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.
It's a bit worrying that the steering committee for such a widely used technology, one which billion-dollar companies have built stacks around, could fracture because of a twitter fight.
Without knowing the facts, the fact that we even know this happened and that it briefly ended up on the front page of HN is concerning.
> It's a bit worrying that the steering committee for such a widely used technology, one which billion-dollar companies have built stacks around, could fracture because of a twitter fight.
Any group of people leading an organization can fracture because of a fight; it's nothing new, and the fact that it happened on twitter is immaterial.
> Without knowing the facts, the fact that we even know this happened and that it briefly ended up on the front page of HN is concerning.
Agreed. Given the list of problems was removed from the GH issue, I have no idea what this is about, and no way of forming an opinion on any of it. I at least will flag it.
> Agreed. Given the list of problems was removed from the GH issue, I have no idea what this is about, and no way of forming an opinion on any of it. I at least will flag it.
There is plenty of information in the comments to this post to get an idea of what it is about. I respectfully suggest that you get some insight before suppressing the post through flagging.
I think the issue is a number of us have built our livelihood on node, and to see it stumble (in both PR and technical quality) is concerning. Especially if the stumbles are due to non-technical matters. Merging the CTC and TSC sounds like a smart approach to balance this: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/312
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.
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.
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.
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.
I heard there were four, but maybe I was wrong. I am still kind of surprised there even was a vote on this. The difference between harassing people and saying "CoC may also have some downsides" should be kinda obvious. Sadly, it's not.
First, tweeting the anti-CoC article was only one of the issues listed, but some of them were on the private issue tracker so I can't speak to those.
The article was definitely what brought it to a head because it prompted some people to say publicly they had bad interactions with Rod Vagg.
There were also a number of thoughtful responses to Rod's tweet where people spelled out why they thought his attitude towards CoCs was unhelpful. As far as I know he didn't engage any of these authors, which makes me suspect he was not actually looking for "interesting discussion".
Overall it was inflammatory in the same way another article complaining about missing generics in golang would be inflammatory here. The article doesn't seem to respect existing work and doesn't bring a new or evidence based perspective.
I agree it would be nice if all the complaints, responses, etc were laid out plainly. But I can also understand why this is not the case, given tweets like https://twitter.com/ag_dubs/status/887785046320480256 and the understanding that there's little benefit for the women involved to gain by re-litigate these interactions in public.
Why would an article on missing generics in Go be inflammatory? Repetitive, wrong, tiresome, whatever, sure -
in your view. But inflammatory? Please. This is symptomatic of the general abuse of language that I have come to associate with social justice related conflicts. Absurd over the top language and imagery is used to try and justify absurd and over the top responses.
The tweets by ag_dubs seem like a good example. She starts by saying up front her problem with Rod is that he "criticises social policies in node" and she can't handle that so she lessened her participation. Presumably she means policies like the CoC.
Then she goes on to assert that he "engaged in targeted harassment against me personally". Because of his "unrestrained antagonism", she often has to have "other people speak on my behalf to sidestep his derailing responses".
Having read that set of tweets, put simply, I don't believe her. I do not believe she has been harassed. I think she can't separate someone disagreeing with her on social policy issues with "harassment". The logic leap from "he harassed me" to, "that's why I ... avoid his derailing responses" clearly isn't rooted in any conventional definition of harassment. And what does it even mean, getting others to speak for her?
> The logic leap from "he harassed me" to, "that's why I ... avoid his derailing responses" clearly isn't rooted in any conventional definition of harassment.
Um, yes it is. A harassing response which does not address the substance of your points is clearly a derailing response. That you can't "clearly" see this says more about you than it does about her.
> And what does it even mean, getting others to speak for her?
Literally, it means asking a colleague to say the exact thing that she wishes to say, because she knows that if she says it he will try to ad hominem it. This is standard English.
I would also point out that some of her vocabulary, "Beyond ____, also ____", is also standard English and it forbids your egregiously malformed interpretation of her comments. That is, you seem to think that the "targeted harassment" is "his constant, unproductive criticism" when in fact the criticism is clearly, in context, the "what he has done to the health of the project" which she has just been talking about -- and she has saying that "beyond" that, he "also" has targeted her with harassing statements. That construction explicitly forbids your sophomoric armchair psychoanalysis which can't separate someone who happens to disagree with you on social policy issues as "she can't separate someone disagreeing with her on social policy issues with harassment." (I don't actually believe that you are this way -- I don't know you -- I just think that your comment reeks of it and I would observe in passing that paradoxically we all accuse ourselves of our own sins. I mean, I'm terribly guilty of the latter, at least.)
I found the post informative ("convincing", to use your word since there seems to be nothing in the post that attempts to convince but merely inform) and I see nothing in your response that addresses any of the points raised.
Perhaps instead of telling us only that your time is more valuable than engaging in discourse on the topic if you did provide more information then we could see new sides and facets of this information that, from what I can tell, you are alleging are missing.
I've been debating on the internet since I was 13 - I know when someone is worth arguing with, and when they refuse to see the structural issues in play.
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.
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.
"...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"
I'm scan reading the article and don't see what's so inflammatory about it either.
It's about the problem of campus censorship and lack of free speech in universities. It starts by suggesting that Isaac Newton would have been pushed out of modern universities, if zapped forward in time, due to his mental issues and eccentric beliefs about non-gravity related topics.
Then it goes on to argue that there's a thing called "neuro-diversity" and universities are only catering to the "neuro-typical". The "neuro-divergent" should stand up for their rights against oppression. This seems like a rather forced way to try and cast what campus politics is doing as discrimination in the hope that the people enforcing speech codes will think again.
It's kind of an odd thesis - I can see where the author is going with that, not sure I agree but I don't clearly disagree either. I just doubt it's a good argument.
Regardless, the only people who could describe this as inflammatory are people on the war path, who want to expel anyone who isn't 110% committed to their ideology of punishing speech that isn't sufficiently "progressive". Seems like another day, another Damore to me.
Honestly, I think Damore was roughly handing a much bigger nerve with a far more authoritative tone and a bigger name attached to his views. The potential (or extant) harm here is much less clear to me.
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
"""
What do you think you're missing? He undermined the processes he's meant to support, which sends a mixed message about the org's commitment to its Code of Conduct, and in fact his behavior undermined its authority. In addition, he explicitly violated some policies.
Out of his 13 peers (other Node TSC members), 4 felt strongly enough about this that they have resigned.
An idea that if an organization has a CoC all the members should be unquestioning fanatical supporters of it and can never even consider discussing the costs vs benefits of it or reevaluating the premises sounds weird and rather harmful for a healthy atmosphere. Since when the doubt is a thoughtcrime in tech community, that must result in immediate expulsion? Since when have we become so stuffy and drunk on "authority" that the mere thought of dissent is intolerable?
> 4 felt strongly enough about this that they have resigned.
Those people felt so strongly about somebody mulling the downsides of CoCs that they preferred to leave the project they worked on than to try and cooperate with the person that may have slightly different opinion. Unless CoC is pretty much the only thing in the universe that can never have downsides or unintended consequences, this is pretty depressing.
I think you may be misunderstanding the nature of the grievances, here. I wasn't there, but having dug around a little bit, I don't believe that the people lodging the complaints are sitting around looking for Code of Conduct violations of which they can accuse people.
It is one thing to have technical disagreements when working with a team of other humans. These debates can reveal some very strong opinions, but if the discussion stays about the tech, it generally isn't a problem for the team to move on, and certainly would not violate any Code of Conduct that I've ever read.
It is an entirely different situation when several people seem to have been made to feel uncomfortable, excluded, marginalized, belittled, mocked, or shamed. Yes, some people have very thin skins and are easily offended, but is it likely that 4 people in this group were over-reacting, and that ultimately drove them to the point of resignation? Or is it more likely that there was a pattern of behavior from @rvagg that violated (or perhaps just consistently pushed the boundaries of) the agreed-upon norms of the group, as laid out in the Code of Conduct?
I think his openly dismissive attitude about the Code of Conduct probably stemmed from him being unwilling or unable to follow it, and regularly being at odds with the rules. If it didn't bother him, why would he question it? More importantly, if the group doesn't want to honor the Code of Conduct they've established, why didn't they just change it to allow @rvagg to operate without feeling like he was at odds with the rules?
Six of them voted for no sanctions, though. And two abstained. Who lost the vote resigned, which is a way to say "we couldn't expel you by voting, now we're trying to create as much drama as possible because we just can't accept the decision, even if voted democratically by our peers"
> now we're trying to create as much drama as possible because we just can't accept the decision, even if voted democratically by our peers
The purpose of the vote was to determine if any action should be taken, the vote occurred and its outcome was respected. If individuals want to resign because they disagree with the outcome of the vote, they are clearly entitled to do so and it does not violate the spirit of democracy that those unsatisfied with the status-quo take a stand by moving on from the organization. They didn't trash the place or delete all the source code and ban all dissenters from the project, they simply resigned from their roles within the organization which allows it to continue unencumbered by the dissenters strongly held viewpoints.
If they had voted to boot the guy and his supporters resigned to show solidarity and protest the decision, would you have been similarly critical?
There is such a thing as "tyranny of the majority." Since there's no back-stop against it in the node.js steering, no reason to lend credence to an organization that you no longer feel comfortable supporting by staying on its steering committe.
....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
Society has been telling people to shut up for a very, very long time. Stepping down from a position because you disagree with someone != "Free Speech"
If you really think disagreeing with someone and expressing it constitutes as limiting Free Speech, then aren't you limiting Free Speech right now?
>>Society has been telling people to shut up for a very, very long time.
Does not make it right when it occurs
>Stepping down from a position because you disagree with someone != "Free Speech"
Attempting to, or actually forcing someone out of a project on the basis they liked a article on the web you believe they should not have liked, then responded with "incorrect words" is in fact a Free Speech issue
>If you really think disagreeing with someone and expressing it constitutes as limiting Free Speech, then aren't you limiting Free Speech right now?
Your original post was against Myles voicing his disagreement. Why were you against Myles voicing his disagreement? Isn't that like restricting freedom of speech, or telling someone (Myles) to shut up?
My Original Post was explaining what happened that led to this person stepping down. It seems Myles supported the removal of another member on the grounds he liked a article critical of CoC policies.
But since you seem to be confused allow me to clearly state my position
1. Myles is free to say what ever he wants.
2. I am free to say what ever I want
3. I believe Codes of Conduct are an assault on freedom of speech
4. I will speak out critically against anyone supporting their use or their enforcement
I wasn't there, but I don't think they were requesting his resignation based on his questioning of the Code of Conduct. From the sound of things, they had called him on several CoC violations over an extended period of time. The community response was to let him off with a warning, maybe? Not sure what actions were taken to address people's concerns.
@rvagg's response was to openly mock the idea of a Code of Conduct. So then not only was he potentially getting away with violating the CoC, he was publicly mocking the whole system with impunity.
"Free Speech" grants us (American Citizens) the right to say (mostly) whatever we want without fear of breaking the law. No one is accusing him of breaking the law. No one is trampling anyone's freedom of speech.
... 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.
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?
If I go to an interview for a Python developer position, and I say "I think Python is a stupid language and nobody should use it," and I don't get the job, it would be ridiculous for anyone to say that I got punished for not using the correct words.
This is the same thing. The Node.js TSC is the body that maintains and enforces the Code of Conduct. Maybe Node should have a CoC, maybe not, but so long as it has one, the body that enforces the CoC should actually intend to enforce the CoC. If they don't want it - get rid of it! Lots of projects don't have one. But if they want it, certainly only people who actually intend to enforce the CoC should be enforcing the CoC.
>>If I go to an interview for a Python developer position, and I say "I think Python is a stupid language and nobody should use it," and I don't get the job, it would be ridiculous for anyone to say that I got punished for not using the correct words.
This is a terrible analogy and in no way related to the topic at hand. I am not even going to bother to refute it as it should be obvious as to why this analogy is flawed
>>This is the same thing. The Node.js TSC is the body that maintains and enforces the Code of Conduct.
the TSC seems to believe this was not a violation, and upon reading what the person is accused of, and the CoC I agree it is not a violation of their codes.
Now it seems some in the project want to adopt even more restrictive CoC to further police any members actions even well beyond anything that is even connected with Node Development, that is insane
Let me stretch your analogy to make the opposite point:
I am employed as an embedded developer. The position I was hired for has a heavy focus on C programming. I would never write the "C is stupid and nobody should use it anymore" articles, but I do still think they have merit and will share them around the company. As someone who knows how to read an argument and separate wheat from the chaff, I have been experimenting with Rust and raising the possibility of adoption in certain areas of new development.
I do not intend to write C at this job. I intend to leverage the right tools to achieve our embedded goals. For as long as that means C, it'll be C, but C might not be the most appropriate tool and I am open to changing our tools.
Yes, and I think that's fine. (I'm in a largely similar position in my own job as it happens, and my management agrees: we probably want out of the technology I'm working on, but we want it well-maintained until we figure out what our better option is.)
My sense, and again I am an outsider and might be wrong, is that Rod wasn't of the opinion that he'll enforce the CoC as long as the TSC (other smart people) and the Node community see it as the right current plan, but he'll advocate for long-term change. He was of the opinion that, right now, not only was the CoC without merit, but it's reasonable for him to actively apologize for moderation actions that the rest of the TSC took.
That is I think not directly analogous to what you are doing. It is much more analogous to you replying to your coworkers code reviews with "-1, it's 2017, you shouldn't write in C," or replying to your customers' bug reports with "Yeah, well, we're writing in C so of course our code is broken." Your coworkers are willing to work with you because they believe, regardless of what articles you're sharing, that for the foreseeable future you will write the best C you can and help them write the best C they can. If that trust is there, advocating for change is totally reasonable. If it's not, and either you believe that your coworkers are hopelessly misguided or they believe that you're hopelessly misguided, one of the two factions needs to leave for the team to be productive again.
Really, the language- or framework-based examples don't apply well because people aren't tools. CoCs generally protect people from bad behavior by other people, under the assumption that debating the merits of people the way you'd debate the merits of tools is, well, a dick move.
> "I think Python is a stupid language and nobody should use it,"
And if you say "there can be downsides to using Python, here's an article describing them" and the response is "you're fired, you infidel, how dare you to question The Sacredness!" then I probably don't want to work in that company.
That's pretty much what happened to nodejs, as far as I can see - somebody said that CoC and speech codes may have downsides, people freaked out and demanded that either he's booted out or they leave.
I am not a Node community member so my knowledge is limited, but that seems like an oversimplification for two reasons: one, he is on the team charged with upholding the CoC, and two, he apologized for the work his teammates did to uphold the CoC.
What is wrong with considering downsides of CoC while enforcing it? I'd say that exactly what person charged with enforcing it should be doing, and if they refuse to even admit the thought there might be any and haven't discussed them before, they may not be ready to enforce it properly. Reevaluating the premises and ensuring that upsides of the current rules exceed downsides, and challenging them if they do not, is the part of a healthy governance process, and flipping out at the mere thought of it is not a sign of a healthy one.
Imagine a judge that is sure there's never downsides and unintended consequences of any law, and never admits a thought that the application of law can be unjust or hurt somebody. Wouldn't you be scared of such Judge Dredd?
> What is wrong with considering downsides of CoC while enforcing it? I'd say that exactly what person charged with enforcing it should be doing, and if they refuse to even admit the thought there might be any and haven't discussed them before, they may not be ready to enforce it properly. Reevaluating the premises and ensuring that upsides of the current rules exceed downsides, and challenging them if they do not, is the part of a healthy governance process, and flipping out at the mere thought of it is not a sign of a healthy one.
It's not an article about CoCs, and it repeats a claim that's been both debunked before and is pretty scientifically inaccurate about people with autism/Asperger's syndrome.
This is more like a judge who tweets, "If you haven't thought about the problems with gold-fringed flags in courtrooms, here's a good place to start," and links to some freemen-on-the-land piece. We don't want that judge either. A judge who uncritically links to such an article isn't actually participating in serious discussion or challenges of the American legal system.
It's not. But it contains thoughts relevant to the topic. Surprisingly, you are allowed to support your points with articles on common relevant topics, not just with ones that repeat your point verbatim.
> it repeats a claim that's been both debunked before
Irrelevant. The fact that somebody somewhere said "nah, it's not so" means nothing. For mostly everything you can find "debunking" if you look hard enough. That doesn't mean that automatically the side you're on wins because there are people on internet that agree with you (oh no, surely it does mean that?)
> is pretty scientifically inaccurate about people with autism/Asperger's syndrome.
I imagine you are speaking as a seasoned researcher on the topic, far outmatching the original author, a mere psychology professor. I respect your credentials on this, but regret to inform you this is also irrelevant - it is not a scientific paper, and neither original author not the tweet author was not asking for a scientific peer review. If anybody that ever recommended scientifically iffy article on twitter would be banned, we'd have nobody unbanned left. The fact is the attack had nothing to do with scientific merits of the article (which nobody even discussed) and everything to do with the outrageous crime of sacrilege by questioning the sanctity of the CoC.
Isn't the entire point of a Code of Conduct to restrict speech and behavior? Those who are Free-Speech extremists should be staying away from CoCs anyway.
If you ever say something like "I support free speech but not hate speech" or "I support free speech but..." then you are not a supporter of free speech.
Free Speech (with caps) is not the same as being able to say whatever you want wherever you want with social and cultural impunity.
The free speech clause of the 1st amendment means that the government won't enact laws that punish someone for saying rude, hateful, bigoted, or inflammatory things. This does not preclude a person's family, school, workplace, business, or any other group they're a part of from punishing or excluding them for breaking rules about behavior that is appropriate to the group.
The difference is that those are rules, not laws. You can go to jail for breaking laws. You won't go to jail for breaking rules, but there can certainly be other consequences. People have to choose whether it is worth following the rules to be a part of the group that made them. One can always quit and find a new group. Sadly, the same cannot usually be said for one's government.
As with most things in life, there are nuances. The free speech right guarded by the First Amendment in the US is not absolute; there are categories that don't meet the criteria (such as the "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater" example, Schenck v. United States, 1919).
There's room for difference of opinion on whether an individual circumstance crosses into the "Creating a clear and present danger" category, or apparently even whether the "clear and present danger" restriction is sound. I'd be willing to classify people who don't see a problem with shouting things intended to cause immediate harm 'free speech extremists,' for example.
>>>The free speech right guarded by the First Amendment in the US is not absolute; there are categories that don't meet the criteria (such as the "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater" example, Schenck v. United States, 1919).
Except for the fact that I am not talking about, nor ever used a reference to the 1st amendment to the US Constitution
I am talking about Free Speech, not Constitutional law. Those are different issues
Further, I am extremely tired of people using "Yell Fire" as a excuse for censorship
Schenck was a TERRIBLE precedent and has been largely over turned by other rulings
"Bear all of that in mind the next time someone name-drops Holmes and cites Schenck as part of a broad endorsement of censorship. The problem isn't that they're incorrectly citing Holmes. The problem is that they are citing him exactly right, for the vague, censorious, and fortunately long-departed "standard" he articulated. Justice Holmes, three generations of hearing your sound-bite are enough." -- Ken White
That's why I never use the "yell fire" example. I always use the example of ordering a hit on somebody. Technically all you did was speak, but that speech has big consequences beyond simple conversation. It would be ludicrous to say that the principle of free speech demands we allow people to put hits on other people. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates that there are reasonable limits to free speech.
Outside of a specific legal, moral, or philosophical framework, the meaning of "Free Speech" likely varies too much from observer to observer to have much value in discussion.
What are you even talking about? Are you basing your comments in reality or are you just interested in posting inflammatory rhetoric? Has anyone said anything about public shame or not being able to find a job?
It's an open-source project; it seems reasonable for people to ask if discussions are open, no?
If you want closed-door meetings and secret decisions, there are tons of proprietary projects and standards committees doing important and exciting work.
Yes, that's how democratic systems function. If Congress passed laws by anonymous vote, individual voters would have no way of knowing if their representative is undermining their will.
Likewise, members on the TSC likely represent constituent interests (or I would hope they do).
This isn't a democratic system. My understanding of how it's organized is that it's more of a politburo.
Election of a new member, or eviction of an existing one, is done by existing membership and there's no public voting to elect any of the members.
I see nothing wrong with having a private vote for something as sensitive as kicking someone out. It's no different than keeping jury deliberations private.
Hm. Perhaps you're right. I think it's fair for people to wonder this question aloud without being thought "scary", though, don't you?
I mean, from the perspective of say, folks that feel they were harassed (hypothetically), they would want to know who they should feel comfortable expressing their concerns to in the future, and who is or is not sympathetic to those concerns. Private votes that don't align with public behavior would also be concerning, and private votes encourage deceptive acts.
For what it's worth, when Congress votes to censure, impeach, or remove, these are public votes. I don't think the jury analogy is quite apt, as the people voting were not selected in that manner. Is that fair?
> I mean, from the perspective of say, folks that feel they were harassed (hypothetically), they would want to know who they should feel comfortable expressing their concerns to in the future, and who is or is not sympathetic to those concerns. Private votes that don't align with public behavior would also be concerning, and private votes encourage deceptive acts.
I think that this is an extremely important point, given that the CoC says that the reporting path is an email alias that goes to the entire TSC.
If the CoC's reporting path were some other group, I think it'd be a very different situation. (There are of course downsides to having a separate antiharassment group that has different power in the project from the core team, and may end up disagreeing with the core team, but it would avoid this particular problem.)
Seems like an administrative issue then, and one that the administrative processes should be able to sort out. Or is there clear and present danger to the community's reputation?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Would you please not post unsubstantive inflammatory comments, especially on divisive topics, to HN? That's flamebait and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly, regardless of the views they favor/disfavor.
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.
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).
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.
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.
> 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.")
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.)
From the archived details it looks like the issue was less posting anti-CoC material (though that was part of it) than putting personal public advocacy outside of project processes ahead of engagement with project processes and representing the project more generally.
That's certainly something that a member of the community is generally free to do, but it's, in pretty much any organization regardless of domain or left-right position on the ideological spectrum, something that is viewed as inconsistent with membership in leadership committees except where that membership is an entitlement through, e.g., equity ownership.
EDIT: but it's also worth noting that the sanction votes in both proposed sanctions were 60/40 against sanctions, and the final outcome was to work to clarify expectations. (And clarifying expectations seems sensible since it is clear that there were sharp divisions within the community in the expectations here.)
That analogy is somewhat wrong. A simple reading makes it boil down to a simple question. If you disagree with how a system implements its goals, do you change that system from within or from without? Noting that sometimes, 'improving from within' vs 'sabotage' is a matter of perspective.
You can disagree with rules and still enforce them. In cases where judgement calls need to be made, you then use your own judgement. This is only unreasonable when the rules are perfect, or judgement calls are made when the rules are clear.
It looks like the responsibilities of the TSC involve much more than enforcing a code of conduct. If you want a simile for this situation, I'd say it's more like a police officer sharing an article that's in favor of marijuana legalization, and being upset when his coworkers attack him over it.
> I'd say it's more like a police officer sharing an article that's in favor of marijuana legalization, and being upset when his coworkers attack him over it.
... but sharing such an article would not be wrong ...
Is the disconnect really this large between ideologies?
Hm, I interpreted 'cosmiccartel as saying that sharing such an article would be fine, and therefore that a more appropriate analogy would lead to the opposite of my conclusion. (And I upvoted that reply because I felt it contributed to the conversation usefully and was a meaningful rebuttal.)
That said, I still think there are scenarios where sharing such an article would be, although not wrong in a moral sense, certainly something that would displease your coworkers and harm your group's effectiveness: imagine that a large number of your coworkers thought that marijuana was a serious problem in their society and had made it one of your team's priorities to eliminate marijuana from the community. If your coworkers don't believe that you'll have their back, or if they worry that you'll undermine them if they leave a prisoner with you or something, it's entirely reasonable for them to be unhappy at you, whether or not they're "right". And it's entirely predictable that a more fruitful way to achieve your goal would be to leave the department and argue your case through political means, instead of remaining.
Yeah, the original list of grievances seemed pretty straightforward and damning. It's not unlike the current US administration, with a climate denier heading the Energy dept, a school privatization advocate heading the Education department, etc.
Yes, and what some call daring, others call scary. One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group shows distaste for CoCs, one can see how that might mean the group's CoC may be threatened. Without CoCs, many people in the Node community wouldn't feel as safe.
You may still feel just as safe, and that's great for you. But it's not very hard to understand why people aren't happy. Even if you vehemently despise CoCs, you should still be able to see how a mass exodus, for whatever reason, could be bad for a project's future.
I've been doing open source work for 15+ years and I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC. Nor did it ever come up as an issue. I did see aggressive list moderation be abused to distort the technical path of a project though.
You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim. If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC then it seems like they went badly wrong somewhere. Somehow other projects thrive without one.
I mean, Node.js has made this particular choice that they're going to believe in CoCs; other projects can of course choose not to: but they chose to and that's what the Node.js technical community is publicly about. That is their choice, and it might not be your choice.
It does have an effect on the social culture that's touched by that CoC, and you might like or dislike that effect. You might also have been totally distanced from this so as someone who is an outsider who has met a bunch of these people, let me say that in my personal interactions with these folks, Node.js has been more friendly to LGBT folks, issues of accessibility for the hearing and sight impaired, people with mental health issues like depression, people of color, women, and nonbinary folks, than just about any other community I have ever met. Meanwhile they have never come across as any of those alt-right buzzwords -- as "social justice warriors" or "man-hating" or "white-shaming" or anything; I have never felt unwelcome personally as a white American man.
Someone on the TSC has been anti-(what-the-community-is-about), and is actively apologizing for CoC enforcement and saying mean things which is discouraging others from participating in Node.js, and the technical community had a vote to censor him. They voted not to, and now someone for whom those community values are important has quit the TSC because they didn't support this decision.
I feel like everybody's rushing to see everyone else's choices as invalid but these are all valid private decisions. That community is allowed to decide that it likes this culture that its CoCs create, Rod is allowed to decide that he does not like it, the TSC is allowed to vote that Rod's dislike is not enough to kick him off the committee, and Myles is allowed to decide that this TSC support of this guy who doesn't like this culture is enough for him to no longer want to be part of the TSC.
And yes, there are a lot of OS software projects that prospered without a CoC. Linux - coincidentally one of the most famous, successful and long-lived open source projects - is one of them.
The culture has changed, and many projects have codes of conducts now.
Could you cite evidence of aggressive list moderation being abused to distort the technical path of a project? Is the project in question the Node.js project, or another?
It wasn't node.js, I have never contributed to node.js
The project is fairly well known to have serious issues with censorship of community forums and moderation. I don't wish to name it here because this is my anonymous account.
> I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC [...] I did see aggressive list moderation be abused
Right, no CoC, just random moderators who abused their power. I don't see how that's a good thing. I think having a CoC can limit the explicit powers given to moderators so that moderators can only moderate very bad behavior like X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C. Of course, this depends on moderators being held to the CoC (i.e. if a moderator doesn't follow the CoC, you make it clear that's not OK so they aren't "abusive" again), and it depends on X, Y, and Z being very carefully deliberated.
> You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim
Visit Twitter and look at Node's "thought leaders". I'll update this post with some links to tweets in a couple minutes.
> If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC then it seems like they went badly wrong somewhere. Somehow other projects thrive without one.
Right, many projects of Node's size thrive without any CoC, they just have moderators following whatever rules the mods deem fit, or they just allow toxicity. If you want to remove toxicity while holding mods accountable, some sort of CoC is the way to go.
You don't need a CoC to deal with 'poisonous people' as the old talk by the Subversion guys named them. You just need a maintainer with common sense who treats list bans as a last resort, but is willing to use them if things get out of hand. If the maintainer can't be trusted to do such things properly, they probably can't be trusted to exercise common sense in other areas too, but in practice I've not seen that be an issue. Normally trolls go away if ignored.
Also as far as I can tell CoCs are invariably so vague that they just trigger more fighting. Now there's a formal excuse to do it, you see.
Again, you're arguing in favor of trusting mods (or just one sole maintainer). I'm arguing that mods will abuse power unless their power is restricted, which is why I think CoCs are good.
One could argue that all you need is a single maintainer, like North Korea has, and I get it, that does sound simpler. But I prefer it when there are more rules to prevent dictators - I think those rules can limit the powers of the overrulers and simultaneously put a wrench in harassment.
Well yes, lots of projects do run on the so-called "benign dictator" model. As do nearly all companies.
Moderators abusing their power is absolutely possible. However it seems to me, anecdotally, that putting in place a CoC is a good sign that such abuse is about to get far more common.
The problem is that a CoC cannot really be any more precise than my vague 'use common sense' strategy is. A CoC will basically say "be nice to people, don't be a dick" in more flowery language, but ultimately - as incidents like this one show - there will still be moderators who decide whether any given incident is in violation. So a CoC doesn't really help with moderator abuse: if they want to be abusive, they're going to do it.
Of course, you can get really in depth and create judgement panels, voting mechanisms, appeals processes etc for a CoC violation. But we already have that, it's law.
> Without CoCs, many people in the Node community wouldn't feel as safe.
I strongly disagree with this language. I support CoCs because I feel explicitly spelling out consequences for harassment allows for the unambiguous rejection of toxic behavior which creates a welcoming environment for new or otherwise anxious contributors... but nothing about CoC affects an individual's personal safety and using that type of hyperbolic language damages the cause more than it helps.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that CoCs magically shield and help people. I simply meant that having a CoC and then removing it or ignoring it will make people feel like there aren't any "consequences for harassment" as you put it. When a CoC is removed or ignored, it makes people feel like there isn't any "unambiguous rejection of toxic behavior", so people don't feel like they're in a "welcoming environment for new or otherwise anxious contributors"
Your wording is definitely better than mine, but I hope that doesn't detract from my point
Have you read the article that was linked to? While I may not agree with the author's solution "use the ADA to eliminate campus speech codes that discriminate against neurominorities", I think he raises a very fair point about speech codes and how they can impact with poor social and people skills.
The solution in my mind is not to eliminate CoCs but to start a discussion about how to improve them to mitigate this impact. This appears to be what the original tweet was doing "If you've never considered the potential downsides of codes of conduct, here's a good place to start"
Apparently this is not a conversation it is ok to have if you are on a committee that is responsible for managing and enforcing the CoC? It seems to me like these are exactly the people who should be having this conversation.
>One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group [demonstrates a different opinion], one can see how [they deserve to be kicked out].
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.