NixOS Foundation board: Giving power to the community
discourse.nixos.org
discourse.nixos.org
Open letter to the NixOS foundation (50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370
The dire state of NixOS's moderation culture (87 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912
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Additionally, these r/NixOS submissions may be of interest:
Jon Ringer: "In case I'm unable to return, wish you all the best" (348 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cd5fod/in_case_im_u...
Transparency about jonringer’s suspension (153 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceeg8h/transparency...
Thoughts on Jon Ringer's temporary suspension (71 comments) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1ceiz36/thoughts_on_...
Moderation no-go zones (55 comments; ongoing) https://old.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_n...
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Finally, the RFC to improve the situation:
"Evidently, Srid's concerns and values, as well as the recommendations and compromises he proposed in response to the charges, were casually dismissed, while other members' concerns and values, as well as their calls for his punishment and sanction, were disproportionately elevated.
And that's unfortunate."
I haven't been closely monitoring the various NixOS spaces, but this seems nebulous.
>it became clear that his values do not align with the moderators
Nor should there be a requirement that they do. If you want an inclusive environment, you're going to have members with different values.
>(or, if I can say that, most decent people that don't see left-wing conspiracies everywhere, casually go on about gender ideology destroying the west and perpetuate covid denial - so also likely the modified CoC of Nix)
(or, if I can say that, most decent people that don't see right-wing conspiracies everywhere, casually go on about Christo-fascism destroying the west and perpetuate biological denial - so also likely the modified CoC of Nix)
See what I did there? You don't get to define your political ideals as the ones "decent people" align with. All sides believe they're moral.
And now the same people that want (impossibly) apolitical spaces want this guy to also be able to post this very political rant that you've probably heard before somewhere in some form, that everyone else is endlessly tired of.
https://srid.ca/unwoke - in case you are missing more context.
Except he didn't post it, he had it in his profile. This is a key distinction.
>And now the same people that want (impossibly) apolitical spaces
It's not impossible, it's something we had before the rise of Newchurch [0], and it's something mission driven communities are moving towards.
>want this guy to also be able to post this very political rant that you've probably heard before somewhere in some form, that everyone else is endlessly tired of.
I agree in general people are endlessly tired of "politics" that are orthogonal to the mission at hand. No one is asking for what you just claimed.
>https://srid.ca/unwoke - in case you are missing more context.
Nothing there is alarming, it's pretty benign and aligns with the direction of many leaders in the industry [1].
[0] https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch
[1] https://fortune.com/2024/04/22/sundar-pichai-google-staff-no...
I suspect Google would cite the same policy this manifesto cites as evidence of it's support as a reason to remove/sanction people posting this manifesto to company resources.
That Google is an obvious hypocrite over Israel's behaviour doesn't seem to me indicative that they've totally flipped on every other issue, or that things this manifesto considers political would be considered political inside Google.
Possibly yes, which is fine as long as it's consistently applied. The key distinction in this case is srid didn't post a manifesto, he had a link to his personal blog in his profile.
>That Google is an obvious hypocrite over Israel's behaviour doesn't seem to me indicative that they've totally flipped on every other issue
Not sure what this means considering the context. They're most definitely hypocritical because just four years ago they let "politics" get in the way of mission during the BLM political unrest. They most definitely have flipped on allowing orthogonal political discussions at work, which is the only issue under consideration here.
>or that things this manifesto considers political would be considered political inside Google.
Identity politics, leftist performative activism, alt-right screeds, etc. are most definitely now considered "political" inside Google considering Sundar's blog post linked above. It's a refreshing welcomed change to be honest.
Since the rise of social media at least a decade ago, tech has seen all kinds of "dramas".
> Can someone summarize what this is all about? From what I had the patience to read people are getting censored on the Nix chat?
Any summary is going to be biased/motivated by who's doing the summarising. -- There are some summaries in some of the other HN threads. (See some top level comments).
e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40115567 this comment seems to summarize the concerns held by people in the letter.
What seems to have drawn the most heat is "Anduril (builds military weapons) sponsors Nix" and "moderation doesn't ban bad people".
The latter draws a lot of heated discussion, since people frustrated with the moderators both have a "good vs evil" fighting mentality, & a desire for broad powers to ban. (Or on the flipside, I guess: since there are so many bad actors & the moderators don't have power to ban them).
FWIW, I think the term "suspended" would be more appropriate than "censored".
> How does this effect Nix on a technical level? Was the censoring related specially to technical debates?
The moderation actions have never been over technical posts.
Some of the open letter signatories have opted to no longer contribute to Nix. One of these was a top-5 contributor to the Nixpkgs repository.
Anduril is a gold sponsor of the NixCon 2024 event.
To the extent that the letter signatories are a significant chunk of nixpkgs contributors, these contributions are lost. -- Perhaps to the extent that most people agree (or disagree) with stuff like in the letter, might discourage people from joining the community depending on how the moderation gets done.
There are a number of comments in the thread of this announcement that are gray-text reported as "off topic" despite their restrained and on-topic tone. One commenter, dedguy21, has all of his comments flagged asking what exactly they're protecting minorities from until they finally admit they're a black man.
This is all pretty bad news for discourse in open source projects. And no, I'm not "concern trolling". We see it in action in the announcement thread, where dissenting opinions are pushed out of sight.
That we've come to a point where people are simply washed out of view for "harmful" rhetoric that isn't some particularly dominant viewpoint is a regression of discourse.
Using terms like "concern trolling" or "sealioning" definitely marks cultural identity.
Considering the term "sealioning": https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sealioning-internet... I recall the original comic was along the lines of a sea lion arguing to the point of following someone into their bedroom. -- I think the idea of taking an argument to places where it's not appropriate is universal.
Merriam Webster's definition is much more belligerent: 'something that appears civil, but actually the civility is disingenuous, and they're only arguing to be a jerk to you'. -- I think there's a good reason why e.g. HN guidelines suggest to try and see arguments in a good light.
"the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter. These questions are phrased in a way that may come off as an effort to learn and engage with the subject at hand, but are really intended to erode the goodwill of the person to whom they are replying, to get them to appear impatient or to lash out, and therefore come off as unreasonable"
You don't have to reply with a yes or no. I'm just wondering if you see the traces, and then we can put the difference down to how much benefit of the doubt we each give to potentially bad actors based on how frequently we encounter them.
It does come across that commenters are frustrated with Jon in the discussion (in that thread, and from various other threads).
> we can put the difference down to how much benefit of the doubt we each give to potentially bad actors based on how frequently we encounter them.
There's definitely a part of this frustration where some have been arguing with the same people for months & others haven't seen that. -- But I don't think that's the only thing.