BUIP122: (closed) Remove Norway from membership

[imaginary_username]

BUIP122: Remove Norway from membership
Submitted by: imaginary_username
Date: 2019/4/14

Summary
A Bitcoin Unlimited member has recently participated in an online witchhunt that attempts to publicize real-life locations of hodlnaut, an online personality that insulted prominent BSV leaders. Such an act endangers the personal safety of regular persons, and he has shown neither remorse nor ignorance about the potential consequences of his act. It is my opinion that continued membership of such a malicious individual impedes future activities of BU, and he should be removed from membership rosters.


Proposal

Direct link:

Archived versions of above, as well as snapshot of the act of broadcasting:

http://archive.ph/VYQno
http://archive.ph/vujiz

This BUIP will remove member #51 @Norway, aka Stein H Ludvigsen as he identifies himself, from membership rosters as well as strip him of all voting powers immediately upon conclusion of voting.

In accordance with the rules clarified here: https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip116-articles-of-federation-adjustment.23726/page-2#post-91701, it must pass with a majority of votes (greater than 50%) with at least 50% of members voting OR a 75% super-majority of votes with at least 25% of members voting to take effect. If it does not take effect, another vote will be barred from proposal for the next 4 months.

EDIT: Updated passing threshold to reflect external clarification.

 

[Zarathustra]

Zero chance because of hypocrisy. @imaginary_username gives that 'doxxing' more visibility and even put it on the internet archive, so that it will be visible even if @Norway deletes the tweet.

 

[imaginary_username]

Feel free to raise a BUIP against me. I'll be more than happy to be evicted along Norway, if that is what it takes.

 

[Zarathustra]

No such ambitions. You are punished enough by your own behavior.

 

[imaginary_username]

EDIT: Updated passing threshold to reflect external clarification.

 

[solex]

The issues I see with this BUIP is that the conduct mentioned is not directly against the BU organisation. It is about a third-party matter. This means it requires a much higher threshold of evidence i.e. that @Norway published the doxxing info before anyone else or received payment for it.

This BUIP will remain in draft in the meantime.

 

[Tom Zander]

It is about a third-party matter. This means it requires a much higher threshold of evidence i.e. that @Norway published the doxxing info before anyone else or received payment for it.

This statement needs additional citations for verification.

 

[solex]

No it doesn't.

The principle is clear. BUIPs for removal of memberships need to to lay out a case for conduct against BU, contrary to its rules, which includes damage to its reputation. This requires some work to collate evidence and present for a membership decision. The example given about doxxing can only be considered in the overall context of damaging the org's reputation. The connection in this case is very slight, hence the bar is high. It would be different if hodlonaut was a BU member, but, like you @Tom Zander, he never bothered to apply for membership.

 

[imaginary_username]

@solex it seems like it is entirely your subjective opinion that "the connection in this case is very slight"; I'm unsure what can constitute greater damages to BU's reputation other than physically committing battery or arson.

The organization has already suffered much due to indecision, appeals to democracy, and a desire to "not split" with actors who have no interests in any of the organization's functions whatsoever. If the goal is to appeal to democracy - perhaps a noble one - at least let democracy run its course.

 

[freetrader]

Hypothesis:

Actions by BU members against non-BU members of the (greater) general public have a potentially more significant impact on BU's reputation than what members of BU do to each other.

In this case, the aggression was not against some unknown person, but against a very prominent member of the BTC / Lightning community.

Doxxing isn't exactly viewed favorably, neither in BU nor outside.

TL;DR : @Norway's public act does have the potential to badly tarnish BU's reputation. At the very least I would expect a public apology to hodlonaut from him as a BU member.

 

[Tom Zander]

I'm genuinely surprised about your reply @solex.

As you see, I'm not a member. I'm an outsider here. I don't hang out on these forums much. That gives me the outside perspective, and I can skip past any internal discussions you already had. The outside perspective is pretty bleak.

As people like to say I'm very direct (which is not uncommon for people from The Netherlands), let me be extremely blunt and predict the future on this one:

A BU member has done something that (Internet) society at-large thinks is a very bad act. Reddit has an explicit rule for this that it will give an immediate ban, not comparing you to reddit just pointing out that one of the biggest communities on earth has a very hard line against doxing. Zero tolerance.

The effect of you veto'ing this request for a democratic vote is going to be seen as you condoning this behavior, without due process.

I'm not sure what principles you are trying to uphold, but I can tell you that at this moment you are breaking these;

• You are breaking the democratic process of the BU rules by veto'ing the request for a vote.
• The leadership is condoning of one of the most vile behaviours on the Internet by one of its members.

 

[jtoomim]

I'm more with Solex on this one. Norway's behavior with hodlonaut is not closely related to BU, in the same way that me or Mengerian contributing code to ABC would generally not be related to BU.

I think a better approach to the issue of Norway potentially reflecting poorly on BU is to propose a BUIP that condemns the doxxing and/or suing of individuals for reasons of blockchain politics.

 

[imaginary_username]

@solex will such a vote as described as @jtoomim be fit for voting? I'll modify BUIP122 if that's the case, seeing that the original BUIP is not reaching the booth either way.

EDIT: typo

 

[solex]

@imaginary_username
I agree that BUIP122 modified to reflect @jtoomim's proposal is a better basis to proceed to vote, in the absence of collected evidence for BUIP122 as it stands.
I also agree with @freetrader that @Norway should make a public apology about calling for doxxing hodlonaut. He has damaged his own reputation over that.

 

[solex]

@imaginary_username
To avoid misunderstanding, BUIP122 is not dead in its original form. It requires work to obtain a weight of evidence. When you proposed it, I had the impression from you that @Norway had done the doxxing himself, however calling for it is still a serious black mark. If this is taken in context with a bunch of other examples of poor conduct on other matters more closely associated with BU, then it provides a weight of evidence that BU is being damaged, and voting should proceed. I checked your archive twitter link, and without trawling the whole history, it is not obvious to me, and any other voting member what the statements are about the doxxing.

 

[Peter R]

How we deal with this first potential BUIP to vote on expelling a member will set precedent for BU going forward. My interpretation of the articles is that they are slightly ambiguous as to where the "bar is" for holding a vote to expel a member.

My view is that the bar must be high enough to prevent frivolous BUIPs being raised each voting session over petty squabbles; but on the other hand, the bar must be held at some finite height, such that the bar is hit by a member whose actions are so egregious and carried out over such a length of time as to cause notable harm to Bitcoin Unlimited in some measurable way (which in my opinion includes actions that cause significant damage to BU's reputation.)

@imaginary_username:

One thing I can say for sure is that the more time and effort ("proof of work") you put into carefully documenting the actions of the member you would like to vote to expel, and the more clearly you can show that this is not an isolated incident of bad behaviour, but instead one of many examples of a long-standing pattern of actions that cause harm to Bitcoin Unlimited, the better the chances that the BU Officers will allow your BUIP to go to voting.

 

[freetrader]

I think a better approach to the issue of Norway potentially reflecting poorly on BU is to propose a BUIP that condemns the doxxing and/or suing of individuals for reasons of blockchain politics.

An open letter signed by those BU members who agree with such a condemnation is sufficient.
A BUIP for that seems unnecessary, and counter-productive because whether it fails or passes, a significant fraction might disagree with the result being presented as somekind of official BU opinion.

If a BUIP is to achieve anything, it should be an amendment of the Articles that has some actual weight within the process of BU.

I've weighed the open letter option myself, even before @Christoph Bergmann 's recent call for signatures on his open letter, and I've come to the conclusion that it would have little positive effect on BU. That's my own assessment, anyone coming to a different conclusion is certainly welcome to write up what they feel, and I'll consider lending my signature to it as a member.

 

[imaginary_username]

@solex @Peter R thanks for your inputs. I have not carefully documented all his past behavior - many of which did a lot of damage to BU's reputation as well as the resources people contribute into BU activites, mostly because I did not think any of them warrant setting a precedence of membership revocation. That was my stance on what people think of "bad faith" voting from @deadalnix and Shammah as well; whatever you think about their opinions, it was not worth setting a precedence, and by extension not worth the effort of otherwise productive people to painstakingly document every offence. People who like that can scroll through his twitter feed and make correlations with activity on the GCBU thread.

I think this particular offence is different, and @Norway did not merely join in "calling for" the doxxing, but also posted information himself as well as broadcasted it in a couple dozen replies. This is the only instance I feel egregious enough to warrant action - I have better things to do otherwise. But if the bar is higher, I'll relent.

With all that said, I'll modify the BUIP into a call for censure instead before the deadline. It might be symbolic in practice, but a vote on it will still show where the membership stands, and hopefully cushion some of the damage that has been done in the eyes of the wider public.

 

[Norway]

If people want me kicked out of BU for whatever reason, you should just vote and be done with it.

 

[Tom Zander]

I had the impression from you that @Norway had done the doxxing himself, however calling for it is still a serious black mark.

Hmm, from my reading Norway posted the exact street and address of place of work of the man.

This in my opinion constitutes doxing of a person where before we didn't even know country of residence.


For clarity, you can find the exact location on, for example, openstreetmap. I've been there, its not a very large office building.

How is this not doxing?