6 ms·

I don't see why promoting inclusiveness and frictionless contribution shouldn't be seen as meritorious activity - I'm not saying that's what you're suggesting,

I don't see why promoting inclusiveness and frictionless contribution shouldn't be seen as meritorious activity - I'm not saying that's what you're suggesting, but "meritocracy" in the context of a software project like this is often taken to mean "can be socially dysfunctional so long as it is technically functional", as if the two requirements are in opposition to each other. I don't believe they are, and I think there are more examples of friendly and socially functional projects (that happen to be meritorious) than not.

lmm 10y ago
I think that's all true, but too often "inclusiveness" is used as a stick to beat political opponents with. I'm all for attracting more developers for FreeBSD. However I'm against e.g. giving an appointed and unaccountable committee the authority to kick out anyone at their sole discretion, which was what some of the "code of conduct" proposals boiled down to.
- HerraBRE 10y ago
  I disagree. Codes of conduct boil down to requiring members of the community to treat each other with basic decency, and defining a process for showing them the door when they fail to do so. This is not a controversial concept in the real world. You'll be fired from your job if you treat your co-workers badly, you'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients.
  - lmm 10y ago
    > You'll be fired from your job if you treat your co-workers badly Sure, but there'll be a process. You'll have a right to a hearing, the right to your own union representative, and a right to appeal to a tribunal or similar. And the HR people themselves will have oversight. HR don't get handed a license to just fire anyone they want to. > You'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients Pubs are not an institution to emulate. A project like FreeBSD should hold itself to a higher standard.
    - sigstoat 10y ago
      > And the HR people themselves will have oversight. HR don't get handed a license to just fire anyone they want to. indeed. and if the HR folks fire so many people that the damage the organization's ability to compete, they'll be out of work sooner or later. no such feedback mechanism is in place for conduct enforcement committees in open projects.
    - HerraBRE 10y ago
      You seem to just assume a code of conduct can not include mature and reasonable policies. I don't share that assumption.
      - lmm 10y ago
        I'm not saying they can't, I'm saying they all too often don't, based on my own experience of seeing them introduced (primarily ScalaZ). IIRC the FreeBSD proposal that the article seems to be supporting has the kind of issues I described.
  - adekok 10y ago
    > Codes of conduct boil down to requiring members of the community to treat each other with basic decency If only it were that easy. I've seen codes of conduct for technical projects where they said things like "MUST be inclusive of trans, gay, etc.", along with political / ideological statements. And the kicker was a phrase saying "these ideologies are not open for discussion". Why a software project needs an ideological statement, I have no idea. But it hits all of my red flags that the purpose of the code of conduct is not to treat each other with basic decency, but instead to push a particular ideology. > you'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients. What about simple questions? Q: Hi, I noticed you're a Democrat / Republican / whatever. I think I may disagree with your opinion. A: THE SIGN SAYS NO QUESTIONING IDEOLOGICAL PURITY. GET OUT. Uh... no. That way lies totalitarianism.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > Why a software project needs an ideological statement, I have no idea. Any selection of relative values is ideological; and every project is, inherently, based on an agreement to pursue some set of values. And the choice for those values to not include social inclusiveness is as much an ideological choice as the decision that the values should include inclusiveness (or that they should include exclusiveness, which is a third possible ideological choice.)
      - adekok 10y ago
        Your comments are either a tautology (projects are based on ideas), or very likely to be wrong (engineering projects should also include social values). e.g. > ... an ideological choice as the decision that the values should include inclusiveness I explained why this is not just unnecessary, but also why it's wrong on a much more fundamental level. When I get patches from people, I don't care what's under their clothes. I don't care what their political opinions are. I don't care what religion (or not) they belong to. I evaluate the patch based on it's engineering merits. I give them a review of the engineering work that they did, without reference to any of the above mentioned issues. It's absolutely inclusive, in a way that perhaps you don't understand. It doesn't pervert the project by demanding that members adhere to a particular ideology. I find naive attempts at "inclusiveness" to be repugnant. They are a back-door way of leveraging such "niceties" into taking over the group, and establishing an ideology-driven totalitarian dictatorship with Orwellian overtones. And no, I'm not exaggerating here. Look at any number of groups which started out as goal oriented, and devolved into fights over ideological correctness. Very soon, the arguments over ideology overwhelm the group, and everyone who gets things done... leaves. What's left is the ideology-driven politicians, who then find out that they're in their an echo chamber. They turn on each other, and the group dies a flaming death. See Atheism+ for a good example of this in recent years.
phicoh 10y ago
There are quite a few people who are technically very capable and at the same time socially dysfunctional. They are great if they can have their own corner of the project. But can be a disaster in areas where interaction is required. There is also the opposite, people who are busy communicating, who generate lots of noise and never do anything. So yes, merit should be defined as getting useful things done with rough consensus and not as brilliant code that then split the community.
- HerraBRE 10y ago
  I may be wrong, but I actually think the current move towards codes of conduct and clarity about expected social behaviour should help with these cases. Being socially dysfunctional (as opposed to being malicious, which is a different problem) is often linked to an inability to pick up the social cues and clues that most people take for granted. A document which clearly explains and gives examples of unwelcome behaviour should help in these cases - assuming people actually read it!
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    ..and assuming those examples of unwelcome behavior are objectively defined. Any room for judgement calls or definition stretching, and you've taken what it supposed to be a useful metric and turned it into a cudgel to be misused. Example: Wikipedia. The talk pages on that site, especially on politically charged topics, are detailed examples in how one can behave in a destructive fashion and drive off talent without ever dipping into base namecalling.
adekok 10y ago
> I don't see why promoting inclusiveness and frictionless contribution shouldn't be seen as meritorious activity The question is "who judges" ? A meritocracy is generally an engineering meritocracy. People who get things done, get more merit. And it's easy to judge who gets things done. No one cares if the contributor is black, blind, gay, trans, politically left or right. They're doing engineering. All other topics are off topic for the engineering project. In contrast, "inclusiveness" is a vague concept. It's hard to judge "inclusiveness". So when the judging happens, it tends to be subjective, and driven by politics, ideology, or emotion. This subject came up on the FreeRADIUS list last year. I made similar points here: http://lists.freeradius.org/pipermail/freeradius-users/2016-February/082389.html http://lists.freeradius.org/pipermail/freeradius-users/2016-... I am actively opposed to most "codes of conduct", for reasons stated in the link. From the main web site http://freeradius.org/list/ http://freeradius.org/list/ --- All mailing lists have a strict code of conduct: The only permitted topic on the list is technical discussion related to FreeRADIUS. Off topic messages will result in a warning. Continued misbehavior will result in the person being unsubscribed from the list, and permanently banned. This code of conduct was defined after many years of experience running the list. It is simple to explain, and simple to enforce. Unlike other codes of conduct, it does not require people to be "inclusive" or "accepting" of certain topics. It requires people to be blind to non-technical topics, as those subjects are explicitly off-topic. --- Such a "code of conduct" is easy to explain, easy to enforce, and easy to judge. No politics, ideology, or emotion get in the way of people doing engineering.

lmm 10y ago

I think that's all true, but too often "inclusiveness" is used as a stick to beat political opponents with. I'm all for attracting more developers for FreeBSD. However I'm against e.g. giving an appointed and unaccountable committee the authority to kick out anyone at their sole discretion, which was what some of the "code of conduct" proposals boiled down to.

HerraBRE 10y ago
I disagree. Codes of conduct boil down to requiring members of the community to treat each other with basic decency, and defining a process for showing them the door when they fail to do so. This is not a controversial concept in the real world. You'll be fired from your job if you treat your co-workers badly, you'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients.
- lmm 10y ago
  > You'll be fired from your job if you treat your co-workers badly Sure, but there'll be a process. You'll have a right to a hearing, the right to your own union representative, and a right to appeal to a tribunal or similar. And the HR people themselves will have oversight. HR don't get handed a license to just fire anyone they want to. > You'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients Pubs are not an institution to emulate. A project like FreeBSD should hold itself to a higher standard.
  - sigstoat 10y ago
    > And the HR people themselves will have oversight. HR don't get handed a license to just fire anyone they want to. indeed. and if the HR folks fire so many people that the damage the organization's ability to compete, they'll be out of work sooner or later. no such feedback mechanism is in place for conduct enforcement committees in open projects.
  - HerraBRE 10y ago
    You seem to just assume a code of conduct can not include mature and reasonable policies. I don't share that assumption.
    - lmm 10y ago
      I'm not saying they can't, I'm saying they all too often don't, based on my own experience of seeing them introduced (primarily ScalaZ). IIRC the FreeBSD proposal that the article seems to be supporting has the kind of issues I described.
- adekok 10y ago
  > Codes of conduct boil down to requiring members of the community to treat each other with basic decency If only it were that easy. I've seen codes of conduct for technical projects where they said things like "MUST be inclusive of trans, gay, etc.", along with political / ideological statements. And the kicker was a phrase saying "these ideologies are not open for discussion". Why a software project needs an ideological statement, I have no idea. But it hits all of my red flags that the purpose of the code of conduct is not to treat each other with basic decency, but instead to push a particular ideology. > you'll be ejected from the pub if you harass the other clients. What about simple questions? Q: Hi, I noticed you're a Democrat / Republican / whatever. I think I may disagree with your opinion. A: THE SIGN SAYS NO QUESTIONING IDEOLOGICAL PURITY. GET OUT. Uh... no. That way lies totalitarianism.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Why a software project needs an ideological statement, I have no idea. Any selection of relative values is ideological; and every project is, inherently, based on an agreement to pursue some set of values. And the choice for those values to not include social inclusiveness is as much an ideological choice as the decision that the values should include inclusiveness (or that they should include exclusiveness, which is a third possible ideological choice.)
    - adekok 10y ago
      Your comments are either a tautology (projects are based on ideas), or very likely to be wrong (engineering projects should also include social values). e.g. > ... an ideological choice as the decision that the values should include inclusiveness I explained why this is not just unnecessary, but also why it's wrong on a much more fundamental level. When I get patches from people, I don't care what's under their clothes. I don't care what their political opinions are. I don't care what religion (or not) they belong to. I evaluate the patch based on it's engineering merits. I give them a review of the engineering work that they did, without reference to any of the above mentioned issues. It's absolutely inclusive, in a way that perhaps you don't understand. It doesn't pervert the project by demanding that members adhere to a particular ideology. I find naive attempts at "inclusiveness" to be repugnant. They are a back-door way of leveraging such "niceties" into taking over the group, and establishing an ideology-driven totalitarian dictatorship with Orwellian overtones. And no, I'm not exaggerating here. Look at any number of groups which started out as goal oriented, and devolved into fights over ideological correctness. Very soon, the arguments over ideology overwhelm the group, and everyone who gets things done... leaves. What's left is the ideology-driven politicians, who then find out that they're in their an echo chamber. They turn on each other, and the group dies a flaming death. See Atheism+ for a good example of this in recent years.

phicoh 10y ago

There are quite a few people who are technically very capable and at the same time socially dysfunctional. They are great if they can have their own corner of the project. But can be a disaster in areas where interaction is required. There is also the opposite, people who are busy communicating, who generate lots of noise and never do anything. So yes, merit should be defined as getting useful things done with rough consensus and not as brilliant code that then split the community.

HerraBRE 10y ago
I may be wrong, but I actually think the current move towards codes of conduct and clarity about expected social behaviour should help with these cases. Being socially dysfunctional (as opposed to being malicious, which is a different problem) is often linked to an inability to pick up the social cues and clues that most people take for granted. A document which clearly explains and gives examples of unwelcome behaviour should help in these cases - assuming people actually read it!
- Karunamon 10y ago
  ..and assuming those examples of unwelcome behavior are objectively defined. Any room for judgement calls or definition stretching, and you've taken what it supposed to be a useful metric and turned it into a cudgel to be misused. Example: Wikipedia. The talk pages on that site, especially on politically charged topics, are detailed examples in how one can behave in a destructive fashion and drive off talent without ever dipping into base namecalling.

adekok 10y ago

> I don't see why promoting inclusiveness and frictionless contribution shouldn't be seen as meritorious activity The question is "who judges" ? A meritocracy is generally an engineering meritocracy. People who get things done, get more merit. And it's easy to judge who gets things done. No one cares if the contributor is black, blind, gay, trans, politically left or right. They're doing engineering. All other topics are off topic for the engineering project. In contrast, "inclusiveness" is a vague concept. It's hard to judge "inclusiveness". So when the judging happens, it tends to be subjective, and driven by politics, ideology, or emotion. This subject came up on the FreeRADIUS list last year. I made similar points here: http://lists.freeradius.org/pipermail/freeradius-users/2016-February/082389.html http://lists.freeradius.org/pipermail/freeradius-users/2016-... I am actively opposed to most "codes of conduct", for reasons stated in the link. From the main web site http://freeradius.org/list/ http://freeradius.org/list/ --- All mailing lists have a strict code of conduct: The only permitted topic on the list is technical discussion related to FreeRADIUS. Off topic messages will result in a warning. Continued misbehavior will result in the person being unsubscribed from the list, and permanently banned. This code of conduct was defined after many years of experience running the list. It is simple to explain, and simple to enforce. Unlike other codes of conduct, it does not require people to be "inclusive" or "accepting" of certain topics. It requires people to be blind to non-technical topics, as those subjects are explicitly off-topic. --- Such a "code of conduct" is easy to explain, easy to enforce, and easy to judge. No politics, ideology, or emotion get in the way of people doing engineering.