5 ms·

Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewher

by Mizza 6y ago

Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values upon functionally autonomous communities elsewhere around the world becomes a form of cultural imperialism? To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bawolff 6y ago
> Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly (I'm not american, i'm honestly not sure which values you think are american left wing ones)? Whether or not its appropriate for WMF to centerally impose behavioural standards has been argued back and forth for probsbly about a decade at this point. (Not saying either side is right or "won", just that both sides have yelled at each other a lot) > To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here. How so? I don't see anything related to that in this document.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I'm not trying to personally nitpick any of the individual points, since there's already a process in place for that discussion, I'm just asking if it ever crosses a line into cultural imperialism, and if so, where is that line? > Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. Re: deletionism, it includes this: > Repeated removal of Wikimedia content without appropriate peer review or constructive feedback for improvement Which hopefully could help address drive-by speedy deletions.
  - disposekinetics 6y ago
    > Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. > One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. It is hard not to see this as a form of entryism in that the people pushing these polices are looking for the power and control without the cost of creation. However, I think there is a far more cynical approach. A huge company can bare the cost of socially expensive HR-values but a small open source team cannot afford the toll of the policies.
    - Mizza 6y ago
      > This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. Exactly. I think it's obviously dangerous to allow the corporate class to take the moral high ground. Apple will gladly publicly support any progressive social program of the week - as long as there is no need for _any_ material change - but will still use slave labour to produce their products.[1] This is now 100% universal. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-factory-nike-shoe-apple-dell-volkswagen-a9366956.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-...
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Fair enough, ossification of rules and too much beurocracy can kill a project. People already posit that rule explosion is linked to a decline in wikipedia. > Re: deletionism, it includes this: I think usually deletionism more implies following proper procedure and due process to delete things (including speedy deletion if the page fits the criteria). I think the code of conduct doc is more concerned with deletions as targeted abuse of power, which is a bit different. Deciding what should be deleted and should not be is something highly vested in the local community and i doubt anyone would want to try to attempt to centralize it
RobLach 6y ago
Define "left-wing American cultural values". As far as I can tell, "left-wing Amerians" are in constant debate about such values amongst themselves, to a fault.
- Mizza 6y ago
  I mean, the idea of a Universal Code of Conduct, as far as I can tell, is actually an interesting new one. However, it reads like it's been written entirely by Californian twenty somethings, and it looks like there is no input from foreign language users, only direct translations from English. I would _love_ to see what people would come up with if this was a different process where each language came up with their own, and then there was a process of mediation. But, AFAIK, that didn't happen, because these things always come from the top down as a way of creating and solidifying control for the educated upper class types.
hkt 6y ago
I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same. I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.
- Mizza 6y ago
  This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system. You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group. I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela.. Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively. Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

by Mizza 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bawolff 6y ago

> Asking for discussion: Is there a point at which imposing a specific set of left-wing American cultural values Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly (I'm not american, i'm honestly not sure which values you think are american left wing ones)? Whether or not its appropriate for WMF to centerally impose behavioural standards has been argued back and forth for probsbly about a decade at this point. (Not saying either side is right or "won", just that both sides have yelled at each other a lot) > To leave a more positive comment, I'm glad that the scourge of deletionism is addressed in here. How so? I don't see anything related to that in this document.

Mizza 6y ago
I'm not trying to personally nitpick any of the individual points, since there's already a process in place for that discussion, I'm just asking if it ever crosses a line into cultural imperialism, and if so, where is that line? > Which "left-wing american values" are those specificly Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. Re: deletionism, it includes this: > Repeated removal of Wikimedia content without appropriate peer review or constructive feedback for improvement Which hopefully could help address drive-by speedy deletions.
- disposekinetics 6y ago
  > Without even mentioning any specifics of the documents, I guess I'm referring to the general trend of the HR-ification of everything. There has been a huge creation of rule systems which give elites and managers more weapons to bludgeon people and groups who want to operate differently than the universal corporate structure, largely as a way of preventing the need to save face in the case of social media outrage. This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. > One thing I have noticed from multiple real life experiences: this mentality rots organizations. The HR-minded are more concerned with creating an impossible perfect organization that crashes into the ground than creating an imperfect organization that actually produces something of tangible social value. It is hard not to see this as a form of entryism in that the people pushing these polices are looking for the power and control without the cost of creation. However, I think there is a far more cynical approach. A huge company can bare the cost of socially expensive HR-values but a small open source team cannot afford the toll of the policies.
  - Mizza 6y ago
    > This is such a strange trend. Organizations are adopting American style progressive ethos, but not via their explicit values but via inserted HR processes that seem to be en vogue. Exactly. I think it's obviously dangerous to allow the corporate class to take the moral high ground. Apple will gladly publicly support any progressive social program of the week - as long as there is no need for _any_ material change - but will still use slave labour to produce their products.[1] This is now 100% universal. [1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-factory-nike-shoe-apple-dell-volkswagen-a9366956.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-...
- bawolff 6y ago
  Fair enough, ossification of rules and too much beurocracy can kill a project. People already posit that rule explosion is linked to a decline in wikipedia. > Re: deletionism, it includes this: I think usually deletionism more implies following proper procedure and due process to delete things (including speedy deletion if the page fits the criteria). I think the code of conduct doc is more concerned with deletions as targeted abuse of power, which is a bit different. Deciding what should be deleted and should not be is something highly vested in the local community and i doubt anyone would want to try to attempt to centralize it

RobLach 6y ago

Define "left-wing American cultural values". As far as I can tell, "left-wing Amerians" are in constant debate about such values amongst themselves, to a fault.

Mizza 6y ago
I mean, the idea of a Universal Code of Conduct, as far as I can tell, is actually an interesting new one. However, it reads like it's been written entirely by Californian twenty somethings, and it looks like there is no input from foreign language users, only direct translations from English. I would _love_ to see what people would come up with if this was a different process where each language came up with their own, and then there was a process of mediation. But, AFAIK, that didn't happen, because these things always come from the top down as a way of creating and solidifying control for the educated upper class types.

hkt 6y ago

I'm in the UK and am happy to report the values are not American. Ask some Aussies or Kiwis and I'm sure they'd say the same. I'd also remark that perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to comment in such a trite way if Wiki had instead make a statement on respecting people's sexualities. Once controversial, now widely accepted as a facet of who people are, and originally a darling cause of the left. It's recognised as a human rights issue, which is to say it has outgrown reasonable politics. I look forward to gender identity doing the same.

Mizza 6y ago
This isn't in any way about gender identity, it's about the fact that there _isn't_ a universal values system. You mentioned the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand - do you notice a pattern there? Throw in Canada and you've perfectly recreated the FIVEEYES international surveillance pact members. It's a culturally homogeneous group. I think you'd get very different results if you were trying to come up with a universal conduct framework and you actually bothered including Russia, China, India, Venuzuela.. Of course, they weren't properly asked and provided no input , because this is a subtle form of upper class Western imperialism.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Of course there is not a universal value system. If you asked someone from nazi germany how they felt about jewish people editing wikipedia, they would probably respond negatively. Does it follow that we should care? Creating Wikipedia is fundamentally a political act. It subscribes to views like information should be free, amateurs can compete with professionals in information compilation, articles should attempt to neutrally represent the facts, etc. These are all ideological views, many of them controversial. Why should we succumb to moral relativism when deciding on how wikipedians ought to collaborate, when we don't subscribe to moral relativism in other aspects of the creation of wikipedia. To put another way: being neutral in article content doesn't imply that we have to be neutral in literally every organizatiinal aspect. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance