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Programming

Rust's Moderation Team Resigns to Protest 'Unaccountable' Core Team (thenewstack.io) 265

On Monday morning the moderation team for the Rust programming language "resigned effective immediately," reports The New Stack: The resignation was tendered via a pull request on GitHub, wherein team member Andrew Gallant wrote that the team resigned "in protest of the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves."

According to the page describing Rust governance, the moderation team's purpose is to do just that — to help "uphold the code of conduct and community standards" — and according to the resignation letter, they are unable to do so, with the Core Team seemingly being outside of those bounds. "As a result of such structural unaccountability, we have been unable to enforce the Rust Code of Conduct to the standards the community expects of us and to the standards we hold ourselves to," Gallant continues, before making four specific recommendations to the Rust community as to how to move forward.

First, Gallant writes that the Rust community should "come to a consensus on a process for oversight over the Core Team," which he says is currently "answerable only to themselves." Next, the outgoing team recommends that the "replacement for the Mod Team be made by Rust Team Members not on the Core Team," and that this future team "with advice from Rust Team Members, proactively decide how best to handle and discover unhealthy conflict among Rust Team Members," with "professional mediation" also suggested. The final point, which they say is unrelated, is that the next team should "take special care to keep the team of a healthy size and diversity, to the extent possible," something they failed to do themselves. To that point, the outgoing team is just three members, Andre Bogus, Andrew Gallant, and Matthieu M...

The former team concludes their resignation letter, writing that "we have avoided airing specific grievances beyond unaccountability" because they are choosing "to maintain discretion and confidentiality" and that the Rust community and their replacements "exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation."

"Our relationship with Core has been deteriorating for months," they add in a thread on Reddit (where the subReddit's moderators have since locked out comments "in light of the volatile nature of this thread.")

There's just one more official update. Thursday former Rust moderation team member Andrew Gallant tweeted the URL to a new post which has now appeared on the "Inside Rust blog" — titled "In response to the moderation team resignation." The post reads: As top-level team leads, project directors to the Foundation, and core team members, we are actively collaborating to establish next steps after the statement from the Rust moderation team. While we are having ongoing conversations to share perspectives on the situation, we'd like to collectively state that we are all committed to the continuity and long term health of the project.

Updates on next steps will be shared with the project and wider community over the next few weeks. In the meantime, we are grateful to the interim moderators who have stepped up to provide moderation continuity to the project.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Rust's Moderation Team Resigns to Protest 'Unaccountable' Core Team

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:37AM (#62025473)

    Who would have had any kind of inkling that a bunch of SJW cancel culture jack-boots would throw a tantrum when they find out that they don't actually run everything, and that people who do actual technical work turn out to be the ones who matter?

    • by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @12:23PM (#62025669)

      According to reports, the leader of the core team hired his wife out of nepotism and she turned out to be fucking terrible, starting drama and getting people she didn't like in trouble for no technical reason. People that warned about this are pissed that it was allowed to come to pass. Also they're pissed that the core team adopted a Code of Conduct (cancer) but didn't apply it to themselves too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by takionya ( 7833802 )
      Anon [slashdot.org]: “Who would have had any kind of inkling that a bunch of SJW cancel culture jack-boots would throw a tantrum when they find out that they don't actually run everything, and that people who do actual technical work turn out to be the ones who matter?

      Well put !!!
    • Unfortunately, that's only true in projects where technical prowess is paramount, and it can easily slip once a corporation rather than genuine experts get in control.

      There are a lot of other instances in software where people end up being hurt because they were told off for not managing to reach certain standards of quality, and those people being emotional and entitled leads to drama and ultimately to shaming the technical people for being too ruthless in their quest for correctness.

      Very often appearance

      • by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @03:49PM (#62026177) Journal

        I get what you're saying. I think there is a balance needed here as in most areas of life.

        Imagine a very famous and important developer. He is well known for not having a lot of patience with crap code, nor with the people who submit it.

        And his typical reaction tends to be: "This code sucks, all your code sucks, you suck, and you should go p*ss off until you get your crap together, which you probably never will, because you're a mucking foron."

        It does make the point. But so would this:

        "You've submitted several patches now that don't measure up to the quality standards for this project, because (reasons). We simply can't accept code like this. I would very much like to see you become a contributing and important member of our community. But next time try to avoid (reasons) and if you aren't sure about something, ask one of my lieutenants, and he or she can probably point you in a good direction."

        The key is being able to teach people, some of them Aspies like myself, how to aim for the latter response, and not the former. Because how you say things, not just what you say, matters, and can make the difference between helping to create a solid and reliable developer on one hand, versus discouraging him to the point where he signs on to Microsoft to develop the next version of Clippy. :)

  • by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:51AM (#62025495)
    WD40 can fix the problem.
  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:55AM (#62025507)
    I'm guessing that no one else is particularly saddened by this and the project won't suffer given these individuals had no technical contributions.
    • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @10:59AM (#62025513)
      I didn't even know that Rust had a "moderation team". I don't even know what a moderation team for a programming language should do...write coding style guides?
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There is no measurable difference between a "moderation team" and "thought police".

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Moderate the community.

        If the language's community is toxic the language will probably fail, no matter how good it is. Languages can only gain major traction if there is a way for people to learn and get involved with it. More over, Rush relies on technical contributions from many people, and if they stop contributing because of bad behaviour from other members of the community then the language suffers.

        As an example, look at Slashdot. For years it was plagued by trolls abusing the moderation system, and th

        • Perl, Python, C, PHP never had a moderator team before they became popular. It seems Rust is not becoming popular partially because of the social justice moderation.

          Why would you contribute to a language if you have to worry about all sorts of non-technical details that donâ(TM)t matter in the real world and continuously changing social norms that they refuse to put in writing.

        • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @01:16PM (#62025769)
          I'm skeptical of that. Past languages like C, Python, or Java that have become so of the most widely used didn't need a team to moderate the community. I'd even argue that attempting to have some kind of singular community that could be moderated by any one group of people would do more to limit an language as would having a group of non-technical individuals making demands of the people working to make the language actually useful.

          I highly doubt Slashdot's decline had anything to do with trolls or the moderation system. Frankly the same problems still exist and there's no good way to fix them that isn't a cure worse than the disease. If anything, the drift away from its roots and the plethora of other sites that do a better job than Slashdot have meant that there's competition for eyeballs that didn't exist in the heyday of the site. The aging user base means that every year there will be fewer and fewer of us left around.
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Python has a strong community with a Code of Conduct. C was the best tool available and got a lot of corporate backing, and Java was corporate backed from the start.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              None of these languages succeeded because of or despite of any kind of "moderation team". Python's attempts at this even postdate the success of Python, so clearly it's not a necessary condition for success. C did not even try. And if Rust succeeds, it's because of its technical merits, and solving existing problems in a novel way, so it's not even a sufficient one.
            • I'm suspecting that the code of conduct was added well after the language became massively successful. It's hard to argue it had anything to do with that success. Seems like being useful is what makes a language successful more than anything.
        • by ehack ( 115197 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @01:53PM (#62025837) Journal

          Languages gain traction when there is usage, but that usage is often the byproduct of another project:
          - C and C++ may have garnered usage from being at the core of much of the Linux ecosystem
          - Swift usage is enforced by Apple, and participating in the Apple space is lucrative
          - There's no real alternative to Javascript if one deals with web frontends

          It's not that a community and guidelines are harmful, rather that they are not always keys to adoption.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            My point was about languages without some commercial or academic backing. They have to rely on their community support.

          • C was popular in the 80s, well before the first line of Linux was ever written. C has always been intricately tied to UNIX and UNIX-like OSes like Linux.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          It's gotten better how?

          I feel the moderation of my comments is very arbitrary... probably depends a lot on the time of day.

          Comments are moderated based on agreement with the point made, not the validity of the facts and logic therein.

          In my opinion, this used to be better if far from perfect. I will grant that it might be observational bias. I recognize that I have changed my tune since the first time I stumbled over this site.

        • I've never seen moderation make any positive impact on anything on the Internet.

          If anything is because there was no moderation in the initial Slashdot that it was so popular.

        • Technology is more or less a meritocracy, and, unfortunately, some folks with great techical skills lack don't necessarily have the best people skills. I won't name names, other than that I'm one of them, albeit usually not by choice. I'm sure we all know such people. I'm pretty sure some of us *are* such people.

          There is sometimes a need to encourage better behavior, and a good (not excessively divisive or insane) code of conduct might play a useful role in doing that. But if you need an entire team to

        • If the language only has a single community, it will probably fail.

        • At no point in software development has anyone with the faintest bit of actual ability to contribute to a project gone "gee, is this place too toxic?" People with ability to code (contrary to the code.org propaganda trying to indoctrinate a bunch of normal people into learning it when they literally are incapable) are fucking rare. No one has the ability to pick and choose between them with that degree of flexibility, coders are literally at the forefront of Human thought, the notion of their lessers tell
      • by Halo1 ( 136547 )

        I didn't even know that Rust had a "moderation team".

        That's one indication they were doing their job well, I'd say.

      • I didn't know it had a "Core Team" either, but I have opinions on how their project should be run.

      • Codes of Conduct are neuronormative style guides designed to exclude neurodivergente with Autistic, Asperger's, Tourette, Coprolaliac, Codependency, and a few other psychological syndromes, from participating in a community.

        Moderators, in turn, are there to enforce all participants follow the aforementioned neuronormative style guide, with power to expel non-compliant members, thus making sure the ratio of neuronormatives to neurodivergents stays as high as possible, ideally approaching 100%.

        • Where "neuronormative" is defined as the profile currently supported by internet/media trendsetting.

        • Yet neurodivergent tend to be better coders.

        • Codes of Conduct are neuronormative style guides designed to exclude neurodivergente with Autistic, Asperger's, Tourette, Coprolaliac, Codependency, and a few other psychological syndromes, from participating in a community.

          Lol, that's hilariously incorrect. Well done on being shitty while not knowing what you'e talking about.

          If anything, Codes of Conduct help such folks participate in a community because they clearly lay out what the expecatations are and thus membership doesn't require social skills to determine what the unwriten rules of conduct are. For a lot of people on the spectrum, trying to figure out how to engage with other people is very, very hard. Providing a framework for how to do that is often very helpful, and is actually a common tool used to help kids on the autism spectrum.

          • by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @03:27PM (#62026119) Journal

            I am on the spectrum. (That form of autism previously identified as Asperger's.)

            I can't say I like a lot of the recent Codes of Conduct, on account of being excessively divisive among other reasons.

            But I do have to admit that having them does help me to understand what is expected, and, therefore, whether I feel I can potentially be a useful and not excessively problematic part of their corresponding communities.

            E.g., no real need for me to join a group or community that requires that I violate my religious beliefs, which some do. I will not do that, but I also will not knowingly inject myself into a community that has stated up front that I am not entitled to those beliefs. I don't see any good that would come of that, so, if I can learn those rules and restrictions up front, I can save both them and myself the aggravation.

          • Spectrals did fine communicating on the Internet for decades before the idea of SJW'ing the Internet became a thing. It's the SJWs who refuse to learn and adapt to the social norms that already existed on the Internet.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 )

      I'm guessing that no one else is particularly saddened by this and the project won't suffer given these individuals had no technical contributions.

      I always find it amusing when people make statements such as this considering the daily (sometimes multiple times per day) we hear of something going wrong because those making technical contributions royally fucked up, didn't listen to input from non-technical people, or took shortcuts because they knew what they were doing.

      You know how the open source community likes to brag that with more eyes viewing code problems can be found and fixed? These techincal folks are the exact opposite of that.

  • by Larsen E Whipsnade ( 4686581 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @11:10AM (#62025529)
    to the end users, and perhaps to the donors. Not to anyone else.

    Let's finalize the spec and have a programming language we can all use without fear of bitrot.
    • by ccguy ( 1116865 )
      "End users" probably do even less than the moderation team (whatever that team did!). Anyone can contribute or not and therefore have an effect on the project direction or not. And use it or not.

      That's all end users are entitled to, unless there's money on the table.
      • "End users" probably do even less than the moderation team (whatever that team did!) ...

        Moderation Team: Helping uphold the code of conduct and community standards

        I interpret that as meaning they're responsible for moderating social media content originating within the Rust development organization and trying to ensure that none of the team members goes "Epstein".

    • Anybody is accountable to the people over whom they have authority and/or who give them money, and NOBODY ELSE. Very few people who do Open Source work have authority over anyone else, so if you're not paying someone, they're not accountable to you. Even if half the world used my code, that would still not make me accountable to anyone. If I make you type "grant me the privilege of this software, my master" before my program starts, then you will type that or not use the software. Users can ASK, not demand.
  • Tempest in teapot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SchroedingersCat ( 583063 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @11:10AM (#62025531)
    This is what I gathered from reading this word soup: some team affiliated with Rust community which no one knew existed, did something no one knew or cared about and resigned for unknown reasons. Does this sum it up?
  • Was this moderation team was created to solve an actual, real problem? Was people upset about things other people said really harming the work? If so, the solution is simple. Just two rules:

    A) Try not to be an asshole
    B) Don't take it personally when someone is an asshole

    Note that rule B does NOT say "unless someone is an asshole". Quite the opposite, it says "when someone is an asshole". The fact that *someone else* was grumpy is not a good reason to get *your* panties in a wad. You are responsible for *y

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      B) Don't take it personally when someone is an asshole

      Note that rule B does NOT say "unless someone is an asshole". Quite the opposite, it says "when someone is an asshole". The fact that *someone else* was grumpy is not a good reason to get *your* panties in a wad. You are responsible for *your* words. What somebody else said is none of your damn business.

      So when an asshole makes a personal attack, as assholes are prone to do, don't take it personally?

      Well this I must say is about the most aggressively stu

      • by xalqor ( 6762950 )
        Right, that's the idea. Now, raymorris can apply rule B!
      • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @01:28PM (#62025781)
        Why get upset about what some asshole on the internet says when they can just be ignored? Or if you are really that by it upset just call them a horse fucker and get on with your day. If your feelings are really so fragile go build your own bubble and stop demanding everyone else conform to your ways.

        I once naively thought that decreasing religious belief would result in a better, more rational population, but little did I know that the moral busybody old church ladies would trade their police scanners fro Twitter accounts and spew their own new form of moral stupidity.
        • Why get upset about what some asshole on the internet says when they can just be ignored?

          If your feelings are really so fragile go build your own bubble

          It's not about fragility or any of the shit you're whining about.

          People are trying to build a community. If the community is full of assholes, then non assholes will eventually drift away. It's happened with me and I didn't even notice it. I was active on a C++ standards usenet group (or mailing list? I forget) ages ago. It was about 90% reasonable people,

          • I think people understand just fine, but no two people are going to draw the same line. Was that community you belonged to really a 90/10 split or was it 80/20 or 95/5? Even two people who agree it was 90/10 might have two completely different groups of 10% in mind. What happens when someone else and enough people decide you're the asshole?

            If you really can't abide the occasional asshole, then it's really on you to go build a new community, alone or with likeminded individuals, and set your standards. Ot
      • So when an asshole makes a personal attack, as assholes are prone to do, don't take it personally?

        Ding ding ding.... we have a winner!!

        Well this I must say is about the most aggressively stupid post I've read on the internet today. I also have it on good authority that you are as ugly as you are stupid, your breath stinks and your immediate family might have been implicated in bestiality.

        Giving a shit about the garbage like this does not pay the bills or get any work done. It accomplishes nothing and is therefore trivially ignored.

        • Ding ding ding.... we have a winner!!

          Ding ding we have a fuckwit.

          Take it personally, because it is personal. Don't get worked up because assholes ain't worth it. But don't lie to yourself that it isn't personal.

          Giving a shit about the garbage like this does not pay the bills or get any work done.

          ding ding we have a winner!

          And that's why most communities don't want to be garbage: they'll be ignored. Few people want to sift through garbage for nuggets of gold.

          • I tend to only take personal attacks serious from people whose opinion actually matters to me.

            You live a much more enjoyable life if you stop caring for the opinion of idiots.

            • I tend to only take personal attacks serious from people whose opinion actually matters to me.

              Indeed, though dumping their comments into the metaphorical garbage bin still takes time and mental effort. When someone acts like a dick, I'll roll my eyes and move on, but I prefer spending time in places where I don't need to do that.

              You live a much more enjoyable life if you stop caring for the opinion of idiots.

              Also not keeping their company. Which is why many communities now want to kick out idiots because wh

    • created to solve an actual, real problem?

      Yeah. The problem that, no matter how good your product is, it probably will not be adopted by another project if you do not have an SJW group overseeing it.

    • If someone is an a**hole to me? I can take it. I just shake my head and move on.

      If someone provokes me to behave in an a**hole-ish way? That's a bigger problem, because I'm not responsible for anyone else's behavior, but I am responsible for my own, and anything that provokes or tempts me to acting like an a**hole is something I want to avoid.

      Now, for the real problem. People being a**holes to others, perhaps toward others for whom I care or respect. I have a LOT of problems with that. I don't like bu

  • by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @11:40AM (#62025581) Journal

    I can only compare to Java, C, and C++ which are the most stable and arguably most successful languages in history (aside from say COBOL which is still around). Java has and has had a community process for almost all its life, to ensure that only changes that were/are beneficial and sensible (for the very most part) were/are incorporated into the language. These people are not necessarily the core team of developers who work on the language and its tools. In fact many if not most of them are not. It stops the core developers from putting in shiny cool things (to them) into the language and in general makes the language stable, more usable, and less esoteric. Java, C, and C++ have similar governance [livablesoftware.com] (the latter two having an ISO standard). I may be wrong but this article makes it sound like Rust is de facto being run in the opposite manner. It makes me hesitant to even look at it.

    • From what I understand by RTFA is that this is more about people code of conduct etc and not as much about evolution of the language itself.

      • Someone should probably tell them that in software development, code of product is more important than code of conduct.

    • }} - In fact many if not most of them are not. It stops the core developers from putting in shiny cool things (to them) into the language - {{ ... An example of developers putting in shiny cool things (to them) -- Firefox. If only Mozilla had (and heeded) more input from the Firefox user base.
  • by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @11:43AM (#62025591) Homepage
    You have already lost the game, because you are already either a)overrun by trolls or b) hijacked by a group of intolerant elitists. Either way it is now all about them and not your project.
  • by vbdasc ( 146051 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @11:54AM (#62025627)

    As far as I'm personally concerned, good riddance to this mod team. Last time I've checked, Rust was a programming language, not an internet forum, and as such it doesn't need moderation. Unless the term "moderation team" isn't some fancy word for police, but I doubt Rust needs that, either. Can anyone imagine Linus being "held accountable" by some Linux community moderation team? I can't either, and it needs to stay this way.

    • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Never underestimate how large the intersection between self importance and self righteousness is particularly in some sections of the dev "community". They just love that taste of power telling others how to think, behave and do while usually contributing the square root of FA themselves to the actual job at hand.

  • FTA:

    "To that point, the outgoing team is just three members, Andre Bogus"

    If true and not a heinous joke then it is a most excellent name and the moderation team should party on dudes!

  • .. seems to be a rather corrosive working environment.

  • by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @12:57PM (#62025729)

    My incomplete understanding is that the core team is not made up of developers -- it is some kind of guidance committee. The moderation team, on the other hand, had multiple important Rust library developers.

    There is some speculation that a newish member of the core team has a bit of a misandry problem and that she is ignoring code-of-conduct recommendations from the moderation team.

    • by epine ( 68316 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @02:48PM (#62026017)

      This entire thread is worthless if 90% of the comments are assuming that "core team" is the A Ark and "moderation team" is the B Ark, only it's the other way around.

      This is why I dimmed on Slashdot: huge worthless conversations about worthless conversations because the actual Slashdot submission failed to clarify terms from the outset. I'm all for a giant worthwhile conversation about worthless conversations (who doesn't love piling on?), but I'm not sticking around for worthless about worthless.

      [*] Formally the Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.

  • And given that software developers and software engineers never write comments or documentation, doesn't this mean there is no need for moderators to moderate the language in documents that don't get written?

    Sorry, I'll let myself out now.

  • by jd ( 1658 )

    1. Anyone using the terms SJW and Woke are probably ignorant of their meaning
    2. Rust modules in Linux might be best put on pause until the dust settles - best to know if Rust is going in a healthy direction or not
    3. Moderation teams are, in effect, useless if their only power is to delete themselves

  • Hire a new moderation team if you need one, then move on. Where is the problem?

  • Nothing has brought about hate and drama into software development communities as moderation teams and code of conducts.
    People whose job is to be a gatekeeper, will always want gates to keep, and if there aren't, they will build them.
  • is that what was before happening only in schoolyards is now for everyone to see. Not that it changes much about if you should care or not, though.

  • I go and look up what all the ruckus is about and I see that github is down....

    Are the two things related or is github just always down now?

  • by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Saturday November 27, 2021 @04:48PM (#62026319)
    And nothing of value was lost.

C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique. -- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341]

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