29 ms·
“There is, unfortunately, no such thing as a truly neutral stance on inclusion”
- snvzz 8y agoSexist and racist codes of conduct do understandably make people uncomfortable.
- nAwYz 8y agoCould you explain what part of their code of conduct ( https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/blob/master/docs/CodeOfConduct.rst https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/blob/master/docs/CodeOfC... ) is racist or sexist?
- youdontknowtho 8y agoThere is nothing about their CoC that is racist or sexist. It's this weird sad attempt at a Jedi Mind Trick where the right says "you are being intolerant of people like me who hate tolerance". What the tee total f... The discussion on lobste.rs was actually really good.
- youdontknowtho 8y agoWhat happened to the free exchange of ideas?
- trothamel 8y agoIt's not the code of conduct here, but partnering with an organization that denies the members of a protected group a benefit due to their race and gender.
- falcolas 8y agoI highly recommend also reading the "stick" part of the CoC - the reporting guide. A person who broke the CoC by snickering at the repeated use of the word dongle; unless a permanent ban is the result, the accused can not appeal any remedial actions taken against them. They are not even guaranteed to offer their side of the story in the investigation. This CoC, like most, puts the power entirely in the hands of the accuser; it is very much the open source equivalent of a "binding arbitration" clause.
- foldr 8y agoI don't follow your comment. The reporting guide doesn't say anything about people snickering at 'dongle', and neither does the post we're commenting on. I also don't see anything in the CoC that suggests that snickering at 'dongle' would constitute a violation.
- falcolas 8y agoThere is a well documented precedent for this exact behavior being considered to be sexual harassment and having negative effects on the accused' professional life. > reporting guide doesn't say anything That's part of the problem: explicit behaviors are not called out, only the effect they have on the accuser matters.
- foldr 8y ago>There is a well documented precedent for this exact behavior being considered to be sexual harassment By which you mean there's exactly one instance of it having happened in a completely different community (a Python conference) with a different CoC?
- 1over137 8y agoIt's not the code of conduct, but the partnership with 'Outreachy', who limits internships based on race and gender/sex: <https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/> https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/>
- ddtaylor 8y agoit's a 404 now?
- mort96 8y agoNo, it's just that HN's comment parser interpreted the > as a part of the URL. Here's a working link: https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/ https://www.outreachy.org/apply/eligibility/
- ddtaylor 8y agoI'm guessing this is the part that divides some: > [To be eligible] you are a person of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander That is racist, by definition. Not very consequential and they can provide support to whoever they want IMO, but technically racist.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here, especially not on divisive topics. That's flamebait, and it's the last thing we need. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- moomin 8y agoaphyr on point as usual. One small point: could we get the title changed? This is a link to a response to the original article, not the original article.
- alew1 8y agoGood response by aphyr. If I’m reading right, the original poster left because LLVM partnered with an organization designed to create internship opportunities for groups traditionally underrepresented in tech. In particular, LLVM agreed to take on one intern from that organization. Everyone is entitled to their own reasons for leaving. But I do find it frustrating that the left gets saddled with names like “snowflake” when such small & reasonable actions routinely ruffle feathers on the right.
- naasking 8y ago> such small & reasonable actions routinely ruffle feathers on the right. I'm not sure why you'd assume the person who left was on the right just because they disagreed with the direction LLVM was taking. When I read the message, it seemed like he had grave concerns that technical merit was now taking a back seat to a political agenda. That seems like a legitimate concern for an open source project.
- danharaj 8y ago> I'm not sure why you'd assume the person who left was on the right just because they disagreed with the direction LLVM was taking. Bayesian priors.
- naasking 8y agoBayesian priors would also suggest that certain minorities are more likely to be criminals. Should we therefore treat people from such minorities as criminals? Bayesian priors don't guide all of our ethics. My Bayesian priors suggest that the OP wanted an easy way to dismiss the person's concerns without addressing them.
- danharaj 8y agoI think having an expectation about someone's further political beliefs based on information about some of their political beliefs is a little less unethical than presuming criminality, my friend. But you're right tho, I think it's easier to cut out the middle man and dismiss his concerns because I think his concerns are shit, regardless of his other politics.
- qntty 8y agoCache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F05U7xm2r1UJ:https://lobste.rs/s/nf3xgg/i_am_leaving_llvm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F05U7x... Original link: http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.htm...
- Harkins 8y agoLobsters sysop here - we're having trouble keeping up with YC News's level of traffic. We're not going to crash, but the unicorn worker pool is small enough that lots of users are getting 500s. I'm adding some caching.
- the_common_man 8y agoHow much is the traffic? Yc traffic is not really that high
- Harkins 8y agoSQL isn't a good match for the recursive structure of comments (and our version of mariadb from LTS Ubuntu doesn't support recursive common table expressions), so the app pulls all comments in ActiveRecord objects and threads/sorts them there. It's expensive and uncached. Codebase is here if you're curious: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters Traffic counting has to wait until I have spare attention, which is also a shallow resource pool. :)
- the_common_man 8y agoGreat answer, thank you.
- timmytwotime 8y agoActually more interested in how you're handling this than the PC fight that's breaking out around the thread.
- Harkins 8y agoI'm not sure what you're asking for. If it helps, https://lobste.rs/about https://lobste.rs/about has some notes on the community and https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations has the log of moderator actions.
- 8y ago
- phyller 8y agoWas the original link to the original post, or was this always linking to the response that it goes to now?
- phyller 8y agoOk, the title has been updated and it makes sense now.
- nialv7 8y agoWhy do we allow first person titles? They are uninformative (who is I?), and click-baity
- magduf 8y agoI have to agree. "I am leaving LLVM" doesn't tell me much. It only made much sense to me because I had already seen news article about this on another site, which had a much more informative title. It would be better to have the title be something like, "<name>: "I am leaving LLVM" " (note the quotes around the first-person statement). It might also be helpful to have it look like, "<name> (LLVM maintainer): "I am leaving LLVM" "
- ddtaylor 8y agoThis reminds me of certain developers being mad at Linus for his rants. Seems unlikely anyone is going to care much and it's a lot of fuss for nothing.
- bquinlan 8y agoI'm a friend of Rafael and talked to him just before he announced that he was leaving LLVM. I actually disagree with many of Rafael's political views but I think that some of the comments in this discussion are unfair. For example, one poster assumed that Rafael is a member of the right - he is actually a member of the BC Green Party, which is firmly on the left. The LLVM code of conduct requires that people be welcoming to others of any religion. I don't want to share too much about Rafael's personal life but he has reasons why that requirement is problematic. Consider that some religious beliefs make women chattel that can be abused at the discretion of their "owners".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mercer 8y agoI find it interesting how you make a jump from 'religion' to 'religious beliefs'. I think the distinction is a very important one, and it bothers me a ton that precisely the people who argue 'against' particular beliefs seem to use the two as if they are synonyms.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- i_am_the_truth 8y agoI welcome everyone to India's reservation system. I am proud to see that the culture is spreading to the whole world, where in the name of equality, you discriminate against everyone by giving unfair chances to the so called minority, instead of actually giving everyone equal chance based on merit.
- garbagetoss 8y agoYes, it is disgusting. Why are you proud?
- i_am_the_truth 8y agoBecause I forgot to add the /s
- naasking 8y agoIt's a thought-provoking comment for sure, but it makes a number of invalid inferences. > This is not to say that your particular choices are wrong. It’s just you are already engaged in “non-technical”, political work A non-technical choice does not entail a political choice. In particular, such choices aren't always about managing "power", which is what politics is about. > With limited time and resources, you will have to make tradeoffs in your code, documentation, and community about which people your software is supportive and hostile towards. [...] At the community development level, your intentional and forced choices around language, schedule, pronouns, and even technical terminology can make contributors from varying backgrounds feel welcome or unwelcome I don't think this argument is sound. "Not supportive of" does not entail "hostile". Choices surrounding language, schedule and technical jargon does not entail how welcoming a community is. This is an overly simplistic viewpoint that's typically indicative of a conflict theory mentality, but is not how good open source projects typically function. If you're ready and willing to be helpful: 1. if you don't know the jargon, people often help you learn it 2. if you don't fit the schedule, people will often help accommodate your efforts 3. if you don't speak the language, people who do will often assist, but if no such person exists, then that's just an insurmountable problem given limited resources > Consider: you wish to take only the best developers, and yet your post has already discouraged good engineers from working on your project. Doubtless it has encouraged other engineers (who may be quite skilled!) with a similar political view to your own; those who believe, for instance, that current minority representation in tech is justified This conclusion just doesn't follow. You can oppose some inclusion efforts in tech and yet not accept that current minority representation is somehow justified. The above argument blatantly begs the question that inclusion efforts a priori ethically justified, except the ethics of such efforts is precisely the dispute.
- forgottenpass 8y agoNo, nothing is truly apolitical. But in practice it's pretty easy to see that there is a subset of political topics inherently tied to the subject at hand, and a subset of political topics that would be ginormous scope creep. (e.g. a window manager caring about colorblindness vs. a window manager endorsing a political candidate) It's pretty obvious that the colloquial statements around "no politics" or some form of "keeping politics out" is simply a way to express how much appetite someone has for the gray zone between the two extremes described above. It frustrates me that the inability to completely disentangle something from the political is used as a thin edge of a wedge that ends in (paraphrasing) "...therefore your project should spend effort on all my pet political issues." At worst it's a dishonest tactic, at best it shows someone's hubris regarding their hobbyhorse.
- fijal 8y agoOne thing that is completely omitted in the discussion here is that Outreachy is doing something based on your residency (if in US, different rules apply). This is well within their rights, but I wonder how that part affects the "diversity" stance - I would expect a black person from Africa to have generally a much harder time in tech than an African American.
- jonhendry18 8y ago"I would expect a black person from Africa to have generally a much harder time in tech than an African American." Possibly the reverse, if bias against African Americans is partly due to preconceptions and stereotypes of African American culture. Black applicants from outside the US might benefit from being perceived differently because they don't fit into the existing stereotype.
- dang 8y agoAll: if you're going to comment in a thread like this, please re-read the site guidelines first: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Then you'll know to assume good faith, to make your comments more civil and substantive as the topic gets more divisive, to avoid name-calling, and to respond charitably. HN's rules exist for deep reasons based on many years of working with community dynamics. If you break them, you contribute nothing to resolving any social issue—all it does is rile up the other side and fan flames—but you do contribute to destroying this community. That's bad for all of us. If you're feeling like venting about how wrong or bad someone is, don't post right away; pause until the needle goes out of the red. Then review your post and edit out any bits that still break the guidelines. That's what I do, and it's the only way I know to make this place work ok. Hacker News is large enough that it lives in a precarious state: the forces that tear an online community apart grow with size and win by default. If HN's health points go to zero, it dies as a place for thoughtful discussion, so please take care with the health points.
- Mithaldu 8y agoReading this has made me find words i've been looking for for months now, and maybe you will at least see these, hopefully even think about them: As an idealistic goal your policies are great. In practice however i find they sorely underestimate the differential in effort required between: - someone who has to censor their earnest thoughts preemptively to not be censured by you and - a troll gleefully dressing up words they know will hurt in dressing nice enough to fly under your radar You're asking the former to spend a lot more time and work, than it takes the latter, for whom it's a form of playing, a game they enjoy. I don't have a solution, but i think it's true that your policies have a chilling influences on earnest voices and are creating a community where trolls are very loud.
- _dps 8y agoConsider the possibility that what you perceive as "a troll saying intentionally awful things dressed up as polite language" may be a person who sincerely disagrees with you, and is also being polite about it. That seems to be the highest form of ideas interacting, no?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- youdontknowtho 8y agoThere were some great comments on lobster.rs. The one about groups A, A', and B was one of the best things I've read about this kind of thing in a while.