Report of code of conduct violations of a WHATWG member

[Kaleidea]

Dear Steering Group members,

Under unfortunate circumstances, I had to make complaints regarding a prominent member of the WHATWG. This issue is a record of the complaint process and resolution. It is in our interest to handle this discreetly and efficiently. Out of courtesy, the member is not named, unless chooses to participate in this discussion.

The issues:

• a lack of openness to developer input
• ignoring developer practices and requests
• suppressing developer feedback, research results, implementation details
• censorship of opposing opinion
• consistent and intentional miscommunication, eg. false statements, unsound arguments, ignoring facts
• rude and disrespectful remarks

The pattern has been ongoing for more than a week, with some precedent from earlier (eg. disrespectful remarks years before).
Polite attempts were made to resolve the disagreements that resulted in rude, non-technical responses that escalated the situation instead of finding a resolution. There is no hope for a change in the course of events, necessitating outside guidance.

The member's work is very valuable to the progress of web standards, but in this case, decisions were unnecessarily rushed and deliberation of those questions was shut down without sound reasoning.

This is in stark contrast with WHATWG principles of openness, efficiency, and professionalism. The comments violate multiple points of the code of conduct.
I've asked the Steering Group to guide the discussion back towards those standards to avoid further damage to the trust towards the member's and the WHATWG's work.

The details have been emailed to the Steering Group. Please make redacted reports on this issue about the progress to resolve this unfortunate circumstance. I'll confirm the results.

[Kaleidea]

@whatwg/sg Can I ask you to confirm receiving the complaint and additional material? Please declare your intent. A timely resolution is essential to discretion. Thank you.

[foolip]

@Kaleidea I'm afraid I can't find the email in question. Can you share the title so that I can search for it? I can't find anything that looks relevant going back to September.

[Kaleidea]

@foolip Is it fine if I send the title in private? I've contacted you on matrix.

[foolip]

@Kaleidea yes that's fine, thank you.

[annevk]

This has been resolved via email.

[Kaleidea]

This issue was unfortunately not resolved. The WHATWG member's code of conduct violations were not recognized or remedied. Allowing the violations to stand is not a resolution. It is possible and I've expected that the Steering Group is not in a position to resolve this issue due to it concerning their colleague.

Please reopen the issue, it was not remedied. For future reference: I'll close the issue when the problem has been remedied according to the complainant.

Allowing the violations to continue would damage the WHATWG's work and the community's trust. These are difficult issues to tackle and not unique, as exemplified by the Rust Core Team's crisis. I ask the @whatwg/sg to contact me in private to discuss the details that might have been missed and the possible resolutions.

@foolip, @othermaciej, @travisleithead
Due to the unreliability of the sg@ email please see my response and the possible resolutions at:
https://github.com/Kaleidea/whatwg-coc-complaint/4-resolutions-12-02.md

These minor remedies can and should be taken within a few days. Thank you in advance.
I'll report back about the effectiveness of the resolution.

[foolip]

@Kaleidea I have replied in your private repository.

[simonsan]

Please reopen the issue, it was not remedied. For future reference: I'll close the issue when the problem has been remedied according to the complainant.

So the thread still being closed means the issue is resolved, I assume?

[foolip]

@simonsan yes, we in the Steering Group consider this addressed. We did not think there was a code of conduct violation in the interactions we were pointed to.

[Kaleidea]

Please reopen the issue, it was not remedied. For future reference: I'll close the issue when the problem has been remedied according to the complainant.

So the thread still being closed means the issue is resolved, I assume?

@simonsan Unfortunately, the issue was not addressed due to the Steering Group's conflict of interest. I'm (the victim) a newcomer here, as such, there is no interest to remedy this issue. In the meantime, the problem became deeper with a direct attempt to prevent me from contributing to Chromium.

@foolip To give the SG an opportunity to resolve the issue the apparent violations are detailed in #186.