Yes, if the running government is seen to be anti-trans, it makes sense that trans supporters will show more support.
Likewise for every topic that is under contest, including right wing topics.
As an aside, I'd say calling it "the Streisand effect" could be seen to be hinting that if people just stopped support trans so strongly, there would be less backlash. That might be true, but given trans people have historically suffered abuse, it would be risky for trans supporters to let things settle and hope for the best.
I think "The US government is too unpredictable at this time to be a trustworthy source of funding" is actually pretty in-touch with reality, unfortunately.
This is why folks can't take yall seriously when discussing code of conduct. This person has a history of being shitty, and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated. If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong", but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did, and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many. He has also been trusted with various forms of moderation authority in the past, and his decisions were respected at the time.
> and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated.
Please read https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..., and then https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html . Mr. Peters is, if anything, overly self-critical here. He quite frankly did nothing wrong. The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to, as well as complete mischaracterizations of the observable facts. In some places, multiple points appear to refer to the same action. In some places it's unclear what is referred to and there has never been any official explanation. In no case is any evidence provided.
> If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong"
I am saying it (your use of the word "screaming" here is demeaning, substance-less rhetoric) because it is in fact the case. Many of the cited "violations" don't actually go against the Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), even if they were true and accurate.
> but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did
It is not obvious, because it is incorrect.
> and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
No useful purpose was served by this suspension.
> The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
This accusation is baseless, incorrect, and offensive.
> No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many.
These are not mutually exclusive states. If anything, it has improved my esteem of PSL that they were willing to hold one of their "inner circle" up to scrutiny.
Even Linus Torvalds came around to the idea that he was a great software engineer and a mean individual to interact with. There's room for improvement in most if not all of us. I'm impressed at both Tim and the PSL for being able to disagree, go through a suspension, and come to terms. It's the kind of potential for growth that makes it a comfortable ecosystem to work in.
> The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to
The problem with the "reasonable person" standard is that it's subjectivity masked in objectivity; we don't poll ten thousand people to decide what "reasonable" looks like. It's another term for "common sense," and... Common sense moves. Common sense said slavery was fine three hundred years ago. Common sense said homosexuality was an abomination sixty years ago. Common sense said you could be as awful to interact with as you wanted as long as you were making software people craved thirty years ago. We grow and change.
This is why most organizations take a blind eye when popular people in their community behave badly; if they even so much as give them a three-month ban from the forum, people will keep bringing it up years later.
The argument you are making here is incredibly disingenuous.
The facts matter. Tim Peters did not behave badly. The reasoning given for his suspension misrepresented the apparent evidence, vaguely alluded to unproven private activity, and alleged harm in clearly benign actions.
I claim that I, too, did not behave badly. In particular, in "recommending" my ban, the Code of Conduct Work Group (which is unelected, and has considerable crossover with paid PSF staff; and to my understanding gets paid in some circumstances for code of conduct enforcement work even as the actual core developers are almost all volunteers) made bizarre mischaracterizations of my complaints — going so far as to falsely ascribe to me terminology that I do not use on principle.
You, specifically, should know about these sorts of things because you comment in these discussions all the time. For example, you participated in https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month... and your posts there demonstrate intimate familiarity with the situation, with quotes like "I suppose I have to point out that “This whole debacle…” wasn’t referring to just Tim personally and not just this one bylaw change but rather referring to, well, gestures to the last two months." (I remember reading that post, not logged in of course, back when you made it.)
You have seen the list of charges in https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co...; so I think you reasonably should understand my position: to the extent that the referents of any of these actions were ever identified, the description is either nonsense or does not point at anything any reasonable person could consider actionable. If you disagree, please be concrete. The entire reason for the "endless litigation" you have repeatedly complained about is the lack of anyone on your side making any clear, understandable argument that anything Tim Peters did at any point was actually wrong. The closest I've seen to such an argument comes from ... Tim Peters (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa), and frankly I think it's far too self-effacing.
The government shouldn’t be spending itself further into unsustainable debt. And state funding of private organizations will always be subject to the politics of the state, leaking those policies into the organizations they fund. Avoiding both is a net win for everyone, so this is a great outcome.
Many of the comments here are disappointing. Regardless of your opinion of the PSF or its leadership, you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind: even attempting to comply with these requirements would allow a politicized IRA to claim that the PSF is failing to uphold its stated mission.
> you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind
The clawback is this sentence, yes? "NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if
recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal anti-
discriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott."
How exactly is "you must follow anti-discrimination law" a "naked" attempt at a double-bind?
(And, um, I'd be more worried about that "prohibited boycott" thing. It's mentioned explicitly in the sentence with the clawback, and I don't see where it's defined.)
The evidence strongly suggests to me that the PSF knew, or reasonably ought to have known, the terms of the agreement months ago, which makes the current activity read very much like a publicity stunt (after realizing they wouldn't be able to take the money).
We are talking about a grant here. I can't see anything wrong with offering someone money that comes with strings attached, when you don't owe anything in the first place. Especially when the offer is being made generally rather than targeting anyone in particular.
In my assessment, the "stated mission" reflects politics that indirectly resulted in harm to me personally, perpetrated by the PSF's Code of Conduct Work Group. The way that this "mission" is presented is in line with common statements that the administration has identified as discriminatory, and I believe they are justified in coming to that conclusion. The PSF represents it as something simple and agreeable; but while I indeed agree with the idea they represent it as, in practice I have seen it mean something very different, and objectionable. In making this representation I find that they commonly insinuate salacious, untrue things about people with value systems like my own, and I consider that representation to be simply dishonest.
The Work Group in question has a document of "Enforcement Procedures" for the Code of Conduct. I determined that these procedures may lead to making decisions that directly contradict what the Code of Conduct says. When I pointed this out, I was baselessly accused of citing previous (unspecified) moderation action against me as examples of the phenomenon that the Code of Conduct forbids but the Enforcement Procedures require ignoring. In so doing, it was proposed that I characterized these actions in terms that I explicitly reject using. (In fact, the main point of my post was to reject the term — as it is one commonly used in strawman representations of my position.)
> The evidence strongly suggests to me that the PSF knew, or reasonably ought to have known, the terms of the agreement months ago
I have firsthand knowledge of the NSF grant in question, but not the PSF’s participation in it. It would not remotely surprise me that they didn’t know about these terms, because there’s a large amount of paperwork and process involved and much of it predates the current administration.
> which makes the current activity read very much like a publicity stunt (after realizing they wouldn't be able to take the money)
I mean, I think the PSF has very explicitly communicated their intent to use the grant’s withdrawal as a fundraising opportunity. That doesn’t strike me as unreasonable, it’s what I would do in their situation to make the best of things.
(I don’t know about you or what you’ve been through, so I don’t have opinions there. But nothing about the PSF’s behavior here appears facially incorrect or unreasonable to me.)
If people don't stand up to this sort of gov behavior, it emboldens them to take it to the next level and make even more demands, as universities are discovering.
Culture wars are intentionally engineered by the rich to distract everyone else from forming class solidarity against them. And it is amazingly effective.
All they had to do, was say "yes, we'll take the DEI sign down, and reiterate that we accept and support everyone and don't discriminate." Heck they could have made their website background a flaming, dynamic, neon rainbow for all the government cared. A $1.5MM ideological mistake.
Immediatly though of donating > $1.5M to remove that indentation hell.
What do you mean it's in their values?
More seriously, I can only respect someone (natural or legal) who refuses 7 figures for their values, which ever those might be and whether I share them or not.
There are two huge problems with these highly intrusive grant requirements that are different than previous Admin's DEI statements (which people sometimes point to, in a "what about ..."):
- they apply to _all_ of the org's activities, whereas previous statements only applied to the grant itself (it had to be used in X way) ; this is what PSF found untenable
- the gov can claw back the money if they deem you were violating the reqs pretty much as their discretion; while this might seem unlikely, the Trump admin is highly aggressive towards universities, withholding funding in a way that has not been done before under a bogus excuse of anti-semitism. It shows they will have their way and there's nothing you will be able to do about it.
35 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 70.6 ms ] threadLikewise for every topic that is under contest, including right wing topics.
As an aside, I'd say calling it "the Streisand effect" could be seen to be hinting that if people just stopped support trans so strongly, there would be less backlash. That might be true, but given trans people have historically suffered abuse, it would be risky for trans supporters to let things settle and hope for the best.
The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many. He has also been trusted with various forms of moderation authority in the past, and his decisions were respected at the time.
> and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated.
Please read https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..., and then https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html . Mr. Peters is, if anything, overly self-critical here. He quite frankly did nothing wrong. The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to, as well as complete mischaracterizations of the observable facts. In some places, multiple points appear to refer to the same action. In some places it's unclear what is referred to and there has never been any official explanation. In no case is any evidence provided.
> If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong"
I am saying it (your use of the word "screaming" here is demeaning, substance-less rhetoric) because it is in fact the case. Many of the cited "violations" don't actually go against the Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), even if they were true and accurate.
> but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did
It is not obvious, because it is incorrect.
> and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
No useful purpose was served by this suspension.
> The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
This accusation is baseless, incorrect, and offensive.
These are not mutually exclusive states. If anything, it has improved my esteem of PSL that they were willing to hold one of their "inner circle" up to scrutiny.
Even Linus Torvalds came around to the idea that he was a great software engineer and a mean individual to interact with. There's room for improvement in most if not all of us. I'm impressed at both Tim and the PSL for being able to disagree, go through a suspension, and come to terms. It's the kind of potential for growth that makes it a comfortable ecosystem to work in.
> The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to
The problem with the "reasonable person" standard is that it's subjectivity masked in objectivity; we don't poll ten thousand people to decide what "reasonable" looks like. It's another term for "common sense," and... Common sense moves. Common sense said slavery was fine three hundred years ago. Common sense said homosexuality was an abomination sixty years ago. Common sense said you could be as awful to interact with as you wanted as long as you were making software people craved thirty years ago. We grow and change.
The facts matter. Tim Peters did not behave badly. The reasoning given for his suspension misrepresented the apparent evidence, vaguely alluded to unproven private activity, and alleged harm in clearly benign actions.
Tim Peters preserved many of his removed posts, along with other relevant information, on a blog (https://tim-one.github.io/) which was largely following my lead in writing about my own prior ban from the forum (https://zahlman.github.io/posts/2024/07/31/an-open-letter-to... ; https://zahlman.github.io/posts/2024/08/10/open-letter-psf-c...) and preserving my own related deleted posts (https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/). It's clear to me, from reading everything (much of which I saw pre-deletion; and also including things that were left up) that at least part of what people objected to in Mr. Peters' "conduct" is that he defended me (despite having many ideological disagreements with me).
I claim that I, too, did not behave badly. In particular, in "recommending" my ban, the Code of Conduct Work Group (which is unelected, and has considerable crossover with paid PSF staff; and to my understanding gets paid in some circumstances for code of conduct enforcement work even as the actual core developers are almost all volunteers) made bizarre mischaracterizations of my complaints — going so far as to falsely ascribe to me terminology that I do not use on principle.
You, specifically, should know about these sorts of things because you comment in these discussions all the time. For example, you participated in https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month... and your posts there demonstrate intimate familiarity with the situation, with quotes like "I suppose I have to point out that “This whole debacle…” wasn’t referring to just Tim personally and not just this one bylaw change but rather referring to, well, gestures to the last two months." (I remember reading that post, not logged in of course, back when you made it.)
You have seen the list of charges in https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co...; so I think you reasonably should understand my position: to the extent that the referents of any of these actions were ever identified, the description is either nonsense or does not point at anything any reasonable person could consider actionable. If you disagree, please be concrete. The entire reason for the "endless litigation" you have repeatedly complained about is the lack of anyone on your side making any clear, understandable argument that anything Tim Peters did at any point was actually wrong. The closest I've seen to such an argument comes from ... Tim Peters (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa), and frankly I think it's far too self-effacing.
The clawback is this sentence, yes? "NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal anti- discriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott."
How exactly is "you must follow anti-discrimination law" a "naked" attempt at a double-bind?
(And, um, I'd be more worried about that "prohibited boycott" thing. It's mentioned explicitly in the sentence with the clawback, and I don't see where it's defined.)
Disappointing?
This is what Hacker News has been for at least a decade. Why would you expect any better?
We are talking about a grant here. I can't see anything wrong with offering someone money that comes with strings attached, when you don't owe anything in the first place. Especially when the offer is being made generally rather than targeting anyone in particular.
In my assessment, the "stated mission" reflects politics that indirectly resulted in harm to me personally, perpetrated by the PSF's Code of Conduct Work Group. The way that this "mission" is presented is in line with common statements that the administration has identified as discriminatory, and I believe they are justified in coming to that conclusion. The PSF represents it as something simple and agreeable; but while I indeed agree with the idea they represent it as, in practice I have seen it mean something very different, and objectionable. In making this representation I find that they commonly insinuate salacious, untrue things about people with value systems like my own, and I consider that representation to be simply dishonest.
The Work Group in question has a document of "Enforcement Procedures" for the Code of Conduct. I determined that these procedures may lead to making decisions that directly contradict what the Code of Conduct says. When I pointed this out, I was baselessly accused of citing previous (unspecified) moderation action against me as examples of the phenomenon that the Code of Conduct forbids but the Enforcement Procedures require ignoring. In so doing, it was proposed that I characterized these actions in terms that I explicitly reject using. (In fact, the main point of my post was to reject the term — as it is one commonly used in strawman representations of my position.)
I have firsthand knowledge of the NSF grant in question, but not the PSF’s participation in it. It would not remotely surprise me that they didn’t know about these terms, because there’s a large amount of paperwork and process involved and much of it predates the current administration.
> which makes the current activity read very much like a publicity stunt (after realizing they wouldn't be able to take the money)
I mean, I think the PSF has very explicitly communicated their intent to use the grant’s withdrawal as a fundraising opportunity. That doesn’t strike me as unreasonable, it’s what I would do in their situation to make the best of things.
(I don’t know about you or what you’ve been through, so I don’t have opinions there. But nothing about the PSF’s behavior here appears facially incorrect or unreasonable to me.)
What do you mean it's in their values?
More seriously, I can only respect someone (natural or legal) who refuses 7 figures for their values, which ever those might be and whether I share them or not.
- they apply to _all_ of the org's activities, whereas previous statements only applied to the grant itself (it had to be used in X way) ; this is what PSF found untenable
- the gov can claw back the money if they deem you were violating the reqs pretty much as their discretion; while this might seem unlikely, the Trump admin is highly aggressive towards universities, withholding funding in a way that has not been done before under a bogus excuse of anti-semitism. It shows they will have their way and there's nothing you will be able to do about it.