I get your point, but I struggle to see how that justifies voting against this. This change was specifically written to address sensitive situations – the ones handled by the CoC WG. It targets that and that only. While there are are other instruments to remove fellows, I don’t believe any of them can be used in a manner suitable for this kind of sensitive situation.
I am not arguing about the non-importance or even down playing on whether this is not sensitive (middle paragraph please). I believe we are equipped to handle them in other ways, whether the board has the power or not.
You are free to make your own mind up on this.
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I didn’t realize you were a PSF Fellow! I see now that Tres is too. To which I say “cool!”. I’m honored to be in your company once again.
By my count the PSF has over 400 current Fellows. Still relatively rare, so not yet passed out like candy 
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That’s not the problem: the bylaws are very clear that a member (any member - “Fellow” is nothing special here)) can be ejected by a 2/3 vote of the membership.
The problem is that this is both impractical (never happened, & hard to imagine it ever could - the logistics are daunting), and in matters involving egregious bad behavior it’s viewed to be (very fairly, to my eyes) highly unfair to the victim(s) to air all the dirty laundry so visibly and broadly.
I don’t believe anyone here has actually opposed lowering that bar dramatically, to let the Board have the final word.
EDIT: I think i missed someone here who does oppose it, at least mildly. Their position isn’t entirely clear to me, but was made clear_er_ in recent posts.
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Yeah, of course. Maybe I am missing something, but how are the current instruments equipped to handle such situation? That’s what I am struggling with, I can’t see how.
Do you currently think a fellow can not be removed if they violate CoC without the board mandate? Is the later great to have yes, do I think we should now? no for me.
I don’t believe it’s been addressed yet. Someone earlier noted that Board votes are a matter of public record today, but I don’t believe the PSF bylaws require that, and it’s not a general legal requirement.
I’ve speculated that “privacy concerns” will cause the Board to reveal as little as possible about member-ejection votes. Who knows? Perhaps they won’t even be mentioned in the record.
Which I don’t even necessarily object to. Details matter here, and there are none.
In any case, web scrapers will be written that track changes to membership lists. Keeping it secret entirely isn’t possible given the nature of the community 
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The bylaws do allow for the members to force a special meeting “when requested in writing by not less than ten percent (10%) of all members entitled to vote at the meeting”, Of all the hypotheticals discussed here, that’s perhaps the least realistic .
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I believe it’s possible, but the issue needs to be raised without context, which makes it difficult to judge. I believe, in practice, it means that issues that should be raised end up not being. This seems to be supported by the statements of several people in this thread.
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Glyph! Long-time, no see. Thanks for adding a new perspective to the conversation.
I’ve been largely absent from the Python community for a few years, so I don’t have the same first-hand experience of PSF members being unkind or inappropriate in some public forum. I have observed the development of the CoC groups and the actions they’ve taken from a distance, and it’s seemed like a healthy, important part of maintaining the community.
I’ve been thinking about power and marginalization, too, although it is the reason I’m feeling conflict about change 3. In the non-Python part of the world, there have been some very weird power dynamics at play. The foremost example in my mind is that Claudine Gay was fired as the president of Harvard. There’s no accuser at play here, but there were questions about her fitness related to her Congressional testimony and accusations of plagiarism. When I read about how the board decided to fire her, there were a number of examples where board members were influenced by lobbying from their extended social circles. A bunch of billionaries lobbied the board and convinced them to oust her. I don’t think the case for her ouster was good, and it’s striking the she was the first black woman to lead Harvard. The power dynamics there were complex; she was powerful, but surely held to a different standard because of her race and gender. (In fact it’s noteworthy that most or all of the colleges being investigated by Congress are led by women.) I know that real world politics are particularly divisive, and I hope that my points doesn’t ride on those issues.
Rather my worry is that we may hold members of marginalized groups to a higher standard that other people. And the simple majority outcome would not be so much about board members with a bad intent, but more about some kind of intersectional bias. I worry that a member from a marginalized group is more at risk for an unfair outcome.
So I’d prefer to see a version of Change 3 that required a supermajority. It seems like we must have some way to remove a member short of a full vote of the members, and why not keep the 2/3rds standard even among the board. You raise a good argument about voting in favor of the current change to make incremental progress, but changes to the bylaws are so rare that I worry no one will be up for a second round of debate.
I’ll admit I’m also unclear about whether there is a problem that needs immediate attention. I gather from Brett’s comments that there are cases where the board would taken action soon after it was allowed to. I assume if these are egregious cases, it would be straightforward to reach the super-majority on the vote. So the board would still be able to take prompt action.
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Bias by the PSF Board against marginalized groups is not an abstract hypothetical. It’s a concrete reality (that proposal 3 would, with certainty, make worse).
See PyCon Africa’s “An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation” as a troubling example: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation
Most likely this comment will also get flagged (by specific individuals I am not at liberty to name). We’ll see.
Let me revise this somewhat. Our current board has a majority of people from the Global South or otherwise marginalized groups. That is encouraging and an extremely positive thing. As long as people who are demographically similar to me do not again have a majority, I have the utmost faith in the Board.
As far as I’ve seen, the entire support of this amendment comes from people who look and speak a whole lot like me. People like me should not be trusted.
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As Thomas pointed out, we have only 12 Board members today. Even assuming they all showed up for a meeting (which appears to almost never happen anymore), the difference between “simple majority” and “2/3rds supermajority” is the difference between 7 and 8. Hardly seems worth any effort to make such a small distinction.
There’s actually no debate here over the text we’ll be voting on. It was presented as “done deal - take it or leave it. exactly as already presented - it’s already too late to make any material changes”. That is, the debate has been only about whether to vote yea or nay, because that’s the only choice on the table to be made.
In some later vote, maybe. But - ya - seems unlikely to me too
Indeed, it’s my guess that that’s what’s really driving this. It explains so much that seems odd; e.g., why the initial post only mentioned “Fellows”, when the actual new text applies to all membership classes.
“There are some Fellows we believe should be ejected from the community for good cause, but the current bylaws don’t give us the power. Please vote to give us that power now, so we can act ASAP.” would have been forthright (if that’s actually the case, of course) and far more compelling to me.
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Ugh! off-by-one errors. I did imagine this would make more of a difference without giving it a lot of thought. A higher standard the simple majority seems better, but “great that a simple majority plus one” doesn’t have same ring.
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You have to also read about the bias concerns that led to the letter from Africa for another angle on this matter. I agree but presented with these trade offs, am not risking this power to the board, mind you am also speaking because I have been on the board when these discussions concerning a certain PSF fellow were happening.
Without saying too much about private discussions, I will say am not hypothesizing about this bias, I am also basing my decisions from the experiences being part of those discussions on the same board…
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This really confuses me, because I was on the Board at the same time as you, and I do not remember any discussions about removing PSF members. The only discussions even close were on whether someone should receive a CSA or not (i.e. an additional honor, not removing one).
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We can have a private discussion if you need to be reminded. I am referring to a completely different incident, that involved CoC of a PSF fellow.
We didnt do anything to the PSF fellow in that case but it was similar.
I also want to say, I gain nothing from fabricating an incident, anyone that wants to discuss the specifics on this incident, engage me privately.
Do not tempt me to violate CoC by answering rudely to you when I am mischaracterized on this topic 
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It can’t have been close, because the PSF Board does not have that power.
The board had no power that is why it didnt happen, so it was positive.
I should use the word “similar” discussion, sorry am not native english speaker.
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I’m sorry, that is just not true. I don’t want to devolve the thread here into a he-said-she-said, but there was never even a discussion about whether it should be possible at the time.
Can you please ask for context? because am also not going to delve into a private discussion, and its clear we are not on the same wave length, am happy to remind you.
I agree, we sent the discussion back to the work group, but the discussion taught me something, that has informed my vote today.
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I sent you a private message four posts ago.
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I’m going to vote in favour of the changes. IIUC much of the discussion in this thread is about two abuses of power: (1) the potential abuse of power from the PSF board and (2) individual PSF fellows being unkind and disrespectful in a way that wouldn’t fly if it were unknowns in the community. As far as I can tell, (1) isn’t a reasonable concern. The PSF is a democratic and pluralistic organisation, governed by bylaws and codes that greatly constrain the ability of any individual or group to subvert it. It’s representative of the community at large and it has my confidence. But (2) is a thing that actually happens, and if nothing were done about it I’d feel a little less proud of my fellowship. ISTM that the new powers are necessary and proportionate, and that the PSF board are best placed to exercise them.
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