What exactly is 'mature' about making a vague accusation, refusing to substantiate it and claiming that if the other side says anything it would be a lie?
And it's not a claim that everything they would say would be a lie, it's just a warning. Given the severity of their actions, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and accept that the warning is probably warranted or at least it feels warranted to them.
The public accusation is vague and is not substantiated. What is the reason for it to exist in the first place if not to put blame without giving a chance to refute it?
You're confused about what the public accusation is. It's not about whatever shitty thing someone on the core team originally did; it's about process and structure. Their complaint was that the moderation team can't moderate the core team, because the latter claims not to be under the purview of the former. Does that really need further "substantiation"? And what's "vague" about it?
And no, the details of the original shitty thing don't matter; the same (lack of?) process and structure would apply to any such incident involving one or more members of the core team.
(How can any of this be so hard to understand???)
That's not what they did, obviously.
The statement is much more than that.
Forcing people to air all their dirty laundry in public, as the Puritans did, is not just, and tends to severely limit already-marginalized people's access to justice.
More importantly this is a problem in a private organization and not a public entity or court proceeding.
This is not about whatever the original "accusation" was; it's about process and structure. AIUI, the whole purpose of having a moderation team is so "dirty laundry" of that kind won't have to be aired in public and ruled on by an uninformed lynch mob. They're talking about not being able -- allowed -- to do their job, not the (irrelevant) details of one specific task of the job.
> This is a fundamental principle of justice, dating back centuries.
And this is a forum moderation team, not a court of law.
> And this is a forum moderation team, not a court of law.
Principles of justice apply everywhere. Suggesting they can't be criticized for being unjust, solely because they aren't a court of law... is quite bizarre.
B) So no case has ever been decided in closed court in your world, or if any have, they're all unsubstantiated? You need to get your mind out of its over-literal legalistic rut, because in the reality the rest of us live in that happens quite frequently, and much of the time we even trust that allegations made in such courts are substantiated even though they aren't made public.
C) This is still not a "system of law" we're discussing. Try to understand the difference.
My position, by contrast, is straightforward: Principles of justice apply everywhere. Full stop.
The fact that this isn't a court of law is utterly immaterial. Allegations "substantiated" in secret are not substantiated at all.
Of course it's a good thing. It's part of the strategy behind this move.
If (when) the accusation turns out to be a relative nothingburger, the Moderation Team would lose the moral authority and hence the power they think they command by going "well fine, we'll take our ball and go home".
Better to let it be vague, so that the public can imagine serious violations that cast the Core Team's legitimacy into doubt.
The reason for this is that, when you hire people to validate a process, most of the failure states come from processes that you are unable to verify as good or bad. This doesn't always mean that something is wrong - it just means that the validation team (or the code of conduct team in this case) does not feel, in their opinion, that they can confidently render an opinion. This is important because, at the end of the day, all these teams can do is produce opinions.
The obvious reaction is to suggest changes to the process that would allow you confidence in validation (these are called 'controls' in the auditing world). However, if the group you are trying to validate won't make your changes, then you are left in a situation where you can't be confident about doing your job. You aren't sure that anything is wrong exactly, but you are sure that the current setup won't allow you to be sure. You're faced with sitting in a situation where people expect you to validate a process, but you feel you can't - and so the only path is to resign.
However, as you can tell, there's a chance that the problem is the process verification team. Maybe they are dumb, or jerks, or whatever. If they are jerks, then you both wouldn't be able to rely on their specific accusations and it is possible that they missed things because of rudeness or incompetence, etc. So either way the sensible thing to do is not make specific accusations aside from "we don't think we can verify this process and we would recommend you take what others say about why with a grain of salt."