
Effective immediately I am stepping down from the Nodejs TSC - Tomte
https://medium.com/@mylesborins/effective-immediately-i-am-stepping-down-from-the-nodejs-tsc-3df37c6ccbae
======
AaronFriel
I think that everyone would be well served by stepping back from this and
thinking carefully about commenting, before inserting snark and derision at
either side.

I see a number of comments that trot out a lot of tired "anti-SJW" talking
points, and these do not add to the dialogue and only create unnecessary
animosity. I didn't see any negativity on the "pro-SJW" side yet - the
responses to the former seem calm but are being downvoted - though I would
advise the same.

If your immediate reaction went to taking some sort of partisan stance on the
issue, either for or against this decision by the author Myles Borins, or by
the TSC's vote, or by Rod Vagg, then I urge you: please step back,
psychologically, from this. Reflect on your thoughts before you resort to
believing that any of these folks are part of your in group or not and basing
your judgment on that quality, as opposed to the facts, which it appears few
of us have.

~~~
ebola1717
Also, this article comes from another TSC member, meaning one of his peers. If
4 of your 12 peers resign because you weren't removed, there is almost
certainly some merit to these complaints.

~~~
peoplewindow
Why not judge merit directly, yourself?

As far as I can tell there is no merit to the complaints. If 4 members stepped
down, that suggests Node TSC has a serious problem with people who are wildly
extreme.

Here's what appears to have happened based on the original complaint:

1\. This guy tweets an article that discusses campus speech codes, university
politics and so on. It doesn't attack anyone and is a fairly long-winded but
reasonable contribution to the discussion about free speech. His tweet implies
he does see CoCs as having downsides and that he finds this article to be
persuasive.

2\. In response, someone tweets that "I hope I meet you at a place without a
CoC so I can take a dump on your laptop". Rod points out that this isn't a
very nice response and is not a mature contribution to the conversation, "Hey
here's an interesting discussion to be had vs ... <tweet screenshot>".

Now let's look at the complaints. They assert:

1\. Rod tweeted an "inflammatory article"

2\. When he highlighted the immature response, this "suggests pleasure at
having upset members of the JavaScript community and others".

3\. Some woman complained and said she wouldn't contribute anymore. That woman
asserted that "some people said he was bad but what can you do". This was "a
reason for some to avoid project participation"

4\. And "it is evidence to others that Node.js may not be serious about its
commitment to community and inclusivity", citing a tweet that says the
Quillette essay is "hot garbage" written by a "known MRA" (what the heck does
MRA stand for?).

I find this rationale extreme, absurd and scary. These people ARE in fact
"warriors" by any definition of the term. I strongly disagree with the
complaint because:

* The article is not inflammatory.

* After being subject to outright abuse and highlighting it, something that women do every day on Twitter, somehow this was turned into Rod being a bad person. This is pure doublethink. Rod was clearly annoyed and trying to point out that such responses are not acceptable.

* A woman proceeded to do some serious shit-stirring and trolling, claiming that lots of anonymous people disliked Rod behind his back, but of course, was unwilling to say who. This is not acceptable behaviour.

* Another woman dismissed the article with a straight ad-hominem on the author.

The bad and abusive behaviour here is very clear and it's all by people who
were objecting to Rod's tweet. Yet somehow this turned into some sort of
trial.

Fortunately, Node TSC rejected this transparent attempt to get rid of someone
for having the temerity to tweet about politics. If there are other members
who couldn't handle this and quit as a result, that can only be healthy for
the project.

~~~
smsm42
Please tell me that nodejs didn't just have a vote on removing a member
because the said member shared an article which was critical of speech codes
and implied CoCs can have downsides. And 40% voted for removal. Please tell me
it was something more serious and controversial. Because if that's what we
arrived at - that the mere implication that you might not be 100% devoted to
the orthodoxy, that you might be considering committing a thoughtcrime and
questioning the dogma - not denying yet, not even arguing, just thinking about
questioning! - you already in serious danger of being ostracized. This is
scary as hell.

~~~
rndgermandude
As I understand it, it was 20% (2 out of 10) vote for removal, 20% (2 out of
10) abstained and 60% (6 out of 10) voted against removal, which is a little
less bad.

~~~
turkeysandwich
I think there were thirteen total members.

Two abstained, one member was the person in question, and then we have 6
against removing, and 4 in favor.

And after this vote failed to remove the person, four members resigned.

------
rocqua
Neither this post, nor the linked decision by the TSC make it possible for me
to judge if this reaction is appropriate.

Without details on how rvagg conducted himself, this could be anywhere from
'Social justice warriors biggest fuck up yet' to 'nepotism protects blatant
asshole/racist/nazi/mysogonist'.

This is all due to the following reasoning:

[Note: the specific list of issues has been removed at the request of several
core collaborators who felt that listing the issues was not fair to Rod. This
post was made with an effort at full transparency and with no ill intent
towards anyone. No additional harm was intended by listing the issues -
jasnell]

Unless this was requested by Rod himself, this seems like needless censorship.

~~~
drostie
It's not _needless_ censorship even though it might not have been requested by
Rod himself. The question before the TSC is "hey should we take action against
Rod for shit like this: ________" and necessarily that blank is filled by a
lot of stuff which makes Rod look like he's not a community player. Meanwhile
the members of the TSC are able to contextualize this -- they are able to say
"Well I have worked with this guy on this and that, I have seen more comments
than just these, and I get to make a holistic evaluation of what's going on
here."

Now if the original post goes public, it makes sense that the details be
blanked as "not fair to Rod", since the rest of the world's eyes are going to
look on just these things and might not have full context.

------
strictnein
The unredacted details still feel like they're missing something:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170821212745/https://github.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170821212745/https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310)

"...Rod’s first action was to apologize to a contributor who had been
repeatedly moderated. Rod did not discuss the issue with other members of the
CTC/TSC first. The result undermined the moderation process as it was
occurring"

"Rod did not moderate himself when asked by another foundation director and
told them he would take it to the board"

"Rod tweeted in support of an inflammatory anti-Code-of-Conduct article"

Is this really all that there is to it?

~~~
fixermark
Of everything in there, this one is probably the most problematic.

""" His tweeting of screen captures of immature responses suggests pleasure at
having upset members of the JavaScript community and others. As a perceived
leader, such behavior reflects poorly on the project.
[https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887790865766268928](https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887790865766268928)
"""

~~~
root_axis
I don't get it. He's not taking pleasure, he's providing evidence of how
people are harassing him when he is trying to have a calm discussion.

------
iamthepieman

        ....concerns were raised by several TSC 
        and CTC members regarding issues they had with 
        @rvagg's interactions in the Github tracker and 
        Twitter.
    
        The specific issues that were reported include: 
        [Note: the specific list of issues has been removed 
        at the request of several core collaborators...]
    

(elipses editing for brevity, full link here[0]

Maybe the offenses of @rvagg were really heinous, but from later in the
link[0] they mention that the charter states they can only remove members by
vote, through voluntary resignation or through participation rules (I assume
that means they stop participating for some length of time) and that they took
said vote to remove @rvagg after failing to reach consensus and the vote
failed.

They are working on improving their existing code of conduct. Presumably to
make it easier to remove people for whatever it is that @rvagg did.

Unless they just want to turn it into a pet project dictatorship (nothing
wrong with that many successful open source projects are run that way - see
the linux kernel for instance) then they need to follow the rules they set
down and it sounds like they are doing that as well as trying to improve the
rules to prevent whatever ruckus it is that happened internally.

I'm sure the OP has lots of inside knowledge that we never will but on the
outside it looks like he would be better served by sticking around to work on
the revisions to the code of conduct

[0][https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310](https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310)

------
mattnewton
I missed all this, what did rvagg do? Why are some people upset enough to try
to vote him off the island, and leave when it didn't happen?

~~~
syshum
Seems he committed the cardinal sin of expressing support for Free Speech and
questioning some aspects of Codes of Conduct.

One can not even question the codes of conduct, they are written on stone and
are beyond criticism and questioning...

~~~
fixermark
... or he committed the cardinal sin of questioning the Code of Conduct, and
when challenged on it, responding with snark and condescension, demonstrating
the need in the community for a Code of Conduct.

~~~
chc
Are you referring to the tweet where he said that threatening to literally
defecate on his computer wasn't a reasonable or proportionate response? Was
that the "snark and condescension," or did I miss another one where he was
actually rude?

------
thecardcheat
A lot of opaqueness for a decision that apparently affects the steering of an
open project. A rather peculiar set of half-elaborated and [REDACTED] posts
that doesn't tell the whole story and makes the governance seem pretty closed
off. Strange.

------
tlb
I really love Node. A single language across server and browser, with decent
C++ integration on the server, rocks. I sure hope the TSC can get their
organizational drama sorted and focus on improving the tech.

------
gedy
Maybe we should fork Node again? While not Node.js per se, npm 5 was a poor
quality rollout, and maybe the folks working on both are too distracted with
the... not-technical?

~~~
curtisblaine
Everyone seems too distracted with the non-technical. It's not about code
anymore. It's about endless politics and virtue-signalling.

------
balupton
Here is a summary of events from what I can gather. Feedback welcome:
[https://gist.github.com/balupton/d6531a2f48dba896a1bced86e8b...](https://gist.github.com/balupton/d6531a2f48dba896a1bced86e8b1636c)

------
formula1
I'm not that surprised. Nodejs has coorperate and investor interest. Rvagg
seemed to more of a doer than a talker in general while it certain involved
didn't offer too much.

I'm hoping this eventually leads to a fork but it probably won't. I imagine
there needs to be enough concentrated power to fork and I doubt there is
enough developers interested to do it.

~~~
curtisblaine
> Rvagg seemed to more of a doer than a talker

So you mean he _actually_ contributed to the code instead of inventing new
ways to police what can be said on Twitter? What an horrible person.

------
neom
Mikeal Rogers leaves and everything goes to shit. Typical.

------
0x4f3759df
>I didn't see any negativity on the "pro-SJW" side yet

Because they got what they wanted?

------
curtisblaine
So he _dared_ to be in favour of anti-CoC article in one of his Twitter posts
and thus unleashed the SJW brigade? What an heinous crime.

~~~
geofft
I think that's an uncharitable reading. It's one thing to be anti-CoC. It's
another thing to be anti-CoC when you're on a committee whose job is to
maintain and enforce the CoC. There's nothing dishonorable about saying "I
don't think I agree with the goals of the job that I am doing, so I will let
someone else do it," but he didn't do that.

It's sort of like going to work for customs while being a strong believer in
open and unrestricted borders, apologizing to people about the existence of
customs and waving them through, and then complaining about "the alt-right
brigade" when people ask if you're actually the right person for the job.

~~~
curtisblaine
Wait, he's a member of the Technical Steering Committee, which is a group "of
key Collaborators who have demonstrated both technical expertise critical to
the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the project and a long term
commitment to driving the project and community forward"[1], not "a committee
whose job is to maintain and enforce the CoC", as you put it.

It's not inconceivable that an member of such a group could be thinking that
"the best way of driving the project and community forward" is __not __having
a CoC at all, or having one different than the current one (like the Linux
one, for example).

[1]([https://nodejs.org/en/foundation/tsc/](https://nodejs.org/en/foundation/tsc/))

~~~
geofft
The committee has lots of jobs, yes. One of them is the maintaining and
enforcing the Code of Conduct:

[https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md](https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)

I think it's totally fine for a member of the group to disagree privately with
the decided goals of the group, whether this is "CoCs are good" or "this
promises spec is good" or whatever, and recuse themselves from that goal and
contribute productively to other goals. But that's different from actively
undermining the group's decision, which is (I think) what is happening here.

~~~
curtisblaine
Which is a clause written on the CoC itself. The CoC must be respected because
the CoC says so. Anyone who has doubts about the CoC, must be expelled from
the TSC, because it's written on the CoC. This ensures that the CoC can't be
touched ever.

A good example of catch-22. They shouldn't have approved it in the first
place.

~~~
geofft
> _They shouldn 't have approved it in the first place._

I agree with this argument - if the TSC does not intend to uphold the CoC,
they should either not have approved it or should have made someone else the
contact point (and given them meaningful enforcement power).

> _Anyone who has doubts about the CoC, must be expelled from the TSC, because
> it 's written on the CoC. This ensures that the CoC can't be touched ever._

I don't agree with this, and I don't understand how you conclude this. An easy
way to change it is for the TSC to vote "We no longer want to have a CoC."
Done. Nothing in the CoC says that it's a CoC violation to want to get rid of
the CoC. (Of course, you have to express your desire to get rid of it without
trolling, harassment, doxing, etc., but that doesn't really seem hard: you say
"I think we should stop having a CoC.")

~~~
curtisblaine
> Nothing in the CoC says that it's a CoC violation to want to get rid of the
> CoC

Wait, they just tried to expel a guy because he was subtly criticizing the CoC
on twitter.

~~~
geofft
1\. If I'm understanding correctly (and maybe I'm not!), the criticism of the
CoC was not seen as a CoC violation, it was seen as incompatible with the duty
_of enforcing_ the CoC. (That is, the situation would have been very different
from if a project member not on the TSC were criticizing the CoC.) There were,
I think, other actions from the same person that were claimed to be CoC
violations, and I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether those claims
are accurate. But I don't think the act of criticizing the CoC was ever even
_claimed_ to be one.

2\. Even if it were, that would still only be a claim about this particular
guy's approach to criticizing the CoC.

3\. Even if it were a claim about all criticisms of the CoC, _the vote
failed._ As far as I can tell, the scenario in reality is exactly the scenario
you wish: someone on the TSC criticized the CoC, the TSC votes that this is
totally fine.

(If you are now additionally arguing that TSC members should be barred from
resigning from the TSC and then critiquing the decision on their private blog
once no longer affiliated from the TSC, well, that does not seem like the pro-
free-speech position.)

