A statement of why I oppose a full re-election:
I said most of this a month ago.
I’ve heard from some who do not want to get involved due to the potential of being targeted by a public mob. This possibility affected their actions. Paraphrasing: “I don’t really care too much about XYZ, but I can’t take the personal or professional risk to be the center of controversy.” This means fear has become the deciding factor or at least that it is not worth the risk or their time. This is rational behavior by any individual and I do not blame anyone for it. But we must be clear; this is a failure. I’m sad to say this is a failure of the community leadership, including myself, to protect people from bullying behavior, from the fear of being targeted by a mob stirred up by a few people intent on causing chaos and drama, who then point to that very chaos as the justification for creating more of it. Instead, we are setting the standard that the community uses established mechanisms for governance, not the court of social media and not the volume of passionate rabble-rousing.
I was optimistic at that time. I am still trying to be optimistic. This is another variant of the same problem. We have seen any group of leaders we have become targeted and pressured until the stress breaks them. Look at the previous Board. Look through the history. From Eelco to Domen, Jonas, and Theophane. The SC just went through the same kind of targeting. Each person is put under pressure, receives open-letters, or campaigns of harassment, or undermined and then gaslit about it. The only escape is to resign or acquiesce. Then the attention goes to the next target. Are we to believe that they all were so flawed as to deserve all that pressure? The moderation teams have also had immense churn. Usually they didn’t have such targeted attacks hosted and amplified on official platforms (because those got moderated, thankfully), but they have had to deal with all the toxicity, which leads towards a large amount of stress, mental pressure, burnout, and finally frustration to give up.
For the recent attack on John; are we to believe that in the space of less than an hour or two and with incomplete information people are coming to reasonable judgements? Attaching names to a doc is a commitment strategy that discourages further review. Swept up by the whirlwind and passions, the mob is stirred up and then we are driven by fear yet again. And then the mob uses the chaos that it itself just caused, to decry the legitimacy of its target?
No. This is unjust. This is wrong. This leads to the very same outcome and history will repeat itself. Because there is no set of perfect leaders without flaws. The crowd has burned out many of the good ones; even the ones who could find ways to productively disagree, but who could work together on the one thing we should be here for. Again, I do not blame anyone who is calling for this. It is almost assuredly not malicious. But it is misguided and misled.
I know I have some minority opinions, but I am willing to concede quite a bit and compromise. I’ve abided by all decisions we made as an SC. That is how representative democracy works, it is the structure the NCA set up. It is the “hold outs” that have not gone back on their word or broken trust. The semi-yearly outrage behavior is shameful and having the targets of it simply walk away to offer the crowd a victory only encourages this to happen again the next time; it becomes normalized. A full reset and ongoing electioneering and manipulation means we end up with another set of 7 people, representative of the various groups, who distrust one another and will need to spend months to build it back up, but now they have even more pressure on them. By having SC continuity you at least have some stability over the long-term.
I will not reward such behavior, no matter who it is targeted at or what the motive is. The behavior is wrong, no matter the intention.
I am willing to discuss this with anyone and answer questions or discuss. Several of you have reached out, thank you.