I'm not going to read the comments here, for obvious reasons, but I do just want to clarify three things:

- I accept the apology.

- I do not accept the assertion that "At the time of the interview, the committee had not determined that there was a violation of the code of conduct, only that there were two complaints filed and being examined." The email to set up the call said "We would like to schedule a meeting so that we can discuss the results of our investigation with you" - nothing further. During the call, the committee stated the list of violations, and said "that is what the reporters stated, and what we found". I asked why they didn't take a statement from me before that finding, and they said "we all watched the video, so we could see for ourselves the violation".

- The committee offered in their apology email to me to have a follow-up discussion, and I declined the offer.

Am I reading this correctly?

It seems to say that Jeremy is still considered guilty of a CoC violation but if he appeals then the board will hear it (rather than the committee). So Jeremey has to file an appeal or the decision will stand? So the onus to fix this is on Jeremy who seems so exhausted by this whole process that he's quit conference talks?

That seems a response that lacks any sense of empathy to Jeremy.

edit: Okay. On Twitter they said that no judgement was made even now. However their enforcement policy (which the apology explicitly references) only mentions appeal if an action was already decided upon "Give them a place to appeal to if there is one, but in the meantime the action stands." Given that not adhering to their own process and written documents was a chief complaint it seems they haven't learned much yet from the incident.

This all reminds me of a talk Justice Scalia once gave. The gist was that the US Constitution isn't very good compared to a lot of countries' equivalent document. For example, the Soviet's Bill of Rights was undoubtedly better.

The important issue is how you structure the governing bodies and separate powers. If you don't do this correctly then your Constitution, or bill of rights, or Code of Conduct, is worthless.

I don't think the tech community has figured out this second part.

The context for those out of the loop:

https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/

At some point we will collectively realize that the average organization cannot and should not act as a judicial body.

Running a fair, competent and accountable court is really hard, and to think otherwise is hubris at best, and unbridled ideology at worst.

Edit: apologies for the multiple edits. It sometimes takes me a few tries to precisely express my thoughts.

This apology rings hollow to me. A person of Jeremy Howard's statue was able to raise the issue in the media and get it resolved.

I would like to understand what would happen to a person who is not of a Jeremy Howard's statue and does not have such a access to the public discourse?

This is a good response as far as the actual process goes, but it doesn't really do anything to address the claims that "There were two totally different Codes of Conduct with different requirements linked in different places" and "I was held to a different, undocumented and uncommunicated standard"

Ok, I'm not heavily steeped in this, but at first glance this seems like total bullshit.

Note that the original complaint was both 1) that the code of conduct people were being, well, total assholes, and 2) that the complaints were so obviously ridiculous that the entire exercise seemed like it could only be a power trip for those involved.

The apology addressed neither. They apologized for being unclear about what stage of the investigation they were in. No apology for laughing at Jeremy's distress, no apology for the witch hunt, etc.

The grand remedy? Replace 3/4 of the people on the committee.

Did I miss something here?

This whole incident is like something straight out of a Kafka novel. The level of insanity in tech community is just shocking to me.

A CoC is exactly as effective as the leadership that writes & enforces it. Sounds like the Board wasn’t happy with how this was enforced, so they stepped in.

Good on them. That said, maybe, uh, try and train your folks if you want them to enforce things like that.

Well, who was responsible for this exactly?

Given the circumstances, they should do better than an amorphous "we".

An interesting thing to think about is if they would apologize if this wasn't published in a blog and discussed online.

Let's say Jeremy just walked away quietly in disgust and didn't say anything publicly. What would have they done? I would guess that they would have chucked it under "We did a great job enforcing the code of conduct. Problem solved".

This blog post is unsigned. They should have put their names on it.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214 for previous related discussion.

This isn't an apology, this is damage control.

The tone is all wrong. You don't "issue a public apology" you say "We apologize for ... " or "We are sorry for ...".

So the Code of Conduct Committee violated their own Code of Conduct, but they won't take action against themselves.

https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct

As best I can tell, nothing really changed... this type of situation can happen again at numfocus.

Implicit to having a code of conduct, is what you do to enforce it. That's the hard part. The problem stems from organizations that setup these types of disciplinary structures/groups without understanding even the basics of due process.

Note, I'm just reading about this now and have no knowledge of this organization prior, but that CoC group at numfocus reads more like a star chamber than anything.

https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1321626078985687042

https://blog.jupyter.org/jeremy-howard-8dace7b4a34a

For people like myself needing backstory.

At least they apologized, unlike the Linux Foundation when they banned a guy from a conference for no good reason.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476407

They say "Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors to take over the work of the committee", yet the 7-person board of directors overlaps with the 4-person code of conduct committee.

Board of Directors: https://numfocus.org/community/people CoC Committee: https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct#persons-responsible

People: let's make coc against bullies Bullies: use coc to bully

Wow this that story where the dude said he thought the other guy was wrong. And this is their response to their handling of it.

They weren’t sure if there was a violation but responded to a couple complaints by bringing this guy in front of a committee of sorts to get to the bottom of it and are now investigating their process to ensure a better process

What a torrential tempest in the tiniest of teapots, sometime you can take yourself too seriously.

For the younger among us there was a time when you could organize a conference or group or project without conjuring a set of rules governing social interactions, and establishing processes for the addressing of rule violations and appealing said addressing.

There’s nothing to be done about it. If people enjoy being treated and treating everyone like babies then it is what it is.

I'm going to get downvoted for this, but: I'm against code of conducts because they're worse than the problems they try to solve.

edit:

In my opinion, code of conducts become a distraction and a cause for worry to anyone contributing to these projects because someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended.

From the way this non-apology is written, these NumFocus people seem very full of themselves and their organization. What are their credentials and achievements?

Okay, they sponsor existing projects and then take credit for them, calling them "our open source tools" which are used by everyone "from Netflix to NASA" to "solve the most challenging problems".

Where is the money coming from?

Their site makes deceptive claims:

https://numfocus.org/case-studies

Here, there is a representation made that there is "NumFOCUS stack" that is being used in various industries to solve problems.

"First Photograph of a Black Hole -- Made with the NumFOCUS Python Stack"

This strongly suggests that there is some actual software component by the name of NumFOCUS Python Stack. But when you read the case study in detail, it comes to light that this refers to some tools that have supposedly received support from NumFOCUS:

"Although the HOPS pipeline Dr. Chan helped develop is mainly written in the C programming language, [watch how we're going to take credit for it anyway, as follows:] EHT scientists also developed a lot of Python code around it to drive the analysis. Dr. Chan explained that there is a huge advantage in using Python."

Right ... , we would not have Python without NumFOCUS, the purveyor of Python! Never mind that Guido guy and what he had been up to since, oh, 1988.

"Dr. Chan pointed to NumFOCUS-supported open source tools — Numpy, SciPy, pandas, Astropy, Jupyter, and Matplotlib — as crucial to this iterative scientific thinking process."

I don't see any references to NumFOCUS in the NumPy Wikipedia page. The NumPy homepage makes absolutely no reference to NumFOCUS at all.

The other "case studies" are like his also.

ScumFOCUS is more like it!

They look like a bunch of status-seeking parasites, from where I'm sitting.

Non-profit organization, right? Sure, after salaries and expenses are paid out.

For those of you who are pro CoC I would be genuinely interested in your perspective if the laws were written as vaguely and subjectively as most CoC are? It is my opinion and from what I’ve seen the majority of enforcement actions occur in the least fair way possible and have more in common with dictatorship kangaroo courts than those we are accustomed to in the western world.

I find the timing of this 'apology' to be somewhat analogous to that of 'Friday news dumps'.

This is a classic non-apology. It’s well-written enough that it sounds good on quick read, but let’s break it down:

1. They use “We’re sorry you feel that way” to recast the issue as a simple miscommunication.

> We acknowledge that it was an extremely stressful experience, being summoned to an interview with several members of a committee, after a week had passed, and without knowing the nature of the complaint.

2. Now that the goal posts have been moved, they apologize for the miscommunication and hurt feelings, conveniently sidestepping any wrongdoing in their intentions or actions:

> We apologize for causing this stress and will work to improve our process to avoid this from happening in the future

3. They go on to try to defuse the supposed miscommunication by proposing a new narrative that diminishes part of the victim’s original complaint:

> To clarify a crucial miscommunication that we take responsibility for: At the time of the interview, the committee had not determined that there was a violation of the code of conduct, only that there were two complaints filed and being examined. We apologize for not communicating that clearly from the beginning. We have not recommended any enforcement actions.

4. They then immediately contradict the previous point, admitting that they had indeed recommended some enforcement actions (asking the victim to postpone posting their talk) and that they clearly communicated to the victim that a violation had occurred:

> We had asked to postpone the posting of the talk to the JupyterCon shared space until the complaints are resolved. We realize now that we used overly charged language and miscommunicated the stage of the investigation when discussing the complaints, i.e. saying a violation occurred.

5. Their “What we should have done” sidesteps the core of the issue and again tries to rewrite the narrative as a simple miscommunication about an investigation, despite having just admitted they told Jeremey that a violation had occurred.

> We should have been clearer saying multiple complaints have been made and the alleged violation investigation had not been resolved.

6. Finally, they conclude without apologizing for or even acknowledging the core issue of the ridiculous complaints. They move the goalposts to a different team within NumFOCUS, while casually admitting that this new team will be continuing the investigation into Jeremy.

> Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.

Unfortunately, this non-apology was clearly revised over and over again by someone with significant PR chops. At first read it sounds like they’re taking responsibility and taking action, but a closer read reveals that they’ve simply sidestepped the core issues, apologized for easy straw man arguments, and managed to reframe the debate in the best light possible for themselves.

If NumFOCUS had simply stepped up and dismissed the violations, absolved Jeremey of wrongdoing, and apologized for letting it get this far, we’d all be in a much better place. Instead, the situation is right back where it started (investigation continues behind closed doors at NumFOCUS).

Was a kangaroo court, is a kangaroo court. And that is what's wrong about this to resolve issues using a CoC. Harassment is of course real, and being a supportive organizations that helps and supports a victim in legal action is a better way to go.

Is this what they call a COC-up?

1. Who are "these" people?

2. Is this org of any significant importance?

3. Why should I care.

Or, am I being to mean and should someone here complain about my topics?

Meanwhile, is numfocus really on the map. Until yesterday, I never heard about them before.

What a ridiculous world we live in. Yet another symptom of the left and the quest for everyone to never ever be offended by anything ever.

Those kangaroo courts are such a joke.

I appreciate that they decided to apologize, but I find this statement lackluster at best. A better, more earnest apology would properly address the major concerns Jeremy raised. This touches on just two of the issues and then only superficially. I don't expect them to lay everything bare and pay public penance. I'm not interested in assigning blame. But apologies ring hollow when you don't even discuss what, if anything, you feel you did wrong.

In fact, in committing only to "improve our process to avoid this from happening," it reads as if they take no meaningful responsibility for how they handled informing Jeremy. It feels as if they are sorry Jeremy was stressed out for a week but unapologetic for any of the numerous and hard-to-defend actions they took to cause that stress. They blame the process, as if it required them to inform Jeremy of a complaint they weren't ready and willing to discuss with him, to assure him they'd give him details the following day and then renege on that, to not give him adequate time to understand the accusation and formulate a response. And it is apparent, from the story as both sides tell it, that far from a "crucial miscommunication," the Committee was accurately communicating what they thought. Their error was in prematurely drawing conclusions and not giving Jeremy the benefit of the doubt.

They also don't address the confusion around having two differing codes; the serious and counterproductive issues with Codes of Conduct prescribing acceptable behaviors (instead of proscribing unacceptable ones), especially when such prescriptions are vague; or Jeremy's accusation that the Committee, itself, failed to follow their own Code(s) of Conduct and Enforcement Guide. And while I would not want or expect them to discuss the specifics of Jeremy's case (unless they have his consent to do so), I do think it's necessary to discuss the issue of whether they believe merely making someone uncomfortable through disagreement on relevant topics can (let alone should) be the sole/primary basis for a finding of misconduct, especially when the people made uncomfortable are not even the person that is being disagreed with.

Perhaps they've given Jeremy a more in-depth and sincere apology and explanation in private. But I don't think that suffices. Like Jeremy, I believe that Codes of Conduct can (and often do) play an important role in improving our communities and events. I'm sure the Enforcement Committee would claim to believe this as well. But the numerous mistakes they've made in this matter do serious harm, not just to Jeremy, but to the larger cause. The way to mitigate (if not remedy) those harms is by honestly admitting to mistakes

i hope they called Jeremy first to apologize before posting this.

What was the context

we - https://numfocus.org/community/people

Just the fact they have a group called "Diversity & Inclusion" is enough to steer away from these people. https://numfocus.org/category/diversity-inclusion-disc

My new funtime activity: filing bogus claims against conference talks.

In the past many societies had a rule where if you falsely accused someone, once it had been found you falsely accused them, you would suffer the same penalties that they would have suffered. Maybe it is time to bring back those rules for CoC complaints.

I, for one, welcome our new censoring overlords.

What I find positive in this outcome is that Jeremy Howard challenged the organisation to live up to their principles, and they are apparently going to do so. Without the CoC, this would not have been such a clear-cut issue.

For those who would do away with CoCs entirely, I suggest you read the HN perennial The Tyrrany Of Structurelessness: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

CoCs are complex in many ways, but it's much better to have a formal process that allows people to be held to account rather than a structureless void which enables people to discriminate without the ability to challenge them to something they've explicitly signed up to.

To all of the people who hate CoCs: Just don't patronize any forum, software repo, or conference that has them. Not so easy to do, right? Same thing with people who get harassed all the time: It's not so easy for them to complain and have anyone take them seriously. Are CoCs perfect? Absolutely not. But allowing decades of harassment to continue unfettered until the most perfect solution is found, is not going to work, either. Of course, the people who hate CoCs don't think there have been decades of harassment. Or, if they even acknowledge harassment, they probably believe it is the victim's fault in the first place, or the victim's fault for not speaking up. I don't think minds are going to change either way. Just one more thing in our increasingly polarized world, that tech is actually making worse, not better. (Oh, so many subjective comments here -- how did I do capturing them?)