Discussion: CoC Violations & Accountability : Node's future

[rachelnicole]

So this is going to be a little unorganized, but this is in regards to the TSC vote, and frankly I don't think they should have been the ones that made that decision.

nodejs/TSC#310

How can we have CoC accountability when that apparently doesn't even extend to the core contributors of a project? There are MULTIPLE conduct violations. What does one have to do to actually have any repercussions?

I'm frankly appalled and confused why this decision was left up to a select few, though I'm not surprised the outcome given the lack of diversity and representation on the TSC.

So what can we do? If anything? I want Node to be a welcoming and helpful community, and I want people to feel safe.

Removed image per Moderation Request.

Code of Conduct: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

[rachelnicole]

To be clear, I want this to be a discussion that's not limited to just members of the CommComm. Since we are here to support the community, I want to hear from everyone.

[gr2m]

Thanks Rachel for opening this issue. I’d add are also hear to represent the community, including the members who left Node core because of the actions for Rod and others in the past. We hear you.

Do Meeting Notes or a recording of the TSC vote exist? Is it known who voted what and who abstained?

[nebrius]

Do Meeting Notes or a recording of the TSC vote exist? Is it known who voted what and who abstained?

The vote was a confidential vote. I don't know who voted for what, and I'm not sure anyone does given the tool we used.

[rachelnicole]

@gr2m in the issue posted by James, it says

There are 13 members of the TSC. 10 members voted, two abstained, and Rod did not participate.

The vote came down 60% against removing Rod from the TSC and 60% against asking Rod to voluntarily resign.

Which basically just says to me, and the ENTIRE community, that the majority of the people making the technical decisions don't care about anyone involved in the project but themselves. This will 100% hurt the Node community.

[zkat]

It's very difficult to see this sort of stuff happen: there are those of us who have tried to do the work in the past to prevent this from happening, and people like Rod were directly responsible for preventing those efforts from taking root. There is a subset of the Node community, now growing in number as others leave, who believe "meritocracy" is the way to run things, and that harassment and CoC violations are justified as long as someone has enough technical contributions.

As far as concrete stuff goes: it's important for Node.js to have a public, fair, and well-defined enforcement process, and for any internal leadership organizations to follow that as closely as possible. It should be as mechanical as possible. Folks that openly advocate against CoC complain that they can be used to ban random people for slip-ups but what we're seeing is that when you lack an enforcement process, what actually happens is that the people you like get away with it, and the people you don't get banhammered at a moment's notice. For an example of my own attempts at building a CoC with an enforcement process focused around empathy and growth (even/especially for folks who everstep it bounds!), see the WeAllJS Code of Conduct.

This is pushing contributors away. I can say that as far as any communities I'm in, Node.js feels like an unsafe project to participate in for anyone in marginalized situations. I've had many conversations with very capable and talented developers who have outright told me they won't participate due to Node.js defending certain actors: Rod being one of them. Choosing to not remove or even make participation conditional on drastic changes in observed behavior is an active decision by Node to create a community that excludes others.

[edit by @zkat: fixed some grammerz, added links, and added reference to WeAllJS]

[gr2m]

This will very negatively affect the community in the long term if we don’t correct it, if a committee like the TSC can simply vote to make exemptions from its own rules for one of its members. This is frankly corrupt.

Update: basically what @zkat says.

[Fishrock123]

So this is going to be a little unorganized, but this is in regards to the TSC vote, and frankly I don't think they should have been the ones that made that decision.

We shouldn't have been the ones but by technicality that is the way the written rules work, as of the current time. 😞

[cherscarlett]

This is incredibly corrupt and the mis-use of science to protect anyone from being accountable for the actions and behavior is ridiculous. I have bipolar disorder, but I understand rules and how my actions affect other people.

We need more diversity in open-source, and this is one of the reasons there's so little.

[rachelnicole]

Edited to add in the photo of the information that was removed because it was "unfair to Rod" because frankly, Rod's behavior is unfair to countless numbers of individuals from preventing them from wanting to contribute to the project. And he should absolutely be held accountable for his actions.

[hackygolucky]

We have a pull request out that I've requested we wrap up @rachelnicole that partially answers this in regards to CoC accountability. We've(TSC/moderation folks/CommComm) long recognized that the TSC being assigned escalation of Moderation isn't something they as a group alone would like to be responsible in dealing with. That pull request is here. This actually makes us, CommComm, also responsible and also means we have voice to help make it better. Prior, only collaborators had view of Moderation and that doesn't match up with how a Code of Conduct and reporting guidelines get worked out, especially in escalation.

In regards to a vote, this is one vote, from one committee. There are other groups, such as the CTC, the CommComm, and the Board of Directors who are capable and can also voice what they'd like to see happen for moderation and leadership guidelines. This communicates our values, as a community. The vote on the TSC voices the decision of the TSC alone.

[rachelnicole]

To all CommComm members, lets review this Moderation issue asap. https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/pull/276/files

[jasonrhodes]

I'm really not sure why @jasnell removed the list of issues from the other post—if they weren't enough to remove him then why is anyone upset about describing them?

As for the community as a whole, to be honest reading through the CoC again I wonder if it's a bit vague and hard to enforce for anything outside of obvious harassment. The things originally described in the other post feel obviously out of line to me for a community leader like a "steering committee" member, but looking through the existing CoC I'm not sure if I can point to the relevant parts?

At any rate, I'd like to see Node do better.

Edit: Having looked at the screenshot again, it seems like there were a few pretty obvious violations. Not a great look for Node. :/

[jasnell]

They were removed at the request of multiple collaborators who felt publishing the list unfairly targeted Rod for harassment.

[rachelnicole]

@jasnell if they felt his actions would warrant harassment, I find it odd that they are okay enough with the actions to have voted the way they did. Especially since they weren't speculations on actions, it's the clear set examples of his behavior.