13 ms·

Inclusivity Is a Joke

320 points by brakmic 10y ago

EdiX 10y ago
This post is currently in page four where it's the most recent post of the page (by a large margin) and the third most upvoted post in the page. Sometimes it's weird how algorithms work.
hubert123 10y ago
Inclusivity is an attempt to ban certain kind of speech. I have found that these people are downright religious in their zeal. Example: https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity/issues/9 https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity/issues/9 I'm not even going to comment further on this, I have found that arguments, sanity and reason do nothing here.
- wyager 10y ago
  This is a gold mine. > problematic language > [a word] is very difficult for many others to stumble across in the codebase > a word choice can be problematic/distracting/triggering/offensive This isn't even something that might reasonably be considered "triggering" material, like a story that might plausibly give someone a PTSD flashback. If someone is so mentally unstable that just seeing a word in an API screws with their head, their problem is sufficiently serious that they ought to seek immediate psychological help.
  - mdadm 10y ago
    >If someone is so mentally unstable that just seeing a word in an API screws with their head, their problem is sufficiently serious that they ought to seek immediate psychological help. It almost seems like child-like behavior. "I don't like this, so everyone has to change to fit my whims." Of course, there's almost certainly valid reasons for wanting change - it's probably not a good idea to make rape jokes or similar in your code[0] - but this seems over the top. Things in the world are going to be offensive, and if seeing a word causes that much trauma for someone, then they probably have bigger issues than just a symbol name or something. [0] Not saying that anyone has done this
    - jegoodwin3 10y ago
      Isn't that what rot13 is for? A think a special compiler switch, along the lines of -Drot13, would work just fine for people who have special needs like that.
      - mdadm 10y ago
        Well but then that mangles the symbol names, which would make programming a pain.
        jegoodwin3 10y ago
        True. I think Kurt Vonnegut had a short story that dealt with that aspect of the plan. A search for "Handicapper General" should dredge it up.
- lukev 10y ago
  No, inclusivity is not about banning speech, it is about making sure that people can feel comfortable in an environment. Sometimes that means enforcing certain standards of speech and behavior. Which you already agree with, if you are at all functional in society. The question in this case is not whether inclusivity is a good thing, it's whether Crockford's speech/actions were "bad enough" in the context of a conference. I don't know (and don't care to know) about that, but it's vitally important not to throw the inclusivity baby out with the bathwater.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Thriptic 10y ago
    While in principle I agree with you, I think at a certain level people need to just learn how to deal with stuff that offends them. I hear things that offend me on a regular basis, including inflammatory (and absurd) remarks about people I care about and groups I am a part of. At the end of the day, I just brush these speakers off as assholes who don't know what they are talking about and go about my day.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      I couldn't agree more. While there are certainly people out there who make inflammatory statements in order to offend and marginalize others, they are in the extreme minority. I've got an essay cooking in my head right now that's tentatively titled "Gaining useful insight from aggressive comments".
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    Just because people claim to have good principles doesn't make them good people or mean that their tactics will accomplish the principle. These systems of public shaming, mobbing, and self-interested entryism clearly aren't creating inclusivity; rather, they are dramatically counterproductive in that regard. If you truly support inclusion, you should be opposing these tactics and the people who use them.
- trjordan 10y ago
  Who are "these people"? The person who opened the bug report asked about a process that's relevant to the purpose of the group (flagging inappropriate language early in places that can be hard to change later, like APIs). There was a previous case with a flag named "suicide", which was removed because it was deemed to be in bad taste. The flag was a honeypot for arguing about the tastemaking question, so once the process question was answered, the thread was closed and locked. Seems reasonable to me. There's certainly distraction around politics-style questions of taste and language, but it's not a bad thing to address the concerns of the community in a formal and standardized way, which is what that thread was nominally about.
  - generic_user 10y ago
    "these people" Refers to a long list of attempts by social justice warriors to join projects and organisations with the intent to subvert the organisation into a platform for there social activism. Which includes introducing extremely vague codes of conduct and then trying to use these vague guidelines to purge the organization of whomever they see as an obstacle of consolidating power and subverting resources. I am not going to drag in a bunch of links because anyone who has been observing this for the past few years has seen these people attempt this trojan horse tactic multiple times in multiple communities. One of the most awful episodes was when the gnome foundation was essentially bankrupted by having there entire budget for developer outreach subverted to 'Outreach Program for Women' which essentially entailed giving checks for 5,000 to any women to wanted the money regardless of there qualifications talent or history in open source. Needless to say the director was forced to resign. http://www.zdnet.com/article/gnome-bled-dry-by-outreach-programs/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/gnome-bled-dry-by-outreach-prog...
    - empath75 10y ago
      No one is ever going to take you seriously if you use the term "Social Justice Warrior".
      - generic_user 10y ago
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I'm going to try to go meta. Wish me luck. PG had an essay a while back about things you can't talk about. I've found lately that there are many topics where you just can't mention them at all online. I will not list these topics. To do so would just invite the kinds of conversations that end in a death spiral. I'm reminded of the old joke of accusing somebody that they are in denial. Once you do that? There's no way they can reply without agreeing with you. It's a semantic trap. There are scads of topics like that today. People have taught themselves the appropriate kinds of wordplay such that they are able to declare certain areas off-limits. Our society, world, and species depends on open and sometimes offensive civil dialogue. I find it depressing that so many people have paid so much money for an education and are not aware of this basic prerequisite for a modern world.
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    "stop being so defensive" is another one.
    - oh_sigh 10y ago
      Done!
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - ZoF 10y ago
    I think it's because we seriously aren't made for this environment. Consider that 100 years ago a picture was a novelty, there was no such thing as perfect recollection. Today we have a perfect/accurate record of exactly what was said/done on social media; it's led to a culture of virtue signalling and often dishonest but politically correct dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love technology and the amazing things it's let us do, but I don't think this aspect is discussed enough. Our day to day existence as a human being has completely/foundationally/fundamentally changed within the span of a couple generations.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  Inclusivity groups risk harnessing the energy of both marginalized groups decent, good people and marginalized groups willing ... in order to empower amoral power-hungry sociopaths (if not outright bigots) who wish to enforce their will on the world and demonize certain enemies. In other words, it's politics as usual - just in this case, "left-leaning San Francisco" politics in the "technology" space. A pity, as when this happens, it becomes a groupthink exercise and critical thinking is most unwelcome (hampering the realization of real diversity and inclusivity). Instead we're left with the Vocabulary Police game and pluralism is dead. (To say nothing the "this guy supports a political party I don't like; let's conspire to destroy his livelihood" witch hunts, which are rarer but even more vicious.)
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Inclusivity is a attempt to be included in the exercise of power, dressed up in language to make it seem less like a power grab and more like a moral imperative. The goal itself is laudable and the usual tactics "toward" that goal are lamentable.
- narrator 10y ago
  A old, but good piece on the culture war from 16 years ago is John Fonte's "Why There is a Culture War" (http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war). First published in Policy Review, put out by that often marginalized bastion of Silicon Valley conservative thought, Stanford's Hoover Institute. I didn't get the whole PC crowd until I read this article. The obvious contradictions in the PC movement can't really be ascribed to any other reasoning then Antonio Gramsci's counter-hegemonic culture war strategy that Fonte chronicles the history of in this article. The strategy seeks to join together all coalitions of those who oppose "hegemonic" values such as meritocracy and other "common sense" in order to seek its overthrow and to pave the way for a utopian revolution. Edit: I left out any examples of PC contradictions because anyone with critical thinking skills can identify many easily and I wanted to be kind and not inflict hurtful cognitive dissonance on those who are still PC true believers.
  - tangent128 10y ago
    Whether "Meritocracy" is an egalitarian or hegemonic value depends heavily on who is allowed to define the Merit function.
- tootie 10y ago
  I'll go ahead and jump down your throat for saying something really stupid. For one thing, no speech is banned. Wild hyperbole doesn't help your argument. Crockford can say whatever the fuck he wants. He has no inalienable right to be invited to private conferences. Secondly, this was just a poor attempt at placating people against some seemingly misplaced umbrage. This was a mistake. If you think this somehow sinks the entire mission of treating people fairly, you are simply wrong. Inclusivity and diversity are great. Treating people with respect is great. Respecting complaints of abusive behavior is great. Placating whiners is not. Striking the balance is not easy and some attempts will miss the mark. That doesn't mean you give up.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I'll go ahead and jump down your throat for saying something really stupid. For one thing, no speech is banned. Perhaps you mean "no speech is totally banned". Because it sure as hell it IS banned from being part of the conference. >Crockford can say whatever the fuck he wants. Nobody said they established their own dictatorship across the country and prevented him from speaking everywhere, so this "correction" is beside the point. He is totally not allowed to say what he wants as part of his presentation, because it was cancelled. And that was because some people couldn't accept him saying some things elsewhere either. What if someone takes offence of your "whatever the fuck he wants" line as sexist? Should you be thrown our from HN? You'd still be able to say "whatever you want" elsewhere, so no harm, right?
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      > Perhaps you mean "no speech is totally banned". Because it sure as hell it IS banned from being part of the conference. That's the problem though, isn't it? It's clear from Nodevember's statement[1] that the action was taken because some member of the community felt uncomfortable, and explicitly not because of any specific speech or action on the part of Mr. Crockford. If this were a movement to censor certain specific speech, I would likely be opposed to it on philosophical grounds but would support and empathize with the motivation. That's not what this movement is about. I see this as an example of a movement based on an extreme political ideology usurping power within a community by shaming its members into submission. [1] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
- Flow 10y ago
  Of course there's a subreddit for these GitHub issues written by SJWs. https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ I think it's striking how these people seem to be on a crusade, often they don't even seem to be users of the code in question and often barely developers at all.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    I've sometimes contemplated creating Offence-as-a-Service. If these groups can't find the precise thing they want to be outraged against, I'll provide them with the exact thing they want to be outraged against to build their political platform.
  - yuja_wang 10y ago
    Exactly right. These non-programmers and non-engineers simply search github for potentially offensive words in comments.
  - generic_user 10y ago
    The intention is to take over and subvert the organisation into a platform for there activism. The goals and tactics including codes of conduct are premeditated. Its a trojan horse technique called entryism used by radical leftist political groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
- Bahamut 10y ago
  I don't really see much of a problem here in the example linked, except that some people sometimes move a little too fast towards loaded exclusionary tactics with talk of sanctions against some poor attitudes - an easy thing to do when one is inexperienced with moderation (I believe I am qualified to comment on that due to having almost 15 years of experience with online moderation in various communities in some fashion). Otherwise, they exert good patience in the comment threads in response to some with not well meaning intentions with regards to having a productive discussion. A productive discussion would be to try to assist in coming up with a good balance in terms of being inclusive of those who have legitimate concerns with certain tone/terminology/etc. and those who don't want to appear too stifled in terms of having to be overly watchful in what is said to avoid undue public shaming for an accident. These sort of social problems don't have unilateral solutions, so the sooner that is recognized by all parties, the better the end result can be.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Some highlights: "terminology sensitivity" "host may be insensitive, use presenter, entertainer instead" "disabled may be insensitive, use turned off, person with a disability, people with disabilities instead" "psychotic may be insensitive, use person with a psychotic condition, person with psychosis instead" F--- that. You guys are psychotic....er, people with psychosis.
  - rvense 10y ago
    How can "host" ever be sensitive? I'm struggling to find a meaning of it that'd be problematic in any context.
    - yuja_wang 10y ago
      I think it's because it's a word that used to be "gendered" (in the correct use of the word gender). There was "host" and "hostess."
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      It's gender-specific (male). The female counterpart is hostess.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        Tons of the words in the english language are gender specific -- ban them all because some small number of people decided not to "identify with established gender roles" anymore, and that its not enough for them to do so, all speakers of the language should also change their ways? It's mostly pandering to individuals with an inflated sense of self importance (everybody change the language to cater for our particular use case and "offence"), and it's disgraceful and hypocritical because it leverages previous generations fights for actual discrimination and intolerance (e.g. against gays and lesbians) by taking to extremes from people that have it too easy today (or don't even belong to said minorities, but just "fight the good fight" in their name).
        10y ago
- dragandj 10y ago
  I read only the beginning of that discussion. One idea that came to my mind is that they are really looking for a strict linter that do not allow many custom options, something that approaches the strictness of Crockford's JSLint, perhaps. It was really difficult for me to understand that nodejs (internal?) source code could be that offensive to anyone to require this level of PC commitment, and I am not even a WASP... It is also quite ironic that they do it on GitHub.
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  I'm hopeful that inclusivity/SJW will destroy itself through its own messed up principles. Eventually, many members of those groups will mess up one of the unwritten rules of the club, and see what it's like to become a social pariah for innocent speech. For example, look at the backlash against Lena Dunham, a pretty prominent SJW, over what she said about OBJ.
- overgard 10y ago
  That's the amazing thing. For all their talk of "inclusivity", when they find anyone disagrees with their goals or methods their strategies revolve around: public denouncements, banishment, and going after people's livelihoods. All the warm-fuzzy talk belies one of the most viciously aggressive anti-free-speech political machines ever assembled.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    Criticizing speech with more speech (denouncements) and exercising your right to freedom of association (banishment) are two of the key ideas of free speech itself. You seem confused.
    - tomohawk 10y ago
      If that's as far as it goes. However, they are going far past that. They are using coercion and bullying. They are trying to get people fired. They are taking their children away. This is intolerance. This is totalitarianism.
      - knucklesandwich 10y ago
        This is an awful lot of outrage over details that aren't substantiated by the Nodevember statement[1] or any cited sources whatsoever. [1]: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
    - xupybd 10y ago
      I don't think banishment and freedom of association are linked in the way you are implying. I'm not free to associate with someone if they are removed from my professional circle for reasons that I don't agree with. Criticizing speech is most definitely part of free speech, but it's the consequences of that speech that is worrying. In the east your professional opportunities dry up when people start accusing you of being an enemy of the state. In the west the same happens when you are declared an enemy of the minority. Inclusion is fantastic, but not if it means excluding people for trivial examples of speech that people have to work hard to be offended by.
elmigranto 10y ago
Some people hear someone say X, put the most sickening meaning into it, get offended, cry on twitter. Pretty sure "saying X" is not the problem here.
fennecfoxen 10y ago
Anecdotally, this seems to be a stronger thing in Node.js community than others. I recall on occasion on the Node channel on Freenode when I got chewed out by the ops+ for not being inclusive enough with a casual "later, guys" (or "later, dudes"). (+ bona fide opped ops, notwithstanding the Freenode "low channel temperature" guidelines)
- mdadm 10y ago
  >Anecdotally, this seems to be a stronger thing in Node.js community than others. I have seen people speculate that this is due to the lower barrier of entry in the JS community (as a whole), although I'm not certain how true this would be.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    there's a pretty low barrier to entry in the PHP world, and I don't think we've seen anywhere near the same level of scrutiny.
    - mdadm 10y ago
      Well lately, everything seems to be focused on JS, no? There's node.js, react, angular, $JAVASCRIPT_FRAMEWORK_OF_THE_DAY, ... So if JS is most of what you hear about, and if the community does actually have low entry standards, it seems logical that it'd be the community that would attract the most issues.
    - 67726e 10y ago
      Well I think PHP has fallen out of favor for Node among the "I wanna program" crowd. Of course this whole "social justice" shit-show is a more recent thing so all the heat is in that community, leaving PHP out of the festivities.
  - lukev 10y ago
    So what you're saying is you want conferences to be a safe space for nerds, with none of them beginners or people with different ideas about what a good community looks like trying to mess things up?
trjordan 10y ago
The part of this article that highlights what Douglas Crockford did to get him removed from Nodevember is fine. A bit boring, but fine. The part of this article that generally hand-waves towards "inclusivity" as a movement and dismisses them as people with "unicorn-colored hair" is frustrating. There's little here that actually discusses the issue. It points out a couple of things that Douglas said, trivializes the issues that the inclusivity group cares about, and seems to make its primary point by arguing semantics (oh, look, the inclusivity group excludes people, har har). I get that its an opinion piece, but there's nothing of substance here that I could possibly disagree with, because it's not defined. If you want to get a bunch of people agree with you and give you internet points, it's spot on. But there's not a lot here that's interesting if you're not already on board with this point of view.
- fatbird 10y ago
  It's worth noting that the details of the reasons Crockford was uninvited have not been confirmed by any of the parties. This article takes speculation from elsewhere as announced truth and proceeds to dismiss inclusivity as a goal on that basis.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    Here is a good update I missed: Formal statement from Nodevember[0] [0] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
    - mzw_mzw 10y ago
      "While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak." Any speakers who are made "uncomfortable" by Crockford's presence are pretty much guaranteed to be the sort of speakers who don't bring anything to your conference anyway. "We are in over our heads." Well, that's certainly the truth. I also notice that while they apologized so unreservedly, they didn't go so far as to reinvite Crockford.
okket 10y ago
See also: "In defence of Douglas Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 "Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061
wyager 10y ago
> No, inclusivity is not about banning speech > Sometimes that means enforcing certain standards of speech Do you hear yourself? The cognitive dissonance is incredible.
- lukev 10y ago
  Sigh. What I obviously meant (btw, you should read up on the Principle of Charity [0]) is that banning speech is not the goal, it's a means to an end, and one that society has already largely accepted. Enforcing a certain level of civility in a given place of discourse isn't "banning" and it isn't a free speech issue. It's a basic prerequisite for human interaction. The "inclusivity" movement is just trying to extend that concept to be sensitive to groups of people that historically have not felt comfortable in certain technical environments. Argue about the implementation if you like, but please don't assume bad faith on the part of everyone who tries to make tech a more welcoming place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    I think we're conflating all kinds of stuff here. In small social groups, the group norms around certain behaviors. That's normal. It's also normal that different small social groups will have different norms. As a personal matter, don't be an asshole. You shouldn't say things to others to deliberately hurt them. The principle of charity is valid here as well, by the way. Sometimes people are hurt because even though you mean well, they take things the wrong way. In larger groups, probably somewhere around Dunbar's Number, it becomes inevitable that norming will not work -- nor should it work. That's because larger groups of people naturally become echo chambers full of groupthink. It's imperative to have voices and opinions that some find harsh. c.f. On Liberty These are three separate issues. They are related, yes, but one doesn't trump the others. Society needs all of this to function well. ADD: One of the interesting things that happened with the invention of the television was that there was no more adult talk anymore. Adults said that in the past, there was plenty of time when the kids ran off and the grown-ups talked about more mature topics. The TV took every kind of conversation and threw it into the middle of the living room with your 4-year-old. (Or 15-year-old, for that matter). Adult talk radically changed. Perhaps the net is doing the same thing with small social groups -- eliminating them as a place where local norms can be far outside what most people would find polite. Everything now is just in one big bucket. If so, it promises a more radical change to human society than anything we've seen so far.
tptacek 10y ago
We only need the one story on this on the front page, and it's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420
pkd 10y ago
I liked it much more when open source was about the code and not the people behind it. Nowadays I worry that I might be called out for using a piece of code (however good it might be) just because the person who wrote it does not use "inclusive" language.
- brakmic 10y ago
  AFAIK, this only affects the JavaScript-based communities. I sincerely doubt one would find anything remotely similar in C++, Linux (C lang), or Assembly-programming communities. The "harder" the language the less non-coding politics around.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    > I sincerely doubt one would find anything remotely similar in a C++, Linux (C lang), or Assembly-programming communities. The Linux world is full of commotion surrounding (written) language.
    - brakmic 10y ago
      I mentioned the "non-coding" related politics which seem to be deeply rooted in JS-based communities.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    When you have two people, you have politics. Nerds just have this ridiculous social signal where they have to pretend to be above it.
    - SCHiM 10y ago
      Nerds try to out-nerd each other. Which could be considered helpful since it could motivate people to go way over the top when designing code, perhaps also harmful if that results in over engineered code instead of good code.
    - Puts 10y ago
jegoodwin3 10y ago
Yes, one of life's harsher lessons is just how vicious Unitarians can be.
- throwanem 10y ago
  "Other grain."
wozer 10y ago
If this is true, it is both ridiculous and terrible.
generic_user 10y ago
I think the takeaway is that when you set up a group within your organisation to promote 'inclusion' or 'diversity' you open the door for entrism by seasoned radical activists who have an agenda. An attempt to include 'marginalized' people by excluding everyone who fails there ideological purity test is simply a witch-hunt tactic to consolidate power and subvert the direction of the organisation. everyone has to be more diligent to protect there projects and communities form these corrosive people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
noobermin 10y ago
Sometimes I wonder if these groups are false flags. I know they aren't, but perhaps it is better to say they are their own parody. There are serious issues out there, discrimination is alive and has been demonstrated in studies, statistics, etc. Garbage like this makes a mockery of the whole thing, the real hurt and issues gets mixed in with this trash and gives some people, I'm sure, solace that all of it is just a tempest in a teapot, and there are no real issues out there. Groups and fake controversies like this distract from real issues of discrimination. They do more harm to inclusive movements than good.
- andybak 10y ago
  As much as I'd like to think this is true, I don't think it's plausible. It would require a conspiracy of epic proportions. It's a flaw in human psychology that is related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference... Another aspect is that as that any idealistic movement is prone to being taken over by it's most intractable members. There's a game theoretic spin on it by Nicholas Taleb if I remember correctly: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf As the emotional tone of a debate is heightened, it's hard to argue for moderation. Anything that pushed emotional buttons forces people to the extremes and those arguing for compromise are often ridiculed by both sides. Therefore we have the phenomenon that many debates end up being between over-the-top SJWs on one side and crazy racists and Red Pill types on the other. And back in the real world, there is still indisputable injustice and discrimination that would be eminently tractable if everyone would come back down to earth. EDIT - I'd like to point out that I'm aware of a major flaw in the above - everyone - myself included regards themselves as a reasonable moderate and others as dangerous extremists. I suppose I'd be quite content to be regarded as a flakey liberal by my friends on the right and a closet imperialist by those on the left. (Except - what happens if the sample of my social group is heavily skewed and my 'left/right' is off the scale? And down the rabbit hole we go...)
  - derefr 10y ago
    Everyone is a moderate; people reposition the callipers around their social group, defining people into and out of it, so as to always stay its most central and reasonable example.
oli5679 10y ago
Paul Graham's Essay on 'What You Can't Say' http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
pvg 10y ago
The statement of the organizers doesn't give a very detailed reason why they didn't want him giving a keynote at their conference and it certainly doesn't say it was over a tweet or using the word 'promiscuous'. That part seems to be much-repeated speculation that does nothing but fuel outrage.
zeta0134 10y ago
Inclusivity is one of those things that you just have to do, and not talk about. I sincerely hope the irony of excluding this man in the name of inclusivity is not lost on the crowd. What a mess. I think more people would do well to practice the tolerance and acceptance that they preach. As a gay man, I've run into my fair share of loud mouthed, biggoted people, who say incredibly mean things about me without realizing that they're affecting someone in the same room. A good deal of my friends are Christians, and a good deal of my family is as well. At least in our churches, being gay is considered quite a heavy sin. Somewhat intuitively then, when I came out to my family, I was simultaneously declaring that I would no longer be a part of their religion. And you know? We didn't fight about it. They understand my limitations, and I still love them. I'm still friends with my Christian friends, and I'm still on great terms with my family. We disagree on certain things but that's OK, because they've learned to see the good in my unique outlook on life, and I've learned to understand the love tolerance that their Jesus teaches, because I watch them practice it every day. We've learned to accept one another, despite our differences. Inclusivity is not hard, but it starts with avoiding conflict. You're going to have to tolerate that which occasionally offends you, and learn to let it go. Learn to love people despite their flaws, because goodness do people have flaws. We're not perfect. Nowhere near it. But all people still have some good in them, and it's worth making the effort to see past that which you dislike to appreciate the human being underneath it all.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- danso 10y ago
  I don't disagree with your overall post except for this point: > Inclusivity is not hard, but it starts with avoiding conflict. I think inclusivity is hard -- for all the reasons you mention in the following sentence, e.g. having the strength to let things go, and the open-mindedness to love someone despite their purported flaws. Not only is inclusivity hard, but it is important to recognize how hard it is to achieve and maintain. Because otherwise it becomes easy to trivialize people who genuinely fight for it but fail to achieve it.
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
PedroBatista 10y ago
I'm guessing even the hardcore Victorians would consider this whole thing "a bit much".
Asooka 10y ago
In the list of recommended articles this image pops up: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TvRN5dsh-PlvHyS7a3jfSw.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TvRN5dsh-PlvHyS7a3... linking to this article: https://medium.com/@CloudCityIO/fostering-diversity-and-inclusivity-in-open-source-projects-e7a1ba6ee704#.8smh55yyh https://medium.com/@CloudCityIO/fostering-diversity-and-incl... With the tagline: Want to Change the Technology? Focus on Inclusion and not Diversity. Which tells you everything you need to know about "inclusivity". It's just the latest name for "let's get a representative of each positive label to be the most positivest of all".
coldtea 10y ago
>Well, it basically came from some very vocal bullying from “inclusivity” folks, incidentally also a part of the Node.js inclusivity group. The problem with "inclusivity groups" is that they have to find work for themselves -- even if that means busywork.
Animats 10y ago
Inclusivity is so last year. Look how well Trump is doing. Trump brought intolerance out of the closet. Like him or not, he's changed American politics.
knucklesandwich 10y ago
Some people in the developer community need to get better at recognizing when a witch hunt is brewing. This blog post has essentially the same content as the one yesterday on the same subject[1]. Like the one yesterday, it attempts to provide its own explanation for why Crockford was disinvited as the keynote speaker. However, none of these details are mentioned in the actual statement given by Nodevember[2], and there are no sources given for how this explanation was arrived at. The Nodevember statement claims he was disinvited based on some public and private feedback from speakers who felt uncomfortable attending with him as the keynote speaker. Why should we take it on face value that the circumstances documented here are actual set of circumstances that lead to him being disinvited? Where is this information even coming from? One of the alleged sources is a blog post from Kas Perch[3]. The alleged slut shaming incident seems to be a minor note in a post otherwise focused on his negative and dismissive attitude towards some of the other speakers. Perhaps this is the more salient part of why this person felt uncomfortable attending with him? Perhaps there's more feedback being kept private to protect the witch hunt from targeting those coming forward? Notably I haven't even seen a statement from Crockford crying foul over this incident. It seems to be coming entirely from other Node developers upset about the fact that he was removed as the keynote speaker. It seems like this is an argument being played out as a proxy over political stances about diversity and inclusion tactics, without a lot of consideration for the actual circumstances. Furthermore I find it very disappointing that this poorly substantiated argument is being used to demonize inclusivity and diversity overall, which is something badly needed in developer communities. [1]: http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford [2]: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html [3]: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8#.b640mips1 https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-...
- tobltobs 10y ago
  > on some public and private feedback from speakers who felt uncomfortable attending with him as the keynote speaker. So you want to say, that there doesn't need to be a real reason anyway, it is just enough that a few other speakers have a problem with him. It doesn't even have to be made transparent what the problems actually is. And you believe that this kind of closed door denunciation will result in a better, more inclusive world? And that Crockford doesn't respond to this hypocritical nonsense is a kind of confession of guilt?
dbg31415 10y ago
The number of people who go around looking for ways to be offended is seriously troubling and a fat greater theeat to humanity's advancement. If someone has something to teach me, I don't care what he does outside of the conference -- if he uses gender biased words or votes for evil bunnies, I'm not there to talk to him about those things. It was better when people knew how to comparatamentalize work and politics and religion and all the other stuff that's personal and not relevant to the discussion at hand.
thiht 10y ago
It seems the SJW movement became a new form of inquisition. What's terrifiying is it actually convinces in real life.
dasil003 10y ago
I consider myself an ally on most social justice issues. The kind of abuse heaped on women online is unconscionable to me. Not to mention Black Lives Matter where people are actually dying because of systemic prejudice. So you have those issues on one side, there are a lot of them and we need to work on them as a society. A step down from that big stuff, you have crass offensive behavior like sexual innuendo in conference talks and other things that can pretty readily be identified as going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. It makes sense for professional conferences to have policies against those things. Then you have this long tail of ways that a person can be offended by subtle interpretations that are impossible to wholly avoid by premeditation except through sheer paranoid blandness. This is the bucket where it seems like this Crockford nonsense falls, and this is also where the movement loses my support. They've crossed the line from helping people to just reaching for the torches and pitchforks, and completely lost the thread that liberalism was once about tolerance.
- noobermin 10y ago
  I feel that these people do not and should not speak for liberalism. The are like the Alt-Right, they are an extreme fringe which give the movement and causes (very important causes) a bad name.
xwvvvvwx 10y ago
pastebin of a nodevember slack channel discussing the incident: http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/50u77r/douglas_crockford_removed_as_a_keynote_speaker_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/50u77r/douglas_...
brador 10y ago
Question: Is that Tweet Libel? > "We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all." - Nodevember Tweet The implication is he creates an uncomfortable environment. Libel?
erichocean 10y ago
Node•vember? Or No•dev•ember? Seems like it's trending towards the latter.
kazinator 10y ago
You can put a network adapter into "promiscuous mode". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode This causes it to disappear all night and crawl home at 11 in the morning with a hangover.
- kazinator 10y ago
  Hmm; I didn't think that was a good comment and am positive I deleted it.
kazinator 10y ago
Donald Trump: - "[Mexican immigrants are] bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists." - "Rosie [O'Donnell] is just disgusting --- she's fat, she's a loser. She's a farm animal pig. She's a beast, ok. She's just a loser. She's no good." RESULT: Just might get elected US President in November! Obscure JavaScript geek: - "blah blah ... promiscuous ... blah blah ..." RESULT: Removed from speaking at some JavaScript conference in November. These inclusivity people need to look around a little and have a reality check. Their incredibly narrow standard for what is acceptable is not even remotely shared by the American society they live in.

320 points by brakmic 10y ago

EdiX 10y ago

This post is currently in page four where it's the most recent post of the page (by a large margin) and the third most upvoted post in the page. Sometimes it's weird how algorithms work.

hubert123 10y ago

Inclusivity is an attempt to ban certain kind of speech. I have found that these people are downright religious in their zeal. Example: https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity/issues/9 https://github.com/nodejs/inclusivity/issues/9 I'm not even going to comment further on this, I have found that arguments, sanity and reason do nothing here.

wyager 10y ago
This is a gold mine. > problematic language > [a word] is very difficult for many others to stumble across in the codebase > a word choice can be problematic/distracting/triggering/offensive This isn't even something that might reasonably be considered "triggering" material, like a story that might plausibly give someone a PTSD flashback. If someone is so mentally unstable that just seeing a word in an API screws with their head, their problem is sufficiently serious that they ought to seek immediate psychological help.
- mdadm 10y ago
  >If someone is so mentally unstable that just seeing a word in an API screws with their head, their problem is sufficiently serious that they ought to seek immediate psychological help. It almost seems like child-like behavior. "I don't like this, so everyone has to change to fit my whims." Of course, there's almost certainly valid reasons for wanting change - it's probably not a good idea to make rape jokes or similar in your code[0] - but this seems over the top. Things in the world are going to be offensive, and if seeing a word causes that much trauma for someone, then they probably have bigger issues than just a symbol name or something. [0] Not saying that anyone has done this
  - jegoodwin3 10y ago
    Isn't that what rot13 is for? A think a special compiler switch, along the lines of -Drot13, would work just fine for people who have special needs like that.
    - mdadm 10y ago
      Well but then that mangles the symbol names, which would make programming a pain.
      - jegoodwin3 10y ago
        True. I think Kurt Vonnegut had a short story that dealt with that aspect of the plan. A search for "Handicapper General" should dredge it up.
lukev 10y ago
No, inclusivity is not about banning speech, it is about making sure that people can feel comfortable in an environment. Sometimes that means enforcing certain standards of speech and behavior. Which you already agree with, if you are at all functional in society. The question in this case is not whether inclusivity is a good thing, it's whether Crockford's speech/actions were "bad enough" in the context of a conference. I don't know (and don't care to know) about that, but it's vitally important not to throw the inclusivity baby out with the bathwater.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Thriptic 10y ago
  While in principle I agree with you, I think at a certain level people need to just learn how to deal with stuff that offends them. I hear things that offend me on a regular basis, including inflammatory (and absurd) remarks about people I care about and groups I am a part of. At the end of the day, I just brush these speakers off as assholes who don't know what they are talking about and go about my day.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    I couldn't agree more. While there are certainly people out there who make inflammatory statements in order to offend and marginalize others, they are in the extreme minority. I've got an essay cooking in my head right now that's tentatively titled "Gaining useful insight from aggressive comments".
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  Just because people claim to have good principles doesn't make them good people or mean that their tactics will accomplish the principle. These systems of public shaming, mobbing, and self-interested entryism clearly aren't creating inclusivity; rather, they are dramatically counterproductive in that regard. If you truly support inclusion, you should be opposing these tactics and the people who use them.
trjordan 10y ago
Who are "these people"? The person who opened the bug report asked about a process that's relevant to the purpose of the group (flagging inappropriate language early in places that can be hard to change later, like APIs). There was a previous case with a flag named "suicide", which was removed because it was deemed to be in bad taste. The flag was a honeypot for arguing about the tastemaking question, so once the process question was answered, the thread was closed and locked. Seems reasonable to me. There's certainly distraction around politics-style questions of taste and language, but it's not a bad thing to address the concerns of the community in a formal and standardized way, which is what that thread was nominally about.
- generic_user 10y ago
  "these people" Refers to a long list of attempts by social justice warriors to join projects and organisations with the intent to subvert the organisation into a platform for there social activism. Which includes introducing extremely vague codes of conduct and then trying to use these vague guidelines to purge the organization of whomever they see as an obstacle of consolidating power and subverting resources. I am not going to drag in a bunch of links because anyone who has been observing this for the past few years has seen these people attempt this trojan horse tactic multiple times in multiple communities. One of the most awful episodes was when the gnome foundation was essentially bankrupted by having there entire budget for developer outreach subverted to 'Outreach Program for Women' which essentially entailed giving checks for 5,000 to any women to wanted the money regardless of there qualifications talent or history in open source. Needless to say the director was forced to resign. http://www.zdnet.com/article/gnome-bled-dry-by-outreach-programs/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/gnome-bled-dry-by-outreach-prog...
  - empath75 10y ago
    No one is ever going to take you seriously if you use the term "Social Justice Warrior".
    - generic_user 10y ago
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
I'm going to try to go meta. Wish me luck. PG had an essay a while back about things you can't talk about. I've found lately that there are many topics where you just can't mention them at all online. I will not list these topics. To do so would just invite the kinds of conversations that end in a death spiral. I'm reminded of the old joke of accusing somebody that they are in denial. Once you do that? There's no way they can reply without agreeing with you. It's a semantic trap. There are scads of topics like that today. People have taught themselves the appropriate kinds of wordplay such that they are able to declare certain areas off-limits. Our society, world, and species depends on open and sometimes offensive civil dialogue. I find it depressing that so many people have paid so much money for an education and are not aware of this basic prerequisite for a modern world.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  "stop being so defensive" is another one.
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    Done!
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- ZoF 10y ago
  I think it's because we seriously aren't made for this environment. Consider that 100 years ago a picture was a novelty, there was no such thing as perfect recollection. Today we have a perfect/accurate record of exactly what was said/done on social media; it's led to a culture of virtue signalling and often dishonest but politically correct dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love technology and the amazing things it's let us do, but I don't think this aspect is discussed enough. Our day to day existence as a human being has completely/foundationally/fundamentally changed within the span of a couple generations.
fennecfoxen 10y ago
Inclusivity groups risk harnessing the energy of both marginalized groups decent, good people and marginalized groups willing ... in order to empower amoral power-hungry sociopaths (if not outright bigots) who wish to enforce their will on the world and demonize certain enemies. In other words, it's politics as usual - just in this case, "left-leaning San Francisco" politics in the "technology" space. A pity, as when this happens, it becomes a groupthink exercise and critical thinking is most unwelcome (hampering the realization of real diversity and inclusivity). Instead we're left with the Vocabulary Police game and pluralism is dead. (To say nothing the "this guy supports a political party I don't like; let's conspire to destroy his livelihood" witch hunts, which are rarer but even more vicious.)
oldmanjay 10y ago
Inclusivity is a attempt to be included in the exercise of power, dressed up in language to make it seem less like a power grab and more like a moral imperative. The goal itself is laudable and the usual tactics "toward" that goal are lamentable.
narrator 10y ago
A old, but good piece on the culture war from 16 years ago is John Fonte's "Why There is a Culture War" (http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war http://www.hoover.org/research/why-there-culture-war). First published in Policy Review, put out by that often marginalized bastion of Silicon Valley conservative thought, Stanford's Hoover Institute. I didn't get the whole PC crowd until I read this article. The obvious contradictions in the PC movement can't really be ascribed to any other reasoning then Antonio Gramsci's counter-hegemonic culture war strategy that Fonte chronicles the history of in this article. The strategy seeks to join together all coalitions of those who oppose "hegemonic" values such as meritocracy and other "common sense" in order to seek its overthrow and to pave the way for a utopian revolution. Edit: I left out any examples of PC contradictions because anyone with critical thinking skills can identify many easily and I wanted to be kind and not inflict hurtful cognitive dissonance on those who are still PC true believers.
- tangent128 10y ago
  Whether "Meritocracy" is an egalitarian or hegemonic value depends heavily on who is allowed to define the Merit function.
tootie 10y ago
I'll go ahead and jump down your throat for saying something really stupid. For one thing, no speech is banned. Wild hyperbole doesn't help your argument. Crockford can say whatever the fuck he wants. He has no inalienable right to be invited to private conferences. Secondly, this was just a poor attempt at placating people against some seemingly misplaced umbrage. This was a mistake. If you think this somehow sinks the entire mission of treating people fairly, you are simply wrong. Inclusivity and diversity are great. Treating people with respect is great. Respecting complaints of abusive behavior is great. Placating whiners is not. Striking the balance is not easy and some attempts will miss the mark. That doesn't mean you give up.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I'll go ahead and jump down your throat for saying something really stupid. For one thing, no speech is banned. Perhaps you mean "no speech is totally banned". Because it sure as hell it IS banned from being part of the conference. >Crockford can say whatever the fuck he wants. Nobody said they established their own dictatorship across the country and prevented him from speaking everywhere, so this "correction" is beside the point. He is totally not allowed to say what he wants as part of his presentation, because it was cancelled. And that was because some people couldn't accept him saying some things elsewhere either. What if someone takes offence of your "whatever the fuck he wants" line as sexist? Should you be thrown our from HN? You'd still be able to say "whatever you want" elsewhere, so no harm, right?
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    > Perhaps you mean "no speech is totally banned". Because it sure as hell it IS banned from being part of the conference. That's the problem though, isn't it? It's clear from Nodevember's statement[1] that the action was taken because some member of the community felt uncomfortable, and explicitly not because of any specific speech or action on the part of Mr. Crockford. If this were a movement to censor certain specific speech, I would likely be opposed to it on philosophical grounds but would support and empathize with the motivation. That's not what this movement is about. I see this as an example of a movement based on an extreme political ideology usurping power within a community by shaming its members into submission. [1] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
Flow 10y ago
Of course there's a subreddit for these GitHub issues written by SJWs. https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ I think it's striking how these people seem to be on a crusade, often they don't even seem to be users of the code in question and often barely developers at all.
- Asooka 10y ago
  I've sometimes contemplated creating Offence-as-a-Service. If these groups can't find the precise thing they want to be outraged against, I'll provide them with the exact thing they want to be outraged against to build their political platform.
- yuja_wang 10y ago
  Exactly right. These non-programmers and non-engineers simply search github for potentially offensive words in comments.
- generic_user 10y ago
  The intention is to take over and subvert the organisation into a platform for there activism. The goals and tactics including codes of conduct are premeditated. Its a trojan horse technique called entryism used by radical leftist political groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
Bahamut 10y ago
I don't really see much of a problem here in the example linked, except that some people sometimes move a little too fast towards loaded exclusionary tactics with talk of sanctions against some poor attitudes - an easy thing to do when one is inexperienced with moderation (I believe I am qualified to comment on that due to having almost 15 years of experience with online moderation in various communities in some fashion). Otherwise, they exert good patience in the comment threads in response to some with not well meaning intentions with regards to having a productive discussion. A productive discussion would be to try to assist in coming up with a good balance in terms of being inclusive of those who have legitimate concerns with certain tone/terminology/etc. and those who don't want to appear too stifled in terms of having to be overly watchful in what is said to avoid undue public shaming for an accident. These sort of social problems don't have unilateral solutions, so the sooner that is recognized by all parties, the better the end result can be.
paulddraper 10y ago
Some highlights: "terminology sensitivity" "host may be insensitive, use presenter, entertainer instead" "disabled may be insensitive, use turned off, person with a disability, people with disabilities instead" "psychotic may be insensitive, use person with a psychotic condition, person with psychosis instead" F--- that. You guys are psychotic....er, people with psychosis.
- rvense 10y ago
  How can "host" ever be sensitive? I'm struggling to find a meaning of it that'd be problematic in any context.
  - yuja_wang 10y ago
    I think it's because it's a word that used to be "gendered" (in the correct use of the word gender). There was "host" and "hostess."
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    It's gender-specific (male). The female counterpart is hostess.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Tons of the words in the english language are gender specific -- ban them all because some small number of people decided not to "identify with established gender roles" anymore, and that its not enough for them to do so, all speakers of the language should also change their ways? It's mostly pandering to individuals with an inflated sense of self importance (everybody change the language to cater for our particular use case and "offence"), and it's disgraceful and hypocritical because it leverages previous generations fights for actual discrimination and intolerance (e.g. against gays and lesbians) by taking to extremes from people that have it too easy today (or don't even belong to said minorities, but just "fight the good fight" in their name).
      - 10y ago
dragandj 10y ago
I read only the beginning of that discussion. One idea that came to my mind is that they are really looking for a strict linter that do not allow many custom options, something that approaches the strictness of Crockford's JSLint, perhaps. It was really difficult for me to understand that nodejs (internal?) source code could be that offensive to anyone to require this level of PC commitment, and I am not even a WASP... It is also quite ironic that they do it on GitHub.
oh_sigh 10y ago
I'm hopeful that inclusivity/SJW will destroy itself through its own messed up principles. Eventually, many members of those groups will mess up one of the unwritten rules of the club, and see what it's like to become a social pariah for innocent speech. For example, look at the backlash against Lena Dunham, a pretty prominent SJW, over what she said about OBJ.
overgard 10y ago
That's the amazing thing. For all their talk of "inclusivity", when they find anyone disagrees with their goals or methods their strategies revolve around: public denouncements, banishment, and going after people's livelihoods. All the warm-fuzzy talk belies one of the most viciously aggressive anti-free-speech political machines ever assembled.
- x0x0 10y ago
  Criticizing speech with more speech (denouncements) and exercising your right to freedom of association (banishment) are two of the key ideas of free speech itself. You seem confused.
  - tomohawk 10y ago
    If that's as far as it goes. However, they are going far past that. They are using coercion and bullying. They are trying to get people fired. They are taking their children away. This is intolerance. This is totalitarianism.
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      This is an awful lot of outrage over details that aren't substantiated by the Nodevember statement[1] or any cited sources whatsoever. [1]: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
  - xupybd 10y ago
    I don't think banishment and freedom of association are linked in the way you are implying. I'm not free to associate with someone if they are removed from my professional circle for reasons that I don't agree with. Criticizing speech is most definitely part of free speech, but it's the consequences of that speech that is worrying. In the east your professional opportunities dry up when people start accusing you of being an enemy of the state. In the west the same happens when you are declared an enemy of the minority. Inclusion is fantastic, but not if it means excluding people for trivial examples of speech that people have to work hard to be offended by.

elmigranto 10y ago

Some people hear someone say X, put the most sickening meaning into it, get offended, cry on twitter. Pretty sure "saying X" is not the problem here.

fennecfoxen 10y ago

Anecdotally, this seems to be a stronger thing in Node.js community than others. I recall on occasion on the Node channel on Freenode when I got chewed out by the ops+ for not being inclusive enough with a casual "later, guys" (or "later, dudes"). (+ bona fide opped ops, notwithstanding the Freenode "low channel temperature" guidelines)

mdadm 10y ago
>Anecdotally, this seems to be a stronger thing in Node.js community than others. I have seen people speculate that this is due to the lower barrier of entry in the JS community (as a whole), although I'm not certain how true this would be.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  there's a pretty low barrier to entry in the PHP world, and I don't think we've seen anywhere near the same level of scrutiny.
  - mdadm 10y ago
    Well lately, everything seems to be focused on JS, no? There's node.js, react, angular, $JAVASCRIPT_FRAMEWORK_OF_THE_DAY, ... So if JS is most of what you hear about, and if the community does actually have low entry standards, it seems logical that it'd be the community that would attract the most issues.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    Well I think PHP has fallen out of favor for Node among the "I wanna program" crowd. Of course this whole "social justice" shit-show is a more recent thing so all the heat is in that community, leaving PHP out of the festivities.
- lukev 10y ago
  So what you're saying is you want conferences to be a safe space for nerds, with none of them beginners or people with different ideas about what a good community looks like trying to mess things up?

trjordan 10y ago

The part of this article that highlights what Douglas Crockford did to get him removed from Nodevember is fine. A bit boring, but fine. The part of this article that generally hand-waves towards "inclusivity" as a movement and dismisses them as people with "unicorn-colored hair" is frustrating. There's little here that actually discusses the issue. It points out a couple of things that Douglas said, trivializes the issues that the inclusivity group cares about, and seems to make its primary point by arguing semantics (oh, look, the inclusivity group excludes people, har har). I get that its an opinion piece, but there's nothing of substance here that I could possibly disagree with, because it's not defined. If you want to get a bunch of people agree with you and give you internet points, it's spot on. But there's not a lot here that's interesting if you're not already on board with this point of view.

fatbird 10y ago
It's worth noting that the details of the reasons Crockford was uninvited have not been confirmed by any of the parties. This article takes speculation from elsewhere as announced truth and proceeds to dismiss inclusivity as a goal on that basis.
- noobermin 10y ago
  Here is a good update I missed: Formal statement from Nodevember[0] [0] http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    "While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak." Any speakers who are made "uncomfortable" by Crockford's presence are pretty much guaranteed to be the sort of speakers who don't bring anything to your conference anyway. "We are in over our heads." Well, that's certainly the truth. I also notice that while they apologized so unreservedly, they didn't go so far as to reinvite Crockford.

okket 10y ago

See also: "In defence of Douglas Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 "Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061

wyager 10y ago

> No, inclusivity is not about banning speech > Sometimes that means enforcing certain standards of speech Do you hear yourself? The cognitive dissonance is incredible.

lukev 10y ago
Sigh. What I obviously meant (btw, you should read up on the Principle of Charity [0]) is that banning speech is not the goal, it's a means to an end, and one that society has already largely accepted. Enforcing a certain level of civility in a given place of discourse isn't "banning" and it isn't a free speech issue. It's a basic prerequisite for human interaction. The "inclusivity" movement is just trying to extend that concept to be sensitive to groups of people that historically have not felt comfortable in certain technical environments. Argue about the implementation if you like, but please don't assume bad faith on the part of everyone who tries to make tech a more welcoming place. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I think we're conflating all kinds of stuff here. In small social groups, the group norms around certain behaviors. That's normal. It's also normal that different small social groups will have different norms. As a personal matter, don't be an asshole. You shouldn't say things to others to deliberately hurt them. The principle of charity is valid here as well, by the way. Sometimes people are hurt because even though you mean well, they take things the wrong way. In larger groups, probably somewhere around Dunbar's Number, it becomes inevitable that norming will not work -- nor should it work. That's because larger groups of people naturally become echo chambers full of groupthink. It's imperative to have voices and opinions that some find harsh. c.f. On Liberty These are three separate issues. They are related, yes, but one doesn't trump the others. Society needs all of this to function well. ADD: One of the interesting things that happened with the invention of the television was that there was no more adult talk anymore. Adults said that in the past, there was plenty of time when the kids ran off and the grown-ups talked about more mature topics. The TV took every kind of conversation and threw it into the middle of the living room with your 4-year-old. (Or 15-year-old, for that matter). Adult talk radically changed. Perhaps the net is doing the same thing with small social groups -- eliminating them as a place where local norms can be far outside what most people would find polite. Everything now is just in one big bucket. If so, it promises a more radical change to human society than anything we've seen so far.

tptacek 10y ago

We only need the one story on this on the front page, and it's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420

pkd 10y ago

I liked it much more when open source was about the code and not the people behind it. Nowadays I worry that I might be called out for using a piece of code (however good it might be) just because the person who wrote it does not use "inclusive" language.

brakmic 10y ago
AFAIK, this only affects the JavaScript-based communities. I sincerely doubt one would find anything remotely similar in C++, Linux (C lang), or Assembly-programming communities. The "harder" the language the less non-coding politics around.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  > I sincerely doubt one would find anything remotely similar in a C++, Linux (C lang), or Assembly-programming communities. The Linux world is full of commotion surrounding (written) language.
  - brakmic 10y ago
    I mentioned the "non-coding" related politics which seem to be deeply rooted in JS-based communities.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  When you have two people, you have politics. Nerds just have this ridiculous social signal where they have to pretend to be above it.
  - SCHiM 10y ago
    Nerds try to out-nerd each other. Which could be considered helpful since it could motivate people to go way over the top when designing code, perhaps also harmful if that results in over engineered code instead of good code.
  - Puts 10y ago

jegoodwin3 10y ago

Yes, one of life's harsher lessons is just how vicious Unitarians can be.

throwanem 10y ago
"Other grain."

wozer 10y ago

If this is true, it is both ridiculous and terrible.

generic_user 10y ago

I think the takeaway is that when you set up a group within your organisation to promote 'inclusion' or 'diversity' you open the door for entrism by seasoned radical activists who have an agenda. An attempt to include 'marginalized' people by excluding everyone who fails there ideological purity test is simply a witch-hunt tactic to consolidate power and subvert the direction of the organisation. everyone has to be more diligent to protect there projects and communities form these corrosive people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism

noobermin 10y ago

Sometimes I wonder if these groups are false flags. I know they aren't, but perhaps it is better to say they are their own parody. There are serious issues out there, discrimination is alive and has been demonstrated in studies, statistics, etc. Garbage like this makes a mockery of the whole thing, the real hurt and issues gets mixed in with this trash and gives some people, I'm sure, solace that all of it is just a tempest in a teapot, and there are no real issues out there. Groups and fake controversies like this distract from real issues of discrimination. They do more harm to inclusive movements than good.

andybak 10y ago
As much as I'd like to think this is true, I don't think it's plausible. It would require a conspiracy of epic proportions. It's a flaw in human psychology that is related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference... Another aspect is that as that any idealistic movement is prone to being taken over by it's most intractable members. There's a game theoretic spin on it by Nicholas Taleb if I remember correctly: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf As the emotional tone of a debate is heightened, it's hard to argue for moderation. Anything that pushed emotional buttons forces people to the extremes and those arguing for compromise are often ridiculed by both sides. Therefore we have the phenomenon that many debates end up being between over-the-top SJWs on one side and crazy racists and Red Pill types on the other. And back in the real world, there is still indisputable injustice and discrimination that would be eminently tractable if everyone would come back down to earth. EDIT - I'd like to point out that I'm aware of a major flaw in the above - everyone - myself included regards themselves as a reasonable moderate and others as dangerous extremists. I suppose I'd be quite content to be regarded as a flakey liberal by my friends on the right and a closet imperialist by those on the left. (Except - what happens if the sample of my social group is heavily skewed and my 'left/right' is off the scale? And down the rabbit hole we go...)
- derefr 10y ago
  Everyone is a moderate; people reposition the callipers around their social group, defining people into and out of it, so as to always stay its most central and reasonable example.

oli5679 10y ago

Paul Graham's Essay on 'What You Can't Say' http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

pvg 10y ago

The statement of the organizers doesn't give a very detailed reason why they didn't want him giving a keynote at their conference and it certainly doesn't say it was over a tweet or using the word 'promiscuous'. That part seems to be much-repeated speculation that does nothing but fuel outrage.

zeta0134 10y ago

Inclusivity is one of those things that you just have to do, and not talk about. I sincerely hope the irony of excluding this man in the name of inclusivity is not lost on the crowd. What a mess. I think more people would do well to practice the tolerance and acceptance that they preach. As a gay man, I've run into my fair share of loud mouthed, biggoted people, who say incredibly mean things about me without realizing that they're affecting someone in the same room. A good deal of my friends are Christians, and a good deal of my family is as well. At least in our churches, being gay is considered quite a heavy sin. Somewhat intuitively then, when I came out to my family, I was simultaneously declaring that I would no longer be a part of their religion. And you know? We didn't fight about it. They understand my limitations, and I still love them. I'm still friends with my Christian friends, and I'm still on great terms with my family. We disagree on certain things but that's OK, because they've learned to see the good in my unique outlook on life, and I've learned to understand the love tolerance that their Jesus teaches, because I watch them practice it every day. We've learned to accept one another, despite our differences. Inclusivity is not hard, but it starts with avoiding conflict. You're going to have to tolerate that which occasionally offends you, and learn to let it go. Learn to love people despite their flaws, because goodness do people have flaws. We're not perfect. Nowhere near it. But all people still have some good in them, and it's worth making the effort to see past that which you dislike to appreciate the human being underneath it all.

deleted 10y ago
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danso 10y ago
I don't disagree with your overall post except for this point: > Inclusivity is not hard, but it starts with avoiding conflict. I think inclusivity is hard -- for all the reasons you mention in the following sentence, e.g. having the strength to let things go, and the open-mindedness to love someone despite their purported flaws. Not only is inclusivity hard, but it is important to recognize how hard it is to achieve and maintain. Because otherwise it becomes easy to trivialize people who genuinely fight for it but fail to achieve it.
EugeneOZ 10y ago

PedroBatista 10y ago

I'm guessing even the hardcore Victorians would consider this whole thing "a bit much".

Asooka 10y ago

In the list of recommended articles this image pops up: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TvRN5dsh-PlvHyS7a3jfSw.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*TvRN5dsh-PlvHyS7a3... linking to this article: https://medium.com/@CloudCityIO/fostering-diversity-and-inclusivity-in-open-source-projects-e7a1ba6ee704#.8smh55yyh https://medium.com/@CloudCityIO/fostering-diversity-and-incl... With the tagline: Want to Change the Technology? Focus on Inclusion and not Diversity. Which tells you everything you need to know about "inclusivity". It's just the latest name for "let's get a representative of each positive label to be the most positivest of all".

coldtea 10y ago

>Well, it basically came from some very vocal bullying from “inclusivity” folks, incidentally also a part of the Node.js inclusivity group. The problem with "inclusivity groups" is that they have to find work for themselves -- even if that means busywork.

Animats 10y ago

Inclusivity is so last year. Look how well Trump is doing. Trump brought intolerance out of the closet. Like him or not, he's changed American politics.

knucklesandwich 10y ago

Some people in the developer community need to get better at recognizing when a witch hunt is brewing. This blog post has essentially the same content as the one yesterday on the same subject[1]. Like the one yesterday, it attempts to provide its own explanation for why Crockford was disinvited as the keynote speaker. However, none of these details are mentioned in the actual statement given by Nodevember[2], and there are no sources given for how this explanation was arrived at. The Nodevember statement claims he was disinvited based on some public and private feedback from speakers who felt uncomfortable attending with him as the keynote speaker. Why should we take it on face value that the circumstances documented here are actual set of circumstances that lead to him being disinvited? Where is this information even coming from? One of the alleged sources is a blog post from Kas Perch[3]. The alleged slut shaming incident seems to be a minor note in a post otherwise focused on his negative and dismissive attitude towards some of the other speakers. Perhaps this is the more salient part of why this person felt uncomfortable attending with him? Perhaps there's more feedback being kept private to protect the witch hunt from targeting those coming forward? Notably I haven't even seen a statement from Crockford crying foul over this incident. It seems to be coming entirely from other Node developers upset about the fact that he was removed as the keynote speaker. It seems like this is an argument being played out as a proxy over political stances about diversity and inclusion tactics, without a lot of consideration for the actual circumstances. Furthermore I find it very disappointing that this poorly substantiated argument is being used to demonize inclusivity and diversity overall, which is something badly needed in developer communities. [1]: http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford [2]: http://nodevember.org/statement.html http://nodevember.org/statement.html [3]: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8#.b640mips1 https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-...

tobltobs 10y ago
> on some public and private feedback from speakers who felt uncomfortable attending with him as the keynote speaker. So you want to say, that there doesn't need to be a real reason anyway, it is just enough that a few other speakers have a problem with him. It doesn't even have to be made transparent what the problems actually is. And you believe that this kind of closed door denunciation will result in a better, more inclusive world? And that Crockford doesn't respond to this hypocritical nonsense is a kind of confession of guilt?

dbg31415 10y ago

The number of people who go around looking for ways to be offended is seriously troubling and a fat greater theeat to humanity's advancement. If someone has something to teach me, I don't care what he does outside of the conference -- if he uses gender biased words or votes for evil bunnies, I'm not there to talk to him about those things. It was better when people knew how to comparatamentalize work and politics and religion and all the other stuff that's personal and not relevant to the discussion at hand.

thiht 10y ago

It seems the SJW movement became a new form of inquisition. What's terrifiying is it actually convinces in real life.

dasil003 10y ago

I consider myself an ally on most social justice issues. The kind of abuse heaped on women online is unconscionable to me. Not to mention Black Lives Matter where people are actually dying because of systemic prejudice. So you have those issues on one side, there are a lot of them and we need to work on them as a society. A step down from that big stuff, you have crass offensive behavior like sexual innuendo in conference talks and other things that can pretty readily be identified as going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. It makes sense for professional conferences to have policies against those things. Then you have this long tail of ways that a person can be offended by subtle interpretations that are impossible to wholly avoid by premeditation except through sheer paranoid blandness. This is the bucket where it seems like this Crockford nonsense falls, and this is also where the movement loses my support. They've crossed the line from helping people to just reaching for the torches and pitchforks, and completely lost the thread that liberalism was once about tolerance.

noobermin 10y ago
I feel that these people do not and should not speak for liberalism. The are like the Alt-Right, they are an extreme fringe which give the movement and causes (very important causes) a bad name.

xwvvvvwx 10y ago

pastebin of a nodevember slack channel discussing the incident: http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG http://pastebin.com/3mQc7DfG Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/50u77r/douglas_crockford_removed_as_a_keynote_speaker_at/ https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/50u77r/douglas_...

brador 10y ago

Question: Is that Tweet Libel? > "We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all." - Nodevember Tweet The implication is he creates an uncomfortable environment. Libel?

erichocean 10y ago

Node•vember? Or No•dev•ember? Seems like it's trending towards the latter.

kazinator 10y ago

You can put a network adapter into "promiscuous mode". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuous_mode This causes it to disappear all night and crawl home at 11 in the morning with a hangover.

kazinator 10y ago
Hmm; I didn't think that was a good comment and am positive I deleted it.

kazinator 10y ago

Donald Trump: - "[Mexican immigrants are] bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists." - "Rosie [O'Donnell] is just disgusting --- she's fat, she's a loser. She's a farm animal pig. She's a beast, ok. She's just a loser. She's no good." RESULT: Just might get elected US President in November! Obscure JavaScript geek: - "blah blah ... promiscuous ... blah blah ..." RESULT: Removed from speaking at some JavaScript conference in November. These inclusivity people need to look around a little and have a reality check. Their incredibly narrow standard for what is acceptable is not even remotely shared by the American society they live in.