[iamed2]

There are two statements here regarding things that have happened:

> the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves

> we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the standards the community expects of us and to the standards we hold ourselves to

It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate.

Seems to be a wide variety of possibilities and leaving the nature of the situation ambiguous* will likely make it difficult for a new mod team. I hope the now-former mod team are open and direct with new or potential mod team members about the environment they're entering.

* I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted harassment and make the situation much worse

[PragmaticPulp]

> It's possible that there were CoC violations that they were not able to moderate, that the actions available to them were limited (e.g., they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member), that a core team member intervened to prevent effective moderation, or that the core team prevented the mod team from being able to access official core team channels in order to moderate.

It's not clear to me that they're claiming a violation occurred.

The wording is vague, but one interpretation is that they simply wanted more control over the core team but the core team didn't want it structured that way, so the mod team resigned.

IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree with their demand to be the ultimate authority over everyone.

Violation or not, I wish they could have come to an agreement without throwing ambiguous accusations out into public as they quit. Between this and the "I refuse to let Amazon define Rust" post a few months ago we're getting a lot of drama with few, if any, details. There's a lot of "just trust me, but don't listen to what anyone else says about the situation" in this post.

Their closing statement asking everyone to not trust anything the core team says makes this feel particularly petty:

> 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 really hope that drama like this doesn't become one of the defining features of the Rust community.

[whatshisface]

I wish they were saying "trust me." What they're actually saying is, "I won't tell you anything, and don't trust anyone who does."

[setr]

> IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree with their demand to be the ultimate authority over everyone.

I think it makes sense, scoped to their domain. Eg a security team can’t do their jobs effectively if they can’t apply their policies to the CO or if CO can arbitrarily undo it — security needs to have the last say on security policies, but that doesn’t put them on the top of the chain.

The same would be true with whoever does financial auditing and verifies everything is done to process & legally, as well as HR guarding against violations, and so on. The C*O must be held accountable as well, because their violations are also the most potentially damaging

[monopoledance]

Agree. What you want is a distribution of power like you got with modern, democratic state systems. As long as the moderation team is not an absolute power, I don't see an issue. If e.g. the COC is meant to be strictly applicable to everyone, then it needs to be enforceable for everyone.

Personally, I think absolute power hierarchies will sooner or later bring out the worst in people, attract bad personalities, no matter the appeal of a tale about leadership and ruthless decision making or whatever. Checks and balances will prevent things from starting to rot. A good foundation likely needs the expenses, work, "ineffectivity" of a thoughtful/elaborate distribution of power.

[politician]

This kind of drama is already a defining feature of the Rust community. They can’t go 6 months without some kind of incident like this. It would be a positive if they could have a BDFL or corporate sponsorship to structure the community going forward because it doesn’t seem like the current community approach really works in practice. I realize that’s probably not possible at this point though.. unless maybe Microsoft steps in.

Disclosure: I am an outside observer, and I find Rust to be excessively syntax dense. Take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[raxxorrax]

> unless maybe Microsoft steps in.

I believe that would very quickly kill the community. Corporate MS cannot be patron here. You will never find me in a development community that puts compliance over people. I accept that in my job because it makes sense there and is necessary. But there are current sensibilities about conduct I do not share and I am not ready to keep up with the newest etiquette to be honest. I think moderators should go against obvious trolls and spammers, but aren't fit to mediate in conflicts.

HN has a strong moderation, but I think these are rules that the community accepts because everyone profits. It could just be a power grab by some mods that feel neglected, at least that is what they seem to display here.

[staticassertion]

Having been a part of the community since a bit before 1.0, no this does not happen every 6 months.

[politician]

I posted a link to Algolia’s full-text search index below.

[smarnach]

I don't think the Rust community is particularly prone to public drama. What other events are you thinking of?

[politician]

Recently? Linux, Amazon, “turbofish”.

Between Oct 2018 and Oct 2021...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1635638400&dateRange=custom&...

[staticassertion]

You searched "Rust" and "Drama", this is not exactly compelling.

First comment is referring to something that happened years ago.

Second comment isn't about Rust at all.

Third post is about Steve not liking something that came out of Amazon.

Reading on it appears to be more references to Actix, Amazon, totally unrelated/ irrelevant results, etc.

[politician]

No kidding. It’s not a curated dataset, obviously. I looked through a few pages and filtered out the most recent few actual dramas:

1) Rust in the Linux kernel 2) Amazon MUST NOT define Rust 3) Turbofish issue

So, yeah, you have to do a bit more work to pull events from Algolia. It’s better than a feeling though and it’s real timestamped data. It’s not Google or Wikipedia though- the most relevant results aren’t just on page 1.

[belval]

Honestly I don't think this proves anything, change "Rust" for "Python", "Java", "C++" or even "Javascript" and you will get a similar number of results with Python being actually higher than Rust.

[twic]

I tried Java. Most of the hits are on sentences like "slowed down dramatically", "changed dramatically", and "latency shifts dramatically under load". There are also:

"So, upon hearing that the .net foundation is spending all of its time generating stacks of bureaucracy and causing internal drama"

"Oracle provides RHEL build and it's pretty good. No CentOS drama, it's free and just works."

"I'd be surprised if you found any dramas with the language."

There's no actual drama. Until page 4, when i find:

"Completely a drama"

In an article about Rust.

[politician]

It’s not the number of search results, but the frequency of events. Admittedly, there isn’t anyone aggregating events and I only looked for the most recent 3 before stopping. I’m sure there’s some insider who’s better positioned to tell the history of the language and the community.

[ksec]

I dont remember any drama on Python, Java, C++ or JS on HN.

But I remember a lot of drama on Ruby and Rust.

[golemotron]

> IMO, it would be strange to make a moderation team the highest authority in an organizational structure. I don't really agree with their demand to be the ultimate authority over everyone.

It is like HR staging a coup d'etat.

[mzs]

The same mod team member is strongly implying elsewhere that such a potential violation did occur:

>burntsushi ripgrep · rust 31 points 2 hours ago

>If we had an answer to your implied question it will necessarily reveal things (via obvious logical inferences) that we carefully avoided revealing in our statement.

https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea...

[monopoledance]

On a side note, I absolutely love the Reddit Rust community. It's somehow devoid of all the anger, loaded harshness of pretty much any other subreddit or HN. So fucking respectful and friendly there. (At least, every time I visited.) I can only assume rustaceans are generally better people! Hanging out there is like a resort within the internet. Please, if you go there leave your edgy internet persona behind, but bring your bathing suit and a tasty cocktail, instead - enjoy life and programming.

[styluss]

FYI r/rust also has a mod team

[monopoledance]

I am sure they are doing a stellar job I am thankful for. However, you see very little [deleted] around, or many down-voted comments. I think it's really the community to praise, and their practiced tone and aspirations.

[zozbot234]

> they would have initiated a ban but they were not able to ban a core team member

If that was the case, the obvious response would be a formal statement of rebuke and censure wrt. the offending member's behavior, which would clarify that such things aren't welcome in the project. The fact that we aren't getting anything close to that extreme suggests that this is in fact a big fat nothingburger. (Unless you think that CoC violations are so widespread in the Rust Core Team that naming the specific people involved would have made no discernible difference, but so far we've seen nothing to indicate that.)

[babyblueblanket]

It might be that they cannot censure the offending member in any capacity, due to their core team member status. In that case, resignation is the only thing they have to effectively rebuke behavior.

[zozbot234]

As pointed out on r/rust, the approved Governance RFC states quite unambiguously that the Core Team is accountable to the community wrt. their behavior:

> Subteam, and especially core team members are also held to a high standard of behavior. Part of the reason to separate the moderation subteam is to ensure that CoC violations by Rust's leadership be addressed through the same independent body of moderators.

https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-governance.html

[loeg]

Public shaming by respected community members is probably somewhat effective. However, they chose not to do that here. Without knowing more, I have to trust their judgment. But I recognize that it’s unsatisfying.

[jacquesm]

This has a much worse effect though. Instead of damaging a single member they are now damaging the whole core team by leaving it unspecific, and they are damaging Rust as well.

[ChuckMcM]

I suspect that doing it this way puts pressure on the core team members who don't subscribe to the behaviors moderate the people on the core team who are problems. But one can never know.

[jacquesm]

Yes, that's how I read it too. At a guess, if the threat to resign didn't change anything the resignation also won't change anything and strongly suggesting the core team can not be trusted not to lie is a very harsh move that has the power to destabilize the whole Rust experiment. Massively dumb move this.

[raxxorrax]

I think the only thing damaged is the concept to follow a COC to the letter. This was expected, people complained about it thoroughly and I think communities work better with a flexible approach as I don't think any personal conflicts have caused problems anywhere to a relevant degree. There are neither judges nor attorneys here.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

It might be that the details would also damage the core team and The Rust community much worse with a flood of people leaving or people being targeted for harassment/abuse.

[jacquesm]

I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but if that is the case then Rust is dead because if the core team can't be trusted to handle something like this then probably Rust as an experiment has failed, you won't get further corporates taking a gamble on Rust if this sort of cloud is hanging over the core team.

[loeg]

Whether it’s better or worse is unknowable.

[jacquesm]

Yes, because if you accuse a group when you should be accusing an individual you are doing all of the people in the group a disservice. Then you should just say nothing. 'wie A zegt moet ook B zeggen'. If there are major upsides to this approach then I'm not aware of them, do tell.

[whimsicalism]

Is there any possibility they are under formal legal contract ie. NDA? Don't know how formal the Rust organization is setup/whether that would be a part in the process of joining the moderation team.

[jacquesm]

A moderation team under NDA might as well not exist. Moderators should always be free to speak their minds.

[Jensson]

Is HR on the employees side? No. Same thing here, the moderation team didn't realize that their job was to protect the core team from the rest, holding the core team accountable wasn't a part of their job even if it was warranted.

[phendrenad2]

An NDA for an open-source project? I sincerely hope no one tried that, but if they did, that's a radical idea and the effects must be studied (never let someone doing something weird go to waste, science can learn from it!)

[whimsicalism]

I don't know what changes when formal structures like a foundation start getting involved.

[hoseja]

I don't understand, why would you trust the judgement of volunteer moderators instead of core technical people?

[CRConrad]

Well obviously you wouldn't, on technical stuff, -- but that's not what this is about, now is it?

[unethical_ban]

> I do think it's right for the mod team to not reveal the specifics in public; that would likely provoke targeted harassment and make the situation much worse

Instead, we have countless people bantering and taking "sides" about hypotheticals. In a world mostly devoid of secrets on the web, I think they could have, at the least, masked identities and summarized the issue.

[hintymad]

It seems there is an internal communication channel for the Rust team? I thought that the moderation team would moderate discussions in open forums like mailing list or issue trackers, but in this case we don't know what happened behind closed doors.