@maloki I empathize with Eugen a bit because he was seriously getting some vitriol, and it's never fun to get flamed by like 40,000 people, but this post was an object lesson in why engaging the public when you're pissed is a terrible idea.

@Miredly Yeah, I have had a lot of sympathy for Gargron a lot of times I mean that's why I was working with him. That's why I wanted to be that buffer.

That's why I offered to come back, and got hired back for a month.

He didn't need me, my feedback wasn't welcome anymore.

So.... I was like. Can I fork? No... That'd be too antagonistic.

I spent all day dealing with "cut him some slack" "Just fork off" "You haven't contributed go away", from other people.

@Miredly

So I was like: okay, let's see if anyone wants to fork.

Before I made anything public or even hinted at it I had whispers my way, which made me sure that I should do it. And that it was the right time to do it.

Critical mass maybe?

@maloki Absolutely. From my perspective, the more diversity in the fediverse ecosystem, the better.

I struggled a lot with if I should in any way lead a charge for a fork, for governance.

I had just not had my contract renewed. It would seem petty and disruptive if I encouraged a fork.

So I bit my tongue, for the past 3 weeks.

I didn't want to rock the boat, I didn't want to be antagonistic. I didn't want to be "that person".

Eugen could manage this himself, he said so, I was willing to give him a chance.

I have never had so many people tell me to "Just fork it" as I had today. They told me my contributions weren't valued, because I hadn't contributed code.

What they all had in common? Seemingly Cis-het men, who I'd never heard about before, or seen in any of the discussions about the project. And none of them acted like they knew I had ever contributed to the project either.

But what spurred me on was the #ForkOff attitude.

I was like. Hmm, they know we can't fork alone, that much is clear.

It's the typical "If you think you can do it better yourself then go and do so", comes with gaming as well.

What can I do well though, what has been my contribution to Mastodon? It's organizing people and listening to the community.

Huh. So I decided to reach out, and ask the community, who probably went through similar feelings as me today, what they want.

I also had a WHOLE OTHER survey in my head, for Main Masto development. For the people who responded with No to if they wanted to #ForkOff.

I had already planned out what I'd be working on over the summer. Finding out what the needs of the community was, was high on my todo list, so was governance.

Then I remembered, Main Masto isn't my responsibility anymore. If Eugen really wanted to know what the community wants and needs, he can make a thorough survey himself.

@maloki As far as I can tell, his metric is based entirely on github comments?

So here we are, #ForkOff-ing

This is for the community, who feel like their voice doesn't matter because they can't contribute code.

This is even for Gargron, because he wont have to deal with us nagging him anymore.

You do you, and we'll do us.

This isn't a hostile action, this is self-care.

#SelfCare

@maloki now that you've said all that, darling, it's time for bed. <3

@noelle Yes!

I understand some confusion arose and I'm looking to suggest that we #ForkOffTogether instead of just #ForkOff.

It makes sure its significantly different to not be confused with others or us saying Fork-off, but is actually a positive move we're doing for #selfcare reasons.

Regex filter for those who want to opt out: #forkoff|#forkofftogether|fork-off

(yes yes I know I'm not sleeping yet, but I've taken the meds now will pass out soon)

@maloki let me know when something's happening

Better yet, we'll #ForkOffTogether

Not just #ForkOff

@maloki Worth noting that as you're on elekk.xyz, you're already on a fork.

And @noelle, the one who forked it, is kinda awesome.

In case anyone else wants to join us.

@Crash yes this is true.

But it's not necessarily any that, but a greater systemic problem about the Mainstream Masto Dev and its governance.

And I have a feeling you already know this?

@noelle

@maloki @noelle I have an RSS feed and reader ready to go for when we all go back to longform blogging on whatever platforms we wish.

A true diaspora, held together only with a loose bond of syndication.

"They told me my contributions weren't valued, because I hadn't contributed code."

This is a rly daunting attitude & it's a shame to see someplace like Mastodon fall prey to such a seemingly-obvious capitalist pitfall as "has your labor produced a demonstrable Product? no? then it doesn't count" (where "count" usually means as a credit or the cost of doing it)

I just want to find a place where being a good community member (not admin) is an investment that matters.

@Cobalt I feel like I need to clarify. It wasn't Eugen who said this nor really any of the other main contributors, but the myriad of other people who told me to fork off yesterday.

So it made me consider that maybe I wanted to #ForkOff, and then when someone reached out to me asking, I figured we could see if anyone else wanted to #ForkOffTogether as well.

@Cobalt i mean my first few dAYS on Mastodon were spent being harassed and dogpiled by people with similar sentiments who thought coding skills were more important than ~racism~

@creatrixtiara ajsddhsja ugh I believe you 100%

@maloki
Urgh, the idea that code is the only contribution... Well this is why so much software is terrible, because code is not the be-all and end-all!

@maloki The word "governance" is key. Forking the software would be pointless without establishing the social infrastructure first. And that means all the boring-but-essential stuff: bylaws, a code of conduct, how to handle RFCs, something like a Board of Directors, etc. Otherwise, it's just Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

@maloki ... I've been part of projects that failed for lacking such things, and I've seen organizations stumble because the one guy in the very middle has to wear too many different hats and becomes the bottleneck to progress. I don't have much experience with the *fixing* of such problems, sad to say.

@bstacey That's why we're going to put on our thinking caps, and figure this out.

@maloki Yes. And I think it's worth taking the time to do it right.

@maloki @bstacey But what if: forking caps?

@bstacey @maloki "the one guy in the very middle has to wear too many different hats and becomes the bottleneck to progress" this sounds like exactly what's happened. It's a common story in #PeerProduction projects #GrowingPains

@bstacey @maloki This is almost verbatim what I just wrote in my survey response moments ago, and have kind of mused on the past little while.

We' ve seen other implementations spring up as similar 'benevolent dictator' situations simply because they're someone's personal pet project - which in and of itself is totally fine, by all means - but I think we're looking for a more mature alternative.

@bstacey @maloki Exactly this. It's hard to take "go and fork it" responses to any disagreement as good faith. People who say that aren't saying it because they sincerely think that it will lead to success. They're saying it to make you go away.

@abbenm @bstacey @maloki I haven't seen any, but I accept there may people who say "fork it" and mean "shut up". But I wonder if these is a cultural misunderstanding here? Since the popularization of #Git, forking has become normalized in #PeerProduction. It's seen as a way to take energy that is at risk of being wasted on butting heads, and redirect it into increasing diversity in our software. When we fork, we create proofs-of-concept, rather than argue in circles.

@abbenm @bstacey @maloki
if respectful persuasion fails, the available options are a) try to force a founder/ "benevolent dictator" to make changes they don't want to make, and b) get together everyone that wants those changes, and create a new project with those changes. Given those choices, b) actually seems like the much less hostile option, and the one most likely to succeed, and least likely to fester and stress out everyone involved

@strypey @abbenm @bstacey Yes, but this is very hard to do when you're immediately met with "forking is hostile actions" when you try to arrange it.

I've had a lot of shit to deal with since I started to see if there was a community for this.

@maloki @abbenm @bstacey ok, that's weird. Is it the same people though? Or is that maybe coming from folks on other side of the cultural divide I'm positing?

@strypey Honestly, it doesn't really matter, because you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Techbros: Fork it!

We: Okay!

Techbros: No Don't Do That!

We:

@maloki Is it though? Or is it ...

Folks who understand the value of forking: Fork it!

You: Okay!

Folks who think forking is equivalent to splitting a political party into two smaller, and therefore less effective parties: No Don't Do That!

You: but it's the best way to reduce toxic conflict and get *everyone's* needs met.

@strypey I don't have energy for this.

@maloki what I'm trying to say is stick to your guns! You are doing a good and useful thing for the (meta-)community! What you are experiencing (and probably already knew) is that taking on a leadership role means taking shit for everything you do and don't do, and being constantly second-guessed. Leadership is doing what you think is right, even when everyone thinks it's wrong, and trusting your own judgement.

@stolas I know, I know.

But it's still funny AF.

@stolas if I cared about the anti-forkers I wouldn't have started this survey in the first place.

@strypey I actually ended up reflecting a little bit on this.

I think we've had a lot of instances when the vulnerable group who reside here on mastodon have gotten very vocal about their needs to hopefully change the mind of the Benevolent Dictator, because making it a big thing was the only way to make it happen.

And yes, that naturally seems like it's "just a very vocal minority" (minorities are vulnerable, so that makes sense).

@strypey
And now when a) has happened a bit too often too close together, b) is happening, ie we're seeing if others feel the same, realize that they are, and trying to form a group and go from there.

Thank you for helping me connect these dots.

@maloki de nada :) Cell division and diversification is a healthy and organic form of growth. I'm very supportive of what you're doing, as I've mentioned in other posts. Hope that's coming through, and I'm not communicating so poorly that expressions of support are coming across as some kind of subtle trolling :{

@strypey
@abbenm @bstacey @maloki
These options aren't mutually exclusive actually.

When GCC's contribution flow stagnated due to its strict committee, a bunch of forks popped up. Those forks then merged together as an alternative GCC, which proved to be much better, so GNU declared the previous project obsolete and the fork the new GCC, with its maintainers/developers as the new committee.

@accedie That works too, but we just gotta dare to take that step to try something new. Etc.

@maloki You know where I stand here.

And for my money, mastodon doesn't need new code for a while, it needs governance and a properly paid sysadmin.

@maloki @pnathan Yeah, I haven't actually found myself wanting new features in ... I dunno how long, but a long time. I know I might not be typical in that (I don't do any admin or moderation stuff, for example), but the code side of things seems ... pretty OK, all in all?

@bstacey @maloki there are, I am sure, scale and devops things that need to be addressed. Along with, like enough, moderation tooling.

But tbh, from a user standpoint, it's probably time to take a hard look at what more needs to be added and try to do a honest to goodness user experience freeze for a while.

This is a fair point @maloki, but I think pardoning @Gargron indignation might be appropriate. It seems like a lot of people are employing a tit-for-tat strategy in #forkoff, which doesn't perform well according to Planet Money: #844 Nice Game. See https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/30/615622421/episode-844-nice-game