Context:
Preface
I want to preface this blog post by coming forward with some of my political views and experience, as I think they’re at least slightly relevant to this situation and provide some important context. I am a political progressive, and I’ve been a progressive ever since I first got into politics back in 2017. I’m currently active in a left-wing political party and used to be active in it’s youth organization, until I was suspended for false claims of entryism. A lot of my political work has been focused on figting against oppression of ethnic minorities, queer people, women and other oppressed peoples. This of course includes trans people, although I’m not trans myself. I’ll let trans people talk about the trans experience and how it relates, or doesn’t relate, to the Hyprland community, and specifically it’s Discord-server.
I’m writing this post to talk about something else: disciplinary actions, civility, how to be constructive and internal culture in organizations. These are things I’ve learned a lot about and think a lot about as a consequence of my political and organizational activity and experience. Organizational structures, internal culture and how it shapes its members is something I have a genuine interest in, and analyzed and read a lot about. Hopefully someone will find this interesting and/or enlightening.
The Ban Reason
I think it’s fair to say that Vaxry did not get banned for breaking the Code of Conduct, but for defending himself against accusations made by someone with considerable power within the Linux-desktop community, and airing the correspondence in public. I think that’s the fairest interpretation you can make of Lyude’s latest e-mail.
Hi, I was actually on the fence of how to respond to this! Other members of the code of conduct team wanted to make sure that you understood that we were being quite serious and were open to discussion.
However, it was brought to our attention apparently you have decided to take to posting about this to your blog. You even dug through my mastodon to find an old post I made?
Anyway, this is beyond unacceptable. I will be disabling your account on Freedesktop after writing this email. You will be removed from any other FDO spaces as well.
Let’s analyze this a tiny bit.
She was on the fence on how to respond to Vaxry. Others on her team wanted to make sure Vaxry understood that they were serious and open to discussion. Then there’s a shift in tone: because Vaxry aired this in public and showed one of Lyude’s publicly available Mastadon posts, she will be disabling Vaxry’s account this instant. The same shift in tone is found in her first e-mail to Vaxry as well. Although steps have been taken, it’s not good enough. Another thing to note is that Lyude aired the situation publicly first, on her Mastadon. She didn’t mention Vaxry, but it’s a bad look, especially since she had such a problem with Vaxry’s blog post written three days later.
One thing to note about the original concern (which you can find on Vaxry’s first blog post), is that the concern isn’t actually about the almost 2 year old incidents and the people involved. That wouldn’t make sense, as the incidents are old and steps have been taken to ensure similiar things don’t happen again, as I just mentioned. As is common with bureaucratic entities, the concern is actually about reputation. This is a common behaviour in top-down organizations, and unfortunately a very damaging one. It’s something you can observe in companies, political parties, governments and other institutions where the leadership is in some form of a privileged position, either because of unchecked power or monetary gains (or both). I’m not accusing Lyude of being in a privileged position, nor of doing these things deliberately. My point is that it’s a culture problem, that is reproduced by an organization’s structure.
On Internal Culture
This often leads to an unhealthy and uncivil approach to tackling both internal and external “threats”. The point, or goal, is not to reach a common understanding of the situation, or reaching some kind of compromise, but to force through some kind of will or viewpoint. This will often lead to some form of dissent, which I think this situation is an example of. Thus, the situation becomes exasperated and becomes harder to solve.
There is an interesting conversation to be had on “Defensive Moderation”, from Quilt’s newcomer guide:
[…] We employ an approach that we call “Defensive Moderation” – an emerging concept that focuses primarily on harm reduction and investigative moderation, keeping an eye on behaviors and trends in the wider community and acting upon them to prevent issues before they happen.
I think it’s fair to say that freedesktop’s Code of Conduct and approach in this situation falls somewhere close to this. I’m not going too much into this here, but I think it’s fair to say that this is an approach that needs a lot of care, empathy and understanding to be pulled off sucessfully and not lead to conflict.
I’ll discuss moderation in general a bit however, as it relates to internal culture and this situation. Disciplinary actions like bans, suspension, formal warnings etc., should not be treated lightly, in my opinion. They can have a deep emotional impact on the affected person, and should in most cases be used as a last resort. I say in most cases as it obviously depends on context. Banning someone on Discord for being racist, transphobic, homophobic or in general being an unfriendly person can easily be justified. In other cases however, like when banning someone from contributing to open-source projects and engaging in big, public spaces, the process should be open, transparent, and the justifications, well, justified.
Using your power as a moderator, issuing disciplinary actions, is a means to an end. The power used and the disciplinary actions issued should not be the end itself. If the internal culture is not concerned about, or conscious of, power imbalance and justified use of power, then power will at some point be used unjustifiably. I think it’s fair to say here that Lyude is in a position of power over Vaxry. That should’ve been kept in mind when writing the first e-mail.
Civility and How to be Constructive
I think there’s a lesson in civility here. In my opinion, both parties could’ve entered this conversation with a more civil mindset, and the whole situation could probably have been easily avoided. In general, when trying to have a constructive discussion with someone, you should always have a charitable reading of the other person is saying or trying to convey. Read them in good faith. That is easier said than done, especially when you’re on the recieving end of a formal warning from someone who does not seem understanding or constructive. I’ll not analyze the rest of the e-mails, as they’re not really that interesting. Vaxry made it clear that he would be interested in continuing the correspondence once he felt that freedesktop’s CoC team were communicating in good faith and with the intention of betterment. Lyude did not respond.
Was the intention betterment, and was Lyude communicating in good faith? Probably. It did however not seem like that to Vaxry, because of the approach taken. This is something to keep in mind. If your intention is to improve upon or fix something relating to another person, you should approach the situation with friendlyness, empathy, and a genuine interest in listening to what the other person has to say. This is true for workplaces, political organizations, non-governmental organizations, and should be true for situations like this as well.
Closing words…
Obviously, do not harass any people mentioned in this post. Do not harass Lyude. Do not harass Vaxry. I wrote this post because I’m someone in the Linux desktop space who doesn’t want things like this to happen. I noticed patterns here that I’ve observed in organizations that I’ve been active in myself, and felt compelled to try to do something to help the situation. That’s all. Thank you for reading.