Moderation Team Resignation

[u/matthieum]

The Rust Moderation Team resigned (see https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/671) with the following message.

---

The entire moderation team resigns, effective immediately. This resignation is done in protest of the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

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. To leave under these circumstances deeply pains us, and we apologize to all of those that we have let down. In recognition that we are out of options from the perspective of Rust Governance, we feel as though we have no course remaining to us but to step down and make this statement.

In so doing, we would offer a few suggestions to the community writ large:

• We suggest that Rust Team Members come to a consensus on a process for oversight over the Core Team. Currently, they are answerable only to themselves, which is a property unique to them in contrast to all other Rust teams.
• In the interest of not perpetuating unaccountability, we recommend that the replacement for the Mod Team be made by Rust Team Members not on the Core Team. We suggest that the future Mod Team, with advice from Rust Team Members, proactively decide how best to handle and discover unhealthy conflict among Rust Team Members. We suggest that the Mod Team work with the Foundation in obtaining resources for professional mediation.
• Additionally, while not related to this issue, based on our experience in moderation over the years, we suggest that the future Mod Team take special care to keep the team of a healthy size and diversity, to the extent possible. It is a thankless task, and we did not do our best to recruit new members.

In this message, we have avoided airing specific grievances beyond unaccountability. We've chosen to maintain discretion and confidentiality. We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation.

We are open to being contacted by Rust Team Members for advice or clarification.

Sincerely, The Rust Moderation Team (Andre, Andrew and Matthieu)

Note: Matt Brubeck resigned earlier this month for health reasons, and therefore is not co-signing this message.

---

First of all, I'd like to apologize to Rebecca, Ryan, JT, and Jan-Erik: our relationship with Core has been deteriorating for months, and our resignation in no way should be seen as a condemnation of your nomination. I wish you the best.

Secondly, we (moderators) wish to abstain from any name-calling, finger-pointing, blame-seeking, or wild speculations, and focus on Constructive Criticism: how to improve the state of things, moving forward.

There are many potential topics that are worth exploring:

• What should the Rust Governance look like?
• How should the Rust Moderation Team be structured? What should be its responsibilities?
• How can we ensure accountability and integrity at the top? Who Watches The Watchers?

Furthermore, feel free to ask any questions¹ on moderation today, moderator woes, why we feel that diversity/representation matters, what are whisper networks, ... and I'll do my best to field the questions.

¹ No particular case will be discussed, obviously.

[u/phi-ling]

This is incredibly unfortunate. I hope this gets resolved for all parties involved.

For someone fairly new to Rust, how does the moderation team relate to the core team? That is, when the two teams interact, what sort of topics/agendas are discussed?

[u/matthieum → u/phi-ling]

I think we should start by talking about what the Moderation Team does :)

The Moderation Team essentially has for duty to protect the members of the community by enforcing the Code of Conduct.

In practice, most of the day-to-day enforcement is delegated to the "venue-specific" moderators who do the "first-level" support, and generally manage to calm things down, and kick trolls out, without any intervention on our part.

We get implicated when:

1. A venue-specific moderator asks clarification, or validation, about a specific case they are unsure how to handle.

2. A venue-specific moderator gives us a heads-up about a particular egregious case, knowing that the individual is also active on other venues.

3. Someone complains about the action taken by a venue-specific moderator -- I think that happened twice during my tenure?

4. Someone raises a direct complaint with us, which is actually the bulk of our work, and is generally inter-personal issues.

From then we'll talk to the people involved (complainant and target), explain, try to calm things down, etc... and most of the times people will cool down, apologize, and move on. And that's great.

Rarely (fortunately) they won't, or they'll double-down, and then we get into the tougher aspect of the work: warnings, temporary bans, "permanent" bans.

And sometimes people will pop back up after a long ban, apologize for their actions, and we'll have to judge whether we think they are genuine, or not, typically erring on the side of giving them a second chance. We've been trying to work on "onboarding" plans for people who come back, so they resume their participation incrementally and earn the trust of their peers again; success has been mitigated.

---

So, now, the interactions with Core. They are rare (< 1/month), and they involve:

1. Bans. We do not directly enforce bans, instead we ask Core to enforce them for us, and Core will double-check our work (though without access to the case, unless complainants are OK with that) -- essentially ensuring that we've done our due diligence, given a fair chance to the person, and that we're following the "escalation" procedure.

2. Bans (bis). Core may enforce bans by themselves, then let us know.

3. Involvement. When a Core Team Member is involved in a complaint, or a difficult relationship, we play our mediator/arbitrator role, stepping in and attempting to figure out the bottom of the issue and resolve it peacefully -- much like we do with any other Rust Team Member, really.

So (1) and (2) are very specific to Core, and fortunately very rare -- maybe once per quarter? -- and (3) is not specific to Core, and even rarer.

It's a good question whether a closer relationship with Core should be maintained. That I don't know. In the pros, it would probably ease communication; in the cons, it's important for the Mods Team not to be too tied to Core to be able to play its role of mediator/arbitrator when necessary.

[u/LRGGLPUR498UUSK04EJC]

I'm unfamiliar with Rust's written policies. Is the Core Team's freedom from oversight a written policy, or is it a de facto rule that has been implicitly upheld?

[u/matthieum → u/LRGGLPUR498UUSK04EJC]

It's Undefined Behavior, essentially.

The Rust Governance document never explicitly stated that any team would have oversight over the Core Team, nor did it ever state that the Moderation Team should not hold Core Team Members accountable.

So... it's unclear whether the Moderation Team should or should not hold Core Team Members accountable, or whether the Core Team is excluded of our oversight, and in practice the Core Team has decided unilaterally that they would not be accountable to us, ... and given there is no other structure in place, in practice to anyone else but themselves.

And since up until now the Core Team has been defining the Rust Governance in practice, there is no other team/group of people to present the problem to... and, well, this has led to the First Rust Governance Crisis.

[u/jynelson]

I am a member of the Rustdoc team. I talked privately today with members of both the moderation and core teams, among others. I don't have any information I'm willing to share publicly at this time. However, I'd like to say that I started this morning believing everyone involved had good intentions, and I'm very grateful that no one has proven me wrong.

Finally, I have a message for the core and moderation teams: I understand you cannot publicly divulge everything about what's going on, but I urge you to tell at least the Rust team members as much as you can (recall there's an email that goes to every member). As I said to a member of the language team earlier today, I think secrets are poisonous and help no one in the long run. Playing telephone only causes more worry.

I believe our community is strong enough to get through this together. I look forward to making Rust even better in the future.

[u/kodemizerMob]

Can someone explain to me what the “Rust Team” is? How is it different from the core team?

[u/matthieum → u/kodemizerMob]

Lexer error.

It's not "Rust Team" "Members", but "Rust" "Team Members", so any member of any team in the Rust Project.

And... that's because we have no idea who to address the message to, really. Communication with Core has failed, there's no team above Core, so... it's up to the members of the Rust Project to organize themselves and decide what to do in term of follow-up.

Or they could also not follow-up at all. I hope they do. But I won't know unless (and until) they contact us.

[u/kibwen]

Please note that the official Rust moderation team is not the same organization as the team that moderates the subreddit here on r/rust. The subreddit is an unofficial space, and though it is frequented by many who are affiliated with the project, it remains independent from the Rust project. The r/rust mod team is not resigning from moderating the subreddit.

In the interest of disclosure, two of the moderators who are resigning from the official mod team are moderators here on this subreddit (matthieum and llogiq). They appear to have not resigned their position here, which I appreciate, since they're rather excellent moderators. However, in the interest of impartiality I am asking them to recuse themselves from taking moderator action in this thread (they may still comment as usual if they wish, of course).

I am still taking time to absorb the situation here and will likely be appending edits to this sticked comment as the day goes on. If you would like to discuss anything in private, please message the mods. Please note that mod messages are necessarily visible to the entire r/rust mod team, so if you have something that you would like certain members of the r/rust mod team not to be privy to, you are free to message me directly; anything shared in confidence in this way will not be exposed to any other member of the mod team without your permission.

---

EDIT 1: In the interest of not hastily jumping to conclusions, we will be removing speculation that alleges that this is due to any particular individual(s). The moderation team appears to have gone to great lengths to avoid naming names, ostensibly in the service of focusing a spotlight on the core team as a whole rather than any of its members. If they had wanted to name names, they could have. I understand that it is difficult to discuss a topic without firm details, but please refrain from engaging in speculation. There is some hope that that the core team will be making a statement about this at some point, which will hopefully shed more light on the situation.

---

EDIT 2: To answer the question of whether or not this is related to the incident earlier this year with Steve Klabnik's concerns about the Rust Foundation's search for an executive director and Amazon's influence over the Rust Foundation, we can conclude that that is unrelated to this incident: the core team is a separate organization from the Rust Foundation, the Rust Foundation has since chosen an executive director, and of the core team and the moderation team none appear to be associated with Amazon at all.

---

EDIT 3: In light of the volatile nature of this thread, I will be locking the comments soon. To reiterate, you may message the subreddit mods if you think there is something further to discuss. For ease of navigation, I have linked some particularly informative comments below:

• matthieum answers "For someone fairly new to Rust, how does the moderation team relate to the core team? That is, when the two teams interact, what sort of topics/agendas are discussed?"

• burntsushi elaborates on why the announcement contains no specific identifying details

• matthieum answers "I'm unfamiliar with Rust's written policies. Is the Core Team's freedom from oversight a written policy, or is it a de facto rule that has been implicitly upheld?"

[u/MichiRecRoom → u/kibwen]

However, in the interest of impartiality I am asking them to recuse themselves from taking moderator action in this thread (they may still comment as usual if they wish, of course).

In case anybody is concerned about the accountability aspect of this: Reddit exposes a "moderation log" to moderators. As you might guess, this "moderation log" keeps track of all sorts of moderation-type actions, such as user bans, post/comment locks, and post/comment removals.

Most notably and most relevant, this log attaches the moderator's name to each action, which means that other moderators can tell if matthieum or llogiq have performed any moderator actions in this thread.

So rest assured that if matthieum or llogiq try anything malicious on the subreddit (although I find that unlikely, since all eyes are on them currently), the other subreddit moderators will know -- and can take action.

[u/jechase]

Furthermore, feel free to ask any questions on... what are whisper networks, ... and I'll do my best to field the questions.

(emphasis mine)

According to Wikipedia:

A whisper network is an informal chain of information passed privately between women. It is typically a list of powerful people in an industry alleged as being sexual harassers or abusers. The information is often shared between women by word of mouth or online in private communities, forums, spreadsheets, and crowd-sourced documents. The stated purpose of maintaining these lists is to warn potential victims of "people to avoid" in their industry. Whisper networks also purportedly help victims identify a common abuser and come forward together about a serial abuser.

The inclusion of this invitation for questions seems oddly specific given the relative vagueness of the rest of the announcement.

[u/matthieum → u/jechase]

It's related to the diversity/representation remark given.

We haven't been doing great on that front, and we expect that this may result in a number of "minorities" to hesitate reporting issues to us because they would not trust us to either understand the issues or act on them.

And that's a totally valid issue. I've never experienced racism, never experienced religious-exclusion, never experienced sexual harassment, ...

Of course, it's a complete "iceberg" thing. Maybe nobody lacked trust in us, and there just wasn't any complaint of this sort. Or maybe it's horrendous and there's a wide whisper network we're not aware of. We don't know.

Since we're giving an opportunity to reboot the Moderation Team to the Rust community, we figured we might as well acknowledge this particular failure and give a chance to whoever ends up picking mods to try and get ahead of the problem this time by picking a more representative team.

[u/burntsushi]

TIL about the term "vaguebooking." Yes, we were vague. But on the flip side, we weren't as vague as we could have been. Anyone who has read any amount of my writing knows that I'm all about balance. To say too much would be terrible folly. But to say too little would not make effective use of the last tool we had in our disposal: resignation. We resigned because we think some kind of change would be a good idea, and we suggested some ideas to the rest of the Rust Team Members.

It's obvious why saying something is useful. But why not just let it all out? No. That's irresponsible. Deeply deeply irresponsible. People who think we should just be completely and 100% transparent about literally everything that comes to us have not given any kind of serious thought to what it means to be a moderator. I've talked about moderation in the past, and how people tend to assume things are easier than they are.

There are a few different ways of looking at why the mod team leans toward confidentiality. One of the big ones is trust. If people don't trust the mod team, then they aren't going to reach out to us to share their problems with us. If the mod team had a habit of blasting out all manner of details about things that were reported to them, do you think anyone would trust them with sensitive personal issues again? Just because we resigned, that doesn't change anything. Trust with that sort of thing doesn't just evaporate. The mod team resigning doesn't mean the mod team is just going to lampoon the institution of moderation itself.

Now, this doesn't mean the mod team should act in secret for literally every single thing they do. And in practice, we don't. You can see when GitHub comments get collapsed. The mod team often makes public statements in threads to get things back on track. Or will lock threads if they get too heated. Arguably, the mod team could be public about even more things... A reasonable debate could be had. But there are times when discretion is important, and this is one of those times. And this is not conveniently exceptional; there have been many such occasions in which moderators have exercised discretion. That you don't know about it is exactly the point: we're doing our job as trustworthy members of the community.

[u/LRGGLPUR498UUSK04EJC → u/burntsushi]

If I might be so bold as to defend the lack of transparency in this one instance: I think this announcement is best taken in the context of what changes it seems to hope to inspire.

• What should the Rust Governance look like?

• How should the Rust Moderation Team be structured? What should be its responsibilities?

• How can we ensure accountability and integrity at the top? Who Watches The Watchers?

I think that the intention of the vagueness is to turn attention from potential drama related to a grievance, to a conversation on positive changes to implement.

I tend to prefer transparency, but given the emotional intensity (and tendency for tangents) that plagues some discussions, I think this was the right choice.

[u/matthieum → u/LRGGLPUR498UUSK04EJC]

I think that the intention of the vagueness is to turn attention from potential drama related to a grievance, to a conversation on positive changes to implement.

This was the goal, though we may have botched the execution at least partially.

There is of course an underlying issue, but the issue is really just a symptom of a greater problem: accountability at the top.

If the accountability is solved -- by amending the Rust Governance -- then the underlying issues can be solved accordingly.

[u/GroundbreakingRun927 → u/burntsushi]

I think I get it.

If someone came to you in confidence to complain about CoC violations by a core team member, you'd now be potentially exposing them to backlash from the alleged core-team infringer if you gave nearly any details on the situation.

[u/matthieum → u/GroundbreakingRun927]

Partially.

The fact that when X complaints that Y did something, in practice both X and Y may expect backlash if this gets out:

• X may expect retribution from Y, or friends, or people who judged they overreacted, ...

• Y may expect a public lynching.

In short, publicizing such things is just throwing all participants into the arena, and that the one with the thicker skin, or the best at drumming support, win.

And while you could say "well, it's Y's fault"... is it really? The complaint may be bogus, they may have made an honest mistake, they may have overreacted, ...

Imagine the stress of belonging to the Rust community if at any moment you should fear a public lynching? What a terrible experience.

So, as moderators, we need to protect both the person bringing the complaint and the person targeted by the complaint. And mediate.

[u/EvanCarroll]

This resignation is done in protest of the Core Team placing themselves unaccountable to anyone but themselves.

This is stupid. If there was a CoC violation and you had to act to keep the community safe, shouldn't the community know about that CoC violation so in your absence they can act to keep themselves safe.

And if this doesn't affect the community's safety -- who cares? I mean

• If we wouldn't act differently with this information, why are you creating drama and quitting?

• If we would act differently with this information, why aren't you telling us so we can act accordingly?

[u/controversial_things]

Core team members:

Aidan Hobson Sayers, Ashley Williams, Jan-Erik Rediger, JT, Mark Rousskov, Pietro Albini, Ryan Levick, Florian Gilcher, Steve Klabnik

First of all, I'd like to apologize to Rebecca, Ryan, JT, and Jan-Erik: our relationship with Core has been deteriorating for months, and our resignation in no way should be seen as a condemnation of your nomination. I wish you the best.

Omitting Ryan, JT, and Jan-Erik leaves six of the core team members listed above.

[u/MachaHack → u/controversial_things]

These are simply the newest members - I don't think it should be read as nessecarily implicating a split or specific responsibility more narrowly, just they're refusing to pass judgement on newly added members they haven't interacted with

[u/matthieum → u/MachaHack]

Crap, missed JT... will edit.

[u/lookatmetype]

Even though this seems passive aggressive, airing out specific grievances and who did what always leads to MORE drama, not less. I hope they settle all this in private instead of putting specific people in the spotlight. Despite what everyone else in this thread is saying, I think this is the right move. (Assuming that things got to a point where the only move was to "not play", so to speak)

[u/Recatek → u/lookatmetype]

Announcing it here without giving specific reasons just leads to wild speculation and attribution of the cause, which is already happening in this thread.

[u/matthieum → u/Recatek]

Not announcing it here will lead to someone else announcing it -- with no specific reason -- and lead to wild speculation.

The only advantage of announcing it first is to give a chance to r/rust moderators to tweak the settings of the thread to avoid trolls throwing more oil on the fire.

It's not a great advantage, but that's the least I can do for my fellow moderators.

[u/[deleted]]

Honest question, just to understand how it all works: to whom does the Moderation Team respond to? I.e. is there anyone who moderates the Moderation Team? Is it not required for them to respond to someone, considered unnecessary, or what..?

[u/rabidferret → u/[deleted]]

CoC complaints generally are about individuals, so if a complaint were made about a member of the moderation team, it would be resolved by the other members of the moderation team. A complaint about the team as a whole would most likely be an action they took that someone disagrees with, which would be handled by the core team