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> They will use anything (e.g. a microaggression, a usually inadvertent tiny slight) to justify cancelling someone. Are there any examples of this happening in

> They will use anything (e.g. a microaggression, a usually inadvertent tiny slight) to justify cancelling someone. Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent open source project? The debate over COCs is a few years old at this point, so if this type of abuse were a common problem I'd imagine there'd be some major examples right now. (I freely admit there may indeed be some, and I'm just not aware.)

type0 5y ago
> Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent open source project? Open Source Initiative itself expelled Eric S. Raymond (a founding member) from their mailing list
- nmjohn 5y ago
  ESR didn't get cancelled for microaggressions. It was because he has a long history of being utterly vile towards black people and women, amongst other very much not "just a microaggression" behaviors.
  - terracottage 5y ago
    Whenever I hear this sort of second hand and third hand information, I assume it's a wild exaggeration, amplified through a whisper network. If there is something concrete to point to, with evidence, people do. In the absence of that, I assume it's just malicious gossip. Hasn't failed me yet.
    - nmjohn 5y ago
      I mean, have you bothered to look? It's not a secret nor in private. Defending eugenics in the comments: https://web.archive.org/web/20210419141913/http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3974#comment-344083 https://web.archive.org/web/20210419141913/http://esr.ibibli... Claiming black people have a lower IQ than everyone else (in an argument that black people shouldn't own guns as a result): https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 Claims LGBT people are making it up: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/769730601872044032/photo/1 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/769730601872044032/photo/1 Lots of racist comments: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/780839196231630848/photo/1 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/780839196231630848/photo/1 This is what I could find in less than 5 minutes of searching - the receipts are there, it is not "a wild exaggeration"
      - terracottage 5y ago
        You're literally doing the thing where you rephrase things to put words in his mouth. Either you are incapable of entertaining certain thoughts dispassionately, or you're on a quest to paint him with the worst brush. Oddly, you don't seem to be aware that you're doing it. Reminds me of the Remove Stallman affair. When autism meets normies, the normies shriek and start reading moral judgements into things. e.g Black people do have a lower IQ, in aggregate, in the US. Are we supposed to pretend that's not true when it's been measured?
      - tacitusarc 5y ago
        Huh. Nothing there is overt, it all hides behind some questionable statistics, but it definitely makes me not want to have a beer with the guy.
grey-area 5y ago
Well one of the people who helped draft this coc have themselves been banned from go spaces using it: https://mobile.twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1438597459383623684 https://mobile.twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1438597459383... I don’t know all the drama in this case and don’t particularly care to know but the punishment seems excessive and arbitrary, and surprised quite a few people. They should drop this sort of heavy handed moderation - communities are governed by consent, not by fiat. This coc seems excessively wordy to me, and subject to arbitrary interpretation and enforcement, and thus a waste of time for all involved, I don’t plan to read it or abide by it, but instead to use common sense. IMO community rules are enforced by example and gentle encouragement, not by encoding a long set of dos and don’ts.
- geofft 5y ago
  There's always two sides to every story, though. I don't know anything about what's going on (and I don't write Go), but there's a mention in the Twitter replies about further discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/ppluux/peter_bourgon_banned_from_all_go_community_spaces/ https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/ppluux/peter_bourgo... which links this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1exmMfbgVCz3dRXOOlfUCYeiXCuyNaMUnDogDv88HV4g/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1exmMfbgVCz3dRXOOlfUCYeiX... which looks an entirely reasonable reason to formally ask someone to knock it off and take some time to chill. From the document, it seems that he has a policy of ignoring Slack moderators, took the fight to Twitter when his Slack account was temporarily deactivated, and has a pattern of such behavior. If that document is to be believed, the punishment was not excessive and arbitrary. He got a temporary Slack ban, which was appropriate and measured, and then chose to continue escalating. There's also this reply: https://twitter.com/ahmetb/status/1438653799724294144 https://twitter.com/ahmetb/status/1438653799724294144 > @peterbourgon Many of us here have respect for u from a technical standpoint and learned from your talks/code. However it’s wrong to troll people on slack (because “this is internet”) and call them names on twitter for no apparent reason. I hope you can stand back and understand the mistake. For what it's worth, I actually think it's a good sign that the CoC is equally enforced against a drafter of the CoC - the alternative is that there's a group of people who are sufficiently in the in-crowd that their behavior is the definition of what's acceptable and they get to do what they want. It's absolutely possible to abuse the power of CoCs, but this seems like the exact opposite.

type0 5y ago

> Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent open source project? Open Source Initiative itself expelled Eric S. Raymond (a founding member) from their mailing list

nmjohn 5y ago
ESR didn't get cancelled for microaggressions. It was because he has a long history of being utterly vile towards black people and women, amongst other very much not "just a microaggression" behaviors.
- terracottage 5y ago
  Whenever I hear this sort of second hand and third hand information, I assume it's a wild exaggeration, amplified through a whisper network. If there is something concrete to point to, with evidence, people do. In the absence of that, I assume it's just malicious gossip. Hasn't failed me yet.
  - nmjohn 5y ago
    I mean, have you bothered to look? It's not a secret nor in private. Defending eugenics in the comments: https://web.archive.org/web/20210419141913/http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3974#comment-344083 https://web.archive.org/web/20210419141913/http://esr.ibibli... Claiming black people have a lower IQ than everyone else (in an argument that black people shouldn't own guns as a result): https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833 Claims LGBT people are making it up: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/769730601872044032/photo/1 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/769730601872044032/photo/1 Lots of racist comments: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/780839196231630848/photo/1 https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/780839196231630848/photo/1 This is what I could find in less than 5 minutes of searching - the receipts are there, it is not "a wild exaggeration"
    - terracottage 5y ago
      You're literally doing the thing where you rephrase things to put words in his mouth. Either you are incapable of entertaining certain thoughts dispassionately, or you're on a quest to paint him with the worst brush. Oddly, you don't seem to be aware that you're doing it. Reminds me of the Remove Stallman affair. When autism meets normies, the normies shriek and start reading moral judgements into things. e.g Black people do have a lower IQ, in aggregate, in the US. Are we supposed to pretend that's not true when it's been measured?
    - tacitusarc 5y ago
      Huh. Nothing there is overt, it all hides behind some questionable statistics, but it definitely makes me not want to have a beer with the guy.

grey-area 5y ago

Well one of the people who helped draft this coc have themselves been banned from go spaces using it: https://mobile.twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1438597459383623684 https://mobile.twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1438597459383... I don’t know all the drama in this case and don’t particularly care to know but the punishment seems excessive and arbitrary, and surprised quite a few people. They should drop this sort of heavy handed moderation - communities are governed by consent, not by fiat. This coc seems excessively wordy to me, and subject to arbitrary interpretation and enforcement, and thus a waste of time for all involved, I don’t plan to read it or abide by it, but instead to use common sense. IMO community rules are enforced by example and gentle encouragement, not by encoding a long set of dos and don’ts.

geofft 5y ago
There's always two sides to every story, though. I don't know anything about what's going on (and I don't write Go), but there's a mention in the Twitter replies about further discussion on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/ppluux/peter_bourgon_banned_from_all_go_community_spaces/ https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/ppluux/peter_bourgo... which links this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1exmMfbgVCz3dRXOOlfUCYeiXCuyNaMUnDogDv88HV4g/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1exmMfbgVCz3dRXOOlfUCYeiX... which looks an entirely reasonable reason to formally ask someone to knock it off and take some time to chill. From the document, it seems that he has a policy of ignoring Slack moderators, took the fight to Twitter when his Slack account was temporarily deactivated, and has a pattern of such behavior. If that document is to be believed, the punishment was not excessive and arbitrary. He got a temporary Slack ban, which was appropriate and measured, and then chose to continue escalating. There's also this reply: https://twitter.com/ahmetb/status/1438653799724294144 https://twitter.com/ahmetb/status/1438653799724294144 > @peterbourgon Many of us here have respect for u from a technical standpoint and learned from your talks/code. However it’s wrong to troll people on slack (because “this is internet”) and call them names on twitter for no apparent reason. I hope you can stand back and understand the mistake. For what it's worth, I actually think it's a good sign that the CoC is equally enforced against a drafter of the CoC - the alternative is that there's a group of people who are sufficiently in the in-crowd that their behavior is the definition of what's acceptable and they get to do what they want. It's absolutely possible to abuse the power of CoCs, but this seems like the exact opposite.