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Here’s one: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 > “Meritocracy” is just thinly

by 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.
    - aninhumer 8y ago
      This only makes sense if you assume the organisation's interest is only to maximise productivity in the short term. An open source organisation may explicitly be interested in attracting marginalised people into the tech sector, to improve equality in society as a whole. Or even from a cynical perspective, a profit-led corporation may desire to increase their ability to hire competent but undervalued (and thus cheaper) employees in future.
  - chroma 8y ago
    > 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. That's not true. The original studies used low class names for blacks and hispanics, but not for whites. (For example, they didn't use names like Cletus or Billy Ray.) Once this was corrected for, they found almost no bias in resume screening.[1] 1. https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_koedel.pdf https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_ko...
- Marazan 8y ago
  No, it's about how many so called meritocracies are not actually meritocracies and instead are nepotistic circle jerks of self reinforcing bad behaviour. That people think it is about enforcing equal outcome shows how threatened they are by the idea that maybe they didn't get where they are by being brilliant but by being a mediocre straight white male promoted and supported by other mediocre straight white males.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Do you think it's actually possible to convey this same meaning without denigrating somebody?
    - Marazan 8y ago
      The only people that denigrated it people so thoroughly wrapped in their own privilege they lack the critical reasoning skills to accurately assess their own capabilities and see the risk of genuinely being judged on their capability as frightening.
  - sheepmullet 8y ago
    > but by being a mediocre straight white male promoted and supported by other mediocre straight white males. That sounds kind of nice actually. If that was actually the case why would the mediocre straight white male feel threatened? Honestly that would be a pretty powerful safety net.
    - Marazan 8y ago
      The thing that is threatening to them is having the concept of 'meritocracy' rumbled and exposed as an unclothed emporer for all to see.
      - sheepmullet 8y ago
        Why would that threaten them?
- chroma 8y ago
  "Studies show" is carrying a lot of water. I don't have access to the study that is linked, but almost all of these studies about sexism in tech end up not being true. An excellent example was Gender Bias In Open Source: Pull Request Acceptance Of Women Vs. Men.[1] This study claimed to find evidence of sexism. If you looked at the data, it was clear that there wasn't any.[2] Still, it was the basis for articles by Vice.com[3], The Guardian[4], Business Insider[5], and the BBC[6]. None of these news organizations issued retractions. The bias in both academia and news organizations is such that they simply cannot be trusted to be accurate on this topic. The bias in bay area tech companies is just as bad. If you express the slightest doubt about sexism being rampant in tech, you will be ostracized. If you speak up in protest when all the women in the office go to a free screening of Wonder Woman during work hours, while all the men have to stay and work, you will become persona non grata. These sorts of things have happened to me and others I know. It's infuriating. Even if sexism and racism are as bad as people like Coraline Ada claim, these "solutions" are making the problem worse. Discriminating on the basis of race and sex only serves to balkanize us and polarize opinions. 1. https://peerj.com/preprints/1733v1.pdf https://peerj.com/preprints/1733v1.pdf 2. Scott Alexander explains the whole saga: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exc... 3. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9aep3y/women-are-better-at-coding-than-men https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9aep3y/women-are-bett... 4. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-con... 5. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/more-evidence-of-sexism-on-github-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/more-evidence-of-sexism-o... 6. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35559439 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35559439
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    > None of these news organizations issued retractions. And then this gets repeated, retweeted and multipied, and finally people start the discussion with "obviously...", "it is widely known that...", "as it's been established...". Not only it gets a life on its own, but you can receive social punishment for just trying to discuss that.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I think that quote reflects a concern about the equality of opportunity ("access to the same resources"), not outcome. And in particular, that rewarding merit as measured solely as the outcome, and not the struggle to reach it, will only reinforce that inequality, since two groups of people who have (on average) the same abilities will have different outcomes if they start from two different positions.
- roenxi 8y ago
  I had a long and fun argument with someone the last time the kernel came up on this exact subject. A very interesting observation is that in the extreme "meritocracy" 100% implies that people with merit should be excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Any political system comes with trade-offs. Meritocracies fundamentally excuse bad behavior, democracies fundamentally allow mob rule/bad decisions in haste, monarchies fundamentally ignore commoner's problems, bureaucracies are too risk averse and slow, etc, etc. If we rejected political systems that allow failings and excuses, we'd only have anarchy. To the topic at hand, the kernel folk don't seem to be particularly political, and obviously they don't want anyone behaving badly in their community, but one does suspect that there is a game of political football afoot that is not going to benefit the kernel. The kernel is a technical project - people who reject the idea of technical merit have a home in society, but that home isn't in the Linux Kernel community; it is a space where merit is meaningful. The kernel maintainers should first and foremost concerned about the technical quality of the kernel.
  - mcbits 8y ago
    > Meritocracies fundamentally excuse bad behavior This may often (?) be true in practice if you remove "fundamentally", but not always and it doesn't have to be. In an environment where people work together to produce an outcome, the ability to interact positively and productively with others is a valuable behavioral merit. It keeps one talented asshole from chasing away all the other talent. You can have a meritocratic organization where "works well with the team" is a requirement. Where this breaks down is when talented people sit back and allow abuse (or worse, start to emulate it) because they're all starry-eyed about an offender's other talents and achievements.
    - rs23296008n1 8y ago
      I'd go further than just remove "fundamentally" from that statement. I'd say the entire statement is false. Getting rid of meritocracy is "Everyone gets an A+". Teams will quickly get in trouble if everyone got A+ for "works well with the team" but some should've gotten a D- or an F. Meritocracies don't have to excuse bad behaviour if they simply penalise it. Perhaps those stuck in bad situations and complaining about meritocracies are really just suffering from the ill-effects of cronyism, favouritism or some other "ism".
- aninhumer 8y ago
  >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. Rejecting meritocracy doesn't mean not acknowledging ability, it means not structuring power hierarchies around it. Those most able should be chosen for tasks because those involved in the work agree collectively, without the coercion of power dynamics, that it's best to assign them that task.
  - naasking 8y ago
    Meritocracy doesn't require structuring power hierarchies around merit. Furthermore, there will never be collective or universal agreement in any remotely complex issue, which means some block of the community is inevitably being coerced into accepting a communal choice.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I think what people mean is that purported meritocracies aren't often actual meritocracies, since unequal opportunities will give some people's contributions more weight than others. Unfortunately, rather than explaining how self-proclaimed meritocracies often aren't actually judging on merit, such remarks often get wrapped in remarks about cis white males or whatever (or at least - the ones that make the rounds do), which understandably leads to people getting defensive. Additionally, as a sibling comment shows, there also appears to be some misleading research, which I think is more likely to happen when arguments like these become as heated as they are. Thus, I'm not sure whether the argument is true or not. However, I think it's good to separate it from the loud voices unsuccessfully making it, and to try to consider it on its own... merits.
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.

by chroma 8y ago

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.
  - aninhumer 8y ago
    This only makes sense if you assume the organisation's interest is only to maximise productivity in the short term. An open source organisation may explicitly be interested in attracting marginalised people into the tech sector, to improve equality in society as a whole. Or even from a cynical perspective, a profit-led corporation may desire to increase their ability to hire competent but undervalued (and thus cheaper) employees in future.
- chroma 8y ago
  > 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. That's not true. The original studies used low class names for blacks and hispanics, but not for whites. (For example, they didn't use names like Cletus or Billy Ray.) Once this was corrected for, they found almost no bias in resume screening.[1] 1. https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_koedel.pdf https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2014/wp1419_ko...
Marazan 8y ago
No, it's about how many so called meritocracies are not actually meritocracies and instead are nepotistic circle jerks of self reinforcing bad behaviour. That people think it is about enforcing equal outcome shows how threatened they are by the idea that maybe they didn't get where they are by being brilliant but by being a mediocre straight white male promoted and supported by other mediocre straight white males.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Do you think it's actually possible to convey this same meaning without denigrating somebody?
  - Marazan 8y ago
    The only people that denigrated it people so thoroughly wrapped in their own privilege they lack the critical reasoning skills to accurately assess their own capabilities and see the risk of genuinely being judged on their capability as frightening.
- sheepmullet 8y ago
  > but by being a mediocre straight white male promoted and supported by other mediocre straight white males. That sounds kind of nice actually. If that was actually the case why would the mediocre straight white male feel threatened? Honestly that would be a pretty powerful safety net.
  - Marazan 8y ago
    The thing that is threatening to them is having the concept of 'meritocracy' rumbled and exposed as an unclothed emporer for all to see.
    - sheepmullet 8y ago
      Why would that threaten them?
chroma 8y ago
"Studies show" is carrying a lot of water. I don't have access to the study that is linked, but almost all of these studies about sexism in tech end up not being true. An excellent example was Gender Bias In Open Source: Pull Request Acceptance Of Women Vs. Men.[1] This study claimed to find evidence of sexism. If you looked at the data, it was clear that there wasn't any.[2] Still, it was the basis for articles by Vice.com[3], The Guardian[4], Business Insider[5], and the BBC[6]. None of these news organizations issued retractions. The bias in both academia and news organizations is such that they simply cannot be trusted to be accurate on this topic. The bias in bay area tech companies is just as bad. If you express the slightest doubt about sexism being rampant in tech, you will be ostracized. If you speak up in protest when all the women in the office go to a free screening of Wonder Woman during work hours, while all the men have to stay and work, you will become persona non grata. These sorts of things have happened to me and others I know. It's infuriating. Even if sexism and racism are as bad as people like Coraline Ada claim, these "solutions" are making the problem worse. Discriminating on the basis of race and sex only serves to balkanize us and polarize opinions. 1. https://peerj.com/preprints/1733v1.pdf https://peerj.com/preprints/1733v1.pdf 2. Scott Alexander explains the whole saga: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-about-that-github-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-exc... 3. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9aep3y/women-are-better-at-coding-than-men https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9aep3y/women-are-bett... 4. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-considered-better-coders-hide-gender-github https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/women-con... 5. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/more-evidence-of-sexism-on-github-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/more-evidence-of-sexism-o... 6. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35559439 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35559439
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  > None of these news organizations issued retractions. And then this gets repeated, retweeted and multipied, and finally people start the discussion with "obviously...", "it is widely known that...", "as it's been established...". Not only it gets a life on its own, but you can receive social punishment for just trying to discuss that.
icebraining 8y ago
I think that quote reflects a concern about the equality of opportunity ("access to the same resources"), not outcome. And in particular, that rewarding merit as measured solely as the outcome, and not the struggle to reach it, will only reinforce that inequality, since two groups of people who have (on average) the same abilities will have different outcomes if they start from two different positions.
roenxi 8y ago
I had a long and fun argument with someone the last time the kernel came up on this exact subject. A very interesting observation is that in the extreme "meritocracy" 100% implies that people with merit should be excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Any political system comes with trade-offs. Meritocracies fundamentally excuse bad behavior, democracies fundamentally allow mob rule/bad decisions in haste, monarchies fundamentally ignore commoner's problems, bureaucracies are too risk averse and slow, etc, etc. If we rejected political systems that allow failings and excuses, we'd only have anarchy. To the topic at hand, the kernel folk don't seem to be particularly political, and obviously they don't want anyone behaving badly in their community, but one does suspect that there is a game of political football afoot that is not going to benefit the kernel. The kernel is a technical project - people who reject the idea of technical merit have a home in society, but that home isn't in the Linux Kernel community; it is a space where merit is meaningful. The kernel maintainers should first and foremost concerned about the technical quality of the kernel.
- mcbits 8y ago
  > Meritocracies fundamentally excuse bad behavior This may often (?) be true in practice if you remove "fundamentally", but not always and it doesn't have to be. In an environment where people work together to produce an outcome, the ability to interact positively and productively with others is a valuable behavioral merit. It keeps one talented asshole from chasing away all the other talent. You can have a meritocratic organization where "works well with the team" is a requirement. Where this breaks down is when talented people sit back and allow abuse (or worse, start to emulate it) because they're all starry-eyed about an offender's other talents and achievements.
  - rs23296008n1 8y ago
    I'd go further than just remove "fundamentally" from that statement. I'd say the entire statement is false. Getting rid of meritocracy is "Everyone gets an A+". Teams will quickly get in trouble if everyone got A+ for "works well with the team" but some should've gotten a D- or an F. Meritocracies don't have to excuse bad behaviour if they simply penalise it. Perhaps those stuck in bad situations and complaining about meritocracies are really just suffering from the ill-effects of cronyism, favouritism or some other "ism".
aninhumer 8y ago
>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. Rejecting meritocracy doesn't mean not acknowledging ability, it means not structuring power hierarchies around it. Those most able should be chosen for tasks because those involved in the work agree collectively, without the coercion of power dynamics, that it's best to assign them that task.
- naasking 8y ago
  Meritocracy doesn't require structuring power hierarchies around merit. Furthermore, there will never be collective or universal agreement in any remotely complex issue, which means some block of the community is inevitably being coerced into accepting a communal choice.
Vinnl 8y ago
I think what people mean is that purported meritocracies aren't often actual meritocracies, since unequal opportunities will give some people's contributions more weight than others. Unfortunately, rather than explaining how self-proclaimed meritocracies often aren't actually judging on merit, such remarks often get wrapped in remarks about cis white males or whatever (or at least - the ones that make the rounds do), which understandably leads to people getting defensive. Additionally, as a sibling comment shows, there also appears to be some misleading research, which I think is more likely to happen when arguments like these become as heated as they are. Thus, I'm not sure whether the argument is true or not. However, I think it's good to separate it from the loud voices unsuccessfully making it, and to try to consider it on its own... merits.

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.