In that case, you may think too highly of your “explanations” They don’t do as you probably wish. They are lacking. Which, of course, is my opinion, and probably that of others.
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Let’s keep the tone respectful, please. This topic is already stressful to read, and arguments can flare up all to easily. This is particularly worrying in a discussion that is specifically about moderation, and official responses to people who cross a not always easy to spot line.
I suggest you drop this digression, and simply agree to differ.
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I’m talking here not about “the ban”, but specifically & only about the list of 10 claimed “CoC violations”. And, no, “they” overwhelmingly haven’t supplied a shred of evidence or reasoning to support those claims, or said a single word as to why they won’t.
Not in public, and not to me either in private. Total stonewalling.
I did everything they asked of me for the ban to be lifted. That’s why I was allowed back. But that did not include agreeing I was guilty of those claimed “CoC violations”. In fact, they were never mentioned to me. And also in fact, I was never asked to agree that I had violated the CoC at all.
So, in private, they didn’t appear to take the “CoC violation” spin very seriously either.
Yet the defamations stand on my ban annoucement, broadcast to the world seemingly for eternity.
That’s wrong. And it’s not in my nature to “just let go” of gross injustice, not even when I see it happening to others.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the most recent 3 cases of public “corrective actions” (mine just being the most recent) including claimed “CoC violations” gave charges that appeared unfounded by the facts. I can only speak to my own, because only I know everything about “my side”, about which I’ve disclosed everything on my blog. Responses from the other targets can be found by following links in my blog.
Again, not the ban, but the specific claimed “CoC violations”.
It’s never going to be the case that I’ll accept a process that makes Stalin-era show trials look fair-minded and transparent in comparison.
BTW, I find dark humor in people saying they don’t want to “relitigate” this. Because that’s the point: there was no sane notion of “litigation” to begin with. The CoC WG never contacted me, I was never told a secret trial was being held, I was never asked a single question about these claimed violations, nor asked even once what I had to say about them, and the first I even heard of those “CoC violations” was after I was already banned.
Every accused person wants their “day in court”. And, IMO, every healthy community should demand that they get one. If not for the sake of the accused du jour, for the future safety of their own circle of besties. There are people who clicked on Ethan’s dissent (in my ban announcement) who didn’t even like me. (and I admire them for putting principle above personal animus - & some of us have become quite friendly since).
As one of the Reddit commenters said in relation to my case:
It’s like you take everything we know to work about a working justice system and do the complete opposite. There’s really just no way this system could ever produce good results, no matter who is in charge.
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Regarding my use of relitigation, I was not saying this thread was unfounded and is relitigation. What I mean is that there was an attempt to get the moderators/SC/CoC board to answer, and they did not. Then it’s brought up again many times, and at some point those continued attempts become relitigation, at least to me.
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Oh, I wasn’t calling you out. I noticed you used the word, but didn’t think much of it in context. Other people have used it too, with the very clear meaning of “Tim already got the full benefit of due process, and no more should ever be said about it by anyone”. Which I won’t say anything about, because nothing kind comes to mind 
I personally think that’s an odd meaning for the word, but gratefully accept your clarification.
"I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” ― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
Although the perceived injustice people protest in my case is insignificant compared to other injustices in the world, past and present, it’s a very visible one happening in one of the communities they care deeply about, so “just let it go” isn’t advice likely to be taken.
“Someone” would be me I have no interest in seeing this particular discussion occurring anywhere other than in this topic, and repeatedly ask people to move mentions of it here.
As you say, until yesterday that had the effect of killing the discussion entirely. Which is fine by me too. So long as there’s a place people can discuss it if they like, “fair enough”.
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Whilst I think those given power should explain this policing action as it may well weigh heavily on the actions of our community in the future. I cannot tell if their actions were warranted, and yet I think there exists an easy way to dispell doubts by quoting comments and the interpretation put on them to show how their case was constructed resulting in the ban.
It seems a lot easier than the work Tim put in to convince us to switch to his sort routine, for example.
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I think there are two reasons for my odd definition, first that we compare moderation on an internet forum to a trial in court, and second me being ESL.
@Paddy3118 Yeah I didn’t mean it in the sense that things shouldn’t change or that people should just let go of their perceived injustices[1], but after talking to Chris and reading your last post I understand that it was taken that way. I should have been more specific, my bad. What I meant is that it might be good for the community to let emotions cool down after 5 months, and then later with a clearer mind try to try to work on things. Maybe some people feel that things got to cool down but to me it seems that emotions are as high as ever. And some people probably disagree and think that emotions do not need to cool down.
I think I’m pretty happy with what I’ve said, and I understand your position much better now so I think I’ll leave the topic and hope that the people affected can resolve this dispute.
No judgement, how you perceive things is an important part of what those things are. ↩︎
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Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but the re-litigation is also weighing heavily on many people.
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It’s not obvious.
Calling this “relitigation” is like inviting Alice to have “more tea” when she has not had any. We can certainly have more litigation than none.
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but all of this debate could be resolved very rapidly if the official silence would be replaced with actual answers.
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The initial litigation was the process that resulted in Tim’s ban, no? That’s what I mean when I refer to this discussion as re-litigating the issue.
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Is there any way in which this could be resolved without a response from the “official” parties (who, I assume, consist of one or more of the SC, the CoC WG, and the forum moderators)? Because at the moment the discussion feels like it’s mostly a combination of reiterating things that have already been said, and people venting their frustration at the continual “official silence”. And I don’t get the impression that we’re likely to see any further official response (not even any further explanation of why the official groups feel that a policy of silence is necessary).
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I don’t know. But right now, the options are “get cowed into silence” and “continue responding to questions”, and it’s pretty clear that the first option is NOT going to fix anything. Unless your idea of “fix” is “let those with power keep their power, force everyone else to shut up”, which - as has been pointed out many times - is the height of injustice.
If you are weary of this whole discussion, lend your voice to the request for an official response. The more people who call for one, the harder it will be for it to be ignored. Otherwise, silence is functional acceptance of Tim’s ban, and all the other claims that have been put forward without justification and then used to ban people.
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Litigation means resolving a dispute in a court of law, or at least in a discussion. Not “here are some trumped-up charges and now you’re banned”.
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If you thought I was using “litigation” in the sense of a court proceeding, then why did you think I was applying it to this discussion? And if we’re merely talking about discussions, then why don’t the extensive discussions that precipitated Tim’s ban count?
I assumed you were drawing an analogy to a court of law. A plaintiff and a defendant get to each make their cases, and then a decision is made. Why? What did you mean it to mean?
Let’s start by defining our terms. What IS litigation, and therefore what is relitigation?
Can you point me to the extensive discussions that led to the list of claimed CoC violations and where Tim was able to respond to them?
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IIUC multiple people reported Tim’s offending posts and there was a lot of back-and-forth about what to do about it over the course of weeks. When Tim’s posts were getting hidden I privately advocated to the mods for them to be unhidden and that he only be banned for a few days at most, and I was disappointed by the lengthy ban. If Tim didn’t get a fair chance to respond to the allegations then that’s a shame and shouldn’t happen in future, but honestly I’m not sure what he could have said to get him off the hook. These discussions didn’t happen in public for the same reason that HR meetings aren’t held within earshot of everyone in the office.
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So how do you propose ensuring that it doesn’t happen in the future? Demanding that everyone just shut up and let things be is the best way to ensure that it DOES happen again.
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The next time it happens, I’ll volunteer to take the ban time myself so that no-one has an excuse to cause so much stress and division over such a relatively minor injustice.
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I would like to see a better response than we’ve had so far, and in particular I’d like to see more clarity on what the various parties’ roles were (the CoC WG, the SC, and the forum moderators). But I would also like to assume good faith on the part of everyone involved, and a lot of the comments here seem inclined towards assuming the opposite - I don’t want to be associated with that viewpoint.
I’m not looking to find fault with people, or with what happened. I’ll be honest, I was getting pretty sick of the way the various discussions that led to Tim’s ban were going. The stated reasons for the ban were odd, and personally[1] I didn’t think they seemed sufficient justification for a ban. But I wasn’t surprised that some action was taken, and I was saddened that Tim didn’t see it coming and tone down his approach.
What I would like is a less formal explanation of “what the heck happened”. Something that allows for “we made a mistake” or “in hindsight, we didn’t explain ourselves properly”. But I fear that the tone here makes it unlikely we’ll get anything like that - because no-one wants to be torn to shreds (or to be the cause of someone else getting torn to shreds) over a mistake that got out of hand.
So while yes, I’d like more feedback from the SC, the CoC WG, and the moderators, this discussion itself feels like it’s pushing things in the opposite direction. This simply doesn’t feel like it would be a safe place for anyone to admit to having doubts about what happened. Which is why I’d like to see things calm down a little. Remember that everyone involved is an individual, and we should assume good faith by default.
but as I’ve stated in a previous post, I grew up in an era where a lot of things that are now offensive were just “background noise”, and I don’t always trust my instincts in these matters ↩︎
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My expectation is also that there will be no such response here and then that this discussion will die down. That won’t mean that anything is really resolved though.
I’m not happy with what has happened here with people being banned through bad processes for reasons that I either don’t understand or don’t agree with. I’m primarily unhappy though not because of what happened in the past but because of what it means going forwards. The only thing that can really resolve that from my perspective is some sense that things will be different in future which does need a significant official response (even if not right now in this thread).
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