In response to the moderation team resignation (Rust) | Hacker News Reader

In response to the moderation team resignation (Rust)

blog.rust-lang.org

51 pointstrenchgun32 comments

Leaving of Mozilla and being adopted by the big players marked the end of the (successful) _technical_ experience that Rust had been up to here. But Rust has also been a _social_ experience, with it's built-in CoC and active community management. It seems like the end of the first experience also signed the end of the second, but without the concerned participants taking notice until now.

I would declare the social experiment also a success, since it allowed the community to grow and support the technology to it's next stage of development with a surprisingly low level of drama, considering the involved egos and passion required for such an effort.

I'm not sure what should follow next. I hope the Rust foundation can spawn the next iteration of the social experiment so that all that was learned in the first phase isn't lost to the cold wind of the new corporate heir's management.

Let this be a reminder to the folks that love to hate on Microsoft (.NET Foundation screw-up from a few weeks ago.)

Open source projects are no more immune to asshole behavior than anything else.

This shouldn’t stop you from choosing Rust or .NET.

The reason I always favored open source projects was my assumption that they're immune to asshole behavior, a behavior which this news headline entails of the Rust core team.

How would that assumption make sense? The projects are still made of people with egos and differing opinions

What this is a response to: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/671.

Even having read both, as an outsider, I wouldn’t know what’s going on.

They are still brainstorming how to spin the un-spinnable. This is like when all of a defendant's lawyers quit or all independent board members quit or auditors refuse to sign your annual report. Maybe hire some PR people to do it for you.

It seems to me more like, the prosecution decided not to present their case, and the defendant’s lawyers are trying to figure out the right motion to file.

I don't know why any of us are judging all of this from nothing. The only pieces of information we have are that the moderation team left because of issues with the core team and that they think no one should trust the Rust core team. But I don't know why I should trust either side. I need a lot more info before concluding anything.

My thought is slightly different. When you're a lawyer representing someone that does illegal things (ongoing, not in the past) sometimes the only thing you can ethically do is quit. You can't reveal what is illegal due to privilege.

Similarly here, they may not be able to reveal whatever is going wrong due to anti disparagement clause or threats of defamation. literally the only thing you can do is quit, which is what they did, which sends a very strong signal to outsiders.

This _may_ also be similar to a lawyer who stops representing someone who the lawyer thinks does immoral things, with the two parties disagreeing about that.

Without knowing details, I can’t judge who’s (more) right here.

That strong signal _can_ be misused, and sometimes is misused. “You’re evil, but I’m not allowed to tell the world why” is something you can’t defend yourself against.

It's true except Rust core team can defend themselves by being transparent or allowing moderators to speak. These aren't national security secrets. In the lawyer case you almost always believe the quitting lawyer, they are just doing their job, it must be pretty bad for them to need to quit.

> and that they think no one should trust the Rust core team

I don’t remember reading anything suggesting this, could you point out where you read this?

From the resignation letter: > 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.

I should have been clear in my comment that it wasn’t about trust in general but just this situation

From this you can easily conclude the reverse. We recommend that the broader Rust community and the Core team exercise extreme scepticism of any statement by the past and future Mod team claiming to illuminate the situation. Death by CoC.

Okay, I didn’t remember that line. Thanks for the response.

It's the defence team quit In the analogy due to their access to internal Communication which they cannot reveal. probably under threat of anti-disparagement or defamation. Cannot see it as not presenting their case, have to read between their lines.

Of course the Rust core team could be fully transparent and release everything to us outsiders to judge, but somehow I don’t think they will. Looks like they are figuring out how to bury it

You're confused about what the "case" is. The moderation team didn't publish the details of whatever shitty thing someone on the core team may have done because they don't matter. What they're resigning over is the fact that they can't do anything about it, because the core team claims not to be under the purview of their moderation.

That problem would be the same whoever on the core team did whatever shitty thing, so the details are irrelevant. This is about processes and structures for handling incidents, not a single incident.

With what was quoted downthread, they impugned the reputation of the core team, maybe justly, without providing justification.

They also haven’t made a case for why the core team needs to be subject to the moderation team’s discipline.

1) Not sure what you mean by "what was quoted downthread", but assuming it was the bit about [paraphrased] "take whatever anyone on the core team says with a large grain of salt": At best, that's just one member of the core team they've "impugned the reputation of" -- whoever did whatever it was. They're just not saying who that was, so you can't know whom on the core team to trust. Which means that unless and until you do, you need to mistrust what any or all of them say(s). As soon as one realises how this logic works, one realises that this is (at least not intentionally!) impugning anyone's reputation, but just an unfortunate consequence of their trying to protect the anonymity of the involved.

2) Why should they have to make a case for that? If the project as such has found it necessary or desirable to have a moderation team, then why on Earth shouldn't that go for the whole project; why should any one team be exempt? If a case needs to be made, then shouldn't it logically be for why the core team shouldn't need to be subject to the moderation team’s discipline?

> Why should they have to make a case for that?

I don’t think they have to make the case. They can just quit. And I will infer that they had some sort of reason.

Nonetheless, the case wasn’t made.

> If the project as such has found it necessary or desirable to have a moderation team, then why on Earth shouldn't that go for the whole project; why should any one team be exempt? If a case needs to be made, then shouldn't it logically be for why the core team shouldn't need to be subject to the moderation team’s discipline?

That’s an easy argument to make, if you want to talk about general organizational principles. The right choice is what makes the org run better, not what is, through verbal thinking, “logical.” I’m not here to propose either design.

> At best, that's just one member of the core team they've "impugned the reputation of"

I guess my phrasing was a poor compression of what they posted. I think their post says a response from the core team may contain lies.

And if that’s true, well okay then. There isn’t the information necessary for outsiders to discern that, other than the background reputation of anybody who might be involved, and there isn’t a surface area of facts and reasoning upon which the core team might interact to counter such a statement, so they don’t need to.

> Nonetheless, the case wasn’t made.

Of course not. Because it didn't need to be made.

> there isn’t a surface area of facts and reasoning upon which the core team might interact to counter such a statement, so they don’t need to.

They do need to explain why they shouldn't be under the same moderation as everyone else. Any "surface area" (???) one could possibly need to establish that was certainly there in the moderation team's resignation.

There is no response. The more this story goes on, the more shady it sounds. It sounds like what happens when people have a big interpersonal conflict behind closed doors.

> As top-level team leads, project directors to the Foundation, and core team members, we are actively collaborating to establish next steps after the statement from the Rust moderation team.

> While we are having ongoing conversations to share perspectives on the situation, we'd like to collectively state that we are all committed to the continuity and long term health of the project.

> Updates on next steps will be shared with the project and wider community over the next few weeks.

That seem like the usual corporate linguo.

I’m deeply concerned by the lack of statements indicating they intend to replace the moderation team with either new people once this is sorted out or with a new restructuring that shuffles the responsibilities into new places but clearly retains the supervision role the moderation team provided.

I'm a bit concerned about the lack of statement and/or substance at all.

> I’m deeply concerned by the lack of statements indicating they intend to ... clearly retains the supervision role the moderation team provided.

That looks like a partial misunderstanding of the problem: What the moderation team said was that under the current structure, they couldn't provide any such supervision role in regards to the core team.

So there is no such thing to retain; that's what the moderation team resigned in protest over. Their resignation was apparently the only way left to them to say that it needs to be not retained, but created.

After the Node incident, it's highly likely Ashley Williams is involved again due to her propensity for racism and sexism.

>After the Node incident, it's highly likely Ashley Williams is involved again due to her propensity for racism and sexism.

I didn't know what this was referring to so I looked it up.

Here's a Reddit thread which seems to be the genesis of the complaint (an archive link because the actual post was removed)

https://archive.md/VEtHu

Link to original Reddit thread

https://old.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...

NodeJS GitHub issue thread

https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/324

HN threads

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16085545

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15115989

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16073017

If it turns out that she was involved or the reason for that, the rust foundation and core team will look really bad. And things usually get public over time. But right now it's just vage drama.

I guess this no-response-yet response is better than a complete silence or some quick dismissive excuse.

What is Rust's "moderation team" supposed to do? What is its function?

Moderate the rust community. Uphold the code of conduct.

https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/moderation

this is not a response. it is a notice that teams are responding. in systems nerd parlance, they have taken the incoming connection socket off the listening socket. communication channels have opened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com