devhack.net/lore/schism.html at main · devhack-seattle/devhack.net · GitHub

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<h1 id="the-devhack-schism">The devhack schism</h1>
<p><small>This is a complicated document to write -m</small></p>
<hr />
<h2 id="summary">Summary</h2>
<p>One specific member joined devhack with misaligned expectations of
what it was, conflicting with both the original founding intentions and
the understanding of a large portion of the devhack active membership.
In the 6 months of this member’s tenure, they contributed a great deal
to the space but in the process alienated most of the former membership
contributing to various aspects of the devhack project, including the
original founding members and most of the infrastructure team.</p>
<p>This concluded in both a <strong>ban</strong> and a subsequent
standoff, shouting match, walk-out, and temporary closure by devhack
membership on the space itself.</p>
<p>The resulting ban cascaded from increased disengagement of long-time
membership, reaching a tipping point that caused the leadership of
devhack decided to make a unilateral decision to remove this member.
Even though they were not communicated any warnings about this happening
from leadership, this should not have come as a suprise, as they had
been subject to substantial moderation – from both devhack leadership
and peers at the space.</p>
<h2 id="the-night-of-the-28th-of-august">The night of the 28th of
august</h2>
<p>Two days after an amicable exit interview, approximately 30 minutes
before the townhall convened to discuss punitive board action, this
person attempted to enter the space with the help of a few supporters.
Many members blockaded the stairwell in response for some amount of
time, before we decided to vacate the premises and hold an informal
discussion at a park a few blocks away.</p>
<p>During the blockade, this person was repeatedly asked to leave by
devhack membership while both they and their supporters recited
washington state law, questioned the space’s insurance status,
unintentionally injured themselves and claimed they needed entry to the
space for first aid, furled insults at devhack leadership and their
supporters, and generally were just very loud and did quite a lot of
emotional damage to those blockading the entrance and observers to these
events. They also threatened to get in contact with devhack business
partners to complain about our conduct throughout these events in an
attempt to tarnish devhack’s business relationships.</p>
<h2 id="consequences">Consequences</h2>
<p>Consequently, these four additional members were banned from devhack
and barred access for aiding in this person’s attempted entry. One ban
has been rescinded due to overreach, and one is provisional due to their
continued work with our business partners.</p>
<p>Two of the banned members have threatened to enter the space with a
police escort, one of the banned members has claimed to have filed a
police report. One auxillary member has deferred all communications with
us through legal counsel.</p>
<p>These banned members have been invited to rightfully reclaim their
personal equipment hosted at the space in a supervised fashion,
alongside other members who have chosen to bow out. This has resulted in
the loss of most of our networking equipment, most of our radio
equipment, some retro equipment we actually liked, lots of auxillary
tools, and other inconveniences.</p>
<h2 id="background-flashpoints">Background / flashpoints</h2>
<p>A concrete list of flashpoints contributing to this person’s
removal:</p>
<ul>
<li>their introduction to the chatspace, and specifically
infrastructure-related rooms, and subsequent disrespectful behaviour
towards members resulted in a very explicit boundaries set by most of
the infra team “we don’t want to work with you and we’re leaving the
chats you look for help from us in”.</li>
<li>entitlement to an audience by people who have communicated they do
not want to engage, further alienating core devhack contributors and
causing them to disengage further.</li>
<li>upon communication of boundaries and the results of their actions,
they had a rather angry rant about the state of things with lots of
words directed at both the infra team and the leadership of devhack,
resulting in an <a href="https://wiki.devhack.net/AskToLeave">ask to
leave</a> from unrelated parties witnessing this. no further action was
taken from this ATL.</li>
<li>continuations of poor communication and collaboration skills during
their attempted improvements of the space – including being
disrespectful and dismissive towards prior work done at the space and
verbally attacking professional partners of devhack while degrading the
physical security of the space and the reliability of our services. The
worst of this resulting in moderation action and subsequently met with
an ATL invoked on the moderator by this person.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now, I do want to stress, this person contributed substantial hours
to the space, just in a largely independent and uncommunicative manner;
helping in some areas and hurting in others. Ultimately, /dev/hack is a
cooperative enterprise, and undermining that cooperation harms the space
more than volunteering helps it.</p>
<!-- Now, I do want to stress, this person was being very helpful at the space and
doing a lot to try to improve it. They were just doing so without taking into
account any sort of reason for why things were done the way they were, doing so
without polling the devhack membership at large for support/consensus, and
generally just steamrolling progress without any sort of cooperation skills
with those who have previously put in work to make the space what it is. This
happened in part due to the fact that everyone who has previously put in work
at the space did not like how they were treated by this person and did not want
to speak to them or work with them in any respects beyond giving them
credentials and links to existing documentation surrounding the work they were
doing. -->
<p>The ban was precipitated on our 13th member signalling their
intention to leave due to the behaviour from this person.</p>
<h2 id="learned-lessons">learned lessons</h2>
<p>Times remain fraught. Volunteers are burnt, disengaged, and trying
their best to get anything done to help the space.</p>
<p>That said, here are some direct actions we are taking to prevent
these kinds of events from <em>ever</em> happening again:</p>
<ul>
<li>Communicate the shared vision of devhack very clearly to guests and
prospective members</li>
<li>Communicate the existing structure of leadership within devhack –
specifically that it is currently a benevolent dictatorship</li>
<li>Be much less lenient towards toxic and antisocial behaviour –
communicating the bad behaviour to those doing it and giving them
chances to improve, but also setting boundaries to remove them from
spaces if they continue to do so.</li>
<li>Moderating the chats much more strictly in-line with our code of
conduct, implementing a moderation team that is disconnected from the
board to do so.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<blockquote>
<p>For privacy reasons I will not be publishing any names regarding the
actors throughout these events, but I do urge other leftist, anarchist,
trans or other minority-focused organizations within the seattle area to
reach out to me at <a href="mailto:m@devhack.net"
class="email">m@devhack.net</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>We will be collating an amount of statements, potentially anonymized
at the discretion of the writers, to place alongside this document.</p>
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