This is why most organizations take a blind eye when popular people in their community behave badly; if they even so much as give them a three-month ban from the forum, people will keep bringing it up years later.
The argument you are making here is incredibly disingenuous.
The facts matter. Tim Peters did not behave badly. The reasoning given for his suspension misrepresented the apparent evidence, vaguely alluded to unproven private activity, and alleged harm in clearly benign actions.
I claim that I, too, did not behave badly. In particular, in "recommending" my ban, the Code of Conduct Work Group (which is unelected, and has considerable crossover with paid PSF staff; and to my understanding gets paid in some circumstances for code of conduct enforcement work even as the actual core developers are almost all volunteers) made bizarre mischaracterizations of my complaints — going so far as to falsely ascribe to me terminology that I do not use on principle.
You, specifically, should know about these sorts of things because you comment in these discussions all the time. For example, you participated in https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month... and your posts there demonstrate intimate familiarity with the situation, with quotes like "I suppose I have to point out that “This whole debacle…” wasn’t referring to just Tim personally and not just this one bylaw change but rather referring to, well, gestures to the last two months." (I remember reading that post, not logged in of course, back when you made it.)
You have seen the list of charges in https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co... so I think you reasonably should understand my position: to the extent that the referents of any of these actions were ever identified, the description is either nonsense or does not point at anything any reasonable person could consider actionable. If you disagree, please be concrete. The entire reason for the "endless litigation" you have repeatedly complained about is the lack of anyone on your side making any clear, understandable argument that anything Tim Peters did at any point was actually wrong. The closest I've seen to such an argument comes from ... Tim Peters (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa), and frankly I think it's far too self-effacing.
This is why folks can't take yall seriously when discussing code of conduct. This person has a history of being shitty, and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated. If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong", but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did, and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
It's been over a year, and they still haven't provided any tangible examples to support their claims. The best they could come up with was something like "he used the wink emoji" I think. There have been hundreds of posts, and many community members have demanded either evidence to back up those accusations or a public apology to Tim and their removal. But of course, those people are racist, misogynist, or creeps so nothing came out of it.
The steering committee folks sound like a microcosm of a communist poliburo. Aiming for who can be the most offended over imaginary slights.
I'm glad as An American tax payer that we're not funding an organization with such petty politics and discriminatory behaviors.
Tim sounds similar to John Carmack recent she post about Meta:
> I wish I could drop (so many of) my old internal posts publicly, since I don’t really have the incentive to relitigate the arguments today – they were carefully considered and prescient. They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad
Not having such a committee in power and most likely no COC. The FSF's Kindness COC sounds good though.
Within perl we treated conference abuse privately in a seperate nonpublic group, but never mailinglist outbursts. This group had no power over anyone else. Esp. over devs with different opinions, who critized core devs over their work.
Glad to hear one programming community is handling the issues in what sounds like a healthy way.
It also requires actual human effort though, so it's difficult to do. People hate doing difficult things and prefer to be part of "witch hunts" because they're easy IMHO. Discussion and discourse is key.
I've come to the conclusion that this is how it needs to work:
1. As the first person on the project, assume BDFL status and prepare to act that way as soon as you consider accepting a PR.
2. As a person, make sure you strongly understand what your moral values are, and why you hold them.
3. Proactively write your own Code of Conduct from scratch. It's important to have one so that you will not be pressured to use someone else's. It's important to ensure that it reflects your own values, not those of some activist organization (or another project that has been co-opted). Make it simple, but feel free to refer to additional documents. https://compass.naivete.me/ can be considered an example (this is not an endorsement, and again my recommendation is to write it yourself from scratch).
4. Do not have an "Enforcement Procedures" document, and actively reject any such proposal. The interpretation of your code of conduct should be apparent from the text itself, given a reasonable-person standard; you do not need to try to formalize the notion of a reasonable person.
5. If people think you are being unreasonable in your project governance, take that discussion somewhere else.
6. Remember at all times that everyone is free to fork your project. If people wish to do this over a governance dispute, it would be better for it to happen now than later. Do not try to prevent this from happening: do not attack the efforts of others (as has happened to XLibre), and also do not negotiate with others out of fear that they might start a fork. If they start a fork it is of no concern to you.
7. Only dictatorships and democracies are stable. While you are in charge, power rests only in those you directly appoint, and you may revoke this if necessary. When you are ready to leave, unless you have in mind a 100% trusted successor, ensure that your replacement is elected and that the project has a charter such that power can only rest with elected individuals.
Asking for the right one-size-fits-all system skips doing the systems thinking up front.
A failure mode with a lot of community management systems is that they're adopted because they have a general vibe of keeping the bad people out. And that vibe will see any criticism of the community management document/team/actions as a way to sneak the bad people in.
Imagine I told you I found a rando discord server dedicated to a tabletop RPG I love, but complained that the moderation team was a clique. I claimed that I feel forced to fit in by pandering to their sensibilities and biting my tongue on other topics even if they're just flat out provably wrong. Nobody would assume I'm just salty because I secretly want to post porn, cuss and be racist in #general. Because we all know discord mods are notoriously petty tyrants.
Now give that discord community a github page and copy-paste in an HR document. The way expectations snap into treating them like levelheaded professionals with unassailable intentions and righteous goals is the reason this topic always goes nowhere.
If Tim Peters has a "history of being shitty", I'd expect Wikipedia to mention it. But his article is clean, if not golden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Peters_(software_engineer).
The only thing I've heard is that he's a bit neurodivergent/socially awkward, which I thought we were suppose to be welcoming and inclusive of.
The reality is that you may be confusing a victim with your political enemies.
I wouldn't expect it to show up on their Wikipedia page, because Wikipedia has a high barrier for what they consider reliable information, and they wouldn't use email list postings, or personal accounts of behavior in what they'd include. This person isn't really relevant enough for his behavior to show up in the news.
But, the employees at the foundation, who are responsible for keeping the community healthy, and for enforcing policies, would absolutely take complaints, then use personal accounts, email list history, chat history, and such. It's effectively like how HR works.
> The only thing I've heard
Right, because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
You're acting like this is some kind of witch hunt, when it's simply "HR" enforcing "employment handbook" standards. It just happens to be that this is a set of volunteers, rather than employees.
> and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
I'm not the person you replied to but I've just spent a bunch of time looking at (what seem to be) the relevant posts on https://discuss.python.org/, along with a couple of external posts about the ban, and I've yet to find anything that looks like a pattern of shitty behaviour on the part of Tim Peters. I wasn't previously aware of him and I obviously may have missed something important, so I ask this in good faith: can you point to some of the specific emails/chats you had in mind? (I'm happy not to argue the point if you'd prefer not to; I'd just like to see the strongest anti-Peters evidence.)
I was looking for a credible source, which you have not supplied.
The threads you've waved at do not show Tim to be the "racist, sexist or creep" that you've insinuated. Rather, they show a committee that can't handle questions, abuses its own rules, and hides behind HR & secret "complaints".
Of course, that's just my opinion from skimming. It'd be better to have someone credible give honest evidence, instead of someone defaming & blaming while projecting their bigotry onto others.
> because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
Can you provide any concrete evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever?
For example, Mr. Peters has published comments of his that were removed from the pertinent discussions, and I can vouch for their accuracy from my own recollection. (Since the Discourse forum can also be used via mailing list, and emails cannot be un-sent, presumably many other people can corroborate via their own local backups, too.) Can you find anything in them to suggest wrongdoing?
Not wrongdoing, but maybe sealioning and other forms of light trolling with plausible deniability. Maybe others grew a bit tired of this and he wouldn't change his behaviour.
The fact that there is no official concrete list of bannable posts suggests there are no standalone posts to look at and be like "wow, how come he's not banned yet". On the other hand I know people who walk a very tight line and find loopholes in every rule, and mods have a very hard time "officially" banning those types (even for a short time to help them reflect on their behaviour). Maybe it was like a town where the main bully met unfortunate circumstances and all twenty witnesses haven't actually seen anything for some reason.
Okay, but can you provide any concrete examples of anything objectionable whatsoever?
> The fact that there is no official concrete list of bannable posts suggests
No; it suggests that he did nothing wrong. Which he didn't.
> On the other hand I know people who walk a very tight line and find loopholes in every rule, and mods have a very hard time "officially" banning those types
I observed him throughout the entire exchange. He did nothing wrong.
ryan_lane claims to know things here, but refuses to cite anything. Because, I contend, there is nothing to cite.
Yes, Mr. Peters apparently has a personality that rubs certain people the wrong way, and over time they get the impression of wrongdoing. I find this impression to be completely unreasonable. But more importantly, the Python Code of Conduct explicitly to "be respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences" and "show empathy towards other community members"; and the way that people find fault with Mr. Peters demonstrates nothing of the sort. It is rather about seeking uncharitable interpretation, which goes so far as to state overt falsehoods.
Also: speaking from personal experience as a moderator, "skill issue tbh". At any rate, despite its length, the Python Code of Conduct is not a bunch of legalese in which people might be able to find "loopholes". The judgment of whether someone is playing along is appropriately subjective, as it needs to be for such matters.
The problem is that it isn't being applied fairly. Not even remotely.
> Maybe it was like a town where the main bully met unfortunate circumstances and all twenty witnesses haven't actually seen anything for some reason.
The PSF goes out of its way to avoid this circumstance with its reporting and incident-handling procedures. It goes so far (which is part of the problem) that they explicitly use it to justify a refusal to show any kind of evidence, even in cases where nobody in the discussion can imagine a way that the evidence could identify a reporter.
Definitely true. Wikipedia has sensitivities reflecting their most dedicated (& extremely online) administrators. Alert & keen for some topics while inert & hostile to others.
I use their bias sometimes for detection. For example, the GP here advances a melodramatic allegation, which someone from their Wikipedian tribe would certainly have documented-- if the evidence aligned with their bias.
The reality is that they go after intelligent people and political opponents on specious grounds because they are jealous and want to preserve their own power.
You can dig up any number of posts on anyone, as Richelieu has pointed out pre-Internet.
No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many. He has also been trusted with various forms of moderation authority in the past, and his decisions were respected at the time.
> and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated.
Please read https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..., and then https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html . Mr. Peters is, if anything, overly self-critical here. He quite frankly did nothing wrong. The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to, as well as complete mischaracterizations of the observable facts. In some places, multiple points appear to refer to the same action. In some places it's unclear what is referred to and there has never been any official explanation. In no case is any evidence provided.
> If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong"
I am saying it (your use of the word "screaming" here is demeaning, substance-less rhetoric) because it is in fact the case. Many of the cited "violations" don't actually go against the Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), even if they were true and accurate.
> but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did
It is not obvious, because it is incorrect.
> and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
No useful purpose was served by this suspension.
> The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
This accusation is baseless, incorrect, and offensive.
> No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many.
These are not mutually exclusive states. If anything, it has improved my esteem of PSL that they were willing to hold one of their "inner circle" up to scrutiny.
Even Linus Torvalds came around to the idea that he was a great software engineer and a mean individual to interact with. There's room for improvement in most if not all of us. I'm impressed at both Tim and the PSL for being able to disagree, go through a suspension, and come to terms. It's the kind of potential for growth that makes it a comfortable ecosystem to work in.
> The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to
The problem with the "reasonable person" standard is that it's subjectivity masked in objectivity; we don't poll ten thousand people to decide what "reasonable" looks like. It's another term for "common sense," and... Common sense moves. Common sense said slavery was fine three hundred years ago. Common sense said homosexuality was an abomination sixty years ago. Common sense said you could be as awful to interact with as you wanted as long as you were making software people craved thirty years ago. We grow and change.
You implicitly claim (in a snarky way) that the actions taken against Mr. Peters were justified. So yes, it absolutely is your job, if you intend for others to take you seriously (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=burden+of+proof+philosophy).
> You're welcome to draw your own conclusions from the public record as I have.
I have. They oppose yours.
> The Foundation laid it out pretty clearly when they suspended him
No, they absolutely did not. The claims made by the Code of Conduct Work Group did not stand up to even basic scrutiny. I have already cited that link repeatedly within the thread, and contrasted it with Mr. Peters' analysis (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html).
To take just one example, as an objective matter of fact, not only did he not "use" the "potentially offensive language or slurs" referred to, he did not even write them out. (Also, I disagree that the word in question is a "slur".) He also as an objective matter of fact did not claim that the skit was funny, but rather that SNL generally was funny in that time period. And even that claim had a clear ironic meaning; the underlying point was that social norms change over time, which was relevant to the discussion.
There is simply no way that any reasonable person who is paying attention could come to the conclusion that this was somehow endorsing the use of such language. The only reasonable underlying logic I can fathom for the objection is "when discussing an incident where someone used a naughty word, thou shalt not provide information that might assist the reader in figuring out what word it was". But I can't fathom a good moral reason for that, nor can I fathom a reading of the Code of Conduct which actually supports that.
I can make similar arguments about every single point on the list. The findings were utterly absurd, and the action unjust.
For that matter, in private discussion (as well as from some of what is said on the above-linked site) I have determined that Mr. Peters is in fact far more sympathetic to the social views of the Code of Conduct Work Group than I am. (I consider a large part of their expressed worldview to be frankly unjust and bigoted.)
They won't listen to you anyway and everything will be dismissed. I remember when zahlman first came to HN, they always participate in threads adjacent to cultural wars and specifically around Python community. Like, religiously so.
> I remember when zahlman first came to HN, they always participate in threads adjacent to cultural wars and specifically around Python community. Like, religiously so.
I came here because I learned that an incident that I was personally connected to (which also happens to relate to this very thread) was being discussed: i.e., the 3-month suspension of Tim Peters.
These topics are only "adjacent to culture wars" insofar as the enactment of the ban could only possibly be explained by culture-war beliefs of those doing the banning. This clearly led them to make many objectively false statements. In particular, they claimed that he had "used" offensive language that he didn't even write out; and suggested that he was defending the use of such language (by "finding it genuinely funny") when he was in fact agreeing that it should not be used, in the middle of citing a previous moderation action where he agreed that it should not be used. (In doing so, they misrepresented the antecedent of "finding it genuinely funny".)
I "religiously" look for discussion of Python and participate in it. The most popular threads, and thus the ones you are most likely to see, are often ones that involve a culture-war angle; such is the nature of Internet discourse. I'm not going to shy away from that discussion when it concerns Python, because I really like Python and I want to see it flourish; and I consider that actions such as the unjust suspension of Mr. Peters interfere with that.
> They won't listen to you anyway and everything will be dismissed.
This is false and hurtful, and you reasonably ought to know so from your own claimed first-hand experience. Like, the above is not at all a long response by my standards. Replying like this takes effort and careful consideration of what people are saying.
