There are a whole set of problems, IMHO. The code-of-conduct working-group (CoC WG) members are self selected. There is no effective oversight mechanism. No matter if you think they are currently doing a good job or not, it's not a proper way to organize such a group. The steering council (SC) did a poor job in communicating and their tendency towards secretiveness does not inspire confidence that the machinery regarding these things is working correctly. Part of the justification for secrecy is that they are protecting the banned person. That is hard to believe since it's trivial to figure out who they are talking about given their initial ban announce posting (X number of posts in a certain topic points to exactly one person). So it looks more like the secrecy is to avoid answering uncomfortable questions about the decision making and the process and not about actually protecting the accused.
Someone made a great analogy about what is happening here. You have a machine that is supposed to make toy dolls. One day you notice the dolls coming out the machine are deformed and weird looking. So, you say to the doll factory manager:
> I think something is wrong with the doll making machine.
They say
> No, this is a very high quality doll making machine, look at the specifications on the great looking dolls it will make. Don't you trust that this machine will make proper dolls? The manufacturer and people running the machine are all very trustworthy
You say:
> That might be true but I see the dolls coming out are deformed, something must be wrong.
Tim does not get a free pass to behave badly just because he is a long-time Python contributor. However, given his literal decades of civil behavior in many public forums, it is hard to believe he did something that was justifying a ban. Based on looking at what the CoC WG shared and what Tim shared, I don't see anything that justifies it. So, I don't think the "machine" is working correctly.
It took me a while to realize that the SC people were talking about in this thread was the Python Steering Committee. I thought it stood for Star Chamber.
Someone made a great analogy about what is happening here. You have a machine that is supposed to make toy dolls. One day you notice the dolls coming out the machine are deformed and weird looking. So, you say to the doll factory manager:
> I think something is wrong with the doll making machine.
They say
> No, this is a very high quality doll making machine, look at the specifications on the great looking dolls it will make. Don't you trust that this machine will make proper dolls? The manufacturer and people running the machine are all very trustworthy
You say:
> That might be true but I see the dolls coming out are deformed, something must be wrong.
Tim does not get a free pass to behave badly just because he is a long-time Python contributor. However, given his literal decades of civil behavior in many public forums, it is hard to believe he did something that was justifying a ban. Based on looking at what the CoC WG shared and what Tim shared, I don't see anything that justifies it. So, I don't think the "machine" is working correctly.