Mod here: Please do not try to evade moderation, such as with trivial edits or reposts. When we see this type of behavior, you will be temporarily suspended, with the possibility of a permanent ban for future evasions. If you have questions about why one of your posts was moderated, you can always DM @moderators.
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Usually, in our wider societies, we find fault in, and so avoid any one entity becoming both judge, jury, and executioner. (As well as wanting transparency).
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I just thought that I might post a link-to-a-link to a past discussion/blog post to make the point that we have been and are discussing our opinions on past events and although people may feel attacked personally - some of that feeling may be due to a preponderence of opinions shared that are counter to ones own.
Peace.
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Luckily, this is not the case in this situation either. At the very least there are three entities: The CoC WG, the SC and the moderators. Ofcourse there is some overlap, but e.g. the discourse moderators who had to deal with Tim’s post beforehand explicitly excused themselves from the CoC decision as to not be accused of a conflict of interest.
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(post deleted by author)
A subset did IIRC
That really gets to the heart of the matter. To many readers (me included) the list of accusations was weak on the face of it. Some were petty, most were cherry picked, some were specious and contrived, some were clear misrepresentations of the OP’s posts, and some had a clear ideological bias.
The ban notice was one-sided and did not give the OP credit for any his efforts to have his points land softly or to acknowledge other points of view. The notice seemed like a poorly crafted effort to completely demonize the poster in order to justify the decision. So as you said so well, “It certainly doesn’t make me very convinced about the fairness of the guidelines, nor their enforcement.”
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In what context could I have mentioned it? @gussis was correct: the last time I mentioned the bylaws topic, or the vote, was well before the vote even started. Nor did anyone else mention it to me again. I was done with it when the deadline for affirming intention to vote arrived. Never another word after.
If you’re unhappy that total silence didn’t mention that change #3 won by a landslide, happy to acknowledge it now that someone else resurrected the issue: yes, #3 won by a landslide. And I expected it would all along.
The rest here isn’t in reply to Al. This is just a convenient place to say it.
People mostly resent hearing about potential flaws in foundational matters (e.g., ask anyone working in security). My purpose in that topic was to try to get answers from the Board. I had no actual interest in debating with the voting members, and repeatedly told them “suit yourself”. But anyone advancing a minority view gets lots of replies in opposition, and I nearly always took the time to reply to each, out of consideration for their time and effort in replying to me. If I had it to do over again, ya, I’d reply to very little. The only replies that advanced my purposes were the rare ones from PSF representatives. “Mere” voters couldn’t answer my questions; only the Board could, although after much effort Thomas and Brett eventually divulged clues.
And, yes, I did think I was special enough to persistently push for answers. I was a founding member of the PSF, worked hard to create it, and was on its Board for its first 13 years. Nobody on the planet had more standing to question a Board power play. All animals are equal, but at times a tardigrade just can’t push as hard as an elephant 
. It was far more my perceived duty to push than it was in any way fun or personally gratifying.
I tried to have some fun with it anyway. I almost always do, but that backfired hugely. Lesson learned. Tedious earnestness is on the menu now.
And so is replying to little. In fact, I’m done with this entire Discourse topic with this post.
My gratitude to all who spoke up. But my ban is history now, so transition toward better processes for the next one. All sides are so rigidly dug in on this one that I don’t expect we’ll ever get more clarity or transparency about it. I believe I already did more than my share on those counts.
If I feel a need to pick over the bones of my ban, I’ll do it on my blog instead. Yes, some parts of my blog are blunt and accusatory, but nobody sees them unless they go out of their way to find them. It’s not Discourse, although the vast bulk of it remains civil. The blunt parts have to be blunt to get across how outrageously wrong some things here appear to me. Few people have ever seen me angry (because I rarely am!), and suppressing that would have been disingenuous.
If you want to keep at it here, on Discourse, please keep it factual and dispassionate, and especially so if you disagree with what was done. It doesn’t help anything to get your posts hidden here, or for your Discourse account to get suspended. Then you have no voice at all. While I intend to stay out of it here, I enjoy reading, and profit from, what all have to say (pro or con). So, for my sake, keep your voice intact here 
.
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I’m breaking my intention to stay out of this here to say something nice to Al: welcome to my world. Even such a brief visit can be … educational. I’m glad you survived it .
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Python was great for me, being an introvert. Gosh I hate politics, but sometimes…
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The scope of that was strictly limited to interactions before the ban was announced. It said nothing about anything after the announcement, or about any of the specific claimed charges.
I since went on to address all of those too, again being as open and transparent as ethically possible. While I endorse Chris McDonough’s analyses, we didn’t collaborate, and I told him nothing during the pre-publication review that wasn’t already publicly known.
My own analyses differ in some respects, in one case disclosing info that wasn’t publicly known, and in a few cases with somewhat different guesses about what some of the vaguer charges may have been about. Links to commentary about all the charges are conveniently arranged on a single page now.
Accounts of interactions after the ban announcement are scattered across my “Ban Q&A” page, and I’m content to leave it that way. While I believe I’ve made a full account of “my side” of those too now, there is no larger coherent story I have to tell about post-announcement interactions. Just details.
I can’t really guess about the newer material. The pre-ban account was dry as toast. Some of the newer material is blunt, and a few parts exude “righteous outrage”. So don’t look at if if you’re a fan of the way this ban was sold and can’t tolerate opposition. I won’t even link to the new parts directly, just point to the top-level “PSF topics” page.
Note: this is just FYI. I’m not looking for an argument here. I know many people are still curious, and today I believe I finished disclosing everything material about “my side”.
What would be interesting to me is someone who looked into a claimed “CoC violation” (not just “I take it on trust”) and agrees with it. I haven’t yet seen anyone do so, neither on the PSF’s Discourse, nor on any other site. Quite the contrary. Ban supporters seem to studiously avoid mentioning any of the claimed violations. “Dark patterns”, sure, but not specific claims.
If nobody can be found who agrees with them, what “lesson” can possibly be learned from them?
If you do agree with one or more, I won’t bite you. I’ll gratefully take it into account, and won’t even reply unless you say you want to discuss it. Of course you can’t post anything in a public space without risking some opposition, but there’s no need for anyone here to be uncivil or accusatory, Play nice .
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Welcome back, Tim. I’ve always enjoyed reading your posts here (and your contributions on stackoverflow.com). It’s great to have you back!
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This is a cross-topic reply, because the original didn’t belong in the PEP 13 topic.
It occurs to me that my reply there missed the point of what he was trying to say: that I said things to people in private email (and much more so later on my blog) that I knew would increase damage, and that the SC never replied did not mean they approved of my doing so.
Both parts of which are true enough, but missed my point entirely too: my intent was never to cause damage, and that’s why I told the SC first.
I wanted the SC to have the chance to “beat me to the punch”, to try some openness of their own to head off the damage, and with luck stop it from increasing.
The damage to trust was going to happen regardless eventually. It was never on the table that I wouldn’t be as open and transparent as possible [1], so everything I knew would come out eventually. The SC couldn’t stop that, & I would not.
I was offering them the chance to put their spin on it first. They didn’t, and that’s on them.
As I wrote to Barry at the time (despite that he stayed out of this):
He said he would forward that to the SC too.
things I’ve very openly & strongly advocated for across years ↩︎
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The PSF and its entities damaged themselves in a significant way and damaged the trust and reputation of the PSF in front of the Python community…and still no reasonable comments - neither by the SC nor the CoC committee.
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Don’t hold your breath waiting. There’s nothing unique about the PSF here. In any organization, the longer a group stonewalls, the more determined they become to stay the course. They just want discussion to end, and preferably without ever admitting to any specific mistake, no matter how minor. “Mistakes were made - but not by us. We’ll strive to communicate more clearly next time.” is usually the best that can be hoped for. Again, nothing specific to the PSF.
In the meantime, I’m actually surprised at how much pushback they’ve allowed here since I came back. I saw your posts, during the ban, get hidden in real time, followed by your unannounced temporary suspension from Discourse.
Your post now is more temperate in tone, so I hope it will survive this time. If people don’t know, you’ve been part of the Python community as long as I have, and - as you said then - it’s indeed very much your community too. At least I’m glad to see you here .
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Tim, you have consistently implied that nobody has defended a single charge in your suspension here over the past couple of weeks. I know this because you have posted that a couple of times in other topics.
Here is a defense of one of the charges:
Excessive discussion of controversial topics or past conflicts, which could be seen as sustained disruption of community discussions.
I am just a random person who goes on the Python Discuss forums to find some technical information. I am not particularly interested in governance, but I’ll click on topics from time to time. This year I learned of your existence because of how much you were posting about the changes. Your name would consistently show up in various parts of Discuss’ user interface and the weekly summary emails.
Now maybe this is a critique of the forum software showing me “recommendations”. But my glib, 2-bit filing for you in my brain turned into “Person who won’t stop trying to relitigate this decided thing”. The Python Discuss forums are not a workplace, but I have a hard time imagining a professional context where this would be acceptable behavior by anyone except for those who have some sort of permanent protection from being disciplined.
I am not going to defend all the charges, but for me, as a person just trying to read this forum, “posting way too much” is a totally legitimate reason to take away posting privileges for a bit (ED: at least as a way for things to cool down and establish a cleaner way for conversations to continue, like having the single thread). And ultimately it’s your behavior that made me have this image of you. I immediately knew who was suspended when I saw the suspension announcement being posted on some news website. I did not have to read the details of the suspension.
This is not a principled defense, but it’s a defense. Perhaps you don’t know your behavior was disruptive, so I’m asserting it was, as a bystander in this whole thing. Just my opinion, though.
PS: this is not some sort of crusade because I disagree with your position on the bylaws change. I am agnostic to the whole thing.
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So what you’re saying is that Tim did, indeed, post a number of times. Last I checked, that’s a completely normal phenomenon.
Question: Does this constitute “sustained disruption of community discussions”?
Further question: Is that a ban-worthy offense?
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None that would potentially justify the actions taken.
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And you guys wonder why noone wanted to post here defending some of the allegations…
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Question: Does this constitute “sustained disruption of community discussions”?
I think in this case, it was that case. This is my opinion, and obviously “sustained” and “disruption” are both heavily subjective things.
Further question: Is that a ban-worthy offense?
I think that suspensions in that case make a lot of sense!
These are my opinions, you can’t say my opinion is wrong, because it describes what I am thinking. But we can disagree on a precise point on the chain of reasoning and that might explain those differences in opinion
- Do you believe that, abstractly, someone can post about something “too much”, in a way that is disruptive to the Python Discuss forums being a useful communication space?
- Do you think that a temporary suspension can be used to help with that problem?
You could answer “yes” to both of those and just disagree on this specific case falling into that category. That’s sort of limits the question down to evaluating what is really a disruption/etc. But if you believe the answer to either question is “no”, then there’s probably a very large gap between how either of us see “successful” management of the Python Discuss forums.
It is, of course, fine for you to answer “no” to either of the above! I’m not part of governance. I just think answers to those questions might provide hints at any difference in axioms.
This is why these convos are tricky. There are so many varieties of opinion theoretically possible:
- “I think all the charges are right and the action taken was enough/too little!”
- “I think the charges are all wrong but the action taken was enough/too little!”
- “I think some of the charges are right or wrong and the action taken was enough/too little!”
- “I think all the charges are right but the action taken was too much!”
- “I think all the charges are wrong and the action taken was too much!”
- “I think some of the charges are right/wrong but the action taken was too much!”
etc etc
Here I’m just saying “look, I think one charge was ‘right’, and some component of the action taken makes sense to me, as a person viewing the forums”. There’s a whole universe of things here. So I guess I disagree about your point, but that still leaves a lot of room for agreement on other details. (I haven’t even really talked about process or whatever…)
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