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We removed our project and never used github again. That seems like a totally disproportionate approach versus responding with a polite 'this is a legitimate u

We removed our project and never used github again. That seems like a totally disproportionate approach versus responding with a polite 'this is a legitimate use of the word, thanks' message.

ep103 10y ago
I would agree with you, if it weren't for all the other articles that have come out about politics and github.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  People on the internet will make lots of noise about everything; paying undue attention to it is a bit silly, IMO.
  - karma_vaccum123 10y ago
    we're not talking about anonymous web forums, we're talking about a git repository. It isn't "silly" to be bothered by random github employees scanning and flagging keywords
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Anything and everything posted online can be handwaved with this argument.
pille 10y ago
Maybe she actually could've read the text and figured it out herself before sending out the note? Just firing off a warning based on a simple text match seems high-handed and/or incompetent enough to consider leaving.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  I actually assumed that this message was automated – "We found on objectionable word in your project, please don't use it." It just seems that this problems is remarkably easily solved with a simple "We are using a technical term correctly, maybe you should consider adjusting your automated emails." I do get the impression that people generally seem to be all to eager to take offence, and it strikes me as a bit ironic to flounce off in a huff as a result of a badly-judged automated process!
  - duaneb 10y ago
    > I actually assumed that this message was automated – "We found on objectionable word in your project, please don't use it." How is this any better?
    - vonklaus 10y ago
      I find it worse. Github provides a great service and certainly has provided an incalculable value to os, but at a project level, it doesnt provide nearly enough value to dictate word choice, etiquette or style. Yes, the service is free, but github needs high caliber os projects more than they need it. It dosnt even matter who has an edge, automating spam at a user who says a naughty word is silly. Idk, i dont understand why they would even care. Unless it reached a very intolerable bar, i dont think this is necessary
- cloverich 10y ago
  Just to be clear, you're saying: "If large company x hires a single incompetent person, that is a good reason to never deal with said company again." I think that's the parents interpretation of OP and hence the "seems like a disproportionate response." (I agree it was absurd to flag the content).
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Absurd being the key word. This isn't a simple misunderstanding we're talking about, it's a company employee using company time and resources (i.e. sanctioned by the larger company) for something that can charitably be described as misguided. It raises questions about the internal company culture, their commitment to pragmatism (doubly important for a source code hosting site), and their priorities. Any developer could have told this person that a string match does not equal a linguistic match. Small signals matter; they're usually all you get out of large orgs.
  - UseStrict 10y ago
    When there are numerous alternatives to GitHub why would I continue to use them? Clearly they were not putting the time and effort in to both train their employee and review the content (simply reading the sentence would give context), why bother dealing with them? Also why as a code hosting service would they be getting involved with the politics of the content of projects they host?
  - pille 10y ago
    That's oversimplification. Even if it is just her own personal incompetence, if GitHub just hired her and let her loose as some kind of independent repo ombudsman to scold users, then yeah, that's a terrible management decision that warrants reconsidering your relationship with them.
    - squeaky-clean 10y ago
      We don't even know the whole story. The "woman" who sent the note is most likely just be an automated script.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Presumably it was an automated message.
  - pille 10y ago
    Someone had to design that automation. And it sounds like the message was at least made to look like it came from a person.
    - explorigin 10y ago
      Go read up on Github user: CoralineAda [1][2] Then consider that GitHub hired her. I would not be surprised if the this automated script and her employment were directly related. [1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/954 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/954 [2] https://github.com/CoralineAda?tab=activity https://github.com/CoralineAda?tab=activity
      - zeveb 10y ago
        > Then consider that GitHub hired her. I'm not terribly surprised. GitHub is, after all, a company which changed its logo to celebrate a highly political U.S. Supreme Court decision and which has had issues with left-wing racism (http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...).
      - duaneb 10y ago
        I really don't want this to be a witch hunt (not seeing that here, just wary of pointing out individuals)—this is exactly the type of thing a business should take responsibility for as a whole. This was a process failure, IMHO.
        pille 10y ago
        Exactly. The point of my comment was just that automation is no excuse for this kind of thing. For me it's still about the organization, and singling out individuals is about as productive as yelling at customer support on the phone.
akerro 10y ago
We moved from GitHub to GitLab CE at our company and co-workers started using GitLab.com for their personal projects, moved away from github.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Perhaps to a comment from a random user, this would be disproportionate. But when it is a GitHub employee sending these messages, someone needs to communicate the issue to them in metrics they will understand, like projects leaving.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
You shouldn't have to explain proper English or put up with someone who doesn't understand proper English subjecting you to a political litmus test.
calibraxis 10y ago
It's a political act to publicly declare something along the lines of, "I quit because of their politics." Fortunately, people like me see such declarations — "Hmm, I'd better now reactivate my paid GitHub subscription, and stop pushing people to competitors. Their attitude is improving!"
tomjen3 10y ago
It seems totally reasonable to me, with Githubs action being completely, well, retarded.
Nadya 10y ago
I stopped using Github when they hired blatant racists as part of their 'social outreach' team. The infestation of politically-correct politics drives talent that can't be bothered with such cruft away. I was there to code. Not worry about if I hurt some oversensitive person's feelings for referring to master/slave copies.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  I wrote this elsewhere so I won't repeat it here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12232883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12232883) We're all on Github to write code, but I'd argue you are dangerously close to throwing the baby out with the bathwater there. It seems perfectly reasonable for someone to say "hey, this term you use might be offensive/makes me uncomfortable, please consider changing it." It's also perfectly legitimate for you to say "I don't want to do that". I just kind of wish that everyone would be a little less sensitive about the prospect of other people being offended by things that they are not. Political correctness, in the sense of "try not to say things that are offensive" sense, is probably not the worst idea in the world!
  - Nadya 10y ago
    >It's also perfectly legitimate for you to say "I don't want to do that". At which point you get harassed by a mob, spammed with issues that clutter up your project, and get emailed death threats. Github is allowed, of course, to choose which projects they decide to host. Demanding the removal of the word "retards" [0] or a project would be shut down drove at least one developer away. So no - that isn't "perfectly legitimate" for that community. "I don't want to do that" is not good enough. [0] https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/9fde8f333984a6588f80f710cb87467e83f1849a https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/9fde8f33...
  - mildbow 10y ago
    It's "the worst idea in the world" because it perpetuates the idea that certain words or thoughts are taboo. This doesn't mean people stop having them. This just means that they are labelled/judged if they have them. Guess what happens then? People keep it to themselves. And then they vote for Trump. Why? Because, he is a ridiculous loudmouth who is very out of touch with most of reality. But, he doesn't feel the need to be censored. And to people who haven't spoken out due to fear of reprisal, this is an admiral characteristic. He gives them validation. So yeah, political correctness is retarded.
tetrep 10y ago
I think it's reasonable if only so you can avoid the overhead of needing to deal woth censors. There's also a lot of overlap between open source and free speech, so I can understand a natural distaste for censorship in general. To olay devil's advocate, what's wrong with offending people who read your source code? You can't harass people through source code in a meaningful way because you can't force them to look at the code through natural interaction with GitHub itself, if they see a project that is insulting, they can just ignore it. It's not like a social media site where you can ensure your victims' feeds will be polluted with your insults.
merpnderp 10y ago
How about it's offensive that a company that bills itself as an open source hosting company even employees (incompetent) morality police? Really, scanning projects for naughty words?
cm3 10y ago
Assuming Github's ToS applied here, it's unlikely that the project owners would have succeeded in keeping the content as is on github by arguing for it. This is regardless of the legitimacy of the content. Being on Github isn't critical for every project, and we need more projects that have their primary location on Bitbucket, Gitlab, etc. instead, in order to break the Github monopoly by making it normal that it's fine to use a different site for a project. It cannot be healthy to have all our eggs in one basket (Github), regardless of how featureful and nice Github is, especially so given the availability of viable options. To that end, we should not complain when a project, say, evil-mode is on bitbucket, and similarly not ask a project to open shop on github. I mean, if we don't work towards a fully distributed project model ala fossil-scm (via things like git-appraise), we should at least use alternatives when we can, and not strengthen Github's monopoly.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  Github does have the lead in terms of exposure and discoverability. To take advantage of that, I've left placeholders in all my projects that are elsewhere now: https://github.com/caseysoftware/marvel-php https://github.com/caseysoftware/marvel-php If you find it on Github, you can find out how to get started but everything else is on Gitlab.
marcosdumay 10y ago
Looks like a very big sign that more warnings will come later, and you'll have to spend time fighting such things now, and start worrying about your data be cut from the site without previous notice. Going away is the correct response, fighting the decision is never useful. One might wait a bit to see if it's a fluke, but that will certainly depend on the GP's evaluation of the company.
Lawtonfogle 10y ago
Given no other information I would agree. But given other information both about Github and about the kind of processes that seek you out to tell you that you are being offensive, I understand. Maybe this was a one time thing, maybe it will be another donglegate. If it is easy enough to move, why wait and find out?
krisdol 10y ago
It seems like the action from the github employee was disproportionate. That sounds like a very risky environment to host your product on. The response seems to match the proportion of the action.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 10y ago
Maybe if they had some allegiance to or belief in Github fixing the issue, talking to employee, retraining them, it might be worth. But when there is another project that is just as easy to use, it often just easier to drop it and switch. Also that interaction with Github, can be interpreted as a pointer to larger systemic issue (for better or for worse) which the customer doesn't believe will be solved with a simple email.
efvxcgci 10y ago
It's quite disappointing to see people defending a company that hires bigoted political activists to crawl users' projects in order to harass users for perceived political transgressions. And what level of access do these on-staff political activists have to private user information? What measures, if any, does GitHub have in place to prevent one of their political activist employees from using privileged information to go after perceived political enemies or even just retaliate against users who protest being harassed?
- untog 10y ago
  It's quite disappointing to see Hacker News users use hyperbolic language and throw out nonsensical arguments. What is "bigoted" about trying to avoid the user of the word "retard"? I'm not saying that what Github is doing is wise or sensible, but I'm struggling to see how it is bigoted. > What measures, if any, does GitHub have in place to prevent one of their political activist employees from using privileged information to go after perceived political enemies or even just retaliate against users who protest being harassed? I would imagine the same as any other company. There's nothing that would indicate otherwise, aside from your own biases against Github.
s_kilk 10y ago
... and risk of it escalating into a (potentially career-ending) Internet knife-fight.
j_s 10y ago
You mean like when the parent poster did this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233452 ?? She indicated that it doesn't matter how the word is used, some will see it as aggressive.
antisthenes 10y ago
No, it isn't. A customer can choose to take their business elsewhere for whatever reason, at any time. I mean you can speculate as to whether it was disproportionate or not, but the only determinant here whose opinion matters is the paying customer.
koonsolo 10y ago
Typically US, blocking the use of such words. Everybody says 'fuck' in the US, constantly, but whey you use it on TV or post it online, all hell breaks loose. It's just a word folks, get over it. What is the worst that could happen when you see 'fuck' or 'retard' somewhere? I'm also curious on how many downvotes I will get for this, because the polite way is to use f*ck or something, right?

We removed our project and never used github again. That seems like a totally disproportionate approach versus responding with a polite 'this is a legitimate use of the word, thanks' message.

ep103 10y ago

I would agree with you, if it weren't for all the other articles that have come out about politics and github.

matthewmacleod 10y ago
People on the internet will make lots of noise about everything; paying undue attention to it is a bit silly, IMO.
- karma_vaccum123 10y ago
  we're not talking about anonymous web forums, we're talking about a git repository. It isn't "silly" to be bothered by random github employees scanning and flagging keywords
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Anything and everything posted online can be handwaved with this argument.

pille 10y ago

Maybe she actually could've read the text and figured it out herself before sending out the note? Just firing off a warning based on a simple text match seems high-handed and/or incompetent enough to consider leaving.

matthewmacleod 10y ago
I actually assumed that this message was automated – "We found on objectionable word in your project, please don't use it." It just seems that this problems is remarkably easily solved with a simple "We are using a technical term correctly, maybe you should consider adjusting your automated emails." I do get the impression that people generally seem to be all to eager to take offence, and it strikes me as a bit ironic to flounce off in a huff as a result of a badly-judged automated process!
- duaneb 10y ago
  > I actually assumed that this message was automated – "We found on objectionable word in your project, please don't use it." How is this any better?
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    I find it worse. Github provides a great service and certainly has provided an incalculable value to os, but at a project level, it doesnt provide nearly enough value to dictate word choice, etiquette or style. Yes, the service is free, but github needs high caliber os projects more than they need it. It dosnt even matter who has an edge, automating spam at a user who says a naughty word is silly. Idk, i dont understand why they would even care. Unless it reached a very intolerable bar, i dont think this is necessary
cloverich 10y ago
Just to be clear, you're saying: "If large company x hires a single incompetent person, that is a good reason to never deal with said company again." I think that's the parents interpretation of OP and hence the "seems like a disproportionate response." (I agree it was absurd to flag the content).
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Absurd being the key word. This isn't a simple misunderstanding we're talking about, it's a company employee using company time and resources (i.e. sanctioned by the larger company) for something that can charitably be described as misguided. It raises questions about the internal company culture, their commitment to pragmatism (doubly important for a source code hosting site), and their priorities. Any developer could have told this person that a string match does not equal a linguistic match. Small signals matter; they're usually all you get out of large orgs.
- UseStrict 10y ago
  When there are numerous alternatives to GitHub why would I continue to use them? Clearly they were not putting the time and effort in to both train their employee and review the content (simply reading the sentence would give context), why bother dealing with them? Also why as a code hosting service would they be getting involved with the politics of the content of projects they host?
- pille 10y ago
  That's oversimplification. Even if it is just her own personal incompetence, if GitHub just hired her and let her loose as some kind of independent repo ombudsman to scold users, then yeah, that's a terrible management decision that warrants reconsidering your relationship with them.
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    We don't even know the whole story. The "woman" who sent the note is most likely just be an automated script.
tedmiston 10y ago
Presumably it was an automated message.
- pille 10y ago
  Someone had to design that automation. And it sounds like the message was at least made to look like it came from a person.
  - explorigin 10y ago
    Go read up on Github user: CoralineAda [1][2] Then consider that GitHub hired her. I would not be surprised if the this automated script and her employment were directly related. [1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/954 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/954 [2] https://github.com/CoralineAda?tab=activity https://github.com/CoralineAda?tab=activity
    - zeveb 10y ago
      > Then consider that GitHub hired her. I'm not terribly surprised. GitHub is, after all, a company which changed its logo to celebrate a highly political U.S. Supreme Court decision and which has had issues with left-wing racism (http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/github-the-full-inside-story-...).
    - duaneb 10y ago
      I really don't want this to be a witch hunt (not seeing that here, just wary of pointing out individuals)—this is exactly the type of thing a business should take responsibility for as a whole. This was a process failure, IMHO.
      - pille 10y ago
        Exactly. The point of my comment was just that automation is no excuse for this kind of thing. For me it's still about the organization, and singling out individuals is about as productive as yelling at customer support on the phone.

akerro 10y ago

We moved from GitHub to GitLab CE at our company and co-workers started using GitLab.com for their personal projects, moved away from github.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago

Perhaps to a comment from a random user, this would be disproportionate. But when it is a GitHub employee sending these messages, someone needs to communicate the issue to them in metrics they will understand, like projects leaving.

karma_vaccum123 10y ago

You shouldn't have to explain proper English or put up with someone who doesn't understand proper English subjecting you to a political litmus test.

calibraxis 10y ago

It's a political act to publicly declare something along the lines of, "I quit because of their politics." Fortunately, people like me see such declarations — "Hmm, I'd better now reactivate my paid GitHub subscription, and stop pushing people to competitors. Their attitude is improving!"

tomjen3 10y ago

It seems totally reasonable to me, with Githubs action being completely, well, retarded.

Nadya 10y ago

I stopped using Github when they hired blatant racists as part of their 'social outreach' team. The infestation of politically-correct politics drives talent that can't be bothered with such cruft away. I was there to code. Not worry about if I hurt some oversensitive person's feelings for referring to master/slave copies.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
matthewmacleod 10y ago
I wrote this elsewhere so I won't repeat it here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12232883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12232883) We're all on Github to write code, but I'd argue you are dangerously close to throwing the baby out with the bathwater there. It seems perfectly reasonable for someone to say "hey, this term you use might be offensive/makes me uncomfortable, please consider changing it." It's also perfectly legitimate for you to say "I don't want to do that". I just kind of wish that everyone would be a little less sensitive about the prospect of other people being offended by things that they are not. Political correctness, in the sense of "try not to say things that are offensive" sense, is probably not the worst idea in the world!
- Nadya 10y ago
  >It's also perfectly legitimate for you to say "I don't want to do that". At which point you get harassed by a mob, spammed with issues that clutter up your project, and get emailed death threats. Github is allowed, of course, to choose which projects they decide to host. Demanding the removal of the word "retards" [0] or a project would be shut down drove at least one developer away. So no - that isn't "perfectly legitimate" for that community. "I don't want to do that" is not good enough. [0] https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/9fde8f333984a6588f80f710cb87467e83f1849a https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/9fde8f33...
- mildbow 10y ago
  It's "the worst idea in the world" because it perpetuates the idea that certain words or thoughts are taboo. This doesn't mean people stop having them. This just means that they are labelled/judged if they have them. Guess what happens then? People keep it to themselves. And then they vote for Trump. Why? Because, he is a ridiculous loudmouth who is very out of touch with most of reality. But, he doesn't feel the need to be censored. And to people who haven't spoken out due to fear of reprisal, this is an admiral characteristic. He gives them validation. So yeah, political correctness is retarded.

tetrep 10y ago

I think it's reasonable if only so you can avoid the overhead of needing to deal woth censors. There's also a lot of overlap between open source and free speech, so I can understand a natural distaste for censorship in general. To olay devil's advocate, what's wrong with offending people who read your source code? You can't harass people through source code in a meaningful way because you can't force them to look at the code through natural interaction with GitHub itself, if they see a project that is insulting, they can just ignore it. It's not like a social media site where you can ensure your victims' feeds will be polluted with your insults.

merpnderp 10y ago

How about it's offensive that a company that bills itself as an open source hosting company even employees (incompetent) morality police? Really, scanning projects for naughty words?

cm3 10y ago

Assuming Github's ToS applied here, it's unlikely that the project owners would have succeeded in keeping the content as is on github by arguing for it. This is regardless of the legitimacy of the content. Being on Github isn't critical for every project, and we need more projects that have their primary location on Bitbucket, Gitlab, etc. instead, in order to break the Github monopoly by making it normal that it's fine to use a different site for a project. It cannot be healthy to have all our eggs in one basket (Github), regardless of how featureful and nice Github is, especially so given the availability of viable options. To that end, we should not complain when a project, say, evil-mode is on bitbucket, and similarly not ask a project to open shop on github. I mean, if we don't work towards a fully distributed project model ala fossil-scm (via things like git-appraise), we should at least use alternatives when we can, and not strengthen Github's monopoly.

caseysoftware 10y ago
Github does have the lead in terms of exposure and discoverability. To take advantage of that, I've left placeholders in all my projects that are elsewhere now: https://github.com/caseysoftware/marvel-php https://github.com/caseysoftware/marvel-php If you find it on Github, you can find out how to get started but everything else is on Gitlab.

marcosdumay 10y ago

Looks like a very big sign that more warnings will come later, and you'll have to spend time fighting such things now, and start worrying about your data be cut from the site without previous notice. Going away is the correct response, fighting the decision is never useful. One might wait a bit to see if it's a fluke, but that will certainly depend on the GP's evaluation of the company.

Lawtonfogle 10y ago

Given no other information I would agree. But given other information both about Github and about the kind of processes that seek you out to tell you that you are being offensive, I understand. Maybe this was a one time thing, maybe it will be another donglegate. If it is easy enough to move, why wait and find out?

krisdol 10y ago

It seems like the action from the github employee was disproportionate. That sounds like a very risky environment to host your product on. The response seems to match the proportion of the action.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rdtsc 10y ago

Maybe if they had some allegiance to or belief in Github fixing the issue, talking to employee, retraining them, it might be worth. But when there is another project that is just as easy to use, it often just easier to drop it and switch. Also that interaction with Github, can be interpreted as a pointer to larger systemic issue (for better or for worse) which the customer doesn't believe will be solved with a simple email.

efvxcgci 10y ago

It's quite disappointing to see people defending a company that hires bigoted political activists to crawl users' projects in order to harass users for perceived political transgressions. And what level of access do these on-staff political activists have to private user information? What measures, if any, does GitHub have in place to prevent one of their political activist employees from using privileged information to go after perceived political enemies or even just retaliate against users who protest being harassed?

untog 10y ago
It's quite disappointing to see Hacker News users use hyperbolic language and throw out nonsensical arguments. What is "bigoted" about trying to avoid the user of the word "retard"? I'm not saying that what Github is doing is wise or sensible, but I'm struggling to see how it is bigoted. > What measures, if any, does GitHub have in place to prevent one of their political activist employees from using privileged information to go after perceived political enemies or even just retaliate against users who protest being harassed? I would imagine the same as any other company. There's nothing that would indicate otherwise, aside from your own biases against Github.

s_kilk 10y ago

... and risk of it escalating into a (potentially career-ending) Internet knife-fight.

j_s 10y ago

You mean like when the parent poster did this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12233452 ?? She indicated that it doesn't matter how the word is used, some will see it as aggressive.

antisthenes 10y ago

No, it isn't. A customer can choose to take their business elsewhere for whatever reason, at any time. I mean you can speculate as to whether it was disproportionate or not, but the only determinant here whose opinion matters is the paying customer.

koonsolo 10y ago

Typically US, blocking the use of such words. Everybody says 'fuck' in the US, constantly, but whey you use it on TV or post it online, all hell breaks loose. It's just a word folks, get over it. What is the worst that could happen when you see 'fuck' or 'retard' somewhere? I'm also curious on how many downvotes I will get for this, because the polite way is to use f*ck or something, right?