Shedding light on a three-month suspension

Do HR departments post public lists of crimes for which someone has been banned?

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Quite frequently companies who are firing a prominent employee will release a statement with some details. Sometimes companies will do this in more gracious ways. Sometimes in less gracious ways.

Sometimes they do this in ways that immediate lead to lawsuits spinning up.

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It’s a fact that I was never asked to agree that I was guilty of any of those claimed offenses. Yet here I am. What does that suggest to you about how seriously “they” took those claimed offenses? It’s possible they took them more seriously than I did, but not enough so to press the issue with me. In fact, they weren’t mentioned to me. That’s all covered near the start of my Ban Q&A page.

So why were they posted at all? Why do they stay up?

I can’t answer those. But it will all happen again if people settle for no straight answers again. I’m not the first, and won’t be the last. I’m just the only one who wanted to come back - and still won’t shut up about perceived injustice :wink:

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Over in a different topic, it was suggested some had:

It’s reasonable to read “reporting to” as a euphemism for “filed a complaint”, but not entirely sure. I invited moving that part of the discussion to this topic, but that was 9 days ago, and no follow-up was made here.

OTOH, neither is there a statement all the claimed violations came from “civilian” reports. I’ve never before seen actual violations modified by so many fuzzy qualifiers, like

  • could be seen as
  • could be interpreted as
  • may be inappropriate
  • which is problematic
  • may be seen as

In “a real” list of claimed violations, there’s never the slightest wiggle room for the slightest doubt about what’s been claimed. For example, in the two before mine, here and here.

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As I have stated before, I ask for that transparency as I am conflicted: Python governance has bumbled along for me for years, but now they censure a pillar of my community who does not agree with that decision. After reading further, I ask for details on how they came to their decision that I think could be made available, but have not been. You know, “please explain yourself”.

With a more detailed explanation, I, and others, will alter our views and act “accordingly”. (I feel that decisions on whether to “leave the matter as is” are possible for me, but if, for example, they state “he needed taking down a peg” then probably not - to state an extreme).

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“On reflection, we made a mistake” As a statement from those who banned Tim, would work for me. It would then be for them to make amends that Tim agreed to - I would think much more of them as it would look like they were learning from their mistake.

:slight_smile:

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That would be a relief to me, but we can’t know. And due to the peculiarities of the way the suspension was handled (no comms from the CoC WG at all to you), I find it unlikely.

Tim knows this, I’m just relating it for posterity, but I define “civilian” as anyone who is not involved in the SC nor the CoC WG, and I define “report” as a message having been sent to conduct-wg@python.org or to a Board member as per Python Software Foundation Community Member Procedure For Reporting Code of Conduct Incidents - Python Software Foundation Policies . Making it possible to elide the report-gathering step while building a CoC WG recommendation is even more guideline-scoffing, and if the reports came solely from members of the enforcement or recommendation bodies, I’m sure most everyone can see the problem with that.

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Guess that is not going to happen.

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That should be in addition to removal of the CoC sentence from Tim’s Wikipedia page. The fact that this could remain forever annoys me deeply.

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That’s not under the PSF’s control. In the event that the SC amends the reasons for the suspension, that amendment would be noted on the Wikipedia page. It’s unlikely it will ever be removed entirely.

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I don’t know much about the editing processes over at Wikipedia but if that’s the case then what a bummer.

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Each subpart of Wikipedia is its own fiefdom ruled by their moderators. In general tho I think Wikipedia likes to keep it at stated facts and there’s nothing false in that statement, specifying that the infringements are alleged. That probably doesn’t help Tim feeling better about it but since almost everybody agrees that the stated violations are questionable or even wrong I think the list reflects worse on the accusers than the accused.

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Even a Steering Council member called it a “ban” (third message in the announcement topic, might even be the first time it was called that here):

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Sure.

It should read, “Permanent ban”, as most uses of ban here are written as if it was permanent and that is specifically the equivalency I object to. But yes, you did catch a technicality there.

This is the core point I was trying to make, the semantics do get messy very easily but I view the action as a timeout button and not as a statement about not being welcome in the community at large. And as others have pointed out, there’s a certain amount of insight we’re just not entitled to get due to the complexity of preserving the privacy of anyone who made a report.

I didn’t get that impression from any.

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Wholly agreed. It should state facts, and this unfortunate drama is a part of the Uncle Timmy story. I believe, however, that the article should be balanced by pointing to a refutation (at least 3 different blogs give detailed responses, although I think my own has the advantage that only I know all the details of what I did and didn’t do, and only my site links to the others).

I believe it does so reflect, but only to people who hear both sides. As I’ve noted before, on various tech-gossip sites’ comment sections, people who just see that shrill list go “what a monster! why are they being suspended for only 3 months?!”. The ones who go on to dig into “the evidence” come back with a very different comment. That’s been so since the start, even before @mcdonc published his blog piece.

But it doesn’t much matter how Tim feels. I’m old, long retired, derive no income of any kind from anything related to Python, and don’t even have “a brand” to sell on the web (I only have a Facebook page, with posts restricted to “friends”, the overwhelming majority of whom are people from around the world whose only original connection is that we used to be Farmville “neighbors”).

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.

And actual changes would help repair the damage in past cases too! I’m not the only one who felt they were railroaded via trumped-up defamatory charges, and while they never expect to get treated fairly either, they are finding fresh cause for hope in following this topic (although remaining invisible). What’s it to them? Empathy: they hope never to see it again happen to another. Not about them directly.

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@KeithTheEE, you appear to be a relative newcomer on the PSF’s Discourse, and it looks like you’ve only posted so far in topics related in some way to “adjudicating” my case.

Which is fine. But as a relative newcomer, you may want to give more credence to people telling you, more than once now, that in Python’s history “ban” and “suspension” have been used synonymously. For me, “ban” is just less typing.

You said elsewhere that you’ve been involved in moderating other online spaces, but didn’t say which. Perhaps “ban” and “suspension” mean quite different things in those spaces?

If so, fine too, but when in Rome …

BTW, suspensions from Discourse alone are usually called “suspensions” even if they’re eternal, because the forum software puts some form of “suspend” in the message attached to the suspended user’s avatar when you click on it. Whether the suspension is for 2 weeks or forever doesn’t matter to this.

This is a deeply unserious conversation, and I don’t blame anyone for staying out of it.

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You’re right I’m new here. I was planning on staying off of dpo a bit longer, but I noticed that there was a lack of perspective from folks who’ve moderated discussing aspects of ‘why’ there is relatively little in the way of public statements.

As to the communities I’ve been a part of in moderation capacity, they’re not really of note. So feel free to disregard it if that’s a requirement.

As to why I care–I had someone use the original thread as a reason they are hesitant to be involved in dpo and likely not the core team. They’re brilliant, but took it as a reason to focus their energy elsewhere.

Which is a net loss to me. And why I care about explaining both that moderation is tricky, but when so many unique bodies are involved, there might be good reason for action, and the action itself probably deserves to be viewed in the light of, “Let’s take a breather.”

I apologize for getting hung up on the nomenclature.

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