[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.

[staticassertion]

I don't think it's better than a feeling? Like, just a quick scan shows the same few things or totally unrelated content.

[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.