Because it’s a private discussion between two people of opposing views. Same reason you can still text your friends even if you work in public office.

Suggesting changes to the website was not a problem.

Trying to mobilize Twitter mob against a person that declined your suggestion was a problem.

> Trying to mobilize Twitter mob against a person that declined your suggestion was a problem.

That sounds less like a suggestion and more like an order.

Imagine someone went to Gab (or whatever the right wing mob platform du jour is) and denounced a colleague and published their contact info on it. There's no explicit call to contact or harass the person.

Is this appropriate?

I’m not too familiar with Gab, but are you implying that Twitter is exclusively a platform for left wing mobs? If so, you are mistaken, and this coarse impression of what Twitter is should not be projected onto every single tweet.

Twitter is a platform for mobs of every sort, and if you have a mob of followers and you attack a colleague, publishing his contact info, you are de facto encouraging the mob to attack him, even if you play dumb after the fact.

There was no attack on a colleague (a public disagreement is not an attack). The person who was fired has less than a third the followers of the other person (and probably very significant overlap between the follower groups). There certainly was no publishing of contact info, unless you consider all public mentions on Twitter to be publishing contact info (which is preposterous). Your impression of what happened is mistaken.

You’re performing impressive mental gymnastics to say this person’s behavior did not harm psychological safety.

Instead of trying to prove there was no harm, and that being a maintainer of an open source project should make it okay if people do this to you.. think about the intent of what this person did.

Did they intend to create a safe environment? Or did they intend to bully someone into seeing their view, and doxed them on Twitter. A view that the original tweeter identified as political!

No, you contact the website admin and discuss the suggestion in the communication medium of their preference. After all, you are making the request to them. Not the other way around.