Code of Conduct Council Communication Thread

🏛 Token House Governance Council Communication Threads
1

Voting Cycle #17 - Summary of Enforcement Decisions

Hello Optimists,

As per the Code of Conduct Council charter, the Code of Conduct Council (CoCC) must publish a report of summary of enforcement actions during each voting cycle’s review period. This report in turn “will be added to the Voting Roundup and optimistically approved. In this context, optimistic approval means the Council’s decisions are assumed to be approved unless the Token House explicitly vetos an enforcement action.”

So, taking this charter structure on board, this Forum Thread will act as the formal Report to summarize the enforcement actions of Voting Cycle #17, and begin a conversation with any interested members in the community here.

To provide context for this cycle’s deliberations:

  • There were no new Code of Conduct Violation Reports from the start of the new year, and through the first two weeks of Season 5.
  • There were however three (3) legacy Code of Conduct Violation Reports that had been submitted at the latter end of 2023 that had not been handled by the Foundation (since the new Code of Conduct Council was pending at the time).
  • Thus the CoCC was tasked with assessing, deliberating, and deciding on three (3) reports that claimed a code of conduct violation.

The process is taken by the CoCC Members:

  • All members of the CoCC were provided with raw details of the three legacy violation reports at the end of 2023.
  • Over the new year break, individual CoCC members conducted preliminary research into the three cases.
  • In the 2nd week of January, the CoCC met to discuss the main issues of the three cases (along with having discussions around administrative matters of the newly formed council).
  • Post this meeting, the reports and report summaries were transferred to a shared online document where over the following week each individual CoCC member added their thoughts, opinions, and reasoning on each case to the shared document. The shared document was indeed a living document as each member’s opinion or thought led to the next member’s response.
  • On January 16th, a final vote was taken by members of the council to finalize a decision on each of the cases. The voting was conducted electronically, with a variety of alternate actions to choose from, and a ‘first past the post’ voting system was used.
  • NOTE: While all the processes mentioned above appear as discrete events, it’s worth noting that the council members have been in discussions on an almost daily basis since late November 2023 via a private CoCC Telegram group.

None of the three cases had unanimous voting decisions, but using the voting system mentioned just prior, three resolutions were decided upon.

The briefcase summaries are decisions are described below:

REPORT 1:

An anonymous complaint was made against @alexcutlerdoteth

While there was a rescoping of the Code of Conduct and the Rules of Engagement in December 2023, the complainant claimed that Alex had cyberbullied community members, harassed community members, and incited others to harass them.

Decision: No action to take

Reasoning: The Code of Conduct Council has decided not to proceed with any sort of enforcement type related to the presented report. It has been reviewed along with the supporting documentation and has concluded this matter will not be considered a violation of the Code of Conduct, as the information presented only contains factual details of an alleged grant misusage, and is then considered whistleblowing. Whistleblowing is not considered a violation of the Code of Conduct.

*Parties involved in this case should please see ‘important notes’ below

REPORT 2:

An anonymous complaint was made against @0xWeston.

While there was a rescoping of the Code of Conduct and the Rules of Engagement in December 2023, the complainant claimed that Weston harassed community members, did not have a positive impact through adding value, and failed to keep the community safe.

Decision: Warning (with a request to make a redeeming public apology or clarification of allegations)

Reasoning: With substantial documentation to support the violation report there was a prima facie case that Weston had misused or heavily mismanaged a grant provided by Optimism. However, considering the timing of the grant and the lack of formal grant rules around this period, the CoCC found it inappropriate to issue a stronger enforcement action when it would need to be applied retroactively. Therefore, a warning from Optimism to Weston was the agreed-upon decision. Beyond this, and in the interests of inclusivity, redemption, and self-directed decentralized activities, the CoCC invites Weston to address the community on the Forum to either apologize for the poor behavior and/or otherwise acknowledge the weaknesses of the grant management while fully explaining and clarifying what happened in this case.

*Parties involved in this case should please see ‘important notes’ below

REPORT 3:

An anonymous complaint was made against kuso.eth.

While there was a rescoping of the Code of Conduct and the Rules of Engagement in December 2023, the complainant claimed kudo.eth engaged in discrimination based on identifying features, such as religion, sexuality, ethnicity, or geographical location.

Decision: Suspension

Reasoning: The CoCC believed that the reported violation was a clear and unambiguously serious violation of the Rules of Engagement and that any enforcement needed to convey the clear boundaries of what are the acceptable and not acceptable interactions within this human-driven community. While on-chain activities cannot be controlled by the CoCC or the Collective at large, a suspension from all of Optimism’s online platforms hopes to communicate how seriously the CoCC took this issue and how unequivocally it wanted to act.

NOTES FOR THE COMMUNITY:

This Code of Conduct Council is a new type of live experiment that the current council members are carrying out. We’ve had our teething problems, and we are the first to admit that the structures and processes do not yet meet the highest standards that each of the council members envisioned when first elected. But we can assure the community that we are doing our best to learn fast and iterate, to be open, available, and transparent with the community and all other stakeholders, and we aim to continually improve over Season 5 so we can hand over a well structured and highly functioning Code of Conduct Council to the council members of Season 6.

IMPORTANT NOTES FOR PARTIES INVOLVED IN THESE CASES:

A member of our council said something important in relation to these first three decisions, “(The CoCC is) setting a precedent for what the CoCC is. How we can be fast with things that are clearly violations of the rules, and careful with breaches in the social fabric? How also instead of a punitive council, we are restoring optimism from its own contributors.”

This statement was quickly agreed upon by other members of the council.

What is trying to be said here is that Reports 1 and 2 appear to be cases that relate more to a breach in the social fabric of Optimism, and importantly we do NOT want to be a punitive council but instead one that inspires and engenders optimism.

And, thus in that vein, we don’t necessarily want to ‘close the books’ on the dispute(s) here, and just wash our hands of it. Instead, we would like to offer any of the disaffected parties here an opportunity to reach out and contact the Code of Conduct Council if you wish to discuss your situation further. The Council currently has members who are experts in conflict resolution, mediation, alternative dispute resolution, and DAO coordination. We would like to use these skills and experience to offer you a more optimal outcome, beyond the cut & dry of the Code of Conduct Council decisions. We’re happy to work with you to find the outcome to the complaint you want or ideally find happiness and satisfaction in the situation that you thought the hoped outcome would bring. So, please, if you are still unsatisfied then please reach out to us at codeofconduct@optimism.io

While there will be upcoming office hours, and discussions with the CoCC here on the Forum and on Discord, our next formal report of enforcement decisions will be delivered by the end of the next review period.

As the implementation of the Council is an ongoing experiment, each of us is committed to making every effort to modify and improve as deemed necessary. We will accept any critique or criticism of our process thus far and will work to amend our process to reflect our learnings.

Thank you for your time,
Members of the Code of Conduct Council

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2

Voting Cycle #18 - Summary of Enforcement Decisions

Hello Optimists,

As per the Code of Conduct Council charter, the Code of Conduct Council (CoCC) must publish a report of summary of enforcement actions during each voting cycle’s review period. This report in turn “will be added to the Voting Roundup and optimistically approved. In this context, optimistic approval means the Council’s decisions are assumed to be approved unless the Token House explicitly vetoes an enforcement action.”

So, taking this charter structure on board, this Forum Thread will act as the formal Report to summarize the enforcement actions of Voting Cycle #18, and begin a conversation with any interested members in the community here.

INFORMATION ON THIS CYCLE’S DELIBERATIONS:

There were no new Code of Conduct Violation Reports since the last reporting period until the end of Voting Cycle #18 Review Period.

Thus the CoCC was not tasked with assessing, deliberating, and deciding on any reports during this period.

GENERAL UPDATES:

While there were no reports and formal decisions made during this period, the following updates can offer the community insight into the activities of the Code of Conduct Council…

  • Following on from last cycle’s decisions, communication was started with applicable affected parties to attempt a mediation process where desired.
  • Following on from last cycle’s decisions, communication was made with admin users to enforce any applicable suspensions.
  • Following on from last cycle’s decisions and corresponding community feedback, the CoCC has discussed introducing an appeal or ‘Reconsideration’ mechanism into the CoCC procedures when earlier decisions could be viewed as sub-optimal.
  • Following on from last cycle’s decisions and corresponding community feedback, the CoCC has discussed introducing an ‘Escalation’ process where a resolution and consensus by the CoCC process appear unattainable, and cases (after initially being filtered by the CoCC structure) can be escalated to the Token House for discussion and decision making.
  • Regular Office Hours were arranged and our first Office Hours session was held.
  • Research and consultation was conducted into Attestations & EAS Contracts to see whether these applications can be experimented within CoCC processes in future Seasons.
  • Representatives of the Code of Conduct Council attended community calls and other meetings within the Governance Calendar, to introduce the CoCC.
  • Dedicated locations for CoCC business were added to Discord and the Discourse forum, and individual CoCC members remained active on these platforms.
  • Regular internal meetings were held by the CoCC to debate issues linked to earlier cycles and/or predicted issues of later cycles.
  • While striving for independence and decentralization, the CoCC remained in regular contact with the Optimism Foundation to align & pace CoCC activities with the rest of the Collective.
  • Operational, administrative and communication systems continued to be added, refined or repaired to get a new Council off the ground and working smoothly.

NOTES FOR THE COMMUNITY:

This report has been published more than 24 hours late (after the end of Voting Cycle #18 Review Period) due to a misunderstanding surrounding the requirements of this report when no new cases & decisions were introduced in this cycle and if there had been a shift of dates in the governance calendar. We acknowledge this delay is a failure in our systems, and we apologise to the community for not adhering to this deadline and any confusion or opaqueness this has caused. Our next formal report of enforcement decisions will be delivered by the end of the next, fixed review period, irrespective of case numbers.

And again, as stated in the last published report, the implementation of the Council is an ongoing experiment, each of us is committed to making every effort to modify and improve as deemed necessary. We will accept any critique or criticism of our process thus far and will work to amend our process to reflect our learnings.

Thank you for your time,

Members of the Code of Conduct Council

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3

Hello,

Starting a thread to highlight some major conflicts of interest that have been discovered here in this present format upon thorough research.

Will update all findings as they continue to appear for anyone in the Collective who may be concerned as well to have visibility.

4

Hi all adding to the discussion for reference here from the Discord CoCC channel.

I originally posted in Discord earlier:

Whoa new channel! :thinking: Noticed there are some conflicting items here where major and unquestionable conflicts of interest already exist. I see that each CoCC member receives ~$12,000 per season so it would stand to reason the CoCC gets started on the right foot and not be seen as some sort of shadow group able to cancel anyone at anytime, which is at it is appearing right now.

Wondering what the feedback mechanism is here for accountability, and if there are 6 individual members, what was the process for election and how their votes will be transparent enough to be recorded onchain whether via Snapshot or an attestation. Thanks.

I have not heard back anything from the CoCC.

5

I added additional context in the first post, below for review, and recently followed up with further questions which are also below:

I’m also wondering if anyone can shed some light on this specifically: Screencap 1 is the findings of this council back from January, that they marked Resolved and Decisions were made. These were already old cases as it were, which was acknowledged. Straightforward enough.

But then… I was confused to receive an email yesterday (screencap 2) - as they were responding to the wrong thread :confused: it turns out - which included all my prior correspondence I’d had with the council. Saying… oh your file has been resubmitted against you? This breaks your own charter and undermines your own ruling from over a month ago.

I have not been in discussions with anything OP related since this prior decision was announced. There is no basis for this, and also seeing the Council has a group discussion with Jack and Alex (screencap 3) - so 8 members in total - (I did not receive an invite) it also highlights why I was confused to receive it upon reading their was an office hours with the individuals who have filed the complaint against me? And are both Delegates? AND have received >$10M $USD in grant funding from the OP Collective? And receiving praise from the CoCC members publicicly in said forum already? If this is what it appears to be - it is flat out corruption, and I want nothing to do with it, nor be a part of this in anyway. I don’t think I need to say anymore. Please stop contacting me, harassing me on social media, and threatening me with deadlines for items publicly acknowledged as resolved.

Most recent post following up:

Hi all, I am still waiting for a response directly from the CoCC here to what was presented above. <@898943373812039721> <@705912745614376971> <@336423896599232512> <@506075561609789441> + the remaining 2 members of the Council. Additionally I am asking for an explicitly clear answer for:

  1. Why was this call not recorded and made publicly accessible immediately upon conclusion if active mediation parties were being discussed and one was not present or even aware of the call?
  1. Under what circumstance would the CoCC - or any civic council for that matter - deem it reasonable conduct to host their inaugural kick off call and proceed to include someone who is a party of their first active mediation case set for resolution? And then as demonstrably shown here, this individual was not acting as a subject for review, but clearly being treated as more so part of the committee itself?
  1. When was the date set for when the CoCC was planning to offer me the same opportunity to speak live in a one-to-one setting? I have offered this many times over the past year - but this opportunity has not been made available to myself and seeing that this occurred for the other party is unsettling as to the nature/intent of the entire process. As always I can be reached: on X @ westonnelson, Telegram @ westonnelson, Discord @ westonnelson Thank you.

Looking forward to some insights here. Thanks again.

6

Hi @0xWeston and anyone interested. I’ll start with this question block first.

The meeting your discussing was our first free to attend, no restriction, public ‘Office Hours’.

These Office Hours are similar to how other Councils and grouping hold Office Hours.

This was NOT a ‘private meeting’ for anyone in particular, but a time that was set aside on the OP Governance Calendar and advertised both in Discord and Discourse.

While there were some in attendance who were complainants & subject to complaints, there was also attendees who were just members of the community.

You, of course, like all public Office Hours, were free to attend, like anyone else in the community was.

While at the time I personally didn’t have the technical capacity or permission to record the meeting, I can only assume this meeting wasn’t recorded because some attendees wanted privacy and to be anon, considering the complaints & decisions were being discussed. However, I understand any lack of recording could cause you to distrust what was discussed at the public, advertised, open Office Hours, and I can see your point here. Thus, I will make recommend & try to implement a change that any future Office Hours are recorded and then posted here in Discourse. I hope this response to your feedback is seen as a sign of accountability & transparency to you and the rest of the community.

In regards to your point (2), I must reiterate that this was a public Office Hours session, and we could not forbid anyone from attending. Any attendees were not being part of a Council, but they were instead asking questions of the CoCC which we had to answer & defend. We were being held accountable for our decisions and actions, like we are here as I write this reply. It was akin to a Q&A session, in a Google Meets forum, similar to the Q&A you’ve demanded here in the Discourse Forum.

As for your Point 3: I urge you attend future Office Hours. You, along with all other community members, are encouraged and free to attend these Office Hours. There was your opportunity to attend last time, and there is your opportunity to attend next time. While you say you have offered this many times over the past year, it should be noted (a) the CoCC only came into force in 2024, and (b) the CoCC has found you to be relatively unresponsive to contact, for e.g. you had not reponded to our initial mediation goal questions (an early step in mediation to assess what all parties wanted in any mediation) and you had not responded to notices about our public office hours, nor attended this session (FYI: It would have been a much better Office Hours session if you had attended).

I hope these initial answers to this first block of questions helps you understand our processes a bit better. We are here to be held fairly accountable, and ultimately offer transparency, and display our integrity & independence. If you don’t see this yourself, yet, then I hope these initial responses are helpful for the community or at least provide the community some more context.

All the best.

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7

Hi again @0xWeston

  1. Yes, each CoCC member earns a stipend of 3,000 OP. This is meant to incentivise applications to the Council and be reimbursement for the time dedicated to the Council. For you, and anyone else interested, this period of work has lasted since early December 2023 and will last to May 2024, so the stipend is for about 5 months work. The CoCC usually meets weekly, has discussions in Telegram daily, and has deadlines set by it’s Charter and our own Internal Operating Procedures. This is not to mention dedicating time & resources to understand, review and decide upon all complaints and claims of a breach of the CoCC. You will see from the published Reports we are required to make information public about the cases we have had to look into, and list other tasks & systems we’ve needed to arrange as part of the inaugural Code of Conduct Council (CoCC). So yes, were are compensated with OP, but this does not lead to a conflict of interest, but instead incentivises a higher than would be workload, and help maintains our integrity & independence by knowing we can be self-sufficient and not susceptible to financial inducements.

In regards to your second point, and accountability and member elections:

  • The CoCC is held accountable here on on the Discourse Forum, whether it is your questioning here, or via our published Summary of Enforcement Actions.
  • We are also held accountable in our Office Hours and Discord (but speaking for myself here, I have never really used Discord much so I’m not that active there, but hope other members of the CoCC are).
    BUT IMPORTANTLY:
  • We are held accountable by every one of our final decisions being put up to vote in Agora for veto. That is, after every case decision is made, voting opens up on Agora and the community has the capacity to vote and veto our decision. Ultimately, we are meant to an efficient mechanism to reduce the governance burden on delegates, but we have no power to usurp the decision making authority of delegates and the Token House. We save them time & difficulty by investigating, reviewing and adjudicating every case, but the final decision is still always up to the Token House, and if we go too far off the reservation, then they can just veto our decision.

As for the process of electing CoCC Members:

  • This was done via a Token House Election.
  • You can find more details about all our nominations to be on the CoCC here: Code of Conduct Council Nominations: Season 5 - #8 by Axel_T
  • And you can see the on-chain election results here: Code of Conduct Council: Member Nomin...
  • Our election is only valid for Season 5 and I assume the same process on nominations & elections will occur for Season 6 and beyond. So this further increases accountability to the community. That is, if community members are upset or unsatisfied with our work, actions and behaviour, then they can vote any of us out next Season and vote for individuals who they think can do a better job.

I’m sorry you did not get a response to these questions earlier, as a I said, I’m not very active on Discord, but hopefully the full response here within three hours can suffice.

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8

Hi @Axel_T

Thank you very much for taking the time and answering so thoroughly. I found this extremely informative and helpful.

I sincerely appreciate this and it does provide a lot of clarity I was seeking. I would love to connect with the CoCC on a call to further clear up any outstanding concerns / questions or issues.

Thanks again,

Weston

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9

Okay, finally with this block, @0xWeston

Noting that it’s only been me posting here so far (most likely because of my Asian time zone hours), so I welcome any of the other five CoCC members adding more context and positions here and with everything else I’ve replied about. I.e. I am only one of six CoCC and cannot speak for the whole group, but I am prioritising responding to you fast as you have complained about a lack of responsiveness.

Quote Block 1. Yes, there were an initial batch of legacy cases that had to be resolved & decided upon in Voting Cycle 17. These cases weren’t exactly straightforward and involved a great deal of research and debate, and none of the decisions in that batch were unanimous, but yes ‘straightforward enough’ in a sesnse that a decision was made by a vote in the CoCC, the decisions were published, and then the decisions were put up to vote in the Token House to see if they needed to be vetoed.

Quote Block 2. In Voting Cycle 19, we received another complaint & claimed breach against you. All I will say right now is (a) Please wait for correspondence after a subsequent decision (by informal vote) was made by the CoCC only 6 hours ago, and (b) While I want to maintain the privacy of the inner workings of the CoCC, I can reassure you that this new complaint against you has led to a long and heated debate amongst CoCC members. We weren’t initially sure how to handle this complaint, and this being the inaugural Season with CoCC, we didn’t have the procedures and policies in place to know how to handle this 2nd complaint. This lack of policy or Charter direction has been a bone of contention in the the new CoCC, has lead to a great deal of (ideally positive, growth oriented) conflict among CoCC members. Just for now, please refer back to seaction “(a)” a few sentences earlier, and please know that very little or nothing in the CoCC is a fait accompli. We are doing our best, as part-time, modestly paid council members, all with our own career and household responsibilities, to devise policies and procedures to handle corner cases and resolve deep, long held disputes amoung community members, all without a long history of precedence and embedded policies & frameworks to rely upon. In it’s most short, please ‘cut us a little slack’ as we build this plane while it’s already flying.

Quote Block 3: I think some of these issues have been discussed in my earlier answers, but yes, I can see your confusion in the process. It is likely hard to fully keep up to date unless you dedicate your life to Optimism (which very few do) or had full visability into the inner workings of the CoCC (which no one does outside the CoCC members). In short (a) I understand your confusion (b) I genuinely believe that none of us are corrupt, but I believe this accusation can slide because you’re confused and upset (c) Active community members are indeed praised, because we welcome engagement and appreciate and respect feedback (in fact, I hope I’m communicating you with the same courtesy that all CoCC members should treat all community members, and thanking you for your feedback), and (d) you are not obliged to respond to or maintain contact with the CoCC at anytime, you can block any and all of us at anytime, but ultimately were just trying to shape and follow our new Internal Operating Procedures, our Charter, and any other policies and procedures. I believe open contact improves decision-making and outcomes, but you are NOT obliged to participate. It’s just that zero contact may mean the CoCC follows procedures and makes decisions without your input.

I hope this answer helps, and can cover the final section of Quote Blocks that hadn’t yet been covered by my other answers.

Final Note: Again, I am only 1 of 6, and other CoCC members might jump in here too when they wake up (most are in the American time zone, with one of us also in the European time zone).

All the best.

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10

Hi @Axel_T thanks again for thorough communication here.

But now I’m further confused here by your comment about a decision being made. The last correspondence I received from the CoCC regarding mediation explicitly stated that you needed my responses by 25/2 to proceed.

Can you please confirm which is correct?

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11

@0xWeston

Because this decision on how to handle this complaint was so recent (it occurred about 6 or 7 hours ago, late in the night of American time zone hours) I don’t feel comfortable outlining the decision when it hasn’t been communicated to the affected parties by our Council Lead (who’s responsibility it is to send these emails).

Please can you just wait 24 hours? I’ll ping you again here in 24 hours, and check if it’s all clear then. I hope this works.

I’m sorry, it’s just not my place to be doing the communications here, with affected parties. Please just give it 24 hours, and I’ll ping you here again tomorrow to see if you got the email from our Council Lead.

What I believe I can say though: (a) We did not make a final decision on the complaint, we simply made a decision on how to handle and approach this complaint. (b) My assumption is, although please wait for the email, is that you won’t have to reply by the 25/2 to proceed.

But I’ll ping you in 24-hours to see if it’s clearer, and before then I’ll confirm with the other CoCC members and Lead if my just stated assumption is correct. Ideally, within the next 24-hours I’ll also seek permission from the CoCC to be able to publish this decision here on “how to handle and approach this complaint”, so the whole community can see how future, similar complaints will be handled.

Sorry for not being fully clear here, I hope you can understand when I’m only one member of the group, not the Lead, and not yet sure what I can post publicly & what I can’t.

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12

Ok then… understood. :+1:

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13

Hello everyone, I think @Axel_T has covered most of the controversial points.

And this is not a formal response from the CoCC, only mine as a member of the community. The response of the CoCC will come once consensus on it is reached, as it should.

All members of the Collective, obviously me included, should adhere to proper forms of communication, facts should be correctly reviewed before presenting them in public platforms, especially when they come with judgement, and there are always procedures that need to be followed.

Please @0xWeston and members of the community, when referring in the future to situations, make sure they are facts, not perceptions, specially when these are against the professionalism and values of third parties.

The CoCC is designed to be as neutral as possible, and will always respect procedures and transparence, as mandated.

This is an experiment, there will be scenarios, in the ones there isn’t a clear procedural line, in those we will work to find the best solutions and document processes for the Collective.

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14

The responsiveness of the committee here is commendable.

To put some additional context around Weston’s attacks on the committee and process, I will just note that he took the same tact on Arbitrum after DisruptionJoe and Plurality Labs surfaced his wrong doing there. He repeatedly made unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, personally attacked Arbtrium DAO members, and even used alt accounts to imply he would inflict physical harm on the individuals in question if given the opportunity.

Of note, he never appealed the decision on Arbitrum or followed up on any of the legal threats he has made.

Given his track record, I believe it is reasonable to read Weston’s responses as just further attempts at obfuscation in an attempt to avoid personal accountability. And after two warnings his continued willingness to make false allegations against the CoC Committee is just all the more evidence that he will never be willing to abide by the Rules of Engagement.

I wouldn’t waste too much time on him, by this point the Collective is more than able to see through his bad faith attacks. I look forward to the Committee conclusions.

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15

Also incase there is any doubt left about his intentions, Weston just held a 24h vote to disband NFTEarth without even posting an announcement in his Discord that the vote was happening.

He claimed that lack of funds was core to his rationale, but didn’t mention the ~$24,000 he just made from the Optimism airdrop which should’ve gone to either the L2DAO or NFTEarth multisigs and been subject to community governance.

https://snapshot.org/#/nftearthl2.eth/proposal/0xe240a0828c293f494b84774c2f483301380ed79d823ef05b7760acde273b4b60

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16

Hi @0xWeston

Pinging you here about 24 hours later.

I don’t think any emails were sent out by our Council Lead yesterday. After deciding on a plan of action about 30 hours ago, the discussions here and in Discord revolving around the CoCC (about 24 hours ago) ended up swamping and crowding out the Council’s work time, deliberations and actions since then. This new, unexpected work had to be prioritised over the 24-hour deadline that I had single-handedly set without any prior discussion or approval from the full CoCC. Further, I am limited in what I can say here because the Council didn’t fully support my responses yesterday & essentially engaging in individual discussions on a personal account as opposed to having the official CoCC Discourse Forum account formally reply to your posts. But I still wanted to get back to you within the 24 hours as I said I would.

To try and be as straight-forward and clear as possible:

  1. I was not able to get permission to publicly publish the details of the informal vote and rationale I mentioned yesterday
  1. The assumption I mentioned yesterday was incorrect.

To provide more context to point (2):

  • An informal vote was taken by the CoCC on how to handle the Voting Cycle 19 complaint against you and any future similar complaints.
  • I cannot yet provide details to you, or the community as a whole, about this new/different complaint handling procedure, or even commit to its implementation, as details have not yet been formalised or even agreed upon as to if & when to make them public.
  • While all deliberations and decisions are in ‘black & white’, the time pressure here mean that things appear fluid in comparison to what would otherwise be, and thus I cannot yet give you a definitive answer as to whether any new complaint handling procedure will apply to you and the complaint against you made in Voting Cycle 19. In other words, the CoCC made an informal, internal decision 30 hours ago and expected to have time to refine this concept, confirm its implementation & share the decision publicly in due course. But then this discussion blew up here and on Discord about 28 hours ago. And then I went out on my own and promised you an answer regarding this internal decision 24 hours ago. Thus, this chain of events has caused tough-to-handle time pressures & possibly exposed some of the internal mechanics of the CoCC in the public Discourse when it would have been far, far better for the CoCC to not have these time pressures created by me & you, and to instead have the CoCC publicly announce any decision in due course after reasonable refinements and clarity could be added. WHAT I’M GETTING AT HERE: Without being able to offer your perfect clarity right now within the 24-hours, it would be best to cover all bases, allow the CoCC to adhere to it’s Internal Operating Procedures (IOPs), and still have you respond to the CoCC questions by the 25/2 (when the IOPs state the response window closes).

Beyond this, I cannot say much more or predict what will happen in the future. Just that the response time window will close on 25/2 as stated by CoCC correspondence from two days ago,

and that you should consider this path still in play, and should follow this timeline for any response to cover all bases.

I hope this response meets the deadline to wait that I requested.

And I hope you continue to engage with the CoCC by providing the requested response by the 25/2.

All the best and Stay Optimistic!

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17

Hi @Axel_T - ok… thanks for following up here.

I think I understand, but this is also still quite a bit unclear to me to be frank. I will go ahead and get my responses submitted then for the CoCC review and look forward to hearing about resolution.

I’m wondering though and still lost as to the vote you mention on the cycle 19 - from an outside perspective it appears as if someone filed a complaint at the very last minute, it was then even voted on (if I am reading correctly here?) all the while I was asking clarifying questions about this process? This just is not sitting well with me, especially when considering the email I received on 21/2 was in reference to a resubmission of the prior complaint from Alex.

I feel that given the circumstances now, it is reasonable to point out that - although you have made it clear there were open office hours before of which Jack and Alex were in attendance and which there is no record of as well, I have attended many different Optimism events various times… and I would have without a doubt attended this one had I been made aware of it - so being that the CoCC is set to resolve it and another party to the complaint was in fact in attendance and given an opportunity to speak verbally with the CoCC, I deserve a similar right, and I would maintain anyone in this scenario would be entitled to this, given the circumstances. So: I will go ahead and submit the formal written correspondence, but am wondering if anyone from the CoCC or the CoCC itself would be available to speak with me today as well - if only even briefly -to clarify and touch base on some items.

I can be reached via Telegram, Discord, X, and would be available for a call on any platform as well.

Thanks again,

Weston

18

Hi @0xWeston

  1. It’s the weekend, so I don’t expect anyone to be available today, and even this reply will be my only ‘work related’ task carried out. I cannot communicate back and forth on this forum all day on a Sunday.

  2. We should not offer private one-to-one sessions with anyone involved in complaints. This, in fact, would be carrying out what you incorrectly accused the CoCC of doing with Jack and Alex. Please see the CoCC Internal Operating Procedures (Code of Conduct Council - Internal Procedures). The Council operates within this framework, not per unique requests from parties to Reports.

  3. If you want to communicate with the CoCC then please use the official email for correspondence. The CoCC will never communicate about reports or complaints via Telegram, Discord or X. Please just communicate via the official email, so all CoCC members receive your communications. You should direct all your future energy for communication through the official CoCC email; we have been waiting for any reply to our emails for some time.

  4. Any and all public office hours are advertised, and it is up to any attendees to keep up to date with the OP Governance Calendar to find out about Office Hours. That is, the CoCC does not invite any particular individuals to Office Hours, and it is NOT the responsibility of the CoCC to ‘make any one individual aware’ of Office Hours. The Office Hours are shared to all community members equally, these notices are freely open to the community, and nobody gets or is entitled to special treatment or special notice.

I hope this is clearer.

Please cease communicating via this forum, alone. (1) It is a Sunday, and all community members deserve time off (2) I have been very fair and reasonable with the time, effort and care I have provided you with my responses over the past few days (3) With this reply, and my last, I have kindly requested you to communicate with the CoCC via the official email (4) I alone cannot speak for the CoCC, and I alone don’t have the authority or influence to give you the resolution you are seeking here on this forum.

Please reciprocate the courtesy & respect I have shown you to date, by not tagging me here alone on a Sunday, making me feel guilty for not responding promptly, but instead communicating with the CoCC via the official email. This is not a request to take things offline, all parties can still save & archive these emails. This email communication just allows the following of the Internal Operating Procedures of the Council and is the most efficient & effective method to communicate to all CoCC members.

UPDATE: I have now seen that you have indeed emailed the CoCC! Hooray and thank you!
Sorry, I hadn’t logged into my work email over the weekend until just then, and previously just wanted to browse this forum on a Sunday morning when I saw your notification.
I will post this reply still, so there is a public forum response from me after your tagging in your forum reply, and there isn’t just silence or a void hanging over this thread. But overall:
Thank you for emailing the CoCC! We’ll do our best to get back to you as soon as practicable (knowing it’s still a Sunday, eek!) :smiley:

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19

Hi again @0xWeston

  1. This is me breaching my own demand to stop posting on the forum on a Sunday. Acknowledged.
  2. And this is me the Optimism community member speaking here. I’m not speaking as the CoCC in this reply.

But I just read your email and I wanted to post here (especially considering my last reply was rather gruff).

Essentially (1) Thank you for sharing what you did in the email (2) It sounds like you gave considerable thought and time into your response (3) I feel rather optimistic right now (pun intended!) after this dispute and cases over Voting Cycle 17 and 19 have taken a toll on me, personally.

As a mere community member speaking here, I cannot offer anything nor promise any outcome. But I do thank you for your email, and the mood it has now put me in.

Okay, back to the weekend for me!

All the best, and stay optimistic.

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20

Communication Thread Cycle 19.

Hello, Optimism community! As an update on the Code of Conduct Council’s efforts on this cycle, we want to communicate the ongoing processes and decisions made collectively.

  • We studied the cases and worked alongside the Grants Council to decide whether any clawbacks were appropriate and found that all cases were solved within the timeframe, and as a consequence, there were no affected projects for the cycle.

  • We continue the follow-up for the warning made on cycle 17, for Report # 2 - where we look for clarification of allegations, requesting acknowledgment of the situation while offering due process for both parties to reply and give additional information, aiming to provide effective solutions on the case. Submissions of reports related to this dispute were presented adding additional information, and included within the scope of this case.

To work with a common truth and legitimation from parties on the outcomes and next steps associated, we are communicating with them and continuing to offer credible neutrality for the processing and enforcement of sanctions related to Code of Conduct violations.

We have been meeting weekly, with constant communication in chats, and informing the governance team of our activities and rationale.

Next office hours will uploaded to the Governance Calendar. We invite all the community and especially the parties involved in cases to participate in this open space to talk with the council and facilitate access to conflict management in Optimism.

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