Good riddance, and easily enough replaced.
On its face, none of these players have accountability. With enough noise individuals could be pressured out from either group. And if either group makes wrong choices, the penalty is just removal.
It's messy; I don't see any obvious answers or conclusions.
This really is like a very strange, petty version of last year’s (ongoing?) Python Foundation moderation debacle, which is quite fitting for one of the goofiest online communities I’ve ever interacted with. NixOS is probably great and laboring to improve OSS is always laudable, but they’re quite a… confident bunch.
Some random thoughts from the thread:
1. “Rust has a different rule; who are you to say you know better than the rust charter writers?” is a hilarious and very Rustian point to make.
2. Describing forum moderation as some arcane art that only experts can truly understand is something I never expected to see outside of political science textbooks. Like a hyperbolic thought experiment criticizing Technocracy, but real…
3. I referenced this above, but the idea that true objectivity is impossible and thus should be forgotten applies equally as much to truth more broadly, good, and unity (i.e. definitions of terms). It’s something we must strive for in order to make society work, knowing that perfect success is inherently unreachable! ISTG, our society really needs to make philosophy courses more accessible+popular…
P.S. anyone know what the political left/right split here is? I don’t want to litigate that part on HN ofc, but there’s quite a few vague allusions that make think it’s there, just like it was for the Python debacle. Sadly, no one in the linked thread has made it clear yet for us unlookers, if so.
Sadly, I don't think it's rare in the FOSS world these days.
> The framing of “the moderation team” resigning when two of them aren’t is a delectable cherry on top of the other drama.
I'd keep an eye out on social media to see what pressure the remaining mods face from those loyal to the resigning ones (including themselves).
> last year’s (ongoing?) Python Foundation moderation debacle
Everyone quieted down about it, but there was renewed tension in this year's elections thanks in large part to Franz Kiraly's efforts to reform the organization (ref. https://github.com/python-software-federation/psf2025 ; https://discuss.python.org/t/_/103390 ; https://discuss.python.org/t/_/103460 ; https://discuss.python.org/t/_/103760 ; https://discuss.python.org/t/_/103776).
> P.S. anyone know what the political left/right split here is?
The upset moderators are on the far left (per contemporary American conception of the spectrum). All of this fundamentally goes back to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40199153 , if not further. (Even if I weren't familiar with the story, this would be my prior assumption by now.)
One of those is resigning, but for other reasons. I don't know about the last one.
> some arcane art that only experts can truly understand the intricacies of
I mean, it kinda is. It doesn't take long to get up to speed, if you have good teachers (I'd say 3 months), but I keep watching new moderators making the same mistakes over and over again, in a couple of online spaces. (The problem's greater in the space without a culture of teaching the newbies.)
I know nothing about what's actually happening with NixOS, but I can imagine scenarios where the moderation team's in the right, the steering council is in the right, and where neither group is in the right, which would produce the observed evidence.
1. Yeah it’s confusing, but keep scrolling — the last one is staying. Also the first one said that they’ll try to do mod stuff in their spare time, which tells me they aren’t really resigning
2. Moderation is certainly a skill, no doubt about it — just as policing is IRL. I just find the idea that it’s such an arcane skill that others couldn’t possibly have opinions about it or critically assess instances of it to be… hubristic?
3. Yes, I totally accept that the mod team might be fighting some sort of good fight here that’s separate from the procedural debate (where they’re clearly in the wrong). Still, even if that is the case: they’re not making that point very convincingly, at least for this outsider!
Could you elaborate?
I'm not aware of any other open source project so consumed with virtue signal bikeshedding.
My impression is that:
* NixOS had light governance for many years, which used to be enough, but wasn't enough to adress disagreements as of around 2022.
* A moderation team partially filled that governance gap, but it was seen to be politically motivated, and is now being held accountable by an elected body (the steering committee).
* This shift in power has resulted in tensions.
* NixOS users skew a little idiosyncratic in general. I'd hazard a guess this coincides with wanting full control of their machines, and being willing to upend the status quo to do so.
I'm hopeful that as more governance is rooted in the elected body, we'll have less tension over time.
I'm thankful for all contributors who make NixOS for what it is today.
2) this post is a good summary of the entire situation: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/a-statement-from-members-of-th...
3) as someone with a bit of a horse in this race, I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best. The past moderation team has done thankless work for a long time, but has struggled to keep up with the community growth. I think the Steering Committee is doing a good job so far.
Overall, this is a bit of a flamey post. Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever.
I see five names. Who's remaining?
> [the SC response] is a good summary of the entire situation
It's unfathomable to me that they're even considering this:
> 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.
The fact that the moderators would resign and in the same breath call upon people they consider adversaries to resign as well, speaks to their character. As does the vague "Measures are in place to ensure essential capabilities are maintained." wording. This is blatantly a power grab by people who clearly already held far too much power.
> I feel like things are working as intended here and this is probably for the best.... Seems to me like there is nothing much to see here. The Nix Community feels healthier than ever.
If the resigned members stay gone and get exactly nothing out of their appeals, I could maybe agree. It's fundamentally unhealthy to have moderation done by a self-appointing, ideologically filtering clique that's demonstrably at odds with a large portion of the community as well as their elected steering committee.
The website lists 7: https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/
It feels inaccurate to say "the team resigns" when it's ~70%.
From the outside, this concerns me for the longevity of the project. I'm sure if it makes it through it could be better for it; but it is concerning and makes me push it further down the list to try.
The politics has never impacted me as a nix user.
I get the feeling like their insistence on things like CoCs is ultimately just used as a false flag to censor "wrong" opinions based on colorful interpretations of subjective terminology used in the policy.
And they're moderators, so, what they say is already "the law" (at least in their eyes) anyways... don't need a code of conduct to tell people the mods have the final say regardless.
I don't think the term "false flag" works that way, but it 110% is exactly that.
Consider how they frame the proposal to add other mods:
> 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
Which is to say, they think it's inherently wrong to put people on the mod team who disagree with their political views, when they don't even moderate a space that's about politics.
This is what you get when you have an unelected body that appoints its own successors and give it the power to enforce "conduct".
... Incidentally, this also perfectly describes the Python Software Foundation's "work groups" for their Code of Conduct (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter) and for "diversity and inclusion" (https://wiki.python.org/psf/DiversityandInclusionWG). (Actually, it seems like most of the work groups work this way.) I'm also amused at how both of these charters refer to "Folks" rather than, say "People". Seems to me like a clear signal of the intended culture, frankly.
For reference, to my knowledge these words are pretty much interchangeable with "folks" being less formal I guess.
My reading of that is they think it's inherently wrong to add people to the mod team because they disagree with their political views. Which seems reasonable to me.
Centos stream
Node to deno
Etc etc
Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way gravitate towards that and those that don’t stay. And boom. There’s peace again.
v.s.
> Why hasn’t there been a fork of nixos? And the folks who want to do things in a certain politically leaning way stay and those that don’t gravitate towards that.
now let's spend the next few years arguing which of these is the correct proposition.
sure, it's more complicated: there's questions about _what_ to fork (Nix is an _ecosystem_, not necessarily a single repository), there are certain things which can't trivially _be_ forked (e.g. a multi-hundred-TB S3 cache that's actually critical infrastructure; project websites, wikis, uncountable automation services). how do you coordinate all the details of forking, if forking isn't actually as trivial as pushing the "fork" button? that requires highly capable leaders, and if the ecosystem were good at finding and promoting that type of leader, then it wouldn't be in this place to begin with.
more optimistically, various parts of this ecosystem _have_ been forked, or reshaped, by various entities. things happen; sometimes that happening is just a lengthy process.
For no other community this is the case. The technology appears interesting, but from the outside it definitely looks like a continuously collapsing project.
If you're out there crawling open source projects: looking to insert "acceptable usage guides", edit doc language to be Correct (tm), or ready to jump into essays on being persecuted, people should just start blocking these posters.
Can you imagine if HN allowed politics. I think most of us here would hate it. RN, hacker news feels like this nice little oasis and even when major political events happened you could come here and it would always have gems. I just think we would be happier if that applied to open source, too. I've often wished to have a plugin that just filters all political stuff from my screen. I will probably develop it one day.
If open source communities stuck to technical matters, there would be little to no need for moderators to pass judgment on political or social views. Their primary role would be in conflict resolution over technical matters.
Unfortunately, people being people, political and social views will emerge. Also, people being people, any attempt by moderators to check these discussions will result in complaints, by one side or the other, about being silenced over "correct speak". It does not much matter which side of the social or political spectrum a person falls on.
As far as I can tell, this all ultimately started because a fringe of activists (aligned with this group of moderators, and possibly including them) within the community decided they didn't like the political implications of where the project got its funding.
There's one side that doesn't practically care about that, and then there's the other side that would want me not only removed from that community, cancelled, but even physically assaulted because apparently that's ok because I hold the "wrong" views so laws and human rights no longer apply.
Lots of talk about them, but nobody will just say what they are?
The problem is that communities want to have (or at least tolerate having) these demographic surveys in the first place. The easiest way to avoid identity politics drama is to avoid identity politics, and the easiest way to avoid identity politics is to minimize and discourage mention of identity. pg was right (https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html).
Open source is for everyone. The OSI is abundantly clear about this. For any given project this means everyone in principle; there is no obligation to check whether you have collected all the identity Pokemon. If your group is small this is impossible and if it is large then it is either inevitable or a failure is not your fault (and trying to force the issue is in fact the discriminatory thing). Besides which, the identity Pokedex doesn't exist in the first place. Why even invite the argument about the categories that need to be considered?
You don't draw a circle by adding more sides. You draw it by using a damn compass.
i mean, this is a set of opinions and positions that are far beyond anything that could be called "moderate opinion[s] on gender representation" and are pretty uncontroversially terrible, particularly in the context of any non-homogeneous community of people
if you post something like this to the public internet and stand behind it, then man i'm not sure what you expect, you're self-identifying as an asshole, and it can't be surprising when you're banned from places as a consequence
edit: good lord, i clicked around a bit more on that website, dude is obviously a psychopath, and i feel duped even responding to this kind of nonsense
Welp.
Could someone point me to examples of controversial moderation decisions that were “interfered” with?
https://github.com/NixOS/moderation/blob/main/moderation-log...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA
My own permanban is detailed in this post:
> The Nix Steering Committee (SC) (https://nixos.org/community/teams/steering-committee/) is the elected community leadership body. It was established as part of the Nix governance constitution (https://github.com/NixOS/org/blob/main/doc/constitution.md) last year, after which the first elections were held, where 450 contributors voted for the current members. This years election (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-election-committee-announc...) is currently in progress. The SC generally is responsible over project direction and community matters, including management of teams. While most responsibilities are delegated, the SC has the authority to step in when necessary.
> The moderation team (https://nixos.org/community/teams/moderation/) was established before the SC or constitution existed. The initial moderators were appointed from RFC 102 (https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/blob/master/rfcs/0102-moderati...), with the mandate to self-select successors. Over the years the team has changed members a lot, none of the initial members are part of it anymore, and the last larger rotation happened last year. The responsibilities include moderation according to the Code of Conduct (CoC) (https://github.com/NixOS/.github/blob/master/CODE\_OF\_CONDU...) of the official community spaces, which is mostly the Discourse and a bunch of Matrix channels. Earlier this year the now-existing SC took on the responsibility of approving new mod team members and CoC changes (https://discourse.nixos.org/t/code-of-conduct-and-moderation...).
Is any of this overhead really needed? What does it accomplish?
(Serious question, maybe I’m just too dim to get it)
Disclaimer: I use nixos but try not to participate in it (private fork), after seeing how they treat prospective contributors.
Moderation is needed, but often abused and used as a tool to create echo chambers.
> What does it accomplish?
As mentioned above, It accomplishes one thing: creating an echo chamber.
Echo cambers are useful, because it shows "wide support" from the community while ignoring the fact that the "community" has been reduced to just the "right people".
For example, in a room there are 100 people, three that have been elected / selected to lead the 97. The three, censor / kick / eliminate 90 people because of their dissenting opinions. Now, the majority (3+7=10) can rule in peace. Quite simple actually.
It's basically authoritarianism that breeds fascism. This is usually a product of the death of objective truth.
Oh! and this is not a LEFT vs. RIGHT problem. Here is a good read: https://danielmiessler.com/blog/bad-governments-on-the-left-...
If you review the post and refresh it frequently, you will observe the censorship in action.
Some instances of censorship are quite extreme. They censor individuals for even the mildest comments. I saw one person get flagged for linking to Eelco Dolstra's PhD thesis and requesting more scientific discussion. The TLDR was something like "More of THIS" were "THIS" was a hyperlink to Dolstra's PHD thesis that sparked NixOS. I wanted to reply, stepped away for a meal, and by the time I returned, the comment had been censored.
NixOS isn't a technical project anymore. It's just Dolstra's stole life's work being kept in life support. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you are... this should anger you. They stole this man's life's work through distasteful political shenanigans.
It's like removing Linus from Linux (unsuccessful removal attempts), Stallman from FOSS (unsuccessful removal attempts), and Eelco Dolstra from NixOS (removed).
I don't care for these people thoughts or beliefs, I see them for what they are, thought leaders. People that ACTUALLY move us (humanity) FORWARD. They should stay in place leading their respective movements for as long as possible or until they break the LAW. Not some "constitution of NixOS" or "bylaws of NixOS", the actual LAW of their respective jurisdiction.
And it is not even about politics and woke, I do not think there were any political statement here. It is just obvious this again was written by a crazy person.
So some people had a problem with the Nix leadership for years, they made numerous drama and forked the project (as they have the right to). But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems...
I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks?
There may not have been political statements here but the people doing this absolutely are motivated by their politics.
> But strangely none of those forks really got any traction or are going anywhere it seems... I am wondering why are those unhappy contributors helping the Lix project or some other forks?
Presumably they aren't helping forks because they despair of any fork getting anywhere near the traction of the original.
But that shouldn't be NixOS's problem.
Then the drama extended because people, even if they weren't right-wing/MAGA/anti-wokism had to agree with the moderators' political opinions.
So when TFA writes this:
> apparently trying to address perceptions of political bias by making political appointments
What they really mean is: "We went so far left our brains left our bodies and we now consider anyone to the right of Stalin to be a nazi".
Is that being up in arms about the usage of woks? I always knew it was a fairly controversial piece of kitchen equipment, but this is a concerning development.
