NixOS
[RFC 175] Memorandum on Equitable Moderation
This seems to be aligned with a similar attempt of mine https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/114 from 2021.
The goal has been moved from "these are acceptable behaviors in this CoC" (114) to "these are how these behaviors should be enforced fairly". Which sounds good to me.
I'll do a more thorough review, but feel confident that I would like to nominate myself as a shepherd.
This is tone policing document, seeking to embolden folks who are seemingly, if I as an outsider understand the context, using their technical contributions, to undermine the group consensus on how to behave.
If you're a great contractor, but you take a dump on the home-owners couch, they have the right to both ask you to stop, and throw you out! It doesn't matter how good your work is, how dilligent you are, how much you internally care, or why you think that behaviour is acceptable; folks told you it wasn't, presumably when you start threads questioning diversity and representation, and apparently you get a temporary ban. Which is understandable but very light-touch.
I wholeheartedly oppose this. At the same time I want to propose an alternative.. Now I'm not good with big words so I'm going to say it straight-- I have the backing of hundreds of contributors (they are anonymous so I cannot tell you their technical depth), and more than thousands of people who have labelled others "nazi" more than a million times. I personally won the "I hate Donald Trump" and "I support the current thing" award 3 years straight in my HoA for being the biggest hater of Trump and lover of woke. So I want to propose my name as the top moderator and I will bring out an amazing CoC, trust me.
I was also the only one who predicted correctly that pottering would be hired by Microsoft (see the post date: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/github-was-purchased-by-microsoft/313/66).
One like on this comment will be one year of jail term for all the currently extant hitlers (nearly 300 in number?), so please give upthumb and likes because that's what counts.
As a person who is actually in a marginalized group in real life, I've genuinely felt afraid of commenting on these issues happening in the nix community, frankly because of the fact that I feel like I'd be downvoted to hell and back for not feeling or acting the way people expect me to. I'm honestly in support of this. I'm kinda tired of people telling me how I should respond to something instead of letting me respond for myself. I feel more marginalized in this community now than I ever have, and it's because of the people standing around screaming that I'm marginalized. If a contractor takes a dump on your couch, you don't go around demanding that people not hire him, you explain to people why they shouldn't and let them make the choice for themselves.
As a person who is actually in a marginalized group in real life
Invalidating other people's voice is not a great way to legitimize yours.
Invalidating other people's voice is not a great way to legitimize yours.
I'd like to present exhibit A
Invalidating other people's voice is not a great way to legitimize yours.
I'd like to present exhibit A
Let's not turn this into mindless distractions; you were the one to implicitly claim other people are not just disagreing with you, but illegitimately claiming minority status and you should be the one to get to talk over them because they're somehow dishonest imposers. That's not okay. I'll exit this line of conversation now, but greets to your friends in Matrix' #totallynoburgersandfries.
I suppose I can use this as an example. We're focusing so much on someone being the victim. What I don't want is people gathering around me screaming about who is the victim, be it me or someone else. I want to have a productive discussion about this. I'm fully capable of ignoring the troll I've fed, and the moderators can make the decision as to whether or not the comment actually contributes to said productive discussion. They don't need to decide whether or not I'm marginalized because of it. My follow-up comment was marked as off-topic and I wholly recognize and understand that. My couch now smells of feces, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm here giving my two cents on the topic. It's a technical community. If the comment goes off topic, eliminate it. In my opinion, we're focusing so much energy on determining who is and isn't a victim that we're forgetting that we could be discussing the terrible error messages or the likes.
I'll edit this to add that I recognize and understand that my comment was marked as off-topic, and I agree with that.
"Exhibit A" was abusive to begin with, so I considered follow-up posts as off-topic.
"Exhibit A" was abusive to begin with, so I considered follow-up posts as off-topic.
Reasonable.
Moderation is, fundamentally, about aligning the community with the community values. Put another way: it's about banning people with radical undesirable values, preventing undesirable values from leaking out of people who aren't nearly as radical, and enforcing desirable values.
This document does not attempt to discuss the values of the project, nor does it try to make moderation process more effective. What it tries is to force a new set of values for the project, as well as dissolve the moderation team by making their work essentially impossible with tons of bureaucratic nonsense.
It is not controversial to say that the values of our community is to be a decent person. This document tries to force in a new set of values, that consist of looking reasonable. It heavily prefers style over substance, and postulates that moderation actions should appear reasonable to any community member without having any prior context on the situation. This makes any conflict essentially non-resolvable as long as all the participants are polite enough. As such, it tries to force tone policing instead of solving actual problems in the community.
In short: no.
Hi all, fwiw Hacker News has evolved a set of community & moderation guidelines over many years, aimed at fostering thoughtful curiosity and minimizing flame wars. Context is similar but not exactly the same, so may or may not be useful, but posting just in case it is. Moderator @dang does a good job at reminding folks from time to time to stick to the guidelines, not heavy-handed but effective and respectful.
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/why-was-jon-ringer-banned-from-github/44114/12
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/rfc-memorandum-on-equitable-moderation/44214/1
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/open-venue-for-policy-discussion/43107/20
Moderation is, fundamentally, about aligning the community with the community values. Put another way: it's about banning people with radical undesirable values, preventing undesirable values from leaking out of people who aren't nearly as radical, and enforcing desirable values.
No, this is wrong.
Moderation is about making sure community members are acting in line with code of conduct / policies / community rules / etc. Moderation is not about "preventing undesirable values". Prevention of undesirable values is censorship. Prevention undesirable values - in the limit - causes authoritarian rule of whoever defines what are undesired values. If the "undesired values" are vague and generic, this effectively gives the powers that be to do whatever they want. This prevents people from thinking out loud and discussing ideas. It has a chilling effect on anyone who is not aligned with the most loud voices. This converts a community over time into an echo chambers which hurts project success and decreases diversity of the community.
All of the above is crystal clear to anyone who has ever lived in any authoritarian regime, or learnt enough about such places.
No, this is wrong.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to that kind of thing. Moderation can be the one, or moderation can be the other. We can argue about which approach is better and why. But don't make pseudo-objective statements about things where there is no ground truth to be found.
All of the above is crystal clear to anyone who has ever lived in any authoritarian regime, or learnt enough about such places.
We are a community not a country. Entirely different problem space.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to that kind of thing. Moderation can be the one, or moderation can be the other. We can argue about which approach is better and why. But don't make pseudo-objective statements about things where there is no ground truth to be found.
@piegamesde, please refrain from ad hominem attacks, e.g. by calling my statements "pseudo-objective". Thank you.
Can we agree that our goal is long-term success of Nix ecosystem?
The disagreement is about the path to success. I claim that the moderation based on policies which use vague and subjective terms and without clear accountability (as proposed in this RFC), if applied to repeatedly over long-enough period of time, will have adverse effects on the success of Nix ecosystem. This is because lack of transparency and accountability very quickly erodes trust of community members towards the moderators, the Foundation, and - overall - the powers that be. Lack of trust prevents people from investing. Lack of effort put into the ecosystem leads to slower progress and - in the limit - death of the project.
Hence - in practical terms and without referring to "ground truth" concept - the model of moderation will have be detrimental for progress towards the common goal. This makes this model of moderation be "the wrong way" as it decreases the chances of reaching the goal.
We are a community not a country. Entirely different problem space.
They are very much alike. A government of a country has a prerogative of using power against anyone living in the country, that's policing. Moderators of a community have prerogative to ban people from participating in the community, that's also policing. Psychology behind inter-personal interactions and, conversely, power balance dynamics are the same. The parallels are very strong. The stakes are obviously much lower and a ban in an online community can't compare to a death by execution squad.
All of the above is crystal clear to anyone who has ever lived in any authoritarian regime, or learnt enough about such places.
Oh, don't you worry about that - I lived under authoritarian regime.
What you're doing is conflating the political concept of "free speech" with community governance. "Free speech" as a value has roots in democratic traditions - that is, holding the government accountable and responsible for silencing the opposition. If we have a government - we have someone to hold accountable and responsible, and thus "free speech" is a positive, because it means that we are successfully holding the government accountable and responsible.
This is also not what you propose here. You propose to establish the rules for moderation, and have moderators be just people who act on those rules. Moderators are only responsible for enacting the rules - they have no agency on their own. They can't be held accountable or responsible, because they don't have agency. And you can't hold the rules accountable, because they were drafted by a group of individuals who have no further authority or responsibility.
This is chaos, and this further worsens governance crisis that we have had for years. The solution is to empower individuals with authority, and to hold them accountable. This is closer to the "free speech" than what you're proposing - having no authority, no accountability, but having transparency for the sake of it.
What you're doing is conflating the political concept of "free speech" with community governance. "Free speech" as a value has roots in democratic traditions - that is, holding the government accountable and responsible for silencing the opposition. If we have a government - we have someone to hold accountable and responsible, and thus "free speech" is a positive, because it means that we are successfully holding the government accountable and responsible.
I elaborated on this in my second post. My goal is not a free speech per se, it is fairness of moderation. Free speech is one of the ways to promote fairness. Another way is to establish an appeals process for moderation actions.
This is also not what you propose here. You propose to establish the rules for moderation, and have moderators be just people who act on those rules. Moderators are only responsible for enacting the rules - they have no agency on their own. They can't be held accountable or responsible, because they don't have agency. And you can't hold the rules accountable, because they were drafted by a group of individuals who have no further authority or responsibility.
This is chaos, and this further worsens governance crisis that we have had for years. The solution is to empower individuals with authority, and to hold them accountable. This is closer to the "free speech" than what you're proposing - having no authority, no accountability, but having transparency for the sake of it.
Do we want the moderation team to be the legislature, the judiciary and the executive roles at the same time? I am assuming that nobody wants that, but correct me if I am wrong!
The line between legislature and executive roles is as fuzzy as policies are vague. I am of opinion that the current moderation policies are too vague. Fuzzy lines reduce accountability, allow for arbitrary interpretation of policies, and lead to eradication of free speech and - as described in the second post - trust inside of the community. The RFC proposes introduction of clearer moderation policies (improving legislature) and an appeals process (introduces a judiciary as a mechanism of balancing the executive powers).
The RFC is a bit heavy, but it moves the community in the right direction of improved transparency, fairness, and trust inside of the community.
Do we want the moderation team to be the legislature, the judiciary and the executive roles at the same time?
No, but consider this.
We don't have tens of senators to act as legislature. We don't have a president we hold a nation-wide election for, and we don't have centuries of judiciary experience to treat intentions. We also don't have millions of cops to do moderation, nor do we have millions of lawyers who give their reading on rules.
We don't need them, either. We don't need a complex bureaucratic system to have moderation in place. With the trust at an all-time low in the community, it is a really bad idea to lower this trust even further and formalize that neither legislature, judiciary nor executive roles are trustworthy by themselves.
All we need is a trustworthy party that will do moderation, and a basic and understandable set of premises for how we want the community to look. This is the model that #98 assumed. This model is not accepted as a result of continuous corrosion of trust over the years. If we want the community to prosper, calling our losses and formalizing that we need a bureaucratic system in place because the trust was broken irreversably is terrible.
Do we want the moderation team to be the legislature, the judiciary and the executive roles at the same time?
No
Got it. It's important to find a common ground in any discussion like this one.
but consider this.
My understanding from reading all the threads on the most recent controversy is exactly that part of the community is concerned about the moderation team wielding all three mantles at the same time. I am observing the following concerns raised across multiple threads:
- lack of ability appeal the moderation team decisions
- lack of transparency on decision making procedure, incl. identities of decision-makers
- lack of justifications related to bans recorded in the moderation logs
- lack of transparency how the first CoC has been established
- unequal application of CoC to different individuals involved in discussions
- silencing of dissenting voices (via moderation tools)
- requesting feedback for public actions of the team to be provided in private
- use of subjective terms in the CoC allowing for subjective application of it
really bad idea to lower this trust even further and formalize that neither legislature, judiciary nor executive roles are trustworthy by themselves. All we need is a trustworthy party that will do moderation, and a basic and understandable set of premises for how we want the community to look.
"Basic" and "understandable" are both subjective. I am afraid that the set of premises has been interpreted inconsistently across the community, which drives the split. It is clear that non-trivial part of the community wants changes as per the votes:
I do not think enough people in the community consider the moderation team to be the trustworthy party we need :'(
This deep split in my opinion highlights that changes are necessary to rebuild the trust. What do you think?
This is the model that #98 assumed. This model is not accepted as a result of continuous corrosion of trust over the years.
Where is the corrosion coming from? Can we address that? Can we refocus the community on areas of Nix ecosystem which are common to us all?
If we want the community to prosper, calling our losses and formalizing that we need a bureaucratic system in place because the trust was broken irreversably is terrible.
I agree that having more bureaucracy is bad in the long term and we should strive to build as lightweight solutions as possible. However, given the split in the community, I would dare to say that #102 needs amendments, since the actions of the moderation team are not supported by significant-enough slice of the community (as crudely measured by the ratio of +1 and -1 on this RFC).
Maybe we should treat this RFC as a signal for necessity of changes and try take incremental steps to heal the divide in the community by carefully addressing the concerns of the dissenters?
I do not think enough people in the community consider the moderation team to be the trustworthy party we need :'(
This deep split in my opinion highlights that changes are necessary to rebuild the trust. What do you think?
I wholeheartedly agree. This is a good summary of the situation.
Where is the corrosion coming from? Can we address that? Can we refocus the community on areas of Nix ecosystem which are common to us all?
It just occured to me that perhaps, we might have been on different pages. The open letter, which is essential for understanding the corrosion of trust in the community, places a lot of the blame on Eelco's leadership. I am also maintaining a more freeform description of events.
I consider the open letter, both sponsorship incidents, and more generally - a long chain of bad decisions starting from RFC 49 to be at the core of corrosion of trust, and as such - necessary to understand the context of the discussion around moderation that we have. This RFC (if we can call it that) is continuing the long chain of related incidents.
Full disclosure: I have signed the open letter, and I fully support banning Eelco from leadership positions in the Nix project indefinitely, and banning him for 6 months from any involvement in the community in general. I have tried to keep my bias out of any conversation that I'm having, but please keep in mind that I do have a strong opinion and that may leak out to how I represent facts, too.
Maybe we should treat this RFC as a signal for necessity of changes and try take incremental steps to heal the divide in the community by carefully addressing the concerns of the dissenters?
I agree - this is a strong signal that changes are necessary. But ultimately, I don't believe that this RFC (if you can call it that) serves to help the issue in any way, shape or form. As pointed out above, it is a molotov cocktail.
I hold out hope that once our governance crisis is resolved and some months have passed, the issue will be resolved by the virtue of new governance actually upholding the moral standards of the community. I also believe that many concerns that are voiced today will be resolved in the similar fashion.
I'm going to unsubscribe and disengage from the thread. As I said above - I believe a lot of the very real concerns will be addressed with governance changes, and that this "RFC" is more akin to a declaration of war, rather than a genuine attempt to solve a problem. Personally, I would advise everyone to do the same, and close this "RFC" for good.
Maybe we should treat this RFC as a signal for necessity of changes and try take incremental steps to heal the divide in the community by carefully addressing the concerns of the dissenters?
Hi. Many people (including but certainly not limited to me) have been doing this for years. It has not gone anywhere, because as it turns out, a number of people do not actually intend for this to get resolved.
I would more broadly suggest that people refrain from trying to infer the problem space here out of a single read of a single document (or even a few documents about the same incident, for that matter), when they've never been involved in the situations preceding it, and do not have any of the background about what has already been tried and how that worked out.
There are many years of history here, much of it never centrally documented anywhere. It requires a significant investment of time and energy to get up to speed with it.
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/discussions-on-jon-ringers-ban/44295/1
Notice to the participants that are not aware: The authors of this RFC were banned shortly after submitting it as a Pull Request. They cannot participate in this discussion.
Moderation is, fundamentally, about aligning the community with the community values. Put another way: it's about banning people with radical undesirable values, preventing undesirable values from leaking out of people who aren't nearly as radical, and enforcing desirable values.
This is not what the code of conduct says. Moderation should be on the basis of behaviour, not values. As it says:
The moderation team is responsible for clarifying the standards of acceptable behavior and are expected to take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any instances of unacceptable behavior.
(That said, I don't think this RFC is the answer and I don't support it.)
This RFC may have good intentions, but it seems to formalize concern trolling and apply it to the moderation process itself. Almost treating moderation like nix derivations.
despite its good intentions I believe it will weaken the moderation process/team and render it unusable. power dynamic problems among humans can’t always be permalinked. issues are nuanced. it’s hard to put things in words sometimes. they have limited capacity.
we ought to trust moderators and only put scrutiny and verify when necessary, not for every single action they take.
as a minority Nix user I don’t support this RFC.
@KFearsoff Thank you for the thoughtful discussion!
@joepie91 I do believe such things should be documented for community discussions to be productive. Otherwise each member of the community discusses a different set of observations (not even facts) and it makes discussions unnecessary heated.
@eljojo Sounds fair. I'd also prefer a lighter approach to addressing the current concerns about the moderation process.
@eljojo Terms like "concern trolling" should not be used in the policies as they are too vague. This specific term is very often applied against dissenting opinions in the community for bringing up problems which are not recognized by the loudest members of the community. Unfortunately policing mechanisms should be leaning towards formal to avoid abuse of power (see concerns listed in https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/175#issuecomment-2081106372), which applies to the moderation process. This is true especially if there's no appeals process.
@J4NV5 Good point, we probably should pause the discussion until the situation with the current shepherds clarifies.
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-is-not-dying-please-dont-spread-fear-actively/44310/42