Suspending a Core Developer for Conduct issues

(From the whole Steering Council.)

The SC has decided to suspend Steven D’Aprano from Core Developer spaces for 3 months, following several complaints and an official recommendation from the PSF’s Code of Conduct Work Group. We and the CoC WG have previously warned Steven both privately and publicly (Mailman 3 Steering Council reply regarding conduct (was Re: Steering Council update for February) - Python-Dev - python.org), and while his conduct hasn’t been as egregious as that particular incident, it continues to cross the line, creating an atmosphere of hostility and making people – Core Developers and others – feel unwelcome. We see this as a corrective action, and hope to improve Core Developer interactions for everyone.

For the whole Steering Council,
Thomas.

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Could you perhaps share links to the recent threads that have been found problematic?

(I understand that the goal is not public shaming of a person, however they may have behaved, so if you don’t want to give links that’s fine. But I also think it’s in the interest of everyone to be transparent on such issues, especially on such fundamental community matters as suspending people.)

By following the link in the original post and expanding content where necessary, anyone interested can find the material. Imo, we should just leave it at that, rather than post a direct link here. Such a prominent link would bring what was evidently a very contentious argument to the fore again, which would almost assuredly become a very unpleasant experience for all involved.

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That link brings to a thread from two years ago. Surely the contentious discussion is not the same this time?

I, of course, don’t know whether some of the related material is impossible to find. If we do find some, we should, imo, leave it up to @thomas whether it would be productive or not to post a link to it, rather than posting such a link ourselves.

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The specific issue that triggered this action were comments made at Add new combination of keywords: "break and continue" inside a nested loop breaks the inner and continues in the outer · Issue #101935 · python/cpython · GitHub . But as the original post for this topic stated, this is not around a single incident but a pattern of repeated comments that “cross the line”.

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Thank you.

FYI Steven’s suspension is up, but we have not heard from him about agreeing to follow the Code of Conduct going forward. As such, the suspension is being left in place until we hear back.

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