Also, lots of people high up in Rust have a background in JavaScript, where drama is common, which I believe has helped normalise it as a mode of social interaction.
IMO the root actually comes from the very heavy social signals that were utilized by the Rust team early on (you can read a lot about them through the core team's reddit posts atp, especially under threads about the code of conduct). This effectively became a beacon for many people to gravitate towards. So when you see these sort of very dramatic disagreements that's laughable to anyone outside of that bubble, it's because that's the type of people Rust was (unintentionally or intentionally) beaconing.
https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_the...
Mod response:
> For all those wondering about removed comments, there was some trolling going on which was summarily removed by the mods.
> Please avoid any trolling and/or drama seeking comments and remember our subreddit rules.
"Trolling" on display in the archives of that thread: https://www.reveddit.com/v/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_t...
And then there's Graydon's reply to the "we will exclude you," in the code of conduct, and the subsequent drama: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6ewjt5/question_about...
Frankly, even though no one has asked for my opinion, the amount of effort people put into the code of conduct (and the discussion around it) is ridiculous; utterly ridiculous. In a time long ago, before everyone was incapable of compromising and cooperating with one another, we had two rules in an informal code of conduct for interacting with one another:
1. Be cool
2. Don't be an asshole
And then we all went back to trying to achieving the task at hand.
[1]: Disclosure: I'm a minority (disabled), but I'm also a white man.
We should not whitewash the past because the present isn't what we want.
The past that I lived in was comprised of people you personally knew; not anonymous membership in a large organization or group, where you could never hope to know everyone on a personal level.
There was very little opportunity for people to be unchecked dicks to one another, because you saw everyone consistently and could easily notice when something was going on.
Perhaps this is an unsolved issue about scaling human communities?
If I've learned anything for Reddit mod culture it's that when you see super involved rules on the sidebar it's still ultimately just post-defacto justifications for whatever emotional mood the mods are in that day. The longer the rules = a good measure how aggressively the mods gatekeeps their community for things that go well beyond the scope of what the community was originally about.
This is how things like Programming becoming lower priorities in such communities than personalities/views of the people running it.
Instead of a tool to be used to solve problems local to an organization or an event, it's wielded as a bludgeon in always the most public way possible (either by the org/conference or target of the CoC itself) and time and again this has shown to be bad for everyone and an endless source of drama.
Coc seems like a law thing but who is enforcing it? Laws you have democratic elected people voting which laws, you have police checking if people follow them, courts giving out punishment. See they are 3 separate entities for a reason. Coc is written by the org, enforced by the org an punished by said org. Doesn't seem like an improvement.
Also, lots of behaviour can be pretty shitty without being illegal.
> Some people, naturally, feel that the norms spelled out in the rust CoC makes them feel excluded. To which all I can say is, yes, it's true: the rust CoC focuses on behaviour, not people, but if there's a person who cannot give up those behaviours, then implicitly it excludes such a person. If someone just can't get their work done effectively or can't enjoy themselves without stalking or harassing someone, or cracking a sexist or racist joke, or getting into a flame war, or insulting their colleagues, I suggest they go enjoy the numerous other totally viable language communities.
Hm... So, if someone just can't get their work done effectively or can't enjoy themselves without going behind the backs of the whole ostensibly “Leadership” group, what then? Has that person been ostracized yet? Have they even been named?!? (I sure ain't seen no sign of it.) If not, why not? There seems to be a hyuuuge amount of effort being expended to spare that person's feelings...
Which seems a) misdirected AF, and b) all too typical of these “governance by namby-pambyism” CoC committee organisations that everything on the Internet appears to have turned into in the last half-decade or so.
sure, merit plays some kind of role, but so do many other things. what so many comments in this discussion (and every other discussion surrounding this issue over and over and over again ad nauseum) really seem to want to ignore is the many other factors that play into long term group/project success.
merit alone? hardly ever, if ever.
Online communities have a natural tendency to turn inward and become disconnected from the original purpose of the community. A good measure is how much meta/political stuff comes up in every thread.