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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-fo

by 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
  Yeah, I didn't read the entire thing (it was torturing my just-waking brain), but I did notice a shift at one point, when he seemed to be trying to defend some well-known fundamental, which IMHO ideally wouldn't need defense nor explanation in context of a bylaws discussion. I suppose, even to very seasoned operators, sometimes it's hard to know when is time for patient and diplomatic explanation, when is time to get worried and make more passionate argument, when is time it's time to shift to "commit" mode, and when it's time to resign with the right decorum so that you still look like a sophisticated team player to future opportunities. I also suppose it's easier if the first priority is to be an operator. As for the other key party, besides whatever else is going on, publicly suspending someone in the tech industry like this seems like a big deal, and can damage the career of even the most accomplished people. It had really better be necessary and appropriate, or you're looking at damage to your org reputation and your culture, and maybe legal liability.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    What do you mean by "operator"?
    - neilv 2y ago
      Politician.
orwin 2y ago
> I skimmed much of "https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed...", and all the Tim Peters comments I saw so far reflected pretty well on him. I read most of it,twice. I almost agreed with Peter's after the first skim, but on reading the second time, I do think use a lot of rethorical stratagems/fallacies (he isn't the only one but the fact that he posted a lot does not help, and the use of the 'slippery slope' argument in like his 3rd post is a killer) so i now tend to distrust his good faith. The 'arguments' he use are fairly anecdotal, and now I think he's mostly wrong and a touch too adversarial. I think the Bennet guy made far better arguments (and that's frm someone who don't know/think anything about the overall situation). Overall, I don't think Tim Peters is a bad guy (tm), I think he has been mischaracterized/misunderstood, but his position was mostly wrong and he was a bit too active, which made him seem adversarial/trollish, which did not help. Also, clearly bad faith arguments are cheap and makes me dislike you when I fell for it (which I did). Banning for that is a bit much, but I understand my sensitivity is not the rule (but it should be :)). P.S: Re-reading that made me feel like I'm part of the 'lesswrong' community. I'm not, but I see why checking the use of rethorical fallacies is useful.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Ironically, that chain of thinking might be a case of the argument-from-fallacy fallacy. Just because someone is seems to be good at rhetoric and makes some bad arguments doesn't mean they are arguing from a bad faith position, or even imply that their position is unsupported.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kamaal 2y ago
>>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 mean even though the board is not traditionally a boss in the sense of an open source project. But its still a kind of management/boss. One of the most cornerstone laws of power is to never criticise a team member, even less so one's own boss(es) or their policies in public. Another law is to never make a team member apologise to you. It simply creates a rivalry on the longer run, and new enemies you don't want to fight. In fact you are better of not doing such things in gossip too. Powers always maintain spies, or just plain allies who give them information in return for favours. If you want to walk down this path, do ensure you have enough(minimum) support from a majority section of similar powers, then act. But even this is not recommended. In this case whenever such policies are announced in public, these decisions have been made with enough support and votes, the announcement is just a public event of informing the larger masses. If you criticise these things in public, you won't change a thing. Instead the powers mark you up for elimination at the first chance. Like in this case. If I was this person, I would abandon the project(not just the 3 month suspension) and probably convince other team members to do the same. Python is not the only decent open source game in town. Its also pointless to contribute to a project whose sole purpose is to hurt the very people that make it happen.
- slaymaker1907 2y ago
  Tim literally wrote the Zen of Python and also came up with Timsort, he’s not just some random contributor.
  - kamaal 2y ago
    The world is not a fair place. Its the political powers at work that decide people's fate no matter who they are. Over the years I have seen some very critical people, even critical teams fired en masse, and then replaced by not so good people. The world goes on. The products and projects suffer for a while, many times even die out completely. But that is what the powers-that-are want, and are ok to live with. My experience with these things tells me Tim won't find much respect there(even when he returns) unless the whole leadership is now replaced. And I can tell you other people will be treated with same levels of disrespect and outright insults going on. Once there is toxic management/leadership in place, your only options are to leave and work at some other place that treats people with respect. Im sure their foundation gets lots of money. And they have to appear in certain way(politically, and popular cultural trends) to keep getting more money. They are not going care who is important or how important they are, when big money is involved and they are likely to make big pay days. Its the standard evolution arc of most political hierarchies in tech companies. Once the product is successful and profits are flowing in. Management takes over. Decide they don't need engineering anymore, treat people with disrespect. Drive away good talent. Poison the whole culture and continue to milk features for more money. Eventually the set up dies out, and they go the next companies to extract the next pound of flesh.

by neilv 2y ago

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
Yeah, I didn't read the entire thing (it was torturing my just-waking brain), but I did notice a shift at one point, when he seemed to be trying to defend some well-known fundamental, which IMHO ideally wouldn't need defense nor explanation in context of a bylaws discussion. I suppose, even to very seasoned operators, sometimes it's hard to know when is time for patient and diplomatic explanation, when is time to get worried and make more passionate argument, when is time it's time to shift to "commit" mode, and when it's time to resign with the right decorum so that you still look like a sophisticated team player to future opportunities. I also suppose it's easier if the first priority is to be an operator. As for the other key party, besides whatever else is going on, publicly suspending someone in the tech industry like this seems like a big deal, and can damage the career of even the most accomplished people. It had really better be necessary and appropriate, or you're looking at damage to your org reputation and your culture, and maybe legal liability.
- hollerith 2y ago
  What do you mean by "operator"?
  - neilv 2y ago
    Politician.

orwin 2y ago

> I skimmed much of "https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed...", and all the Tim Peters comments I saw so far reflected pretty well on him. I read most of it,twice. I almost agreed with Peter's after the first skim, but on reading the second time, I do think use a lot of rethorical stratagems/fallacies (he isn't the only one but the fact that he posted a lot does not help, and the use of the 'slippery slope' argument in like his 3rd post is a killer) so i now tend to distrust his good faith. The 'arguments' he use are fairly anecdotal, and now I think he's mostly wrong and a touch too adversarial. I think the Bennet guy made far better arguments (and that's frm someone who don't know/think anything about the overall situation). Overall, I don't think Tim Peters is a bad guy (tm), I think he has been mischaracterized/misunderstood, but his position was mostly wrong and he was a bit too active, which made him seem adversarial/trollish, which did not help. Also, clearly bad faith arguments are cheap and makes me dislike you when I fell for it (which I did). Banning for that is a bit much, but I understand my sensitivity is not the rule (but it should be :)). P.S: Re-reading that made me feel like I'm part of the 'lesswrong' community. I'm not, but I see why checking the use of rethorical fallacies is useful.

roenxi 2y ago
Ironically, that chain of thinking might be a case of the argument-from-fallacy fallacy. Just because someone is seems to be good at rhetoric and makes some bad arguments doesn't mean they are arguing from a bad faith position, or even imply that their position is unsupported.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kamaal 2y ago

>>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 mean even though the board is not traditionally a boss in the sense of an open source project. But its still a kind of management/boss. One of the most cornerstone laws of power is to never criticise a team member, even less so one's own boss(es) or their policies in public. Another law is to never make a team member apologise to you. It simply creates a rivalry on the longer run, and new enemies you don't want to fight. In fact you are better of not doing such things in gossip too. Powers always maintain spies, or just plain allies who give them information in return for favours. If you want to walk down this path, do ensure you have enough(minimum) support from a majority section of similar powers, then act. But even this is not recommended. In this case whenever such policies are announced in public, these decisions have been made with enough support and votes, the announcement is just a public event of informing the larger masses. If you criticise these things in public, you won't change a thing. Instead the powers mark you up for elimination at the first chance. Like in this case. If I was this person, I would abandon the project(not just the 3 month suspension) and probably convince other team members to do the same. Python is not the only decent open source game in town. Its also pointless to contribute to a project whose sole purpose is to hurt the very people that make it happen.

slaymaker1907 2y ago
Tim literally wrote the Zen of Python and also came up with Timsort, he’s not just some random contributor.
- kamaal 2y ago
  The world is not a fair place. Its the political powers at work that decide people's fate no matter who they are. Over the years I have seen some very critical people, even critical teams fired en masse, and then replaced by not so good people. The world goes on. The products and projects suffer for a while, many times even die out completely. But that is what the powers-that-are want, and are ok to live with. My experience with these things tells me Tim won't find much respect there(even when he returns) unless the whole leadership is now replaced. And I can tell you other people will be treated with same levels of disrespect and outright insults going on. Once there is toxic management/leadership in place, your only options are to leave and work at some other place that treats people with respect. Im sure their foundation gets lots of money. And they have to appear in certain way(politically, and popular cultural trends) to keep getting more money. They are not going care who is important or how important they are, when big money is involved and they are likely to make big pay days. Its the standard evolution arc of most political hierarchies in tech companies. Once the product is successful and profits are flowing in. Management takes over. Decide they don't need engineering anymore, treat people with disrespect. Drive away good talent. Poison the whole culture and continue to milk features for more money. Eventually the set up dies out, and they go the next companies to extract the next pound of flesh.