Howdy Rico, welcome to the forum. Although the topic of forum moderation is currently at the forefront of the convo here. It is still a great place to find out more about ECC & Zcash as you originally intended to do here.
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First of all I want to personally apologize that I did not have your back on parts of this issue when it was happening and that it has taken me so long to speak up. You and I have been friends for over four years, I deeply respect you as a person, as a proud LGBTQ member, and for what you have done for Zcash. I do my best to understand where you are coming from and I felt many of the same things you did, this entire situation led to my feeling stressed, and anxious to the point of losing sleep at night. So much so that I had to request the Zcash Foundation that I take a leave of absence from participation in this forum all together to gain some distance and perspective.
Now that I’m back I wanted to take the time to post my perspective of recent events.
It started in the MGRC thread where I had posted the meeting minutes and it became evident that Kek was not happy with the fact that Mario (a non-MGRC member) was included in the meeting and began heavily trolling the thread with clown memes. This led to several flags by the community because it was obvious trolling and I agreed with several of the flags and hid the posts. Later you informed me and the rest of the Mod team that these memes should be considered as white-supremist dogwhistles and you had taken the next step of not just hiding the posts but completely deleting them. I told you that I did not know about the use of clown memes as dogwhistles but that I trusted your judgment on the matter since you had apparently had more exposure to that side of the internet than I did. I considered that matter settled and I followed up by sending Kek an official warning to not post one again. It was up until this point that I had your back on this issue.
However, a day or two later (I don’t recall exactly the timing and order of events) @mistfpga posted that the Zcash Contributor Code of Conduct had been updated in the Zcash Github and that he had concerns about its applicability to his streaming on Twitch and other interactions with Zcash. You also informed me the mod team that you had updated the Zcash Code of Conduct and you strongly suggested that the forums code of conduct also be updated with the newly added text. This is while simultaneously you were telling Mist in that thread, in no uncertain terms, that he (a non-ECC employee) now had to enforce this revision on Twitch (a non-ECC controlled platform) and that if he did not do so he would be in violation of this revised CoC and at risk of being banned. This hard line stance that ECC makes the rules for anything to do with Zcash led to much confusion and debate as can be seen in that thread. It was this turn of events that caused me to have great concern about the broader picture of what was happening, and it was at this point that I no longer had your back on this issue.
The big concern I had was not the wording of the revision but the way it was being presented and enforced. I was extremely disheartened to have to be stuck with two impossible choices:
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Advocate for the revision to be put on the forums CoC as had been made by a small group of three developers within the Zcash GitHub repository and in doing so implicitly concede that ECC had the unilateral power to make changes that were enforceable on every platform that even mentions the word Zcash (Including this forum).
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Disagree with the revisions and not advocate for a change of forums CoC, not because of the text of the revision, but because it represented an egregious overreach of power by the ECC and could have repercussions that would be felt throughout the entire Zcash ecosystem.
I chose, with much stress, option number 2 with looming dread that I could be risking my personal reputation and be portrayed as a white-supremist empathizer because I did not advocate for the revision to be added verbatim to the forums CoC. Its also important to note that I use the word “advocate” when referring to this forums CoC because these forums are owned and operated by the Zcash Foundation and I do not get to set the rules.
I want to be crystal clear on this: I do not condone and absolutely will not support any fascist, white supremist, or Nazi groups whatsoever. The only issue I had with this whole situation was not that you were taking a stand against these groups but the way it was being imposed upon the ecosystem.
I hope this clears up any misconceptions about my views on this subject, I sincerely hope that you will remain on the forums, and I hope that we can somehow move past this whole ordeal and get back to focusing on making Zcash better.
I think is also important to note that I think the revised ECC-employee CoC which will be replacing the current version of the Contributor CoC on GitHub is well thought out and personally I would not be opposed to adopting a similar version of it here on the forums.
Sincerely,
Shawn
EDIT: P.S. I also want to add that I realize now that this was not ECC taking a position of enforcing rules on other platforms as evidenced by the new ECC employee CoC , I had no way of knowing the position of the ECC at the time.
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Thank you @Shawn for taking time to reflect on the recent events.
My request to everyone on the forum: take a step back, understand the perspectives of others, then make insightful, constructive & reasonable responses. Give a good argument, you will find support in the community to back you up & eventually make the change happen.
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Thanks for your input Shawn. Unfortunately this is a microcosm of what has been going on in the United States for the last several years.
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Seems some people are overly sensitive and wish to censor others views. Weak people are inherently prone to censor any dissent within its ranks and thus, ideas are not allowed to flourish. In my view as long as everyone is kind /curdious ALL views/opinions should be shared and moderators should be unbiased and mentally strong. In business you do not want to block an entire demographic over political views which are not tolerated withing the company /community/forums.
This is the second time (first time being the MGRC election diversity discussion/where electecting people based on sex, which is actually a form of sexism was discussed. All hires elections should based on merit /qualifications and Not their Sex or Skin color/Ethnicity as these are racism and sexism disquised.) I’ve seen weakness and complaining in this forum with regards to political views which is a red flag to investors and I strongly encourage everyone in Ecc/ZF/Moderators to steer clear of.