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> Oh. Well this is weird. They seem like awfully indirect measurements of relevant skills and perspective The effort to reach underrepresented demographics see

• DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  I see it as a way of investigating possible unconscious bias or even hostility towards minorities in the Rust developer community - from easily fixable things such as male-bias in documentation (e.g. examples using male pronouns disproportionately) - to vitriolic sexist and other abuse in chat and forum groups. Fortunately the Rust community isn't GamerGate, but if we can eliminate those attitudes sooner, then that's in Rust's long-term interests.
  • collyw 9y ago
    Considering the vast majority of programmers are male, does it really matter if we use male pronouns. What does changing them actually solve? Are women really put off of computing because of that? It all seems so trivial.
    • emilk 9y ago
      Many small trivial things can add up. Also, if we cater to the status quo ("the vast majority of programmers"), the status quo is less likely to change.
      • teacup50 9y ago
        Why is the status quo a problem? I'm not saying it isn't; I don't know. I just don't see why should we assume that it is.
        • nickez 9y ago
          Because you don't benefit from half of your population if you only teach men to code. The same applies to other minorities. Of course it is essential that we can get everyone to code so that everyone can contribute in the future when a lot of work will require coding skills.
          • duality 9y ago
            The claim is that only men are taught to code?
          • nickez 9y ago
            > The claim is that only men are taught to code? At least at the university I went to it is something like 5-10% women in computer science and electrical engineering.
            • goodplay 9y ago
              The university I attended had females comprise 90% of all students in computer science, and over half of all students in engineering fields. Anecdotes are fun.
          • dhf17 9y ago
            Frankly, the white male privledge guilt message is getting old. Programming is mostly self taught, through hours of social isolation researching and seeking it out. Short of writing politically neutral docs that focus on the subject at hand, there is no need to evangelize. It seems more arrogant than anything.
            • int_19h 9y ago
              It's not supposed to be about guilt. It's supposed to be about empathy towards those who don't get that privilege. (Side note: the word "privilege" is really poorly chosen, because in practice it has a strong implication of blame and guilt assignment in our culture.)
    • conradev 9y ago
      > Are women really put off of computing because of that? Yes.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    • geofft 9y ago
      > Considering the vast majority of programmers are male, does it really matter if we use male pronouns. I'm not following that logic - if a reason to use male pronouns is that current programmers are male, then does it not follow that, yes, it actually matters? (And if it doesn't matter, why care? Why not let the people who want to use other pronouns use other pronouns?)
      • kmicklas 9y ago
        Such logic will not convince such sexists, sadly.
    • DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
      > What does changing them actually solve? By itself not much: but I see it as a necessary-but-insufficient step, in much the same way it is necessary to remove public statues deifying US Civil War Confederate "heroes" (I'd prefer the term "traitor"...). > Are women really put off of computing because of that? It all seems so trivial. Not "because of that" directly, no - of course not, but projecting an inclusive image is important to attract people who might not otherwise be interest for fear of not being a "cultural fit" despite having the skills. (Most) people are not robots: there is a very human need to feel accepted and fit-in.
      • collyw 9y ago
        (Assuming that you are a male) would you be in any way bothered if everything was changed to exclusively female pronouns?
        • DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
          I imagine I would feel the same way as the first wave of male nurses would have in the postwar years - with textbooks and instructional materials, even the job titles: Sister and Matron, reflecting a strong female bias. I quickly went through the Wikipedia article on Men in Nursing just now to write this reply and it's already having me reconsider how I perceived gender bias in industry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing
    • jlebar 9y ago
      > Are women really put off of computing because [people use male pronouns for programmers, assuming they're male]? This doesn't need to be a hypothetical question. You could find a woman programmer and ask her. (A woman might even chime in on this thread, although given the ridiculous level of toxicity on this thread, if I were anything other than a het cis white man, I'd be staying the hell away from here.) Or you could even Google it, and find some woman programmers talking about this. Here are a few references to get you started. https://geekfeminism.org/tag/pronouns/ https://geekfeminism.org/tag/pronouns/
  • bauerd 9y ago
    Can you point to an instance of offensive behaviour towards minorities in the Rust community? I'm not involved in Rust, and I have no strongly held opinions on the topic at hand. However I cannot recall coming across the abuse you describe on GitHub's issue trackers, nor in the IRC channels I frequent, nor somewhere else. Sure, just because I don't notice it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Same goes for biased wording in the docs. A common line of argument is that "being more welcoming" will lead to more contributors and thus to more diverse perspectives. Browsing through Rust's documentation and bug tracker alone makes me skeptical of that. I can't find a thing that will turn away someone interested in Rust. There's definitely sexism in the industry, no question. But I have yet to see someone present numbers of how e.g. their Code of Conduct lead to more contributors. I doubt that any of these undertakings do, unless the project really does have an asshole community. But Rust surely doesn't.
    • emilk 9y ago
      Some people will simply not engage in a project if there is no set code of conduct for it. The logic presumable being that even if there is no problem now, problem may come in the future, and a agreed upon code of conduct can nip such problems in the bud.
      • teacup50 9y ago
        Or create problems, since they give a huge amount of leverage to those interested in dominating others through purely institutional/bureaucratic power games.
        • Sir_Substance 9y ago
          Which is why I go out of my way to avoid projects that feel the need to wave their codes of conduct like flags. No matter how egalitarian your code of conduct is, there's no substitute for not being a shitty person.
          • galangalalgol 9y ago
  • curun1r 9y ago
    > a way of investigating possible unconscious bias There's other ways to address that too. I've used https://textio.com/ https://textio.com/ in the past for job ads and it's really interesting to see examples of how seemingly minor word choices can land depending on the reader. It'd be a relatively simple task to run documentation, RFCs and Github comments of core team members through such a service and automatically generate a report (which wouldn't have to be released publicly, but could be sent to authors to aid in using more inclusive language going forward). The thing that's really difficult to do is to be inclusive in a way that doesn't feel exclusive towards people who aren't in the target demographics. Using these types of automated tools doesn't have that downside. Has anything like this been suggested/done by the people working on Rust?
• Normal_gaussian 9y ago
  Awesome. I see now that this context is two links away on the main page. Its particularly interesting to note that the respondents gave a figure for LGB that falls within most estimates for population percentage (and hence doesn't form an underrepresented group here).
• elgenie 9y ago
  > Increased diversity could lead to new project-wide perspectives and overall community enrichment, if solely due to life-experience-based heterogeneity. One might wonder what benefits alternate uses for scarce resources spent chasing that "could" could provide instead.
  • civilitty 9y ago
    One might wonder what benefits alternate uses for scarce resources spent chasing chemistry could have provided for alchemy instead.
    • teacup50 9y ago
      If you're ascribing the pseudoscience in this analogy to the parent's position, you have it backwards.
      • civilitty 9y ago
        It wasn't pseudoscience when they were making that decision.
        • DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
          And similarly, I know plenty of people who consider gender-inclusive policies as a form of psuedoscience too (in that they don't give it much credence).
          • civilitty 9y ago
            Diversity is quite literally the reason life still exists after billions of years and five mass extinction catastrophes. It is the foundation for the predominant economic system in human society as well as all of the technological and scientific progress we've made. Hell, you can't even really have cultural (in the broadest sense) progress without a diversity of ideas and opinions, let alone a functioning, stable democracy. I'm skeptical of race- and gender-inclusive policies because they're often blindly implemented and detrimental to their goals but diversity has shown itself to be not just important, but vital, to the long term success of any large, complex system, whether it be the Apollo program or our planet's ecosystem. I'd love to hear rational arguments against, however.
• bsder 9y ago
  Expending resources on making Rust an Arduino-level community or more useful to embedded would PROVABLY extend Rust. So, which one is a better use of scarce time and resources? Rust the language is making me happier and happier. Rust the community sometimes makes my eyes roll. I'll need to borrow the millennial "<shrug> Whatever ..." for the proper response to this.
  • steveklabnik 9y ago
    > So, which one is a better use of scarce time and resources? This is a false dilemma. Work on that stuff is ongoing regardless of this initiative.
  • Retra 9y ago
    I'm not sure I see the waste here. Most people I know spend several hours each day doing things that will literally accomplish nothing. If you're arguing that effort is being wasted here, then I'd say your effort is being wasted on this issue, rather than, say, campaigning for the abolition of music and television and whatnot. There are far smarter places to recover this spent effort, if that is your actual concern.
    • bsder 9y ago
      The currency of open source is time. Time is a zero-sum game on open source. Choosing to spend time on one task means choosing not to spend it on another. Rust seems to spill an awful lot of words (which I translate to time) going "Look at US! We're magically delicious ... errr ... socially conscious! <jazz hands>". However: 1) It's not my call as I'm nobody important to Rust. 2) The only downside is time. And maybe a couple of eyerolls from us old fogeys. 3) And, hey, if it cleans out a couple of real jerks or prevents one from joining then it's probably a net win on time. As I said, "<shrug> Whatevs ..."
      • Retra 9y ago
        Go read what the rust devs have written. They've spent a nearly insignificant amount of time on the issue of community diversity. One post among thousands, and we all better turn up the heat, because "oh my, the wasted effort! They used words that I didn't want to hear one time!" If you're going to criticize how people spend their time, you'd better bring actual facts about how their time is really spent. One blog post and a few side discussions does not constitute a time investment problem. All you have here is a basic polite courtesy, and that's not something to object to.
• MichaelGG 9y ago
  >Increased diversity could lead to new project-wide perspectives and overall community enrichment, if solely due to life-experience-based heterogeneity. Are there any plans to measure the impact of this? That way the Rust project could show other projects the actual, concrete, benefits of diversity.
  • carols10cents 9y ago
    We run the survey every year, and we plan to do more qualitative tracking of the impacts of this project as well.