As I’ve said publicly. and to you in private, I have no interest in addressing “general ban” issues. The ban time came & went. It’s history, and I let go of it.
The only thing I’m still on about is that list of specific claimed “CoC violations”. They appear nearly wholly without merit to me, are widely (in & out of PSF members) disbelieved by many, and will follow me the rest of my life. That’s wrong, in so many ways, and the processes that let it come to this are dead broken on the face of it. They need to change, not particularly for my sake, but for the future health of this fracturing community.
No PSF group has said a single word in public, or to me in private, to shed one photon on how those claims were justified. They didn’t even supply links or reasoning at the start, and have left it there, stonewalling ever since, despite getting sincere, significant, mushrooming pushback starting very soon after. Fast closing on 4 months now.
Grossly unfair from start to date.
I do not accept that any group of humans is omniscient or inerrant. I do not accept either that any group should be able to work 100% in secret with 0% public accountability for their actions, beyond the extreme “don’t like it, vote us out” which leaves them 0% accountable for so long as they still hold power. The CoC WG isn’t subject to election anyway - they’re self-selected.
Light has to come from them. I’ve already been as transparent as humanly possible.
And some of those defamatory claims have nothing conceivable to do with “privacy”. Start here. Nobody here has said a word to defend that nonsense. Almost everyone here just ignored it. The only direct reply it got agreed that the claim was nonsense.
How can “privacy” possibly have anything to do with a claim that I said “X” when the plain meaning is that I said “not X”? It doesn’t matter one whit whether someone told them “I read ‘X’”. If someone did (which I doubt), fine, they can remain anonymous forever. Anyone can read for themselves that I did in fact say “not X”. There’s no point at all in saying anything about who reported it. Their identity is irrelevant to what I said.
And with that, I’m done here for now. I’m just repeating the same things, where the only responses that could matter to the issues I care about are of two kinds:
- Someone volunteering new information to justify one of those specific defamations. I asked Ethan to put this in the unrestricted (for posting) PSF category so anyone can openly supply new info. @rtpg obliged, which I didn’t bite them for - I thanked them. And they could not have posted in the Committers category. Nobody else said anything relevant yet.
- From a PSF representative.
Essentially nothing else here serves a purpose I care about. I’ll still value reading what everyone has to say, but others here absolutely understand what I’ve been saying, and in several cases say it better than I can.
I just ask that everyone play nice. I’ll also repeat the First Rule of Usenet: don’t feed the trolls. If you see a message that appears obviously to be made in bad faith, don’t reply at all. Just move on, possibly flagging it first.
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OK, with one post a day, I’ll add @thejcannon’s request for new info:
I was implying all 3, but that’s overly broad. I never tried contacting the Board. Why would I? The CoC WG produced the list of claimed violations, and the SC echoed it. Only they can account for their actions.
Far as I know, the Board had nothing to do with it, apart from that, due to overlapping memberships, the CoC WG holds a third of the Board seats, and vice versa. So there’s nothing one group knows that’s a mystery to the other.
I’ve said a lot already about trying email with the SC. Search for “ghost” in my Ban Q&A page. There are at least two messages of mine in this topic with verbatim quotes from emails I sent to the SC. I don’t know whether they even read them (no replies), but they were plain and bluntly stated, warning in advance that the exact thing happening now would happen in the absence of them trying some openness of their own.
I didn’t try emailing the CoC WG about this. As detailed on my blog, I filed my own CoC complaint on Aug 2 (before the ban). On Aug 6, I got a 1-line reply - “Tim, we acknowledge receipt of your report.” On Sep 24, I still hadn’t heard back, so sent a polite request:
Today, over 2 more months after that, I still haven’t heard anything.
So you can perhaps forgive me for having no presumption of good faith remaining.
I know of other people too who never get replies, although can’t attest to precisely what they sent, or to how long they’ve been waiting.
Fine, they’re busy. That’s understandable. What isn’t is why, as with the SC too, they think total silence is professional behavior. If they intend never to address the complaint, send a 1-line reply saying so. If it’s a low-priority issue, likewise. “As you can understand, we have higher-priority issues to look into, and can’t promise a date at which we may get to yours.” My response would probably be “OK, I withdraw my complaint. Thank you for replying.”
I served 13 years on the Board, and “bureaucratic runaround” was not how we worked in those days anyway. If you had a community issue the Board should address, you’d tell me (or another Board member) directly. It was part of our job then to bring it up with the Board. Since that’s an ordinary part of how social dynamics work in any organization, I assume that still often works here.
So I’ve tried communicating too with group members individually. A mix of futilities:
- Mail the group instead.
- No offense, but go away - I won’t talk about it. Hope you’re doing well!
- Ya, the claimed violations don’t hold water to me either, but I’m powerless.
- No reply.
It’s certainly the case that others have reached out one-on-one too, but theirs aren’t my stories to tell. Whether they want to speak up here is up to them.
I’ve done more than my share already, so “no, thank you” again. I’m not playing logic-chopping “check the bureaucratic boxes” games anymore. Some people in the relevant groups are acutely aware of “the problem” already. It’s on them now. I understand and empathize with that they don’t want it to be on them, but (in)actions have consequences for everyone.
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Heh - and one more!
And I see now that the page has been updated to include a link to my site. My only objection was to the lack of balance, and that’s been addressed. Many thanks to whoever made that edit!