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Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

> In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion and confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation.

Isn't that a kind of scorched earth statement? I read it as "we will be discreet and don't believe anything anybody tells you in the future...instead assume all your worst fears are true".

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I feel it's a bit of a tautology, the fact that they're resigning already clearly communicates there's an irreconcilable difference between the mod team and the core team. If the core team comes with an explanation that would make light of the situation surely the new mod team would be skeptical.

That said, there is still a bit of a game left to be played. The mod team just played their trump card, by instantly making the matter super public. But by keeping the specifics close to the chest they both keep their integrity and they give the next mod team some leverage for their interaction with the core team to resolve this situation.

It's really good btw that they're keeping the specifics private. Having someone publicly lynched is never a good situation, it's probably something that's offensive to a group of people, but the person(s) who caused offence probably have no bad intentions. It's hard running an organisation with a diverse group of people. You'll never get everyone to settle on the same moral values so it's inevitable that you'll get someone who is unapologetic about some value they hold.

> but the person(s) who caused offence probably have no bad intentions

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'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.

The people who freak out over trivialities usually don't resign; they try to get others fired.

Sometimes they resign when they find out that they can't get others fired.

I don't know whether that fits in this case. I'm inclined to think not; I suspect that those who freak out over trivialities, try to get others fired, find out that they can't, and then resign, tend to have a public hissy fit when they resign. I'm not sure that what the Rust Moderation Team did counts; they seem to be trying to not air dirty laundry (or what they perceive to be dirty).

"by keeping the specifics close to the chest they both keep their integrity"

Odd code of honour there. They've made a lot of dramatic insinuations about other Rust contributors, basically asserted that they're all bad people, and provided no detail. That's the opposite of integrity.

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".

In context, I read this as:

"We're not going to say what, specifically, one or more Core Team members are being held unaccountable for. If the Core Team does say what, specifically, we aren't necessarily going to respond. Don't take our non-response as an endorsement that this is what it's about."

It's more them saying be skeptical of anything the accused says about the situation, which is common sense in that the "wrongdoer" will more than likely spin the story to save face. Unlike a court of law, they're under no oath.

They may make a statement about the situation if the core team decides to release details on the situation, but they don't want to be the first to do so, so they're simply saying be skeptical if the core team speaks out because it may not be the whole story.

Without knowing details, I can say from experience that those who feel they are the most righteous are often the most wrong. I’ve been on both sides of this.

If this has to be aired publicly, then we need to be able to objectively assess. Otherwise, I’m reading this as ‘we don’t get along with those guys and gals on the core team and vice versa’, which is, fine, it’s just humans not getting along.

Which reminds me, I don’t get along with some team members either. I want to write an email just like this, a veritable ‘fuck off, you stink”. Feels good. Now what?

Move along everyone, we’re all adults after all (right?).

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.

So get into the specifics of every instance. Trust me, the world is bored, we’ll be judge and jury on this.

Don’t be half assed about it. Ya’ll wanna air it out, air it out.

This is what the mod team says. I can't assess if that is the case or not.

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.

We’ve entered Dunning–Kruger effect, or now days:

https://reddit.com/r/NotLikeTheOtherGirls

So some people are particularly special, huh? I doubt it.

Sure but there is no way for us to know who the wrongdoer is in this case.

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.

it's very similar to working in a corporation and seeing someone get fired. the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why the person was fired, which leaves everyone else wondering if the person had done something fireable or if the company was playing politics with power.

i've heard netflix does things a bit differently. when people are asked to leave, their manager sends an email out to everyone explaining exactly why that person was asked to leave. i assume their generous severance package contains a legal release for netflix to be able to do that.

> the company is bound by legal concerns to not reveal why the person was fired

I think this is a fairly common misconception. While you might sign an anti disparagement agreement when you were hired, those tend to be one-way and designed to protect the company. And the bar to prove a defamation case is extremely high.

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

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.

Exactly. Any such disclosure gives a foothold for legal action that could drag on for a long time and cost a fortune. Even if you win, you lose, so why take that risk?

It's not that simple. Arbitrary firings are bad for morale, so it's in management's interest for the remaining employees to understand what happened.

In my experience, remaining employees generally understand what happened without the company having to disclose exact reasonings. Especially publicly.

Employers airing dirty laundry is way worse for morale. Typically the people who work in close proximity have a good idea of why their colleague may have been fired, or can reach out to them privately to get details. If the fired employee doesn't want to talk about it, it's presumably something private, and the employer probably shouldn't either.

> 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?

There is to be a cause, but there is no need to broadcast it to the world. The specifics are mainly a matter between the employee and employer.

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.

It's overwhelmingly likely that the person did something that was fireable, even in the big bad, limited employee rights USA.

At the same time, professional discretion is the norm and so you might not know from the written/spoken language if someone was let go because of a specific acute incident or a pattern of under-performance. (Except that people usually know who the chronic under-performers are, so when one is let go, you tend to assume it was performance-related and if someone thought to be a high-performer is let go, you tend to assume a non-performance cause.)

"Assume all your worst fears are true" is substantially different in meaning from "exercise skepticism around public statements by the Core Team." I understand your reading, but I don't think it's warranted by the actual public announcement here.

Exercise extreme skepticism. It doesn't seem like that word is there by accident.

Translating from don't-sue-me "extreme skepticism" obviously means "they're a clique of manipulative liars".

It's the opposite: it's a "we refuse to drag this drama out into the public sphere" statement.

It is very much in the public sphere now though.

Sure, but you can't resign and not have it be a public thing. They said as little as they could

I'm pretty sure you can resign with a lot less "drama", for the lack of a better word. Simply make the PR remove people from the moderators list and say "We don't want to be moderators anymore", but instead they give clues to what could have happen for them to take this action.

I guess you can say that their action was "semi-public". It wasn't trying to be completely private, and neither completely public, but somewhere in-between.

But if you just say "we don't want to be moderators anymore" nothing would change would it? The whole point of the statement is that the mod-team believes something in the organisational structure needs to change.

What would you have done in that case?

I would explain what went wrong. It's clear that their organizational suggestions were prompted by a member of the core team doing something they consider terribly wrong - how can it be so bad the Rust community has to know about it yet not bad enough that the community needs to know what it was?

> I would explain what went wrong.

They did: What went wrong was that the mod team doesn't have the power to mod the core team.

>I'm pretty sure you can resign with a lot less "drama"

I am not sure you can, unless you play the politician bit and lie about "wanting to spend more time with family" or "health reasons".

If they resigned without any statement, people would have noticed as well, and speculation and gossiping would be still rampant, if not more rampant, because it's not every day that the entire Rust moderation team resigns.

They are between a rock and a hard place, if their objective really was to avoid public drama. Give too little detail and you're entirely at the mercy of speculation and maybe whatever the opposing party puts out (without other people even knowing who that opposing party is). Give too much information and you may irrevocably hurt people (like victims, or even the accused when a mob comes for them) or the community as a whole.

The problem wasn't saying too much, it's saying too little. A resignation is supposed to be a message. The appropriate thing is to make that message clear and professional. It can be discrete without innuendo.

The fact that the moderation team didn't have the power to moderate the core team is public, as it needs to be if that is going to change. The actual moderation issues that arose from that have remained private, which is probably for the best, because the entire point of moderation is to not try people in the court of public opinion.

That's a naïve reading. They are dragging more into the public sphere than necessary to raise their grievances.

They could have kept the statement confined to disagreement with the government structure. Leave it ambiguous between whether it was a theoretical weakness in the structure, or a practical one where they already experienced the inability to censure.

People like goss. Wagging your eyebrows to imply something definitely did happen - but you're too classy to release details - is not a insipid act.

The mod team is in a difficult position and are trying to thread a needle.

* They actions they have taken have publicly-visible consequences, so they must publicly acknowledge it

* They want to be respectful, and so minimize the amount of information they make public

* They believe the Core team acts in bad faith. So whatever public statement they make, they must anticipate being attacked for it and pre-emptively defend themselves.

That's a difficult set of objectives to try to meet simultaneously. I'm going to choose to support they way they've handled it, even if I don't 100% agree with it, because I don't think a perfect solution is possible.

    They are dragging more into the public sphere than necessary

That's a bold claim. For you to accurately make that claim, you'd need to know every other piece of the story that lead to this point and lead them to feel that this public statement was their only remaining choice.

I was replying to someone who said the content of the resignation was a refusal to drag drama into the public. I did not say dragging it into public was a bad tactic for accomplishing their goals.

>you'd need to know every other piece of the story that lead to this point and lead them to feel that this public statement was their only remaining choice.

No I wouldn't. I will stand by my claim that they said more than necessary to raise the structural issues they perceive in Rust's governance. They very well may need to say more than that - or even more than they did say - to see their desired changes to the governance system enacted. Not what I was responding to.

"I don't know the story, nor any of the events leading up to this point, but I am convinced that one side is handling it wrong!"

Ironically, that's exactly what the moderation team seems to insinuate with their "extreme skepticism" claim.

"You don't know the story, we won't tell any of the events leading up to this point, but you better be sure that these people on the core team are wrong!"

I wholeheartedly agree that "don't trust XYZ, they'll probably lie, but I can't tell you any more about it" is... very non-ideal.

There are some situations in life where there just aren't any good choices. It's possible that this may have been one of them.

What would you do if you felt that you had to walk away from a bad situation on a public project, and had strong reason to believe that the other party would attempt to publicly misrepresent the situation?

You could remain silent, but we're talking about the court of public opinion here and we know silence is often interpreted as guilt, or at least irresponsibility. It would also allow the other party to continue creating this "bad situation" without, at the least, giving future moderators some warning. Likely, the mod team would have faced similar criticism had they simply walked away silently.

Presumably, the members of the mod team are interested in maintaining their own reputations and would like to continue working in this field.

> They could have kept the statement confined to disagreement with the government structure. Leave it ambiguous between whether it was a theoretical weakness in the structure, or a practical one.

Nobody resigns over a theoretical flaw in the governance structure. It’s only when it starts becoming a problem that people do so.

It’s more of a “let’s allude to problematic behavior, without actually explaining it, so we can fuel a maximal amount of speculation, and also let’s throw in some hot-button, culture wars issues, just to spice up the discussion”

I mean, I agree that their intentions were probably more like what you wrote, but the resulting effect is far worse than if some shitty behavior from someone in the rust core team had become public knowledge…

Then why the guild-drama act?

Why are users supposed to exercise skepticism about anything the core team says, without any information from the other side so that we may judge for ourselves where our skepticism is warranted?

Drama has already been dragged out. Now people are left to speculate and accuse. This thing from 4 years ago has been dug up, for example: https://archive.fo/f10KK and I can see it being the basis of some of those speculations.

> we refuse to drag this drama out into the public sphere"

I genuinely can’t think of a more dramatic way to drag this into the public sphere than saying “we all quit due to unspecified violations of the vague code of conduct - go make your best guesses what those were”

I read it as they warn people to believe the core team specifically, not the whole Rust organization, as the reason they are leaving is because of the actions from individuals in the core team (or lack of thereof).

> warn [..] to believe the core team

It's not even this, it's only "believe the core Team wrt. this specific situation" as well as a implicit "we do not believe the core Team is suited for making decisions about the personnel of the new Moderation Team Members".

> of scorched earth statement

I wouldn't say so it basically says:

Let's keep past thinks in the past.

Through it also implies there is at least one Person on the core Team which they are afraid will abuse their "Let's keep past thinks in the past." approach to twist the truth.

You could say it's demeaning towards the Core Team, which violates point 6 of the Rust Code of Conduct.

Sure -- you could say anything: "The moon is made of green cheese". There, see? But me saying that doesn't make it true.

If you’re not going to publicly state your grievances, so publicly posting your resignation seems at best political and at worst slanderous.

Either let the public in on the situation or don’t. Don’t badmouth someone and then refuse to explain why.

They explained why: accountability and structure.

Do you need specific instances, date and timestamped?

Yes. If you're going to accuse someone of something, have details.

It's a resignation, not a prosecution.

Edit:

If it helps, imagine a time you quit your job.

Did you provide a datestamped list of incidents that lead to your decision to quit?

Or were you, by chance, slightly more vague and provide something along the lines of: "The culture/fit/hours/goals/growth do not align with mine so I am resigning."?

I've always written out what specific issues I had that led me to resign. If you don't say anything, nothing changes. A resignation letter is a professional curtesy, the point is to provide useful, professional information. Of course in some instances there were personal factors that influenced my decision, and I didn't list those out in detail, but I let them know that those were issues on my end that the employer didn't need to address. There's no need to beat a dead horse and bring up every single grievance, and you can be diplomatic, but if an issue is bad enough to warrant resignation, it really should be mentioned in the resignation letter.

I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done something wrong but refuse to clarify.

>I'd certainly never insinuate that my employer had done something wrong but refuse to clarify.

I suppose we're of different opinion, as I considered the resignation letter to have enough clarity to the intended recipients to be acceptable. They didn't say "I quit, the end". They pointed at the specific areas of issue (accountability, structure) of which the core team is likely well aware of the minutiae.

Just because it wasn't explained incident by incident to the public does not mean the "employer" (or, in this case, core team) did not understand the message.

I would wager that incidents were brought up, not addressed (or addressed as a WNF), escalated, then resulted in this resignation. The people relevant to each stage will be familiar with each stage, and should hopefully be able to follow the progression.

The public does not need to be privy to each and every individual incident, as much as everyone would like to butter their popcorn.

They dropped a pretty beefy bombshell in the last paragraph that there were issues beyond accountability that they refuse to disclose. I'm absolutely certain that the core team has a good idea what they are talking about, the problem is this is a public letter, the intended audience is everyone, and they specifically attack the core team's credibility.

When I resign from a job, I send my resignation to my employer in private. I wouldn't put anything in it that I'm not comfortable with becoming public, and if they wish to share what I wrote that's fine, but the purpose of being discreet is to leave the level of disclosure up to the other party's discretion. You don't send a company wide email saying "management knows what they did, don't believe a word they say, I'm out, peace!"

>is this is a public letter, the intended audience is everyone

Just because something is public does not mean the intended audience is also everyone. Something can be intended for a subset of people, but broadly published. But I think this has been hashed out somewhere else in the thread.

I think "management knows what they did, don't believe a word they say, I'm out, peace!" is a bit of a disingenuous reading of the letter, but you have a valid point about the last paragraph and I'll walk back what I said a little bit.

You're a class act. Next time I leave somewhere I hope to be half as thoughtful.

By the public nature of it, it's a bit of a persecution.

Persecution: hostility and ill-treatment, especially on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or political beliefs.

What I read does not seem to fit this definition, but maybe to others it does.

That's one of the dictionary definitions. That's not how it's used in everyday parlance however. It's usually used to mean harassment, usually of a group.

> To harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict

At this point I think we might just be talking past each other, but I fail to see how this resignation letter meets that definition either. I don't see the letter as harassment to the core team. It also doesn't strike me as a letter designed to injure or grieve.

Semantics aside, the letter may not give enough information to you, but it gives enough information that anyone privy to the internal team dynamics will understand the underlying issues and the logical progression of events that lead to the resignation.

It's the best they can do for the rust community.

Pointing out some specific things is hard as it's most likely not one specific thing but many small things plus some "that's enough" bigger thing(s) and because it likely has various negative effects including:

-people focusing on that specific thing, instead of the general problem (unaccountability)

-people overreacting, e.g. starting a witch hunt with serve negative effects for the community

- ... (other more vague/implicit things, like leaking of private information)

Agreed. There was no good option - this was the least worst option they could come up with.

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