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> who believes meritocracy is racist and sexist Is it bad that nowadays I've trouble identifying whether this kind of categorization is redpillers bile or an a

> who believes meritocracy is racist and sexist Is it bad that nowadays I've trouble identifying whether this kind of categorization is redpillers bile or an accurate representation of an increasingly dominant extreme left? Would you have a quote from that lady, and if correct, how did she get in the position of writing Linux COC?

chroma 8y ago
Here’s one: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 > “Meritocracy” is just thinly veiled misogyny and white supremacy propping up fragile cis het white men’s egos. Or https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029952846492565504 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029952846492565504 > “Reverse racism” is such a weird phrase for “justice”. Or https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/823064825366360065 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/823064825366360065 > Why didn’t anyone punch the reporter giving the nazi air time? (Note that the last one is endorsing violence against journalists. Not cool.) Though I think you have the wrong impression. Coraline wasn’t asked to write the Linux CoC. They just used a CoC she wrote: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
- m_mueller 8y ago
  OK, so I can't really find fault with the CoC itself, but the motivation as described in your link is indeed questionable, though I'd say worthy of discussion: > Studies have shown that organizational cultures that value meritocracy often result in greater inequality. People with “merit” are often excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Meritocracy also naively assumes a level playing field, in which everyone has access to the same resources, free time, and common life experiences to draw upon. These factors and more make contributing to open source a daunting prospect for many people, especially women and other underrepresented people. So, if merit is used to excuse bad behavior I agree that it's a problem (a fairly solvable one though I'd think). But I also detect an inequality-of-outcome kind of stance here, as inequality due to merits is seen as a bad thing. I just always have trouble imagining the end game of that kind of thinking - even in Stalinism, people with higher abilities were selected for various more demanding tasks. Are they saying that everyone is absolutely born with the same abilities? Because that's just so easy to falsify with data.
  - lordlimecat 8y ago
    > Studies have shown that organizational cultures that value meritocracy often result in greater inequality Inequality is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is the reasons for that inequality that can be unjust. If you and I are unequal in society either because you made poor decisions or else were unwilling to work as hard as me, that is in fact "just" even if it is not "equal". Equality at all costs simply does not work, which is why it has failed every time humanity has tried to enforce it on society. We should fight inequality that results from factors like ethnicity, ideology, and disability, but what's interesting to note is that people like Coraline have shown no qualms about creating inequality for those with different political views-- calling even for the explulsion of OSS devs from projects where their only crime is holding a different political view in private. It's hard to read her comments and the phrasing of the CoC and not think that its purpose is to allow purging those who commit "wrongthink".
  - ghusbands 8y ago
    Part of the point is that the unprivileged don't get the same opportunities in many ways, so they don't do so well in tests but they still do well at the job; therefore, you need to give them extra leeway during recruiting and such. Also, the experience of the less privileged is that some people use claimed-impartial tests and barriers to exclude them in particular, and so when a test comes along it is demotivating, as it might just be an attempt to exclude them. Look at the voting reforms in various places for examples of this. Using tests to try for pure meritocracy only works when everyone has had the same kind of background and nobody has bias. Look at the examples of CVs/books sent around with just the name/gender changed and the huge difference in response rate to see the bias. Essentially, if you're recruiting (or filtering any set of people) and aren't actively controlling for bias (anonymization is key), you will be biased.
    - jf- 8y ago
      From an organisation’s point of view, does it matter how one person came to be a better performer than another? Surely they just care about current state: this person performs better than this other person now. Perhaps had their backgrounds been different, their performance would be different. Perhaps if the under-performer had more training, their performance would be better. But right now, things aren’t different. From the organisation’s self-interested point of view, they should just choose the better performing candidate.
- BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
  It's amazing to see how many nice open source projects have been pressured into adopting this.
  - AnnoyingSwede 8y ago
    Like SQLite? Well played if you ask me.. https://www.sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html https://www.sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html
    - BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
      Thanks for pointing me to that, I wasn't aware. Very well played indeed. I think I'll proactively start including this in my own projects. However what I meant was the projects on this list: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/adopters https://www.contributor-covenant.org/adopters
      - danillonunes 8y ago
        I would include that in my project if I had one and I am an atheist. I would convert just so I can play this card.
        BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
        One of the best things is you really don't even have to convert to anything.
  - BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
    And I'm not the only seeing a pattern... "It's only fair to mention that the person who started the initial controversy by merit of whining about twitter things on the issue tracker is also the owner of the code of conduct that is being pull requested by @tarcieri in #947 One could claim personal bias. In fact, going through past projects that adopted this CoC, this seems to be a recurring trend, where people start a fake controversy, then propose the CoC and guilt trip it into being adopted." [0] [0] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942#issuecomment-113375041 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942#issuecomment-1133750...
- notyourday 8y ago
  Those who can write code. Those who can't whine about their inability to write code.
rurounijones 8y ago
Not that I believe the fierceness of the assertion however. The CoC's writer's blogpost https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ certainly proves she has issues with the term "meritocracy" > At first I had my doubts. I was well aware of GitHub's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system And most articles I have read detail the idea that "meritocracy" is inherently biased because it is men deciding the merit (since male dominated) https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ She wrote a COC and various projects have adopted it to a lesser and greater extent and with varying levels of controversy
- m_mueller 8y ago
  Thanks, see also my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18281843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18281843.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
It is extremely easy to look this up... Just check the screenshot in my above comment, Twitter, the post-meritocracy site, Coreline's blog, etc... When Coreline was Corey, he was not an activist - and was not given such power. When he was a man he worked in a meritocracy. Now that he's changed his gender he wants a "post-meritocracy." This is not hateful to say; it is merely an account of history. And if you're going to call me out for saying "he" - remember every cell in his body has a Y chromosome in it, and what language policing you will have to endure if it were enforced (which is it becoming, as you can see by the fact that my comment history is mostly censored).
- Foobarcomments 8y ago
  As concerned as I am on the authoritarian left's stifling of debate nowadays, the author's gender change is irrelevant. I interpret you mentioning their gender change as ill-intention.
lordlimecat 8y ago
Take a look at her comments on github and judge for yourself. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 She wants to tar and feather an OSS contributor for views expressed on a personal twitter account. Further down searches through his ~400 git repositories, finds two with potentially offensive names (which have rational explanations, including being non-native english speaker), and uses that as basis to continue witch hunt. Eric Raymond did a good write up on what's happening here that I certainly found insightful. He gives a description that perfectly describes what you see in that github issue: "What’s there is totalitarianism in miniature: ideology is everything, merit counts for nothing against the suppression of thoughtcrime, and politics is conducted by naked intimidation against any who refuse to conform." http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918

chroma 8y ago

Here’s one: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 > “Meritocracy” is just thinly veiled misogyny and white supremacy propping up fragile cis het white men’s egos. Or https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029952846492565504 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029952846492565504 > “Reverse racism” is such a weird phrase for “justice”. Or https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/823064825366360065 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/823064825366360065 > Why didn’t anyone punch the reporter giving the nazi air time? (Note that the last one is endorsing violence against journalists. Not cool.) Though I think you have the wrong impression. Coraline wasn’t asked to write the Linux CoC. They just used a CoC she wrote: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

m_mueller 8y ago
OK, so I can't really find fault with the CoC itself, but the motivation as described in your link is indeed questionable, though I'd say worthy of discussion: > Studies have shown that organizational cultures that value meritocracy often result in greater inequality. People with “merit” are often excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Meritocracy also naively assumes a level playing field, in which everyone has access to the same resources, free time, and common life experiences to draw upon. These factors and more make contributing to open source a daunting prospect for many people, especially women and other underrepresented people. So, if merit is used to excuse bad behavior I agree that it's a problem (a fairly solvable one though I'd think). But I also detect an inequality-of-outcome kind of stance here, as inequality due to merits is seen as a bad thing. I just always have trouble imagining the end game of that kind of thinking - even in Stalinism, people with higher abilities were selected for various more demanding tasks. Are they saying that everyone is absolutely born with the same abilities? Because that's just so easy to falsify with data.
- lordlimecat 8y ago
  > Studies have shown that organizational cultures that value meritocracy often result in greater inequality Inequality is not in and of itself a bad thing. It is the reasons for that inequality that can be unjust. If you and I are unequal in society either because you made poor decisions or else were unwilling to work as hard as me, that is in fact "just" even if it is not "equal". Equality at all costs simply does not work, which is why it has failed every time humanity has tried to enforce it on society. We should fight inequality that results from factors like ethnicity, ideology, and disability, but what's interesting to note is that people like Coraline have shown no qualms about creating inequality for those with different political views-- calling even for the explulsion of OSS devs from projects where their only crime is holding a different political view in private. It's hard to read her comments and the phrasing of the CoC and not think that its purpose is to allow purging those who commit "wrongthink".
- ghusbands 8y ago
  Part of the point is that the unprivileged don't get the same opportunities in many ways, so they don't do so well in tests but they still do well at the job; therefore, you need to give them extra leeway during recruiting and such. Also, the experience of the less privileged is that some people use claimed-impartial tests and barriers to exclude them in particular, and so when a test comes along it is demotivating, as it might just be an attempt to exclude them. Look at the voting reforms in various places for examples of this. Using tests to try for pure meritocracy only works when everyone has had the same kind of background and nobody has bias. Look at the examples of CVs/books sent around with just the name/gender changed and the huge difference in response rate to see the bias. Essentially, if you're recruiting (or filtering any set of people) and aren't actively controlling for bias (anonymization is key), you will be biased.
  - jf- 8y ago
    From an organisation’s point of view, does it matter how one person came to be a better performer than another? Surely they just care about current state: this person performs better than this other person now. Perhaps had their backgrounds been different, their performance would be different. Perhaps if the under-performer had more training, their performance would be better. But right now, things aren’t different. From the organisation’s self-interested point of view, they should just choose the better performing candidate.
BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
It's amazing to see how many nice open source projects have been pressured into adopting this.
- AnnoyingSwede 8y ago
  Like SQLite? Well played if you ask me.. https://www.sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html https://www.sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html
  - BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
    Thanks for pointing me to that, I wasn't aware. Very well played indeed. I think I'll proactively start including this in my own projects. However what I meant was the projects on this list: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/adopters https://www.contributor-covenant.org/adopters
    - danillonunes 8y ago
      I would include that in my project if I had one and I am an atheist. I would convert just so I can play this card.
      - BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
        One of the best things is you really don't even have to convert to anything.
- BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
  And I'm not the only seeing a pattern... "It's only fair to mention that the person who started the initial controversy by merit of whining about twitter things on the issue tracker is also the owner of the code of conduct that is being pull requested by @tarcieri in #947 One could claim personal bias. In fact, going through past projects that adopted this CoC, this seems to be a recurring trend, where people start a fake controversy, then propose the CoC and guilt trip it into being adopted." [0] [0] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942#issuecomment-113375041 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/942#issuecomment-1133750...
notyourday 8y ago
Those who can write code. Those who can't whine about their inability to write code.

rurounijones 8y ago

Not that I believe the fierceness of the assertion however. The CoC's writer's blogpost https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ certainly proves she has issues with the term "meritocracy" > At first I had my doubts. I was well aware of GitHub's very problematic past, from its promotion of meritocracy in place of a management system And most articles I have read detail the idea that "meritocracy" is inherently biased because it is men deciding the merit (since male dominated) https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/ She wrote a COC and various projects have adopted it to a lesser and greater extent and with varying levels of controversy

m_mueller 8y ago
Thanks, see also my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18281843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18281843.

pokemongoaway 8y ago

It is extremely easy to look this up... Just check the screenshot in my above comment, Twitter, the post-meritocracy site, Coreline's blog, etc... When Coreline was Corey, he was not an activist - and was not given such power. When he was a man he worked in a meritocracy. Now that he's changed his gender he wants a "post-meritocracy." This is not hateful to say; it is merely an account of history. And if you're going to call me out for saying "he" - remember every cell in his body has a Y chromosome in it, and what language policing you will have to endure if it were enforced (which is it becoming, as you can see by the fact that my comment history is mostly censored).

Foobarcomments 8y ago
As concerned as I am on the authoritarian left's stifling of debate nowadays, the author's gender change is irrelevant. I interpret you mentioning their gender change as ill-intention.

lordlimecat 8y ago

Take a look at her comments on github and judge for yourself. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 She wants to tar and feather an OSS contributor for views expressed on a personal twitter account. Further down searches through his ~400 git repositories, finds two with potentially offensive names (which have rational explanations, including being non-native english speaker), and uses that as basis to continue witch hunt. Eric Raymond did a good write up on what's happening here that I certainly found insightful. He gives a description that perfectly describes what you see in that github issue: "What’s there is totalitarianism in miniature: ideology is everything, merit counts for nothing against the suppression of thoughtcrime, and politics is conducted by naked intimidation against any who refuse to conform." http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918