This is a mildly reworked version of an email I sent to the SC early during my ban, explaining as best I could make out the real reason people took such offense at me (no, the list of “CoC violations” still appears beneath even minimal credibility to me). I don’t know what the SC thought of it - they didn’t reply. It remains my best guess.

Here it is:

Reading Chris’s blog reminded me of how very important my “style” was in the early days. It kept c.l.py and python-dev relatively pleasant and flame-free. It was valued by everyone, from Guido down to the rankest newbie. Surely Thomas and Barry remember those days?

So it got way off on the wrong track with me when the old style was characterized as “unfortunately common” in the public shaming (ya, ya, I wasn’t named, but everyone knew). That read like someone who knew nothing about Python’s actual history. There wasn’t anything “unfortunate” about it. It played a major role in Python’s early growth.

So I’ve been pondering it. One thing that occurs to me:

Back in those days, mine was also the most dominant voice in those forums. I was Guido’s oracle and by far the most engaged on all kinds of topics - and I read every single msg.

My “style” was always playful, good-natured, partly joking (even dark humor at times), tongue-in-cheek gaslighting, with a sense of joy. Tedious earnestness wasn’t on the menu. Come for the smiles, stay for uncommon tech knowledge.

My style was their style. Most people played along, not because they were forced to, but because people were having fun with it. It was spontaneous. Chris reminded me of that too, and he’s far from the only one who found the lack of pretension very inviting. If, e.g. you had a PhD in CompSci, I’d engage you at that level, but I was just as happy engaging with newcomer Chris at his level, someone who wondered whether they wanted to get into programming at all.

He wasn’t alone. My email is crushing me now, with people thanking me for the positive influence my style had on their early careers, which they partly copied later to help build their own successful dev teams.

But as I became less active over the years, my voice faded into campfire stories. The newer generation has little direct exposure to my style. Which hasn’t changed. So too many now read one of my typically part-joking posts, and think I’m making fun of the topic being discussed, or belittling them.

Wholly unintended, but understandable, and I first realized that yesterday.

Now it makes some sense to me how someone could take offense at my message about sexual harassment. There was some lighthearted tone in parts of it, but not at all about the topic under discussion. As Chris said, “Tim was as serious as Tim ever gets.” But Chris knows my style very well - he “grew up” on it.

Which seems to be a real root cause of this unfortunate extended drama. Mea culpa. And that’s something I can change. Maybe ;-)