A statement from members of the moderation team

Announcements
1

We resign, effective immediately, in protest of the Steering Committee’s ongoing pattern of attempting to interfere with moderation team operation, membership and specific moderation decisions.

This is not a statement we enjoy making, and we apologize to the community for leaving right before an election that is bound to be contentious, and likely now more so. Unfortunately, the Constitution does not provide a meaningful recourse to SC overreach, and we cannot in good faith continue operating under the current conditions, leaving us no other options.

The SC has involved itself in matters of moderation since its inception, but has repeatedly failed to understand the issues in the community and the requirements of moderation. We have experienced:

  • SC members attempting to stall implementation of some moderation decisions and actively subverting others
  • SC members asserting their authority to specifically target individual community members and topics of conversation, and pressure moderation to apply additional action under threat of further interference
  • SC members demanding justification for moderation actions post-hoc, responding agressively when explanations have been misunderstood, and going silent with no acknowledgement of further clarifications
  • SC attempting to unilaterally remove moderation team members with no justification
  • SC attempting to unilaterally appoint new members to the moderation team
    • intially phrased as a suggestion, with a stated goal of adding “diversity of opinion” and “tension” to the moderation team
    • apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments
    • despite this suggestion being immediately rejected as destructive and misguided by the moderation team
    • despite the specific candidate being rejected as unsuitable by the moderation team, and agreement from SC that at least some of the reasons discussed were disqualifying
    • eventually phrased as a mandatory directive, after no further mention of the candidate in the intervening months, and after said candidate explicitly petitioning SC to install them as a moderator

The SC has also shown, in private and public conversations, their lack of understanding of basic principles of community management and open communication. They have mistaken quiet and a lack of controversy for success and peace. They have consistently become upset when there is criticism, and gone quiet on crucial issues in between. We have some fundamental conflicts in this community, which absolutely require discussion. Meanwhile, discussion with the SC has only become less effective.

We think that the goal of moderation should not be to avoid difficult conversations - it’s to navigate those difficult conversations in ways that remain safe and constructive. We believe we’ve made considerable progress as a community on making those conversations happen, and we believe they need to happen more for the project to grow, not be suppressed. We thank everyone for the growth that we have seen, and for their efforts to avoid personal focus in discussion, especially recently.

We call on the SC: to join us in resigning, effective immediately, with no second terms, and allow new members to take their place based on the community vote.

We call on the community: to demand transparency and accountability from the elected SC members, and checks and balances on their reach.

We call on the SC candidates: to commit to implementing a Constitution reform that will require transparency and accountability from the SC, with teams like technical steering and moderation providing a counterbalance.

We’re not leaving the community - yet, anyway. We will be around. Measures are in place to ensure essential capabilities are maintained. We hope to see this community grow and prosper, and we believe that it is only possible through transparency, accountability and trust.

  • 0x4A6F
  • arianvp
  • K900
  • nim65s
  • uep
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Thank you for your services and commitment to this community, it was and is highly appreciated by many of us. Let’s hope we will be able to reach better days yet.

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Thanks for your work so far, hoping the future will be brighter.

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I made this a question to candidates in How would you act on the moderation team's call to SC candidates? · Issue #390 · NixOS/SC-election-2025 · GitHub.

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Thanks for your work, you all! And thank you for seeking transparency and drawing consequences. I respect your decisions.

Could SC comment on the accusations before the elections? Especially on the last two points about trying to remove team members and appointing their own?

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Dear 0x4A6F, arianvp, K900, nim65s, uep and community,

I’d like to share my personal view on your resignation, which I support.

in protest of the Steering Committee’s ongoing pattern of attempting to interfere with moderation team operation, membership and specific moderation decisions.

The SC has tried to work with the moderation team to understand moderation decisions and steer towards more objective moderation behavior, with the goal of making moderation fair and respectable, which feeds back into making moderation work easier.
Nonetheless, we have continued to observe moderation not based on the Code of Conduct, but opinions and interpersonal tradeoffs (to put it nicely).

Furthermore, we have observed an unwillingness to be accountable to the Steering Committee; the only body they are directly accountable to anyway.
Due to this continued pattern, we’ve had to take stronger action.

We call on the SC: to join us in resigning, effective immediately, with no second terms, and allow new members to take their place based on the community vote.

I have no plans to resign, nor do I believe @Ericson2314 will. I believe the NCA made a good decision to stagger elections and smoothen SC transitions. Furthermore I believe I can continue to represent the community.

We call on the SC candidates: to commit to implementing a Constitution reform that will require transparency and accountability from the SC, with teams like technical steering and moderation providing a counterbalance.

Are you asking for an elected body to be accountable to an unelected people. I don’t think this is entirely impossible, but it at least needs more thought put into it, and before taking any sort of bureaucratic approach, we should consider changing the governance culture, which is entirely within an SC’s power.

Looking back on the past year, I believe the lack of transparency has at first served us well in terms of reducing drama and giving some “breathing room”, but since this summer, I have felt that balance shift. To be frank, making such a change was difficult in the face of numerous ongoing issues.

I acknowledge that more openness is needed, and this is important for the effectiveness of the SC and the community as a whole to build a respectable reputation for the SC as part of the governance culture. This is an area in which the current SC has not been able to develop, which I agree is unfortunate. I believe it was necessary, and it should not stain the future development of the community. Also, as I have alluded to, I do not believe a constitutional change is currently required to guarantee openness, unless the next SC is somehow unable to change the governance culture to be more open.

This will be a turning point, for both the SC and moderation, neither of which should operate in a “damage control” mode anymore.

101 Likes
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IMO, you bring the fight to meydan[1], you let meydan learn the facts judge for themselves

  1. αγορά - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
    maidan - Wiktionary, the free dictionary ↩︎

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The project governance in whichever form has tried to chase this goal of “objectivity” for as long as I remember being involved with NixOS, and for just as long it has failed to produce the envisioned outcome of a healthy community, despite repeated changes of entire moderation teams.

I would suggest that the SC should take some time to think about why that is, and whether perhaps there is an expertise-based reason why moderators have not actually operated this way in practice, and whether the SC really has the requisite background to decide on the correct policy here.

I’ll leave my comments at that.

47 Likes
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Thank you for your commitment of time and energy towards the moderation of official NixOS spaces. I believe that moderation is a fraught and difficult task; that maintaining a fair and principled approach is never easy, nor is the appearance of fairness always going to be possible; and that moderation makes demands on time, attention and availability that other aspects of governance may not. Thank you for your willingness to step into that role, and for your service.

Could we get clarification on some matters?

  1. The members listed as resigning are the 5 members 0x4A6F, arianvp, K900, nim65s, and uep. Based on the Moderation Team Page, which lists 7 members, my understanding then is that lassulus and Aleksana have not resigned. Is that correct?
  2. Without undue breach of privacy, is it possible to better understand:

?

  1. Without undue breach of privacy, is it possible to better understand

?

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I agree with everything @roberth said. I’m not resigning either.

48 Likes
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I will be withdrawing for personal reasons. I’m currently studying for a Master’s degree in another major, which is quite tight, and I have internships (and hopefully a job) coming up soon. I have also lost the interest to oversee all the NixOS community affairs.

Apart from that, I will try my best to use my free time to do maintenance work, but I can’t guarantee that.

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at NixCon '24 the NCA introduced its created constitution as initial steps in a gradual process of improvement, and i believe the current situation is demonstrating opportunity for improvement.

in light of multiple SC members declining the opportunity to reaffirm their mandate (at a point where said mandate is credibly called into question, i.e. backed by a body’s majority resignation), I feel inclined to reiterate it’s unfortunate our governance model has no recourse yet when an elected member were to lose their electorate’s trust.

(if we were to revise this, a follow-up concern would be technical implementations.)

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Doesn’t the board already provide counter balance to the SC? Or is it the other way around?

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I agree with @dragon_logic. We already have a process, nobody is using it but many people ask for it being changed. There is an upcoming election where majority of seats is already up for election so the next SC can make thing completely different.

I would like to also highlight that this is the first year of the existence of the SC so maybe we need to wait a bit more time to see if the governance model really works out or not. Currently the lack of established processes probably makes it hard to start. Maybe we should lower our expectations that all problems can be solved within a year.

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I’m sad that it turned out this way, though I always expected it to. Thank you for your courage in speaking out publicly, and in resigning.

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I think you’ve failed to understand the graveness of your mistake. Since the outset of the SC, I’ve hoped that it would work to form new governance structures, not form a grip on decisions made community-wide. The recent nixpkgs-core team announcement is an example of what the SC should be doing: delegation. The SC’s job this year was to set up rules of governance such that teams of experts could form and carry out their intended purpose reasonably autonomously. Both Robert and the resigning moderators describe the SC’s approach to moderation as very different from delegation.

I don’t expect the SC to be experts on many of the subjects that they govern. Robert explained that he had a different opinion of how to approach moderation than the moderation team, but frankly Robert, I don’t think you were elected to ensure every moderation action met your approval. I think your job this year was to empower the mod team, yield to their expertise, and help identify the rules that need changing, not the decisions that need changing. If there was a problem with the mod team’s rules of engagement, that could have been a broader policy conversation, rather than having the SC assume direct control of the mod team’s actions. The constitution does give the SC power to control the membership of the teams it manages, but IMO this should be seen as an extraordinary measure for use when there is zero confidence in the team.

The consequences of overreach here are extremely steep. When you consistently bypass delegation, you will be left with no delegates. The teams the SC manages have to be able to trust the SC. When the SC erodes that trust, the teams will vanish. This matters much more than having the teams act the way the SC wishes they would. You guys really need to realize that a mass resignation of a team is an objective and dramatic failure of the SC. It doesn’t matter that you disagreed with them; it matters that you chose the wrong methods to address your disagreement.

I was approached last night by a member of the SC asking me if I wanted to be a moderator. In light of this mass resignation, I now find that disturbing.

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The rust project has a governance rule that the core team and the moderation team may disband themselves and the other team. The SC either does not understand why this rule exists or thinks themselves to have better judgement than the rust project.

I will defer to the mass resignation of core maintainers of the past two years due to the poor decisions of basically exactly the same people as the SC members who admitted to being the problem above as to whether they actually have better judgement than the rust project.

40 Likes
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I’m a bit busy today (c-base is celebrating it’s 30th birthday :tada:). I will stay a moderator until at least post election. I feel responsible for this as the longest serving moderator and part of the NCA and the Board. Please keep it civil so I don’t have a bazillion flags to resolve tomorrow :slight_smile:

EDIT: this means a more thorough statement will be made in the coming days

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Well, I’m already ending my term early and I’ve also publicly commented on my desire for Constitutional reforms so I have no conflict of interest in that regard, but I’ll comment on the moderation team’s request for constitutional reform. This is also me speaking in an unofficial capacity and not officially representing the Steering Committee.

My general disposition is: if the moderation team wants to reform the Constitution to put themselves on an equal footing to the Steering Committee team (a “counterbalance” as you put it) then they also need to reform the Constitution to make their positions elected positions instead of “self-appointed” positions (because currently only moderation team members can appoint new members).

More generally, it’s not clear from the resignation letter what the moderation team envisioned as the external checks or accountability on their team. Currently, because the moderation team is unelected and self-appointed, the only check on the moderation team is the Steering Committee’s constitutional authority to create and manage teams.

However, two of the grievances of the resignation letter are related to the Steering Committee proposing to add or remove members from the team, so if the moderation team is not okay with that then they need to propose a different accountability mechanism.

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qed.

The word “proposing” is doing a lot of work here methinks.

If the Steering Committee wants to have a say in how moderation should be done, it needs to match the moderators’ skill in navigating a community this large. From what I’ve seen so far, this has very much not been the case. Especially the desire for more “friction” in the moderation team (I’d like to hear the SC’s perspective on that wording) is some pretty bad optics to me, to the point of blurring the line between serious incompetence and questionable intentions.

29 Likes