Hello,

I'm writing to file a formal Code of Conduct complaint against Peter Bourgon, because of his harassment of Gophers in the Slack space, as well as his continued indirect verbal attacks (subtweets) directed to them on Twitter. This is serious enough that I'd like to explicitly follow-up with someone about this, and am happy to either chat via VC or text (Slack, etc.).

A user named Brandon Dube was in #general asking a question about how leap seconds are handled in the stdlib. Peter Bourgon initially engaged and seemed like he was trying to help, but then he started to act negatively towards Brandon with these messages:

Peter: computers to not parameterize "models of time"

Brandon: they do

Peter: maybe your dumb space computers do

He then proceeded to go on some tirade that's unrelated to the problem, that to me is clearly an attack on Brandon and/or who Peter perceives his employer to be (NASA):

speaking of, isn't that why y'all crashed landed a rover into the mars planet?

oh no wait that was because you confused meters and feet

my bad nevermind

He continues his unhelpful trolling / borderline harassment by then starting to say things about the movie The Martian:

@Brandon Dube hey do you know matt damon

did he really grow those potatoes

It's at this point that Brandon explicitly asks Peter to stop if he's just trying to troll. That seems more than reasonable, because Peter has clearly moved into a place of not being just unhelpful but downright toxic.

Peter then effectively makes a joke about Brandon Dube escalating to a known admin because of the problems in the conversation, by imitating a child yelling "TEACHER!" when a fellow student is causing problems. He's infantilizing Brandon with this statement, indicating that he's a child. There is no purpose to do that beyond trying to completely neg someone.

I then proceeded to tell Peter I thought he was being disruptive, and asked him to stop.

Me: @peterbourgon you are being pretty disruptive, though.

So could you, like, not...?

Peter: lol I am absolutely not being disruptive

this is the internet

welcome to cyberspace

During this interaction, another person responded in a way that made me believe they were also uncomfortable.

He then proceeds to admit to ignoring a moderator of the space, which isn't an issue in itself but it shows the respect he has for those who enforce CoC violations:

Peter: I have him on ignore haha

Eric Chlebek: you can ignore people on here?

Nynex: slack supports ignore?

Peter: no I mean I just ignore him

At this point Brandon Dube seems defeated, and says he'll come back later or ask on the issue tracker.

Peter continues to troll, while people try to help Brandon find where leap seconds are handled in the stdlib. After this he does quiet down a bit, but I think it's because he stepped away to get food. He still has time to call out that his "troll game is :chef-kiss:", if that gives you an idea of his motives during this conversation.

It's not too long after this that an admin in Slack disables his account, and so he comes back to try and understand what happened. It looks like his account is disabled again, but he comes back a third time to try and get more context...

During this conversation it's clear he has no belief that he's in the wrong. He then tried to blame Brandon's behaviors for the way he behaved a few times during this conversation.

Afterwards, Bill Kennedy offered to chat with Peter via DM and asked him to "Please respect the ban [f]or the rest of the week". Yet, he proceeded to continue to engage on Slack with messages.

After this point his third account was deactivated, but he then proceeded to blast Brandon Dube via Subtweets, continuing his harassment of him by insulting his intelligence:

https://twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1432797128150167552

https://twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1432851152677347330

Please excuse my language, but this all seems absolutely fucked and so I'm curious whether this is the type of person we want to be involved in our community. Attacking people in the #general channel of the Slack space, admitting to having no respect for those tasked with enforcing the Code of Conduct, to then evade the ban that was given because of abhorrent conduct, to finally continuing the attacks against the person on the broader Internet (Twitter).

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this situation, and what you'll be doing going forward to ensure that Peter is no longer going to have this sort of impact on individuals in the community, because this isn't the first time action has had to be taken against him. His blatant disrespect of the moderators, and downplaying of his share of responsibility for the situation, doesn't give me confidence that he's capable of growing from this.

Cheers!

-Tim

P.S. This isn't the first time he's gone on Twitter to attack people in the community. He used it in the past to attack moderators for action taken against him, I guess to try and make them reconsider taking action again (otherwise they would have a Twitter mob on them). I suspected it would only be a matter of time before he started to attack other members of the community, and not just the moderation staff.