This is a formal announcement to the entire community. Under the current Code of Conduct (available at https://github.com/dirigeants/CoC/blob/b682d3/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md), I am applying points 4 and 7 towards our current Project Creator & Lead, AoDude#8676 (also known as bdistin on GitHub) and thereby removing his ownership status due to his multiple violations, as demonstrated below:
- Toxicity towards the community
Over time, Ao has shown again and again that he cannot take criticism, is toxic while replying to issues or concerns and threatens with or applies moderative actions against people who either disagree or argue with him.
There are many examples available in this Discord server and on the project's GitHub organization, to mention just a few:
- The constant denial of suggestions or PRs without giving any reason (dirigeants/klasa#843 (one of many of Skillz's suggestions), or PRs (dirigeants/core#183) amongst many others)
- Passive-aggressive or otherwise rude behavior on submitted issues (e.g. dirigeants/klasa-pieces#229 (comment) where he said someone was "not worth fighting over" and https://discord.com/channels/339942739275677727/339944237305036812/734810358753001682 (https://i.imgur.com/YVgv4Vj.png) where he is showing passive-aggressive behavior towards someone just for having a different opinion), and much more.
Per point 4.2 (Negative contributions to the community similarly weigh against other positive merits you may have.), this behavior outweighs the amount of good brought in the time spent (especially because of its repetition) and thereby violates our Code of Conduct at the time of writing, thereby applying point 7 (Failure to adhere to this code of conduct will result in loss of status, seniority, and/or access to the project/community.) and resulting in the immediate removal of his power (having broken the community's trust, alongside his teammates).
- Abuse of administrative power against members of the community and team members
Alongside point 1, his constant abuse of administrative powers on Discord shows that he is in no way fit to lead a community. Simply criticizing him or his opinion can yield a kick or even a ban if he is "tired of it". There have been several incidents where arguing about things yielded a kick and permanent demotion (a certain community member was banned for 24 hours & permanently demoted for suggesting a different test suite, and another member was banned permanently for basically saying that Ao was "selfish" and criticizing his behavior and decisions (https://i.imgur.com/BNy9lmj.png), with Ao's reply being seen here https://discord.com/channels/339942739275677727/339944237305036812/734424212403388427 (https://i.imgur.com/v1zLIoq.png) after banning said member). Such behavior is simply unacceptable from the owner of a community and was very much uncalled for. Not only that, but he himself also admitted to gladly abusing his powers (https://discord.com/channels/339942739275677727/339944237305036812/714163103604015137 (https://i.imgur.com/BCGL0Kh.png)). He also clearly cannot take pestering or anything like it (https://discord.com/channels/339942739275677727/339944237305036812/714165601442201731 (https://i.imgur.com/nmE4dWR.png)), and does what he does best: abuse power and kick (or at times ban) anyone disagreeing with him.
- A letter from a (former) Core Team Member, Kyra (also known as kyranet)
I have been a contributor of Dirigeants since March 2017, starting my engagement with the organization in January, when only Komada was a thing, which was governed by Faith and CyberiumShadow, having the support channels in the "An Idiots Guide" Discord server under the supervision of Evie and York.
During that time, Ao was inactive, working on his bot, using another version of the previous framework, to implement classes. The ownership of Dirigeants was on CyberiumShadow.
I quickly became the maintainer of Komada, Dirigeants's old framework. While maintaining Komada I contributed in many ways. From updating its source code and fixing its bugs to creating the database providers, writing and updating the guides (about topics such as creating commands, handling command arguments, and how manage a database), and much more. All this, when nobody else wanted to.
Later, Ao suddenly became active and shared his plans with us. We released Komada v0.20 and later we split teams to finish Komada while we also worked on Klasa. Then we created our own support guild.
My work was mostly focused on anything settings related, although I also worked on a patch that allowed the loader to be significantly faster, making the developer experience much nicer. Back in those days, Dirigeants was under a democratical system where we discussed everything as a team, using votes if we could not come to a unanimous decision.
However, this changed when Ao created Klasa, as he became Project Creator (highest role in Dirigeants's current "Code of Conduct") of the predominant project of the organization. This ended up with his promotion to the owner of the Discord server. This promotion ensured he would have the final say on everything, in both Discord (we cannot demote nor kick the guild's owner) and in the organization (highest hierarchy of predominant repositories).
At first, we agreed with it because the system was some sort of a republic, where the core developer team had a say in decisions to be made by means of voting.
It didn't take long until Ao started abusing his power and converted the system into a dictatorship, denying feature requests and proposals without reasoning and sometimes suggesting workarounds that did not address the core problem. This was the beginning of a bad era, Ao changed Dirigeants into a dictatorship, and later, a harmful one.
There are many discussions in both the Discord guild and GitHub issues/PRs of Ao shutting down Skillz when he was showing a design problem and was trying to improve it. After one of the shutdowns, Skillz went into the Discord server and explained why his idea worked, and he got kicked afterward.
Ao had issues in real life, causing him to be frustrated and attacking community or team members. When the issues got resolved, he apologized, and we thought it'd lead to a better future... That didn't happen. Instead of behaving professionally or trying to be a more welcoming and respectful member of the organization, he started kicking and/or banning active members for breaking no rules:
- Quantum (+1 year member) got banned for mentioning the name of a river; on the claim of it being intentional racism.
- Favna (+6 month member) got kicked and demoted for criticizing Ao's behavior and choices.
- Alex (+2 year member) got banned for pointing out that Ao's behavior was corrupted and toxic.
- Kyra (+3.5 year member) got kicked and demoted for making his own framework; on the grounds of stealing copyrighted code. (This argument could have easily been solved by a private DM or GitHub issue, requesting proper licensing of said files. Instead, Ao chose to threaten with an unofficial DMCA; (one that wasn't submitted through GitHub's DMCA system))
This behavior is simply unacceptable, and shows traces of being anti-competitive, my framework is built on the same library as Klasa, but is inspired by other frameworks and contains a much smaller and different feature-set as well as design, as well as giving first-class support for main-replica systems.
Ao's behavior has affected Dirigeants's reputation deeply and will soon be irreversible if nothing is done against him, with some of the most active users leaving before and after me and the staff team siding with me against Ao's dictatorship.
After Ao's actions today (22/07/2020), I am very hurt as somebody who mentored and taught me over the years ended up disregarding all my dedication to the organization and restricting access to my own code.
Let's sum it up, shall we?
In terms of dedication, Ao has spent 30-40% of the time (+1 year) absent in two parts, one before Klasa's creation and another last year. He contributed with the ideas that shaped the modern framework (inspired by the previous, made by other developers). In addition, he worked with things he was confident with: Usage and Loader. However, this is quickly overwhelmed by his bad actions: shutting down issues and PRs because "I don't want this", kicked/banned/demoted active users while they did not break a single rule, and caused lower-skilled developers to avoid contributing, as Ao threatens members with moderative actions if they bring up the topic, even if it's a question about it or simply asking for its reasoning.
Written with a 💔 and hopes of justice to be brought over.
In the end, what can and will happen in the future
This is a formal warning and direct request to Ao to take a break and spend time seeking professional help. The short fuse attitude brings nothing good to the community, instead it splits it into pieces. Thereby, effective immediately, his status of ownership has been revoked and it will not be returned until further progress updates and behavior evaluations.
Ao, you're an amazing code architect, but time and time again it shows you have deeper issues that need to be solved via professional help, be them anger management issues, lack of accepting, processing valid (and sometimes harsh) criticism, and more. We love you, but you messed up, and it's time for a change. If no changes happen this time, or you keep acting the same way, further actions may be taken, which includes, but is not limited to: temporary or permanent removals from the organization.
u mad gurl?