Three month suspension for a Core Developer

[emily (Emily Morehouse)]

As someone involved in most of the SC discussion on this, please know that it, as with all CoC incidents, was not taken lightly. These discussions are infinitely more challenging than any technical PEP that we discuss. It involves not only a thorough analysis of a situation, both documented and recounted, empathy for those who have raised complaints of behavior that has caused them harm, balancing the often negative impact of taking corrective action when needed, and ultimately, attempting to find the solution that won’t alienate those involved while maintaining and improving the health of our community. It is wildly rare to approach someone who has behaved poorly or said something that hurt someone and have them respond with, “Wow, I’m so sorry that was the impact of my words. I may not understand all of it, but I’ll work to do better”.

This is not the first time that there was no singular incident or sentence that comprised an offense. The list of behaviors, in my opinion, is not a list of individual things so egregious that resulted in a suspension. They are examples that attempt to summarize an overall communication style that pushed boundaries too far and caused harm to multiple people in our community.

And yes, as Mariatta mentioned, we did discuss this directly with the person first as an initial corrective measure where the feedback was not received and no willingness to listen or improve was indicated (in fact, doubling down on issues we were trying to address occurred).

@nanjekyejoannah

point one almost gave me an impression the SC and PSF aren’t impressed with controversy or they don’t appreciate that sometimes controversy should be feedback to some of our processes, even if we don’t take everything suggested in the controversy. In another interpretation of this point, this may not be what the SC means by that point of course.

@hauntsaninja

I don’t think the person was really doing themselves any favours; it’s a pretty bad strategy to take a sardonic tone and assume your readers will catch your nuance when talking about difficult subjects in a heated conversation while also posting at volume and also engaging people who did clearly cross lines.

I really like @hauntsaninja’s description of the communication strategy here – I don’t mind controversy and certainly welcome those who have opinions that are different from my own. The volume and overloading of these discussions was the issue, not having a “controversial” opinion.

In CoC violations in general, I wish that there was a way to paint the whole picture for the community at large, but it’s unfair to both the person(s) who report issues and the people who are being suspended. I do hear the feedback on this and hope that our communications and process can be improved in the future.