– Posting collectively for the entire 2024 Python Steering Council –
Python Community and CPython Core Developers -
In the recent discussion threads covering the upcoming (ongoing) PSF ballot measures both here on Discuss and in parallel over on the psf-vote (members only) mailing list we witnessed some disturbingly unprofessional conversations take place, involving many well known individuals. These comments have alienated many members in our community and act to prevent others from wanting to join and become a part of Python’s future.
This is not okay. The Steering Council does not endorse this behavior.
This does not reflect our values and who we as CPython Core team strive to be, and it certainly does not align with our goal of fostering an inclusive and diverse group of Core Developers.
While code of conduct discussions are ongoing, we wanted to communicate this message as the Steering Council to emphasize and clarify that we are taking this matter seriously.
In particular, we’d like to highlight some key examples of the non-inclusive comments and behavior from the discussion that occurred in order to demonstrate the impact and harm that can be caused both intentionally and unintentionally by our words and their interpretations:
(1) Bringing up examples of sexual harassment and making light of workplace sexual harassment training. This is highly disrespectful to survivors of sexual assault and those who care about them. This topic is never a joke.
(2) Utilizing emojis and turns of phrase in ways that can be misconstrued or perceived entirely differently by different people. Be mindful when writing that your audience is a much broader diverse professional community than the small collegial group of insiders that Python evolved from decades ago. Some communication styles that were unfortunately common in the past are rightfully recognized as inappropriate today.
(3) 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. Rules lawyering on moderation attempts or a high volume of frequent replies does not further an online conversation; it tends to derail it.
We expect everyone to uphold an inclusive communication standard in the Python community, regardless of your tenure, stature, reputation, or history with the project.
– The 2024 Python Steering Council (Barry, Emily, Greg, Pablo, & Thomas)
We have asked the moderators to preemptively set this topic to slow mode.
I didn’t keep abreast of every message in the psf-vote thread, but I can say that the ones that I did read made me very seriously question how much I want to participate in this community. And as someone who has chaired two PyCons AU[1] and already sunk many hundreds of hours into Python community work between those and other things, that isn’t something I say lightly.
I was also really surprised and disappointed how many of the emails that made me feel that way had names attached to them that I recognised; names of people that I don’t know personally but had a level of respect for because of their major accomplishments in Python and its ecosystem.
To be clear, I am speaking here in my personal capacity only and not on behalf of the current year’s PyCon AU committee nor the PyCon AU Steering Committee, neither of which I am currently on. ↩︎
Forgive me for pushing back on that a bit: the idea that the Python old-timers are troglodyte reprobates is counterfactual.
Where was the SC when the first woman was breaking into the Python world? The first Jew? The first American? The first Muslim? The first Russian? The first black? The first openly gay? And so on. I was there. They were heartily welcomed by all. I’ll only name one, because he is - alas - dead, so can’t be embarrassed, harassed, or trolled. Aahz Maruch. That was the name he went by. He was born into a Jewish family. Short, pudgy, physically challenged (most obviously severe hearing loss), not conventionally “attractive”, polyamorous, and had a male partner so long as I knew him. He may have been bisexual - never asked and don’t recall him saying, but I have a vague recollection of that he was. Nobody cared about any of that.
In those days, there was really no “pecking order”. Guido was at the top. That was it. There was far more work to do than people to do it. Slots were filled by people stepping up and grabbing what struck their fancy. Then they sunk or (mostly) swum. Aahz was one of the first to step up to claim the “intro to Python” book slot:
That was co-authored with his primary life partner.
Aaha was also key to successful community management at the start, thanks to extensive experience in managing SciFi fandom events, He wasn’t just welcomed, he was celebrated.
Nobody talked about demographic markers because they didn’t matter to anyone. We were indeed “collegial” because of our shared passion for Python. It wasn’t enforced, patrolled, or strained. In a way, it was, e.g., a blessing that we had no money to pass out for conferences - nobody could feel excluded because there was nothing to exclude them from . Yes, that’s a “wink” emoticon. I don’t buy that its meaning is some kind of secret cultural dog whistle. Granted that some cases can be far subtler, though. I’ll keep an eye out for that.
The PSF has apparently grown too large for genuine universal collegiality, or even frank rational discussion. I lament that, but I’d encourage all technically inclined to find a small, struggling project to engage with. I don’t particularly enjoy being dumped on for every perceived fault of the Python community, but it’s a small price to pay for the joy of seeing people still using code I labored on 30+ years ago .
But, to be fair, “survivorship bias” is at work there. All the ambitious start-up companies I worked for failed. Python is the one project that happened to survive - and, indeed, thrive. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Go for it.
No, I think you are missing the point. The PSF wants to make sure discussions are welcoming to anyone, that is not mutually exclusive with frank rational discussion. You can very well have frank ratrional discusssions while being compassionate and welcoming — it’s hard, I know, but that’s what we are striving for.
Like @gpshead said, some styles of communications that were common in the past are now recognized as inappropriate, which is something I don’t think is surprising to most people. The problem are those styles of communication, not rational discussion. It can be that your style of rational discussion may include some of those inappropriate styles of communication, but that’s why moderation is important. Moderation is not only an administrative tool, but crucially, it is a tool to give you feedback, and to guide you to use better, more welcoming, language.
If one of your posts gets edited by a moderator, it is not a fault on your character, and you should not take it very personally, instead, I think you should simply take it as feedback. How you respond to that situation is what is reflected by your character.
Well, when “missing the point” s universal, rational discussion is in fact not possible .
I can tell you for a fact that more than just a few PSF members are terrified by the possibility that the CoC WG will ruin their careers. Do they bring that up with the WG or SC? No. They’re already terrified. They’re far more likely to bring it up with me, which is why I hear about it. On the flip side, “X said a bad word” complaints are far more likely to end up in the WG’s inbox than in mine. Even when I agree, I have no power to “do something” about it. In the former case, I have no power either, but since I’m long retired I have no career to protect. All I can do is reflect their concerns, but I’ll no more “name names” than the SC will.
Nobody has a full view here, and everyone is biased, That’s how humans are wired. Confirmation bias is a universal human cognitive defect, and “group confirmation bias” is all but impossible to overcome.
Reflect that back. When someone is saying they find the SC’s actions or statements are over the line, that too is an expression of pain. But they increasingly fear to say anything in public, so, ya, in a “like” popularity contest, I’m always going to lose.
In the “good old days”, Python was more welcoming to my eyes. For example, some developers are just plain hard to work with, routinely impatient and dismissive. They were welcome too, although never became popular. I confess that diversity of viewpoint is important to me too, and more important than being as inoffensive as toast.
The current notion of “welcome” is conditioned on criteria so subjective, who can tell? Well, the CoC WG can, because that’s their job now.
It was the Board’s job when the CoC was first adopted. David Mertz and I were both on the Board at the time, and already recounted at some length how inherently arbitrary and unprincipled our deliberations were. That wasn’t for lack of trying, There was simply no consensus to be had,
Unless human nature has changed in the meantime, there’s no reason to believe that’s fundamentally changed. You either have people who can’t reach agreement, or groupthink has come to wholly dominate.
AFAIK, it hasn’t happened to me yet. If it does, my reaction will depend entirely on details of the specific edits made. For example, I may thank them for the change. Or I may delete the post entirely rather than allow a gross misrepresentation to persist. The idea that the edit must be “good” just because someone with the power to make it did so doesn’t get off the ground with me.
Discourse did “auto-hide” a few of my posts. I had no reaction at all, beyond giving up trying to guess about why (so I could edit out the claimed offense, about which Discourse says not one word). I don’t care much about that - it was merely a minor waste of time. The mods soon enough resurrected those posts on their own initiative.
I’m not (unless this happens automatically in some way that I don’t know about) a PSF member, but what you say rings incredibly true. I’ve lost count of the cases I’ve seen elsewhere in tech where such terror was either described to me or I could immediately empathize.[1]
At the risk of redundancy, I’m going to give my own perspective below, because it’s just that important to me now. When I see things like this happen, it makes me less interested in joining or working with the PSF.
The point, I think, is that it’s simply beyond imagination how a wink emoji could be “recognized as inappropriate”, or something which could “be misconstrued or perceived entirely differently by different people”. Aside from which, if this is sincerely the position of PSF Code of Conduct enforcers - that a complaint about such indeed has merit - then why are we using software that automatically converts that sequence of punctuation into an image?
Or is there, then, more than one way to “use” an emoji? If there is, I can’t understand the distinction being made, so I don’t know how I should properly look out for my own conduct going forward, aside from “just don’t type the close bracket after the semicolon; someone might take offense”. As far as I’m aware, the use of a wink emoji is that one inserts it into text, and it conveys the meaning that the preceding part was either not meant seriously, contains wordplay, or otherwise is intended to have a more light-hearted or jovial interpretation than the literal text would suggest. None of that sounds potentially inappropriate to me in the context of a forum discussion.[2]
Nor can I understand, from what I read in the thread, how any “soft conduct moderation” was “resisted”. To the extent that a problem was pointed out, it appears to have dealt with content that had been censored (whether preemptively or upon request, I don’t know) and which was relevant to the discussion. If there was something else, I missed it entirely, sorry. (I acknowledge here that there may have been posts deleted before I could see them.)
And where workplace sexual harassment training was brought up, I frankly don’t understand how it could be said that anyone was “making light of” it. If anything, the central point of the comment I recall reading, was to highlight the problematic nature of the situation - whereby those in power go unpunished while innocent third parties are at least inconvenienced and potentially shamed. If anything, that seems to me like progressive messaging.
Not to mention, also, the idea that styles of communication “are recognized” as such and so, as if that were an objective matter. This particular bit of rhetoric is far too familiar to me. Specifically, I’m accustomed to hearing it from people who in another context would rally fervently against linguistic prescriptivism (if there were any risk of “excluding” people by proposing to correct their grammar, for example). And it has never left a good impression for that reason.
And now I feel the need to move up a level or so of meta in the discussion.
I merely lurked in the previous thread (I didn’t even “like” any posts) because I could see that the primary topic of discussion had become politically (in the broad sense) contentious, and I’ve been trying to cut that out of my life, or at least to compartmentalize it. I’d prefer not to talk about issues like this as a programmer. I’ve even held my tongue, elsewhere on the internet, when people were verbally abusive to me and blatantly falsely accused me of sexual discrimination. (I’ve even gotten this when I didn’t know the sex or gender of anyone involved and can’t think of a solid reason why I should have been expected to.) In fact, I only even read the previous thread because it was referenced here, and this one because the forum software drew my attention to it. I wish I hadn’t read it, but the temptation was apparently too strong.
I don’t like bringing it up, because I have a general distaste for identity politics and don’t think it should ordinarily give my argument any more weight (whether from pity, “skin in the game” or supposed authority) - but I consider myself to be to some extent on the autism spectrum. I self-test fairly high in several categories[3], and many of my personal habits and tendencies seem strongly suggestive of ADHD[4]. I’m sure (on the balance of probabilities[5], circumstantial evidence, and also at least one admission I can recall) I’m not alone in this, either.
But I bring it up regardless, because: if pronouncements like this are what “inclusivity” looks like, it doesn’t seem very accommodating at all. I don’t feel included when I know (or sense) that I’m being expected to navigate all of that. Other communities have given me the impression that “diversity” isn’t actually meant to include neurodiversity; but I’d prefer to try to stay charitable here. So let me try to explain what I find problematic, from a personal perspective. Of course, I don’t mean to speak on behalf of anyone else, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical.
When I sense that I need to scan my examples for non-obvious potential causes of offense, that can actually take quite a bit out of me.[6]
When I learn that I’m being expected to pick up social queues from plain text and that I could be deemed a rule-breaker if I get it wrong, panic sets in.
When I read that what seems to me like a common marker of normal socialization - the sort that I’ve had to consciously teach myself to do, just in order to fit in when in public and not surrounded by people with a common interest - could be “misconstrued”, that panic doubles, and synergizes with confusion and a looming sense of injustice. (I should understand when others are aggrieved, but not attempt to express my own emotions? - Except it looks like I’m going to anyway…)
But most importantly, when I know that all of this is nominally about the pain and trauma of others, and the sheer importance thereof, a wave of emotions I don’t have names for washes over me, fueled by the past trauma (going back at least 15 years) of witnessing (and, unfortunately, getting involved in) prior discussions of this sort.
Those discussions are the bulk of why I’ve been trying to avoid discussions like the previous thread, and the current one, for the past few years. Because I have a pretty good picture of where they invariably go from here. And because they never leave me in a particularly good emotional place.
But I’m hitting the Reply button anyway.
Because Tim Peters is someone I’ve known of for almost as long, and first got to interact with over a decade ago[7], and greatly respected that entire time. On top of which, I’m deeply concerned with the direction things appear to be going here.
So I would never be able to live with myself if I didn’t.
Just as I’ve lost count of the times I was simultaneously asked to empathize with someone else and told that doing so is impossible due to immutable characteristics of my person; but that’s another story… ↩︎
When I read this paragraph back to myself, it sounds a bit snarky and, well, hurt. I don’t really intend to convey that, but I genuinely don’t know how to fix it while actually conveying the message. At any rate, while no snark is intended, I do feel hurt. ↩︎
…but notably not WRT language processing - which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I’m perceiving what I am here. ↩︎
To the extent that I’ve understood the research I’ve been able to do, of course. I don’t expect anyone to take this self-diagnosis at face value. ↩︎
Probabilities which are, of course, conditioned on the fact that this community is focused on the act of programming. ↩︎
I can count at least three things in this post that I either preemptively self-censored, or felt I had to go back and edit, because I sensed the potential for entirely unintended sexual innuendo. And now I feel like I should delete this footnote just in case; but I won’t because the internal conflict illustrates my point so clearly. ↩︎
I ask you to picture the still-mature, but less experienced me, star-struck - talking on Stack Overflow about a problem where a naive application of sorted resulted in substandard performance, only to receive praise and an insightful back-and-forth from the person who’d implemented it! ↩︎
I feel obigated to post here, if only because the OP is impossible to derive any meaning from without knowing the full context of a separate thread. And I read the other thread, and even now I’m unclear what the proscription is. If the SC wants to fight on the behalf of someone, they should write better. They should say plainly what they mean.
I can gather that this is in reference to a (anodyne) set of posts in another thread by TIm here.
“Bringing up examples of sexual harrassment”? What does this actually mean? There were no gory descriptions of actual harrassment. Is the concept out of bounds in a thread that relates closely to code of conduct? It cannot be. Presumably you know this, because the OP feels a lot like a CoC violation warning. And indeed we all know that sexual harrassment does occur. And to somehow pretend it does not for the sake of the reader is likely itself a violation of the CoC.
And is that limitation in concert with or independent of:
“making light of sexual harrassment training”? This is a stretch. The clear intent of the message was to bemoan the system which allowed the actual offender to escape consequences, not to demean the concept of sexual harrassment training. I suppose the crime here was putting the words in quotes. But no one was making fun of anything, and to say so is a willful misreading.
I’m going to assume this was also aimed at Tim.
I think you’re saying we shouldn’t wink here. I mean, fair enough I guess, although it seems pretty arbitrary and I’ll take my chances personally. But of course I’m just spitballing because no one knows what you mean. “using turns of phrase” is utterly meaningless. Say what you mean, please.
I’m going to guess this is about a member objecting to one of his posts being edited by a moderator. I object too. But again, no one knows what you mean.
I am disappointed in this style of communication from the SC. If you have a problem with a specific member, take it up with them, and be specific. There is no need to advertise your virtue here.
I want to say that I have the strong suspicion that much of the worst behavior did not happen in the publicly available thread here on discourse but on the non-public mailing list thread. I feel therefore that speculations by non-PSF members like @kknechtel and @mcdonc (and myself) are not going to be helpful, since the part of the context we can see is not going to allow us to correctly judge what is meant here.
If PSF members want to refute this and say “no, the mail thread is a lot more tame than the discourse thread” (and tbh, I am not going to take the judgement of anyone involved with the SC or either thread at was value), I am willing to readjust my view and start wondering what the SC wants to say with this OP.
This is an odd definition of welcoming. You seem to be saying, “everyone was allowed in, it was their decision whether they wanted to hang out with people who were routinely impatient and dismissive.”
I’m fully in favor of the community educating or excluding someone who is “routinely impatient and dismissive.” Allowing that behavior drives other people out. It’s a bad tradeoff.
Thanks Ned! Yes, that is a great way to put the fundamental point in words.
Some people seem to want a very specific list of what is and isn’t allowed, perhaps out of fear that they’ll cross a line. That’s the code of conduct which applies to everyone. With additional role expectations for those bearing the CPython Core Developer title laid out in PEP-13 - “Core team members are expected to act as role models for the community” in particular. Nothing in either of those should be surprising to anyone. They are the same kinds of standards any employer would hold you to.
I want to assure everyone that the points we made in the original post were so pointed exactly because of the complaints we received from community members. They do not owe anyone an explanation of how or why they interpret things perhaps different than yourself. The important point is to recognize that people do. The right course of action is to believe them, accept that, and learn. Not try to tell them they are wrong.
The SC argued internally a lot over how specific to be in the original post. We importantly chose not to call anyone out by name in the there because our expectations aren’t about one person. All of us need to be aware of what is and isn’t okay and a lot of people were involved in the problematic threads, even if Tim, as self-identified here, was one big part. We did reach out to Tim privately beforehand.
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.
There is no cabal conspiring to plot anyone’s demise. Nobody is likely to be forced out for a mere one off “AAA said BBB to CCC” complaint unless they’re actively trying to be an asshole in order to be shown the door. What really tends to do it are repeated patterns of disrespectful behavior not in keeping with our community standards and a demonstrable inability to learn and improve going forward when those behaviors are pointed out. Sometimes demonstrating improvement can be as simple as a sincere apology and not repeating the behavior.
For those who have built a career based on an identity as strongly involved with Python the project or community, that’s great! I expect we’re all inspired by that and welcome it. But part of doing that has always meant that you need to be willing to co-evolve with the professional standards of the project over time. That means accepting that old status-quos on how things once worked may be obsolete.
So no, the “CoC WG”, “PSF”, or “SC” cannot “ruin their career”. That’s entirely on them. Blaming others for the consequences of their own actions would demonstrate a lack of self awareness, which if that is their attitude, was IMNSHO likely part of the problem in the first place.
This is exactly how the rest of us hear about the many people who don’t want to be here because of the behaviors they routinely witness and experience.
Members and would be members are quite literally afraid to bring it up publicly because they get jumped on by people telling them they are wrong. They simply do not want to interact in our spaces at all which means they remain invisible and even when some are brave enough to speak up, as has happened multiple times in these threads, they appear to often be ignored. It is shameful.
The number of people I’ve worked with who would’ve made great open source contributors, here or elsewhere, who’ve effectively turned tail and said “hell no!” to the suggestion because of how they see people get treated by those already in this pool is more than I can count.
I wish I could 100% trust that this was the case. But there is a complete lack of transparency. How can we know that the responsibility truly does lie with that person? At present, what we have is “trust me, there’s problems, and we need to deal with them, but we can’t say anything”. I don’t feel comfortable with that kind of power being wielded in that much secrecy.
Codes of conduct can be weaponized just like anything else. Secrecy creates dangerous weapons.
Do more people need to leave Discourse and go back to the mailing lists and newsgroups?
I sincerely hope not. Mailing lists and newsgroups have a far higher barrier to entry, IMO. I don’t think it would be any more conducive to inclusivity in the long run. They’re also just technologically inferior; for example, I’ve seen on mailing list archives that people will use Markdown in their messages, but the archive site doesn’t render it.
I sincerely hope not. Mailing lists and newsgroups have a far
higher barrier to entry, IMO. I don’t think it would be any more
conducive to inclusivity in the long run. They’re also just
technologically inferior; for example, I’ve seen on mailing list
archives that people will use Markdown in their messages, but the
archive site doesn’t render it.
What you consider “technologically inferior” I see as
“technologically superior.” I can (and do) interact with mailing
lists and newsgroups with any compatible client of my choosing, in
my case entirely from a text terminal, which works the same no
matter where I go or what system I’m on and is conveniently operated
entirely from a keyboard without need of a graphical pointing
device.
Discourse on the other hand has a very limited “mailing list mode”
function which is a far cry from the flexibility and functionality
of an actual mailing list or Usenet newsgroup. For “first class”
Discourse functionality you’re stuck using a graphical Web browser
(even the rather advanced elinks text browser struggles with it).
Not everything that’s new is better just because it’s new.
I only moved to discussing things on the Python Discourse because
the official Python community mailing lists were closed down, not
because I thought it was in any way an improvement. In fact, I
sorely miss the functionality I got from Mailman 3. Most other
projects I work on day-to-day do still use it, thankfully, rather
than caving to flashy trends that seem to think the World Wide Web
is all there is to the Internet any more.
EDIT: sorry, this was meant to be a reply in the " Inclusive communications expectations in Python spaces" topic. Discourse doesn’t appear to support a way for me to move it. Neither will let it me delete the post here and repost in the intended topic.]
Which I appreciate. The original expressed concern was that I was “making light of the SH itself”. Which I replied couldn’t be read that way by a reasonable person. I didn’t get a response, but next thing I saw was a public post in which the claim had morphed into that I was “making light of workplace SH training”. Which is also an implausible reading, although slightly less implausible. I didn’t, e.g., mention that the bosses in these cases were exempted from attending the training. It wasn’t the training that was the joke, but the corrupt process that let the bigwig off the hook. I was decrying the lack of justice for the victim(s).
I decided to let it go, since there’s no point fighting confirmation bias. If you’re determined to take offense, offense is what you’ll find. I see that at least two others here read the post with its intended meaning, as did the person I was originally replying to. They exposed themselves to shunning by speaking up. That’s brave.
We’re all community members here, yes? I have no problem with someone telling me I’m wrong. But I’m not required to agree with them either. It cuts both ways. They’re not required to “explain” anything to me. Somehow that burden falls only on those you don’t favor - but, in which case, even their attempt to explain is unacceptable. I simply don’t buy it.
I worked with a person who had a traumatic childhood experience with a house fire. They had major PTSD, physically shaking upon encountering any reminder. Nobody asked them to “explain” it - some reactions are plain out of reach of rational thought. We accommodated instead, when we could. For example, if they had to be in a meeting, we picked a room without a fire extinguisher, on a path from their office free of fire extinguishers too. Neither did anyone try to tell them they’d actually be safer if they were closer to a fire extinguisher. Etc. We were all happy to accommodate.
But that was a “small, collegial” environment, akin to Python’s earliest days. The PSF wasn’t intended to be a support group for PTSD survivors, and is spectacularly ill-suited to such a role. People who need therapy should by all means pursue that. This is not the place to find it. IMO it’s very much your proper job to apply “reasonable person” standards. And it’s all our proper jobs to be accommodating when we can be.
Shoe, foot, other. You’re very plainly telling them “you’re wrong”. What happened to the imperative to “believe them, accept that, and learn”? Indeed, if the roles were reversed here, you’d be accusing me of “blaming the victim”.
It’s actually a very plain meaning of “welcoming”: “you’re welcome to join. Period.”. It didn’t come with pages of subjective fine print .
I actually agree. In the early days, Python was in much more of a “beggars can’t be choosers” category. It outgrew that long ago.
Still, to my eyes, the PSF is remarkably intolerant of various forms of neurodivergence. They’re people too, but don’t have a lobby with political power to shape public opinion. In the US in general, the default response is to medicate the “troublemakers” into compliance.
I have a specific core dev in mind who was a major pain to work with, and was almost certainly (to my eyes) at an extreme on several measures of autism. But they were (literally) obsessed with a specific core library, of which they were the author and sole maintainer. Leave them alone with that, and they usually left you alone. Needless to say, I got along with them fine .
They got a ban, and with 100% predictability had no interest in ever returning. Rational talk was never going to work with them, which was also thoroughly predictable. Can’t say I know what might have worked, but still regret that they’re gone. They weren’t evil - they were neurodivergent, I can’t help but feel there must have been some more truly compassionate way to resolve that one.
I have been “exposed to shunning” too many times to care about it any more, really. But I do care about the stress and trauma involved in trying to explain myself clearly; going out of my way to try and avoid leaving points that others could complain about and thus derail my argument; and just generally feeling like I am about to subject myself, yet again, to a game played by someone else’s rules, applied inconsistently.
To be fair: if I knew that a medication would empower me to take more appropriately timed breaks for personal care while in the middle of obsessing over some personal project - or conversely, not to leave personal projects shelved literally for months or even years because I somehow just can’t get myself to come back to them - and it were safe and affordable and readily available, I would happily take it. (But my understanding is that effective ADHD medications tend to be controlled substances.)
I don’t want to wade into this too much but I do have some concerns about this whole process. There are two main things I want to say.
The first is that the tenor of the comments from the moderation team/SC/PSF board strikes me as essentially “If Person A does something and Person B interprets that in a way they find objectionable, it is automatically (or at least by default) Person A who must accept they are in the wrong.” I don’t think that that is reasonable, and on some level I think it reflects a limited view of the CoC guideline about “being respectul of differing viewpoints and experiences”. When I participate in a community, I accept that I may sometimes have to reconsider my own actions in light of how others interpret them, and perhaps change my pattern of future action, and I accept that. But I also accept that I may sometimes have to consider my own reactions to the actions of others, and perhaps change my pattern of future reaction. Both of those are part and parcel of engaging in a diverse community.
Which actions and which reactions are condoned or condemned cannot follow simply from a general maxim to “be respectful of different perspectives” but must also depend on substantive guidelines about actual content. I recognize that there is a reluctance to get into things like lists of specific allowed or prohibited conduct, and reasonably so, because (as mentioned by others) it can lead to “rules-lawyering” and tempt certain people to push the boundaries. But just because not every detail can be specifically delineated doesn’t mean the right approach is to totally avoid such details and fall back only on very general principles like “be respectful and considerate”. The problem is that what it means to be respectful of differing viewpoints is itself a matter on which people have differing viewpoints. This doesn’t mean the differences are irreconciliable or that any mismatch in perspectives means someone has committed an egregious violation. It just means that those general principles often need additional, more specific layers on top of them to make clear to everyone what the accepted interpretation of such guidelines is in a particular community.[1]
My second, related point is that a lack of transparency in handling such matters can be self-defeating in some ways and may not advance the goal of having healthy community consensus on acceptable conduct. The reason is that our understanding of general principles of conduct can evolve, and the only way we know it is evolving in a good direction is that we as a community see it happening and understand it and endorse it. An opaque process based on broad principles can just as easily be used (and has often been used) to silence or punish the powerless as to curtail the impunity of the powerful.
Simply learning that someone did something and it wasn’t okay, but not knowing what was done or why it wasn’t okay, doesn’t increase confidence that all is well. It may not even have the effect of deterring other potential wrongdoers (since it’s unclear what the punishable offence was), and it can have the unintended effect of deterring other participants from innocent acts. It also misses one of the most important opportunities for enhancing the community, which is the chance to clearly take a position and exemplify the standards we espouse. In some cases, a quiet resolution without disclosure of the offense can be seen as sweeping the problem under the rug. The point is that without transparency no one knows whether enforcement of a CoC is too strict, too lenient, or just right.
I sense in the board’s communications a desire to protect victims or offended parties, which is certainly a valid concern. But enforcement of community standards impacts not just the victim and the perpetrator, it impacts the whole community. When people are suffering in silence, one of the main things that makes them feel comfortable voicing their concerns it that they see action being taken against an offender, and a clear statement of what the offense was, and thus gain confidence that their own complaint will be supported too. But that “collateral benefit” isn’t available without transparency.
On some level, both these points can be boiled down to saying that something like a CoC can’t fully succeed unless it is by and for the community, not just the moderation team. There needs to be a shared understanding of what is and isn’t okay, and that can’t occur without openness in the handling of at least some delicate situations. It doesn’t mean every detail needs to be public, but enough needs to be public that the community as a whole can know whether they agree or disagree with how things are going.
I’ve had my share of encounters with communities that took the position that users should toughen up and deal with various kinds of bad behavior, and those were hair-raising enough to make me sure we don’t want that here. I sympathize with a desire to steer clear of that. I’ve also done enough moderation myself in other online spaces to know that overall we have it pretty good here on this forum. But it seems we’re already seeing a degree of fracturing, and I’m not sure that simple reiteration of the same broad CoC principles (as noble as they may be) is really the best that can be done.
For instance, the original post in this thread mentions “Utilizing emojis and turns of phrase in ways that can be misconstrued or perceived entirely differently by different people”. That to me is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Virtually everything can be misconstrued or perceived differently by different people. The following reminder to “be mindful when writing that your audience is a much broader diverse professional community” is certainly a fine sentiment, but, at least for me, it doesn’t really add anything new beyond what’s already in the CoC. To be clear, I don’t question that people should be mindful of these things or think twice about what they say; I’m just not sure how many outré comments that would otherwise have been said will now remain unsaid due to this guidance. ↩︎
Like everything, it really depends on context. A wink emoji itself wouldn’t be recognized as inappropriate, unless accompanied by text or other context that makes it so, but to be perfectly honest, I am really struggling to think of a situation where the emoji would be what makes it inappropriate. Where is this example coming from?
I haven’t been accompanying any of these situations closely, but from my impression “resisting” was simply continuing with the same, or similar, behavior after being warned by a moderator.
I don’t think you should assume that was referring to the specific situation you have in mind. It’s a big leap, and it’s very possible you don’t know the full context, even if it’s the situation you are thinking about, so I don’t think this is a productive exercise or will result in any a productive discussion.
Yeah, it’s not objective, that’s why moderation is important. We are “curating” these spaces to be welcoming to the general public, so we want to have a diverse and emphatic moderation team to try to identify situations that can make others feel uncomfortable and give that feedback to the people involved. Like I said in my previous reply, being the recipient of moderation is not something I think should be taken personally, it’s helpful feedback. I know a lot of us have been used to viewing moderation as a last resort action to deal with problematic people, but while that is still encompassed, it’s only a small part of what moderation is, most moderation is essentially just giving feedback to people to make things more welcoming for the general public.
You are indeed not alone, I too am neurodivergent, and have had several experiences similar to what you describe, so I understand where you are coming from.
You shouldn’t feel like a rule-breaker, this is the main thing I have being trying to explain in this thread. You should see receiving moderation simply as receiving feedback.
The goal is to make everyone feel included, including you, so if you are having trouble understanding or implementing the feedback, feel free to ask the moderators, or even contact the PSF CoC Work Group. The moderators should be sympathetic and understanding towards your neurodivergency, that’s why it is important to have an emphatic and diverse moderation team. If you don’t feel like this is the case, contact the CoC Work Group, as they should have better resources to deal with this kind of situations, and can help the moderation team better understand and deal with them.
Of course you are allowed your own emotions, in fact, that’s something I would encourage you to do! If anything makes you feel uncomfortable, I would encourage you to let other people know, that is good feedback, which I personally find extremely helpful. [1]
In fact, I don’t know if he remembers, but early in my involvement in the Python community I had an interaction with @brettcannon that lead me to change my behavior when communicating with others. In a technical discussion, I was being very opinionated, adamant, and hard-headed, which wasn’t conducive to a productive discussion, so much that Brett felt the need to remove himself from the discussion. After that, I re-evaluated my approach to the discussion and realized this was not a good way to interact with others, and started working towards adjusting my behavior, which is still an ongoing effort.
While this was not a blatant violation of the PSF CoC, my behavior was certainly not in its spirit. I don’t know if it would have warranted any moderator action, but seeing how Brett felt towards my behavior was a critical, and immensely helpful, piece of feedback. ↩︎
This community has always been “a game played by someone else’s rules” in my regard. It has never really been this nice and welcoming place that some people are fantasizing about. From the start, you have to comply with social rules which are very much imposed by people from a specific social portion of a specific part of the world (the anglo-american world, which is still socially dominant here), in a language whose nuances you don’t fully master. Successful people end up mimicking those rules and even enforcing them to others.
So, well, while I agree with you that the current situation isn’t brilliant, the past wasn’t either.
(FTR, I vaguely remember a PSF dinner ~15 years ago that was absolutely dismal - and I’m not talking about the food, though it was no reconfort either )
. Yes, that’s a “wink” emoticon. I don’t buy that its meaning is some kind of secret cultural dog whistle. Granted that some cases can be far subtler, though. I’ll keep an eye out for that.
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This doesn’t mean the differences are irreconciliable or that any mismatch in perspectives means someone has committed an egregious violation. It just means that those general principles often need additional, more specific layers on top of them to make clear to everyone what the accepted interpretation of such guidelines is in a particular community.