5 ms·

Maybe is better that no single action is emphasized or a single person and focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the l

Maybe is better that no single action is emphasized or a single person and focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions. Edit: I think if some action will be made public then everyone will focus on debating why that action was correct/incorrect , then a lot of mostly politics dirt will be thrown around etc.

notreallyserio 5y ago
Without knowing exactly what went wrong it won't be possible for the community to know if their changes have gone far enough (or too far) to address the actual problem. This stinks. I wonder if the moderators are concerned they'll be found culpable as well, if the problem is revealed.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  Being a moderator is a thankless job, and when you don't have any power to do that job, it also becomes soul-sucking. I don't think the moderators are concerned about culpability. I think they're concerned that what appears to be an internal debate is going to get dragged out for months on end, in public, with all context loss, and with even less ability on their part to do anything useful or constructive. If I were in their position, I would very likely do the same thing and try to learn some lessons and move on with my life.
capableweb 5y ago
> focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions, when what is supposed to have exemplified the problem is kept in the dark.
- simion314 5y ago
  Probably by the rules, say if the existing rules have exceptions for the core team so making this core team above the existing laws.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  > I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions Perhaps you aren't? This is still an internal Rust team issue; it's not a problem for us, a bunch of randos on the Internet, to solve. Our job is just to gawp from a distance, maybe gossip on Hacker News a bit.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    It doesn't look like an internal Rust issue when the moderation team disappears while saying "If the Core Team says anything about us/the situation, be careful about trusting it without verifying first" in a very public venue. If they really wanted to keep it internal, it would require even less effort to just remove themselves from the moderation list with a "We resign" message without further detail.
    - couchand 5y ago
      They didn't send you a personal e-mail. They made a PR changing their team status to "alumni" and included the requisite justification in the PR message.
      - cormacrelf 5y ago
        That doesn't mean it does not affect anyone outside leadership. It's government, they make decisions that affect participants. There's no such thing as a completely 'inside baseball' issue in government, unless you aren't a citizen. If you don't use Rust at all, you are free to feel like you do not need to think about solutions.
        mumblemumble 5y ago
        I would argue that it's governance, not government.
        cormacrelf 5y ago
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  The people who own the project, own the project. The people who own your employer, own your employer. Does that sometimes suck? Sure. Is it often unjust? Absolutely. Do you sometimes need to switch jobs or fork a project? Yup (see: mod team resigning). But don't ever get confused and think that an HR process can save you from the whims of your master, and don't ever believe a "rule" that says the owner of something is constrained. Unless there's a higher power that can enforce that rule (e.g., a government or a market). And even then, the rule isn't doing any of the lifting.
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  They are saying that if those people keep it up, they can't have a Mod Team. It is an expression of an incompatibility between expansive power residing in the Core Team and the existence of a Mod Team. You don't really need a specific situation to see how that could obviously happen (classic power struggle), or to believe it has recently happened. Story as old as time. At its height, this resignation constitutes (a) a plea for people in power to exercise it better, and (b) for those people to voluntarily become more accountable for some pattern of behaviour. (A) might be effective, if only because Rust governance so far prides itself on all the things that come with having a Mod Team. Not having one is embarrassing. But point (b), which is indeed the focus of the resignation message, is plain magical thinking to my eye. Accountability I understand it is the acceptance of responsibility, by someone, for some thing. Someone else fundamentally needs to know what that something is for that to happen. It cannot happen if the thing is kept completely under wraps, but it can be approximated with limited but trustworthy disclosure, and this is the basis for the levels upon levels of that in e.g. national security regulation. That is a very difficult problem in its specifics, but the theory is simple: inform someone trustworthy and neutral, and then tell everyone else that you informed them. What this message lacks is any indication of which people do know what the specific acts by Core Team members were and who did them, and what position those people are in to verify if anything is done about it. If you are unwilling to muck-rake in public, you need to give everyone else a proxy by which to gauge your generic claims. In normal governments this takes many many forms, including ministers, Inspectors-General, privileged parliamentary committees, etc. But you do not need a formal role, you simply have to nominate someone outside your group and your opposition (ie appears neutral on the face of it) that is aware of the facts. Without that, everybody who sees this will have to gauge your claims on the extremely minimal information provided plus your own reputation, but with no credible claim to neutrality on the issue. Even one such person would be better than all of the co-signatures on that letter combined.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > What this message lacks is any indication of which people do know what the specific acts by Core Team members were and who did them, and what position those people are in to verify if anything is done about it. The answer(s) to that is (are) probably: The whole Core Team knows, and since they apparently aren't accountable to the Mod Team, the only entity that can do anything about it is the Core Team as a whole. So the ball is in the Core Team's court.
- jpfed 5y ago
  A group being "above the rules" is, I think, a statement about what the rules are and how they are enforced. It doesn't really hinge on whether any members of that group have, up to this point, violated the rules.
throwawaygh 5y ago
I'm generally in favor of enforcing high-level "behave professionally" norms in OSS communities. And not as a new phenomenon, either. I've been kick-banning disruptive people from IRC channels for several decades, I've run forums where I appointed mods, and I've always avoided participating in completely unmoderated communities beyond N=20 or so (not worth the headache). But for some reason, the formalization of conduct enforcement stuff around OSS projects still feels weird, off-putting, and very "Corporate HR"-y to me. I still get a kinda awkward feeling every time I see a code of conduct in a freaking code repository as opposed to an MOTD or mailing list welcome email or the like. The contents is normally reasonable and if it were in one of those other formats it'd feel normal, but checked into a code repo just feels wildly out of place and needlessly in-your-face? Maybe I'm just getting old.
- caffeine 5y ago
  Large OSS projects are largely staffed by corporate contributors - the culture shift in the organisations paying the contributors is reflected in the projects and the communities surrounding them.
- couchand 5y ago
  How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Edit: it looks like you've removed the part about Teams/Committees.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    yea, sorry, I tend to over-use the "edit" button and treat "submit" as "save draft". > How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Yeah, I guess I'm just getting old. The idea of an open source project with enough people to form an entire committee of moderators also feels weird, but is apparently fairly normal these days.

notreallyserio 5y ago

Without knowing exactly what went wrong it won't be possible for the community to know if their changes have gone far enough (or too far) to address the actual problem. This stinks. I wonder if the moderators are concerned they'll be found culpable as well, if the problem is revealed.

pavel_lishin 5y ago
Being a moderator is a thankless job, and when you don't have any power to do that job, it also becomes soul-sucking. I don't think the moderators are concerned about culpability. I think they're concerned that what appears to be an internal debate is going to get dragged out for months on end, in public, with all context loss, and with even less ability on their part to do anything useful or constructive. If I were in their position, I would very likely do the same thing and try to learn some lessons and move on with my life.

capableweb 5y ago

> focus on the actual problem, the fact that there might be a group that is above the laws/rules and possible solutions I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions, when what is supposed to have exemplified the problem is kept in the dark.

simion314 5y ago
Probably by the rules, say if the existing rules have exceptions for the core team so making this core team above the existing laws.
mumblemumble 5y ago
> I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions Perhaps you aren't? This is still an internal Rust team issue; it's not a problem for us, a bunch of randos on the Internet, to solve. Our job is just to gawp from a distance, maybe gossip on Hacker News a bit.
- capableweb 5y ago
  It doesn't look like an internal Rust issue when the moderation team disappears while saying "If the Core Team says anything about us/the situation, be careful about trusting it without verifying first" in a very public venue. If they really wanted to keep it internal, it would require even less effort to just remove themselves from the moderation list with a "We resign" message without further detail.
  - couchand 5y ago
    They didn't send you a personal e-mail. They made a PR changing their team status to "alumni" and included the requisite justification in the PR message.
    - cormacrelf 5y ago
      That doesn't mean it does not affect anyone outside leadership. It's government, they make decisions that affect participants. There's no such thing as a completely 'inside baseball' issue in government, unless you aren't a citizen. If you don't use Rust at all, you are free to feel like you do not need to think about solutions.
      - mumblemumble 5y ago
        I would argue that it's governance, not government.
        cormacrelf 5y ago
throwawaygh 5y ago
The people who own the project, own the project. The people who own your employer, own your employer. Does that sometimes suck? Sure. Is it often unjust? Absolutely. Do you sometimes need to switch jobs or fork a project? Yup (see: mod team resigning). But don't ever get confused and think that an HR process can save you from the whims of your master, and don't ever believe a "rule" that says the owner of something is constrained. Unless there's a higher power that can enforce that rule (e.g., a government or a market). And even then, the rule isn't doing any of the lifting.
cormacrelf 5y ago
They are saying that if those people keep it up, they can't have a Mod Team. It is an expression of an incompatibility between expansive power residing in the Core Team and the existence of a Mod Team. You don't really need a specific situation to see how that could obviously happen (classic power struggle), or to believe it has recently happened. Story as old as time. At its height, this resignation constitutes (a) a plea for people in power to exercise it better, and (b) for those people to voluntarily become more accountable for some pattern of behaviour. (A) might be effective, if only because Rust governance so far prides itself on all the things that come with having a Mod Team. Not having one is embarrassing. But point (b), which is indeed the focus of the resignation message, is plain magical thinking to my eye. Accountability I understand it is the acceptance of responsibility, by someone, for some thing. Someone else fundamentally needs to know what that something is for that to happen. It cannot happen if the thing is kept completely under wraps, but it can be approximated with limited but trustworthy disclosure, and this is the basis for the levels upon levels of that in e.g. national security regulation. That is a very difficult problem in its specifics, but the theory is simple: inform someone trustworthy and neutral, and then tell everyone else that you informed them. What this message lacks is any indication of which people do know what the specific acts by Core Team members were and who did them, and what position those people are in to verify if anything is done about it. If you are unwilling to muck-rake in public, you need to give everyone else a proxy by which to gauge your generic claims. In normal governments this takes many many forms, including ministers, Inspectors-General, privileged parliamentary committees, etc. But you do not need a formal role, you simply have to nominate someone outside your group and your opposition (ie appears neutral on the face of it) that is aware of the facts. Without that, everybody who sees this will have to gauge your claims on the extremely minimal information provided plus your own reputation, but with no credible claim to neutrality on the issue. Even one such person would be better than all of the co-signatures on that letter combined.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > What this message lacks is any indication of which people do know what the specific acts by Core Team members were and who did them, and what position those people are in to verify if anything is done about it. The answer(s) to that is (are) probably: The whole Core Team knows, and since they apparently aren't accountable to the Mod Team, the only entity that can do anything about it is the Core Team as a whole. So the ball is in the Core Team's court.
jpfed 5y ago
A group being "above the rules" is, I think, a statement about what the rules are and how they are enforced. It doesn't really hinge on whether any members of that group have, up to this point, violated the rules.

throwawaygh 5y ago

I'm generally in favor of enforcing high-level "behave professionally" norms in OSS communities. And not as a new phenomenon, either. I've been kick-banning disruptive people from IRC channels for several decades, I've run forums where I appointed mods, and I've always avoided participating in completely unmoderated communities beyond N=20 or so (not worth the headache). But for some reason, the formalization of conduct enforcement stuff around OSS projects still feels weird, off-putting, and very "Corporate HR"-y to me. I still get a kinda awkward feeling every time I see a code of conduct in a freaking code repository as opposed to an MOTD or mailing list welcome email or the like. The contents is normally reasonable and if it were in one of those other formats it'd feel normal, but checked into a code repo just feels wildly out of place and needlessly in-your-face? Maybe I'm just getting old.

caffeine 5y ago
Large OSS projects are largely staffed by corporate contributors - the culture shift in the organisations paying the contributors is reflected in the projects and the communities surrounding them.
couchand 5y ago
How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Edit: it looks like you've removed the part about Teams/Committees.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  yea, sorry, I tend to over-use the "edit" button and treat "submit" as "save draft". > How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Yeah, I guess I'm just getting old. The idea of an open source project with enough people to form an entire committee of moderators also feels weird, but is apparently fairly normal these days.