Nate:
I couldn't agree more with the way you have expressed this. Thank you
for speaking your mind on this tiresome political back and forth; it
really doesn't have to be this hard to work on technical standards, and
it certainly does not need to be so personal. Real problems have a way
of bringing a more balanced perspective to all our feelings and
frustrations.
I hope all is going better for you and your family.
Cheers,
Jason
Nate Abele wrote:
On Thursday, June 23, 2016 at 3:53:03 PM UTC-4, Michael Cullum wrote:
Hi all,
Over the past 8 weeks, we [the secretaries] have had a number of
voting members, former project representatives and well known
community members alike approach us regarding a situation they
believe is being detrimental to the continued success of the FIG
and the harmony in the group. It is, essentially, the impact of
Paul M Jones on the harmony of the mailing list and the impact his
contribution is having on making this group welcoming or pleasant
to be involved with.
To avoid putting words in mouths but still convey the common
grievances, we’ll quote from those who have complained:
*
“This individual is toxic to the group and is therefore
directly affecting the ability of the group to perform its aims”
*
“I believe this individual is the sole biggest cause of loss
of respect and members for the FIG”
*
“I stepped down as a voting representative due to this member”
*
“The presence of this individual makes me not want to
contribute or get involved with to the PHP FIG”
*
“My main problem with him is that every time I opened a
threads lately to read up, he's getting into some tantrum with
other over small meaningless things. Sometimes he might even
be right but honestly I don't even care whether he is right or
wrong. They is just plainly disrupting the FIG at this stage.
He used to be annoying, but I was fine with that, this is just
disruptive though.”
The following complainants said they are happy to be named (Nobody
asked not to be named, but some we never asked if they were happy
to be named):
*
Ross Tuck - Community figure
*
Larry Garfield - Drupal project representative
*
Graham Daniels - PHP League project representative
*
Fabien Potencier - Symfony project representative
*
Mike van Riel - PHPDoc project representative
*
Jordi Boggiano - Composer project representative
*
Anthony Ferrara - Community figure
*
Phil Sturgeon - Former project representative and community figure
*
Christopher Pitt - Former project representative and community
figure
*
Rafael Dohms - Community figure
*
Marc Alexander - phpBB project representative
*
Cees-Jan Kiewiet - ReactPHP project representative
In total the number of complaints about this individual totals
about 20 however there have also been other concerns aired about
this individual publicly and a number of individuals who contacted
us said they in turn had heard complaints about Paul from others;
as a result of this, and being explicitly asked what we can do/to
do something about this situation, including requests of this
specific course of action we are starting this discussion on PMJ’s
membership. It is not the role of the secretaries to handle this
kind of thing or pass judgement on member projects so we are
posting this topic to invite discussion from both sides of the
table out in the open.
We believe having this discussion going on for too long will not
be conducive to the FIG so a vote [to request a new representative
from Aura, which will result in Aura’s expulsion unless a new
representative is provided] will then commence unless a conclusion
has been reached agreeable by all sides before that point. That
vote should then put an end to the current situation.
To clarify further, this topic does not indicate the opinion of
secretaries that this project representative should be expelled,
but that we have been asked by a significant number of voting
members and community members to do something about it so we are
moving those complaints into public for discussion by voting
members as we can do nothing but move the discussion and
complaints to the mailing list for the attention of voting members.
I know this is a difficult discussion to avoid making personal,
but please try and keep it civil and respect self-throttling.
People have requested we ensure we always have two week discussion
periods before voting on matters which means that we will not lock
this topic unless we have no other option open to us but will be
issuing temporary mailing list bans on anyone not respecting rules
about civility or self throttling; more than 3 responses in a 24
hour period will result in a 24 hour temporary ban, as will
repeatedly making posts that cross boundaries into flaming. If
rules are broken multiple times, we will increase the time period
of bans.
Many thanks,
The Secretaries
As a founding member of this organization, this type of discussion is
deeply disappointing, as is much of the politicking I've witnessed
over the past few months. (As an aside, I believe much of that is
owing to fundamental structural issues which generally boil down to
the fact that the process is borderline meaningless until member
projects actually start shipping code, but that's a whoooole different
topic).
On review of the evidence presented, the only conclusion I can
reasonably come to is that people wish for Paul to be dismissed
because they don't like his tone. In many cases, it seems the
'offense' is based on things that could only /potentially/ be
/implied/ by his statements, rather than the content in and of itself.
When a person makes a statement, should they be judged by their own
intent, or how they're understood? Charitably, or by the worst
interpretation that can be manufactured against them? As the father of
a child with autism, this is a question I'm confronted with nearly
every day. What kind of society do we wish to create?
For all the preaching about empathy, I can't say I see much practicing
here. In fact, in many of the threads held up as evidence, I see
knee-jerk, uncharitable reactions from people who clearly haven't
taken the time to consider what he's actually saying.
Yeah, Paul's opposition to CoCs has been pretty vociferous and has
spilled over onto this list occasionally. Yeah, sometimes he prolongs
unproductive discussions by /insisting/ on responding to personal
attacks, where someone else might have just let it go.
And yeah, Paul is a stickler for the rules, if ever I've met one. He's
also one of the most consistent, principled people I know. He has a
tendency to abstract specific incidents out into general rules, which
people often seem to miss (sort of hilarious, considering the
context), so it gets interpreted as an attack or off-topic.
If this is about tone, maybe find a medium like Skype where it doesn't
have to be left to the imagination. If it's about email chatter, make
a policy to take back-and-forth discussions to a logged IRC channel
and keep thread noise to a necessary minimum. We work in tech. There
are a zillion solutions to these problems. But if the plan is to turn
FIG into a popularity contest for the in-crowd, hey, that's fine. Just
don't expect it to maintain any credibility as a professional
standards body.
After spending ~a year mostly away from Open Source because I was busy
trying to keep my wife out of prison, maybe my barometer for what it
means to be a victim or feel offended is just different now. I don't
know. Or, maybe it doesn't have to be about that. I've had beers with
most of the people involved or referenced in this discussion. You're
all wonderful people. Figure out a way to move past this. It doesn't
have to be /this/ hard.
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