And, of course, all sides can produce examples of that. That’s what happens when a process is perceived to be unfair. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” has always been my advice. If “they” feel they’re getting the short end of this stick, shine some light.
There’s one brilliant person I had been low-grade mentoring toward becoming a core dev who wants nothing to do with it anymore. And more than one current core dev has been considering quitting (enough so that I made an entry in my Ban Q&A page asking them not to). One core dev I know of did quit already, although only partly due to the drama over this, One Fellow I know of resigned that honor, and more are waiting to see what happens.
All of which would be net losses to me, and to the PSF too. Including the person you have in mind.
There’s nothing to celebrate here, for any side. Nobody is “winning”.
If someone brought a report to the moderation team, steering council, or code of conduct workgroup, that was probably them shining some light on it. It’s not easy to say, “I don’t feel welcome here.” And they shouldn’t need to do so on such a public stage. That’s quite literally one of the purposes of those bodies, to evaluate and handle instances where some behavior is exclusionary, even if exclusion is not the intent.
You understand that the thread on bylaw change 3 did have a negative impact on some people, and by extension seem to be understanding of the suspension itself. Additionally, you seem to understand that a moderating body can’t put individuals who made a report in public light, because it puts them in a vulnerable position and by extension they can’t fully publicly present all elements of an identifying report.
And finally you seem ok with the notion that a suspension can be a moderation tool to encourage an emotional community to take a breather so emotions can ebb off and the space can return to it’s welcoming, pythonic state.
So, is there more light to shed on this within reason? There’s a lot of reasons there are limitation to what any moderation body can say.
That’s a rather hyperbolic reaction to a hyperbole. A single exaggerated statement does not render the entire conversation “deeply unserious”. And, while drawing parallels to tyrants of the past is a quick and easy way to lose credibility on the internet, there’s something unsavory - almost opportunistic - about choosing to zero in on it. But perhaps you have your reasons for reacting the way you have and I don’t know enough about the social dynamics at play here to be able to tell.
Unfortunately the tone has started to head in a direction that isn’t welcoming and is triggering a visible increase in flagging of posts, so slow mode has been flipped on for now.
(FWIW all 3 of those options had email as a viable means of official communication)
I’m really unfortunately bad at reading ambiguities (call it nuerodivergence) but I can’t tell if you’re implying you’ve tried all of these avenues (emailing each of the parties you’d like an official statement from) or you’re implying you’ve tried the avenues you’re willing to try.
Again, I think the claims here of “lack of an official response” are lacking the weight of “when an official request was made”. Otherwise, it feels like there is an expectation that these groups respond based on posts and threads in this forum (which I didn’t see as an way to make an official request for any of the 3 groups above).
Best case: they respond! And there’s at least some closure in whatever the response is.
Worst Case: the claims of “lack of an official response” have much much more merit.
Right now we have:
Best case: a member of the group is combing discourse and feels strongly enough to bring it up to the group in a way, AND the group agrees to make an official response
Worst case: Multiple people sour and leave over a lack of “official response” to a request that was never sent.
Well, you shouldn’t go creating TImsort and one of the most productive threads on c.l.p for it’s introduction, that I use as an example of our cummunity at its best then! Never met you, but you should be treated better - or our community is diminished - and I like bumbling along in our community.
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.
============================================================
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.
============================================================
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!
Shedding light on a three month suspension
Paddy McCarthy <paddyXSF...@...>
13:30 (0 minutes ago)
to conduct-wg
Many members of our Python community are discussing issues relating to the ban placed on Tim. I and others are requesting further information.
A link to the discussion is:
https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month-suspension
Thanks.
(Email sent yesterday, but was delayed a day on being able to add this comment).
The COC WG only works on reports received, it does not proactively look out for things to make recommendations on. This case was no different. I find it disheartening you keep twisting my words to not acknowledge this straightforward explanation.
You let me know on Nov 4th you’d like this redacted and I put this on the agenda for the COC WG to make a decision on. Since then the COC WG had a single meeting on the 15th and this topic didn’t make it to be discussed within the hour allotted for the meeting. There are two meetings per month. The next one is this Friday, the 6th. We will discuss it, I doubt it will be controversial. It just takes time.
The COC WG responded to you:
We acknowledge receipt of your email. The COC WG does not discuss details of cases with third parties. If the reported person wishes to clarify anything, they can reach out to the WG directly.
We do not moderate to suppress discussion nor specific opinions unless they run afoul of the CoC itself or the guidelines for this website, so even if someone was attempting to do that it wouldn’t be effective and would instead cause them to be in violation of the CoC. But the flags I have seen have all been about tone and attitude and not the opinions expressed.
After discussing it among the moderators we wanted to let participants here know that we have made the decision to stop special-casing our moderation of this topic. Because we knew this was a sensitive topic for some we wanted to make sure people were able to express themselves a bit more freely. Unfortunately this topic alone dominates our moderation workload, both historically and now. And since we are not going to fully ignore moderation anywhere on this site that means we are going to apply normal moderation practices here. That also means that if this topic continues to be an issue we may be compelled to lock it as we have done previously for problematic topics (but we would rather not).
After I post this I will be clearing the queued flags on this topic so that moderation is starting from a clean slate. Slow mode should also be expiring shortly (it was set for 48 hours).
Yep. I’ve seen Brett make the same point, and I don’t doubt either of you. But I’m not sure how it’s relevant. I’m suggesting that the CoC WG did not follow the steps outlined in its own enforcement policy, not necessarily that any of its members singled Tim out to pick a fight with.
This man put everything on the line not for himself, but for others. He has been looking for answers for a very long time now, but never received a single response for the crimes he was accused of. Withdrawing accusations that have circulated for months without providing any answer on why they were given, or not considering the possibility to enact changes that will prevent future injustices would accomplish nothing. It would mean nothing to a person like this.
Source:
So I find it hard to claim any actual damage from attempts at character assassination. Hammering on that here is more for past and future targets. If my case doesn’t provoke actual changes, it’s all wasted, even if they do give straight answers about my case.
If changes won’t happen it would actually be better for him that the accusations were not redacted, as they would clearly testify that changes are indeed necessary.
From the hundreds of emails I’ve gotten (far more than the total verbiage about this than on Discourse), ya, contrasting the ban announcement with what the 3 (that I know of) blogs commenting on it say, my reputation in reality, among those who look into things for themselves, has only been enhanced.
But I’m not the only one here, and I have concerns about several kinds of damage. I didn’t ask Łukasz for retraction, let alone an apology, just to scrub the list (which he reasonably read as “redaction”). That part isn’t for me. It’s for a different kind of damage, not trying to improve the processes, but to move closer back to the status quo ante. I’m sure I’ve said almost all of this before, but probably never in this precise combination, so forgive the repetition. All of it needs to be said so you know what Łukasz saw:
Notes:
Łukasz didn’t reply, so I just shrugged “OK, ghosted again”. I’m overjoyed to learn that he read it!
I’m not claiming that Łukas agreed with any of it. I wouldn’t know.
At the time, I was fed up with “refuting” stuff. I went on to finish the job, over time, largely as writing up entries for my “Ban Q&A” page.
I don’t hate the CoC, or the CoC WG. They absolutely have important work to do, and I have every reason to believe they do a good job in non-public cases.
Leaving that list up is bound to keep on damaging trust in them so long as it stays up. I have the personal testimony of so many people, in email, to that effect. Most have little to no presence on Discourse. But they’re part of the Python community too.
And that’s the basis on which I pitched the idea: not for me, and not for Łukasz, but for the good of the group.
All the same, @grodola is right that scrubbing the list would do nothing to improve the processes, which is my true goal. But that’s not what I was aiming at with that particular message.
Improving the processes is the possibly quixotic quest of @malemburg’s topic.
Or, rather, a successful conclusion to that topic would be a start. @malemburg has a lot of ideas .
There’s not really a part where you asked for Łukasz to reply in this. Even if you did ask for a reply I can see how it would probably be bad for Łukas to reply as he can’t, in that capacity, speak for any deciding body.
Beyond that, it’s usually a pretty common policy for moderators to ignore DMs or direct them to a more typical modmail system. In this case I’m confident you’re familiar with whichever modmail like channel is appropriate, so replying just doesn’t make sense.
(Not replying isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it is pretty darn common in delicate situations as it encourages official channels which offers increased documentation and the ability to have a third party oversee a conversation.)
And I grant that I don’t know the policies of the Discourse mods, Steering Council, nor Code of Conduct workgroup, and cannot speak to their choices, actions, or background knowledge, but I do offer it as a common thing. Especially when there’s an official avenue to raise these issues. And it’s prudent to avoid replying to direct messages or side channel conversations to avoid adding confusion into the mix.
There is a wealth of research regarding the moderation of online communities as well. I know my experience as a moderator in other communities was questioned, and if moderation policy of academic rigor is more your style, there’s ample research to draw on. I’m pretty out of date regarding what’s popular but there is a wide world out there, and the moderation has seemed prudent given the constraints at hand from my, out of the loop, perspective.
Never said there was. I didn’t ask for a reply. I detailed at some length before how one-on-one contacts worked in my Board days, and same thing here. Perfectly ordinary social dynamics to bring attention to a matter to a group member one-on-one when contacting the group as a whole isn’t getting anywhere. Demanding a reply would be inappropriate in that context. In my days, I’d reply anyway, but non-committedly. That’s me. I never really identified with the bureaucracy I was part of to the exclusion of ordinary social graces.
To be perfectly clear, I have absolutely no problem with that Łukasz didn’t reply. He was under no obligation to do so.
“Shrugged” is accurately indicative of that there was no emotion attached to it. Just “OK, on to the next attempt”.
At least the way I see it, this is at the root of this conflict.
And this is the exact reason why I, myself, have some involvement here.
I did not get involved because I like to take sides.
I did, because I have had my own 1st hand experiences and made my own conclusions.
And only later observed Tim’s situation, where Tim’s accounts were in high resonance to my own experiences and observations.
Let’s take 2 extremes:
a) Governance in oppressive regime
b) Governance in healthy community
To depict (a), this statement could fit well: “I have higher status that you, thus you need to obey unconditionally and I do not need to spend my time to hear and understand what you are saying.”
Having observed (b) in practice, it can be summed up as follows: “leaders have a standard aim to treat all humans with equal dignity and respect, be it a homeless person or president of USA”.
So these are extremes.
Now, let’s put them on a scale 0(a)-10(b) and put it into perspective:
0 - Things are very bad here...
3 - Worst companies that I have personally worked for
4 - People in governing roles of Python community that I have had a chance to interact with
5 - Average corporation in today's capitalistic society
6 - Culture of Python community before creation of various corporate entities.
7 - People that are getting banned/driven out of Python community
8 - Best of what I have observed in various workplaces (unfortunately, these were single individuals)
10 - Utopian Community
The above is my 1st hand account. Except:
(6): This is only my best estimate from observations of past discussions and 2nd hand accounts.
I have had interactions with senior members that were banned/resigned and have observed high degree of their integrity 1st hand.
Now, I understand that I am in no position to impose on what sort of culture has to prevail.
Maybe Python community is destined to become “just another corporation”.
But my own distress comes from the fact that I have intentionally left (3) and went looking for something along the lines of (7).
So to sum up:
Old timers want to get back to (6), because it was relatively better
Those that are placed comfortably in current (4) don’t want changes
Those who want to belong to healthy community are simply distressed
Those who have not experienced anything higher than (5) in their lives can not understand what all the fuss is about.
I, being idealist-realist, understand that going back to old (6) is unrealistic, but idealistically I would like to belong to something new at (7), which combines best aspects of old (6) and current (4).
Current situation is not all bad:
I have had limited exposure so I would allow current situation to be somewhere in the range of (3-5). Also, my experiences are limited to admins, moderators and few others. And it is only my extrapolation that their communication and actions is a good indicator for existing culture in governing entities.
Past (6) was not perfect. Especially some toxic aspects of old usenet culture. I have had quite intense arguments with Tim about some of them (Hope you don’t mind me putting it out here).
So this is 2 cents from someone who has joined community with completely flat prior a bit more than a year ago after erasing their online profile with intent to have a fresh start.
We are now posting “political compass” memes (one that shows Howie Hawkins, co-founder of the Green Party, as to the left of… Fidel Castro? And… Joe Biden as more right-wing than Donald Trump? Never mind, all of this is silly.)
I have several things to say on this topic, but I have Python books to edit. Maybe I’ll have time to chime in next week or next month. I’m sure this unproductive debate will still be reaching new peaks then.
I am, as always, thankful to the moderators who have to read through all of this. It’s a job that nobody likes and everybody needs.
Man, this is an example of what makes moderators’ job unpleasant.
We see what you’re trying to say in your posts, and we don’t mind you saying it, but you’re doing it in a way that will inevitably cause grief.
Liking an open-source community to a country is not productive. You’re bringing real-world politics into the forum, this never ends well. What’s even less productive is posting altered political cartoons with no attribution, and yours in particular includes Stalin, Rand, and so on. There’s a reason there’s one mustache missing on this cartoon. The person who originally drew it understands that this is loaded material. Even subtler stuff will unnecessarily cause heat, like Joe Biden being right of Donald Trump on the libertarian scale. This is not useful on a Python forum. It already got flagged, and will bring more flags.
And now, if we leave it be, it’s going to cause more replies, more flags, and more upset. Not good. But if we hide it, it might revive the voices decrying censorship. So the moderators here are between a rock and a hard place.
It would be best for you to delete those posts yourself, so we don’t have to.
.