If you feel as though any member of the Rust team is failing to uphold the principles of the project then you may contact the moderation team at rust-mods@googlegroups.com . Note that that is a private mailing list and that Steve is not on the moderation team (nor is any member of the Rust core team, by design).
Interesting, how was the mod team picked? I think it is a good check to have it be separate from the Rust team (assuming it wasn't picked by and answers to the Rust team).
The moderation team was conceived and designed by Manish Goregaokar, an experienced moderator from Stack Overflow and a volunteer for the Servo project. The original roster for the mod team was picked by Manish and the core team, though moving forward the mod team can expand its ranks on its own. Also notice that the moderation team has no formal leader, every member has the same amount of authority. One of their explicit goals is to police the other teams, including the core team, hence the requirement for disjoint membership between the mod team and the core team.
What exactly is the goal of the group? What does it mean that they "police the other teams"? This is just out of pure curiosity, I find the idea of having a mod team for a large, public project interesting but a bit strange.
Well, policing the other teams is just part of the mod team's responsibilities.
The design of the mod team can be found in the RfC[1].
The driving philosophy is to try and deescalate any situations which may crop up, either in situ or by privately discussing with the involved parties. It's easy to forget that the People on The Internet are humans too, so a technical discussion that gets heated sometimes needs a reminder to keep civil.
The purpose is to make sure that the code of conduct[2] is upheld online. Rust has had a CoC for a while now, but it wasn't enforced. This meant that users violating it in reality were free to continue violating it without much repercussions. And this had happened a couple of times; users were warned after being abrasive but no action was ever taken and it just got worse. The mod team can enforce the CoC by temporarily blocking a user from the project if warnings are ignored. Deescalate whenever possible, and if it doesn't work out, warn/act on the warnings.
Policing other teams is a part of it; the core team and subteams are also subject to moderation; which is why no core team member is on the mod team. In case of an ugly dispute between a core team member and some other user the mod team is a more impartial way of resolving it. Though in practice I don't think the core team would ever be in such a situation.
People often say that technical communities should stay technical and not worry about civility or other social issues. In my experience this rarely turns out well, aside from Rust I've seen this idea cause problems in other technical communities. Technical communities are, in the end, communities, and community health is something that needs tending. Maintaining civility and avoiding the exclusion (active or passive) of other users is a part of it, and that's something the mod team handles.
That seems... less good honestly, but gotta start some where I guess. Friends-network effect should grow weaker with time (or at first big drama blowup).
