Warn Alex UA about Community Conduct violation.

I am recusing myself as a webmaster from deciding on this issue since I work for Palantir.net.

I don't think this is neccessary.

Me neither. I have had both in person and online spats with Alex UA about various subjects (commercial content on Planet, my employer, whether people who own companies are in a position to try to guilt trip people about who their employers are etc. etc.)

In general
- there are real pain points in the community that are not often discussed openly.
- I entirely disagree with Alex UA about what specifically those pain points are (i.e. I think they're systemic, not about corruption).
- as well as that I completely disagree with the way that he approaches discussing them.
- this was all true before he was personally accusing three people of financial misconduct, which is obviously taking it to a new level.

I do not know any details of Alex's communications with the DA (beyond what I just read on the new website), so I don't know if those accusations have been put privately before they were done in public (implicitly they have been but not explicitly).

While the behaviour looks both wrong and self-destructive to me (and at least borderline libellous), shutting down discussion is unlikely to improve the situation and could considerably worsen it.

I agree it's a witch-hunt/vendetta rather than discussion, but it's one that is being conducted both off Drupal.org and off.

Currently the off-Drupal.org stuff is now happening on a website that is run by Alex, and has comments turned off in favour of the groups discussion. Groups is currently the only central place that any of this could be responded to (except officially by the DA on the association site, and that doesn't appear to have been happening very promptly even if it's starting to catch up now).

To me regardless of whether it's entirely fabricated, just wrong etc. it will not look particularly good (even if only to casual observers) if a discussion about the Association, which is responsible for Drupal.org infrastructure (although not content/moderation, even if some people in the DA are also d.o webmasters), is prevented from happening on Drupal.org itself.

On a community site I help run (which bans a lot more non-spammers than Drupal.org does for disruptive behaviour), the one thing we don't ban people for is criticising the site itself or the people who run it, because that tends to just end up being another bullet point on the list of complaints/accusations and they tend to spread to various other channels that are much harder to track and respond to.

There are plenty of people who will read the first few lines of accusations like this (including "and I was banned from Drupal.org for bringing this up!") then not read any further.

Also a lot of people don't understand the difference between Drupal.org webmasters and the Drupal association, thinking they're the same thing (in the same way the security team gets e-mails from people trying to get specific posts taken down from Drupal.org that mention their name or something).

I totally agree with @catch in #3. I totally disagree with Alex UA's methods and personal attacks, but the conversations about why the Drupal Association is totally disfunctionnal needs to happen. Shutting down the discussion will not help the association on its path to making things better.

(Nor will a process to improve transparency conducted completely behind closed doors, but I digress.)

I agree with Alex UA that actions must have consequences. However, while he does not have proof for anything he says, we have that he against Drupal: He is openly encouraging people to report the DrupalCon Inc to the IRS which at least will cause a lot of time wasted and possibly a lot of revenue loss. Remove http://drupal.org/node/286955 from Services and http://drupal.org/aggregator/sources/216 from the Planet. Revoke http://drupal.org/user/110386/edit his vetted git role and documentation maintainer rights. I do not wish to stifle discussion so I am not asking for his ban outright.

I think that we should look at the reason why he started the "discussion."
It seems to me that the reason is similar to when he debated that the rules applied to the Planet Drupal RSS were wrong, for the simple fact that something has been reported about his RSS that is in the Planet Drupal. Because he didn't like that, he did proposed that Drupal.org webmasters should not decide about that; he proposed changes that should have been applied, as if he alone can decide for something that involves other people, and as if his decisions would be more democratic than the decisions taken from a group of people that is directly involved in taking decisions about the topic. Finally, he moved the discussion from the Drupal.org webmasters' queue, which is freely accessible to everybody, to a group on g.d.o where most of the members are Drupal.org webmasters or administrators; the reason is probably because issues in the issue queue can be closed, while posts on a group cannot be set to "fixed," or other statuses that make the post itself not normally visible without to make the post unpublished.

I also don't see the connection between his last post and the Drupal.org policies group where he posted it. Correct me if I am wrong, but if a user keeps to post something in the wrong place, even when he was warned, then something should be done. Users who keep cross-posting can be blocked, after they are warned; is there any difference in this case?

With the clarifications of #10 and #11, I'm totally happy with warning Alex UA about his behavior being against Drupal's code of conduct. While the discussion needs to happen, blanket accusations and conspiracy theories are just not ok.

Banning lends credence to conspiracy. Today, with Twitter and G+, etc., there is no silencing those who want to have their say and trying to do so builds interest in others so inclined to believe someone, somewhere is hiding the truth from them.

However, I would urge the project to remove the names of individuals who have been accused of wrong doing. It is potentially, and in my estimation, likely, libelous. A desire for openness should lead to discussion on issues and approaches, but balance is needed to protect individuals from such extreme personal attacks.

Very sad to see this. So inappropriate.

Well. I have made it very clear that being on the Services page is an award. That one should be removed , nonetheless.

This is going to be my first, last, and only input on the story:

I would urge the project to remove the names of individuals who have been accused of wrong doing.

I support @AmyStephen's proposal. Regardless of facts, FUD, history, lies, or missing transparency, these public personal accusations harm the Drupal product and the overall Drupal community at glance.

Suggested replacement strings:

"[Names of two members of the Drupal Association board]"

"[Name of one member of the Drupal Association general assembly]"

plus post body suffix:

"-- Names of individuals have been removed from this post, since they violate Drupal's Code of Conduct. The Drupal.org webmasters."

Libelous??? That's a big legal word there. What exactly is libelous? Yes, I was a bit of an asshole (okay a lot of one) during the lead up to this. I accept that my tone was overly aggressive, and I did my best to annoy the DA board (I did too well, since I annoyed all of you as well).

But with regards to censoring me and/or trying to 'scrub' my post, you are surely wrong. Not only will it not change any of the material facts, it will not obviate the fact that the DA will have to audit itself anyway, if it complies with the laws I have been trying to ensure they complied with for the past nine months.

Anyway, if someone wants me to remove the people's names on that post, then how can I publicly accuse them of wrong doing? All three of these people are pseudo-public officials (in our own Drupally way), so are you saying there is no way to accuse them in public? How else are you supposed to accuse them, if private appeals have failed?

@catch- I have been trying to get this resolved for nine months, and I certainly have let my emotions get the best of me, but I felt that I had exhausted all other avenues for recourse, and also felt backed into a corner by their recent actions (specifically crafting their COI policy in secret, with 2 of the 3 people I had accused of a COI on the COI committee).

Anyway, do what you like, as I said, it will have zero effect on what's happening at this point. @merlinofchaos has already expressed a desire to trash the GPL to prevent me from using Views (if he could), folks here have mentioned censoring me or punishing my company (btw, chx, Alex != zivtech, and I don't blame you for anything Sony does, so have some respect) are there any other principles of the community we'd like to throw out of the window here?

@merlinofchaos, I have said it before and I'll say it again: I do not think you are corrupt, and making you sad does disturb me, but not enough to stop using what I am free to use. That is the blessing and the curse of open, and I for one love freedom, even when it makes me sad. I'm not sure if I'll have a way to make it up to you some day, and I suspect that even if I did you wouldn't forgive me, but I hope to make up for the frustration I've caused you somehow. I am not blaming you, nor am I saying you were powerless, but the accusations I have made are serious and should be taken as such, I'm just sorry that I made them in such a way that you feel so defensive and disrespected. I assure you, I have nothing but respect for you.

I still have to understand in which way a post about public accusations is on-topic in a group that has the only purpose "to discuss and help draft policies related to the Drupal.org Web site."
Also, banning a user account doesn't mean the user is not anymore able to use Drupal, or any Drupal modules, as the download is available to anonymous users.

The Services page says For more information contact Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg at (215) 866-8956 or e-mail alex@zivtech.com

That pretty much equals Zivtech with Alex. Furthermore, zivtech.com is registered to his name. (Alex, my Services page bears my name and my name alone and never had anything to do with Examiner or Sony so do not try to FUD that.)

Edit: I have found http://drupal.org/node/282109 the original page which says "ZivTech is a company owned by Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (Alex UA)". See how it is easy to take facts out of context and spin them? Because it actually says "ZivTech is a company owned by Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (Alex UA) & Jody Hamilton (Lynn)." and because of that I am OK with the Services page staying (alas).

Hm. I probably shouldn't comment at all here, but I can't resist.

First, I thought Merlin's comments in response to Alex's accusations were very helpful for the most part. They gave me some useful background in understanding this controversy and suggest to me that (1) there are indeed problems with DA's governance, but (2) those problems stem primarily from lack of time, resources and experience on the part of DA's board, and not from corruption. "Lack of time, resources and experience" are typical of the pains that an organization experiences when it grows, and Drupal has been growing.

Second, the implied call by Alex for people to report the Drupal Association to the IRS is a serious attack that seems unwarranted and provocative. If Alex feels there is a legal violation, he should simply report it himself rather than trying to incite other people to file the complaint for him. Either DA has broken the law or it hasn't, and if it has broken the law, Alex shouldn't be waiting until August to report it. The facts, however, suggest no legal violation. The IRS does not allow "inurement/private benefit," but this only applies if the DA board members enter "into an arrangement with the nonprofit and receives benefits greater than she or he provides in return." The $45,000 benefit which Palantir received in this case had no cash value whatsoever and consisted entirely of presumed advertising value. For this to constitute "benefits greater than Palantir received in return," the IRS would have to conclude (a) that the value of a diamond sponsorship was truly $45,000, and (b) that Palantir delivered services of significantly less value than that amount. Similarly, the IRS would have to conclude that the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History got paid more money than it should have been paid for the event which it hosted in connection with DrupalCon. (The Field Museum's website lists a price of $65 per person for events hosted there, so the fact that DrupalCon paid $45/person actually means that they got a discount.) In any case, the burden of proving inurement would be on the IRS or on the person who makes the accusation. The Drupal Association is not legally obligated to initiate an audit or any other investigation, and I think the IRS would be unlikely to initiate an investigation unless Alex comes up with stronger evidence of wrongdoing than he has thus far provided. I have some knowledge of the way the IRS treats allegations of conflict of interest in a nonprofit organization, and I do not believe that the information Alex has presented would lead to sanctions.

However, I think people should be careful about about using Drupal's Code of Conduct as a basis for punishing Alex. The Code contains some recommendations to "be considerate," "be respectful" and "consult others," but those are vague phrases. Moreover, the Code contains no enforcement mechanism, and I don't think it is a good precedent to conjure up an enforcement mechanism now just to deal with the fact that Alex has angered people. If Alex indeed believes that members of the DA board have conflicts of interest, there is nothing inconsiderate or disrespectful about him saying so. If he is saying those things when he knows otherwise, of course he is being disrespectful. The point is that the question of whether he has violated the Code of Conduct depends entirely on whether or not we happen to think he is sincere, and none of us is the Great Pumpkin with an inherent ability to judge whether someone is sincere. We can merely form an opinion about whether he is right on the facts. (My opinion, at present, is that he is wrong.) It would be censorious and could establish a bad precedent for future openness within the Drupal community if we were to start banning people whenever they happen to forcefully express beliefs which we do not share. If failure to "be respectful" is considered grounds for banning someone, should we also ban the user who responded by calling Alex a "douchebag," or ban Merlin for calling Alex a "terrorist"? People say heated things in the heat of passionate debate. I've done it myself, and I'm sure I could compile a long list of disrespectful remarks that have been posted on drupal.org by some of the most respected members of this community.

The main aspect of Alex's attack which may merit sanction is his attempt to drag in the IRS, which is a clear threat to hurt the Drupal Association financially. However, the Drupal Code of Conduct does not contain any language which says that people are forbidden from attempting to hurt the Drupal Association financially. If the Drupal community wishes to take self-governance seriously, it may have to accept that members of the Drupal community are allowed to take legal actions which the Drupal Association finds inconvenient, just as for example the U.S. constitution allows citizens to file lawsuits against the federal government (including meritless lawsuits) without accusing them of treason. I can imagine adding language to the Code of Conduct which would define a grievance process, and the rules for filing grievances might be defined in such a way that Alex's actions constitute a violation. At present, however, no such language or process exists, and it would be a poor precedent to simply "read between the lines" in order to artfully construe his actions as a violation. If people want to sanction Alex, there are informal ways to do that (through declining to offer him leadership positions or to do business with him), but I don't think the Code of Conduct in its current form can serve as a basis for sanctions.

Finally, I would just note that Alex has been a longtime member of the Drupal community, and although I think he has gone off the rails in this case, a number of his past contributions have been positive. I would hope that some way can be found to dial down the acrimony and resolve this amicably. Maybe I'm naive, and I'm sure I don't know all the history here, but that's what I wish would happen.

@chx, I am an owner of Zivtech, but only one of them. In addition we have many contributors on staff, who are not Alex, and thus you cannot and shall not punish Zivtech for your anger at Alex, any more than I punish you for my anger at Examiner or Sony. My ownership stake doesn't change the basic fact that the other 12 or so contributors at Zivtech don't deserve your barbs.

@Sheldon Rampton, as per your request, I have (temporarily) disabled the page IRS page. You say I want to hurt the DA financially? That must be why I've written so many checks to them over the past few years. I am suggesting appealing to the authorities because I feel that the tax-exempt charity that I have invested so heavily in is being used for the private benefit of another company, which I feel is fundamentally wrong. If the DA will not hold its board members to account, then it should not have a tax exempt status, and the drupal community should set up one or more new (c)3s to fulfill the purposes which the DA can no longer accomplish (without paying taxes). Anyway, claiming that my attempts to force accountability on a charity (by reporting their actions to the IRS) are deserving of sanction seems fundamentally wrong. Disagree with my tactics if you like, but they are perfectly valid as an option of last resort.

Also, wrt "inurement/ private benefits" you are only correct wrt to inurement, though I can't say what the real value of the services they rendered is on the open market (and neither can they because they never put a contract out to bid). With private benefit, the standards are much broader, and I wouldn't be so certain that a line wasn't crossed. Either way, it's a question, not a statement, and it needs to be asked.

Please post (and potentially move above) comments on the DA matter on http://groups.drupal.org/node/162604, not on this issue.

Since @Alex UA followed up on this issue here, read about the community's socio-technical perception of his actions (which is all that matters for drupal.org itself), and (thankfully) adjusted the opening g.d.o post, this issue can be considered as fixed.

@Alex UA: I don't see how your tactics can honestly be described as "an option of last resort." The word "last" has an obvious meaning which you can find in any dictionary. There are quite a few things that you could have done prior to attempting to bring the IRS into this which you have not done. I have nothing against your right to publicly ask questions, but there is a big gap between asking questions and calling in the IRS. You have not presented any evidence of actual lawbreaking, only questions and speculation. Between "questions and speculation" and "calling in the IRS" there are any number of options to which you could have resorted before going nuclear.

As for whether DA should have put a contract out to bid for the work that Palantir did, the Drupal Association is not required by law to put all contracts out to bid. You are certainly entitled to think that they should have done so, and if you feel that they are not managing your donations responsibly, you are not obligated to continue donating. You can even ask them to refund past donations, although they are under no obligation to do so. (I happen to sit on the board of directors of a nonprofit organization, and occasionally we have received requests of this nature. We have always complied with those requests, not because we are legally obligated but because we think it's the right thing to do.) You are also certainly entitled to argue passionately and publicly that DA should put all its contracts out to public bid. However, publicly alleging that they have violated the law and trying to drag in the IRS crosses a line that I do not think you should have crossed.

See #25.

@sun: Point taken, sorry. I posted my most recent comment before I saw #25.

So, I'm sorry to reopen this, but I have been thinking a lot about what has been said here and on the other g.d.o. post, and at this point I unfortunately have to agree that I should be warned for violating the DCoC. I am still extremely concerned, as well as very angry, about this situation, but I believe that the ways in which I expressed that concern and anger were unbecoming of a member of this community, to the point where I was obviously doing harm to both myself and the broader community.

I'm not sure how this works, but if nobody objects, then I'll consider myself warned, with the full knowledge that a recurrence could lead to my banishment from drupal.org properties. I will not stop pushing for the transparency and accountability that I believe are fundamental to our community (both in the DA, and on d.o.), but I will stop letting my anger and pride guide my actions and strategies (or I will accept that I cannot take part on these sites).

Earl- again, I'm sorry that I've caused you so much stress. I don't really know you, so I don't know why it's bothering me so much, but I really do feel like I've (mistakenly) killed a litter of kittens (really cute ones), by hurting you as you obviously have been hurt by my words. I don't know how kitten killers repent, but hopefully I'll figure out a way to make it up to you.

Again, my apologies for my tweet barrage, as well as for the poorly worded complaint on g.d.o. It won't happen again.

Sorry Earl- I was writing at the same time as you. I'll close the issue again if nobody objects to my warning.

@merlinofchaos: Per your request, I've reposted my thoughts on the g.d.o thread, so feel free to delete them here.