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I am assuming, based on the fact that it's a project by an American company, that this is largely being done by functionally monolingual English speakers. I wou
by mumblemumble 6y ago
I am assuming, based on the fact that it's a project by an American company, that this is largely being done by functionally monolingual English speakers. I wouldn't want them to attempt to speak for other cultures. And I wouldn't want to shame them for not attempting to speak for others.
It's a bit unfortunate that they use the word "human" so expansively when the scope is so limited, it's true. But it's a new project, so let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that that's meant to reflect the project's aspirations. Even if the reality, after only a few short months, doesn't quite achieve it. Tech culture is supposed to value iteration, and accept that things won't necessarily get it all right on the very first try.
A more constructive way to make sure other cultures are reflected would be to say, "Hey, this is a great idea. But looks like you're only covering Anglophone sources right now. Can we help by contributing additional sources?"
- zurfer 6y agoexactly, and one don't even need to comment on HN, but can just open an issue or even better a pull request ;)
- dgellow 6y agoI'm all for iterative work. I'm just pointing an issue in the current state of this project. It's a common behaviour from huge and global US companies (GitHub IS huge and global) to kind of forget that other cultural groups exist, I'm used to it. It's a bit dishonest in this specific case because they present the project as a "humanity preservation project".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoPosted on HN yesterday, Pioneers of Soviet Computing: https://archive.org/details/PioneersOfSovietComputing https://archive.org/details/PioneersOfSovietComputing
- mm89 6y agoI haven't read the document but what's wrong with the term "human"? Is there some other intelligent life-form on this planet contributing to technology and software today that I'm unaware of? Picking on the word human just seems nit-picky, like someone's not woke enough to use a more inclusive term.
- mumblemumble 6y agoMy reading was that the complaint was that it implied false inclusiveness, which can come across as solipsistic to those who weren't included. A little bit like how the final stage of Major League Baseball's playoffs are called the World Series, even though 29 of the teams are based in the USA and the 30th plays in a stadium ~25km outside the USA. I imagine that is at least a little bit irritating to professional baseball players from elsewhere in the world.
- celticninja 6y agoExcept the World Series is named after the original sponsors of the competition and is not meant to infer worldwide participation. I'm not from the US and I am not from somewhere that plays competitive baseball and I know that,therefore I assume in the competitive baseball world this is known widely enough.
- monocasa 6y agoNah, it being named after the New York World newspaper is just the sports blogger equivalent of an old wive's tale. It really was built off of the US exceptionalism of the gilded age with the idea that nobody could beat the US at it's own game anyway so why bother inviting them. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4675711 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=467571...
- mumblemumble 6y agoThe New York World story even has its own Snopes page: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/world-series/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/world-series/