Code of Conduct Violation: Carlos Melgar

[system]

Proposal Title: Code of Conduct Violation: Carlos Melgar

Proposal Type: Code of Conduct Violation

Executive Summary

A community member has filed a report, substantiated by documentation, against grant recipient Carlos Melgar.

Discord name: carlosjmelgar

Reported violation: Intentional doxxing

Enforcement type: Suspension

As outlined in the Code of Conduct, the Token House must vote to suspend grant recipients that are reported to have committed severe violations, which include intentional doxxing.

Motivation

The below is adapted from a community member’s report. It has been anonymized and edited slightly for understandability.

I was nominated as a badgeholder in the public on the forum. carlosjmelgar proceeded to question my nomination, after providing a detailed and respectful response, he continued to push doing it in a way that exposed personal information that it’s not public and spreading lies with no proof, which by the code of conduct is a severe violation as it’s a form of harassment and doxxing. He isn’t only doxxing myself is doxxing my husband who also doesn’t have this information public.

Specifications

The reporter included a forum post documenting the doxxing as well as a screenshot of conversations substantiating the above claims. We have not reproduced them here to protect the reporter’s identity.

Action Plan

If the Token House approves a vote for suspension, the grant recipient will be suspended from Discord and Discourse and any sort of interaction within the community for a period of three months. A “Yes” vote indicates that you believe a severe violation of the code of conduct has occurred and the grant recipient should be suspended.

If a vote for suspension is not approved by the Token House, the grant recipient will remain active in the community without interruption.

Conclusion

According to the procedures outlined in the Code of Conduct, the reported violation is a severe violation, which is enforced via a Code of Conduct Violation proposal. These proposals may only be submitted by the Foundation and, therefore, will automatically move to a vote. The Foundation’s role in Code of Conduct enforcement is purely administrative. Since a report was filed with supporting evidence, a Token House vote on the matter must occur in Special Voting Cycle #16a, as outlined in the most recent version of the Operating Manual.

Disclaimer

In the future, delegates will not be asked to vote on Code of Conduct Violation proposals, unless they pertain to grant misusage or Security Council members. In Season 5, the Code of Conduct Council(s) will process these reports with optimistic approval. More details can be found in the Code of Conduct Council post.

[jamesbond007]

Can we see some evidence? How am I supposed to evaluate something so vague that looks like a he said she said without proper context?

Is this related to this conversation? SEED Latam | Regarding the selection of the new badgeholders for our members - #9 by JoaoKury

I am not privvy to the details but I see a lot of Code of Conduct accusations being thrown around whenever someone uses evidence to question the actions of a project. I remember seeing members being threatened by the foundation for pointing out the actions of Layer2Dao. This is all too familiar. We can’t take the foundation seriously when they have a trackrecord of going after whistleblowers. From what I can tell Carlos did nothing wrong.

[Carlosjmelgar]

• I did not make any link to social accounts and crypto projects which the social account holders had not already made themselves

• I shared no material information about the identity of these humans which was not already shared by themselves

• My intentions have only been to discuss impact, and decentralize the flow of funds in the space.

@system

he continued to push doing it in a way that exposed personal information that it’s not public and spreading lies with no proof, which by the code of conduct is a severe violation as it’s a form of harassment and doxxing. He isn’t only doxxing myself is doxxing my husband who also doesn’t have this information public.

This claim is false as can be seen on this tweet. This has been public information for a long time, they’ve even publicly disclosed the location of their honeymoon. I did not “doxx” their names and referred to them with the aliases they use online. I also did not intentionally or even maliciously mean to dox them because this information has been shared by them on several occasions. It’s so public that it didn’t even occur to me not to refer to them as a couple.

Update: This and other public examples of the information they claim was was not public has been deleted since publishing here.

These actions should be considered when making a vote in this matter, taken into account in relation to their integrity and for potential disciplinary actions against them since this erroneous report is a form of bullying and harassment against me.

As additional proof, this has been a point of contention within the Ethereum Honduras community due to this nepotism limiting fair distribution of resources and opportunities for Honduran builders. Anyone that raises this concern has been fudded and cut off from the community. This bullying has led to multiple builders being cut off from resources and discouraged from continuing to build on Ethereum. I’ve also been a target of this bullying in many forms, but fortunately have been able to persevere past it due to consistently delivering impact.

I am posting this screenshot of a conversation (with permission) with a Honduran full stack dev that has been victim to this bullying. He even encouraged me to use his name, but I will avoid this due to the vicious nature of Ethereum Honduras core and contributors of EthKipu and SeedLatAm.

AI Translation:

@system

spreading lies with no proof, which by the code of conduct is a severe violation as it’s a form of harassment and doxxing.

I believe I shared plenty of proof to substantiate my claims about the inefficiencies, lack of results as a community despite receiving so much funding, provided clear examples and links as proof for my arguments. There is no transparency here as to what the “lies” are so I cannot defend this point.

I respect everyone’s right to privacy; but also believe openness, transparency, and fairness are needed to create a strong and resilient collective.

[system]

The Foundation plays a purely administrative role in processing Code of Conduct reports. We verify that the alleged conduct is covered by the Code of Conduct and that sufficient evidence has been provided such that the Token House can decide whether the violation happened. The Foundation does not make enforcement decisions, that is up to the Token House. We do not share the evidence in the case of doxxing reports as it may contain sensitive information.

The Foundation has never threatened any member of this community. A whistleblower policy and protections will be published before the start of Season 5, clearly outlining the difference between whistleblowing and violating the Code of Conduct

[system]

The Foundation has received a request that the photo and full name of the individual associated with the tweets be removed from the forum. We are requesting that you remove the photo and full name from the screenshots above, including the link that discloses the photo and full name. Please refer to the Guidance on Severe Code of Conduct Violations for relevant definitions.

[Carlosjmelgar]

The photo and full name have been removed from the screenshot.

[OPUser]

respect of privacy is a human right, doxing someone intentionally is unethical. Will be voting in favor of suspension as mentioned in code of conduct.

[CryptoReuMD]

I think that we have a little miss conception about privacy and secretive behavior. If I decided to publish anything inside a public space in a private social media platform that has my name or nickname and it’s related to my personal life or goals, it’s probably going to be interpreted and has to be disclosed.
We are having major problems in the space if we do not declare the personal interest in a public service, as an ethics matter, I suggest that we need to address more on ethics and less on behavior, we are watching a lot more of this complaints inside the governance forum, that are people actively engaged in deciding what we need to think and create.
I’m pretty sure that Carlos is working in a very good manner and has proved that in other forums and ReGen space and this type of things needs to be bidirectional, and try to understand the reason why it was originally proposed.

[FractalVisions]

Absolutely agree here. People can lie & manipulate the system here for their own personal gain.

I believe that is what we are witnessing. The way that the reporting is done is not in an ethical manner.

It seems to favor those who may be manipulating the voting on Optimism governance. This needs to be reexamined as these problems continue to arise within the community.

Hopefully there is a better outcome in the future because we hate to see the reputation of the projects Carlos has established such as the Web3 beach cleanup becoming tarnished due to this violation.

Personally it’s been a great learning experience for us. As we had our account suspended for 3 months from the forums already.

It was a good time for our team to continue building & stay focused on our project. It can be very easy to get caught up in this type of drama when you are as passionate about Public Goods as some people are.

[Carlosjmelgar]

I agree that the way this rule is worded favors and encourages those that make deceiving claims (about impact, personal interests, collusion, experience, etc…) and penalizes anyone challenging those claims with proof - even if it has been publicly shared by the individuals using the forum to mislead the collective.

If I made false claims about impact, my tenure in the industry, etc… and anyone shared proof against it, I could just claim those “lies” are being used to harass me and the proof is “doxing” me, even if the proof was publicly shared by me.

This is a sign of the infancy stage we’re experiencing, but it’s unfortunate that the foundation is allowing individuals to manipulate these inefficient rules to favor their personal interest and attack members who have good intentions for the collective, have worked to create impact and shown alignment for a long time.

Whatever the outcome of this vote is, I will not be deterred from continuing my work in public goods and impactful adoption around the globe. Stay Optimistic, always!

[chaselb]

Since the complains are contested here, can the foundation provide any reasoning with why they still consider the evidence for the complaint substantial?

[system]

The Foundation plays a purely administrative role in processing Code of Conduct reports. We verify that the alleged conduct is covered by the Code of Conduct and that sufficient evidence has been provided of the claim. The Foundation does not make enforcement decisions, that is up to the Token House.

Delegates may reference the response of the delegate up for suspension and the definitions in the Code of Conduct to decide whether a violation has occurred and if enforcement action is required.

[FractalVisions]

When we were given notice of our suspension we had the option to resign from our position in Governance…

Does @Carlosjmelgar also have this same opportunity?

Also we were given less than a few days to make this decision which I missed due to visiting with my mother at the time.

There was not enough time given to us for any sort of contention or discussion in the governance forums and was left with an ultimatum when finding out that it was too late to voluntarily resign.

So as much as we wanted to resign from the position within the governance the voting process was forced upon us with little to no warning.

[lanzdingz]

I second this. Voting on his possible suspension without active engagement/response to his rebuttals of the violation/concerns of what prompted it isn’t giving us enough context to vote in a fair manner.

Carlos and web3beach do meaningful and impactful work. Their suspension only harms the communities they support.