NixOS story time, community safety 
Two years ago, there was a previous attempt by a couple of folks (I was one of them) to address lingering community safety issues in the #NixOS community. This came in the form of RFC 98: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/98
The idea was that the NixOS community hadn't grown that big yet, so there was still a fair amount of room for setting up healthy governance structures.
RFC 98 proposed a participatory moderation model, with a rotating cast of moderators, and a moderation process that was based in consensus seeking and helping people understand the implications of what they say and do, preferring to resolve conflicts through mediation rather than punishment.
A number of privileged white dudes caused a huge fuss over this proposal. Why? Because it didn't specify *exactly* which things were and were not allowed (as this was meant to be a consensus-seeking thing); and they were convinced that it would be used to silence and/or censor people, even though the proposal explicitly stated otherwise.
(Cynically, I would say that they were afraid that there would be consequences for them overstepping their behaviour; something they could previously do with relative impunity, and free of the "risk of getting criticized".)
A competing proposal was put forth by someone else as a result, RFC 114, which introduced a 'traditional' code of conduct with specific disallowed things and no real provisions for problematic behaviour outside of those.
Crucially, whereas RFC 98 sought to *change* the shape of the community, to improve community safety... RFC 114 was meant to enshrine the *current* state of the community, not being particularly offensive to anyone currently involved in the project, and not excluding any of the existing behaviours.
RFC 98 was concern-trolled to death. The authors (very much marginalized folks) burned out. It was never passed, and neither was RFC 114. No formal support from project governance ever materialized.
And now an immigrant murder machine manufacturer has sponsored NixCon (sponsorship since thrown out, after public criticism), and this is being enthusiastically defended by people on the NixOS forums, who seem entirely comfortable in their defense.
Does this mean that the NixOS community is full of fascists? No. And there is a pretty large contingent of marginalized folks within the community!
But the reality is that community safety issues are not a new problem in NixOS, that the Anduril sponsorship was really not a free-standing incident, and that on a governance level, almost nothing is being done about it.
NixOS story time, community safety :boost_requested:
@joepie91 obviously, we are not doing enough but I can assure you that those matters have been on my mind and many others people, unfortunately, I am running all around today in NixCon organization and sometimes speaking about the matter with any community member that comes around.
I also wish / hope we will be able to talk more about it in the future and reach new milestones regarding these problems.
re: NixOS story time, community safety
@raito To clarify, you are one of the few people who has actually put in some real work to understand the problem, so this complaint isn't really aimed at you!
But at the same time, I know you don't have a magic wand either - and this is very much aimed at most of the rest of the people involved, who have been decidedly less interested in resolving these issues over the years.
And that is just something that I want to be transparent about towards others who might not know the history; to avoid getting stuck in a situation where there's perpetually one person trying to fix things 'within the system' at a time (until they burn out and the next comes along) and it's always "in progress".
That is a particularly nasty trap; because the sense that something is being worked on perpetually prevents the issue from being talked about transparently enough, and so serves to keep it under the covers, only known to a select few "in the know".
So I think it's important to talk about this publicly (with the necessary nuance; hence the "it's not full of the fascists"), simultaneously with active efforts to work on it. With a bit of luck, it will help those efforts along and cause them to succeed this time.
