Growing a healthy Holochain community

General Chat Suggestion Box
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#42

Hey everyone,

I’ve been the lead organizer for the Devcamp7 and was responsible for team coordination and content planning. I have also participated in European-time Hackalong calls last year on a regular basis. I feel compelled to share my perspective as I feel there’s some context missing in this thread.

European-time Hackalong

I have met with Greg in the Hackalong calls last year, where he also was a regular for quite a few months. Hackalong was created as a space for development related discussions (About the Virtual Hackalong category) prioritizing developers, but people of all backgrounds were welcome. Both organizers and participants tried to make the environment safe and pleasant, providing explanations for missing context and holding space for different opinions to be heard. Greg has made a good first impression, being polite and excited about the technology and possible solutions, but then he displayed a consistent pattern of behavior which didn’t fit the culture:

  1. he started interrupting development-related discussions with off-track, irrelevant topics. When being politely reminded about it, he didn’t change his approach. Having Greg’s interruptions meant that other people who are more shy and may not feel so confident speaking in English couldn’t participate so easily. It also made it harder to moderate the space, putting emotional burden on the people involved.

  2. During his interruptions he would often criticize developers for talking about the architecture and design instead of producing the useful opensource code, citing his show-dont-tell approach. While I share the result-oriented approach in the business setting, I find it completely inappropriate to enforce it on a group of volunteer developers having a general technical discussion about things they’re excited about. Blaming volunteers for the lack of results from their happy-hobby-time is a recipe for a burnout.

  3. Greg would often bring in an explosive and annoyed temper, raising his voice and making demands and accusations when he wasn’t getting what he wanted. This behavior extended to other calls as well.

Devcamp7

  1. We’ve had participants from almost all the continents, including Africa and Latin America (nobody from Antarctica though, weird). And I took notice of it because I wasn’t expecting the first event I helped to organize ever to be that global – how cool was that! I don’t think it’s polite of me to tag our non-white, non-US based participants just because of the color of their skin – wouldn’t have wanted this for myself.

  2. With most of the organizers’ team being located in Asian and European time zones, we have actually made our sessions schedule inconvenient for most of our participants from the Americas, leaving all of the US based folks at disadvantage. We have received comments about it (polite inquiries, not entitled demands), and as much as we wanted to accommodate everyone, it was just too much to ask from a team of volunteers who need to sleep at night.

  3. I have put in the effort to share the content as much as possible, and both organizers and participants reminded me to do that when I was forgetting, which was very helpful. There are publicly available posts about learning Rust and Windows environment setup. Our github repo is publicly available and I have specifically made sure that code has abundant comments so that people without prior Rust experience have easier time reading it. Core concepts of Holochain are available as well on the official site and this is the doc which we used when preparing the content. Nobody is hiding the knowledge.

  4. There were decisions made about limiting the amount of people admitted into the Devcamp7. By being a lead organizer for this event I took a responsibility for the quality of experience that our participants had. Having people who consistently interrupt the conversations, may behave aggressively and do not respond to feedback would’ve meant failing those who behave in a respectful manner and came there to learn, therefore Greg wasn’t admitted.

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#43

Thank you @e-nastasia for providing this much-needed context and thanks for all the work you’ve put into this. Sounds like you’ve helped to foster lots of hAppy devs from around the world!

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#44

I’ve been concerned with the general problem of building collaborative communities that really work, and think this is especially important for the Holo community, as I see it as building the infrastructure that will make large scale collaboration much simpler and more successful in wider society.
One of the keys to this is to nurture a culture of skilled communication where people are committed to converging when they differ, and doing this without upsetting others. Especially, there needs to be a ‘peacemaking’ support group, who can intervene when needed, respecting all sides in a conflict.
I’m not sure of what is behind the idea of ‘membranes’, but I do see the need to build circles of trust, which may be locally closed. Is that what it’s about?
Gary

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#45

I agree! I would however slightly rearrange “large scale collaboration” to “collaboration scale” - I am suffering a little lack of sleep due to early morning freezer delivery and night before Xmas feeling lack of sleep however when I read the above it sounded like BIG networks as opposed to networks of all sorts of sizes. I’m sure you meant this too!

This is where I’m not so sure there is an answer and it is something that is developed over time. You have your hypothesis, someone else has theirs. When I read your paragraph above, it reminded me of the community I was in previously, and I see what they did as both a success and a complete failure, an even more digital totalitarian situation than before, and this is the route we are heading in terms of digital communities so I see it as probably the most important issue we have as humans right now. And probably why I got a bit enthusiastic about it, however I do feel I went a little OTT so believe it or not am trying to ‘ground’ my involvement a little more as I see what I was projecting from previous and can look at this situation with a little more balance now, and grateful for what it has taught me so far about both myself and this community and what they are building.

What precisely happened to cause this thread was as I interacted with the community here certain topics were brought up in the conversation that I, like you, am passionate about. Just a few months prior at the end of last year I decided I had to make the leap of faith from a community where I had invested much of my life in to one which I had been watching from the sidelines for many years but not really said hello to.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me at the end of last year was when I was yet again helping in a situation organising and connecting companies across continents, putting my everything in to what I now see is very narcissistic and in a situation where the entire ecosystem itself is still back in the dark ages when it comes to what on the outside it professes to be one of those at the forefront yet the reality of the story is very different when you actually speak to people on the ground. I hope you understand why I am being a little careful about my wording here. I am sure everyone has good intentions, it is the system that is the problem and one that I feel, as you do by the looks of it, that this community proposes to be part of helping resolve.

One of the best hints at ways forwards was from a video posted in another thread where I picked up three key points:

  • “The model is never the thing - it’s the best epistemically we can do at that moment”
  • “Wisdom is the difference between the optimisation function and the right choice”
  • “They’ll do it and they won’t even realise necessarily that that’s what they’re doing“

I added some notes to the thread “The War on Sense-making - Daniel Schmachtenberger”.

As far as I understand membranes is the term used to conceptualise these ‘circles of trust’ you mention. You write your rules, and whilst I may trust Person X in one membrane, I may not trust them in another. With current systems it seems it’s either trust or don’t trust in a blanket way.

In terms of membranes where the organisational side is concerned then yes they’ve set out theirs for the community as they’re growing it and it seems two people went beyond those T&Cs and understandably had to be dealt with otherwise what’s the point of having the membrane? I see a situation has been going on a while, we’ve had response explaining the context a little further and whilst there’s all sorts of loose ends and questions still that could be asked, I’ve seen and heard enough about both myself, the community, and the ‘perpetrators’ in order to take this as a learning experience and increase my trust for the participants I believe in, who at the moment is me, and Holochain :wink: Not necessarily sitting happily together in a tree but respect for each other’s missions. Been trying to figure out my OSX setup issues again today, I don’t think my curiosity about Holochain is going to end anytime soon lol!

Happy Easter if you celebrate such a thing, from just south of you in the Essex countryside!

#46

Thanks for the comments Steve. I just looked further back in this thread, and can see that the situation is quite complex and not easy to resolve. My sense is that the things Greg thinks he was banned for are not the same as what those banning him were looking at.
Just keeping up with this thread is a big task. The solutions I would like to see are not simple. They involve a clear vision of a kind of convergent communication that needs to be widely accepted by the group, including ways of handling problems that treat all involved with respect and empathy.
How and where could we even raise such an issue?

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#47

There is a “Start Here → Participation Guidelines” section which contains a Code of Conduct and a How we Grow which states:

Personally I believe having these discussions in the open is key to progress so I would, as I did with this, post in the “General Chat → Suggestion Box” category.

My only piece of advice would be remember that none of us have the answer otherwise we wouldn’t be in the current situation. We all have ideas about what we think would be the ‘right’ thing to do, and I believe it is our duty to ensure we express those in as best a way as we can, not to either sit back and watch without speaking our mind, or on the other extreme to assert that our way is the way. That I guess includes this paragraph I just wrote :wink:

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#48

It is quite possible that these are the reasons or some of the reasons Greg was not admitted into a recent DevCamp. However, this thread is about way more than not being admitted into a DevCamp. I think some of the main points are getting lost now.

(1) We are all now talking about building community processes which is exactly what greg started this thread to talk about. And he expressed it in an elegant, clear, and in-depth manner. Where is the offense in that?

(2) Greg was then banned entirely from the holochain forum with still NO EXPLANATION even though it was promised that explanation would come. This is an extremely egregious and intentional lack of consideration and vulnerable transparency. It also breeds disrespect because promises are not being kept and then avoided (thus far). I would bet it is not malicious (though I can’t be absolutely certain) but it certainly is intentional.

(3) Someone else who quietly behind the scenes encouraged Greg to voice his opinion here on this thread was also banned from the forum also with no explanation (thus far)!

Now we are all discussing the nuances of community building here. But the violations present in this thread (thus far) do not require nuanced thinking. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a holochain developer :joy:) to figure out that when you ban two members, the community will probably appreciate an announcement about the reasons why, especially if you promised you would do that.

Perhaps there are things happening behind the scenes that caused Greg to be banned, but why in this thread? He said nothing in this thread that should be considered to be a “final strike” or something like that? Right? Doesn’t that part not make any sense?

And what about the person who has nothing in this thread but simply encouraged greg to share his feelings? Getting banned for simply encouraging another to share their vulnerable feelings and critiques on a forum? That’s as far as we know…

Please excuse me if a formal announcement was made about this in an alternative thread and link me to it :slight_smile:

#49

Even still, overall holochain seems to be one of the shining lights out there so I will still support in any way I can the beautiful vision :slight_smile:

#50

And therein lies your issue.

Whilst you continue to support that which you disagree with, that with which you disagree with will continue to exist and grow.

Which was kinda my point when I was discussing the options for governance. If we want this ideal of both the tech and the community, then it is going to take more than simply scribbling it on the screen.

#51

Fabulous quote from this recent conversation:

“Everyone wants the Drive-thru not the breakthrough”

#53

Are you still missing the extreme irony, @stephenpurkiss, that the whole point of this thread was to take action on this issue and that person was then banned from the community :joy:

Effectively that message by the people with the “power” to ban was that they were going to take extreme action to shut down conversations like this.

Besides, your little trope about scribbling on a screen is stupid and demeaning. Are computer programmers just scribbling on a screen? Are writers of books just scribbling on a screen?

This is the main forum and medium of communication for the holochain community. What kind of action would you like? Do you want to facilitate an in-person meeting flying people from all around the globe to meet in one area? Do you want to facilitate everyone who cares to get on a zoom call to hash this out?

I’ve spoken my truth and I’m willing to do next steps but I can’t do anything if the people with the “power” to ban aren’t willing to communicate.