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Comment by kurbin | Hacker News Reader

They say "Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors to take over the work of the committee", yet the 7-person board of directors overlaps with the 4-person code of conduct committee.

Board of Directors: https://numfocus.org/community/people CoC Committee: https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct#persons-responsible

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It's just Andy Terrel who's in both, right? That's not a huge amount of overlap. Enough to potentially cause a problem, but 6 members of the board being different (and a whole lot of public backlash) should probably be enough to resolve this.

The 'overlapping person/people' (Andy Terrel in this case) should recuse themselves. Even then, it is no guarantee of impartial results, given that the committee reports to the board.

They seem to have rescued themselfes:

> Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors, minus those involved, to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.

This was possibly edited later into the article.

C'mon, overlap n = 1

The only two non-staffers (and thus decisionmakers) on the committee were both on the board at some point.

> 7-person board of directors overlaps with the 4-person code of conduct committee

The overlap is one person: Andy Terrel, NumFOCUS President.

That's a pretty important overlap. How many people on a board or in a community are really willing and able to entirely discount the President's views and consider issues independently?

Of the 4 person committee, one is on the board, the other was on the board last year, and the other two are staffers.

The president (who presumably is also the chairman) was the only "non-staffer" on the committee and thus almost certainly had full responsibility already.

The rest of the board should ask for his resignation.

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