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Rust Moderation Team Resigns

• atsjie 5y ago
  Seems like a new mod team has already been found? https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
• emerged 5y ago
  Let me guess, they want to govern Rust via whatever DAO-of-the-day unproven crypto tech instead.
• lifeisgood99 5y ago
  Sorry what's the context?
  • xdennis 5y ago
    The current speculation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307015
  • cpach 5y ago
    No idea – At this point it seems like the context isn’t widely known outside of close circles.
    • ziml77 5y ago
      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.
• fivelessminutes 5y ago
  'Core team' as a concept naturally leads to elitism.
  • choeger 5y ago
    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)".
    • everybodyknows 5y ago
      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.
    • capableweb 5y ago
      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.
      • dboreham 5y ago
        This is what humans do.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • maydup-nem 5y ago
        > "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?
    • 5y ago
• nikivi 5y ago
  I wonder if it's related to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
  • alexarnesen 5y ago
    The author of that piece is on the core team. https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
    • OJFord 5y ago
      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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307113)
      • rocqua 5y ago
        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 5y ago
    Alternately, there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • jturpin 5y ago
      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.
• capableweb 5y ago
  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.
  • willvarfar 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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.
• xibalba 5y ago
  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.
  • notreallyserio 5y ago
    It looks like they've decided to keep the reasons secret and unaccountable.
    • user-the-name 5y ago
      "Unaccountable"?
      • notreallyserio 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          You wouldn't trust people that go to great lengths to not bring internal conflicts into the public?
      • pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
        Well, have they provided an account of those reasons?
        • user-the-name 5y ago
          That is not what the word "unaccountable" means.
  • rbanffy 5y ago
    > 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.
• jebronie 5y ago
  Is this a dirty trick by the amazon folks to harm the core team?
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    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 https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
    • tonightstoast 5y ago
      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 5y ago
    Are these people on the moderator team employed by amazon?
  • mijoharas 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
    At this point, it seems like Amazon running the show would bring some stability to what looks like a shitshow.
  • kristoff_it 5y ago
    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.
• krisrm 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Based on their mods.toml file: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/blob/master/teams/mods.toml 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.
• scandox 5y ago
  > 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".
  • capableweb 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
    "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_ 5y ago
      Exercise extreme skepticism. It doesn't seem like that word is there by accident.
      • HelloNurse 5y ago
        Translating from don't-sue-me "extreme skepticism" obviously means "they're a clique of manipulative liars".
• ferdowsi 5y ago
  These organizational breakdowns in tech communities (recently Rust,.NET, Elm) make me much more appreciative of long-running, relatively healthy communities.
  • nzach 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on the Elm breakdown? I don't remember reading about it.
    • foldr 5y ago
      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.
      • nzach 5y ago
        Thanks!
      • iudqnolq 5y ago
        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.
• randyrand 5y ago
  Programming Language authors love to formalize everything, but did Rust really need all of these rules and moderators to begin with?
  • sharklazer 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      You realize that the author of those posts are also devs right?
    • nvrspyx 5y ago
      You realize that the moderation team were all rust contributors/developers, right?
      • LanceH 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          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 5y ago
            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
• throwaway59553 5y ago
  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?
• lovecg 5y ago
  Why does a language need a “moderation team”? C++ seems to do fine without one.
  • Daishiman 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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.
    • bluGill 5y ago
      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).
    • 5y ago
• fijiaarone 5y ago
  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.
  • fijiaarone 5y ago
    4 Downvotes in 1 minute -- exhibit A
    • gspr 5y ago
      > 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?
    • dthul 5y ago
      The author of the PR is burntsushi of ripgrep fame. This isn't some "developer oppression by non-developers".
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • njgingrich 5y ago
    You're saying BurntSushi, llogiq, and matthieu-m _don't_ contribute to rust?
• zozbot234 5y ago
  TL;DR: the Rust development community is so moderate and peaceful on its own that the Rust Moderation Team was left without a job!
• jonjonanonnon 5y ago
  tech geeks too corny, dry snitching keyboard cops yuck
• the_duke 5y ago
  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/membership_changes.md https://github.com/rust-lang/governance/blob/master/common/m... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
  • tapirl 5y ago
    kick off? Is this necessary for an open source non-profit project?
    • medeshago 5y ago
      Of course it is. What if a contributor is harassing another team member? What if he/she is being openly racist/sexist/etc.?
      • Ticklee 5y ago
        In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want as long as they contribute good code.
        • nopcode 5y ago
          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.
• praveenperera 5y ago
  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.
  • quotemstr 5y ago
    > 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.
    • lern_too_spel 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
          > 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.
• formerly_proven 5y ago
  <inaccurate>
  • u320 5y ago
    The announcement is clear that this is unrelated, it states health reasons.
• yannoninator 5y ago
  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.
• mahkoh 5y ago
  Selective enforcement of CoCs? Hard to believe. The Rust Code Team has my full confidence.
  • HideousKojima 5y ago
    "Arbitrary and capricious" are the first two words that come to mind any time I hear "Code of Conduct."
• iamed2 5y ago
  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
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      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.
      • loeg 5y ago
        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.
• mjburgess 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    This exactly. You have summed up my thoughts better than I could. I am also interested to hear from the downvoters.
  • tinco 5y ago
    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.
• q1w2 5y ago
  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.
  • caffeine 5y ago
    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.
  • tinco 5y ago
    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.
    • znpy 5y ago
      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.
      • deltaonesix 5y ago
        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.
      • couchand 5y ago
        Perhaps this message was not written for you?
• asoneth 5y ago
  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.
  • mjburgess 5y ago
    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.
  • unanswered 5y ago
    > 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.
    • zozbot234 5y ago
      They're committing to sharing these reasons with other Rust Team members, though. Just not the broader dev community.
      • nrabulinski 5y ago
        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.
        • baseballdork 5y ago
• vegai_ 5y ago
  What was their responsibility?
  • asteroidbelt 5y ago
    Moderation of discussions in issue tracker for example. Some are quite non-constructive (e.g. 100s of "+1" comments).
• Subsentient 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• znpy 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      I was talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
• ehutch79 5y ago
  Sooooo. Should we not use rust then?
  • wtf_is_up 5y ago
    I would hold off until the Core Team is disbanded.
    • jimbob45 5y ago
      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.
      • bluGill 5y ago
        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.
      • dapids 5y ago
        yea? And I have some swampland in Florida to sell, you buying?
  • Shish2k 5y ago
    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.
• twa999 5y ago
  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.
• Zababa 5y ago
  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 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 5y ago
    See the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306.
    • Zababa 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437441118745071617 [2]: https://rustacean-principles.netlify.app/how_rust_empowers.html https://rustacean-principles.netlify.app/how_rust_empowers.h...
• marcus_cemes 5y ago
  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.
• TeeJayD 5y ago
  Great news
• lvass 5y ago
  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.
• MR4D 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
• unanswered 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
• spedru 5y ago
  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?
• tin1g1erh 5y ago
  [flagged]
• bobthechef 5y ago
  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?
• IceWreck 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    [deleted]
• wheelerof4te 5y ago
  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.
• dom96 5y ago
  > 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 https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/8629
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • couchand 5y ago
    They do suggest that the next mod team spend more time recruiting...
  • burntsushi 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Thanks for your contribution burntsushi. I'm sorry it has come to this.
      • teakettle42 5y ago
        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.
        • danachow 5y ago
          Specifically, how do you feel someone like burntsushi represented an unearned power grab? Go on, I'm listening.
• dolni 5y ago
  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.
• throwaway894345 5y ago
  > 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.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • radlad 5y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Justice_Initiative
    • ptsneves 5y ago
      It is also completely unrelated to a programing language, so the commenter's grievance seems founded.
    • anandrew 5y ago
      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 5y ago
      i think the parent was referring to https://github.com/golang/go/issues/45970 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/45970
      • throwaway894345 5y ago
• opheliate 5y ago
  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_team_resignation/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
• jgrant27 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      [dead]
    • weatherlight 5y ago
      https://evrone.com/steve-klabnik-interview 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 5y ago
    Some of us respectfully disagree.
• InTheArena 5y ago
  This seems suspiciously similar to the drama that hit node a while ago.
  • j56no 5y ago
    agreed, and if you intersects the two groups of people, someone easily stands out.
• devwastaken 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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.
• threatofrain 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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?
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    [deleted]
• Kla_usLa22 5y ago
  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.
• secondcoming 5y ago
  Why does a programming language need a 'Mod Team'? This is what happens when redditors leave the house.
  • tharne 5y ago
    > 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.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• porker 5y ago
  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 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.
  • unethical_ban 5y ago
    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.
  • wyager 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      > 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.
      • 5y ago
• gumps4pres 5y ago
  [dead]
• hintymad 5y ago
  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?
  • dathinab 5y ago
    > 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.
    • stillicidious 5y ago
      > 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 And how would you describe HR?
      • dathinab 5y ago
        Department responsible for managing employees? The difference is the moderation Team does only moderation. But HR does all kinds of things, which often (but not always) includes moderation.
  • isoskeles 5y ago
    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.
  • strunz 5y ago
    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...
• r053bud 5y ago
  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.
  • native_samples 5y ago
    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.
    • samhw 5y ago
      > Mozilla, which is super steeped in SF social justice culture (see the antics of their CEO) Who do you mean? The only Mozilla CEO I can remember being involved in any controversy was Brendan Eich, and that controversy was over his funding a campaign against gay marriage. I can hardly imagine calling that 'social justice culture'. (I'm hoping this comment doesn't summon him, like the last time I mentioned him on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28789197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28789197)
      • amadeuspagel 5y ago
        > I'm hoping this comment doesn't summon him This is extremely odious. HN is a public forum and everyone has the right to reply to your comments, especially if you mention them.
        • samhw 5y ago
          Fair enough, I didn't mean to be too nasty. He has a right to his opinions, even if I consider them by turns a menace to society (in the vax case) and not terribly enlightened (in the gay marriage case, considering I'm gay myself). And I obviously respect the guy tremendously for his life's work and contributions to the world, which are far more than my own. I was just looking at it through a slightly different frame since he's a (relatively) public figure. It's one thing to tag your Facebook acquaintance in a post and have them respond, it's another to make an offhand, slightly pejorative reference to Beyoncé and then see that Beyoncé herself sent you an angry reply. It's certainly his right, but it's a bit unexpected, and I don't think 'summon' was a particularly bad word for it. But I suppose this is a tech forum, and Eich is not Beyoncé, so it's a bit hazy.
• ww520 5y ago
  Sounds like a failed political power grab.
  • asteroidbelt 5y ago
    Sounds like a successful political power grab by someone in the core team.
• opheliate 5y ago
  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/7185102aa6261d0181f343fd7581f44d9eadfa27 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/7185102aa6261d0181f... 1: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation
  • bbatha 5y ago
    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 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/672
    • opheliate 5y ago
      Thanks, didn't see that, will edit my post. Ominous tone wasn't intentional, was just surprised to see such a quick change.
• say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
  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.
• queuebert 5y ago
  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.
  • dathinab 5y ago
    > 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.
  • staticassertion 5y ago
    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.
  • smarnach 5y ago
    Rust overall has a nice and welcoming community. If you want to get an impression, look at the "help" section on https://users.rust-lang.org/ https://users.rust-lang.org/. I'm a (currently inactive) member of the crates.io team, and haven't experienced any drama so far.
• bogwog 5y ago
  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.
  • throwaway2077 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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_image_editor_forked_to_fix_problematic_name/ https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/28/gimp_open_source_imag... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20190705030057/https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/3617 https://web.archive.org/web/20190705030057/https://gitlab.gn...
      • throwaway2077 5y ago
        that's the one, thanks
  • dathinab 5y ago
    > 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.
• bitwize 5y ago
  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.
  • fastball 5y ago
    I think you have it almost completely backwards.
• papreclip 5y ago
  >"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 https://archive.fo/f10KK
  • avl999 5y ago
    That seems to be node.js drama... not sure what it has to do with rust.
    • CRConrad 5y ago
      The same people are -- well, the same person is -- on the Rust core team.
  • bb010g 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      >overreacted to, and/or taken out of context. change the race and/or sex in those quotes
      • bb010g 5y ago
        that's not how minorities and/or affirmitive action work? thank you for your bold take, throwaway2077
        • 5y ago
• o_wa_32 5y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• heywherelogingo 5y ago
  "we're resigning, but not saying why; just believe us anyway". Really?
  • elihu 5y ago
    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.
• DarkCrusader2 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • dogleash 5y ago
    >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.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > Why is this discourse happening in public? Because that's the appropriate scope to discuss what the moderation team wanted to start a discussion about: Processes and structures. > They want to use public opinion to bring reforms to the Rust governance but not divulge any details? What they said was basically "Someone did something shitty, we wanted to clean up the discussion, but couldn't because of the current structure where the core team isn't | doesn't see itself as being under any obligation to listen to the moderation team". Those are all the "details" needed for the subject of the discussion, namely processes and structures. The details of the original "shitty thing" are irrelevant; the same (lack of appropriate) processes and structures applies to any such incident involving the core team. This all seems pretty self-evident to me; I'm dumbfounded by how many commenters here on HN can't seem to grasp this fundamental but utterly simple difference. Your quote from the subreddit only shows that the moderators there do get it (no wonder, being partly the same people), and are therefore (quite properly IMO) trying to quell speculation about the (irrelevant!) "original shitty thing". It shouldn't be so hard to see that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that either.
• isitdopamine 5y ago
  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!
• mperham 5y ago
  In case you are curious, here is the Core Team: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
• thrower123 5y ago
  Anywhere in any of this is there any indication of what specifically they are fussed up about this time?
  • asteroidbelt 5y ago
    Ashley Williams twitter was public, and it is private now. Seems like it is about her again.
• vbezhenar 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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).
• rust-throwaway1 5y ago
  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 https://archive.fo/f10KK [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_ashley_williams_joins_the_core_team/ https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_a... (https://archive.fo/ISXJF https://archive.fo/ISXJF) [3]: https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-ashley-williams-joins-the-core-team-and-taking-lead-of-the-community-team/6453/24 https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-ashley-willia... (https://archive.fo/9yW9I https://archive.fo/9yW9I)
  • ignoramous 5y ago
    > 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CRUSH and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SQS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:SQS
  • unanswered 5y ago
    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.
• lloydatkinson 5y ago
  I think it's ridiculous a programming language needs a whole team to make sure people are being nice anyway.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  What does the Rust Moderation Team moderate? Discord channels? GitHub issues?
• surrealize 5y ago
  Some interesting context from one of the resigning mod team members: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_team_resignation/hln65nd/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...
  • rStar 5y ago
    how is it interesting?
    • viro 5y ago
      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.
      • rStar 5y ago
        isn’t that kind of like the press secretary telling the president what to do?
  • gwbas1c 5y ago
    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.
• axiosgunnar 5y ago
  tldr?
• j56no 5y ago
  here’s the core team https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core - you can easily spot one person lacking ethics
  • janniks 5y ago
    How do I spot them? Where’s the intersect?
• na85 5y ago
  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 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/tree/master/teams
  • M2Ys4U 5y ago
    > 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? Because this development is done by people. Those people need to communicate and coordinate in an effective way, including with people outside of the immediate development effort (i.e. not just writing code).
    • na85 5y ago
      C++ and Fortran are in active development, but to the best of my knowledge have neither "mod teams" nor the heightened level of drama that Rust seems to attract.
      • M2Ys4U 5y ago
        > C++ and Fortran are in active development, but to the best of my knowledge have neither "mod teams" nor the heightened level of drama that Rust seems to attract. I don't know exactly how Fortran is developed, but C++ developed at the ISO which has its own flavour of bureaucracy. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't think that C++ has its own - sanctioned - community fora like Rust does.
        • na85 5y ago
          >And correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't think that C++ has its own - sanctioned - community fora like Rust does. That seems to be the rub of it, yes. Rust has aspirations of being its own social network in addition to being a programming language.
• rStar 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    It's funny, but ... what business would that be?
• Animats 5y ago
  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.
• elzbardico 5y ago
  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.
• m0zg 5y ago
  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.
• covidpositive 5y ago
  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.
• xondono 5y ago
  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.
• fastasucan 5y ago
  Is this related to this, where of member of the core team is in some drama in the node community? https://archive.md/f10KK https://archive.md/f10KK Also: https://archive.md/xaa5v https://archive.md/xaa5v
  • LAC-Tech 5y ago
    Who in that thread is a member of the Rust core team?
    • fastball 5y ago
      What do you mean? Literally the person those threads are about (Ashley Williams) is a member of the Rust core team[1]. [1] https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
• wilx 5y ago
  So, if I understand this correctly, people who make things happened don't allow people who just police bullshit CoC to take over? Good for them.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  So, basically, it seems that the most common speculation is the following: While one might have suspected that the Rust moderation team were people with "progressive/SJW" leanings themselves, in fact what happened is that someone on the core team with radical "progressive/SJW" leanings violated the relevant codes of conduct sufficiently that when the core team denied the moderation team their right to take action against the infringer, the moderation team were so pissed off that they resigned. In light of that it's tempting to wonder whether it's a bit of a sign of the times -- after the last few years of increasingly absurd and ascendant progressive positioning, the adults in the world finally not being able to take the nonsense from progressives any longer and putting their feet down.
• budabudimir 5y ago
  Does anybody actually care about the moderation team anyway? CoC is also just set of guidelines that people abide by anyway in most situations, but doesn't prevent anybody from being an asshole. When somebody is an asshole, random set of people can't really do anything about it.
  • fastball 5y ago
    You can if you empower them to kick people off the core team if they egregiously violate the CoC.
• blindmute 5y ago
  I'm fine with this. Let the people work. Moderators rage quitting because they don't have ultimate power over everyone in the organization is probably indicative of an organization better off without them. If the problem was actually egregious, the people in charge of the core team would have allowed the enforcement. A resignation strongly implies that no one in power was on their side.
• nurettin 5y ago
  ripgrep guy wants more attention.
• Dowwie 5y ago
  This response merely preserves the status quo, which is the thing that Andrew and team have an issue with in the first place. This is not an appropriate circumstance where discretion better serves anyone except for the people who were apparently above moderation.
• archer423 5y ago
  Who would want to see Rust move to a DAO on blockchain? I can help make that happen. ray@oblivion.io Since so many blockchain projects are using Rust and the community is struggling perhaps moving it to a DAO is the way to reboot things and create a more democratic and transparent experience for all. LMK.
• zetadoop 5y ago
  let them go
• lenkite 5y ago
  Good. The Core Team can govern and mod themselves. This general mealy-mouthed complaint about "un-accountability" - with utterly no specifics given - can be crushed and dumped into the dustbin. If you don't want to "publicize" it, then don't make a formal, public post on Reddit Rust - handle it internally. If you want to publicize it, then have the courage to provide the specifics to the public.
• magicroot75 5y ago
  As someone who has no idea what Rust is, but dabble in HN, I'm now intrigued.