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Core Python developer suspended for three months

107 points by Khaine 2y ago

pansa2 2y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470
- dang 2y ago
  Three month suspension for Python core developer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 - Aug 2024 (73 comments)
giraffe_lady 2y ago
I suspect the expectation is that we consider this an abhorrent violation of free speech or something and get worked up over it? But it seems to be a well-defined governance mechanism applied reasonably and as intended. The user has a pattern of disruptive behavior across many posts over a long stretch of time, many of them clear violations of CoC and received a 3-month suspension for it. It isn't a witch hunt, or an egregious punishment. I don't see the crisis frankly.
- christophilus 2y ago
  Can you point to an example that you find illustrative?
- blueflow 2y ago
  The damage of the public image of the Python Community has now been done not by the developer being banned, but by the CoC drama around it. If seemingly innocent things are now held against the banned developer, that is reason to worry.
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    > its not too difficult to disagree that they justify a ban I don't disagree. I have never been involved in their governance, don't know their rules, and therefore I don't have an opinion. It's their organization, they can do whatever they want. The person you're responding to is right, this is the outrage industry again.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Having and using a CoC isn't drama unless you're a grievance farming culture warrior. The list of behavior is far from "innocent" especially taken in aggregate. Now if it isn't a true representation of the user's behavior that's a different story entirely, and would certainly reflect poorly on the python community. Is that the allegation you're making?
    - bawolff 2y ago
      I mean, i think anytime something gets to the point of CoC issuing a ban against a well known community member, it is always dramatic. I dont know anything about this particular case, but in every community i have ever been a part of, the ban hammer equals drama. That's true even when it is the right course of action.
    - blueflow 2y ago
      "far from innocent" - in my eyes more of a statement about you than about Peters. I'd be worried what I would be guilty of in your eyes.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Affric 2y ago
        Clearly very guilty of wrongthink.
  - HelloNurse 2y ago
    Should a potential contributor get involved with Python development, or keep a safe distance? The decision isn't obvious, and conflicts of this kind place a lot of weight on the wrong side of the scale.
    - Ancapistani 2y ago
      It is obvious, and I’ve made it. I had planned to join PyPA - attended a sprint, even had a fairly significant PR ready to submit. Then some drama started behind the scenes and I saw one of my friends drug through the mud by almost exactly the sort of thing this article is about. I “noped” right out of there. Deleted the PR, and will never be associated with that group.
- sharperguy 2y ago
  I wouldn't assume anything without seeing direct quotes.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    What exactly are you alleging here?
    - sharperguy 2y ago
      Absolutely nothing at all. I just cannot make a judgement without seeing what was actually said.
  - xandrius 2y ago
    Same, if they want people to side with them, quotes are vital. I wouldn't jump to conclusions either.
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    I asked for direct quotes, but got turned down with general corp speak.
roenxi 2y ago
Small community scandals are a part of small communities and good luck to whoever is involved. However, the dot point list in this article manages to add a few levels of entertainment. > Using potentially offensive language or slurs, in one case even calling an SNL [Saturday Night Live] skit from the 1970s using the same slur 'genuinely funny', which shows a lack of empathy towards other community members. This is wonderful on a couple of levels. Both because someone seems to be saying finding SNL funny can be a CoC offence and also because I can't figure out what the word is. Too offensive for adults I suppose.
- christophilus 2y ago
  Roenxi, you ignorant slut, you can’t figure out which skit they’re referring to?
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Ta.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    Found it. Watched it. I laughed.
    - blueflow 2y ago
      Dare to link it?
      - blitzar 2y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
        greenyoda 2y ago
        Some context: The Point/Counterpoint debate between Curtin and Ackroyd was a recurring feature on SNL, and was a parody of the Point/Counterpoint segment on CBS's "60 Minutes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#%22Point/Counterpoint%22_segment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#%22Point/Counterpoi...
woodpanel 2y ago
To see a headline were an individual who massiveley donated his private time is suspended from doing so and then wondering before clicking it "is there any chance this doesn't have anything to do with some upper class zealot being offended by how normal people speak" – one might say "Bull's Eye! What are the chances?" But the only thing I'm surprised of is that I'm not surprised anymore.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > how normal people speak Normal people don't use the N-word in 2024. Also, being neurodivergent isn't a "get out of jail free" card. Plenty of neurodivergent people know or at least try to not be a jerk. Edit: I'm wrong. I confused 70s SNL skits that didn't age well - He referenced the S** skit.
  - edward28 2y ago
    Where does he say that?
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    Did he use the n word anywhere in 2024? I didn't see it until now anywhere. Link? Thank you.
  - wccrawford 2y ago
    For anyone else wondering, the SNL skit word was apparently "slut", based on other comments here.
- bawolff 2y ago
  In my experience, the worst people to have in a group project are useful assholes. The people who volunteer a lot of time, but are so miserable to deal with that they are still a net negative when it comes to how many people they scare off or prevent from joining the project because they create such a toxic environment. I dont know anything about this person or the python politics, maybe he fits in this category, maybe he doesn't. However i strongly feel "donating lots of time" is not an excuse for being an asshole.
zb3 2y ago
[flagged]
0x27135614 2y ago
python-dev is a repressive organization run by those who put themselves up for election and get 30 out of 90 votes. Inexplicably, the elected "leaders" also have/had positions at Google, Microsoft, RedHat and Bloomberg (the Googlers may have been fired this year). The council prosecutes those who contradict the hierarchy and have an own opinion. Tim Peters has contradicted the council on many occasions. The council is unable to summarize even simple mail conversations, disregards historical context, applies the CoC selectively and does not shy away from defamation. The council censors and does not let the accused defend themselves. Tim Peters is the good guy here. Intelligent, non-threatening and easy to deal with. Like in the Soviet Union, these qualities make him a threat to the system.
- bawolff 2y ago
  This is open source. The traditional remedy to some disagreement over project managemeng is to fork. If everyone agrees the fork wins, if the CoC people are in the right the fork dies. The great thing about free software is you can vote with your feet when it comes to management issues.
  - orochimaaru 2y ago
    Yes it is that simple and it’s also not. You need financial muscle behind the fork. E.g deno vs node, valkey vs redis, etc. The discussion got heated but I think Tim Peters is arguing for a more stringent suspension rule as opposed to a simple majority vote. CoC violations are serious and should be debated better than just setting up a vote. The debate should be publicly discussed and the findings and reasons published as well. Why is there opposition to that?
  - xnabn 2y ago
    > if the CoC people are in the right the fork dies. I would disagree with that part. Forks are highly difficult. OpenBSD succeeded, so did the gcc fork that was sponsored by Cygwin but then merged back into mainline gcc. Otherwise? Then, the council owns the entire marketing organization PSF, which owns the conferences, which means undesirables can and will be deplatformed. It is much much harder to do a successful fork in 2024 than it was in 2005. Open source is corporate now, and the employees will stick with the official version and not the fork. I think you could literally write an XPython fork that is 2 times faster, has a 100% compatibility but would still be marketed out of existence. If Python had a free standard, it might be possible. But that will not happen.
foobarbaz33 2y ago
> mechanism to remove them – if they've been found to have violated the CoC – is seeking a vote from the full Python Community. This is undesirable, because it would "subject members of the community – including people directly impacted by that violator's behavior – to undue distress. So... down with voting, up with secret police? Wouldn't want to stress the commoners with the power of a vote.
TZubiri 2y ago
Is this a volunteer or a paid position?
- arp242 2y ago
  Being a core developer is not paid as such. Whether it's "volunteer work" is a bit tricky, because a number of core developers work on Python as part of their day job. Some also work on it in their spare time, some don't. Or some previously worked on it in their spare time and now no longer do. So there isn't really an obvious answer to this.
didntcheck 2y ago
> Steering Council member Gregory P Smith: "If a conduct-related enforcement action happens and that 'ruins their career', the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place." It's concerning just how strong the "just world" fallacy is with so many people, to the point of not being able to comprehend the argument that Good Thing (tm) could ever cause harm > "Defending 'reverse racism' and 'reverse sexism', concepts not backed by empirical evidence, which could be seen as deliberate intimidation or creating an exclusionary environment." Sorry do they need a scientific paper to confirm that it's possible to be racist to a "majority"? And the Kafkaesque idea that it's "exclusionary" to oppose it, even as a theoretical thing
- shrubble 2y ago
  So basically “import kill-whitey.py” in an example bit of pseudo code is perfectly acceptable?
  - halfcat 2y ago
    Definitely not acceptable. For starters, you can’t import a module with hyphens.
  - rudasn 2y ago
    I bet there are lots of pips(?) arguing against the use of hyphens in module names.
  - polotics 2y ago
    Is this a real example? Adam lives in theory, right?
- blueflow 2y ago
  Something that came into my mind while reading your comment: There is a link between the "just world fallacy" and "creating an exclusionary environment". The just world fallacy is a mis-thought to justify CoC abuse. Abusing the CoC against people is going to hit marginalized people most - if there are accusations against a person, they are more likely agreed with when the targeted person is one of the odd/weirdo people in the community. This is how how marginalization works in practice.
languagehacker 2y ago
We say that open source is "coding in public", but we often omit that it's also being a professional in public. Even if they were well intentioned, it doesn't sound like Tim's actions were too professional. That kind of behavior can be damaging for a professional community in a lot of ways. Outside of giving the impression that the community is not welcoming to individuals of all backgrounds, it can expose actual legal entities to actual risk. This doesn't seem like a one-time mistake, but rather a pattern of behavior that was measured and then acted upon -- likely after a series of warnings that took place behind closed doors. The suspension is really too bad for everyone involved in the Python community, but I hope it can be a lesson for folks who have a hard time separating how they present themselves personally vs. professionally. Let's also hope that this doesn't result in the collateral damage we saw after the whole Donglegate fiasco. I'd like to think after ten years of stuff like this we've gotten a little bit better.
- eadmund 2y ago
  > We say that open source is "coding in public", but we often omit that it's also being a professional in public. I completely agree! > it doesn't sound like Tim's actions were too professional. I disagree here, at least with respect to what I have seen of his actions (I am not deeply familiar with them, just know what was referred to in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470). From what I can tell, the Python Steering Council’s actions were unprofessional and the members should resign; if they do not, they should be replaced. However, since I have not seen everything referred to, it is possible that I am wrong. edit 1: reference earlier HN thread edit 2: I found and linked that earlier thread
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > folks who have a hard time separating how they present themselves personally vs. professionally It always amazes me to see the way people behave here. Some of the heaviest hitters in the world hang out here. Even though the atmosphere is casual, careers are regularly made (and, I suspect, broken), here. I know that I may seem overly casual, in my own posting here, but: 1) I am not looking for employment, 2) I try to present a face of kindness and empathy. It may seem "stuffy," but I never come from a position of "I'm better than you" (There's very good reason for that, which is a story for another time), and 3) I take care not to "go negative." I'm quite capable of it, being a reformed troll, but have decided that it is better to be a force for unity, than rancor.
perihelions 2y ago
The leaders seem to have the self-awareness to realize that writing "we are punishing a contributor for disagreeing with us on a forum thread, an act we found personally annoying" would not be ideal. Yet, they don't have the awareness to realize saying "actually, we are punishing them for writing too many comments" and directly referencing that exact thread is precisely the same thing.
td540 2y ago
cool, when does the movie come out?
greenavocado 2y ago
LMAO. Allowing the public to vote IS UNDESIRABLE because it MIGHT cause "undue distress." The Python Foundation is subverted. > The issue is that Python Fellows are awarded membership for life and the only mechanism to remove them – if they've been found to have violated the CoC – is seeking a vote from the full Python Community. This is undesirable, because it would "subject members of the community – including people directly impacted by that violator's behavior – to undue distress."
mihaic 2y ago
Before Timsort, I knew of Tim some 20 years ago from the ranking and online forum of SPOJ[1], a Polish competitive programming website where he always seemed to top the speed leaderboards with unorthodox usage of Python. He's exceptionally talented and original, and that sort of nonsense doesn't go well with a bureaucracy. [1] https://spoj.com https://spoj.com
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  Not all, but some exceptionally talented people might be hard to work with as well, so that anecdote doesn't give much information---you may well have claimed such observation as a generality and argued in the other way.
  - mihaic 2y ago
    You're right, generalizations are difficult, and I can't give a second hand summary of how the younger me perceived Tim's posts. One thing I remember is that he didn't give off the dogmatic stubbornness or indifference to the reasoning of others that seems to be correlated with the difficulty in working with smart people.
  - seivan 2y ago
    [dead]
rty32 2y ago
I briefly went through two posts and the comments, and just can't figure out this -- > "Making light of sensitive topics like workplace sexual harassment, which could be interpreted as harassment or creating an unwelcoming environment." > "Casually mentioning scenarios involving sexual abuse, which may be inappropriate or triggering for some audiences." In which scenario would these topics even come up when people discuss Python? I can't imagine anyone talking about these things in a professional workplace outside exceptional situations. This just seems very weird to me.
- kapilvt 2y ago
  It was a code of conduct discussion wrt to enforcement and changes to bylaws to enable that. The actual threads https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed-bylaws-changes-to-improve-our-membership-experience/55696/98 https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed... And then a public warning https://discuss.python.org/t/inclusive-communications-expectations-in-python-spaces/57950 https://discuss.python.org/t/inclusive-communications-expect...
  - rty32 2y ago
    Wow. I can only say I can't imagine such conversations take place in this way at my company (or most companies with a decent HR department) -- some people would be fired for that. But this is open source project, I don't know what's happening.
  - eadmund 2y ago
    This is interesting, from the PSC, as a whole: ‘Resisting soft conduct moderation when people point out problematic statements in what has been said. When someone tells you something said earlier was problematic, listen. That is not an opportunity for debate. That is an expression of pain. It is time to stop and reflect upon what has happened.’ I genuinely find the PSC’s suspension of Mr. Peters to be problematic given my current understanding of the situation. Will they listen to my expression of pain? Will they stop and reflect on their actions, and on the repercussions of those actions on Mr. Peters, the Python community and the software community as a whole? Or will they try to exclude me, as they have exclude Mr. Peters? If bias plus power is a problem, who here has the power: the one suspended, or the ones suspending?
lifthrasiir 2y ago
This article gives much better context than the previous discussion (which devolved into an usual disagreement over CoC process), but the discussion itself didn't improve much. It turns out that there were several actual reports about the person in question and even quantative observations [1], regardless of one's actual intents, and that should be enough to alarm anyone (but please let me know if this is rather just a regular phenomenon). This "suspension" should really be read as: please, please chill down, because you may well have been just overheated enough to harm without realizing. [1] https://discuss.python.org/t/python-s-supportive-and-welcoming-environment-is-tightly-coupled-to-its-progress/59232/1 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-s-supportive-and-welcomi...
Apreche 2y ago
[flagged]
serial_dev 2y ago
I hate that they publish 10 points without link to the original offences. I'm sorry, I won't trust any of these committees / foundations / council without direct evidence, you can't just make up these charges and remove all the context... I mean you can, but based on my experience, I'll just assume the council is full of do-nothing political activists who infiltrated a developer project and found a way to be petty and feel all important and mighty. First point, he started a discussion in a discussion? What else, he commented on a RFC?
eadmund 2y ago
Gregory P. Smith writes: “If a conduct-related enforcement action happens and that ‘ruins their career,’ the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place.” That puts far too much faith in the process, assuming that the Python Steering Council (of which he is a member) will never get something wrong. ‘Enforcement actions’ (what a bureaucratic way to refer to punishment!) do not just ‘happen’: they are imposed by people. They may be just or unjust; the people may be fair or biased; the process may be due or undue. Mr. Smith should reflect on the fact that his name is indelibly associated with this action, and consider that if others happen to think ill of his actions and remarks in this affair then the responsibility for that lies entirely with him: it is his behaviour he may be judged for.
jsnell 2y ago
> I recognize that there are some who think that way. It makes me sad. But that attitude as phrased is entirely backwards. If a conduct related enforcement action happens and that “ruins their career”, the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place. That seems obviously incorrect. The outcome is a combination of their behavior, the text of the CoC, and the subjective interpretation of the CoC and the behavior (by the people doing the enforcement). Any of these could be "wrong". I gather that the person making this comment was one of the people doing the enforcement. Obviously they'd think that in any specific case, the CoC was reasonable and their reading of it and their interpretation of the behavior was correct. If they didn't think that, they would have reached a different outcome. But this isn't a statement about a specific case. It's a statement about generalities. And it's pretty disturbing that the people running the show refuse to acknowledge the possibility of errors even on a theoretical level.
- xtiansimon 2y ago
  True. Reminds me of some negative interactions on Stack Overflow when your post is rewritten making your question into a different question. What are the reasons— it reads better for the community; you don’t know what you’re asking.
jddj 2y ago
It seems like there is a corollary to the paradox of tolerance which causes groups to become so preoccupied with inclusiveness that they become exclusive
trallnag 2y ago
Is that the woke mind virus in action Elon Musk has been talking about on his personal blog?
nemo44x 2y ago
Typical modern codes of conduct (broad, arbitrary, politically motivated) seem to me to exist solely as a case of pluralistic ignorance. Besides a few true believers - usually those that gain a sociopathic leverage through them - most everyone else only goes along with them because they think everyone else does. A collective illusion forced by social pressure - nearly no one believes in it but assumes the others do so it exists. You can’t CoC unsavory opinions out of existence. You need to confront them by putting beliefs against each other. Otherwise it’s just another inquisition.
ozzcer 2y ago
Getting the vibe that both parties are probably at fault here. Sounds like python community can be a bit overzealous in it's enforcement of generally good rules, and potentially might be politically motivated to silence someone who wants to affect change. But also that Thomas Wouters is failing to understand context and time and place, with his other infractions (like overt endorsement of slurs) making him an easy target for censoring. Like if you want a community to be more welcoming to your point of view you don't do it by upsetting others in it. Also as someone diagnosed with ADHD, burn Babylon.
neilv 2y ago
The first given reason in "https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-core-developer/60250 https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..." is discussion on the bylaws change: > Overloading the discussion of the bylaws change (47 out of 177 posts in topic at the time the moderators closed the topic), which created an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which encouraged increasingly emotional responses from other community members. The later result of the vote showed 81% support for the most controversial of the bylaws changes, which demonstrates the controversy was blown out of proportion. I skimmed much of "https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed-bylaws-changes-to-improve-our-membership-experience/55696/20 https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed...", and all the Tim Peters comments I saw so far reflected pretty well on him. He seemed to be pointing out risks of giving quite that additional power to a board, including the risk of it being abused to neutralize opposition -- only to have the existing power appear to be used to neutralize him. I hope this aspect won't be lost in discussion. Knowing online forums of modern Internet, I fully expect some of the keywords in later-listed reasons given for suspending Tim Peters to trigger big upvoted threads, with the effect of burying discussion of the first-listed reason. As, for example, the current top-voted thread on HN as I type this.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  It's a cringing read. Someone points out new rules make it too easy to cancel people over nothing, gets cancelled, seemingly, over this compliant (no idea about everything else). It's literally a catch-22. EDIT on further reading, while I agree with the arguments made by Tim Peters, I think he misread the room perhaps. It's clear the people he's talking to don't understand his hypothetical objections, and just won't change their mind. At the point where they start to take his (reasonable) objections personally, it does turn into a bit of a polite food fight. At some point, I think you cut your losses, if arguing for the right thing does more damage than the wrong thing itself. As is, he's out, presumably the proposal will pass, just without him in board. He could have cut his losses and maybe resigned. But easier said than done, arguing with people online about things you care about is hard.
  - neilv 2y ago
raptor99 2y ago
This seems quite relevant to this situation: https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
polotics 2y ago
This makes me a little bit less of a fan of Python, maybe that thing has jumped the shark after all. Time will tell. Looking a bit more into this. I saw https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408 https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408 And this really makes me sad for Python: the whole thing is so far away from a productive discussions, posts get hidden, etc. Very much a poisoned well. People's tempers flare, they have unresolved trauma and whatnot. So talk with them more, not less!
- stemlord 2y ago
  Is there any way to read flagged posts? That thread is near useless without that context
  - zahlman 2y ago
    Hi, I am the OP of that thread. As my opening post there says, I was going to leave anyway - so I don't particularly mind being banned, but I do consider most of what they said about me to be defamatory and untrue (and the rest to be irrelevant). I'm admittedly no stranger to this sort of drama in the tech world - so I made local backups of my posts throughout that discussion (across multiple threads), because I knew there was a chance that I and others could lose access to them. But the specific way in which they went about things was beyond what I could have imagined. But regarding your question: the linked forum uses the Discourse software, and its standard policies apply. Posts which were "temporarily hidden by the community" (in some cases, this can be done unilaterally) are only visible to logged-in users who have reached a certain "trust level" (which is also involved in weighting flags). If you are logged in and subscribe to a thread, you can (as I understand it) configure your account so that replies are emailed to you. Generally this would happen before a post can be hidden, and you'd have an irrevocable record of it. However, this doesn't help with previous posts. There's an outside chance that archival websites have copies of those forum threads taken at the right time to include currently-hidden posts. Alternately, I've put my own archives on my blog: https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/ https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/ .
- okr 2y ago
  It is poisonous and cancerous. I can only recommend to the people to abandon these ships. DEI in all it's forms will make you suffer, when you are talented and you are "diverse" by being "difficult". Simply let those shops dry out. Money talks. These "nice" communist people want everyone equal and those ideas have to be fought.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Variation on Lewis's Law: Any discussion of a Code of Conduct supports the need for a Code of Conduct. (Original is "the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism").
- didntcheck 2y ago
  That sounds like a usefully-circular/tautological claim
rkharsan64 2y ago
I've seen an increasing number of projects with seemingly questionable Codes of Conduct or other similar guidelines. As an example, a few years ago I was interested in trying my hand at contributing to a FOSS project, and found P5.js which matched my interests. However, the contributor docs [1] mentioned: > At the 2019 Contributors Conference, p5.js made the commitment to only add new features that increase access (inclusion and accessibility). We will not accept feature requests that don’t support these efforts. I completely support these efforts, but it turned me off the project. It seems a bit too strict to just refuse any PRs that cannot be considered as increasing access by some measures. I even tried looking for the proceedings of the mentioned conference to get more context, but didn't find anything conclusive. It seemed like an arbitrary decision, made outside public oversight. It might be the case that these policies aren't enforced seriously, but at that time I decided that I didn't want to risk working on something for potentially months that I found cool but couldn't present as "increasing access". So, I just went ahead and played around with OpenGL instead. [1]: https://p5js.org/contribute/access/ https://p5js.org/contribute/access/
arp242 2y ago
"Discussing bans or removals of community members, which may be seen as publishing private information without permission" ... isn't that what they're doing here? Either ban people "silently" without commentary, giving them the choice whether they want to talk about it, or give 100% transparency and share the full details. Making an announcement about it that has half the (one-sided) details is just the worst possible option. Things like "defending reverse racism" can mean so many things from "oh my God, that's super-racist!" to fairly benign awkward choice in language. We have no idea what it is now, but by making the accusation (without details) there will always be the air of suspicion that maybe, perhaps, they're secretly super-racist. Or something. This is an issue with a number of items on this list. Not great... Whether the suspension is justified is hard to judge, but it shouldn't have made this announcement, and absolutely should not have published this list. I'll also add that quite a few of these items seem to be "making assumptions or speculations about other community members’ motivations and/or mental health", which is one of the accusations on the list. Posting "too much" can certainly be disruptive, saying this "creates an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt" is just speculating about motivation. This too is an issue with several items on this list.
aayala 2y ago
You can express yourself as long it aligns with us ...
seivan 2y ago
[dead]
major505 2y ago
Truth is, this days if a project have a code of conduct larger than 1 page, you should probably not invest your time helping it.
blueflow 2y ago
This is pretty low stab and i agree that it is no better than a personal attack, but... the person enforcing the CoC has pronouns in their bio while the person who got banned doesn't. Again.

107 points by Khaine 2y ago

pansa2 2y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470

dang 2y ago
Three month suspension for Python core developer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 - Aug 2024 (73 comments)

giraffe_lady 2y ago

I suspect the expectation is that we consider this an abhorrent violation of free speech or something and get worked up over it? But it seems to be a well-defined governance mechanism applied reasonably and as intended. The user has a pattern of disruptive behavior across many posts over a long stretch of time, many of them clear violations of CoC and received a 3-month suspension for it. It isn't a witch hunt, or an egregious punishment. I don't see the crisis frankly.

christophilus 2y ago
Can you point to an example that you find illustrative?
blueflow 2y ago
The damage of the public image of the Python Community has now been done not by the developer being banned, but by the CoC drama around it. If seemingly innocent things are now held against the banned developer, that is reason to worry.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  > its not too difficult to disagree that they justify a ban I don't disagree. I have never been involved in their governance, don't know their rules, and therefore I don't have an opinion. It's their organization, they can do whatever they want. The person you're responding to is right, this is the outrage industry again.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Having and using a CoC isn't drama unless you're a grievance farming culture warrior. The list of behavior is far from "innocent" especially taken in aggregate. Now if it isn't a true representation of the user's behavior that's a different story entirely, and would certainly reflect poorly on the python community. Is that the allegation you're making?
  - bawolff 2y ago
    I mean, i think anytime something gets to the point of CoC issuing a ban against a well known community member, it is always dramatic. I dont know anything about this particular case, but in every community i have ever been a part of, the ban hammer equals drama. That's true even when it is the right course of action.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    "far from innocent" - in my eyes more of a statement about you than about Peters. I'd be worried what I would be guilty of in your eyes.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Affric 2y ago
      Clearly very guilty of wrongthink.
- HelloNurse 2y ago
  Should a potential contributor get involved with Python development, or keep a safe distance? The decision isn't obvious, and conflicts of this kind place a lot of weight on the wrong side of the scale.
  - Ancapistani 2y ago
    It is obvious, and I’ve made it. I had planned to join PyPA - attended a sprint, even had a fairly significant PR ready to submit. Then some drama started behind the scenes and I saw one of my friends drug through the mud by almost exactly the sort of thing this article is about. I “noped” right out of there. Deleted the PR, and will never be associated with that group.
sharperguy 2y ago
I wouldn't assume anything without seeing direct quotes.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  What exactly are you alleging here?
  - sharperguy 2y ago
    Absolutely nothing at all. I just cannot make a judgement without seeing what was actually said.
- xandrius 2y ago
  Same, if they want people to side with them, quotes are vital. I wouldn't jump to conclusions either.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  I asked for direct quotes, but got turned down with general corp speak.

roenxi 2y ago

Small community scandals are a part of small communities and good luck to whoever is involved. However, the dot point list in this article manages to add a few levels of entertainment. > Using potentially offensive language or slurs, in one case even calling an SNL [Saturday Night Live] skit from the 1970s using the same slur 'genuinely funny', which shows a lack of empathy towards other community members. This is wonderful on a couple of levels. Both because someone seems to be saying finding SNL funny can be a CoC offence and also because I can't figure out what the word is. Too offensive for adults I suppose.

christophilus 2y ago
Roenxi, you ignorant slut, you can’t figure out which skit they’re referring to?
- roenxi 2y ago
  Ta.
- blitzar 2y ago
  Found it. Watched it. I laughed.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    Dare to link it?
    - blitzar 2y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c91XUyg9iWM
      - greenyoda 2y ago
        Some context: The Point/Counterpoint debate between Curtin and Ackroyd was a recurring feature on SNL, and was a parody of the Point/Counterpoint segment on CBS's "60 Minutes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#%22Point/Counterpoint%22_segment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#%22Point/Counterpoi...

woodpanel 2y ago

To see a headline were an individual who massiveley donated his private time is suspended from doing so and then wondering before clicking it "is there any chance this doesn't have anything to do with some upper class zealot being offended by how normal people speak" – one might say "Bull's Eye! What are the chances?" But the only thing I'm surprised of is that I'm not surprised anymore.

alephnerd 2y ago
> how normal people speak Normal people don't use the N-word in 2024. Also, being neurodivergent isn't a "get out of jail free" card. Plenty of neurodivergent people know or at least try to not be a jerk. Edit: I'm wrong. I confused 70s SNL skits that didn't age well - He referenced the S** skit.
- edward28 2y ago
  Where does he say that?
- serial_dev 2y ago
  Did he use the n word anywhere in 2024? I didn't see it until now anywhere. Link? Thank you.
- wccrawford 2y ago
  For anyone else wondering, the SNL skit word was apparently "slut", based on other comments here.
bawolff 2y ago
In my experience, the worst people to have in a group project are useful assholes. The people who volunteer a lot of time, but are so miserable to deal with that they are still a net negative when it comes to how many people they scare off or prevent from joining the project because they create such a toxic environment. I dont know anything about this person or the python politics, maybe he fits in this category, maybe he doesn't. However i strongly feel "donating lots of time" is not an excuse for being an asshole.

zb3 2y ago

[flagged]

0x27135614 2y ago

python-dev is a repressive organization run by those who put themselves up for election and get 30 out of 90 votes. Inexplicably, the elected "leaders" also have/had positions at Google, Microsoft, RedHat and Bloomberg (the Googlers may have been fired this year). The council prosecutes those who contradict the hierarchy and have an own opinion. Tim Peters has contradicted the council on many occasions. The council is unable to summarize even simple mail conversations, disregards historical context, applies the CoC selectively and does not shy away from defamation. The council censors and does not let the accused defend themselves. Tim Peters is the good guy here. Intelligent, non-threatening and easy to deal with. Like in the Soviet Union, these qualities make him a threat to the system.

bawolff 2y ago
This is open source. The traditional remedy to some disagreement over project managemeng is to fork. If everyone agrees the fork wins, if the CoC people are in the right the fork dies. The great thing about free software is you can vote with your feet when it comes to management issues.
- orochimaaru 2y ago
  Yes it is that simple and it’s also not. You need financial muscle behind the fork. E.g deno vs node, valkey vs redis, etc. The discussion got heated but I think Tim Peters is arguing for a more stringent suspension rule as opposed to a simple majority vote. CoC violations are serious and should be debated better than just setting up a vote. The debate should be publicly discussed and the findings and reasons published as well. Why is there opposition to that?
- xnabn 2y ago
  > if the CoC people are in the right the fork dies. I would disagree with that part. Forks are highly difficult. OpenBSD succeeded, so did the gcc fork that was sponsored by Cygwin but then merged back into mainline gcc. Otherwise? Then, the council owns the entire marketing organization PSF, which owns the conferences, which means undesirables can and will be deplatformed. It is much much harder to do a successful fork in 2024 than it was in 2005. Open source is corporate now, and the employees will stick with the official version and not the fork. I think you could literally write an XPython fork that is 2 times faster, has a 100% compatibility but would still be marketed out of existence. If Python had a free standard, it might be possible. But that will not happen.

foobarbaz33 2y ago

> mechanism to remove them – if they've been found to have violated the CoC – is seeking a vote from the full Python Community. This is undesirable, because it would "subject members of the community – including people directly impacted by that violator's behavior – to undue distress. So... down with voting, up with secret police? Wouldn't want to stress the commoners with the power of a vote.

TZubiri 2y ago

Is this a volunteer or a paid position?

arp242 2y ago
Being a core developer is not paid as such. Whether it's "volunteer work" is a bit tricky, because a number of core developers work on Python as part of their day job. Some also work on it in their spare time, some don't. Or some previously worked on it in their spare time and now no longer do. So there isn't really an obvious answer to this.

didntcheck 2y ago

> Steering Council member Gregory P Smith: "If a conduct-related enforcement action happens and that 'ruins their career', the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place." It's concerning just how strong the "just world" fallacy is with so many people, to the point of not being able to comprehend the argument that Good Thing (tm) could ever cause harm > "Defending 'reverse racism' and 'reverse sexism', concepts not backed by empirical evidence, which could be seen as deliberate intimidation or creating an exclusionary environment." Sorry do they need a scientific paper to confirm that it's possible to be racist to a "majority"? And the Kafkaesque idea that it's "exclusionary" to oppose it, even as a theoretical thing

shrubble 2y ago
So basically “import kill-whitey.py” in an example bit of pseudo code is perfectly acceptable?
- halfcat 2y ago
  Definitely not acceptable. For starters, you can’t import a module with hyphens.
- rudasn 2y ago
  I bet there are lots of pips(?) arguing against the use of hyphens in module names.
- polotics 2y ago
  Is this a real example? Adam lives in theory, right?
blueflow 2y ago
Something that came into my mind while reading your comment: There is a link between the "just world fallacy" and "creating an exclusionary environment". The just world fallacy is a mis-thought to justify CoC abuse. Abusing the CoC against people is going to hit marginalized people most - if there are accusations against a person, they are more likely agreed with when the targeted person is one of the odd/weirdo people in the community. This is how how marginalization works in practice.

languagehacker 2y ago

We say that open source is "coding in public", but we often omit that it's also being a professional in public. Even if they were well intentioned, it doesn't sound like Tim's actions were too professional. That kind of behavior can be damaging for a professional community in a lot of ways. Outside of giving the impression that the community is not welcoming to individuals of all backgrounds, it can expose actual legal entities to actual risk. This doesn't seem like a one-time mistake, but rather a pattern of behavior that was measured and then acted upon -- likely after a series of warnings that took place behind closed doors. The suspension is really too bad for everyone involved in the Python community, but I hope it can be a lesson for folks who have a hard time separating how they present themselves personally vs. professionally. Let's also hope that this doesn't result in the collateral damage we saw after the whole Donglegate fiasco. I'd like to think after ten years of stuff like this we've gotten a little bit better.

eadmund 2y ago
> We say that open source is "coding in public", but we often omit that it's also being a professional in public. I completely agree! > it doesn't sound like Tim's actions were too professional. I disagree here, at least with respect to what I have seen of his actions (I am not deeply familiar with them, just know what was referred to in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470). From what I can tell, the Python Steering Council’s actions were unprofessional and the members should resign; if they do not, they should be replaced. However, since I have not seen everything referred to, it is possible that I am wrong. edit 1: reference earlier HN thread edit 2: I found and linked that earlier thread
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> folks who have a hard time separating how they present themselves personally vs. professionally It always amazes me to see the way people behave here. Some of the heaviest hitters in the world hang out here. Even though the atmosphere is casual, careers are regularly made (and, I suspect, broken), here. I know that I may seem overly casual, in my own posting here, but: 1) I am not looking for employment, 2) I try to present a face of kindness and empathy. It may seem "stuffy," but I never come from a position of "I'm better than you" (There's very good reason for that, which is a story for another time), and 3) I take care not to "go negative." I'm quite capable of it, being a reformed troll, but have decided that it is better to be a force for unity, than rancor.

perihelions 2y ago

The leaders seem to have the self-awareness to realize that writing "we are punishing a contributor for disagreeing with us on a forum thread, an act we found personally annoying" would not be ideal. Yet, they don't have the awareness to realize saying "actually, we are punishing them for writing too many comments" and directly referencing that exact thread is precisely the same thing.

td540 2y ago

cool, when does the movie come out?

greenavocado 2y ago

LMAO. Allowing the public to vote IS UNDESIRABLE because it MIGHT cause "undue distress." The Python Foundation is subverted. > The issue is that Python Fellows are awarded membership for life and the only mechanism to remove them – if they've been found to have violated the CoC – is seeking a vote from the full Python Community. This is undesirable, because it would "subject members of the community – including people directly impacted by that violator's behavior – to undue distress."

mihaic 2y ago

Before Timsort, I knew of Tim some 20 years ago from the ranking and online forum of SPOJ[1], a Polish competitive programming website where he always seemed to top the speed leaderboards with unorthodox usage of Python. He's exceptionally talented and original, and that sort of nonsense doesn't go well with a bureaucracy. [1] https://spoj.com https://spoj.com

lifthrasiir 2y ago
Not all, but some exceptionally talented people might be hard to work with as well, so that anecdote doesn't give much information---you may well have claimed such observation as a generality and argued in the other way.
- mihaic 2y ago
  You're right, generalizations are difficult, and I can't give a second hand summary of how the younger me perceived Tim's posts. One thing I remember is that he didn't give off the dogmatic stubbornness or indifference to the reasoning of others that seems to be correlated with the difficulty in working with smart people.
- seivan 2y ago
  [dead]

rty32 2y ago

I briefly went through two posts and the comments, and just can't figure out this -- > "Making light of sensitive topics like workplace sexual harassment, which could be interpreted as harassment or creating an unwelcoming environment." > "Casually mentioning scenarios involving sexual abuse, which may be inappropriate or triggering for some audiences." In which scenario would these topics even come up when people discuss Python? I can't imagine anyone talking about these things in a professional workplace outside exceptional situations. This just seems very weird to me.

kapilvt 2y ago
It was a code of conduct discussion wrt to enforcement and changes to bylaws to enable that. The actual threads https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed-bylaws-changes-to-improve-our-membership-experience/55696/98 https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed... And then a public warning https://discuss.python.org/t/inclusive-communications-expectations-in-python-spaces/57950 https://discuss.python.org/t/inclusive-communications-expect...
- rty32 2y ago
  Wow. I can only say I can't imagine such conversations take place in this way at my company (or most companies with a decent HR department) -- some people would be fired for that. But this is open source project, I don't know what's happening.
- eadmund 2y ago
  This is interesting, from the PSC, as a whole: ‘Resisting soft conduct moderation when people point out problematic statements in what has been said. When someone tells you something said earlier was problematic, listen. That is not an opportunity for debate. That is an expression of pain. It is time to stop and reflect upon what has happened.’ I genuinely find the PSC’s suspension of Mr. Peters to be problematic given my current understanding of the situation. Will they listen to my expression of pain? Will they stop and reflect on their actions, and on the repercussions of those actions on Mr. Peters, the Python community and the software community as a whole? Or will they try to exclude me, as they have exclude Mr. Peters? If bias plus power is a problem, who here has the power: the one suspended, or the ones suspending?

lifthrasiir 2y ago

This article gives much better context than the previous discussion (which devolved into an usual disagreement over CoC process), but the discussion itself didn't improve much. It turns out that there were several actual reports about the person in question and even quantative observations [1], regardless of one's actual intents, and that should be enough to alarm anyone (but please let me know if this is rather just a regular phenomenon). This "suspension" should really be read as: please, please chill down, because you may well have been just overheated enough to harm without realizing. [1] https://discuss.python.org/t/python-s-supportive-and-welcoming-environment-is-tightly-coupled-to-its-progress/59232/1 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-s-supportive-and-welcomi...

Apreche 2y ago

[flagged]

serial_dev 2y ago

I hate that they publish 10 points without link to the original offences. I'm sorry, I won't trust any of these committees / foundations / council without direct evidence, you can't just make up these charges and remove all the context... I mean you can, but based on my experience, I'll just assume the council is full of do-nothing political activists who infiltrated a developer project and found a way to be petty and feel all important and mighty. First point, he started a discussion in a discussion? What else, he commented on a RFC?

eadmund 2y ago

Gregory P. Smith writes: “If a conduct-related enforcement action happens and that ‘ruins their career,’ the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place.” That puts far too much faith in the process, assuming that the Python Steering Council (of which he is a member) will never get something wrong. ‘Enforcement actions’ (what a bureaucratic way to refer to punishment!) do not just ‘happen’: they are imposed by people. They may be just or unjust; the people may be fair or biased; the process may be due or undue. Mr. Smith should reflect on the fact that his name is indelibly associated with this action, and consider that if others happen to think ill of his actions and remarks in this affair then the responsibility for that lies entirely with him: it is his behaviour he may be judged for.

jsnell 2y ago

> I recognize that there are some who think that way. It makes me sad. But that attitude as phrased is entirely backwards. If a conduct related enforcement action happens and that “ruins their career”, the responsibility for that lies entirely on them. It was their behavior that got them there in the first place. That seems obviously incorrect. The outcome is a combination of their behavior, the text of the CoC, and the subjective interpretation of the CoC and the behavior (by the people doing the enforcement). Any of these could be "wrong". I gather that the person making this comment was one of the people doing the enforcement. Obviously they'd think that in any specific case, the CoC was reasonable and their reading of it and their interpretation of the behavior was correct. If they didn't think that, they would have reached a different outcome. But this isn't a statement about a specific case. It's a statement about generalities. And it's pretty disturbing that the people running the show refuse to acknowledge the possibility of errors even on a theoretical level.

xtiansimon 2y ago
True. Reminds me of some negative interactions on Stack Overflow when your post is rewritten making your question into a different question. What are the reasons— it reads better for the community; you don’t know what you’re asking.

jddj 2y ago

It seems like there is a corollary to the paradox of tolerance which causes groups to become so preoccupied with inclusiveness that they become exclusive

trallnag 2y ago

Is that the woke mind virus in action Elon Musk has been talking about on his personal blog?

nemo44x 2y ago

Typical modern codes of conduct (broad, arbitrary, politically motivated) seem to me to exist solely as a case of pluralistic ignorance. Besides a few true believers - usually those that gain a sociopathic leverage through them - most everyone else only goes along with them because they think everyone else does. A collective illusion forced by social pressure - nearly no one believes in it but assumes the others do so it exists. You can’t CoC unsavory opinions out of existence. You need to confront them by putting beliefs against each other. Otherwise it’s just another inquisition.

ozzcer 2y ago

Getting the vibe that both parties are probably at fault here. Sounds like python community can be a bit overzealous in it's enforcement of generally good rules, and potentially might be politically motivated to silence someone who wants to affect change. But also that Thomas Wouters is failing to understand context and time and place, with his other infractions (like overt endorsement of slurs) making him an easy target for censoring. Like if you want a community to be more welcoming to your point of view you don't do it by upsetting others in it. Also as someone diagnosed with ADHD, burn Babylon.

neilv 2y ago

The first given reason in "https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-core-developer/60250 https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..." is discussion on the bylaws change: > Overloading the discussion of the bylaws change (47 out of 177 posts in topic at the time the moderators closed the topic), which created an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which encouraged increasingly emotional responses from other community members. The later result of the vote showed 81% support for the most controversial of the bylaws changes, which demonstrates the controversy was blown out of proportion. I skimmed much of "https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed-bylaws-changes-to-improve-our-membership-experience/55696/20 https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed...", and all the Tim Peters comments I saw so far reflected pretty well on him. He seemed to be pointing out risks of giving quite that additional power to a board, including the risk of it being abused to neutralize opposition -- only to have the existing power appear to be used to neutralize him. I hope this aspect won't be lost in discussion. Knowing online forums of modern Internet, I fully expect some of the keywords in later-listed reasons given for suspending Tim Peters to trigger big upvoted threads, with the effect of burying discussion of the first-listed reason. As, for example, the current top-voted thread on HN as I type this.

rich_sasha 2y ago
It's a cringing read. Someone points out new rules make it too easy to cancel people over nothing, gets cancelled, seemingly, over this compliant (no idea about everything else). It's literally a catch-22. EDIT on further reading, while I agree with the arguments made by Tim Peters, I think he misread the room perhaps. It's clear the people he's talking to don't understand his hypothetical objections, and just won't change their mind. At the point where they start to take his (reasonable) objections personally, it does turn into a bit of a polite food fight. At some point, I think you cut your losses, if arguing for the right thing does more damage than the wrong thing itself. As is, he's out, presumably the proposal will pass, just without him in board. He could have cut his losses and maybe resigned. But easier said than done, arguing with people online about things you care about is hard.
- neilv 2y ago

raptor99 2y ago

This seems quite relevant to this situation: https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

polotics 2y ago

This makes me a little bit less of a fan of Python, maybe that thing has jumped the shark after all. Time will tell. Looking a bit more into this. I saw https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408 https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408 And this really makes me sad for Python: the whole thing is so far away from a productive discussions, posts get hidden, etc. Very much a poisoned well. People's tempers flare, they have unresolved trauma and whatnot. So talk with them more, not less!

stemlord 2y ago
Is there any way to read flagged posts? That thread is near useless without that context
- zahlman 2y ago
  Hi, I am the OP of that thread. As my opening post there says, I was going to leave anyway - so I don't particularly mind being banned, but I do consider most of what they said about me to be defamatory and untrue (and the rest to be irrelevant). I'm admittedly no stranger to this sort of drama in the tech world - so I made local backups of my posts throughout that discussion (across multiple threads), because I knew there was a chance that I and others could lose access to them. But the specific way in which they went about things was beyond what I could have imagined. But regarding your question: the linked forum uses the Discourse software, and its standard policies apply. Posts which were "temporarily hidden by the community" (in some cases, this can be done unilaterally) are only visible to logged-in users who have reached a certain "trust level" (which is also involved in weighting flags). If you are logged in and subscribe to a thread, you can (as I understand it) configure your account so that replies are emailed to you. Generally this would happen before a post can be hidden, and you'd have an irrevocable record of it. However, this doesn't help with previous posts. There's an outside chance that archival websites have copies of those forum threads taken at the right time to include currently-hidden posts. Alternately, I've put my own archives on my blog: https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/ https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/ .
okr 2y ago
It is poisonous and cancerous. I can only recommend to the people to abandon these ships. DEI in all it's forms will make you suffer, when you are talented and you are "diverse" by being "difficult". Simply let those shops dry out. Money talks. These "nice" communist people want everyone equal and those ideas have to be fought.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Variation on Lewis's Law: Any discussion of a Code of Conduct supports the need for a Code of Conduct. (Original is "the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism").

didntcheck 2y ago
That sounds like a usefully-circular/tautological claim

rkharsan64 2y ago

I've seen an increasing number of projects with seemingly questionable Codes of Conduct or other similar guidelines. As an example, a few years ago I was interested in trying my hand at contributing to a FOSS project, and found P5.js which matched my interests. However, the contributor docs [1] mentioned: > At the 2019 Contributors Conference, p5.js made the commitment to only add new features that increase access (inclusion and accessibility). We will not accept feature requests that don’t support these efforts. I completely support these efforts, but it turned me off the project. It seems a bit too strict to just refuse any PRs that cannot be considered as increasing access by some measures. I even tried looking for the proceedings of the mentioned conference to get more context, but didn't find anything conclusive. It seemed like an arbitrary decision, made outside public oversight. It might be the case that these policies aren't enforced seriously, but at that time I decided that I didn't want to risk working on something for potentially months that I found cool but couldn't present as "increasing access". So, I just went ahead and played around with OpenGL instead. [1]: https://p5js.org/contribute/access/ https://p5js.org/contribute/access/

arp242 2y ago

"Discussing bans or removals of community members, which may be seen as publishing private information without permission" ... isn't that what they're doing here? Either ban people "silently" without commentary, giving them the choice whether they want to talk about it, or give 100% transparency and share the full details. Making an announcement about it that has half the (one-sided) details is just the worst possible option. Things like "defending reverse racism" can mean so many things from "oh my God, that's super-racist!" to fairly benign awkward choice in language. We have no idea what it is now, but by making the accusation (without details) there will always be the air of suspicion that maybe, perhaps, they're secretly super-racist. Or something. This is an issue with a number of items on this list. Not great... Whether the suspension is justified is hard to judge, but it shouldn't have made this announcement, and absolutely should not have published this list. I'll also add that quite a few of these items seem to be "making assumptions or speculations about other community members’ motivations and/or mental health", which is one of the accusations on the list. Posting "too much" can certainly be disruptive, saying this "creates an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt" is just speculating about motivation. This too is an issue with several items on this list.

aayala 2y ago

You can express yourself as long it aligns with us ...

seivan 2y ago

[dead]

major505 2y ago

Truth is, this days if a project have a code of conduct larger than 1 page, you should probably not invest your time helping it.

blueflow 2y ago

This is pretty low stab and i agree that it is no better than a personal attack, but... the person enforcing the CoC has pronouns in their bio while the person who got banned doesn't. Again.