Revert " #268: Update CoC w/ 'gender identity and expression'" #274
Conversation
This reverts commit 139a9ad.
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(rust_highfive has picked a reviewer for you, use r? to override) |
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Sorry, I was under the impression that it was being more explicit in definition rather than changing a defined process. Not sure what I can do here to help, but I am happy to try. Would you like me to delete my tweet? |
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(I don't know where to have this discussion as there is this PR and now three linked PR's/issues) |
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@Charlotteis I don't think you did anything wrong. There was obviously some miscommunication on our side. I still think the change is a good one. |
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After talking to some of the core team privately we're going to discuss this at the next core team meeting before taking further action. We're not going to revert this change. |
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@Charlotteis To clarify a bit: Rust's governance remains a work in progress, and we haven't had a super clear process around evolving the code of conduct. In this case, a number of core team and subteam member signed off on it, but not everyone had a chance to chime in. Those who did sign off felt the change was a straightforward way of making more explicit what was already implied. But we need to sort out the procedure around these changes in the future. We'll be discussing that, and the particulars of the change, at the next core team meeting on Wednesday. |
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I wrote about what I felt about this experience. I believe this is the right place to put this for transparency, and I don't want to send it to anyone directly as everyone should have a chance to read and discuss this. I'd like to thank anyone who has been involved in this discussion so far, for taking the time to do so. It's a long one, so I suggest looking at some pictures of cute puppies for energy. When I say "you" or "you've'" I refer to no person in particular, I am not upset by any one person. You == Rust. Anyone could have been involved in this. I'm going to be very truthful here and say that this was not a positive experience. Not that I in any way have any problem with meetings, or governance or what have you. Rust is a big thing, I'm sure there are lots of meetings and rules and forms etc. Firstly, you've received a PR from a new contributor who was eager to get involved in the community. Rather than give them a heads up, a reversion was opened. I'm not sure about you, but having dealt with harassment on many levels before, I immediately assumed this was a troll by someone who had issues with people with different gender identities or a CoC in general. (I've seen this happen before in other communities).
I changed three words to ensure that I could contribute to Rust without feeling excluded. I had plans to be involved in the community (as in like, help out, give you my time etc.) but I can't be involved in something that doesn't seem to have a CoC that would protect me (as someone who does not define their gender by the common gender binary), which is a reason to make a change up front and it's also a great way to get a feel for a community based on how they respond to such a change. I realise that the gender binary may not be something that is understood, so I am very happy to discuss this with anyone. The dictionary tells me that constitution means 'fundamental principles', is this in general reference to a CoC, or is this the feeling of not wanting to change it? Because of the lack of process (which is fine, these things evolve and take time) I feel stuck between two groups of contributors. Which is uh... weird. I only see the messages sent to me on GitHub but I can guess that there's a lot of back and forth (as the reversion PR was closed whilst I was asleep) going on somewhere in private (private channels are valid, necessary and wanted) which makes me feel a little in the dark. It is positive, this will be discussed properly in a few days time, though I'm anxious to know the outcome. Rust is a really cool thing (!!!) and I've written about how cool it is myself. I am seeing more and more people want to learn it, which is awesome. Rust has made a friendlier way of writing low-level code (C) in a way that folk like me from a dynamic high-level programming can understand. As I don't join a community without reading up on it first, I know there's been discussions over the lack of diversity/inclusivity in Rust before. This worried me, but knowing some of the positive attitudes in this community, I persevered. The main reason for making this change was not just for me, but it was to ensure that Rust was approachable for a whole group of people who I know are either within the Rust community or within programming at large (judging by the amount of traction my now deleted tweet got). I think this is a very positive change, and if some defined process and transparency comes out of this I guess this was a good thing to experience, but I don't feel confident about making further contributions. I will not be openly sharing or talking about this experience (i.e not sharing it on Twitter) as inviting a thousand people to a table does not necessarily make for a productive discussion in this instance. This does mean that this could right now be pictured as me going up against an entire programming language community, which is very scary! I hope what I wrote made sense. Of course by writing it I have now opened myself and my words up to be discussed so I just ask that you be kind and I'll do the same. 💖 |
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@Charlotteis Thank you for posting that. I very much appreciate you being open with your feelings on this matter. Let me just re-emphasize that I don't want you to feel excluded from the Rust community and I'm sorry that this whole episode played out the way it did thus far. In general, we on the core team take inclusion very seriously. I hope you'll stick around and let us prove it to you. :) It seems like you basically understand the facts of what happened, but just to recap: some of us here on the core team got a bit overenthusiastic and merged the original PR before the others even knew it existed. Since we try to govern by consensus, that's not really the way to go about things. I can definitely assure you that nobody wants to exclude people from the Rust community on the basis of their gender identity! This is why we decided not to revert the change and start fresh: because we didn't want to inadvertently send the signal that we disagreed with it on its merits. It's just that the CoC is clearly a very important document and so everyone wants a chance to think over changes to its wording very carefully. UPDATE: It occurs to me that you likely do not know who is on the core team. Here is the official web page for the various Rust teams, but in particular everyone involved here (@aturon, @brson, @steveklabnik and I) are all on the core team. |
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@Charlotteis: I just wanna say thank you for writing that. I saw your tweets about updating the CoC and I was watching from afar. I was so disappointed too when I saw this reversion PR, but I do understand what @nikomatsakis and @aturon are saying here, so let's just hope the process gets better going forward! The Rust community has some awesome folks in it, so I feel like things like this won't happen too often. |
Unintentionally, that signal was sent (which I explained above) but your clarification helps a lot. It's hard to see what people are feeling/talking about through GitHub so I appreciate these things are difficult to wield :)
Totally agree and appreciate this. Happy to show evidence of other large communities using this, if that helps the case.
Thanks for pointing the page out!
Awesome, and thanks for your kind words :) |
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Hey @Charlotteis, As the person who merged the original PR, I would like to re-iterate what @nikomatsakis said here. The confusion that resulted was entirely my fault, by merging the PR without waiting for consensus from the entire core team. Even for minor changes, it's important that everyone is kept in the loop, and it was my actions, not yours, that led to this. If I was the person who was left out of the process, I would have felt the same way about the procedure, even if I felt positively about the change itself. Regardless, after discussing the procedure over, this other PR was created to go even a bit further than the original PR did, as the issue you raised is still important: we've had our CoC for a long time, and it's a little out of date in terms of language. Thanks again for raising this issue, as well as being patient when we made mistakes. |
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Thanks @steveklabnik. Very happy to see that PR implemented. Good luck to all you Rustaceans. 👍 |
This reverts commit 139a9ad.
This change to what is in some sense Rust's constitution happened far too casually for my comfort. I was not aware it was happening.
cc #273 #270 #268
cc @Charlotteis @rust-lang/core