* They actions they have taken have publicly-visible consequences, so they must publicly acknowledge it
* They want to be respectful, and so minimize the amount of information they make public
* They believe the Core team acts in bad faith. So whatever public statement they make, they must anticipate being attacked for it and pre-emptively defend themselves.
That's a difficult set of objectives to try to meet simultaneously. I'm going to choose to support they way they've handled it, even if I don't 100% agree with it, because I don't think a perfect solution is possible.
Nobody resigns over a theoretical flaw in the governance structure. It’s only when it starts becoming a problem that people do so.
They are dragging more into the public sphere than necessary
>you'd need to know every other piece of the story that lead to this point and lead them to feel that this public statement was their only remaining choice.
No I wouldn't. I will stand by my claim that they said more than necessary to raise the structural issues they perceive in Rust's governance. They very well may need to say more than that - or even more than they did say - to see their desired changes to the governance system enacted. Not what I was responding to.
"You don't know the story, we won't tell any of the events leading up to this point, but you better be sure that these people on the core team are wrong!"
There are some situations in life where there just aren't any good choices. It's possible that this may have been one of them.
What would you do if you felt that you had to walk away from a bad situation on a public project, and had strong reason to believe that the other party would attempt to publicly misrepresent the situation?
You could remain silent, but we're talking about the court of public opinion here and we know silence is often interpreted as guilt, or at least irresponsibility. It would also allow the other party to continue creating this "bad situation" without, at the least, giving future moderators some warning. Likely, the mod team would have faced similar criticism had they simply walked away silently.
Presumably, the members of the mod team are interested in maintaining their own reputations and would like to continue working in this field.
They could have kept the statement confined to disagreement with the government structure. Leave it ambiguous between whether it was a theoretical weakness in the structure, or a practical one where they already experienced the inability to censure.
People like goss. Wagging your eyebrows to imply something definitely did happen - but you're too classy to release details - is not a insipid act.