Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

A few weeks ago, concerns were raised by several TSC and CTC members regarding issues they had with @rvagg's interactions in the Github tracker and Twitter.
The specific issues that were reported include:

[Note: the specific list of issues has been removed at the request of several core collaborators who felt that listing the issues was not fair to Rod. This post was made with an effort at full transparency and with no ill intent towards anyone. No additional harm was intended by listing the issues - jasnell]

Ok, so what did they do? Does the announcement say?

EDIT: It looks like some of the allegations are at https://twitter.com/ohhoe/status/899748838302302212 but I'm having a bit of trouble parsing it.

Would it be possible to get "They said X, which is inappropriate because Y"? I don't know enough to understand why "apologizing to a contributor who had been repeatedly moderated" is bad (or what it even means, really).

On the other hand, I don't want my comment to be interpreted as a dismissal, or to put anyone on the defensive. I'm just asking for more info.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079139

He had the audacity of standing up against black-rimmed eyeglass freedom fighters. How DARE he!

How DARE he suggest a code of conduct is bullshit and infesting projects left and right. I deleted my twitter because these goons are known to stir up shit when there is none.

Bleh, will this ever get better? http://archive.is/f2KWf

Note that the fork is just political grand standing. Look at the issues lol https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/issues

I'm pretty far on the sidelines here but I don't really understand the CoC hate. Code of Conducts feel like unit tests for a community along with a plan of action if one of those tests fails.

Just like there are bad unit tests, I'm sure there are bad Codes of Conduct, but on the whole it seems like a positive thing to clearly state how things should go in a community.

I've seen it multiple times: A project is humming along, lots of contributors and in pops this stranger that has no ties to the project whatsoever with a demand for a CoC. They also happen to invite their twitter swarm to the thread and demand a CoC or else they support some $horrible_group.

Example: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942

If members of your community are feeling discouraged to the point that they're asking for a CoC, it seems like something worth taking notice of.

I think the objection comes if the people asking for the CoC are from outside the community.

Of course, the argument can come that there's not going to be much people inside the community asking for a CoC because they're obviously comfortable with how things are running, or they wouldn't keep contributing.

Doesn't seem like an easy call either way.

I mean, that's not what has happened here; the CoC has been around for a while. What's happened here is just that there is someone who is "above the law" that the CoC provides for and a bunch of others are just like "we don't support that, if we are going to carefully abide by the CoC then we don't want to work with folks who flagrantly disregard it and get away with it because they have a position on some committee."

I read that thread and ... I see that the people working towards a CoC are the calm, reasoned ones whilst the anti-CoC people are the rabid trolling libertarian nonsense "WHAT ABOUT THE MUSLIMS?" bullshitters (ie the very people you don't want in a community.)

You may have shot your own foot with that link.

The late Pieter Hintjens had some thoughtful criticisms of CoCs: http://hintjens.com/blog:108

From my understanding, he's concerned about harmful assumptions sometimes made in them and also how the policing of them can be abusive.

I think they have more than 5 issues...

I don't know enough to understand why "apologizing to a contributor who had been repeatedly moderated" is bad (or what it even means, really).

I think it means the contributor said something that was not allowed, got moderated, and then "Rod" apologized to the contributor that he was moderated for that.

Basically, undermining the moderation philosophy.

I'm not sure that's what happened, but it's the only way I can make sense of that statement.

Here's a screenshot of the original posting to restore context: https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/899760806551666690

I can't figure out what the issue(s?) is. What was the context of the moderations and associated apologies? And was another complaint that he was promoting specific companies to help them win more business within the Node community? And I guess he doesn't respect the concept of a Code of Conduct?

Maybe I'm dense but it's not exactly Damore level stuff here.

"Professional Mantagonizer."

The issue is that people have apparently on many occasions said "Hey Rod, don't do that, it's against the CoC (code of conduct)" and his attitude has been "I don't care about the CoC, I don't believe in CoCs, and I'm important enough that you can't touch me." This creates a really difficult environment for completely non-SJW-related reasons (I am very sad that people keep treating this as a social justice issue).

Codes of conduct are only meaningful if they apply to core contributors with all the more force than occasional contributors. The chief accusation lobbied against a CoC is "oh you just use those to go after people you don't like," much like, say, the police sometimes use US law. The only security against this accusation is that the CoC is applied with more forgiveness at the lowest levels and more stringently to the people-at-the-top. It's not social justice; it's consistency.

Admittedly I think a bunch of HN would like the anti-SJW approach of "let's just burn the CoC and forget that it ever existed," and in that sense I suppose that it is "social-justice-ish", but these are orthogonal concerns. The one concern is that members of the Node.js CTC are beyond reproach for shitty things they do; the other concern is defining clearly what things are shitty.

The issue is that people have apparently on many occasions said "Hey Rod, don't do that, it's against the CoC (code of conduct)" and his attitude has been "I don't care about the CoC, I don't believe in CoCs, and I'm important enough that you can't touch me."

The accusations would carry more weight if they were accompanied by links to examples of their behavior. At the moment, it reads like you're quoting him even though he probably didn't say that.

He's definitely against CoCs.

https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841

hasenj mentioned[1] this link in the earlier discussion: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918

I think it is very relevant.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079209

This Rod guy looks like to be a real terrorist, wow. I'd be so scared if he lived in my neighbourhood.

[citation needed]

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