David Mertz's keynote address at PyCon Nigeria

[tim.one (Tim Peters)]

[NOTE]
This is a kind of repost. I tried to hide the identity of who I was repying to by editing the quote tag in Markdown to remove the link to the original. Which did what I expected (left no clue in the body of my reply), but I didn’t notice that there was still a link retained by Discourse, showing up in a decoration at the top right of the area outside the post body. That displayed the user’s Discourse handle.

That decoration remained even after the OP deleted their post. And it still remained after a mod stepped in to delete their post “for real”. And it still showed up after I deleted my post. It finally went away when a mod deleted my post “for real” too.

Nothing sinister about any of this. A mod & I cooperated on the common goal of hiding the OP’s identity, which is what the OP wanted too.

Anyway, while it may never come up again, that’s the trick: if you don’t want any trace of who you’re replying to, don’t use any of Discourse’s helpful “reply” features to begin with. Start a reply “by hand” from scratch.
[/NOTE]

edit: I’ll have to remove this post in a few days as I know it’s not safe for me to even describe online what is happening where I live.

And for that reason I’m not quoting you in a way that leaves your online identity visible. You may or may not want to delete your post sooner, before the Internet Wayback Machine captures it. You should also be aware of that copies of your msg may also have been emailed to Discourse users (for example, the system sent a copy to my email address).

I find this casual comparison of mild moderation here on DPO that happened online to a few well-off Westerners living in the safest countries in the world to “purge” and “exile” to be borderline insulting in how it minimizes and trivializes the actual persecution, purge and exile happening right now in less fortunate places.

David would agree. @Lucas_Malor didn’t copy the entire speech, just the part he cared about. Not long after:

[David Mertz]

I want to temper, in a certain way, the concerns expressed in the last couple slides. Even though I find the actions of a number of prominent and self-righteous Python figures stupid and venal, none of this genuinely affects me, nor Tim, nor Steve, nor Raymond, nor the various other folks who will be banished in the coming months.

While the social dynamic that motivates banishment from the PSF resembles fervent religious and political purges, at its heart it’s trivial. In this world, now and historically, there have been far too many genuinely oppressive governments and fanatical religious devotees who have murdered, tortured, geographically exiled, barred from employment and income, and separated from their families, their perceived opponents. Nothing remotely similar applies to the Python community or to that small United States nonprofit corporation

He’s very aware of that he’s making a limited analogy, not at all claiming equivalence.

If that’s not enough for you, please email him yourself. I have enough of a job just trying to explain myself I don’t have David’s deep academic background in this area, and would not myself have used these words. But I understand why he did, and believe he made it very clear how comparatively trivial Python schisms are.