I would personally like to vote based on the candidates merits’ (as perceived by me, of course) rather than merely their positions on the CoC issue. I hope the general outcome of this election won’t be interpreted as a collective stance on how to deal with CoC violations.
2 Likes
I absolutely didn’t mean you should vote solely on that basis. Simply that the candidates’ views on the CoC matter is a factor where you can influence the SC’s views over the next year, just like any other area where a candidate’s views are important to you. As I said in a part of my post just before the part you quoted, the SC vote is simply another option for influencing things.
4 Likes
FWIW, I already said in my initial “I’m back!” post that I believe their competence in handling the non-CoC issues should be primary, and I will in fact be voting for more than one of the SC members who voted to ban me.
But it’s an inescapable fact of life that so long as the SC is in the ban business, CoC enforcement is part of their job, so their positions on that are also legitimate criteria to weigh. I give them less weight, but not zero weight.
I expect everyone has their own weighting to work out for themselves.
1 Like
Sorry, this still does not make sense. The SC vote is a vote to renew the SC and nothing else. It’s not a vote on any specific PEP changes.
Please stop implying that we should use the SC vote as a proxy on people’s preference on this issue. The only thing the SC vote results tells you is who they voted for; not why they voted that way.
1 Like
I don’t believe that to be Paul’s implication. I think what he means (and which I agree with) is that CoC views are an inescapable part of this election, and meaning will be read into the results whether we want it to be or not.
10 Likes
This could imply that there are no criteria for who to vote for, which seems silly. Everyone has goals and desires:
- more minority representation?
- more resources for performance?
- better handling of CoC issues?
I’m confident that the technical side of Python will continue to thrive with whichever group of five gets elected, so I will cast my vote based on the other issues that the candidates are representing.
9 Likes
I will say that the number who have come to me privately over the years about conduct issues they have had with another core dev is unfortunately not insignificant, and they have not all been in public spaces and thus don’t have something one can share a link to or find out about in passing. And so I think asking people to publicly come out about conduct issues they have faced puts folks in such a uncomfortable position that they would rather not participate or leave completely.
15 Likes
Maybe it’s worth trying to convince MAL to hold this vote until we’ve come up with a more comprehensive proposal? I know he said he disagreed, but it looks like in its current form the proposal isn’t going to pass, and we don’t want to get too many attempts—people get tired of votes and it looks bad.
15 Likes
Note that it wasn’t just Tim who woke up to press inquiries. I was contacted by the same people. (One of them was dishonest by not revealing his press affiliation.) I responded the same as Tim said and I believe I had at least as much of a hand in quieting this down as Tim had. (Tim knew this, as we exchanged email about the incident, but I’m glad he didn’t want to reveal my personal involvement.)
Also it was my contacting Łukasz that caused my post to be unhidden. (Other moderators didn’t respond.)
14 Likes
In this case, you had more to do with it. I was locked out of DIscourse so couldn’t contact a mod. You could, and did, and that’s what got the post unhidden. If that hadn’t been unhidden in a timely way, I believe at least one of those “press contacts” would have gone live with “the story” before night came.
In some other cases, you had nothing to do with it, and still don’t know about them. And I expect the reverse is also true.
I spelled it out here because, in context, I seemed to be being accused of trying to damage the PSF. You weren’t. But I believe I misread Greg’s post, and posted a quite different reply in the topic where it belongs. Where followups to this little digression should also go.
I hope people appreciate that it’s actually quite difficult for some of us to discuss CoC enforcement at this time while pretending there isn’t an elephant in the room. I don’t want that to be focus here either. But concrete examples can also be enormously clarifying when weighing abstractions, like test-driving a new API prototype. At least I hope I can use my own ban as an example without being charged with “publishing private information without permission” (which, no, I never did either, no more than I divulged Guido’s involvement in the current anecdote - that was up to him).
And, sorry, but I don’t think that’s really irrelevant here. How did we end up with a process where even plainly false charges can survive review by 2 groups comprising 17 people in total? It’s unfathomable to me. At a bare minimum, at least try once to ask the accused what they have to say about a contemplated charge?
Maybe MAL can run a poll about adding “ask questions” to the SC’s CoC enforcement duties.
5 Likes
Here’s how I would think the CoC enforcement could happen if it wasn’t explicitly assigned to the SC: leave it to the particular forum’s moderators, who can decide to take it to the CoC WG. I don’t want to link to it to avoid attracting more attention to that particular case, but around the same time as the last ban, someone else was banned, by the Discourse moderators, after discussion with the CoC WG. The moderators posted their decision in the offending thread, quoting the points made by the CoC WG, which sounded eminently reasonable to me given what was said earlier in that thread.
The same approach could apply to the GitHub moderators, and by the moderators of any other forum that happens to be under the PSF’s purview. (The commit bit is a separate thing. Ideally it should not be used for punishment but for clear violations of trust.)
I understand that this would heighten the burden for the Discourse moderators – if that burden becomes too high, the PSF should help by hiring someone.
I got part of this idea from Microsoft’s CoC – they encourage solving CoC problems locally but offer professional help (no, not that kind of professional help 
) to moderators who are dealing with cases beyond their powers or skill set.
And I agree with MAL and several others here that one of the issues with the CoC WG is transparency. Understanding the need to keep certain details private, I still believe that there is something here that can be improved. (And I don’t mean this as a critique on the WG members present here. The upheaval just strongly suggests to me that something needs to change.)
PS: I haven’t posted much here until today. That’s mostly because this drama has been excruciating for me. My friend (Tim) felt hurt, and my friends (the SC) were in an impossible situation (“information asymmetry” is a bland euphemism). I’ve talked to a variety of core devs and SC members and every time I thought I had some insight, the next discussion revealed even more complexity. It’s eating at me. Let’s try to move forward rather than “re-litigating” the last case. (If anything, what hurts me most is all those other people who were either banned or decided to leave the team altogether.)
33 Likes
Maybe a moderator can move Tim’s post here (and possibly others, including my own) to that other thread? I agree with Time that it doesn’t belong here.
2 Likes
Just pointing out the problem Brett raised earlier:
So there’s not always “a forum” involved.
Not to poo-poo your post (I like it!), just to suggest that “one approach fits all” rarely really does in reality.
1 Like
Tim, I would like to hear from someone else in this discussion. Please don’t overwhelm the thread.
5 Likes
That would lead to a chilling effect of people not reporting problems because it removes all anonymity and privacy. This Committers space is not an appropriate forum.
Even if we were to discuss things in our non-public Inquisition category and pretend that it would remain private instead of being selectively leaked by anyone disgruntled… That still lacks anonymity.
When discussing if intervention is needed in a conflict: It is important to have a space that excludes the accused and anyone with ties to them. Because you’re literally discussing how best to intervene and who should do it and how. Doing it any other way is disrespectful and turns it into a fight when the point of discussing someones behaviors and how to get them to stop is to prevent that.
It is better to have people not engaged in the conflict be the arbiters and mediators. We in this forum are all engaged by definition with happenings among us here. That is exactly what the PSF CoC WG provides. They form subcommittees for incidents composed of people not tied to those involved. That’s why the core devs on the CoC WG recused themselves. All of that takes time but is important for some of the serious incidents they have to handle. (source: I’ve actually talked to several people involved and heard how they operate this year - those who are here are welcome to correct me if I misrepresented anything). But as a result of that, the CoC WG likely doesn’t have the low latency or even bandwidth to do things in the more timely manner we all wish conflict resolution could happen in. We should come up with a specific request of what we want and ask them, but not presume they’ll be able to take it on.
What I think we need is a set of more near real time conduct mediators. But this is not something I believe we’ll have volunteers willing to commit time to doing. Nor do I believe that all those who most need such intervention(s) would trust any group who does volunteer for that given how poorly our existing simpler job moderators have been treated by various aggrieved this year. If anyone is willing to take on setting such a thing up, you’ve got my support.
I’m obviously voting against this change without a respectful replacement mechanism setup, even though I wish the SC didn’t have to bear this burden no matter who it’s made up of.
10 Likes
I’d love to know if there is a form of professional help to moderators that’d actually work in forums like ours.
6 Likes
I respect the standards in the Microsoft CoC. If folks focused on these, we would have a productive and humane core development community.
Like Guido, I’m sad about the toll this has taken on people. To be perfectly honest, I regret ever requesting that people stop referring to sexualized language. It made me really sad to read offensive comments on the mailing list and the lack of regard that some had for empathy and community. I want to be very clear that Tim did not fan the flames on sexualized content that was done by others in the Python community. Tim was gracious to me publicly and privately, and he complied as soon as I asked for irrelevant sexualized language cease. He has my respect as do the Steering Council and the CoC WG members.
Our Standards
Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:
- Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
- Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
- Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
- Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
- Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community
Examples of unacceptable behavior include:
- The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind
- Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
- Public or private harassment
- Disruptive behavior
- Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
- Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
Overall, if we spent more time trying to carry out the standards above in public, we would be a much healthier community.
14 Likes
By whom? I don’t really care if third parties try to read into the results in the way you’re saying. I would be very annoyed, though, if such reading happens in the Python core developer community, which is what I’m trying to warn about here.
1 Like
I certainly wasn’t suggesting anyone in the core dev community should draw such a conclusion. Honestly, I can’t see how anyone could, given that only a couple of candidates have stated a position on the matter.
I must say, I am really happy that we are having these discussions and people come out with many different opinions and suggestions on how to tackle the conduct challenges.
Since the main critique still is that the proposal does not provide an alternative way to handle conduct issues, I hereby put the proposal on hold until we have sorted out filling in this gap. I’ll add a note to the OP explaining this.
So let’s continue the discussion and see whether we can flesh out an improved proposal.
I’ll write up some responses in another longer message.
17 Likes