Language, Twitter, Misunderstanding & Drupal Community

Morten - although I am not part of the Drupal community I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for standing up and giving your time freely to help others.
Thank you for standing up and volunteering to work when others sit on the sidelines.
Thank you for standing up and working hard to advance the usage of open source software
Thank you for standing up and travelling the world to "spreadthedrupallove"
Thank you for standing up and leading the way for others to follow.
Thank you for standing up and writing the code that others will benefit from.

Thank You

This is kind of sad. I feel you could have given a much needed different perspective. This is an opportunity now missed. Brashness often leads to discussions that turn out to be much more interesting than situations where nobody dares to open their mouth in spontaneity for fear of being called out.

However, ultimately this decision is yours, and I can certainly understand the need to cut away all distracting and energy soaking bullshit from your surroundings so you can focus to the tech tasks at hand.

Happy twigging, Morten.
J.

Sadly, I knew that something like this will happen after initiating the DrupalCon conflict.

Yes I was the guy that called Mørten to be a pussy (sorry again for such offensive word) and included the #DrupalCon hashtag, making the twitter conversation less personal and more related to the Drupal community.

That was such a terrific error so I tried to fix it immediately apologizing for my error. Some people accepted my apologies but someone considered them "Bullshit and empty". I think it's not the right way for asking for respect considering that I was so sorry from the beginning. That's the point where I totally agree with Mørten when he pointed to DrupalCon Code of Conduct for Conflict Resolution. Problems and misunderstandings should be fixed with the same respect you are asking for.

Anyway, the result of that conflict is that one good friend was involved in this problem I was responsible for. That was my fault and I'll try to never do it again. And, if I'm such stupid to do something similar in the future, considering that english is not my first language (I know that's not an excuse, but it's hard to me to understand the second meaning of some words) I beg you to explain it to me and don't consider my apologies "Bullshit and empty".

Mørten, sorry for that dude. Hopefully we can talk about it in Frontend United in front of a few beers.

Long live to the King of Denmark!!

I suppose all of this was inevitable. And sometimes it's weird to genuinely understand and agree with both sides. Lets just hope someone else joins the board who can kick just as much ass!

And by the way !€%& u, u &/(?ing, #"!°. I hope you !"#€ing ?=€#, °§"#45€!!!!. Just saying!

Morten, all part of the rough and tumble of life. Your contributions have been immense. You resigned with dignity and rock on with integrity.

Best,
Pete

Great, now even pet names need to be discussed and approved by the community? I wish there was a comprehensive list of this bullshit. Such a loss for the DA...
brb scrapping everything from my Frontend United talk that isn't code!

I'm kinda shocked by this. It is a sad state of affairs that you have to stand down from the Drupal Association board by just being who you are. Everyone offends people all the time without even trying and people sometimes need to decide if they want to be offended or not. Yes, it is a choice to be offended. Unless you are maliciously causing offence (which you are not), I don't see why you should stand down. A true community will embrace and accept everyone for their different styles and characters. People shouldn't feel like they have to fit a certain mould in order to be accepted but standing down sends a signal that everyone had better change who they are in order to be in the DA board. The DA should represent EVERYONE!

It's a sad state of affairs when you feel you need to step down due to a 3rd party you know as a friend calling you something that was taken way out of context by people who know neither of you and the message was not meant for them. It clearly wasn't meant and didn't offend you and I'm sure it wasn't meant to offend anyone else.

People should stop being so sensitive and get on with life, is it your responsibility a small % are offended by something that had no malicious intent and 99% of people saw for what it was, non malicious banter between friends.

I am saddened by this posting because I feel like you and I are kindred spirits in many ways my friend, but I am so impressed with you conflict resolution skills and how you handle your business. It is a loss for the DA for sure, thank you for turning to face the issue head on, and not taking this personally and pulling away from Drupal. You are hands down one of my favorite members of the community, and I can't help but smile when I see you at large events. Here's to seeing you at D4D Boston and buying you a beer.

morten, whether it's in the issue queue or at a sprint, or even in person, you always manage to bring a smile out of almost everyone. Even in your "stepping down from the DA" blog post, I'm happy for you. Sounds like this is just a title shift.

See you in Amsterdam.

Are we now hostage and subject to scrutiny over every little thing a third party says on Twitter in our direction?

Perhaps we need thicker skin and grow up. We are humans, we are people. A board is a group for the good of the collective towards its set initiatives, that's where your public actions can be scrutinized. But private life (and yes, a friend tweeting you in public falls into that category)? That shouldn't count.

Morten feeling like he needs to step down is completely asinine. This reaction is way exaggerated.

Part of being in a community is learning to deal and respect personalities of the people in it. 99.% of them are good people. Forcing people to bend and change to extreme PC views (like some non-community member calling someone a pussy) is very non-community like.

I think you should stay on the board as long as you are performing the duties asked of you. Stick to your guns.

So FUCK YEAH. If that offends you as the reader, go elsewhere on the net or life, there's a billion places to be. Don't change.

Stunned and heartbroken. We are missing the point.

I saw this on Twitter. I thought the apology took care of any offense that anyone could have. I thought it demonstrated a humbling of ones ego and a willingness to adapt for others. Isn't that all we can ask?

Maybe there are people who are able to walk thru life right down the line without intentionally or accidentally stepping outside of the lines of that narrow definition of what we consider acceptable, but is that really what we are after? If so, count me out. I'll take the King any day. He comes with a huge heart, he works hard for the Drupal communty, if you did a survey, I am quite certain his involvement is the reason for many to participate. The credibility, alone, of the Drupal Association rose significantly having a 'real person' participate as fully as he does.

Sexism is systemic to our culture. That means we are all infected. We have to make it safe to learn because we are blind to our biases. We do not fully appreciate how we offend others. If someone apologizes, that is enough. We pick up, and move on together. It builds trust, others take note that while mistakes are not tolerated, people who adapt are accepted.

When overly harsh responses are made, it has an effect of silencing the correction, either through fear of what might happen to the one corrected, or fear of personal consequence for putting the individual into harm's way. Not so safe to learn.

Yes, he is on the board and he is held to a higher set of standards. And, man, does he live that way with his commitment to this community and continually reaching out.

I am in so much shock by this new prevailing ideology in which the most insane of us hold the power and enforce that if they find our words offensive that we must atone. I thought this was an open source community- one which I once took to be aligned with personal freedom and anarchist sentiments, not hyper-sensitivism, politics, and censorship. I find these social justice warriors particularly disingenuous when they see an inclusive, high-minded, intellectual community as their target for their alleged mission of promoting equality. It sickens me that the need to control others manifests itself more and more in the self proclaimed power of the drupal association. As someone who is pro both gender equality and bad words I will say it: this is some real pussy shit. And no I do not mean that women are inferior and excrement comes out their vaginas. I mean you psycho witch hunters are scaredy-cat cowards masking your desire for power and attention with this victimhood routine and your ideology is a giant smelly turd.

First of all I would like to thank you for giving so much in your role in the DA Board. Maybe it went unnoticed but I saw how you were in Portland, went home to be with your daughter just for the weekend and straight out the New Zealand flying the Drupal flag. On so many occasions you have done this in your term.

Watching the Erynn Petersen keynote last week [ https://austin2014.drupal.org/keynote-erynn-petersen ] she mentioned how in healthy communities there needs to be 10% people who are outspoken, maybe don't tow the line and stimulate awkward conversations which result in positive outcomes from healthy debate. Witnessing your cat herding the front enders at DrupalCon last week, you are able to do that like few others in Drupal. Behind closed doors I am sure you did exactly that on the DA board.

In so many ways I am surprised this hasn't happened earlier. That's a tribute to how you've approached your responsibilities with respect, cleaned up your language.

Twitter can be a dangerous wild west, I feel your pain, I've felt your pain. Recently. Get back to being yourself again ;-)

As Amy says so well above, sexism (and many other bigotries) exists in our culture. Everyone is sexist because we all grew up in a sexist culture. It's what was handed to us. It's inevitable. But how we respond to it, deal with it, learn from it is what matters.

All too often we see pushback from the privileged when they are asked to show some respect and courtesy to others. They cry foul, they declare "political correctness", they bewail the loss of "free speech". And all too often, things get much much uglier, with epithets, rape threats, doxxing, and so on. We hear about it happening in tech conferences and gaming forums so often that it's not even fucking news. We all have to live in this world. And it's important to remember (or learn) that how that world feels for you is not the same as how it feels for others, especially those on the receiving end of the above. It's all of a piece, and goes beyond "offending", even if it's not seen or experienced as such by all.

What's rarer, but what gives me hope every time it happens, is when people step up, own up, and learn from the experience because to them it's more important to be a positive contributor than it is to be a righteous bastard, er, seen as always in the right.

That's why it pains me that out of this incident (which I completely managed to miss when it happened), when you so clearly in your blog post here have stepped up, owned up and learned from the experience, and obviously want to do better, obviously support diversity, obviously embrace the values of the community, explicitly embrace the CoC and conflict resolution process—it pains me that you still feel you must (or have been quietly and strongly encouraged to) resign from the DA Board. [Disclosure: I am a former DA Board member and currently am a member of the Advisory Board, but I have no knowledge of any activity or discussion regarding this that isn't in the public sphere.]

Morten, you've been a leader among leaders in the Drupal community. You've championed the community throughout. I'm glad that you're still rocking the front-end rise from the ashes of phpTemplate, divitis, core class contagion, and all those other headaches we've had to deal with coming from the Drupal theming firehose.

Still, there's good reason why you've been elected by engaged community members. I feel that we all lose with your resignation from the Board, but I hope that this at least frees you to focus all the more on the people and things that you love.

Fuck off, man!!!
You serious???
Not buying it, piss out a better excuse.. like you need more free time, or prefer watching paint dry rather than arguing for the sake of it...
Cultural respect works the other way around as well. You're not forced-fed any abuse and if that's offending you, fine, but don't put it on the cultural respect...
I've been working with Drupal for a while now and was really tempted to contribute actively, after your session at the last Drupal Camp I've been to. This comes as a bit of a shock, to be honest...
Totally understand if you had enough, not so much if this "incident" (??) was the real reason.
Either way, it sucks... sucks balls...

Morten, you are great. F!@# 'em if they can't take a joke.

As has been echoed, we are a global community -from ALL walks of life, all religious and political views. That sword cuts both ways, but we each choose this community as a whole. We are students, experts, and everything in between. We work from the comfort of home, in cubicles, on beaches, in offices, in dorm rooms, on trains, planes, and in seedy little dives that we love. Tolerance, passion, acceptance, and constructive collaboration are what make Drupal so special.

I for one love that there is one person that I know I can bounce something off of and can guaranty the response to be genuine and in the best interest of a global effort - What the fuck? Is welcomed with open arms if it is going save time and energy to help guide me in the right direction. When we all stroke each other's egos and pc the hell out of every conversation we loose the passion which ignites and unifies us to create something greater. It is at turning points such as these where we as a community digress afraid to speak...guarded..we wind up in a circular Death by PowerPoint because we may offend one of the thousands in attendance. Anyone up for civility training which encompasses our entire demographic? Tap that into Drupal 101, we are a community which respects diversity as long as....

It is the association's (as well as the community's) loss for you to step down. I am sorry for this bs to have been the breaking point.

Thank you for being a force to be reckoned with!!! Should be a fun ride seeing you without reins. ;)

Cheers,
Jen

I think it's important that people realize (and this isn't entirely evident from the post) that there's a bit more to this than just someone else saying the word "pussy" on Twitter and Morten getting drawn up into it and feeling forced to step down from the DA as a result.

From the Drupal Community Working Group's POV, that specific public incident followed our newly established Conflict Resolution Process https://drupal.org/conflict-resolution, to a successful outcome. Morten met with both the offended party and a neutral third-party in-person, Morten accepted personal responsibility for his hand in escalating the situation, and apologies were made and accepted (both in private and on Twitter). This was the first real "Beta test" of this process, and by jove it actually seemed to work. Awesome!

Unfortunately, though, because of Morten's specific position as a DA board member, these sort of missteps carry a lot more weight. It was not just a loud-spoken Drupal community member who accused a DrupalCon attendee who raised a concern about sexist language of being overly PC, it was a DA board member who did it. It was not just a loud-spoken Drupal community member who then proceeded to "mansplain" the Code of Conduct to said DrupalCon attendee, it was a DA board member who did it, etc. All of which happened very publicly.

So you can hopefully understand how this puts the DA as an organization in a very tight spot, because on the one hand we put the Code of Conduct in the program guide, we say at the beginning of and throughout the conference we will investigate all complaints, take them seriously, and look to resolve them. Then on the other hand, you have someone actually steers said organization dismissing complaints raised by a conference attendee, and doing so in public.

When you accept a position on a board, one of your primary legal obligations and duties is "Duty of Care." This is spelled out as "To protect the reputation and well being of the organization" in our Board Member Agreement which all of us on the board must agree to. This was clearly violated, so something had to be done.

And even if it were just that one incident, this most likely would've only resulted in a stern, public, warning from the DA. But unfortunately, that one single public incident then caused a small flood of additional, private complaints from others who've witnessed Morten's behavior at events during the time that he's been on the board. And while we can't discuss publicly exactly what those were (and I know how much that sucks for a community who rightfully expects transparency in all of our dealings), let's just say that these weren't merely cases of him saying "fuck" too much in front of the wrong set of ears. :P

So I'm really proud of Morten for "owning" his missteps here. This taking of personal responsibility is central to our Code of Conduct. I'm even prouder for him choosing to step down from the DA. That was a really sucky choice to make, but in doing so he's spared the DA from being forced to choose between hypocrisy and disenfranchising the community from their elected voice.

Morten, if you're game, I'd love your help in identifying someone else who can run in your place next elections to represent the kind of global mindset, grassroots activism, branching out to other open source projects, etc. stuff you represented on the board. We definitely do not want to lose your perspective, as much as it sucks we had to lose you.

Man, this just sucks. I just want to echo what others have said about your generosity to the community and passion for the frontend cause.

@webchick, i appreciate the explanation, but if this is a "successful outcome" then I'd hate to see an unsuccessful outcome.

The DA has just lost a lot of heart and soul. And for what? Appeasement?

Morten's post shows how willing he is to learn and do the right thing. It shows that his heart is and has always been in the right place. It shows how willing he is to grow. These traits are something everyone who knows him already knew.

I don't believe that those who worked to push Morten out have their hearts in the right place.

This is a demonstration of how it is possible to enforce conduct that is central to and required to foster a welcoming and diverse community without experiencing communal growth or learning. This is the kind of action that creates an expectation of behavior without doing the work of growing our community into one that understands and appreciates why such behaviors are desired.

This could have been a wonderful teaching moment in our community. Instead we now have yet another community drama that results in the DA turning something like a public school board which accomplishes desired behaviors through fear instead of love and understanding.

We've chosen the quick and lazy route of requiring conformity to play the game instead of the right route of encouraging personal growth.

This kind of enforcement of the CoC will only push unwelcoming behavior out of the spotlight instead of eliminating it.

What a misstep by the DA and what a loss for our community.

Morten was the public flagship of those of us who only wanted to say what they think, without thinking if the words by themselves offend anyone or not. This does NOT mean we want to offend them. If there are people offended by this kind of attitude, then something is rot at the roots. Does anybody have to be MortenDK to be allowed to say what s/he thinks? Don't think so. There are quite a bunch of people who do want to do this, but we are remaining silent just to avoid offending anybody. This means the community loses some minds, some thoughts, some talents – just because we, as the community, want to avoid offending some people.

Anyway, let's count these people who feel themselves offended every now and then because somebody uses some words without even the intent to offend them, and shouting subversion all the way around the globe in seconds via Twitter, DC keynotes of invited speakers, etc. Then let's count those people like us who are trying to be silent instead of being accused of offensive. I think the first group has way less people and way more sound – but they can be compared by the talents in them.

I, for one, am offended if somebody feels offended by some of my words that were never intented to be offensive, but are used everyday in the culture of mine, and they don't accept my apologies. If I can accept their POV, I expect them to accept mine – ditch the misunderstandings, accept apologies, and let both parties rock on together making Drupal even better.

That's it - we are now hostage to the extreme liberal agenda of the female sex. Everyone has bent to its will so no one gets upset.

We can no longer speak, even in passing to friends.

Pack up and go home.

This is a slippery slope and one that the DA should take a serious look at.

It is my right to say "I fucking hate kittens".

As long as someone isn't being racially or gender insulted the code of conduct should end there. The DA is a 501c3 nonprofit but doesn't rely on foundations or corporate sponsors so unless the community votes him out should be serving on the board.

Morten, based only on what I've read right here, I don't think you needed to resign. You and your friend didn't mean to offend. It's enough that there is a conversation about it. None of us is perfect and few of us manage to never in the spur of the moment use a word that cultural habit has burned into our brains and yet communicates undesirable judgments. I don't think we should throw people away every time we are hurt. The helpful thing to do is to communicate and improve common understanding and learn, which is also pretty much what open source is about.

Morten, though you are stopping down, I hope you will not be dissuaded from trying to reach out to people and work with others. Getting one's ear burned a little is a small (even helpful) price to pay for the rich rewards of building true honest community.

Morten, I'm really sorry to hear that you stepped down from the DA board and about the reasons for it. I really have been totally happy that you decided to bring your efforts and down to earth mind into the DA since two years ago and have been working on steering the DA to work on important things, not politics and other bureaucratics.
Now I feelt totally spiritless to renew my membership for a third year as I get the feeling that the DA now finally has completely lost its connection with the Drupal community and spirit and is just running after the big companies which don't like open minds and trouble.
Morten you solved the problem in the best way by talking to the people. This should have not only been honored but given you the highest respect by Dries, Webchick and everybody on the board who still believes to have a connection with Drupal community members. It was their duty to motivate you to stay on the board for the rest of your term, I see they faied.
I salute you!

We definitely choose whether to be offended or not. Although my age, gender, and background would make me a prime candidate to be offended, I choose not to be. Like @mechr, my motivation for having a DA membership was to be able to vote for people who have given a lot to the community like Morten to represent me on the DA. I voted for you twice and am sorry you have resigned, Morten. I agree with others who have said if this is an example of a "good" outcome from all the rules and regulations and governing committees, I'd hate to see a bad outcome.

I'm an American. I'm not sure what all is going on here. If someone is being railroaded out of the Drupal organization for exercising their unalienable right to free speech, then that is a most counter revolutionary insult to everyone in Drupal and everyone in America.

Call me a pussy but to me the word 'pussy' has always been a metaphor for a cat. So, on a positive note, after this kerfuffle, I will now think of my wonderful wife's body each time I hear this word, yay!

Keep on keeping up Mortendk, For all you do and have done, I will chase u down in the Dam and buy you a beer AND a spliff (is that allowed in COC?)

R

p.s. I am actually concerned about posting my name for fear of reprisals. Now that is a being a pussy!

Morten, I knew nothing about this situation until reading this post. You deserve respect for your decision to stand down and allow the DA to save face. We've all done things like this but maybe not with so much attention on ourselves. You leave big boots to fill on the DA board but it's not like you needed a platform to make some noise and make a difference. Looking forward to hearing your unmistakeable grumblings at the next event.