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Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
- minimaxir 8y agoIt's worth noting that back in 2014, GitHub removed a meritocracy rug from their office for similar reasons: https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/
- bufferoverflow 8y agoThis is insane.
- connorelsea 8y agoWords are important. Devs will argue over a correct variable name for hours but think names in other places have no meaning
- geggam 8y agoDevs or Developers ?
- connorelsea 8y agosame thing in the context of my sentence. developers
- finaliteration 8y agoExactly! Programmers/Developers brushing this off as, ”well it’s only semantics” seem to forget that our entire industry is predicated on the use of semantics...
- cucumberferity 8y agoThese people thing changing the code of our institutions works, specifically by giving them more power, that we can rid our institutions of the worst aspects of human nature: racism, sexism, xenophobia. We can and should combat those aspects for sure, but we are also giving into another aspect of human nature: unchecked power and control, which will almost certainly lead to abuse. There is also no evidence that this will improve diversity. It's just to make people feel good and put a few radicals in charge who want to dictate everything.
- cucumberferity 8y agoWords are important. Diversity is important. Changing words like "meritocracy" does not improve diversity. It is the illusion of diversity, a feel-good opportunity for well-intentioned bystanders. The true intent is for a small group of highly politically motivated people to gain more control. The governance documents are about control and changing those documents means a shift in control. The movement we are seeing here opposes meritocracy on political principle, as part of their worldview. It does not stop there though. They believe the only answer for "diversity" to put them in charge, beginning with government documents that reflect their radical worldview, see FreeBSD Code of Conduct. Even if you support diversity, you have to realize these people do not care about diversity or inclusion, they are little authoritarians who want more power to dictate what people say and whose opinion matters more/less based on immutable characteristics. We cannot allow authoritarians with such warped views of the world to seize control of key open source projects.
- connorelsea 8y agoyou sound like a conspiracy theorist. it is changing an inappropriate word, not shifting control over the entire company Mozilla. i doubt you care about diversity or improving the quality of the open source project
- nailer 8y agoReally? People who interpret 'meritocracy' in a narrow, little known historical context, as being a conspiracy against miniorities, rather than it's currently accepted form, sound like conspiracy theorists.
- connorelsea 8y agothat is quite the stretch. thinking a word should be updated or clarified does not make me a "conspiracy theorist". What am I conspiring against? people fighting so hard against a simple change to make the sentence more inclusive are just fighting to keep their antiquated system of bias in place
- herrkanin 8y agoSounds quite reasonable from my point of view. This idea that words should only be judged in isolation and not in the historical contexts they have been viewed is not very realistic.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sincerely 8y agoIsn't this a misleading headline? It looks more like "Someone proposes that Mozilla remove 'meritocracy' from governance docs"
- seandougall 8y agoAgreed. Or perhaps leave the original subject line intact (and free of scare quotes).
- cucumberferity 8y agoPatrick Finch is a high-level strategist for Mozilla, has been there 8 years.
- bluecalm 8y agoCan someone explain how striving for meritocracy stems from assumption of equal opportunity? I want projects I am part of or benefit from to be guided by meritocracy. It means some people have better chances to contribute or gain influence there than others. Those are more competent people who often got better opportunities through life. I want that because I care about those projects. I don't see how chances not being equal contradict any of it.
- ggggtez 8y agoLet's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a). But what if y only had "b" tries, where b<a? What would y have to be to make Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|b)? Our intuition seems to say that there will be a lot of variance in Pr(y|b). But the candidate's skill hasn't actually changed, just we aren't measuring it with the same fidelity! And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates, just because "x" candidates had more chances.
- sanxiyn 8y agoThis assumes meritocracy we want is based on skills. I think "working as intended" is actually based on "shown skills", not "skills"; people with mad skills which didn't show it in the project don't have merit. I've seen "do-ocracy" used instead for this reason. Do-ocracy does not assume equal opportunity.
- oconnore 8y agoThis is a really weird critique of the idea that people with fewer opportunities should be given a few more chances to show their skills. It's directly increasing the metric you're interested in, but you're still against it for... reasons?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- autarch 8y agoI think this bit from the email is the most important: > To sum up: > -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge evident bias in representation in the project. > -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is unhelpful to us. > -Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit. > -We should also acknowledge the importance of measures we take to debias how authority is distributed. In particular, note the second and third points. The real issue here is that some people get really upset by the word "meritocracy". Is it worth fighting that, or can you just use different words for the same thing?
- blattimwind 8y agoDo you think people which get really upset by word X representing entity Z will not get really upset after a while by word Y representing the same entity Z? This is quite literally how euphemism treadmills start out.
- remarkEon 8y ago>Is it worth fighting that, or can you just use different words for the same thing? Today it's "meritocracy". Tomorrow it's "talent". It will never be enough.
- blattimwind 8y ago> -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge evident bias in representation in the project. I don't see the connection; it is a well established fact that no two people have the same opportunities, regardless of country. In one country you might see large differences between skin colours, in another the prime opportunity differentiator is parental income and so forth. Therefore you would expect that differences in opportunity (which are infinitely greater than innate differences in ability relevant to software engineering between the various popular subdivisions of humanity [1]) more or less transfer directly to the composition of meritocratic organisations. If that statement is meant to imply that an actual meritocratic organisation would closely track the composition of the general populace, then I'd say that it fails to acknowledge bias in society, because then the assumption backing the statement is society already providing equal opportunities, which we know is patently false. [1] Just because something is statistically significant does not mean it's relevant; effect magnitude must always be considered.
- jds375 8y agoAfter reading the comments in the linked google group it seems like the issue is that they just need to more clearly define (and perhaps more fairly) what ‘merit’ is. Each team/role should have this clearly defined to eliminate bias/subjectivity. Also by clearly defining that, you help escape a meritocracy where ‘authority’ decides what ‘merit’ is behind close-doors (which isn’t really a meritocracy). Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues, why don’t they just fix the problems?
- cucumberferity 8y ago> Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues, why don’t they just fix the problems? Because the small group of people pushing these changes don't want meritocracy, they want power and influence merely for having the correct political opinions. They rely on the cooperation of well-meaning people who support diversity but don't see it's ploy for control and power.
- CapacitorSet 8y ago>The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open source project governed as a meritocracy.” >The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer from a lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as problematic: it proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity. Is there evidence that the assumption of equal opportunities does not hold for Mozilla? It seems to me that they went to great lengths to ensure equality of opportunities.
- hrktb 8y agoI don’t usually follow Mozilla, what efforts do they make that for instance effectively offsets issues of access to education or social discrimination outside of just Mozilla ?
- sanxiyn 8y agoThey don't; it's not their problem. I think addressing social discrimination is a great mission. But organization needs to focus, and can't address every great mission. Social discrimination is just not the focus of Mozilla's mission.
- hrktb 8y agoBut I guess that’s the point in rewording the mission. The proposal is to align the mission statement with something closer to reality, and give more leaway to adapt.
- baybal2 8y agoIt is hard to be meritocratic for Mozilla when their C-levels get half million US dollars of salary in cash and fly on chartered business jets
- sanxiyn 8y agoThe post cites "Gender difference and bias in open source" as a supporting evidence, but it is super unconvincing. The study found, in the study's own words, "Surprisingly, our results show that women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s". They still conclude bias against women (not men)! They have their reasons, but they don't stand up to scrutiny. For more details than you probably want, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exci... Meritocracy may be problematic, but the proposition needs better evidence than that.
- ssivark 8y agoThis is the suggested modification: "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority through active interventions that engage and encourage participation from diverse communities." While it removes the word "meritocracy" it clarifies and validates the exact manner in which meritocracy is being promoted: "members as they show their ability through contributions to the project". While there is a debate to be had between the two formulations, the current HN title seems misleadingly editorialized for two reasons: 1. It is a proposal by two members, yet to receive ratification from the organization. 2. The suggested change still emphasizes the principle of meritocracy without using the word.
- cucumberferity 8y agoIt also adds language about debias. So it doesn't simply remove meritocracy to appease the far-left activists. It specifically inserts language to appear them, reaffirm their world view. Is it really necessary to create a safe space for fringe political activists to create substantive diversity? No. It's also promoted by high-level Mozilla employees in response to a recent anti-meritocracy movement. After what happened to FreeBSD's CoC you can hardly claim this is happening in a vacuum, it's a cause now.
- jakelazaroff 8y ago> It also adds language about debias. I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of authority does have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the project", why wouldn't they want to fix that?
- tomp 8y agoExactly, it’s equivalent to saying “meritocracy”, except that it uses words approved by the far-left in place of a word disapproved by them.
- tjpnz 8y agoWhy exactly do people contend that meritocracy somehow clashes with diversity? The implications being made by suggesting the two be mutually exclusive are frightening.
- bnav6 8y agoThey clash. You either have a meritocracy or diversity quotas; you either choose people because they’re competent or because they are of a certain sex/race.
- connorelsea 8y agothis is an extreme oversimplification. those aren't mutually exclusive and diversity isn't just "quotas". read a book
- ripdog 8y agoThanks for the recommendation. I read harry potter. It was great. Not sure what I learned about 'diveristy', though.
- connorelsea 8y agogood choice. great series
- tjpnz 8y agoBut what might preclude someone who happens to be of a different race or gender from also being the most competent person for the job?
- cucumberferity 8y agoThe people pushing this radical view on diversity and equality tend to paint all people they see as marginalized as unable to compete on a level playing field.
- davidgerard 8y agofake editorialised title, please change to original
- cucumberferity 8y agoWhat about it is fake? A senior-level employee and strategist for Mozilla made this proposal to the governance listserv. It's up for serious discussion.
- egwynn 8y agoI don’t think I agree that it’s fake per se, but it definitely looks editorialized to me with scare quotes around “problematic“.
- danharaj 8y agoMeritocracy, like all words that reduce to "good thing", are always troublesome. No one ever claims to be a "bad thing"ocracy. The issue is the opacity of the concept of merit. How do you distinguish being a meritocracy in some good sense from insisting you are a meritocracy and thus poisoning any discussion that you are not one? Using words to maintain a culture has a sort of Newton's third law. It might push you towards striving to be "good thing", but it also pushes back, making people resistant to the idea that you aren't striving for "good thing". This is an inescapable fact of how humans hold values. Better words are the ones that aren't exclusively evaluated by humans. These are things on which people can agree there exists an impartial measure of the thing. There is no such measure of merit. Merit is an undecidable value at best and an incoherent one at worst. So, counterintuitively, "good thing" words to describe values are kind of bad. It is easy to construe acknowledging their badness as thinking the underlying concept is bad. I think that is happening in this comment thread. I think rewarding people with trust and responsibility based on merit is a great idea! I think it is detrimental to the cause to codify that in your mission statement.
- vanderZwan 8y agoVery nice way to put it. What do you think of Google's "don't be evil" clause and that it was recently removed? Same thing, or subtly different? Not trying to be inflammatory, I don't know what to think myself: rationally I think it should feel the same, yet somehow it feels different.
- danharaj 8y agoI think it feels different, at least to me, because "don't be evil" doesn't signal any value about how I would be treated if I worked at Google. We often evaluate such value statements by empathizing with the people affected. Everyone here wants to be evaluated on their merit. Everyone thinks they're meritorious. So it's easy to see opposition to the word "meritocracy" and, putting oneself in the shoes of a member of the Mozilla org, feeling mistreated. On the other hand removing "don't be evil" doesn't feel like Google is going to start mistreating people I empathize with^. ^ I feel that way for different reasons :^)
- 8y ago
- malvosenior 8y agoAs someone who comes from a minority group, I absolutely want to be judged on the technical merit of my contributions and not my skin color, gender or genetic background. Implying that people who aren't white males can't succeed in a meritocratic environment is racist and condescending. I don't see how this helps diversity one bit.
- kgraves 8y agoI have thought about this and I too find it patronising and racist indeed. I don't care about your race, I only care if you are the best.
- malvosenior 8y agoIt's actually a pretty popular opinion among high performing minorities (at least the ones I know -- yes anecdotal). Sadly it's a position entirely absent and forbidden in the debate around this. While I'm not one for identity politics, I have to say there's just something weird about watching wealthy and powerful white (usually) people debate this issue and completely ignore the voice of those they are supposed to be "sticking up" for. For me the end goal looks like an attempt to remove the tool I and others used to make social and economic advancement (legitimate skill and hard work) and replace it with some sort of cherry picking of individuals from above. It's definitely something I'm not comfortable with.
- zerostar07 8y agoI think it has been proven that oppressed people cannot judge their oppression
- malvosenior 8y agoI think you're missing your /s tag. If that's not sarcasm, I kindly ask you not to call me oppressed. This pretty much makes my point for me as well that an attempt to "help" me is nothing more than pure condescension and racism.
- nostalgeek 8y agoInteresting, just when the "post-meritocracy" manifesto was published, Mozilla changes sides on meritocracy : https://postmeritocracy.org/ https://postmeritocracy.org/ authored by Coraline Ada Ehmke who is already well known for their activism in IT and open source with the contributor convenant https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ . Coincidence? or consequence?
- ddtaylor 8y ago> But meritocracy has consistently shown itself to mainly benefit those with privilege, to the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology. The idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.” That seems strange to me, because most projects are basically saying if you have no commits you're voice is essentially noise to them, which I agree with. If you want to join an FOSS project and a make a difference put your money where your mouth is - otherwise don't expect most people to listen. All the flowery words and PR likely won't change this reality, for good reason.
- cucumberferity 8y ago> an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.” Yeah, when evaluating PRs I rarely even look at the person making the contribution, I look at the code.
- 21 8y agoQuote from the covenant link: > People with “merit” are often excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Watch out, they are coming for Linus :)
- syshum 8y agoI dont fear for Linus, I fear for linux the project once Linus Retires....
- nextlevelwizard 8y agoWhy is time spent on things that do not matter? If you want to contribute to Open Source project the pull request literally doesn't care whether your reproductive organs are inside or outside of you (or if they even exist at all) just write some code. People who have nothing better to do than cry about use of this kind of words (and language in general) probably do not contribute to the project in net positive manner.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wtfstatists 8y agoMeritocracy means your elevation within a group is not influenced by your ancestory, wealth, socail status, who are your friends with, how much you were/are-being oppressed, charisma or twitter followers. The group has a mission. You help with mission, you go up. You work against the mission, you go down. Thats meritocracy.
- sanxiyn 8y agoIt is especially relevant that it is not influenced by your ancestry.
- cucumberferity 8y agoThe radical group pushing these language changes are explicitly opposed to meritocracy. They don't think they should have to justify their positions or their influence, they get it by having the 'right' politics. They are committed to advancing their own personal and political power and influence by language enforcement, then use of secret code of conduct proceedings, all of which are subject to abuse. Even where open source has failed to be inclusive and diverse empowering a fringe minority and instituting authoritarian language policing and secret proceedings will not advance inclusion or diversity. They make no substantive contribution to diversity or the project.
- danharaj 8y ago> The group has a mission. You help with mission, you go up. You work against the mission, you go down. Thats meritocracy. Honest question. Do you think you've cleared anything up with this definition? I don't think you've gotten anywhere closer to the truth. If only it were so easy to know what the mission is or what is in service of the mission. In life, in software, there are enough derelict projects, aspirations, visions, dreams to fill a graveyard. That should serve as a warning that it's not so clear. And anyway, does the mission really have to say "We are a 'help the mission'ocracy"?
- falcolas 8y ago> If only it were so easy to know what the mission is or what is in service of the mission. This is how you get evaluated on a quarterly (or yearly) basis at a job. You had goals. Did you achieve them? Did you fall short? You were given tasks and a timeline (perhaps you even helped set the timeline). Did you complete the tasks? Were there excessive bugs? Were you on time? These are all relatively simple things to measure, which is why they're used so often. If you tie merit to your performance in relation to stated goals (and I think that's reasonable), it's pretty straightforward to measure.
- plantain 8y agoI keep writing paragraphs to respond to topics like these, but every time I find myself just linking to @aphyr instead, who put it so much more eloquently than I can. https://lobste.rs/s/nf3xgg/i_am_leaving_llvm#c_ubyrb0 https://lobste.rs/s/nf3xgg/i_am_leaving_llvm#c_ubyrb0 Paste: Suckless makes a window manager: a part of a computer that human beings, with all their rich and varying abilities and perspectives, interact with constantly. Your choices of defaults and customization options have direct impact on those humans. For example, color schemes determine whether color-blind people are able to quickly scan active vs inactive options and understand information hierarchy. Font sizes and contrast ratios can make the interface readable, difficult, or completely unusable for visually impaired people. The sizes of click targets, double-click timeouts, and drag thresholds impact usability for those with motor difficulties. Default choices of interface, configuration, and documentation language embed the project in a particular English-speaking context, and the extent to which your team supports internationalization can limit, or expand, your user base. 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. These are inherently political decisions which cannot be avoided. This is not to say that your particular choices are wrong. It’s just you are already engaged in “non-technical”, political work, because you, like everyone else here, are making a tool for human beings. The choice to minimize the thought you put into those decisions does not erase the decisions themselves. 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, or render the community inaccessible entirely. These too are political choices. Your post above is one of them. There is, unfortunately, no such thing as a truly neutral stance on inclusion. 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, representing the best engineers available, and that efforts to change those ratios are inherently discriminatory and unjust. Policies have impact. Consider yours.
- cucumberferity 8y ago> 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. The proposal is not to make Mozilla more diverse, nor would it accomplish that. The proposal is to change the language to make Mozilla seem more diverse to people with very explicit radical views on diversity. This will actually have the opposite effect of reducing diversity and only serves to empower the people with the correct views.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- trgv 8y agoIt seems that some people view the term "meritocracy" negatively because they believe it implies that everyone has the same opportunities. I don't see that implication, but if enough other people do, maybe it's worth re-wording their governance docs. At the same time, the proposed replacement seems off the target: > "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority through active interventions that engage and encourage participation from diverse communities." What's wrong with something innocuous, like: "We strive to encourage contributions/engagement/participation from diverse communities"?
- cucumberferity 8y ago> The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority Because this is not about the governance documents of an open source software project, it is about affirming the radical worldview of a small but loud fringe group in the name of diversity. Except the only diversity is creates is diversity for people with the correct political opinions. It has nothing to do with the actual diversity that benefits an open source project. It is time we stop listening to this fringe group about how to achieve diversity, they clearly only want power and control for themselves. We should not let them bully pragmatic moderates who generally support diversity and inclusion into ceding them more authority and dictatorial control.
- pseudalopex 8y agoI think their proposed language could use some work, but a key difference from yours is the commitment to "active interventions". It's easy for an organization to pay lip service to something in a mission statement and go on to neglect or unintentionally discourage it.
- quantummkv 8y agoThis frightening shift away from meritocracy sounds suspiciously like what happens in India. In India, everything from government jobs, admissions to colleges and universities, etc is based on this quota system based on caste, religion, and other subdivisions instead of meritocracy. The intentions are undoubtedly good. But the actual results? Every government department is horrifically inefficient because a whole lot of people who do not know how to do work land up there due to these quota systems. In many cases, if you fit in a special category, you can basically fail in your university entrance examinations, even not attempt more than one question, get that question wrong, and still get admission. People regularly riot, often violently, to pressurize the government into declaring their group as minorities so that they can specifically get these benefits. ISRO and the Army are the only public institutions in India that operate on meritocracy. And they are pretty much the only public institutions held in any regard by the public. This may have a feel good effect in the short period and some people may feel like they are somehow morally superior. But this will always lead to a whole lot of pain in the long term.
- cucumberferity 8y agoThis is about changing the very nature of how open source projects work for people with radical political views to 'feel included', specifically to have their political views validated. It is not about improving actual diversity, Mozilla already has those efforts. Mozilla should welcome and support contributions by everyone, I even recognize the systematic barriers that some people face, but I don't think we should be altering how key open source software projects function to affirm the believes of a small but loud group of radicals, particularly when their solutions for diversity don't actually increase diversity, they just increase the power of that loud group.
- cucumberferity 8y agoIt's strange this has so many points and comments but almost instantly disappeared from the front page of HN.
- Rexxar 8y agoStory with more comments than points always disappear faster from front page.
- cucumberferity 8y agoGotcha.
- plcancel 8y ago"This proposal does not seek to change how Mozilla is governed, only how we talk about how Mozilla is governed, which may be reasonably be regarded as contentious." ...said another way?... "It is reasonable to expect a few questions after we emphasize the importance of changing how we talk about x while we also emphasize that changing x is not the objective." The reasoning in this part of the email is pretty good.
- mabynogy 8y agoMeritocracy is a word used by the right (you succeed by your will and your skills). It's not compatible with the system of believes of the left (the unlucky should be helped more - something like a rule, a rate must compensate that injustice). It's logical they change that and it confirms the political nature of those subjects. My advice is to avoid people dealing with that because it's not related to computers.
- rich-w-big-ego 8y agoThis is the core conflict. Do we judge people on their competence, or do we judge them by the degree to which they are oppressed?
- mabynogy 8y agoI tend to evaluate them on their intents. Do they try to make the good?
- rich-w-big-ego 8y agoIntention is also very important. Are they focused on people in the office, or code on the computer?
- cleanyourroom 8y ago"I know how to fix Mozilla." Sincerely, Someone who cannot even keep zer own room clean.