
| reached the point where we're no longer just scrabbling
| together hovels with scrap wood, we're trying to build
| the Pyramids or the Hoover Dam now. A few anonymous
| internet denizens are not going to be able to accomplish
| that.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Sure. And I dislike corporate BS but happily work in
| corporations as long as I can mostly get away with
| nothing but the most surface-level acknowledgment that
| the shit does indeed smell like roses. (And like 90+% of
| what HR enforces is mostly good anyways; pretending it's
| not a facade is often a small price to pay for the level
| of nonsense I'm shielded from)
|
| Again, I'm not even necessarily saying things should be
| different or proposing a better alternative. Just
| expressing a feeling.
|
| If could change one thing in the corporate world, it
| wouldn't be to change how corporations work. Simply
| disabusing people of fantasies about how corporations
| work would be far better than any incremental
| improvement.
|
| I guess I feel the same way about OSS codes of conduct.
| They're facade. To the extent that they're enforced, it's
| because the wizard behind the CoC curtain allows this to
| the case.
|
| Should anything be changed? IDK, but everyone
| understanding this would probably be preferable to any
| incremental change to project governance. If that makes
| sense.
| simion314 wrote:
| >But for some reason, the formalization of conduct
| enforcement stuff around OSS projects still feels weird,
| off-putting, and very "Corporate HR"-y to me.
|
| But if a community already approved such rules is it OK
| that those would not apply equally for all? Before joining
| a new community I always check and see if there is a lot of
| toxicity or just low effort contributions and I am avoiding
| those, it would suck to join a community because they
| promise moderation and later you see that the rules don't
| apply equally.
| lstodd wrote:
| What's "a community" here?
|
| If this "moderation team" felt that there is no option
| but to quit, that means that they were rejected by the
| community, complete with the "CoC" they tried to enforce.
|
| Seems like everything is fine to me.
| simion314 wrote:
| For me seems they were rejected by the core team, no idea
| who elected the moderators and who elected the core team
| , I do not know if Rust is a democracy and works like
| Debian or is different, I will try to inform myself
| though.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Maybe it will help to explicate what rubs me the wrong
| way about "corporate HR".
|
| The facade of process masking Machiavellian reality is
| what rubs me the wrong way.
|
| I'm always astounded by folks who don't understand that
| companies are feudal kingdoms and that all the stuff
| about processes and protecting people who are innocent/do
| the right thing is just hot air. And I've never been on
| the wrong side of HR, so this isn't a personal issue per
| se. But when I mentor new grads, I do make sure to find
| some time to explain how companies really work and stress
| that "getting along" with people is the most important
| skill.
|
| I've always felt like the world would be a better place
| -- and workplaces would function better -- if Corporate
| HR was just honest: "this company is someone else's
| property, you have no rights to that property, we do what
| we want, so play nice and don't piss off the wrong folks
| unless you're ok leaving."
|
| Most OSS projects aren't so dissimilar. I don't know
| about Rust, and suspect "Core" might have a different
| meaning here. But in most projects the core (aka primary)
| developers effectively own the project. Rules to the
| contrary are at best aspirational and at worst lies. If
| you disagree with the primary developers, it's much
| better the just fork the project than to imagine that
| there's some fair and rational process by which you will
| be able to plead your case and over-ride their edicts.
| Again, this isn't a value judgement. It's just a
| description of how reality works.
| eldavido wrote:
| I have a nagging feeling the rules are different in
| fields like sales, trading, sports, or others where
| performance is more precisely quantified.
|
| The reality, somewhat sad in my view, is that in most
| places, software shops, architecture firms, academia,
| pretty much anywhere where individual measurement isn't
| possible and most work is done in teams, most performance
| reviews are a thin veneer over a high school popularity
| contest. You get ahead by being liked, something that's
| at best loosely correlated to how much work you get done,
| or at what quality.
|
| Of note, the best manager I worked for (in software) ran
| a great team by making work _about the work_ , not being
| liked, or delivering great powerpoints, or other
| secondary things.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> sales_
|
| Most types of sales labor is a complete commodity. For
| every one high-powered b2b software sales person there
| are hundreds of folks selling commodity laptops to rural
| schools, pushing trim upgrades in car dealerships, cold-
| calling convenience store owners, etc. The high school
| politics in those sorts of sales shops are next-level.
|
| _> trading_
|
| Trading desks are often whole orgs, often with diffuse
| and difficult to measure contributions. Not so dissimilar
| from software shops, really. In fact, often literally are
| software shops!
|
| _> sports_
|
| I don't have first-hand experience with anything other
| than climbing and skiing, where "hussle" and getting
| along with everyone from sponsors to gym/resort owners to
| random community members is _way_ more important than raw
| talent. At the end of the day you 're basically an
| influencer. Instead of HR imposing rules to help with
| reputation management work, you're doing the HR
| reputation management job yourself.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The problem is that people want the facade. I generally
| expect managers to present themselves as first among
| equals, even though I understand in extremis that's not
| true, and I wouldn't work in an organization where they
| do a bad job at pretending. It's my understanding that my
| mindset is pretty common, although I have to admit that
| I'm not sure because this isn't the kind of thing I'm
| comfortable polling my coworkers about.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| My post is about HR processes, not management
| relationships. And what I said about the ultimate
| authority was about _ownership_ , not _management_.
|
| Managers are also just laborers. As laborers, they also
| need to know that "getting along with people" is most
| important.
|
| _> I generally expect managers to present themselves as
| first among equals, even though I understand in extremis
| that 's not true, and I wouldn't work in an organization
| where they do a bad job at pretending._
|
| If you're a senior engineer making anything less than
| 500k or so, your first-line and even second-line managers
| _do_ have a complicated power relationship with you.
|
| I.e., another way of saying what you said here is that
| your labor is in high enough demand that your mangers
| have to treat you with a certain amount of respect in
| day-to-day interactions.
|
| A manager who doesn't show enough politeness/deference
| will have high turn-over, and in most situations that
| spells problems. Again, because they aren't capital
| owners. They are laborers.
|
| Like I said, "getting along with people" is probably the
| most important skill. Finding yourself in an HR process
| means you failed at "getting along with people". The rest
| is noise. Don't rely on HR. Get along with people.
| yeputons wrote:
| > "this company is someone else's property, you have no
| rights to that property, we do what we want, so play nice
| and don't piss off the wrong folks unless you're ok
| leaving."
|
| > so play nice and don't piss off the wrong folks
|
| "Play nice", "don't piss off" and "the wrong folks" are
| open to interpretation. I think having these at least
| somewhat codified is very helpful. Cultures differ a lot,
| and what may be considered "a useful, clear, concise and
| honest code review" in one is "blatant non-constructive
| shitstorm from an arrogant a-hole" in another.
|
| However, such codification probably requires specific
| examples rather than "please be respectful to all people
| regardless of X, Y, Z" or "don't piss off people". For
| example, I really like how Recurse Center's "Social
| Rules" are described: https://web.archive.org/web/2021111
| 7232710/https://www.recur...
|
| > Most of our social rules really boil down to "don't be
| a jerk" or "don't be annoying." Of course, almost nobody
| sets out to be a jerk or annoying, so telling people not
| to be jerks isn't a very productive strategy. That's why
| our social rules are designed to curtail specific
| behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive,
| productive, and fun learning environment.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> "Play nice", "don't piss off" and "the wrong folks"
| are open to interpretation._
|
| Yup. It's sometimes hard to figure out how power flows
| and the social preferences of the people who modulate
| those flows. Getting along in large orgs is a skill that
| requires both experience and intentional work.
|
| The problem is that people rarely run into trouble due to
| abrasiveness among peers, so examples like the Recurse
| center can be helpful but are woefully incomplete as a
| guide to corporate politics.
|
| Getting along while being ambitious is anything but easy.
| There are no rules.
|
| At the end of the day, "social skills" and "social
| intelligence" are just that -- forms of skill and
| intelligence. "Getting Along" is always a learned
| behavior, albiet does come more naturally to some than
| others, and is far easier said than done.
|
| These skills are often learned pretty early on in life.
| It's one of the reasons I encourage folks who are
| considering home-schooling to at least send their kids to
| one year of high school.
| poszlem wrote:
| This 100 times this. It's especially weird since the
| whole idea of open source was that you can just fork a
| project if you don't like it.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The vast majority of open source projects do not create
| their own open source license- most of them choose from a
| relatively small selection of widely used licenses (GPL,
| BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.).
|
| Why then do so many project choose to roll their own CoC?
| I'd expect that there would also be a relatively small
| handful of widely used CoCs to choose from, and a project
| could pick based on their projects' needs.
| Macha wrote:
| I'd wager this is because there is one outright leader in
| the field (the Contributor Covenant) who's author has at
| times been a controversial figure in her views on
| enforcement and scope of codes of conduct, which can lead
| to people being apprehensive of just adopting the popular
| example.
|
| You can see similar with licenses. Stallman was initially
| controversial for his views on software licensing, and so
| in the early days there was a proliferation of licenses
| like the eclipse public license, mozilla public license,
| microsoft public license, CCDL, etc.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm on a tiny project without a CoC because I don't know
| how to enforce it if we had one. Enforce means it needs
| to apply to me, and also whoever enforces it needs to be
| active to watch for issues. I wish KDE/Gnome/other big
| project would just do a CoC as a service for tiny
| projects. For the most part the CoC should be standard,
| and a few experts to enforce it would be better than
| random enforcement. (note I have no idea if the above is
| possible)
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> For the most part the CoC should be standard, and a
| few experts to enforce it would be better than random
| enforcement._
|
| I've heard that large-scale enforcement of CoC is super
| easy and that all the big social media companies have it
| figured out ;-)
| ufmace wrote:
| I don't think it makes sense to have a CoC beyond "Don't
| be a jerk" until you have multiple teams and more complex
| governance structures.
| caffeine wrote:
| Large OSS projects are largely staffed by corporate
| contributors - the culture shift in the organisations
| paying the contributors is reflected in the projects and
| the communities surrounding them.
| xondono wrote:
| To no one's surprise, rather than be a tool for reducing it CoCs
| are proving to be a very effective way to create drama.
| fijiaarone wrote:
| We don't contribute but we want control -- if we can't have it,
| we will libel the project.
|
| Almost every open source project is being overtaken by social
| justice warrior leeches. Even Linus Torvalds was kicked out of
| Linux. I'm surprised that the Rust community pushed back.
| njgingrich wrote:
| You're saying BurntSushi, llogiq, and matthieu-m _don't_
| contribute to rust?
| fijiaarone wrote:
| 4 Downvotes in 1 minute -- exhibit A
| gspr wrote:
| > 4 Downvotes in 1 minute -- exhibit A
|
| No. The downvotes probably come from the bullshit lies you're
| spewing:
|
| > Almost every open source project is being overtaken by
| social justice warrior leeches.
|
| False. Or at least it has to be assumed false until you back
| it up with numbers.
|
| > Even Linus Torvalds was kicked out of Linux
|
| False. Obvious lies.
|
| > I'm surprised that the Rust community pushed back.
|
| What?
| [deleted]
| dthul wrote:
| The author of the PR is burntsushi of ripgrep fame. This
| isn't some "developer oppression by non-developers".
| [deleted]
| da39a3ee wrote:
| What does the Rust Moderation Team moderate? Discord channels?
| GitHub issues?
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| tldr?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| TL;DR: the Rust development community is so moderate and peaceful
| on its own that the Rust Moderation Team was left without a job!
| atsjie wrote:
| Seems like a new mod team has already been found?
| https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
| emerged wrote:
| Let me guess, they want to govern Rust via whatever DAO-of-the-
| day unproven crypto tech instead.
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| Sorry what's the context?
| cpach wrote:
| No idea - At this point it seems like the context isn't widely
| known outside of close circles.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I hate all the drama that gets spread around the internet
| with zero or limited context. Everyone gets mad and the
| extrapolation and speculation on what's going on starts to
| spread as fact.
| xdennis wrote:
| The current speculation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307015
| opheliate wrote:
| Two new moderators have already been added to replace those who
| left on a temporary basis: [0], [1]
|
| 0: https://github.com/rust-
| lang/team/commit/7185102aa6261d0181f...
|
| 1: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
| bbatha wrote:
| That pr is less ominous than you're making it sound. These are
| temporary moderators who were on a a different rust moderation
| team -- https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/672
| opheliate wrote:
| Thanks, didn't see that, will edit my post. Ominous tone
| wasn't intentional, was just surprised to see such a quick
| change.
| j56no wrote:
| here's the core team https://www.rust-
| lang.org/governance/teams/core - you can easily spot one person
| lacking ethics
| o_wa_32 wrote:
| Tough times for Rust. The hype resp. honeymoon is over. Adoption
| is kind of plateauing - at least from my perspective.
|
| I've invested in Rust and don't regret it so far. I love the
| language and the tooling.
|
| However, I'm not sure if I'd choose Rust again.
|
| Those politics are really disturbing, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306.
| [deleted]
| Zababa wrote:
| Things are happening behind closed doors in Rust's leadership.
| First there was a post from Steve Klabnik, a member from the Core
| team, about how Amazon is taking too much power in the Rust
| leadership (discussed here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130). Then that post,
| that seems against the Core team. I would appreciate some
| transparency and clarity about what's happening. Lots of people
| are currently wonder about whether or not to invest in Rust, me
| included. Stuff like that is a clear negative signal for me.
| GrayShade wrote:
| See the discussion here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306.
| Zababa wrote:
| I did see it, however it seems to be just speculation about
| what is happening. I don't want to base all my opinion on
| that. Some of these are rather heavy accusations, like the
| nepotism between Steve Klabnik and Ashley Williams, or that
| Steve Klabnik smeared Amazon because they didn't give Ashley
| Williams a job. I don't want to give them weight when the
| only source seems to be a pseudonymous post.
| GrayShade wrote:
| The poster there actually worked on the Rust project and
| did more than Ashley Williams, at least on the technical
| side. I even noticed their "absence" (or lower involvement)
| earlier this year and was wondering if they're okay.
|
| As for Steve's rant [1], it was weirdly guided against the
| "Rustacean principles" (which are totally harmless [2]),
| but happened right after Ashley's interim director contract
| was not extended.
|
| Actually, on the HN post back then, Steve complained more
| about how Amazon didn't give her the job, than anything
| else.
|
| But yes, you're right, this is just speculation.
|
| [1]:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437441118745071617
|
| [2]: https://rustacean-
| principles.netlify.app/how_rust_empowers.h...
| nabakin wrote:
| > Actually, on the HN post back then, Steve complained
| more about how Amazon didn't give her the job, than
| anything else.
|
| Where did Steve mention Ashley not getting a job at
| Amazon? I remember reading through that thread but I
| don't remember Steve mentioning that. Today is the first
| I'm hearing of it.
| GrayShade wrote:
| They did not extend her (interim) contract as Foundation
| chair. It's not "she didn't get a job", but rather "she
| didn't get the job she wanted".
| nabakin wrote:
| So Steve was saying that Amazon is responsible for not
| letting Ashley remain interim chair? I don't remember him
| saying that either.
| GrayShade wrote:
| I'm not sure (nor do I care) by what mechanism, but yes:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/14374416629980078
| 09
|
| I also seem to have confused the executive director and
| chair positions. She was the ED.
| [deleted]
| nabakin wrote:
| Oh I see. Thanks for the clarification!
| tin1g1erh wrote:
| This is what happens when half the "community" is made up of
| commies and pedophiles that dress up as dogs to fuck underage 15
| years old in the ass.
|
| Rust is an interesting language but fuck the "community".
| rStar wrote:
| RUST MODERATION TEAM: ("we believe ourselves and our feelings to
| be more important than rust as a whole so we hope to watch it
| crash and burn")... RUST RIVAL EXECUTIVES, previously :EXEC#1:
| ("well you know it looks like we have the C replacement for the
| next 50 years, it's free, it's secure, it scales, and it's been
| developed out in the open. this is definitely cutting into our
| business johnson, what can we do about this?")...EXEC#2:JOHNSON:
| "whip up the wokesters and take that motherfucker down?")...
| EXEC#1: "sounds good johnson, make it happen"!
| kristjansson wrote:
| It's funny, but ... what business would that be?
| the_duke wrote:
| I have used Rust for years, but I never bothered with looking
| into the governance structure.
|
| How are team members selected? Who has authority to kick someone
| off a team? How are team leads selected? Who can remove team
| leads?
|
| Is it the core team? If so, who picks the core team?
|
| I can't find anything online, except this very bare-bones WIP
| stub. [1]
|
| This seems to be a glaring and surprising oversight.
|
| Especially at this point, with Rust becoming more and more
| popular, the foundation in place for almost a year, and corporate
| interest flooding into the project, I would have expected proper
| procedures to already be in place for quite some time.
|
| There certainly seem to be other cracks in the system. See for
| example "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust" by core team member
| Steve Klabnik, extensively discussed here on HN. [2]
|
| [1] https://github.com/rust-
| lang/governance/blob/master/common/m...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
| deanCommie wrote:
| Since Steve is on the core team, this certainly puts "I refuse
| to let Amazon define Rust" in a whole new light.
|
| Maybe the problem wasn't Amazon, and HN shouldn't have jumped
| to conclusions so quickly...
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| The core team is responsible for - Managing the overall
| direction of Rust, subteam leadership, and any cross-cutting
| issues
|
| It doesn't sound like they directly work on the compiler?
| tapirl wrote:
| kick off? Is this necessary for an open source non-profit
| project?
| medeshago wrote:
| Of course it is. What if a contributor is harassing another
| team member? What if he/she is being openly
| racist/sexist/etc.?
| Ticklee wrote:
| In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want
| as long as they contribute good code.
| jrockway wrote:
| What if the hate convinces 10 other people to stop
| contributing? You can still make a net-negative
| contribution even if you contribute something.
| folkrav wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious: why should contributors have to
| endure someone's toxicity if something can be done about
| it? In professional settings, I've seen colleagues get
| fired over bad behavior, and not for the lack of
| competence - and I can safely say the team's morale and
| productivity went right up each time. I fail to see how
| this couldn't be applicable to open source projects that
| wish to do it as well, as you'll typically have to get
| involved quite a bit with these individuals if you're
| going to contribute.
| canaus wrote:
| And not even just contributors. Users of your project
| might not want to interact with your team. If I encounter
| a bug and want to create an issue, but I either see
| racism within communication, or just overall negativity
| in comments from members, why would I continue with your
| project? I could just as easily be subjected to it.
| kazinator wrote:
| > why would I continue with your project
|
| Because I have important stuff in my life that depends on
| it; business, workflows at work, IT infrastructure, ...
| folkrav wrote:
| If it's that important to you, it's likely in a
| professional setting, isn't it? I'd say most CoCs are
| perfectly reasonable, and you usually have to go out of
| your way to cross them in a professional software
| development environment.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _it 's likely in a professional setting, isn't it?_
|
| Not necessarily!
|
| > _usually have to go out of your way to cross them in a
| professional software development environment_
|
| I believe this subthread is about the situation of some
| example hypothetical person being a user of a project in
| which there are "bad" things going on (whether or not
| there is a CoC in place that is being violated).
|
| This user is not the one perpetrating abuse.
|
| Say that user reports some problem and is treated
| abusively or whatever. Or just learns about that kind of
| thing going on in the project, and disagrees with it.
|
| So question is, why would that user continue to use such
| a project.
|
| Well, there is the answer: people depend on stuff in ways
| that they just can't drop it because of someone's
| behavior.
| andybak wrote:
| > In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they
| want as long as they contribute good code.
|
| I would argue that you don't literally mean that - or
| rather there are situations you could find yourself in
| that would result in your changing your mind on this.
|
| Although it's possible you're being slightly disingenuous
| and what you really mean is more "The thing I currently
| suspect is happening in the Rust team isn't something I
| would regard as serious". I suspect that's behind at
| least some of the responses on this thread.
| fastasucan wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to end up with your team
| consisting of only one person. Not very effective. Do you
| expect everyone else to just endure that behavior?
| nopcode wrote:
| Yes, and this is the policy of many long-running and
| successful FOSS projects (e.g. kernel developers).
|
| Rust however wanted something different and attracted a
| lot of "snowflakes" because of it.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| The Kernel also has a code of conduct:
| https://www.kernel.org/code-of-conduct.html.
| wyager wrote:
| This was added within the last 3 or so years as the
| result of an intentional social struggle to put a CoC on
| the kernel. It remains to be seen what the net effect of
| this on kernel development will be.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Can you explain to me what your definition of snowflake
| is?
|
| Is it anyone who doesn't agree with the ethos "In my eyes
| someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want as long
| as they contribute good code."?
|
| Genuinely asking, as it seems to appear several times
| throughout this topic and the only thing I can settle on
| is that it's used as a derogatory term for anyone who
| cares more about X or Y than the person calling them a
| snowflake. (Does asking make me a snowflake?)
| thegrimmest wrote:
| "Someone who chooses to get offended about what others
| write or say" would be my working definition. I don't
| think being offended is a reasonable thing to be,
| generally.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Is getting offended about someone insulting you or who
| starts discussions which make people angry unreasonable?
|
| I'm genuinely curious, maybe I misunderstand what it
| means to be offended.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Yes. People make themselves angry, people choose to take
| offense. The _reasonable_ thing to do is not allow
| yourself to be provoked to upset or anger by someone else
| 's communication. People you disagree with are easy to
| ignore, even if you find their opinions loathsome.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| 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 similar to the above example,
| but it's more personal and threatens group coherence.
| What's your take on being offended by that?
| johnisgood wrote:
| > intended to falsely undermine your reputation
|
| I did not know that insults are capable of doing that. If
| the insult is based on something accurate, then what is
| wrong with it? Just realize it is based on reality and
| improve. If it is not accurate, then why give a damn?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| 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.
| eropple wrote:
| "Just ignore people seeking to harm you specifically and
| severally" has historically been poor practice.
|
| And it's almost always advocated by people who have the
| upper hand in their own exchanges. Which is fascinating,
| isn't it?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| We have a system of law and justice that is designed to
| prevent people actually visiting harm on eachother. We
| should draw the (very clear and very sharp) line at
| _doing_ harmful things, and allow people to say whatever
| they want.
|
| The alternative we're seeing is an ever-expanding, ever-
| blurring definition of what is policed as "offensive",
| stifling innovation and fostering division.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I cannot remember the last time I got offended by an
| insult. A little bit of stoicism goes a long way. It is
| up to you whether or not you get offended by an insult. I
| typically choose self-deprecating humor as a response to
| insults instead of wasting my energy getting angry.
| zzzbra wrote:
| seems like a bad take
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| In general, people don't want to work with assholes.
| Doubly so if they aren't getting paid for it.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Really disingenuous. Even if you yourself don't value
| civility and just being a good human being, a toxic team
| member may easily cause a net _loss_ of good code, no
| matter what sort of 10x engineer they are themselves, due
| to the opportunity costs they incur.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| what IF a person in a responsibility position is openly
| accused of being XYZ-phobic by attention-seeking,
| emotionally unstable netizens?
| jmull wrote:
| Exactly. That's what a mod team should do: sort invalid
| accusations out from legitimate ones.
| xibalba wrote:
| This statement is inscrutably generic. Are there examples of
| behavior which went unaccounted? Or, what prompted this?
|
| Also, is it common for projects to have mod teams? This is new to
| me.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Are there examples of behavior which went unaccounted?
|
| They don't want to make the specific issues public, but take a
| stand against the core team being non-responsive to issues
| raised by the moderation team. We don't know what or why beyond
| the fact the moderation team feels it can't perform its job
| when the core team does not submit to the same rules the rest
| of the community does.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| It looks like they've decided to keep the reasons secret and
| unaccountable.
| user-the-name wrote:
| "Unaccountable"?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| Heh. I couldn't help it, even if it doesn't make much
| sense. Still, I wouldn't trust them on teams where the goal
| is transparency and fairness, that's for sure.
| user-the-name wrote:
| You wouldn't trust people that go to great lengths to not
| bring internal conflicts into the public?
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Well, have they provided an account of those reasons?
| user-the-name wrote:
| That is not what the word "unaccountable" means.
| jonjonanonnon wrote:
| tech geeks too corny, dry snitching keyboard cops _yuck_
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I mean, is it any surprise? When all you have is a hammer,
| everything is a nail. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they
| probably recruited a bunch of SJWs who went around looking to be
| offended, then were told where to go (I mean, they're non-
| technical members of a technical project) and now they're acting
| offended...
| pulisse wrote:
| > they're non-technical members of a technical project
|
| As part of the moderation team they're serving in a non-
| technical _role_, but they can and do play technical roles as
| well.
| lukebitts wrote:
| As someone mentioned in another comment, BurntSushi is an
| amazing engineer who has contributed immensely to the
| ecosystem, on top of being a moderator. Don't turn this into
| some dumb "non-technical people stirring up trouble".
| [deleted]
| opheliate wrote:
| Further information might be gleaned from the associated Reddit
| thread, where one of the mod team who resigned in this post has
| offered to answer questions surrounding the departure, although
| not relating to any specific incidents:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
| bobthechef wrote:
| I don't see an explanation anywhere. Why are they resigning? The
| reason given (a lack of accountability?) doesn't really tell me
| anything.
|
| If you're going to resign, it helps to clearly explain why with
| sufficient detail. Maybe they did this elsewhere?
| na85 wrote:
| Can someone explain why the development of a computer programming
| language needs "mod teams" and other stuff?
|
| I don't use Rust; does Rust aspire to also be a social network or
| something?
|
| It seems to me, from my outsider's perspective, that Rust has a
| lot of bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake. The "teams" directory
| [0] has two pages worth of files, which I assume are sub-team
| membership lists? Good grief.
|
| [0] https://github.com/rust-lang/team/tree/master/teams
| marcus_cemes wrote:
| I'm glad that they're trying to make their voices heard, but I
| hope this doesn't have any long lasting effects on the Rust
| community/ecosystem as a whole. We all (mostly) want to see Rust
| succeed, but we're struggling on our way there.
|
| There are a lot of companies on the edge about investing into
| Rust in my opinion, there are a lot of reasons for, but it also
| generally just feels so unstable and easy to rock.
|
| Being at the centre of controversies, such as the one with actix-
| web, gives it a bad reputation even outside Rust circles.
| praveenperera wrote:
| I love Rust. Its the language I use most these days.
|
| But seems like there is a new drama every week with the core team
| and community.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I think it's been the same drama over the core team which has
| been playing out over a month or two now.
| nomaxx117 wrote:
| What drama exactly? Sorry, I'm a bit out of the loop now, I
| stopped using reddit and twitter a few months ago.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > But seems like there is a new drama every week
|
| That's what happens when you elevate micromanagement of
| language to a task of equal or greater importance than the
| creation of code.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I recognize the PR author as the author of some of my
| favourite Rust projects. He is a prolific programmer. Good
| software from BurntSushi, in general.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| What a strange way of looking at it. At any functioning
| company, toxic employees get fired because the cost of them
| pushing out other employees is usually higher than the cost
| of firing them. Open source projects do not hire and fire
| people but do have the ability to censure toxic contributors.
|
| I know nothing about this particular case, but the general
| idea of moderating contributors to a project is not wacky as
| you seem to believe and predates the existence of distributed
| open source development.
| poszlem wrote:
| Except in those situations you never weight the amount of
| people you lose by adding a significant level of "cultural
| oversight" to a project. I actively avoid projects that
| spend a lot of time talking about "inclusivity" because to
| me it's a symptom of a (ironically) toxic environment full
| of people looking for drama (I am an ethnic and sexual
| minority myself in case someone wants to throw privilege in
| my face). The end result is that you replace one group of
| people with another group of people, you push away some to
| gain some. Except people like myself are rarely mentioned
| when there is a discussion about toxic environments.
| tharne wrote:
| > I actively avoid projects that spend a lot of time
| talking about "inclusivity" because to me it's a symptom
| of a (ironically) toxic environment full of people
| looking for drama
|
| 100%. I do the exact same thing, for the exact same
| reasons.
|
| If you see a code of conduct that reads like a political
| manifesto, that's a red flag, regardless of the
| particulars of the politics expressed.
| greenhatman wrote:
| I suspect any popular technology will have drama in the
| communities surrounding it. Anything high value will have power
| struggles around it.
|
| Same happened with Node as it gained popularity.
| pphysch wrote:
| That's frequently the nature of "community" projects. They're
| based in a particular idealism wherein authority is a
| patchable bug and direct democracy can scale infinitely.
|
| In reality, they are just free-for-all power struggles. What
| starts out as anarchic fun and inclusivity among ~1-100 like-
| minded people scales into dysfunctional sectarianism.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Why does a programming language need a 'Mod Team'? This is what
| happens when redditors leave the house.
| tharne wrote:
| > Why does a programming language need a 'Mod Team'? This is
| what happens when redditors leave the house.
|
| Exactly. CoC's have become back doors to insert a specific
| brand of politics into the development world.
| jebronie wrote:
| Is this a dirty trick by the amazon folks to harm the core team?
| mijoharas wrote:
| > by the amazon folks
|
| What is the reason that amazon folks would want to try and harm
| the rust core team?
|
| Is there a specific group of "amazon folks" you're talking
| about, or do you think the entire company has something against
| the rust core team?
|
| (Not saying they don't, I'm just slightly perplexed and have no
| idea what you're talking about).
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| At this point, it seems like Amazon running the show would
| bring some stability to what looks like a shitshow.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't believe anybody on the moderation team works at
| Amazon[1]. But I could be wrong.
|
| [1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
| tonightstoast wrote:
| BurntSushi works at salesforce and Ilogiq works at Synth.
| Couldn't find the third individual's employer but at least 2
| of 3 do not work at Amazon.
| rocqua wrote:
| Are these people on the moderator team employed by amazon?
| kristoff_it wrote:
| As Amazon conspiracy theorist in chief, I doubt this is the
| case. Amazon likes to associate with good Rust PR, this is just
| messy stuff that takes away PR bandwidth and that makes things
| more unstable. People associated with AWS (eg Shane Miller,
| Chairwoman at the Rust Foundation and head of the AWS Rust
| team) will have to play a role in this conflict, and the
| decisions they will make should be publicly scrutinized, but
| that's it.
|
| The source of this conflict seems a somewhat long-standing
| tension inside of the Rust organization.
| [deleted]
| jgrant27 wrote:
| Comrade Klabnik has been as toxic for the Rust community as he
| was for the Ruby on Rails community. This could actually turn out
| to be a positive for the future of the language and community.
| I'm not a fan of Amazon but if they took over as it's stewards it
| would be a lot better.
| earthnail wrote:
| I hope you don't mind me asking; I might just be missing a
| reference here.
|
| Is Comrade Klabnik a person, or is it a saying?
| gumps4pres wrote:
| Steve will happily admit he is a communist.
|
| Considering communism has murdered 100s of millions of people
| in the past hundred years some of us think that's a bad
| thing.
| weatherlight wrote:
| https://evrone.com/steve-klabnik-interview
|
| He's a core team member and responsible for making rust
| accessible to audiences that might not reach for rust first,
| (rubyists, etc.)
|
| he's responsible for creating a lot of top-notch
| documentation for Rust developers.
| weatherlight wrote:
| Some of us respectfully disagree.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| <inaccurate>
| u320 wrote:
| The announcement is clear that this is unrelated, it states
| health reasons.
| elzbardico wrote:
| What exactly was the role of this team? how exactly it came into
| being? I suspect that we are starting to see the reaction against
| the CoC entryists in open source projects.
| krisrm wrote:
| This makes me sad.
|
| As someone who's used Rust but isn't fully familiar with the
| community, what would the expected roles of these moderators have
| been? Is it just forum moderation or are there other components?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Based on their mods.toml file:
|
| https://github.com/rust-lang/team/blob/master/teams/mods.tom...
|
| The "description" field says "Helping uphold the code of
| conduct and community standards" which is why they left. My
| guess is people could of done literally any number of things
| that violated the Code of Conduct. They want to not start a
| witch hunt which is respectable. As someone else around this
| thread said though, it leaves room to interpret it as the
| absolute worst. I am going to assume it's not as awful as it
| seems and might just be something to the tune of differing
| opinions. Maybe another Linus Torvalds scenario, I rather not
| make assumptions that are really bad.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Is this about Amazon employing most of the core team and having
| too much influence on the language ?
|
| I remember someone else high up in the Rust project leaving due
| to those reasons last month.
| [deleted]
| TeeJayD wrote:
| Great news
| scandox wrote:
| > In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances
| beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion and
| confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust community and
| the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements
| by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the
| situation.
|
| Isn't that a kind of scorched earth statement? I read it as "we
| will be discreet and don't believe anything anybody tells you in
| the future...instead assume all your worst fears are true".
| tinco wrote:
| I feel it's a bit of a tautology, the fact that they're
| resigning already clearly communicates there's an
| irreconcilable difference between the mod team and the core
| team. If the core team comes with an explanation that would
| make light of the situation surely the new mod team would be
| skeptical.
|
| That said, there is still a bit of a game left to be played.
| The mod team just played their trump card, by instantly making
| the matter super public. But by keeping the specifics close to
| the chest they both keep their integrity and they give the next
| mod team some leverage for their interaction with the core team
| to resolve this situation.
|
| It's really good btw that they're keeping the specifics
| private. Having someone publicly lynched is never a good
| situation, it's probably something that's offensive to a group
| of people, but the person(s) who caused offence probably have
| no bad intentions. It's hard running an organisation with a
| diverse group of people. You'll never get everyone to settle on
| the same moral values so it's inevitable that you'll get
| someone who is unapologetic about some value they hold.
| anandrew wrote:
| > but the person(s) who caused offence probably have no bad
| intentions
|
| I'd give the mod team the benefit of the doubt that the
| offense they've all resigned over is not so mild that it
| could be committed unintentionally.
| tharne wrote:
| > I'd give the mod team the benefit of the doubt that the
| offense they've all resigned over is not so mild that it
| could be committed unintentionally.
|
| I don't think that's necessarily a safe assumption,
| particularly in today's cultural and political environment.
| anandrew wrote:
| I agree. Lets put it this way: I'll be surprised, but not
| shocked, if the assumption turns out false.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| The people who freak out over trivialities usually don't
| resign; they try to get _others_ fired.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Sometimes they resign when they find out that they _can
| 't_ get others fired.
|
| I don't know whether that fits in this case. I'm inclined
| to think not; I suspect that those who freak out over
| trivialities, try to get others fired, find out that they
| can't, and then resign, tend to have a public hissy fit
| when they resign. I'm not sure that what the Rust
| Moderation Team did counts; they seem to be trying to
| _not_ air dirty laundry (or what they perceive to be
| dirty).
| native_samples wrote:
| _" by keeping the specifics close to the chest they both keep
| their integrity"_
|
| Odd code of honour there. They've made a lot of dramatic
| insinuations about other Rust contributors, basically
| asserted that they're all bad people, and provided no detail.
| That's the opposite of integrity.
| capableweb wrote:
| I read it as they warn people to believe the core team
| specifically, not the whole Rust organization, as the reason
| they are leaving is because of the actions from individuals in
| the core team (or lack of thereof).
| dathinab wrote:
| > warn [..] to believe the core team
|
| It's not even this, it's only "believe the core Team wrt.
| this specific situation" as well as a implicit "we do not
| believe the core Team is suited for making decisions about
| the personnel of the new Moderation Team Members".
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Assume all your worst fears are true" is substantially
| different in meaning from "exercise skepticism around public
| statements by the Core Team." I understand your reading, but I
| don't think it's warranted by the actual public announcement
| here.
| vegai_ wrote:
| Exercise _extreme_ skepticism. It doesn 't seem like that
| word is there by accident.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Translating from don't-sue-me "extreme skepticism"
| obviously means "they're a clique of manipulative liars".
| WithinReason wrote:
| You could say it's demeaning towards the Core Team, which
| violates point 6 of the Rust Code of Conduct.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| It's more them saying be skeptical of anything the accused says
| about the situation, which is common sense in that the
| "wrongdoer" will more than likely spin the story to save face.
| Unlike a court of law, they're under no oath.
|
| They may make a statement about the situation if the core team
| decides to release details on the situation, but they don't
| want to be the first to do so, so they're simply saying be
| skeptical if the core team speaks out because it may not be the
| whole story.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Without knowing details, I can say from experience that those
| who feel they are the most righteous are often the most
| wrong. I've been on both sides of this.
|
| If this has to be aired publicly, then we need to be able to
| objectively assess. Otherwise, I'm reading this as 'we don't
| get along with those guys and gals on the core team and vice
| versa', which is, fine, it's just humans not getting along.
|
| Which reminds me, I don't get along with some team members
| either. I want to write an email just like this, a veritable
| 'fuck off, you stink". Feels good. Now what?
|
| Move along everyone, we're all adults after all (right?).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Not really, the mod-teams grievance is with the structure
| (and accountability) of the rust organisation (in
| particular the core-team). Likely they were triggered by a
| specific instance, but we can assess the problems with
| accountability, e.g. the power of the core-team to ignore
| rules that apply to everyone else quite objectively by
| looking at the power structures of the organisation.
|
| I think if you want to highlight problems with a
| process/structure it is much better not to get into
| specifics of one instance. This is what the (former) mod-
| team is doing.
| crate_barre wrote:
| So get into the specifics of every instance. Trust me,
| the world is bored, we'll be judge and jury on this.
|
| Don't be half assed about it. Ya'll wanna air it out, air
| it out.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| I'd rather say that a specific very annoying type of wrong
| people feels righteous, for reasons that range from
| psychotic entitlement to not understanding what they are
| doing. Right people often feel righteous for valid reasons.
| crate_barre wrote:
| We've entered Dunning-Kruger effect, or now days:
|
| https://reddit.com/r/NotLikeTheOtherGirls
|
| So some people are particularly special, huh? I doubt it.
| u320 wrote:
| Sure but there is no way for us to know who the wrongdoer is
| in this case.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Why do we care? Are we in middle school?
|
| We are professionals - I'm not going to get involved in
| playground politics.
| golemotron wrote:
| Proprietary software has a lot of problems and open
| source was a good response to them, but it's notable that
| proprietary isn't as prone to the 'middle school'
| problem. When money is involved, there's more alignment.
| criddell wrote:
| Yet here you are getting involved.
| PKop wrote:
| >Why do we care?
|
| We're developers, and many use Rust (though
| organizational politics can effect many other projects as
| well, how it plays out here could affect other situations
| etc) so in one way or another care very much about if the
| project is being run effectively, which side to support
| in internal conflict so as to ensure the project keeps
| being run effectively etc.
|
| >not going to get involved
|
| Getting involved or not are both political acts.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Well, obviously, but that's why you should be skeptical of
| both sides. It's just that the resigned moderation team
| aren't saying anything. I'd expect the core team to also
| urge people to be skeptical if the former moderation team
| do speak out about the situation.
|
| I'm not saying who is right or wrong. I'm just responding
| to the parent comment because I think they're extrapolating
| too much from the statement.
| amalcon wrote:
| In context, I read this as:
|
| "We're not going to say what, specifically, one or more Core
| Team members are being held unaccountable for. If the Core Team
| does say what, specifically, we aren't necessarily going to
| respond. Don't take our non-response as an endorsement that
| this is what it's about."
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's the opposite: it's a "we refuse to drag this drama out
| into the public sphere" statement.
| dogleash wrote:
| That's a naive reading. They are dragging more into the
| public sphere than necessary to raise their grievances.
|
| They could have kept the statement confined to disagreement
| with the government structure. Leave it ambiguous between
| whether it was a theoretical weakness in the structure, or a
| practical one where they already experienced the inability to
| censure.
|
| People _like_ goss. Wagging your eyebrows to imply something
| definitely did happen - but you 're too classy to release
| details - is not a insipid act.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > They could have kept the statement confined to
| disagreement with the government structure. Leave it
| ambiguous between whether it was a theoretical weakness in
| the structure, or a practical one.
|
| Nobody resigns over a theoretical flaw in the governance
| structure. It's only when it starts becoming a problem that
| people do so.
| lmkg wrote:
| The mod team is in a difficult position and are trying to
| thread a needle.
|
| * They actions they have taken have publicly-visible
| consequences, so they must publicly acknowledge it
|
| * They want to be respectful, and so minimize the amount of
| information they make public
|
| * They believe the Core team _acts in bad faith_. So
| whatever public statement they make, they must anticipate
| being attacked for it and pre-emptively defend themselves.
|
| That's a difficult set of objectives to try to meet
| simultaneously. I'm going to choose to support they way
| they've handled it, even if I don't 100% agree with it,
| because I don't think a perfect solution is possible.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| They are dragging more into the public sphere than
| necessary
|
| That's a bold claim. For you to accurately make that claim,
| you'd need to know every other piece of the story that lead
| to this point and lead them to feel that this public
| statement was their only remaining choice.
| dogleash wrote:
| I was replying to someone who said the content of the
| resignation was a refusal to drag drama into the public.
| I did not say dragging it into public was a bad tactic
| for accomplishing their goals.
|
| >you'd need to know every other piece of the story that
| lead to this point and lead them to feel that this public
| statement was their only remaining choice.
|
| No I wouldn't. I will stand by my claim that they said
| more than necessary to raise the structural issues they
| perceive in Rust's governance. They very well may need to
| say more than that - or even more than they did say - to
| see their desired changes to the governance system
| enacted. Not what I was responding to.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| "I don't know the story, nor any of the events leading up
| to this point, but I am _convinced_ that one side is
| handling it wrong! "
| intelfx wrote:
| Ironically, that's exactly what the moderation team seems
| to insinuate with their "extreme skepticism" claim.
|
| "You don't know the story, we won't tell any of the
| events leading up to this point, but you better be sure
| that these people on the core team are wrong!"
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree that "don't trust XYZ, they'll
| probably lie, but I can't tell you any more about it"
| is... very non-ideal.
|
| There are some situations in life where there just aren't
| any good choices. It's possible that this may have been
| one of them.
|
| What would _you_ do if you felt that you had to walk away
| from a bad situation on a public project, and had strong
| reason to believe that the other party would attempt to
| publicly misrepresent the situation?
|
| You could remain silent, but we're talking about the
| court of public opinion here and we know silence is often
| interpreted as guilt, or at least irresponsibility. It
| would also allow the other party to continue creating
| this "bad situation" without, at the least, giving future
| moderators some warning. Likely, the mod team would have
| faced similar criticism had they simply walked away
| silently.
|
| Presumably, the members of the mod team are interested in
| maintaining their own reputations and would like to
| continue working in this field.
| splistud wrote:
| Then why the guild-drama act?
|
| Why are users supposed to exercise skepticism about anything
| the core team says, without any information from the other
| side so that we may judge for ourselves where our skepticism
| is warranted?
| Angius wrote:
| Drama has already been dragged out. Now people are left to
| speculate and accuse. This thing from 4 years ago has been
| dug up, for example: https://archive.fo/f10KK and I can see
| it being the basis of some of those speculations.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| It's more of a "let's allude to problematic behavior, without
| actually explaining it, so we can fuel a maximal amount of
| speculation, and also let's throw in some hot-button, culture
| wars issues, just to spice up the discussion"
|
| I mean, I agree that their intentions were probably more like
| what you wrote, but the resulting effect is far worse than if
| some shitty behavior from someone in the rust core team had
| become public knowledge...
| u320 wrote:
| It is very much in the public sphere now though.
| 2fast4you wrote:
| Sure, but you can't resign and not have it be a public
| thing. They said as little as they could
| jjk166 wrote:
| The problem wasn't saying too much, it's saying too
| little. A resignation is supposed to be a message. The
| appropriate thing is to make that message clear and
| professional. It can be discrete without innuendo.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you can resign with a lot less "drama",
| for the lack of a better word. Simply make the PR remove
| people from the moderators list and say "We don't want to
| be moderators anymore", but instead they give clues to
| what could have happen for them to take this action.
|
| I guess you can say that their action was "semi-public".
| It wasn't trying to be completely private, and neither
| completely public, but somewhere in-between.
| cycomanic wrote:
| But if you just say "we don't want to be moderators
| anymore" nothing would change would it? The whole point
| of the statement is that the mod-team believes something
| in the organisational structure needs to change.
|
| What would you have done in that case?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I would explain what went wrong. It's clear that their
| organizational suggestions were prompted by a member of
| the core team doing something they consider terribly
| wrong - how can it be so bad the Rust community has to
| know about it yet not bad enough that the community needs
| to know what it was?
| rndgermandude wrote:
| >I'm pretty sure you can resign with a lot less "drama"
|
| I am not sure you can, unless you play the politician bit
| and lie about "wanting to spend more time with family" or
| "health reasons".
|
| If they resigned without any statement, people would have
| noticed as well, and speculation and gossiping would be
| still rampant, if not more rampant, because it's not
| every day that the entire Rust moderation team resigns.
|
| They are between a rock and a hard place, if their
| objective really was to avoid public drama. Give too
| little detail and you're entirely at the mercy of
| speculation and maybe whatever the opposing party puts
| out (without other people even knowing who that opposing
| party is). Give too much information and you may
| irrevocably hurt people (like victims, or even the
| accused when a mob comes for them) or the community as a
| whole.
| bccdee wrote:
| The fact that the moderation team didn't have the power to
| moderate the core team is public, as it needs to be if that
| is going to change. The actual moderation issues that arose
| from that have remained private, which is probably for the
| best, because the entire point of moderation is to not try
| people in the court of public opinion.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > we refuse to drag this drama out into the public sphere"
|
| I genuinely can't think of a more dramatic way to drag this
| into the public sphere than saying "we all quit due to
| unspecified violations of the vague code of conduct - go make
| your best guesses what those were"
| [deleted]
| bkirkby wrote:
| it's very similar to working in a corporation and seeing
| someone get fired. the company is bound by legal concerns to
| not reveal why the person was fired, which leaves everyone else
| wondering if the person had done something fireable or if the
| company was playing politics with power.
|
| i've heard netflix does things a bit differently. when people
| are asked to leave, their manager sends an email out to
| everyone explaining exactly why that person was asked to leave.
| i assume their generous severance package contains a legal
| release for netflix to be able to do that.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| > the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why
| the person was fired
|
| I think this is a fairly common misconception. While you
| might sign an anti disparagement agreement when you were
| hired, those tend to be one-way and designed to protect the
| company. And the bar to prove a defamation case is _extremely
| high_.
|
| AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on
| firings as a matter of policy, not law.
| gsnedders wrote:
| > AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on
| firings as a matter of policy, not law.
|
| Note that this isn't true in much of Europe, where in many
| countries firing someone beyond their probationary period
| requires due cause. I kinda suspect this is largely a
| function of at-will employment?
| temac wrote:
| There is to be a cause, but there is no need to broadcast
| it to the world. The specifics are mainly a matter
| between the employee and employer.
| pc86 wrote:
| It's not a legal requirement, yes, but any competent HR
| person or attorney will tell you publicly telling everyone
| in a company or on a team why someone was fired is a _huge_
| liability and will almost certainly result in a lawsuit
| after it happens a couple times.
| jaywalk wrote:
| You're correct in that there is no law saying that
| employers are prohibited from disclosing why a person was
| fired. But the policies are a result of laws that could
| open them up to legal action if they were to disclose any
| specifics. However unlikely that legal action may be, and
| probably even more unlikely to succeed, they still gain
| nothing from any such disclosures so it makes perfect sense
| to prohibit them.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Exactly. Any such disclosure gives a foothold for legal
| action that could drag on for a long time and cost a
| fortune. Even if you win, you lose, so why take that
| risk?
| ectopod wrote:
| It's not that simple. Arbitrary firings are bad for
| morale, so it's in management's interest for the
| remaining employees to understand what happened.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Employers airing dirty laundry is way worse for morale.
| Typically the people who work in close proximity have a
| good idea of why their colleague may have been fired, or
| can reach out to them privately to get details. If the
| fired employee doesn't want to talk about it, it's
| presumably something private, and the employer probably
| shouldn't either.
| jaywalk wrote:
| In my experience, remaining employees generally
| understand what happened without the company having to
| disclose exact reasonings. Especially publicly.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's overwhelmingly likely that the person did something that
| was fireable, even in the big bad, limited employee rights
| USA.
|
| At the same time, professional discretion is the norm and so
| you might not know from the written/spoken language if
| someone was let go because of a specific acute incident or a
| pattern of under-performance. (Except that people usually
| know who the chronic under-performers are, so when one is let
| go, you tend to assume it was performance-related and if
| someone thought to be a high-performer is let go, you tend to
| assume a non-performance cause.)
| dathinab wrote:
| > of scorched earth statement
|
| I wouldn't say so it basically says:
|
| Let's keep past thinks in the past.
|
| Through it also implies there is at least one Person on the
| core Team which they are afraid will abuse their "Let's keep
| past thinks in the past." approach to twist the truth.
| donatj wrote:
| If you're not going to publicly state your grievances, so
| publicly posting your resignation seems at best political and
| at worst slanderous.
|
| Either let the public in on the situation or don't. Don't
| badmouth someone and then refuse to explain why.
| dathinab wrote:
| It's the best they can do for the rust community.
|
| Pointing out some specific things is hard as it's most likely
| not one specific thing but many small things plus some
| "that's enough" bigger thing(s) and because it likely has
| various negative effects including:
|
| -people focusing on that specific thing, instead of the
| general problem (unaccountability)
|
| -people overreacting, e.g. starting a witch hunt with serve
| negative effects for the community
|
| - ... (other more vague/implicit things, like leaking of
| private information)
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| Agreed. There was no good option - this was the least worst
| option they could come up with.
| ziddoap wrote:
| They explained why: accountability and structure.
|
| Do you need specific instances, date and timestamped?
| donatj wrote:
| Yes. If you're going to accuse someone of something, have
| details.
| ziddoap wrote:
| It's a resignation, not a prosecution.
|
| Edit:
|
| If it helps, imagine a time you quit your job.
|
| Did you provide a datestamped list of incidents that lead
| to your decision to quit?
|
| Or were you, by chance, slightly more vague and provide
| something along the lines of: "The
| culture/fit/hours/goals/growth do not align with mine so
| I am resigning."?
| jjk166 wrote:
| I've always written out what specific issues I had that
| led me to resign. If you don't say anything, nothing
| changes. A resignation letter is a professional curtesy,
| the point is to provide useful, professional information.
| Of course in some instances there were personal factors
| that influenced my decision, and I didn't list those out
| in detail, but I let them know that those were issues on
| my end that the employer didn't need to address. There's
| no need to beat a dead horse and bring up every single
| grievance, and you can be diplomatic, but if an issue is
| bad enough to warrant resignation, it really should be
| mentioned in the resignation letter.
|
| I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done
| something wrong but refuse to clarify.
| ziddoap wrote:
| >I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done
| something wrong but refuse to clarify.
|
| I suppose we're of different opinion, as I considered the
| resignation letter to have enough clarity to the intended
| recipients to be acceptable. They didn't say "I quit, the
| end". They pointed at the specific areas of issue
| (accountability, structure) of which the core team is
| likely well aware of the minutiae.
|
| Just because it wasn't explained incident by incident to
| the public does not mean the "employer" (or, in this
| case, core team) did not understand the message.
|
| I would wager that incidents were brought up, not
| addressed (or addressed as a WNF), escalated, then
| resulted in this resignation. The people relevant to each
| stage will be familiar with each stage, and should
| hopefully be able to follow the progression.
|
| The public does not need to be privy to each and every
| individual incident, as much as everyone would like to
| butter their popcorn.
| jjk166 wrote:
| They dropped a pretty beefy bombshell in the last
| paragraph that there were issues beyond accountability
| that they refuse to disclose. I'm absolutely certain that
| the core team has a good idea what they are talking
| about, the problem is this is a public letter, the
| intended audience is everyone, and they specifically
| attack the core team's credibility.
|
| When I resign from a job, I send my resignation to my
| employer in private. I wouldn't put anything in it that
| I'm not comfortable with becoming public, and if they
| wish to share what I wrote that's fine, but the purpose
| of being discreet is to leave the level of disclosure up
| to the other party's discretion. You don't send a company
| wide email saying "management knows what they did, don't
| believe a word they say, I'm out, peace!"
| ziddoap wrote:
| >is this is a public letter, the intended audience is
| everyone
|
| Just because something is public does not mean the
| intended audience is also everyone. Something can be
| intended for a subset of people, but broadly published.
| But I think this has been hashed out somewhere else in
| the thread.
|
| I think " _management knows what they did, don 't believe
| a word they say, I'm out, peace!_" is a bit of a
| disingenuous reading of the letter, but you have a valid
| point about the last paragraph and I'll walk back what I
| said a little bit.
| donatj wrote:
| By the public nature of it, it's a bit of a persecution.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Persecution: hostility and ill-treatment, especially on
| the basis of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation
| or political beliefs.
|
| What I read does not seem to fit this definition, but
| maybe to others it does.
| donatj wrote:
| That's _one_ of the dictionary definitions. That 's not
| how it's used in everyday parlance however. It's usually
| used to mean harassment, usually of a group.
|
| > To harass or punish in a manner designed to injure,
| grieve, or afflict
| ziddoap wrote:
| At this point I think we might just be talking past each
| other, but I fail to see how this resignation letter
| meets that definition either. I don't see the letter as
| harassment to the core team. It also doesn't strike me as
| a letter designed to injure or grieve.
|
| Semantics aside, the letter may not give enough
| information to _you_ , but it gives enough information
| that anyone privy to the internal team dynamics will
| understand the underlying issues and the logical
| progression of events that lead to the resignation.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| People in open source don't seem to understand that major open
| source communities such as those for Rust are work environments,
| and in work environments you should act professionally. Don't
| discuss religion or politics. Don't insult. Respect those who you
| disagree with.
| m0zg wrote:
| They'd do well providing some root causes for this blowout. "Core
| team won't take CoC" is a bit of a cop-out. If the conduct is
| legal, IMO people who contribute most of the code should have
| more weight when deciding moderation related issues (and people
| who contribute none should have no say at all).
|
| Show me the transgressions that would require CoC to be enforced
| and then I'd be more sympathetic. As presented, this seems like
| political bullshit, and their efforts would be better spent
| overhauling Rust's unergonomic error handling.
| yannoninator wrote:
| Could we have someone from the Rust Core Team here for a
| statement for more context rather than us guessing the context?
|
| We still don't know what is going on.
| lvass wrote:
| Not that this specifically will cause any consequence for the
| language, but it's terrible how entirely possible some similar
| drama can affect it. This is a complex, unspecified language with
| a single decent implementation.
| mahkoh wrote:
| Selective enforcement of CoCs? Hard to believe. The Rust Code
| Team has my full confidence.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| "Arbitrary and capricious" are the first two words that come to
| mind any time I hear "Code of Conduct."
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| "we're resigning, but not saying why; just believe us anyway".
| Really?
| elihu wrote:
| What do you think a moderation team ought to do in a situation
| where code-of-conduct violations are happening and they can't
| do anything about it? To stay and not say anything publicly
| would leave outsiders with the impression that everything is
| fine and that whatever is happening has their personal stamp of
| approval. There may be valid reasons they don't feel at liberty
| to name the parties and say what's going on.
|
| To leave an organization might be their only recourse.
| Sometimes doing the right thing is necessary even when the
| outside public is unable to independently confirm that one is
| doing the right thing.
|
| We have no idea whether the mod team resigning was the best
| choice, but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that it
| was. And if they are resigning due to a real problem, then that
| problem is much more likely to be addressed and resolved by the
| new moderation team now that the community knows that an issue
| exists.
| queuebert wrote:
| 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.
| staticassertion wrote:
| As a rust user I really don't care at all about this stuff.
| Rust is bigger than any of these teams now, and it has been for
| a few years. I have a lot of confidence that the language will
| continue forward in a healthy way, and that governance issues
| will ultimately smooth out.
|
| I only care insofar as I have been a part of the rust community
| for 6 years or so, and I care about others in the community.
| dathinab wrote:
| > I think Rust is a great programming language, but to be
| honest all this drama discourages me from using it as much.
|
| It has little to do with using the language.
|
| Also I doubt there is more drama in Rust then in Python, Ruby
| or similar. It's just that in recent years everything rust get
| always a lot of attention.
|
| There is also not just "the rust Team" there are many
| independent working Teams, as well as a foundation. I don't
| think it becoming de-functional or fork-splintered is something
| you have to worry about.
| DarkCrusader2 wrote:
| From the rust subreddit, which apparently is an "unofficial
| space" does not want people to discuss any specifics either. Why
| is this discourse happening in public? They want to use public
| opinion to bring reforms to the Rust governance but not divulge
| any details?
|
| Does Rust really have a community if noone but a few select
| member have access to the information regarding why things are
| changing and the community members can't even discuss the
| forbidden topics in "unofficial spaces" either. How do I decide
| if I an getting involved with a community or just an elite club.
|
| Quoting from the stickied comment from r/rust moderator.
|
| > In the interest of not hastily jumping to conclusions, we will
| be removing speculation that alleges that this is due to any
| particular individual(s). The moderation team appears to have
| gone to great lengths to avoid naming names, ostensibly in the
| service of focusing a spotlight on the core team as a whole
| rather than any of its members. If they had wanted to name names,
| they could have. I understand that it is difficult to discuss a
| topic without firm details, but please refrain from engaging in
| speculation. I have confirmation that the core team will be
| making a statement about this at some point, which will hopefully
| shed more light on the situation.
| [deleted]
| dogleash wrote:
| >Does Rust really have a community if noone but a few select
| member have access to the information regarding why things are
| changing and the community members can't even discuss the
| forbidden topics in "unofficial spaces" either. How do I decide
| if I an getting involved with a community or just an elite
| club.
|
| As a first order approximation, the word "community" is so
| overused as to mean nothing. It's often used to obscure a power
| structure, or pretend a mass of people are more cohesive than
| they are. Sometimes both. Don't go into any software project
| expecting more.
|
| Rust is a big club and you ain't in it. You can still use it,
| submit patches, maybe even work towards a position in their
| project hierarchy. The important thing is you got your first
| strong sniff of knowing where you stand in relation to the
| club.
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