Diversity on the governance teams

[carols10cents]

I am a cis, white, economically privileged woman who has made contributions to Rust. Hi, I am here.

Speaking for my experiences and no one else’s, I have not experienced ANY discrimination, harassment, barriers, etc in the process of making those contributions and being around the Rust community. I have found it to be very welcoming and friendly. At no point has anyone or anything made me feel like I don’t belong-- quite the opposite. Everyone has been super helpful; every contribution level has been valued and appreciated. Having the Code of Conduct be part of the language and every online venue of the community is really really good-- the Rust subreddit is an oasis in the cesspool of the rest of Reddit, and that is a large part due to the clear expectations and diligent moderation.

I don’t have any suggestions on how to fix this because I’m here. I don’t know why people in other underrepresented groups aren’t here.

I’m not interested in being a part of the moderation team or any team for that matter… I’ve got a day job and I’m enjoying Rust being my no-pressure hobby project right now.

One thing I hope to do in the future is have events like Rails Bridge/Rails Girls that help teach people in underrepresented groups. A thing that excites me about Rust in particular in this context is that I HAVE been scared of systems programming being “too difficult” or “too scary” for me (for me, because I’m a web developer and C never really clicked with me in college, not because I’m a woman, but this may be a feeling that women disproportionally have) but the safety built into the Rust language has given me the confidence and desire to try to learn systems programming again. I would love to help other people get this same confidence. But again, this will probably be something I do locally, and share whatever resources/curriculum/tips I can with everyone of course, but it will take a lot of people running a lot of these events (and pursuing many different outreach strategies at the same time) to move the needle.

This isn’t something that is going to be fixed overnight or even in weeks or months. Nor does the current state of things mean Rust is “doomed” to be a white-male-only team forever, IMO. But I don’t have many useful suggestions, sorry.

[rkruppe]

First I want to explicitly state that I agree with @Manishearth, I don’t take offense and appreciate the passionate contribution.

When assessing a community with no previous community knowledge, they look at the outward communication first.

I understand that (I think). However,

1. The outward communication is not the only important thing for the project overall,
2. It’s unclear to me if, and how much, not forming subteams is better communication than the best possible communication of having formed them.

But yes, it’s makes a certain impression when the official site has a “team” page full of male names. I don’t mean to talk this away, I am just not convinced that abolishing a page like that completely needs to be part of the best way forward.

What if someone wants to join the community on a moderator role? It’s not unusual that new moderators go from “fresh person” to moderator status in a short matter of months. It is not even unusual for people to join communities just for moderation.

I was mostly thinking and writing about the other teams, admittedly. I’m wasn’t aware of people joining just to be moderators, either (with no investment into what’s the community is actually about? really?). Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Again, though, the question is what the provisional solution should be. No moderation team? That’s even more of a blow to the CoC. No list of moderators? That seems to mean not knowing where to get help with CoC violations, which isn’t good either. Yes, the current situation is not perfect - but is it worse than before?

Pro-diversity arguments from non-diverse groups are easily negated. And that’s the very core of the issue.

Which is why it can not be the solution, yeah. The words need to be supported by actions. Which is what I was saying, wasn’t I? We only disagree whether one particular action is inherently harmful, or only potentially harmful in the wrong context.

You cannot put up a CoC on the wall, talk about diversity as an important and then put those things in the freezer because there is a release date to meet. People will turn that against you - rightfully to some point, even. And I prefer those people to be community members.

You can’t put the entire rest of the technical and community stuff in the freezer either. It would be cool if we could just skip forward to the point where the community is closer to what we’d like, but such hibernation has tangible disadvantages. Therefore I seek a way to avoid or minimize those disadvantages also avoiding or minimizing the valid concerns you and others raise.

I have only my almost-zero personal experience to support this claim, but I’d think communicating “Here’s who we are today, here’s what we’d like to become, we’re reaching out to you” is no worse than radio silence. (Talking only about official channels, don’t want to brush over the work you and others are doing!) At the very least, it can’t be so much worse that it justifies waiting an indeterminate amount of time before reaping all the technical and “intra-community” social advantages of the new governance model.

This is not to completely defend the status quo of rust-lang.org/team.html — two of the three clauses I put into the team’s mouth above aren’t being communicated today. I am proposing a middle ground between just blazing into the open as a “boy’s club” and shameful silence while scrambling to find enough team members of diverse backgrounds.

[skade]

Thanks for that statement. I’m in no way arguing that the Rust community is “doomed” or in any way a bad place. I’d like to avoid a future where we need Rust Bridge as anything more then a program of many (the name “Girls” is by the way a huge practical problem for “Rails Girls”[1].

I’d “just” prefer outward communication and activity in that regard to be much better.

Local action is best action in that regard, I you would like assistance, please reach out to @rustberlin and we can help making things easier.

[1]: Source: I’m board member of the body governing Rails Girls Berlin, the largest chapter.

[skade]

First I want to explicitly state that I agree with @Manishearth, I don’t take offense and appreciate the passionate contribution.

When assessing a community with no previous community knowledge, they look at the outward communication first.

I understand that (I think). However,

1. The outward communication is not the only important thing for the project overall,
2. It’s unclear to me if, and how much, not forming subteams is better communication than the best possible communication of having formed them.

But yes, it’s makes a certain impression when the official site has a “team” page full of male names. I don’t mean to talk this away, I am just not convinced that abolishing a page like that completely needs to be part of the best way forward.

1. I haven’t said that, but outward communication is the reason we throw launch parties on a set date, advertise them everywhere, send around shirts and make a big thing about this whole “release” and “we have a team today” thing. Outward communication has been huge during the recent months, just not on the diversity side.
2. I haven’t said not forming them is the best way - avoid forming them until you properly can is the important thing.

Informal is sometimes better then formal. The current setup is just a collection of people based on their work with no stated aim or goal.

What if someone wants to join the community on a moderator role? It’s not unusual that new moderators go from “fresh person” to moderator status in a short matter of months. It is not even unusual for people to join communities just for moderation.

I was mostly thinking and writing about the other teams, admittedly. I’m wasn’t aware of people joining just to be moderators, either (with no investment into what’s the community is actually about? really?). Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Again, though, the question is what the provisional solution should be. No moderation team? That’s even more of a blow to the CoC. No list of moderators? That seems to mean not knowing where to get help with CoC violations, which isn’t good either. Yes, the current situation is not perfect - but is it worse than before?

No moderation team with official organizational blessing would be okay. It worked okayish before, it would work the same way later. “We haven’t formed an official team out of this, because the setup doesn’t fit what we want” is a good reminder of issues. The current state is not.

[quote]

Pro-diversity arguments from non-diverse groups are easily negated. And that’s the very core of the issue.

Which is why it can not be the solution, yeah. The words need to be supported by actions. Which is what I was saying, wasn’t I? We only disagree whether one particular action is inherently harmful, or only potentially harmful in the wrong context.[/quote]

It’s actually harmful. I’m not discussing theory here. This is influencing people that consider joining my community team. And that is costing me actual sleep, because that means that I’ll be the one being up at night doing outward communication that you have flagged as not being the only issue. And I need those people, because there is only so much trust to gain as a cis white male in a group of similar people. To make it very clear: It’s actively harmful to my work and stated goals for contribution to Rust.

You cannot put up a CoC on the wall, talk about diversity as an important and then put those things in the freezer because there is a release date to meet. People will turn that against you - rightfully to some point, even. And I prefer those people to be community members.

You can’t put the entire rest of the technical and community stuff in the freezer either. It would be cool if we could just submerge until the community is closer to what we’d like, but such hibernation has tangible disadvantages, so I search a way to avoid or minimize those also avoiding or minimizing the valid concerns you and others raise.

I have not asked for this. I do a chunk of that community stuff, mind you. So much that I am the first one that @rustlang mentions when it comes to the topic.

Rust Language (rustlang)

I have only my almost-zero personal experience to support this claim, but I’d think communicating “Here’s who we are today, here’s what we’d like to become, we’re reaching out to you” is no worse than radio silence. (Talking only about official channels, don’t want to brush over the work you and others are doing!) At the very least, it can’t be so much worse that it justifies waiting an indeterminate amount of time before reaping all the technical and “intra-community” social advantages of the new governance model.

This is a huge part of the problem: People are arguing that the governance only reflects the community while magically waiting for the thing that helps. In my experience, the governance is a huge part of changing systems. Ruby in Berlin has only done it’s great change because the whole community is governed by those people it wants to speak to.

It’s “hey, we are 5 guys, we’d like more woman here?” vs. “hey, we’re a diverse group, want to hang out with us?”.

This is not to completely defend the status quo of rust-lang.org/team.html — two of the three clauses I put into the team’s mouth above aren’t being communicated today. I am proposing a middle ground between just blazing into the open as a “boy’s club” and shameful silence while scrambling to find enough team members of diverse backgrounds.

Sure, let me be the thorn in the side.

[skade]

It was also wrong to not include those that already did.

Could you expand on this? I don’t see what you mean here. As far as the internal discussion goes; it’s just started. As far as this public discussion goes, it was shared on the initial twitter thread iirc.

Please don’t think of the core/mod teams as one entity with all-encompassing knowledge. At the moment it’s mostly just me and Matt and some core team members actively pushing here. The issue was just raised today morning (in my timezone). We both pinged the people who we felt would be interested, but we don’t know that many off the top of our heads. You may have been involved in diversity work and core team members may have been familiar with it, but I/Matt weren’t.

We did try to start global community efforts multiple times, posted them on the subreddits and it would have been great to get some support there. I don’t want to put blame on people, so I won’t go further into details. I’m puzzled you aren’t and it would be nice if you investigated that.

I’d prefer if the core team took the initiative here in these discussions – we’ve gotten a positive response from them; and I have faith in them that they’ll handle it correctly. I myself have not been involved in core Rust things until recently, and I don’t have much active experience with promoting diversity, so I’m happy to be involved but reluctant to take the initiative in case I make mistakes or misrepresent the situation due to lack of knowledge.

If the core team can’t or won’t do this (seriously doubt that this will be the case), I don’t mind stepping up.

You are actively excluding people that raised the issue by keeping the discussion internal and not at least including those with vested interested. You already failed at noticing the issue internally and acting appropriately. My faith is absent.

[rkruppe]

I haven’t said that, but outward communication is the reason we throw launch parties on a set date, advertise them everywhere, send around shirts and make a big thing about this whole “release” and “we have a team today” thing. Outward communication has been huge during the recent months, just not on the diversity side.

Certainly, and I also want more focus on that. Just not (too much) at the expense of other aspects. There’s putting energy into a cause, and then there’s hurting other causes while doing so. Naturally this goes both ways.

Informal is sometimes better then formal. The current setup is just a collection of people based on their work with no stated aim or goal.

That’s not really true. There is a core team that has privileges, sets priorities, makes tough calls, etc. — though it hasn’t been quite as publicized.

I haven’t said not forming them is the best way - avoid forming them until you properly can is the important thing.

We all seem to be on the same page regarding the eventual goal. That is, I meant “not forming them now”.

No moderation team with official organizational blessing would be okay. It worked okayish before, it would work the same way later. “We haven’t formed an official team out of this, because the setup doesn’t fit what we want” is a good reminder of issues. The current state is not.

As you note, the community is growing and being grown. That means lots of new people and that means more troublemakers and more drama. It only works okay-ish because so far there were few problems, and those that did happen recently went ugly enough that a motion to become more serious about moderation/CoC enforcement formed. The community at large is doing its part, for example people on IRC are giving polite reminders when things get heated. A stern, official warning is invaluable for troublemakers though (this much I do know about moderation). In addition, someone has to have a ban hammer for the official venues, and that alone is an official blessing. (Before, that was just the core team I think?)

It’s actually harmful. I’m not discussing theory here. This is influencing people that consider joining my community team. And that is costing me actual sleep, because that means that I’ll be the one being up at night doing outward communication that you have flagged as not being the only issue. And I need those people, because there is only so much trust to gain as a cis white male in a group of similar people. To make it very clear: It’s actively harmful to my work and stated goals for contribution to Rust.

I’m sorry. Again, I don’t want to defend the status quo. What I am asking you (and myself to be honest) is whether you see a way to have a somewhat official organizational structure that isn’t harmful like that, whether by changing how it is communicated or by amending the exact nature of the governance.

This is a huge part of the problem: People are arguing that the governance only reflects the community while magically waiting for the thing that helps. In my experience, the governance is a huge part of changing systems. Ruby in Berlin has only done it’s great change because the whole community is governed by those people it wants to speak to.

I don’t think anyone in this thread expects the solution to appear out of thin air. I don’t see what any of this has to do with the old vs. the new governance either. The core team of the day before the team announcement wasn’t diverse either, and it still is an important part of the new governance model. Either way there is a governance and, as you say, it has a large part in such changes, specifically by moving towards a state where “we’re a diverse group, want to hang out?” is accurate. If governance needs to take part in these efforts, making more people part of governance should help with that rather than hindering it, even if those people are only working towards diversity, not the source of diversity. I am assuming, of course, that some new “peers” do want to work on it. We’ll have to duke that out with them, rather than each other.

It’s “hey, we are 5 guys, we’d like more woman here?” vs. “hey, we’re a diverse group, want to hang out with us?”.

The first utterance is the current state and will remains so for a (hopefully rather short) while. That’s how we get to the second utterance. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here?

[skade]

Certainly, and I also want more focus on that. Just not (too much) at the expense of other aspects. There’s putting energy into a cause, and then there’s hurting other causes while doing so. Naturally this goes both ways.

I’d like to cut this short here, because I don’t have energy to follow that thread further. There is currently no effort in that direction. You are basically asking for being nice on that state and avoiding putting too much into it. You are also arguing that this work comes at a cost to other kinds of work and that this is harmful. These lines of reasoning are the reason why such efforts are extremely drawing: constant questioning of the work effort.

[rkruppe]

I’m sorry, you are right. I was pressing rather hard on that point. Your work is awesome and you’re awesome! You raise good points and have swayed me a great deal from my initial positions. I just know more about, and am slightly more invested in, the intra-community side of things, so I want to have my cake and eat it too. Please feel free to come back later and I’ll try to have a more productive discussion

[Manishearth]

You are actively excluding people that raised the issue by keeping the discussion internal and not at least including those with vested interested.

Again, this is the external discussion. And everyone who raised this on twitter was linked to this.

I am not a core team member, and I cannot claim to speak for the Rust community; I’ve not been a part of it for that long. I’m not going to take any action and bring in those with vested interests into a discussion until the right people from the Rust side are present. Please stop equating me or anyone else with an omnipresent entity who knows the parties with vested interests and can speak for the community. I am a concerned community member who is also a part of the moderation team. This discussion has just started. You are right that this should have been noticed before. I admit fault in not doing so personally. You are very wrong to berate me/us for not contacting the vested parties when we haven’t even gotten our bearings on this issue yet.

Let me say again that we are not actively excluding anyone. The internal discussion was one on a thread where the mod team was deciding how to operate, and sort of branched off. After some back and forth, Matt posted here for a wider set of opinions. We have not kept the discussion internal. However, I do feel that it would be more productive if the discussion with parties with vested interests was had internally because the Internet is great at derailing such discussions. Note that this discussion has not started yet, though I intend to push for it.

As far as the internal discussion goes, it was mostly focused on how to add diversity to the mod team, and also how to move ahead from here, but we quickly switched to this forum. We have not been doing major discussion internally; if we do we will ensure that the right parties are involved.

I’m puzzled you aren’t and it would be nice if you investigated that.

You’re puzzled I’m not what?

Informal is sometimes better then formal. The current setup is just a collection of people based on their work with no stated aim or goal.

No, the aims and goals of all the subteams were stated in the governance RFC. Furthermore each team may publish additional info on how they plan to operate; but they’ve just formed and are still deciding things.

It worked okayish before, it would work the same way later.

No it didn’t. Things went out of hand with more than one user.

[Manishearth]

Carol, thanks for your response!

I don’t have any suggestions on how to fix this because I’m here. I don’t know why people in other underrepresented groups aren’t here.

I was hoping for some ideas, but I guess it’s a good thing that you haven’t come across any direct problems with the community

I’m not interested in being a part of the moderation team or any team for that matter… I’ve got a day job and I’m enjoying Rust being my no-pressure hobby project right now.

Also hoping you’d be able to help, but I understand.

One thing I hope to do in the future is have events like Rails Bridge/Rails Girls that help teach people in underrepresented groups.

This would be great! I can try to push locally though at the moment the India Rust community is virtually nonexistant, so diversity isn’t something we can talk about yet (given that there’s nobody to talk with). I hope that after the release party next week (lots of interested people, so perhaps a community can form!) we can work on both diversity and expanding the Rust community in general.

Something non-local would be nice too. I’ve only ever done local things so I don’t have much of an idea about this.

A thing that excites me about Rust in particular in this context is that I HAVE been scared of systems programming being “too difficult” or “too scary” for me (for me, because I’m a web developer

Me too!

Nor does the current state of things mean Rust is “doomed” to be a white-male-only team forever, IMO.

Agreed. But it’s not something that’s going to fix itself either.

(I’m not white btw, but that doesn’t really diminish the problem at hand)

[skade]

If you don’t want to be associated with the Rust team, you should make sure your name is removed from the official team page. Don’t keep associations you don’t feel comfortable speaking in.

I’m puzzled that you weren’t made familiar with the community at large, despite joining the globally announced moderation team.

So, to summarize, just that I understand you correctly:

1. there is currently no discussion in the team ongoing about this
2. the team has no bearing on this at all
3. there is an internal discussion
4. communities doing active outreach are excluded
5. the major discussion is still optional
6. situations went out of hand
7. community issues were pushed off after 1.0

I am amazed by the juxtaposition between 6&7.

Sorry for refering to the state of last week as the “current state”, I meant the “past state”.

[Manishearth]

Core team != team. I am not a member of the core team. I am a member of the Rust moderation subteam.

I am familiar with the community at large. I’m not familiar enough to be comfortable speaking on their behalf; even if I’d be around for two years I wouldn’t be doing so IMO. Nor does being familiar with the community mean that I will know each and every community effort that exists. I’m a volunteer here (mostly contributing to Servo, but I’ve started contributing to Rust too), and I generally gravitate towards writing code; even though I have moderation experience and want to help with the same. I participate in the online community (and am familiar with most of the active users online), and sometimes organize local events, but I’ve never had the time or inclination to comprehensively study the whole community. I find it baffling that you expect me to. As a moderator I am supposed to police the online communities; and I do believe I am familiar enough with their composition and workings to do so.

1. there is currently no discussion in the team ongoing about this
2. there is an internal discussion

There is a discussion going on internally (that I am a part of), but it’s specific to the mod team issue, not exactly the larger issue. The larger issue is getting talked about too though, but that wasn’t the major focus. I do not know if the core team is having a discussion internally. It would make sense for them to have one internally on how to handle this issue (and then proceed to handle it publicly, or proceed to a private discussion involving parties with vested interests), but I suspect that they are tired after this week and will hold it off to monday.

Like I said before, I don’t see an issue of an internal discussion while we’re still getting our bearings.

2. the team has no bearing on this at all

What team? I don’t know what you’re trying to say here.

4. communities doing active outreach are excluded

No, no, and once again no. I’m not explaining this again.

5. the major discussion is still optional

Nothing’s been planned yet. I intend for it to happen.

6. situations went out of hand

In the past, yes. There were ugly and toxic discussions that happened, leading to multiple users leaving. These weren’t exactly community issues, it was mainly dissent on technical decisions that was coupled with users behaving nonconstructively in these discussions and nothing being done about it because CoC enforcement hadn’t been worked out.

7. community issues were pushed off after 1.0

Not consciously, no. Not that I know of. But yes, this sort of happened.

[skade]

Then, I’d like to speak to a member of the core team.

[Manishearth]

Then, I’d like to speak to a member of the core team.

cc @steveklabnik @aturon @alexcrichton @brson @nikomatsakis @pcwalton

[Manishearth]

Just to be clear, this thread was an indication that some of us understand the problem, and a desire to discuss and fix it. Both mod team members noted that they were speaking here in a personal capacity.

It’s not a “this is how we intend to address it” thread, and I think it will take some time before everyone figures out how to do so. It’s a “We have a problem: how should we address it?” thread.

“it” being the Rust community diversity issue, not the mod team issue (we’re still figuring out what to do there).

I, personally, as a community member feel that, moving forward, we should:

• Contact people who are experienced with fixing diversity issues and ask for an assessment and advice. Include community members who have been active in these things too. I’m okay with this discussion being private amongst participants (perhaps minuted); and would prefer it; because public internet discussions can go viral and get derailed, plus it’s harder to be frank in public.
• Do some introspection to figure out what we’re doing wrong. I think many of us already have.
• Work on some concrete solutions using the assessment and advice from point 1. Announce it.

As far as the mod team goes; we hope to figure something out. I am okay with the mod team not being diverse for some time, but I think it should happen eventually and the sooner the better. This should be a priority for us.

[erickt]

@skade: speaking with my SF meetup organizer hat on, have any advice on organizing more diverse meet ups? How did you adjust the Berlin meetup to work better for care givers? For the past events my focus has been trying to grow the community by organizing talks that hopefully interest different technical groups. I would be wonderful to bring in a broader and more diverse group too.

[nrc]

I think you agree with this … the efforts for diversity within the mod team are not tokenism

Yes, I 100% agree!

(I just wanted to agree with that but Discuss insists my post needs more chars)

[wycats]

(I just wanted to agree with that but Discuss insists my post needs more chars)

You can always the post

[starkat99]

I’m a woman and I just started learning Rust this week, before the 1.0 release, just playing with the beta. I learned about the 1.0 release from multiple friends pointing out the total lack of women and non-white folks on the teams page. Like, that’s the first impression multiple women I know are getting of Rust, and it’s very negative. I don’t know anything about the Rust community, but I do know this was a huge red flag that almost halted my learning Rust. And I know most of the other folks pointing it out basically just dismissed Rust as “yet another one of that kind of open source community.”

Frankly, the only encouraging thing was Twitter replies pointing out that there’s awareness of the problem…But looking at this thread, there’s lots of talk and absolutely nothing being said here on how to fix it, which is very discouraging. Only reason I’m even taking the time to say this is a couple folks engaging me; that needs to be happening across the board, not some local efforts by a handful of folks.

Your teams need to include women asap, because the longer this structure continues right now, the harder it will be to change. Folks like me in “wait and see” mode will only wait so long. You need to be engaging directly with women-focused organizations, and definitely not demanding any women fix the problem for you, because quite frankly, we don’t owe any time to an organization that hasn’t done any of the work necessary to build diversity in the community. Most of us likely aren’t going to want to be the first few token women…

[nrc]

You can always the post

But I wanted to agree with the specific piece of text that I quoted, not show vague liking for the whole post.