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Comment by ziml77 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why any of us are judging all of this from nothing. The only pieces of information we have are that the moderation team left because of issues with the core team and that they think no one should trust the Rust core team. But I don't know why I should trust either side. I need a lot more info before concluding anything.

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My thought is slightly different. When you're a lawyer representing someone that does illegal things (ongoing, not in the past) sometimes the only thing you can ethically do is quit. You can't reveal what is illegal due to privilege.

Similarly here, they may not be able to reveal whatever is going wrong due to anti disparagement clause or threats of defamation. literally the only thing you can do is quit, which is what they did, which sends a very strong signal to outsiders.

This _may_ also be similar to a lawyer who stops representing someone who the lawyer thinks does immoral things, with the two parties disagreeing about that.

Without knowing details, I can’t judge who’s (more) right here.

That strong signal _can_ be misused, and sometimes is misused. “You’re evil, but I’m not allowed to tell the world why” is something you can’t defend yourself against.

It's true except Rust core team can defend themselves by being transparent or allowing moderators to speak. These aren't national security secrets. In the lawyer case you almost always believe the quitting lawyer, they are just doing their job, it must be pretty bad for them to need to quit.

> and that they think no one should trust the Rust core team

I don’t remember reading anything suggesting this, could you point out where you read this?

From the resignation letter: > We recommend that the broader Rust community and the future Mod Team exercise extreme skepticism of any statements by the Core Team (or members thereof) claiming to illuminate the situation.

I should have been clear in my comment that it wasn’t about trust in general but just this situation

Okay, I didn’t remember that line. Thanks for the response.

From this you can easily conclude the reverse. We recommend that the broader Rust community and the Core team exercise extreme scepticism of any statement by the past and future Mod team claiming to illuminate the situation. Death by CoC.

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