On the matter of PHPixie

[Larry Garfield]

Moving this to a new thread in an attempt to keep previous threads on
topic...

To everyone, but Márk especially, I would please ask you to read the
current bylaws before suggesting what the group "should" do. "[A]sking
the representative to step down and suggest a substitute" is pretty much
exactly what the bylaws say. I quote:

-----
If, in the judgement of PHP-FIG, a Voting Representative is acting
inappropriately and to the detriment of PHP-FIG's ability to meet its
objectives, a vote may be taken to request a replacement Voting
Representative in accordance with the Voting Protocol bylaw or to expel
the Member Project where replacing a Voting Representative is not possible.
-----

From http://www.php-fig.org/bylaws/membership/

We technically have no process for forcing a project to leave FIG, other
than there being no available representatives for it. (I don't recall
the exact reasoning for that decision off hand.) I would not be adverse
to including that in the FIG 3.0 revamp, but at present, Mark, what you
describe is precisely what *we're already doing*.

Avoiding "humiliating" the representative is an odd thing to ask for.
The charge at hand is that Dracony -- the PHPixie project lead and FIG
representative, and according to GitHub sole contributor -- has
deliberately falsified information on GitHub, on Reddit, and on this
very mailing list in order to pretend that PHPixie is more popular than
it is and then to try and cover up that fact when found out. *IF* true
(emphasis added because as of this moment I am personally undecided on
the matter), that is a serious problem that I believe would qualify as
"acting inappropriately and to the detriment of PHP-FIG's ability to
meet its objectives". If someone gets caught for being so duplicitous,
underhanded, and outright fraudulent and feels "humiliated" as a result,
well, they brought it on themselves by their actions and I have exactly
zero sympathy for it, and neither should anyone else. That's simply
taking responsibility for your actions.

Some have likened the accusations against Dracony to a "witch hunt".
This is a highly bizarre claim. How else should such an accusation
(which is itself valid to make when evidence is available to support it)
be handled, if not by presenting it to the list? Are follow-up
questions not legitimate? If someone wants to claim that more time
needs to pass between initial accusation and call-for-vote, I will
agree, but given how quickly the situation escalated it's not
surprising. (The amount of email I had to sift through while at
DrupalCon this week was unpleasant.) It feels like the accusation is
simply a way to avoid saying "why are you saying bad things about this
person, you meanie", which when stated that way is more clearly a
short-sighted statement. Saying "bad things" about someone who has
allegedly done "bad things" isn't a witch hunt. It's holding people
accountable for their actions. I fully support innocent until proven
guilty as a general policy, both formal and informal, but the
implication becomes that you can never hold someone accountable for
misbehavior, which is an astonishingly self-destructive position.

Even "good" or smart people can grossly misbehave or be otherwise
toxic. Addressing those people is crucial to the health of any
community or organization.

--Larry Garfield

[Adam Culp]

Larry, I only see the words "witch hunt" used in this and one other thread when doing a search, and the other thread that contained those words definitely did not use the term in the manner of which you state.

[Christopher Pitt]

Adam, I think addressing the phrase (which I'll agree has been used far more off the group than on it) is a good idea if we're trying to be as transparent as possible to the outside world. This thread will probably be posted to /r/php as every other one has since this whole mess started.

[Adam Culp]

If that is the case, then I sincerely feel we should also address the aggressiveness of how this was handled, and how personal the attacks became so quickly. I'm not condoning what Roman did, which cannot be conclusively proven, but I'm shocked at how some reacted in such an unprofessional manner about it.

Within 24 hours of the accusations multiple people aggressively attacked, rather than constructively inquiring. A few then continued to instigate with personal attacks, which the accused responded poorly to through coercion. Then, still within that 24 hour window, and without a more formal investigation, a vote was called to boot the project...not the accused...from the group. How is that not a witch hunt?

And now this thread was started with a very condescending tone using such strong words as "bizarre", "astonishingly", and additional color. Which as indicated is to handle social media "off the group".

We've already spent far too much time and karma on this matter. We need to just let it die and get back to work.

[Márk Sági-Kazár]

I agree with Adam 100%. The discussions on other threads were far more than proving Dracony's guilt and discussing how the group should act.

Larry: I think I made it clear in the "State of the FIG" thread, that I don't think that in such case a representative should continue the work within the FIG. (Honestly, after such accusations and proofs, probably the best thing would be if the representative resigned himself, but that's my opinion). Refering to the bylaws in this case will probably not provide a 100% solution as I think this is not something that the founders kept in mind. I hardly think that we disagree about the importance and the possible solutions, but it does matter HOW we get there.

I would kindly ask you to answer the following question: Imagine this is happening in a) a parliament and b) in a company. Which do you think the current discussions look like? Like in a parliament where politicians try to humiliate their opponents as much as possible or like in a company, where a worker is simply fired after an investigation?

[pedrofr...@gmail.com]

Adam, as the author of said thread, I don't feel like I was agressive, nor that I started a witchhunt.

I never called anyone names, I wasn't asking for people to go out of their way to "punish" dracony, I didn't ask people to try to get him fired from his job, nor did humilliate or asked people to humiliate dracony. I did address the issue publicly (in this list) because I thought people here would be interested in knowing that they had been lied to. I think I was objectively proven right - if it didn't matter to you or to a few other members, it DID matter to some. I was assertive of my convictions that dracony was guilty, and that too was proven to be right.

If you get back to the original thread, you'll find that dracony's the one who called people names and replied agressively. Well, he actuall went to the trouble of creating a fake email to further the lies.

So, if just talking about the issue can be seen as a witchhunt, should I have just remained silent?

Also, it baffles me that people are still knocking on the it-wasnt-proven-enough key. It's proven beyond any reasonable doubt. You have an IP address admittedly belonging to dracony sending emails to this very list pretending to be someone else. No one knew dracony's IP at the time of the original fake email (dracony admitted that Andrew only sent that bait email a long time after the faked emails). It didn't matter that there wasn't more time, it's a settled matter.

Like I said before, this whole story doesn't concern me directly, so I don't really care if dracony gets expelled or not. In my mind, it was obvious that dracony would get expelled after lying so blatantly to this group (if that's not innapropriate behavior, I don't know what is). If the actual voting members here don't agree, that's fine too, let him be.

And in this particular case, dracony is the only possible project representative (because he's also the only project collaborator). There is no switching representatives and keeping the project. But everyone here knows that, I don't know why people are still arguing over those semantics.

This whole discussion bothered me a lot, just in a different way. The only "drama" I saw here were from people referring to an attempt to expose a non-standards-related complaint (very valid imo) as a drama show. Just because it concerns an individual, it doesn't mean it's not relevant or that it's "just drama".

If you truly don't care about non-standard-related discussions, then let anyone vote on PSRs. It shouldn't matter if the voter is a project representative or not, "as long as the contributions are valid". Now, if you have an admission policy (and I think you're 100% right to have one, or this group will become a mess like PHP-CDS), then this membership-related discussion should concern you. You may not be interested in this discussion, but it concerns you, and people should stop trying to invalidate this discussion by calling it a witchhunt.

[Adam Culp]

Pedro,

Thank you for your original post bringing this to the attention of the FIG. Let me be clear that I was not targeting the thread you created with my words, and I was not targeting any post that was objectively asking questions in a respectable manner to investigate the issue at hand. As I stated in my post, "A few then continued to instigate with personal attacks", which coerced bad reactions from Roman. Without that coercion things may have happened very differently, but we will never know for sure.

I think some of my words were not clear. Too many posts, each with slightly different agenda's and meaning. When I said that findings were not conclusive, I was referring ONLY to PHPixie gaining admittance to the FIG through fraud.

[Andrew Carter]

Hello All,

I've just re-read the locked thread, and I can't actually see much that would constitute a "personal attack".

The examples I could find were:

- Phil and Paul trading remarks with each other
- Dracony's confession sock puppet calling me fat
- One comment where Dracony was called a liar (which is the implication of the accusations anyway, but maybe a bit too blunt)

When I said that findings were not conclusive, I was referring ONLY to PHPixie gaining admittance to the FIG through fraud.

I completely understand this view point - however it certainly can be proven that he acted fraudulently in his cover up on the mailing list.

Regards,

Andrew Carter

[Adam Culp]

Andrew,

Yes, and I was already rethinking my original vote, not because of the activities outside the group but because of the actions in-group. Had Roman just shut up, he would have likely been fine.

This is one reason why a discussion period should be required prior to a vote. Things can, and often do, change.

[Robert Hafner]

Paul was being pretty insulting towards people on Reddit, specifically calling out Phil in comments in a way that seemed pretty petty. Some may consider this out of scope, but I think if people are going to work together on things a certain level of professionalism is required in their interactions. If someone sends a professional email in one case but insults people on a public forum in another it becomes difficult for people to assume good faith when working with them.

Rob

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[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 16:30, Robert Hafner <ted...@tedivm.com> wrote:
>
> If someone sends a professional email in one case but insults people on a public forum in another it becomes difficult for people to assume good faith when working with them.

I agree. Be sure to tell that to Phil Sturgeon, who has been insulting to me on this list, on Twitter (where he tweets bravely about me from behind a block), on Reddit, on his website, on his podcast, and goodness knows where else.


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http://paul-m-jones.com

[Robert Hafner]

If I saw him doing that I would.

However, your comment wasn't in response to him or even in a conversation with him- it seemed to come out of nowhere. All I saw was a member of this group insulting people for no contextual reason at all. Behavior like that reflects badly on the whole group and makes working together more difficult.

What is the point of your reply? Is it your argument that bad behavior is acceptable as log as others are also doing it? If Dracony finds another project that inflated their usage stats would his bad behavior be excused as you are requesting we do of yours here?

Rob

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[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:13, Robert Hafner <ted...@tedivm.com> wrote:
>
> What is the point of your reply?

It is that if you're going to call "people" out for bad behavior, be sure to call out Phil, who is far more deserving of it.

[Christopher Pitt]

Phil is no longer a representative of any projects here. You are.

[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:31, Christopher Pitt <cgp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Phil is no longer a representative of any projects here.

And thank goodness for that.

[Christopher Pitt]

Please leave your personal grievances with outsiders at the door. You are a professional, and we expect a level of behaviour from you that we would expect from any representative here. I think that's what Robert was alluding to, and it's not an unfair expectation for or from any of us.

[Stefano Torresi]

Hey Paul Jones,

FWIW, between you and Dracony, in the latest days I've seen the most immature behaviour since I'm a FIG subscriber.

I hope you realize how much damage you guys are causing to this initiative, who people like me looked up to.

Maybe try to be more constructive, eh?

Peace out.

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[Robert Hafner]

Thank you for proving my point, I don't think I could have done it better.

Rob

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[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:36, Christopher Pitt <cgp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You are a professional, and we expect a level of behaviour from you that we would expect from any representative here. I think that's what Robert was alluding to, and it's not an unfair expectation for or from any of us.

I have been remarkably restrained in my commentary. However, if you want to keep poking at it, I can become less restrained. Your call.

[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:37, Robert Hafner <ted...@tedivm.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you for proving my point, I don't think I could have done it better.

(/me bows)

[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:36, Stefano Torresi <ste...@torresi.io> wrote:
>
> Maybe try to be more constructive, eh?

You know, you're right -- maybe I should try being the driving force behind roughly half the PSRs produced by this group instead.

(/me shrugs)

[Christopher Pitt]

I have been remarkably restrained in my commentary. However, if you want to keep poking at it, I can become less restrained. Your call. 

 

Are you actually threatening me with unprofessionalism if I continue to push for professional conduct on this list? If Adam was acting unprofessional, or Larry, or anybody else; I would be saying these things to them. Please reconsider your approach. I am not your enemy, but rather someone who recognises when you are not on your normal behaviour and desperately wants to see you back to normal again...

[Paul Jones]

> On May 16, 2016, at 18:48, Christopher Pitt <cgp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have been remarkably restrained in my commentary. However, if you want to keep poking at it, I can become less restrained. Your call.
>
> Are you actually threatening me with unprofessionalism

I'm not threatening you with anything. I'm saying you're going after the wrong person. Apply your comments to Phil.

With that, I'll continue my restraint, and let you have the last word, with the hope that you will look back on this in a few years and realize you owe me an apology.

[Samantha Quiñones]

This is just a friendly reminder to keep any personal conversations off the mailing list. This is not the appropriate venue for such things.

Thanks,

Samantha Quiñones

[Dracony]

Also a super quick reminder that I *still* claim to innocence with this (just keeping silent and forcing myself away from discussion threads, so I'm not accused of resurrecting drama). And frankly I think the drama is what caused the entire thing.

The nightly upload bumps are still happening, one of the thoughts I have is maybe the same IPs are used to increase the counters for some other packages, and Pixie might have been added to the mix so that to dilute the other packages being upvoted. This is still happening and afaik the graph hasn't even smoothed out yet. If those are proxies it's an easy fix to just blacklist them on packagist btw. But I think Andrews post really really inspired someone to go along with this Andrej thing (and just a quick reminder I was the first one to call his email on being fake and found proof for that). Somebody who knew how to get the IP header there, and knew that mail.ru send that header in the first place. You could actually get the same result by submitting two iframe forms using Flash (and linking me to such a page). Why would somebody care to go through this? For lulz, of course, the drama was already there and ripe.

The only reason I'm posting this here is because the tone of the posts shifted from "is it really Dracony?" to "it was 100% him" which is kind of sad tbh. Anyway, of course I expected that a lot of people will vote against me, and I can see how it's possible to not believe me. But the aggression with which it's done is truly amazing. And I'm not even talking about Andrew here.

P.S. please don't reply to my response. If you want, go cast the additional +1 on the voting thread, but I'm seriously tired of fighting this fight any longer

[Korvin Szanto]

To get back to the original issue and to ignore all the other nonsense in this thread, I agree completely with Larry. We need to be able to hold our members accountable. Presenting evidence and asking questions does not constitute a "witch hunt", in fact look up the definition for that and tell me if you think anyone is guilty of leading it.

@adam, I hope you're not looking at my replies and suggesting that I coerced anyone into acting badly. If so, my intention was to come to Roman's aid not to antagonize some kind of negative response. I hope that people don't see me in that light, and I'll be more careful to prevent that in the future.

Thanks,

Korvin

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[Robert Hafner]

You're contradicting yourself. On one hand you say members should be accountable for their actions, but then your first statement was that you're ignoring the "nonsense" from this thread. It seems to me like this group only wants to enforce professionalism when it suites the needs of specific people in the group, but is otherwise perfectly willing to let insults and even threats (not of violence but of drama) go as long as they come from certain members.

The cliquey nature of this group has always been an issue, but it's gotten worse and I'm worried we're institutionalizing it.

Rob 

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[Korvin Szanto]

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 9:16 AM Robert Hafner <ted...@tedivm.com> wrote:

You're contradicting yourself. On one hand you say members should be accountable for their actions, but then your first statement was that you're ignoring the "nonsense" from this thread.

 

The nonsense is the idea that Phil's actions matter at all when talking about Pauls actions. Lets discuss this in a thread that has that as the topic instead of hijacking this thread about accountability at large.

 

It seems to me like this group only wants to enforce professionalism when it suites the needs of specific people in the group, but is otherwise perfectly willing to let insults and even threats (not of violence but of drama) go as long as they come from certain members.

I hope you aren't actually suggesting that I don't care about professionalism. When I have an issue with the way Paul has acted in the past, I've brought it up with him personally in a private email. If it had extended past that I'd bring it up with the secretaries and make a new thread so that we can discuss it.

I just want to discuss the topic at hand and not let EVERY thread devolve into discussions about Paul's or Roman's actions. Lets make a thread for it and discuss it there. 

 

The cliquey nature of this group has always been an issue, but it's gotten worse and I'm worried we're institutionalizing it.

I'm not sure why you'd suggest that, I've always been on the side of professionalism and have personally gone out of my way to contact the offending party to resolve the conflict. Suggesting that I'm part of some clique that is somehow targeting people who I don't like is just absolutely ridiculous and frankly very offensive.

 

 

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[Roman Tsjupa]

There really should be a bylaw on the amount of concurent drama threads in that case :)

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[Robert Hafner]

Korvin, please don’t take what I’m saying about the group as a personal comment against you specifically.

To address a serious point though=

Lets discuss this in a thread that has that as the topic instead of hijacking this thread about accountability at large. I just want to discuss the topic at hand and not let EVERY thread devolve into discussions about Paul's or Roman's actions. Lets make a thread for it and discuss it there. 

This is *not* a thread about accountability at large. Looking at the subject of this thread it appears to be very specific regarding PHPixie. It is literally the subject of the thread. I agree that having a conversation about general behavior would be a good idea, but I grossly disagree that this was that thread.

The cliquey nature of this group has always been an issue, but it's gotten worse and I'm worried we're institutionalizing it.

I'm not sure why you'd suggest that, I've always been on the side of professionalism and have personally gone out of my way to contact the offending party to resolve the conflict. Suggesting that I'm part of some clique that is somehow targeting people who I don't like is just absolutely ridiculous and frankly very offensive.

I really don’t understand the jump that was made here. I claimed this group is cliquey (and considering the biggest complaint I see people on reddit make is that this group isn’t open enough I think that’s a valid comment), and you took that to mean I was claiming some sort of conspiracy. I don’t see those words anywhere, and if you saw an implication there then honestly I don’t know where it came from.

To be clear about the cliquey nature of this group, here are some examples-

* Multiple times I’ve had PSR-6 conversations die out, only to find out later that they were taken to channels that excluded the majority of contributors (and by extension the mailing list itself). 

* At various points proposals have been put on hold only to be made at a conference, where no effort is made to include people who aren’t at that conversation.

* While a bit secondary, the “cult of personality” means that if people in this group say something it reverberates. There have been multiple times where someone related to this group have said something publicly which inspires all sorts of brigading and harassment. Clique and group thinking make this type of issue more likely to occur.

This isn’t a conspiracy, and there are quite likely good reasons why this happens. People who know each other are more likely to talk to each other, and it’s easier to get things done in person. There doesn’t need to be maliciousness for what I’m saying to be true. However, if we just ignore it then it will get worse, and frankly it already has had some seriously negative consequences, and any group that treats some members to one standard while holding others to a higher one is going to find itself in trouble.

Rob

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