I thought this was a very good and informative post for those of us who saw the basic problem (keynote cancellation handled badly due to miscommunication and/or organizational management problems, so... unfortunate, but happens all the time), and then wondered, why are all these Rust people FREAKING OUT over this?
It does a good job of explaining the back story. As a normal Rust user, and not an insider, I still can't help but look at the event itself and think, Well, that keynote snafu was unfortunate, I guess... so anyway what should I have for lunch?
But with this background, I can understand how if I was an insider, I might have a way stronger reaction because of the secrecy and organizational problems and the stream of similar unforced errors that preceded this latest one.
And in fact, as a user who's only recently started to actually use Rust at work, I am kind of reassured to see all these people freaking out and resigning their posts in outrage (or just from a desire to not be part of a dysfunctional/non-transparent org structure).
Because it seems like the overall organization(s) that comprise what we think of as "Rust" do badly need a dramatic overhaul, so some drama is probably required to achieve that.
> It's a delicate balance between "demanding justice" and "remembering we're dealing with human beings here". I've blown everything up and left enough times before, I was hoping for a better outcome here, despite the project's track record.
The author states earlier they are neurotypical who feels "really strongly about justice."
Their propensity for blowing things up not more than once but "enough times before" and their need to be explicit they are neurotypical but also really strongly feeling about justice does not jive with a calm, collected, drama-free individual and speaks volumes about the level of drama involved within Rust.
This is way too much hand-wringing and public emoting. The author's article is way too long for such an event. And I'm sorry but if your keynote gets downgraded and you blow up publicly this is as much a statement of you and your desire and need for recognition and conflict than anything else.
These are all symptoms of over-engagement and the sickness of ego that seems to be running rampant all over the internet. People need to start checking their egos rather than self-cherishing and exhorting those egos to greater levels of insanity.
Note that the author wrote neuro*a*typical (although I also made the same mistake when I first read the article). This makes more sense within the context of the paragraph - one typical trait of, for example, autism is a strong sense of right and wrong, so I think the author is trying to link those two ideas together: they are neurodivergant or neuroatypical in some way, and as a result, they feel heavily affected by issues that they perceive to have a moral or social justice aspect to them.
I think this is a very thoughtful, high-quality post.
A lot of people are saying that this is all way too much drama and analysis for a language community, and I do think a lot of this was overblown; but I think posts like this ones are symptoms of a healthy community, that takes the time to understand problems and have thoughtful discussions about them.
I think it's better to have a mindset of "talk about problems soon and often" rather than "don't think about it, let it blow over", even if the observable result is a lot of hand-wringing sometimes.
It does a good job of explaining the back story. As a normal Rust user, and not an insider, I still can't help but look at the event itself and think, Well, that keynote snafu was unfortunate, I guess... so anyway what should I have for lunch?
But with this background, I can understand how if I was an insider, I might have a way stronger reaction because of the secrecy and organizational problems and the stream of similar unforced errors that preceded this latest one.
And in fact, as a user who's only recently started to actually use Rust at work, I am kind of reassured to see all these people freaking out and resigning their posts in outrage (or just from a desire to not be part of a dysfunctional/non-transparent org structure).
Because it seems like the overall organization(s) that comprise what we think of as "Rust" do badly need a dramatic overhaul, so some drama is probably required to achieve that.