It was sent to all of python-committers as a heads up that _someone_ was banned.

I didn't follow the thread in question, so this is all a little opaque to me, I have no idea who we're talking about or what their conduct is. I assume that's intentional.

Alex

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 3:40 PM Ivan Levkivskyi levkivskyi@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I don't remember participating in any of the recent discussions on the mentioned lists. Why is this sent to me? Can you mention any particular posts? The scary atmosphere here becomes unbearable. I wasn't very active lately anyway, and I think I will stop contributing indefinitely.

Best regards, Ivan

On Wed, 22 Jul 2020 at 20:30, Python Steering Council < steering-council@python.org> wrote:

...

The following message was sent to a core developer. This message was thoughtfully and respectfully sent by the Steering Council as a serious reminder that the privilege to serve as a core developer comes with the responsibility to act thoughtfully.

---

Based on Code of Conduct violations in your recent mailing list posts, and under the recommendation of the Code of Conduct Working Group, the Python Steering Council has voted to issue a three-month corrective action to you for Core Python development. This corrective action bans you from all Core Development privileges including commit rights, issue tracker privileges, and participation in all core development communication spaces including mailing lists, Discourse, and Zulip channels. This corrective action will be in effect for three months. At the end of the three month period, these privileges will be automatically reinstated.

The Python Code of Conduct workgroup reviewed the conduct reports and recommended that corrective action was necessary for the violations. The Python Steering Council finds these violations to be serious breaches of civility and expected core development conduct.

Please consider this corrective action as a serious reminder that Python core development is a privilege. This privilege to serve as a core developer comes with the responsibility to act thoughtfully and reflect on how hostile communications are harmful to other members of the community. We trust that you will respect the temporary loss of privileges and the seriousness of this action.

Respectfully, Python Steering Council

---

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---

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-- All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing.

What's the point of sending this to everyone? Why wasn't this sent as a quote?

I'm not in the coc workgroup or steering council, but I think a copy was sent for transparency.

I personally think it is important that we know that there was an incident, the incident was reviewed, and action was taken. So I appreciate the update on this matter.

Thanks.

Given that this is a response to behavior in public mailing list posts, the lack of specificity feels off to me. Whatever this person did is already public. What's being hidden isn't their behavior; it's the conduct-wg/steering-council's reasoning for banning them. The point of having a CoC is that everyone is on the same page and can be confident about what behavior is unacceptable and acceptable, but it's hard for them or others to learn from this, if you don't tell them or us why they were banned...

Apparently there was agreement to hide this kind of information, and that's worse than the original behavior that was acted on. Who will be next? For what reason? I am not questioning the decision, at least we voted for our delegates, so I have to respect that decision even if I would disagree. If you don't want to communicate in public, then email committers separately, or create a private ML for committers.

Matthias

On 7/23/20 12:39 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:

It’s a really difficult call. Please accept that everyone on the PSF Board, SC, and WG are really trying to do their best. I know you do Nathaniel, so this is not meant to call you out personally, it’s just a general plea for understanding. This has been really difficult for everyone involved, often in ways that are not visible publicly.

-Barry

...

On Jul 22, 2020, at 13:54, Nathaniel Smith njs@pobox.com wrote:

Given that this is a response to behavior in public mailing list posts, the lack of specificity feels off to me. Whatever this person did is already public. What's being hidden isn't their behavior; it's the conduct-wg/steering-council's reasoning for banning them. The point of having a CoC is that everyone is on the same page and can be confident about what behavior is unacceptable and acceptable, but it's hard for them or others to learn from this, if you don't tell them or us why they were banned...

---

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---

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I’ve put this topic on the SC's agenda for our Monday meeting. I can appreciate that core developers would like more detail on the behavior that initiated the ban. I’ve also added an item to consider whether and how to create a private space for further discussion among core developers (and PSF staff) only.

As a general plea, please accept that this ban was not undertaken lightly, capriciously, or gladly. There are lots of checks and balances, and more internal discussion that any of us (all volunteers) would ever have liked. I can’t speak for the Conduct WG, but every reported violation was thoroughly investigated, and a report was issued to the Board and the SC, along with recommendations. So there were a lot of people involved and consensus was reached. By constitution, the SC has ultimate authority to issue bans, and ultimately both the PSF Board and Steering Council are elected positions. As with any democracy, we serve you all, and elections are the way to signal your agreement or displeasure with the results.

On a personal note, I want to express my deep respect and gratitude to the members of the WG, the Board, and my fellow SC members for the compassion, diligence, and sense of responsibility in dealing with these matters. Every single one of them only wants what’s best for the Python community, and we are all trying to figure out how to do this the right way, despite the personal toll it takes. None of us wants to do this - we’d all rather be coding. We’ve never had to issue a ban before, so this is uncharted territory. Any missteps are unintentional. Please, help us navigate this with your understanding, constructive, and compassionate assistance. Let’s use these incidents to illustrate the best in the Python community, and why we love being part of it.

Cheers, -Barry

On Jul 23, 2020, at 01:17, Christian Heimes christian@python.org wrote:

On 23/07/2020 09.52, Matthias Klose wrote:

...

Apparently there was agreement to hide this kind of information, and that's worse than the original behavior that was acted on. Who will be next? For what reason? I am not questioning the decision, at least we voted for our delegates, so I have to respect that decision even if I would disagree. If you don't want to communicate in public, then email committers separately, or create a private ML for committers.

python-committers has a public mail archive. Anybody is able to follow python-committers discussions via the public mailing list interface. I understand why the SC is avoiding name calling in public.

Barry, multiple core devs have raised a concern now. There is at least one more CoC violation under investigation, which is going to cause even more concern. Would it make sense to disclose more details on the matter in the private area on discuss.python.org? We have an internal forum that is only accessible by core devs and PSF staff. That way the SC can disclose more information in a private post without public name calling and public shaming.

Christian

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 05:46 Donald Stufft donald@stufft.io wrote:

On Jul 23, 2020, at 3:52 AM, Matthias Klose doko@ubuntu.com wrote:

Apparently there was agreement to hide this kind of information, and that's worse than the original behavior that was acted on. Who will be next? For what reason? I am not questioning the decision, at least we voted for our delegates, so I have to respect that decision even if I would disagree. If you don't want to communicate in public, then email committers separately, or create a private ML for committers.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to allow the core developer the chance to come back in 3 months without all of their “colleagues” (for lack of a better word), knowing they’ve had disciplinary action taken against them.

The problem with this reasoning is, the disciplinary action was for things the core developer did *to* those colleagues, in public.

Imagine two hypothetical scenarios: in both of them, you're at work, and you see one of your co-workers punch another in the face. Then, in scenario 1, management makes an announcement that people shouldn't punch each other, and that the offender has been disciplined. In scenario 2, as far as you know, management doesn't do anything.

In which scenario are you going to find it easier to work with that colleague in the future? The one where you know that they've learned something about appropriate behavior and that if they repeat what they did before there will be consequences, or the one where they "have the chance" to pretend that everything was fine and that punching co-workers is totally cool and consequence-free?

I'm all for CoC violators having the chance to make amends and come back, but the most effective way to do that is to acknowledge the problem and, well, make amends, not sweep things under the rug.

-n

Hi Berker,

If you have specific concerns, you are always welcome to reach out to the SC or Conduct WG. For now I’ll just say that we are continuing to work through conduct issues.

Cheers, -Barry

On Jul 22, 2020, at 16:57, Berker Peksağ berker.peksag@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Jul 22, 2020 at 10:31 PM Python Steering Council steering-council@python.org wrote:

...

The following message was sent to a core developer. This message was thoughtfully and respectfully sent by the Steering Council as a serious reminder that the privilege to serve as a core developer comes with the responsibility to act thoughtfully.

I respect the decision to handle this mess without pointing fingers. However, I must say I was expecting a decision about two people after I saw the message at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-committers@python.org/message/M... Should I expect a similar notification in the near future or should I directly reach out to the SC or conduct-wg?

--Berker

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On Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 05:25 Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:

I'm sorry we had to ban Guido for three months but maybe he'll learn his lesson and not merge commit messages that include screeds about "relics of white supremacy".

I'm guessing there's some layers of irony or sarcasm in this message, but I'm definitely not able to unpack them, and I think it's spectacularly inappropriate regardless. Maybe you're only joking when you say Guido is at fault here, and maybe you're only joking when you act like the problem with white supremacy is people mentioning the existence of white supremacy. I don't know. I hope so, because both statements are completely false. But there are certainly plenty of people who think both those things, so it doesn't work as a joke.

I would forward this post to the conduct-wg, but Jack's already cc'ed them himself.

I think this interchange illustrates why we need some clearer statements from the conduct-wg when you all have a chance. Obviously Jack and I still have very different ideas about what's appropriate here. Does the conduct-wg in fact consider mentions of white supremacy to be a violation of the CoC? I hope not, but I just don't know.

-n

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 8:53 AM Nathaniel Smith njs@pobox.com wrote:

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 05:25 Jack Diederich jackdied@gmail.com wrote:

...

I'm sorry we had to ban Guido for three months but maybe he'll learn his lesson and not merge commit messages that include screeds about "relics of white supremacy".

I'm guessing there's some layers of irony or sarcasm in this message, but I'm definitely not able to unpack them, and I think it's spectacularly inappropriate regardless. Maybe you're only joking when you say Guido is at fault here, and maybe you're only joking when you act like the problem with white supremacy is people mentioning the existence of white supremacy. I don't know. I hope so, because both statements are completely false. But there are certainly plenty of people who think both those things, so it doesn't work as a joke.

+1. Toxic emails like this are one of the reasons why I'm not actively following Python lists anymore.

Yury