Constitutional Assembly Statement on Jon Ringer

The mission of the NCA is to establish a community-based governance structure, which still takes some time, but the current situation regarding Jon Ringer (@jonringer) calls for immediate attention.

We want to see people engage in forward progressing change in the project. We believe that this means acting generally in ways which de-escalate hard issues and seek resolution not rancor. Respectful disagreement is substantially different from rhetorical appeals.

In discussion with the moderation team, we are recommending that Jon should be banned permanently from all community spaces.

The reason for this has been well explained throughout the public discussions: Jon’s behavior continues to encourage community polarisation and drama, despite the previous suspension for the same reason, clearly indicating that his behavior has not changed for the better.

We summarise the situation:

  1. Jon was suspended for 6 weeks for repeatedly derailing sensitive discussions and willfully furthering the division in the community. For more information, see Why was Jon Ringer banned from GitHub? - #23

  2. After the suspension, Jon asked @domenkozar in private to get back Nixpkgs commit access, to which Domen replied “can you request it on the commit issue?”

  3. Jon made this lengthy request in the issue. It contained two main parts: A summary of Jon’s contributions and an appeal that the suspension was not justified. The post was later edited to remove the latter part, check the revision history for the original.

    This behavior is problematic because it escalated the situation beyond necessity.

  4. After initial responses on the issue, Jon made posts on both Reddit (“[Drama] Will jonringer’s commit bit be restored?”) and Discourse (“Should jonringer get his commit bit back?”).

    It’s generally a good idea to move discussions into their own threads, but in this case, the framing and choice of discussion venue further escalated the situation.

  5. Despite @infinisil asking him to step away, Jon continued engaging in the discussion with lengthy replies to defend his actions.

    This behavior further escalated the situation even more (and continued the trend leading up to the initial suspension).

We do not condone such behavior and don’t think it’s possible to establish a healthy community if it continues to be allowed.

If you want to give feedback on this, feel free to contact us privately.

110 Likes