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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/nodej

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.

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.