Agree. What you want is a distribution of power like you got with modern, democratic state systems. As long as the moderation team is not an absolute power, I don't see an issue. If e.g. the COC is meant to be strictly applicable to everyone, then it needs to be enforceable for everyone.

Personally, I think absolute power hierarchies will sooner or later bring out the worst in people, attract bad personalities, no matter the appeal of a tale about leadership and ruthless decision making or whatever. Checks and balances will prevent things from starting to rot. A good foundation likely needs the expenses, work, "ineffectivity" of a thoughtful/elaborate distribution of power.

> unless maybe Microsoft steps in.

I believe that would very quickly kill the community. Corporate MS cannot be patron here. You will never find me in a development community that puts compliance over people. I accept that in my job because it makes sense there and is necessary. But there are current sensibilities about conduct I do not share and I am not ready to keep up with the newest etiquette to be honest. I think moderators should go against obvious trolls and spammers, but aren't fit to mediate in conflicts.

HN has a strong moderation, but I think these are rules that the community accepts because everyone profits. It could just be a power grab by some mods that feel neglected, at least that is what they seem to display here.

Having been a part of the community since a bit before 1.0, no this does not happen every 6 months.

I don't think the Rust community is particularly prone to public drama. What other events are you thinking of?

FYI r/rust also has a mod team

As pointed out on r/rust, the approved Governance RFC states quite unambiguously that the Core Team is accountable to the community wrt. their behavior:

> Subteam, and especially core team members are also held to a high standard of behavior. Part of the reason to separate the moderation subteam is to ensure that CoC violations by Rust's leadership be addressed through the same independent body of moderators.

https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html

Public shaming by respected community members is probably somewhat effective. However, they chose not to do that here. Without knowing more, I have to trust their judgment. But I recognize that it’s unsatisfying.

I hope it is as straightforward as that. But that's still not something that outsiders can see and help with.

There's nothing stopping you from doing it that way; it's just not very effective. A public resignation is usually designed to call attention to a problem, and trigger changes. If you don't say what the problems are with any specificity, it doesn't work as well.

The other shoe is that if they let the core team be above the law, when an incident happens, there will be all sorts of accusations of impropriety.

Then don’t make a whole big public announcement about it. As someone from the outside this just reads like a post specifically to generate drama and attention but not giving details as to direct it at anyone in particular.

So set `X = "other Rust team members"`. Everything else in the comment was just for drama.

I have yet to see significant sexism/racism in open source, but I have seen an insurmountable amount of drama, bad behavior, prosecution and prejudice from people proclaiming to fight against it.

what IF a person in a responsibility position is openly accused of being XYZ-phobic by attention-seeking, emotionally unstable netizens?

In my eyes someone is allowed to be as hateful as they want as long as they contribute good code.

With most OSS projects nowadays I don't think you have to use a mailing list or anything that would have an MOTD in order to contribute. Contributions nowadays are often done entirely through the repository, so it makes sense to put in them the things that people contemplating contribution should be cognizant of.

Repositories for most projects are more project repositories than mere code repositories.

The vast majority of open source projects do not create their own open source license- most of them choose from a relatively small selection of widely used licenses (GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.).

Why then do so many project choose to roll their own CoC? I'd expect that there would also be a relatively small handful of widely used CoCs to choose from, and a project could pick based on their projects' needs.

>But for some reason, the formalization of conduct enforcement stuff around OSS projects still feels weird, off-putting, and very "Corporate HR"-y to me.

But if a community already approved such rules is it OK that those would not apply equally for all? Before joining a new community I always check and see if there is a lot of toxicity or just low effort contributions and I am avoiding those, it would suck to join a community because they promise moderation and later you see that the rules don't apply equally.

Large OSS projects are largely staffed by corporate contributors - the culture shift in the organisations paying the contributors is reflected in the projects and the communities surrounding them.

The people who own the project, own the project.

The people who own your employer, own your employer.

Does that sometimes suck? Sure. Is it often unjust? Absolutely. Do you sometimes need to switch jobs or fork a project? Yup (see: mod team resigning).

But don't ever get confused and think that an HR process can save you from the whims of your master, and don't ever believe a "rule" that says the owner of something is constrained. Unless there's a higher power that can enforce that rule (e.g., a government or a market). And even then, the rule isn't doing any of the lifting.

> I just find it hard to understand on how you are suppose to see if the group is above the rules or how you can find any possible solutions

Perhaps you aren't?

This is still an internal Rust team issue; it's not a problem for us, a bunch of randos on the Internet, to solve. Our job is just to gawp from a distance, maybe gossip on Hacker News a bit.

They are saying that if those people keep it up, they can't have a Mod Team. It is an expression of an incompatibility between expansive power residing in the Core Team and the existence of a Mod Team. You don't really need a specific situation to see how that could obviously happen (classic power struggle), or to believe it has recently happened. Story as old as time.

At its height, this resignation constitutes (a) a plea for people in power to exercise it better, and (b) for those people to voluntarily become more accountable for some pattern of behaviour. (A) might be effective, if only because Rust governance so far prides itself on all the things that come with having a Mod Team. Not having one is embarrassing.

But point (b), which is indeed the focus of the resignation message, is plain magical thinking to my eye. Accountability I understand it is the acceptance of responsibility, by someone, for some thing. Someone else fundamentally needs to know what that something is for that to happen. It cannot happen if the thing is kept completely under wraps, but it can be approximated with limited but trustworthy disclosure, and this is the basis for the levels upon levels of that in e.g. national security regulation. That is a very difficult problem in its specifics, but the theory is simple: inform someone trustworthy and neutral, and then tell everyone else that you informed them.

What this message lacks is any indication of which people do know what the specific acts by Core Team members were and who did them, and what position those people are in to verify if anything is done about it. If you are unwilling to muck-rake in public, you need to give everyone else a proxy by which to gauge your generic claims. In normal governments this takes many many forms, including ministers, Inspectors-General, privileged parliamentary committees, etc. But you do not need a formal role, you simply have to nominate someone outside your group and your opposition (ie appears neutral on the face of it) that is aware of the facts. Without that, everybody who sees this will have to gauge your claims on the extremely minimal information provided plus your own reputation, but with no credible claim to neutrality on the issue. Even one such person would be better than all of the co-signatures on that letter combined.

A group being "above the rules" is, I think, a statement about what the rules are and how they are enforced. It doesn't really hinge on whether any members of that group have, up to this point, violated the rules.

Being a moderator is a thankless job, and when you don't have any power to do that job, it also becomes soul-sucking.

I don't think the moderators are concerned about culpability. I think they're concerned that what appears to be an internal debate is going to get dragged out for months on end, in public, with all context loss, and with even less ability on their part to do anything useful or constructive.

If I were in their position, I would very likely do the same thing and try to learn some lessons and move on with my life.

There are always types of events that are not suitable for public discourse (pretty much any form of harassment or abuse, where victims are still subject to pressure or were yet unable to process what happened falls into this category). I have no insight into what happened but it's not hard for me to imagine what could prompt moderation team to resign w/o disclosing specific instances.

My views on Codes of Conduct are pretty nuanced, and frankly, I learned a long time ago that the Internet cannot handle nuance. I was and still am an enthusiastic supporter of Rust's CoC, but you'll also notice that none of my personal projects have a CoC in them. So from that alone, you might at least surmise that I don't necessarily think CoCs are a universally good idea (or more precisely, "worth it") in literally every situation. Equivalently, I think they are a good idea in some situations. But I'm not going to say much more than that.

> I very much dislike COCs and overbearing moderation teams in open source communities.

Same. And I have avoided some such communities in the past.

But, I am not necessarily against overbearing moderation. For example, r/askhistorians is one of my favorite subreddits, and I would attribute that state to their intense moderation.

A code of conduct is there so that everyone knows what the rules are, and can refer to them when moderating (including self-moderating) interactions within the community. I'd consider it a big upgrade over when I was in charge of moderating an online community, and formal COCs weren't a common thing yet. The rules, such as they were, were largely informal and unwritten. In consequence, that mod team was very much a star chamber. It wasn't great. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Inter-corporate communication is not a good analogy here, because inter-corporate communication can't generally be modeled as a set of individuals freely associating with each other. Their status as representatives of their employers significantly changes the landscape. Companies are generally careful not to install people with less-than-stellar communication skills at their interfaces with other companies in the first place. I suppose the maxim to trot out here is, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Thanking the political commissars?

I’m glad to see them resign, and I hope open source can ultimately route around the unearned power grab that the “CoC” movement represents.

Department responsible for managing employees?

The difference is the moderation Team does only moderation.

But HR does all kinds of things, which often (but not always) includes moderation.

Agreed, a single point of authority is useful.

Although in this scenario, isn't code of conduct something much more "local" that the ringleader doesn't really need to step in every time to enforce?

CoC is just something I expect everybody to enforce when needed. Having a dedicated team to do that seems odd to me. I guess you still need someone to issue bans and to wield the ban hammer, but it _should_ happen infrequently that simply informing the violator of their violation should be enough (unless they're a troll and will continue violating, in which case they can be kicked).

Didn't Guido resign due to politics[0]? I think politics is an issue of organization size more so than structure.

[0] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2018-Jul...

I think the case of Rust is a bit unique with heavy interest in the future of the language from powerful companies [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130

Woah, mate. I think that way of thinking might be more-than-slightly career limiting.

The community does play a role in the ecosystem you’re buying into. You will most likely need to send PR’s / bug reports in at some point. If the core team tends to ignore bugs/external contributions, it is a point to consider.

Furthermore, if your first knee-jerk reaction to the behaviour you think undesirable in reports is to “limit their reach and upward mobility” I think you need to think seriously about what mentorship means.

Depends on your POV

My POV is one of privilege (I hate that word and concept, but it fits here). Being part of the majority most of the ways you can slice IT - except I am older but that one was a change!

In other fields I was made aware of what it is like to be part of other groups, and it can suck. I got married. My spouse took me on a tour playing "spot the detective". They got followed around shops in a way that never happens to me. When we stood together at a bar, they were served after me, every time.

A lot of people here know this from personal experience, a lot of people here it is academic reality, a lot of people here simply do not understand. OK. Believe me, it is real

I have been involved in groups that make efforts to embrace people from outside the main dominant (majority) slices (how ever you choose to slice it) and groups that do not. The former is much better.

Rust has truly benefited from it. Those in the comfy majority, it turns out, benefit too. I do.

Compare Rust and Swift (I use Swift professionally, Rust for fun) There is no comparison. Swift has so many corners that have not been rounded off. The ergonomics is mostly much worse (unwrap V ! is an exception). Memory management in Swift is almost non-existent, the threading model is appallingly bad. I could go on, but on one side is a vibrant community, on the other is a bunch of alphas, astroturf, and the weeds rolling through almost empty Apple forums.

The mod teams are a very important part of making the community a good place, making the community a good place is crucial for making the technology good.

I would think more likely all the drama and more is still there without a CoC or a team to enforce it, it’s just hush-hushed and allowed to fester. The world is chock full of examples of communities quietly condoning horribly toxic and outright criminal deeds and abuses, often toward less privileged people, that have continued for decades because ignoring, suppressing and silencing is easier than the alternative.

in general, i believe in the effectiveness of running communities via benevolent dictatorship. a group that has good reputation among the rest of the members, gets to decide how disputes are resolved / who gets silenced, etc., without having to justify themselves against a byzantine set of rules. for many open source projects that hope to be used by the wider world, this governance model is unacceptable though.

> Zero people in the real world avoided using the Linux kernel because Linus was brusque.

Actually, the best example of a project where the leadership of the project was so toxic as to drive away potential contributors would probably be glibc under Ulrich Drepper, which got so bad that most distributions abandoned glibc for the eglibc fork. (See https://lwn.net/Articles/488847/ for a high-level discussion).

Perhaps no user avoided it (though that seems unlikely), but can't you imagine why some contributors may have avoided it? Wouldn't that lack of potential contributions be a material loss for the project?

One of the biggest contributors to R's success over the past decade is folks having negative experiences with the Python community, particularly folks who are women, non-white, or come from non-CS background. The R community (and RStudio in particular) has worked hard to be much more inclusive and you can see this clearly reflected in the diversity of users and package authors.

Linux with Linus, who famously had to change his abusive tone? GCC with Richard Stallman, accused of various kinds of sexual misconduct? Python, which felt it necessary to impose a CoC eventually?

Your counter examples are questionable at best.

In my personal experience such statements are actually not rare among specific minorities, and only in spaces between those minorities. They will never be said in a public way, because it makes them targets. I've been pulled aside by fellow minorities and warned against communities I had expressed interest in in the past, always in private in confidential spaces.

I openly advise my students to stay away from posting questions on StackOverflow and ask for help among their peers and teachers. At least until they're able to clearly grasp what the "Minimal Complete Verifiable Example" is, how to minimize code, and how to google problems with slight variations, which are not easy skills.

It's not to say that StackOverflow is generally toxic. It is, though, unusable by beginners, and it's mostly by design. And I don't think there is a good way to communicate this to a beginner whose question has been just closed because it lacks details.

Oh, I think they are not as rare as you think. People are actively deterred from, say, Linux kernel development because of the community.

have you seen a thread discussing OCaml recently?

And without any details at all, it sounds like some people want to bend others to a code of conduct that they never agreed to.

> I'd give the mod team the benefit of the doubt that the offense they've all resigned over is not so mild that it could be committed unintentionally.

I don't think that's necessarily a safe assumption, particularly in today's cultural and political environment.

No, they've only said that "something happened". That could mean as little as "one person did something". What they're accusing the rest of the core team of is not being a part of it, nor even necessarily of explicitly condoning it -- just of not explicitly doing, or allowing the moderation team to do, something about it. That may be bad enough, but IMO nowhere near as "dramatic" as "assert[ing] that they're all bad people".

Well, obviously, but that's why you should be skeptical of both sides. It's just that the resigned moderation team aren't saying anything. I'd expect the core team to also urge people to be skeptical if the former moderation team do speak out about the situation.

I'm not saying who is right or wrong. I'm just responding to the parent comment because I think they're extrapolating too much from the statement.

Why do we care? Are we in middle school?

We are professionals - I'm not going to get involved in playground politics.

Not really, the mod-teams grievance is with the structure (and accountability) of the rust organisation (in particular the core-team). Likely they were triggered by a specific instance, but we can assess the problems with accountability, e.g. the power of the core-team to ignore rules that apply to everyone else quite objectively by looking at the power structures of the organisation.

I think if you want to highlight problems with a process/structure it is much better not to get into specifics of one instance. This is what the (former) mod-team is doing.

I'd rather say that a specific very annoying type of wrong people feels righteous, for reasons that range from psychotic entitlement to not understanding what they are doing. Right people often feel righteous for valid reasons.

You're correct in that there is no law saying that employers are prohibited from disclosing why a person was fired. But the policies are a result of laws that could open them up to legal action if they were to disclose any specifics. However unlikely that legal action may be, and probably even more unlikely to succeed, they still gain nothing from any such disclosures so it makes perfect sense to prohibit them.

> AIUI, most employers simply do not disclose details on firings as a matter of policy, not law.

Note that this isn't true in much of Europe, where in many countries firing someone beyond their probationary period requires due cause. I kinda suspect this is largely a function of at-will employment?

It's not a legal requirement, yes, but any competent HR person or attorney will tell you publicly telling everyone in a company or on a team why someone was fired is a huge liability and will almost certainly result in a lawsuit after it happens a couple times.