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I would like to join the moderation team (for a while) #1006

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@fasterthanlime

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@fasterthanlime

I've spent the last two days talking to a lot of people involved with the RustConf Keynote Fiasco, so I could make a public informed statement / summary about it.

However, in doing so, I've realized that in addition to the information I can responsibly make public, there's a whole side to this that shouldn't be made public at this time, but I would still like to help with.

As a result, I've decided to apply for a position on the moderation team.

Why add anyone to the moderation team?

In short: burn-out, conflicts of interest re: the recent situation, and following this piece of advice from #671:

  • we suggest that the future Mod Team take special care to keep the team of a healthy size and diversity, to the extent possible. It is a thankless task, and we did not do our best to recruit new members.

Why add me specifically?

I would rather it be someone else, and in fact, I encourage anyone who would be willing to serve on the moderation team for at least a little bit to step forward. I would also encourage people to encourage people who they know might do a decent job at it.

I've been active in the Rust space since 2019, mostly through my writings and videos as a content creator / educator. This has allowed me to meet with folks from various teams of the Rust project, Rust foundation, and RustConf. I maintain friendly relationships with a lot of them.

However, I have never been a member of any team, I am not beholden to any team's specific agenda. My ties with the 3 Rust orgs so far have been:

  • Received $5K from the foundation in 2023 for content creation
  • Was briefly asked by the project whether I wanted to join a team sometime in 2021/2022 (I didn't)
  • I was on the RustConf program committee in 2022

What's my plan?

I would like my time on the moderation team (if it my application is accepted) to last only as long as it needs to. I would like to focus on several areas:

  • Helping to finish resolving the "RustConf Keynote Fiasco" internally as peacefully as possible (I unfortunately cannot give any more details publicly at this time)
  • Leadership Council: Facilitating in whatever ways I can the arrival of the Leadership Council, which heralds the death of the core team (and the leadership chat, implicitly)
  • Recruitment: Helping to grow and diversify the moderation team to better distribute the burden
  • Professional training & support: Working with the foundation to provide/require professional training for people serving on the moderation team so that they're better equipped to deal with complex moderation issues, as well as mental health support, and access to third-party mediators
  • Specialization: Seriously considering the idea of renaming and/or splitting the moderation team between "moderation" issues (GitHub, Discourse, external CoC violations) and "internal support/mediation" issues (interpersonal conflict, crisis of consensus/quorum, formal processes not being followed, etc.)
  • Transparency: Helping the Rust project as a whole achieve better transparency and regain public trust. This doesn't include all past issues, but it should be an important goal moving forward.
  • Thinking about the power held by subreddit moderators (disclosure: I was added to /r/rust's moderators on May 28), and whether there needs to be coordination between both teams. I only learned a few days ago that the "moderation team" and the "/r/rust mods" were two separate groups (that overlapped at various points)

I have not checked ahead of time with anyone regarding these: these are just on my mind.

Will I have time to do this?

I'm setting aside time to do it. I'm not currently employed (I live off of sponsorship money through Patreon & GitHub Sponsors + severance from my last job), but I do normally try to make technical contributions (see my work on rust-analyzer proc-macro compatibility for example) to Rust, or educational contributions to Rust.

I most likely won't have time to do these initially, or as much, or perhaps at all for a while. That's okay with me.

Why is this a github issue? Surely this is not how you apply to the mod team?

Well!

I've been asking around and nobody can tell me what the procedure is for applying to the moderation team.

This page says:

Its members are chosen directly by the core team, and should be community members who have demonstrated the highest standard of discourse and maturity.

Except the core team is about to be dismantled by virtue of the leadership council being established. In the interim, it seems it would fall to the "(interim) leadership chat" to step in? The problem is, I have the feeling that document is fairly outdated.

The Moderation team page says nothing about applying. There is an "E-mail" button, and I was given discord handles, but it felt wise for there to be a public trace for my application, so that a larger number of people can be aware of it (and potentially be inspired to apply in turn).

I have no idea who will be ultimately responsible for 👍 -ing or 👎 -ing this, but, well, here we are. I am willing to discuss my application more in private or in public, with anyone who reaches out.

(cc @khionu and @technetos)

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