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This blog post (which I was the principal author of, with substantial input from the board at the time) talks about the current PSF Code of Conduct (which has subsequently had minor revisions), which has been in effect since 2019, and the reasons why it was adopted.
And this is a link to the current (2019-era) code of conduct: Python Software Foundation Code of Conduct - Python Software Foundation Policies
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… are you sure? 
Personally, I would prefer that objectionable individual word choices were edited out in a clearly recognizable way, if the alternative were deleting the post. But you’re free to disagree.
In theory I agree. In practice I’m not sure that it would be used. Replying in situ will, I think, always be instinctive.
That said, are such posts in scope for Discourse Feedback ?
More than that, a top-level overview of what the org structure is. I can think of many titles off the top of my head that connote some kind of authority or privilege in the Python diaspora, and I have very little idea how they actually relate to each other.
I think Discourse should be held responsible for this rather than any individual instance. (And yes, it’s exactly as @hugovk says. Modern web design, you know…)
100%. I have seen far too many moderation teams fail to learn this lesson.
One thing maintainers (not just moderators, but anyone with any kind of curation privilege, or who is consciously trying to set an example, or is just far above average activity) of any community need to understand is that the world is full of well-meaning people who simply will not read any kind of “documentation of the community” until a conflict arises. They expect to get by on the fact that they’re well-meaning people and have no interest in causing trouble with anyone.
For the record, I tried actually searching. “Good” appears once, and “faith” not at all.
I was once a moderator of an explicitly political space full of highly intelligent people with wildly opposing, fringe views. What I learned was that the only effective prevention is setting a good example; and the most important rules are to speak plainly (i.e., without irony in the broad sense), avoid expressions of anger (including profanity), be intellectually honest, and be charitable.
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I haven’t been a particularly active poster here, and I’m not overly concerned with the controversy at hand, but I have seen or participated in a lot of discussions similar to this one in various discussion forums. Some general principles of effective moderation that seem to me to be relevant:
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When multiple people share moderation duties, shared guidelines are necessary to ensure consistency of moderation behavior, and developing those kind of guidelines is a harder task than people reasonably expect it to be. The larger the moderation team, the more detailed the internal guidelines need to be.
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The community needs to know what they can expect from the moderation team at a high level in order to build trust. On the other hand, sharing the detailed internal moderation guidelines is usually a bad idea that hurts more than it helps by inviting rules-lawyering. The balance of transparency is also harder to get right then people expect it to be.
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A lot varies based on both the makeup of the community and the technical details of the forum, but I don’t think it’s true that preventative moderation doesn’t work. The early replies in a thread can easily set a tone. Overly dismissive, combative, and/or narrowly focused or tangential early replies have outsized influence when a thread runs long. People often read the first few replies, then skim a bit, then skip to the bottom to write their reply.
Nipping an early reply like that in the bud is the ounce of prevention that’s worth a pound of cure, and it only works if the moderators can remove them before there’s a lot of other replies. That said, this is not a pattern I’ve observed here very much, I think due to both the technical focus of the forum and the fact that especially long threads are mostly the exception rather than the rule.
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Moderators leaving notice of removed replies is generally a good thing, but I don’t think it needs to be an iron-clad rule. It depends on how substantial the removed post was, and how many replies it attracted before removal. But some things really are just low-effort noise that can be safely and silently removed to the benefit of all.
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Moderators editing posts without being asked to makes sense to me for things like broken links or formatting. I had a post of mine edited because I forgot to put
__init__in backticks and the underscores got interpreted as formatting instead of literals. That’s reasonable to me. Typos hardly seem worth it unless the typo is somehow generating misunderstanding or a derail. Edits for content seem dicey.
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I would ask people to please consider that this is a public forum and that speaking in absolutes, making blanket statements about groups of people and taking minor moderation extremely personally, creates an environment that many people do not want to be part of.
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Sure.
And many people don’t want to be part of an environment where there they sense no empathy for why they reacted the way they did to moderation decisions, and where actions are labelled “minor” that they see as quite significant, and where they are scolded for “taking something personally” when they feel that there is bias against them personally (or against groups they belong to) and are trying to make that case.
And at least some people approach a discussion with many, many years of experience discovering that supposed concern for “groups of people” doesn’t extend to the groups they belong to, but only ones on the approved list for orthodox thinkers to show compassion towards.
But also, I can’t really tell what posts, or parts thereof, motivate you to say so, which IMHO is a bad look in the context of a discussion about transparency and openness.
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What you’ve said is true, but it’s worth noting that there are quite a few things that are evidently creating an environment that people do not want to be a part of, and I suspect that blanket statements aren’t the biggest problem here.
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I’ve received a lot of private feedback about the blanket statements from people who are watching this conversation but aren’t posting.
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It’s more about the rules/policy than technical details… Technically, it could be as simple as removing the offending post and adding a new post informing that post X published at Y has been removed because of a CoC violation… (Of course, if Discourse can offer another, better way to achieve the same goal, with at least the same level of clarity and visibility, let’s use it!)
Here I exclusively referred to the flagging-then-auto-hiding feature – before a moderator actually makes their decision (I have no problem with the policy letting the moderators remove hate speech and other unacceptable stuff; quite contrary – I’d had a problem if such stuff were kept intact).
It is just annoying that I cannot read automatically hidden/folded content (typically, quite innocent), especially when it is a part of a broader narration/argumentation/discussion… Also I find it as not a very welcoming policy that some users (“more equal”?) can read it, and some others can’t.
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sigh Once again, we have to take this entirely on faith. We have to accept that the feedback you’ve received is entirely justified, valid, and significant, all without knowing a single thing about it.
So what are we supposed to do? Faced with such entirely non-specific information as this, how can we do anything OTHER than give blanket statements??
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Pushing back a bit, Deb didn’t say anything about whether they’re justified, valid, or significant. It’s not possible to believe they were “investigated” to any significant extent.
But it’s dead easy to take on trust that, ya, sure, she got complaints. Can’t say about “a lot” - no idea there.
That there are complaints is information. Not much, but some. I’m not clear on what, e.g, “blanket statements” refers to either, but there’s at least a fraction of a bit of information in that too 
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“Carry on”. Next time I post, e.g. I’ll take some extra care that I’m not grossly over-generalizing (the most plausible meaning of “blanket statements” to me).
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Yes. I realised on reread that it did look like I was implying that we couldn’t even trust that she’d received complaints at all, and while it’s true we’re taking that part on faith too, my point was about the merit of those complaints. I don’t doubt that there are complaints, but it’s easy to say “there are complaints” and much harder to convey how much weight those complaints ought to carry.
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If it got hidden you could take the view that it shouldn’t have been a part of the discussion to begin with, so it was a mistake for it to exist at all.
At some point I’m afraid you will have to trust the people involved are doing what they think is best and that what that leads to is okay. There will never be any radical transparency around CoC enforcement, and so there will always be things you won’t get to know. I understand that may bother you, but CoC stuff is balanced with privacy on purpose (for both people reporting and those being reported). There just has to be trust at some point, or else I’m afraid you will be perpetually frustrated here.
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I’m suggesting the latter part is irrelevant. Really! If, e.g. you were being actively threatened with a ban, then the weight of the complaints (should) matter a lot.
But before then, this forum is for everyone in the community, and everyone’s complaints should matter, at face value. That there is a complaint is prima facie evidence that their experience here isn’t what they’d like it to be.
You’re not required to accept that the complaint is weighty, but it’s “just nice” to accommodate if you can. I don’t believe a mod is required to believe a complaint is weighty either - that complaints exist is enough for them to try to nudge things in a more congenial direction.
Notwithstanding that, in this specific topic, it’s unlikely to work .
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I’m sorry you think that, but as I said, there’s a balance. That means some things are in public, others are not. It’s a judgment call and every situation is different. You can call me flawed and inconsistent if you want, but we are all doing our best here.
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I could if it was removed by a conscious decision of a moderator who takes responsibility for it, and removed for all readers. If we say, however, about hiding by an impersonal formula with high ratio of false positives, then – no, I’d prefer not to. And if the effect is that some (non-moderator) users are still able to read the “hidden” content and refer to it in the further discussion, and others are excluded from that ability – that’s just a frustrating and alienating experience for non-insider users like me. Couldn’t all users of public parts of the forum be treated equally in terms of the ability to read posts?
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It is difficult for me to convey how utterly chilling this statement reads to those of us who are not moderators. This is a level of “I know better than you do what you should or should not be saying” that I find it hard to believe people are okay with it as a community speech moderation practice.
I also found it quite shocking to read that moderators apparently routinely go fix up typos etc. in other people’s posts. IMO it is not okay to change people’s words after they post them, no matter how well meaning, and leave attribution solely as the original author.
It’s quite easy to believe the former. Pretty much everyone in existence is doing what they think is best.
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We acknowledge the feedback in this thread, but also feel it’s no longer on topic or productive to leave open. Please see our published guidelines and message @moderators if you have further feedback.
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