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Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

• flippinburgers 5y ago
  The good news is that it has been reverted I believe. How obnoxious.
• gorgoiler 5y ago
  Opening a PR for something like this is extremely dramatic. I have, thankfully, never had much involvement with codes of conduct but if I did I would want it to pass by a committee or a community vote, with ample time beforehand for discussion, platform, and voting with majority or super majority requirement. A PR, on the other hand, needs just a handful of political allies — your reviewer — to land, and that’s it. I of course assume the best intentions on the part of the requester, but one could be forgiven for seeing it as a power play, subverting the democratic process. Not everything is code.
• karaterobot 5y ago
  In general these seem like mostly bad ideas to me, but I'm not part of that community, and I'm in favor of them making their own rules and accepting the consequences. However, I am wondering if there is some historical context that I'm missing: have their been increasingly hostile or abusive discussions in the Ruby community which these changes are meant to address?
• hogFeast 5y ago
  How it started: come on let's just oust the baddies...who can disagree with this? How it ended: I am from a different culture, I have no idea what any of this means. Classic.
• temp8964 5y ago
  This whole CoC thing is just stupid. Why do they need to write this kind of rules in the first place?
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    As a mod, it is helpful to have rules to point to when disciplining someone to prevent it from seeming arbitrary.
    • patronagenone 5y ago
      As an open-source contributor and professional developer, it tells me which projects to avoid entirely. Keep your state sponsored politics out of my hobby and profession.
    • enriquto 5y ago
      Honestly, I'd prefer that trolls get banned straight away without needing to point anywhere, instead of all these stupid CoCs. You do not need any special document to kick off annoying people from a mailing list. The mere existence of CoC documents seems like an elaborate act of extreme trolling. EDIT: Moreover, CoCs don't really work in practice. Has any CoC ever prevented abuse of somebody? Do you have a concrete example?
    • swat535 5y ago
      I think as a mod you are in a tough spot regardless. If you have loose rules and use your discretion you will be hated on. If you have strict rules, you will be hated on for stifling speech.
  • sarlalian 5y ago
    Because people keep saying and doing crappy things, and then when they are called out for it, they claim its just a joke.
    • brighton36 5y ago
      It probably is a joke. Jokes often have a butt. What else do you think they're up to, exactly...
  • LAC-Tech 5y ago
    Missionaries have been around for a long time.
• nyellin 5y ago
  Title seems wrong according to the diff on GitHub.
  • morpunkee 5y ago
    https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691/files https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691/files
    • meowface 5y ago
      Yeah, looks like that's the diff OP intended to link. At face value, it seems even worse than presented. Removed: >"Participants will be tolerant of opposing views." Modified: >Before - "Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated." >After - "Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated." The "reasonably" removal aside - for an attempt to be much more precise and inclusive with language, why would they narrow the previous "harassment" to "harassment against protected classes"? I'm sure this wasn't the intention, but rather than adding or intensifying any protections, the change, if read literally in the context of the diff, makes it seem like harassment is now tolerated if you aren't a protected classes whereas it previously wasn't tolerated at all. I think a better route would've been to keep that line as-is and add a new line saying something like "any remarks that could be considered disparaging, mocking, or exclusive towards any protected classes will not be tolerated". This makes it clear that any kind of singling-out of protected classes is disallowed, regardless of the fact that some people may consider the definition of "harassment" to require something more severe than that.
• simonsarris 5y ago
  Almost more surprising is that this was removed: > When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. In favor of this: > Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent. Also changed yesterday: > Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. became: > Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated. The updated CoC is here: https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/master/en/conduct/index.md https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/master/en/con... This is very weird because fundamentally it stems from a failure of the moderators. If someone makes a sexist joke you don't just let them because you're "assuming good intentions", that clause means that you tell them it's not appropriate here, and if they apologize you assume they are sincere, and if they don't you swiftly boot them. But there is no substitute for good moderation, shifting words around won't help much. Aside: Open source discussion opening with "My rationale for these changes are documented on Twitter: [link]" also seems somewhat crazy. And I love Twitter, it just seems very odd to link to a thread of tweets instead of restating your case in the proper medium.
  • zkldi 5y ago
    Yeah - no longer assuming good intentions is a weird thing to change. I guess it makes it easier to claim bad intentions?
    • mannykannot 5y ago
      Having a position of always assuming good intentions can be gamed by people with bad intentions.
      • tomjen3 5y ago
        It also is an issue for all others. FX I don’t know if it is appropriate to say “you guys” to a mixed crowd anymore, but if I hadn’t seen that some people get upset about that I wouldn’t think twice about it and just emulated American movies. Buffy isn’t exactly sexist and she says it often and to a mixed crowd.
• zkldi 5y ago
  Not a fan of the "you should educate yourself" retort whenever people ask for definitions. It happens in that Github thread over what a "protected class" entails.
  • phone8675309 5y ago
    Can't educate myself if you don't give me a pointer. That said, "please help me understand" is sometimes a bad faith tactic to claim ignorance of basic empathy.
    • andrew_ 5y ago
      the "bad faith actor/tactic" argument is a dismissive mechanism to justify overreaction.
      • BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
        Whenever I’m arguing about a position I’m expected to thoroughly define terms and provide citations. Yet, when I ask what a nebulous term entails the onus is on me to “educate” myself … as if what they’re saying is self-evident. It’s so underhanded.
        • phone8675309 5y ago
          It's like when someone tells me to "read more theory".
      • krageon 5y ago
        > dismissive mechanism Yes, it is. It is meant to dismiss trolls. > to justify overreaction Trolls should be banned, because they are poison to a community. As such, it is not an overreaction to use a mechanism like this.
        • bsagdiyev 5y ago
          I don’t have hours every day to research every little thing. You want to be an ambassador for your views? Provide context and references.
• jhhh 5y ago
  This github links to a twitter thread about rationale for the change which mentions a sexist joke that was in the ruby mailing lists but doesn't link to it. I feel like I've read entire news articles about kinds of events like these where no one will actually show what was said. We're just supposed to agree it was really bad sight unseen. Here's my guess at the joke at the core of this for anyone wondering: http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441396 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/... Edit: Appears it was copied in the git thread, as mentioned below.
  • zkldi 5y ago
    I was trying to actually look for the sexist joke, couldn't find it anywhere.
    • tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
      It's a bit buried in the GH discussion, but someone else posted it here: "Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)" If I were in charge of a community or mailing list, I would kick the person who wrote that off. But I simply don't see how (a) the existing rules didn't do enough to cover this, or (b) the changes will resolve those issues without causing other problems.
      • not2b 5y ago
        As I understand it, some people who want to make sexist jokes on the mailing list with impunity pointed to the language about tolerating opposing views to claim that their desire to belittle women on the mailing list must be tolerated. Maybe they should point to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance edit: evidently someone thinks this comment is worthy of a downvote. I didn't say whether I approved of this action or not. I looked through the threads to find out why the decision was made. I don't think a sincere effort to provide more information should be punished because of disagreement.
• JakeAl 5y ago
  So harassment of non-protected classes is ok? What pre-adolescent nonsense is this? How about "Behave in a professional manner or get kicked off the mailing list."
  • dnautics 5y ago
    What I think is odd is that "protected classes" language is a highly us-legal-system-centric concept.
    • tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
      Even more than US-centric, the commenters in the GH discussion explicitly refer to California laws. The internet is not California, regardless of what the technologists who live there would like to believe. (to be clear, I'm completely in favor of protecting people from harassment and abuse, though I strongly disagree with reserving that only to legally protected classes).
      • zuminator 5y ago
        Everyone is part of a legally protected class. For example, you oughtn't discriminate on the basis of marital status. Regardless of who you are you have a marital status, either single, married, divorced, widowed, etc. Or you ought not discriminate on the basis of race. Whether it be white, mixed race, ginger, etc. So while it might be the case that being a member of a minority is a particular instance of a protected class, we all fit into various classes, and the idea is that none of us should face harassment or discrimination based upon our membership therein, regardless of what it may be.
        • tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
          They're part of a class but no, not everyone is "legally" protected. Short people are not a legally protected class, hence why it's possible to have height restrictions in certain employment roles (in the US at least). But that kind of underscores why "legally protected class" really doesn't make sense for a CoC. Like yeah short people aren't legally protected...but any good CoC should prohibit harassment and abuse against people for their height. Obviously.
• setpatchaddress 5y ago
  This is a very slanted and misleading title. The title of the commit is "Remove abuse enabling language" and it appears to do just that.
  • tenaciousDaniel 5y ago
    It might be slanted in the sense that they're picking out a single thing that was removed, but I don't see how it's misleading. They are indeed removing that line.
• calvinmorrison 5y ago
  .
  • taneq 5y ago
    > The rest of us normal, sane people need to stop letting "good intentions" let the trojan horse of endless CoC, morality games, witch hunts and ideological warfare from continuing in the name of 'being non-offensive'. Amen. These days my instant response to this kind of posturing is to disengage as far as possible from all involved. It's an ideological cancer that turns previously productive communities into a morass of backbiting and one-up-person-ship.
  • mackal 5y ago
    Last time I participated in a discussion about adding a CoC to a project it boiled down to people just not liking that it's called a Code of Conduct. They agreed that we needed a basic set of rules etc for moderation purposes but opposed having a CoC, but they were fine as long long as it wasn't called a CoC. I neglected to point that out to them.
    • SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      I think that's a reasonable perspective. As demonstrated by the incident here, the specific term "Code of Conduct" tends to attract people who don't like to be tolerant of opposing views and don't think it's appropriate to assume good faith. If you want to maintain those standards, which have traditionally been seen as necessary in online communities, it's probably best to use alternative terms which don't have that baggage.
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  • golingo 5y ago
    As an alternative, have you tried to not act like a jerk?
• nemetroid 5y ago
  What's with the recurring comments about corporations and businesses? > Some people may have views that when expressed, may be harmful to the interest of particular groups of people like big corporations. This has to be taken into account. > universally accepted corporate values > That's California Core Corporate Policies in work > For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. > Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause Given the success of the pull requests, I can only assume that this is not a sockpuppet mocking the rules in question. Is it some kind of multi-layered joke?
  • geofft 5y ago
    I find it confusing too, but my reading of this is that @hmdne is trolling, but the actual changes @hmdne wants to make are fine and defensible in their own right and in fact make it easier to kick out trolls like @hmdne (e.g., a troll can claim that their trollish proposition is an "opposing view" that one needs to be respectful of), and so people are engaging in good faith to try to deflate the troll. Some of these comments are obviously bait to me - e.g., the one about how we should privilege members of boards of directors - and this looks like a careful attempt not to take the bait. Note that PR 2690 is not from @hmdne and was unchanged from how it was proposed. PR 2691 is, and perhaps should not have been accepted in its present form because of the "protected class" language, but there are good-faith comments in 2690 (with no mention of corporations) about why the "opposing views" line should be removed.
    • morpunkee 5y ago
      In this sense, that they would help protect the community from trolls - yes they are defensible. But otherwise, I would unfortunately disagree. It's like an argument that we should lock everyone in cages, so they wouldn't hurt themselves.
    • cnvlal 5y ago
      Can't wait for the Rust changes to be merged into the Linux kernel, so we have behavioral expert opinions on LKML, too!
• xanaxagoras 5y ago
  Everything these children worry about is frivolous.
  • tdfx 5y ago
    This should be the top voted comment on this post.
• jolux 5y ago
  Generally I'm opposed to rules changes as a solution to moderation problems unless the rules genuinely do not provide for a way to discipline people who misbehave. But to some extent, they're necessary. Would we prefer if enforcement of rules was capricious and random? Better to have a shared understanding of behavioral expectations before engaging in shared labor. Still doesn't remove the need for good moderators though.
• andrew_ 5y ago
  And another project skews into the digital manifestation of an HOA [1]. May the next generation put an end to this madness. [1] Home Owners Association, for those outside the U.S. and unfamiliar with the term.
  • froggertoaster 5y ago
    I feel like your comparison is unfair to HOAs.
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  • DonHopkins 5y ago
    Are you saying that the Ruby community is trying to ban Black people? Where did you get that idea? What exactly is your point? https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-associations-black-americans-discriminaiton-2020-9?international=true&r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-... >When homeowners associations were first created, they helped keep Black people out of the neighborhood. They're still doing it today. >Homeowners associations exploded in popularity in the 1960s as suburb development was booming. >Some HOAs used racist deeds and covenants to bar Black buyers from purchasing homes. >Today, HOAs are majority white and Asian, and Black homeowners say they experience targeted discrimination and harassment by their HOAs.
    • reuben364 5y ago
      I think he's referring to the idea of petty HOA politics where motivated power hungry people drown others out and selectively apply rules to make others miserable.
      • deleted 5y ago
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• bawolff 5y ago
  The new version > "Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent." Huh. That's interesting phrasing. I don't think i like it. Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent, the sticky point in human interaction and morality is to what extent do we take results instead of intentions into account when evaluating the morality of an action. The statement as is isn't saying anything about how we should interpret intent vs result just that we should acknowledge that its different. I personally believe that codes of conduct (both this current trend, but also in the traditional meaning of the word) should be specific about what behaviour is wanted, otherwise its a meaningless platitude. This says nothing about how we should interpret someone doing something hurtful while not intending to (or claiming not to). Is that ok? Is it only ok if a "reasonable" person would make the same mistake? Is it ok if they haven't made the same mistake before? Something else?
  • oh_sigh 5y ago
    It's just laying out exactly what you seem to agree with, and that good intentions aren't a shield for bad results. Someone might say "you look really sexy today" and intend it as a compliment, but even if it is a compliment it almost certainly isn't going to be received as one.
    • bawolff 5y ago
      Is it laying that out? I think you have to significantly read between the lines to get there. > what you seem to agree with, that good intentions aren't a shield for bad results I wasn't giving my opinion so much as sumarizing its an unsolved problem with no obvious correct answer. If you want my personal view. I don't believe actual results should be taken into account at all. "you look really sexy today" isn't wrong to say because the recipent was offended. It's wrong to say because a reasonably acculturized person would know that there is a high chance it would be offensive in context. If the dice were on your side, and for some reason the recipent was delighted at your "compliment", i would still say it was wrong because you had no way of knowing that that would be the outcome. The wrongness has nothing to do with what actually happened, only with what was reasonably predictable to happen. There are pros and cons to this view, and reasonable people do disagree. [And to be clear, even if something was not predictable and therefore not "wrong", that doesn't absolve you from having to apologize/make it right if you accidentally hurt someone]
• dfgjnirf 5y ago
  I thought this was a troll. I feel that the identifying of CEOs of big companies as a protected class may have been a tipping of the hat. There seems to be a common strategy by right wing accelerationists that involve masquerading as left wing and pushing things into absurdity.
  • andrew_ 5y ago
    Or there are left wing actors that are truly absurd. I'd believe that before tinfoil theories about bad actors.
  • taneq 5y ago
    > There seems to be a common strategy by right wing accelerationists that involve masquerading as left wing and pushing things into absurdity. Or does there? The truly disturbing aspect of so many things like this is that (as per Poe's Law) it's impossible to distinguish cynical mockery from earnestly-held extremism.
    • User23 5y ago
      I was wondering if some of the weirdness is machine translation from Japanese. Anyone know?
      • morpunkee 5y ago
        We don't know the nationality of this hmdne guy, possibly Arabic.
    • dfgjnirf 5y ago
      4chan /pol/ does this stuff all the time. The OK as white power sign, the Free Bleeding movement as just a few off the top of my head. But then there are antifastonetoss which I'm pretty sure are actually fans of stonetoss using a loophole to avoid getting banned. These people cannot operate in the open and have found other ways to operate. I can't tell if it fits the Ruby CoC case. I'm just keeping an open mind to the possibility.
• throwawaybchr 5y ago
  Aside from obvious cases of intentional abuse: The world is filled with people who have different ideas about what is funny, what is offensive, what is fun, what is boring, etc. On the internet it is expected to have a clash of cultures since people from different backgrounds are collaborating. There will naturally be well intentioned misunderstandings. Rather than creating a system that allows for these to take place peacefully without incident, any example of a joke gone wrong or a word out of place will result in an inquisition. Why do so many westerners want to live like this? Constantly thirsty for purifying others. It seems to come from some kind of emptiness that must exist in one's life to be so obsessed over minutiae.
• inside65 5y ago
  Equality once meant tolerance and acceptance of differences. Now it means if you disagree with me, you're a leftist or a trumper or a thisthatortheotherphobe.
• noxer 5y ago
  +1 wokeness for them, next.
  • seoulmetro 5y ago
    Hopefully all these "wokeness" vs "conservative" lines are drawn in the sand. I really enjoyed when we were writing lines of code rather than writing borders, rules and obvious regressive in-fighting. I can't be the only one looking at all this political garbage and ghost drama with shame.
    • noxer 5y ago
      The comment was exactly in that ironic spirit. The internet version or a slow clap for someone who did something completely useless for the sole purpose of virtual signaling. If someone runs around on github doing such nonsense "work" editing text no one ever reads you dont deserve more than a ironic acknowledgement. Its like writing ToS that no one reads but replace the salary of a lawyer with people laughing at you for doing this sh*t in your free time (I sure hope no one pays for it). >I can't be the only one looking at all this political garbage and ghost drama with shame. This is not political its cultural and everyone outside the US laughs about it.
      • seoulmetro 5y ago
        Politics is part of the culture in the US. And yes, they laugh about it.... but then they slowly devolve into catering towards it and existing within it.
      • raxxorrax 5y ago
        I don't think you should ever demonize trivial contributions. I really dislike any COC or even the intent to further "professionalism" but that is another matter. You will never lose anything if someone contributes, however small the change may be. I have a project with an extremely narrow purpose. Someone corrected a missing dot in a sentence. That was awesome and unexpected.
        • 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• arthurcolle 5y ago
  Opposing view: GitHub's changing of `master` to `main` as the name of the default remote branch was not necessary and a huge waste of time for all parties involved.
  • hallway_monitor 5y ago
    I still can't get over this. The word master has like 10 definitions and because one of them is part of a distasteful part of history that has nothing to do with the way it was used in this context, they inconvenience everyone.
    • saba2008 5y ago
      >is part of a distasteful part of history ...of one of the english speaking countries
      • MadeThisToReply 5y ago
        I think you mean "of literally every country in the entire world".
        • tgv 5y ago
          I don't like taking things literally, but in this case that would be necessary, as it's the whole point. "Master" is an English word. If it isn't, "main" is primarily translated to "haupt" in German, and we all know what a Haupttruppführer was, so that should go too, as should every other word that possibly has a negative connotation somewhere in the world.
          • arthurcolle 5y ago
            Minitru is hard at work yeet'ing all the double-plus-ungood words out of the lexicon for sure
  • JadeNB 5y ago
    What does this have to do with the discussion, unless as an illustration of what an "opposing view" could be, which surely no-one had trouble imagining?
• ergl 5y ago
  > That's common sense. We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. Uh… is this a troll? Like other commented said, this feels like a anti-CoC thing or an extreme case of Poe's law, at least.
  • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    It's probably a troll. Man, the passionated bikeshedding over CoCs in some communities and even in here, with many extremist viewpoints from both sides, makes me glad I'm not really attached to any community. If they're stupid, why should I spend the emotional energy? Just walk away.
    • sprash 5y ago
      That's the whole point of CoCs: divide and conquer. As a result people "Just walk away". Assets paid by Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce and Google are pushing this.
      • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
        On the topic of extremist viewpoint, this one's (in my first reaction) is off the scale... I'd ask you if you got proof, but as I wrote above, I'm not sure I want to spend my evening reading conspiracy websites. But hey, maybe you can "guide me to the light"?
  • tgv 5y ago
    IMO that's satire, "the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues." It says a lot if you can't tell the difference.
• Seattle3503 5y ago
  After centuries of attempts it appears we still struggle to define how a good person should act. I really thought we had it this time /s
• eljimmy 5y ago
  Seems like a poorly misinterpreted joke about how people will often mention a younger age for their birthday when they’re getting into their older ages? Is that the joke? If this joke is told by women more often than men (in my experience it is), is it sexist to point that out? Would this have received the same reaction if the joke was made by a woman? Some things to ponder, no doubt. However, in this day and age I personally wouldn’t make a joke about any particular group unless I was born into it. Cancel culture is becoming a bit overwhelming.
  • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    How about a joke in the context of saving money that said "Must've been done by a Jew" (my supremely limited interaction - with one person from Israel - was about him trying to get more money from the organization I was representing), would it be bigoted to point that out? For my taste that "must've been a woman" line was cringeworthy. He could've said "Well I guess someone doesn't want to grow old".
    • bsagdiyev 5y ago
      I say that all the time and I’m Jewish, so I think it’s more about whether the intention was offensive or genuinely meant as a joke.
      • wccrawford 5y ago
        Sadly, as someone who isn't Jewish, my view is that if a non-Jewish person says that, they almost have ill intent. It's one of the things that I think people can joke about themselves that way, but it's almost impossible for an outsider to do it without ill intent. I thought the joke that spurred this was in poor taste, but didn't have any ill intent. It definitely didn't belong on on that message. I'm not even sure jokes belong there at all. If they do, it'd be a pretty narrow selection of them, in certain circumstances.
        • bsagdiyev 5y ago
• 908B64B197 5y ago
  A lot of the Codes of Conduct (especially the Ruby one) stem from activism by Coraline Ada Ehmke[0] For those who don't know her, quite an interesting person. She was notoriously fired from GitHub after a year after being hired to work on their anti-harassment platform. [0] https://where.coraline.codes/ https://where.coraline.codes/
  • umvi 5y ago
    Oh yeah, wasn't she the instigator of "Opalgate"? Seems like she has a chip on her shoulder and this is her life's work (to go around bullying projects that don't have stringent enough CoCs into submission)
    • krainboltgreene 5y ago
      No, I was, but amazingly I haven't received any bullying or harassment for it. I wonder why.
      • umvi 5y ago
        At first I thought you were trolling but you're right, Coraline links to your Twitter post in the original Opalgate PR. I wouldn't really call what you did "instigation" though. You called out a post on Twitter you thought was BS, but that's way different than actually taking action to boot someone from a project, their career, etc. The former I would call "speech" or "an opinion", the latter I would call (esp. with Twitter mob backing) "bullying", "instigation", and/or "aggression". If Coraline feels bullied or harrassed, my guess would be because people tend to react to bullying and aggression with bullying and aggression. "You reap what you sow", "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar", etc.
        • krainboltgreene 5y ago
          How do you think Coraline saw this information? I spread it. She just took the brave step of actually trying to get that psycho off an important community project. All I did was gossip. > If Coraline feels bullied or harrassed She's gotten death threats. Doxed. Anything relating to codes of conduct will immediately bring her up, likely lying about the situation or her intentions. There is zero good faith discussion going on in this thread. Her attempting to remove a toxic person from a community should not result in this hate, yet here you are, without all the facts, deciding she deserves it. Just obliterate this community from the sky.
• deleted 5y ago
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• umvi 5y ago
  Why does forcibly making communities more equitable, tolerant, inclusive, etc. feel like the community is moving more towards dystopia than utopia?
  • scotty79 5y ago
    I think that's the effect of attempting to codify good etiquette. You get drowned in details and the result is kafkaqueske.
  • saba2008 5y ago
    Because it's good-old trick of making vague and overreaching rules, so anybody could be declared guilty and thus maximizing power of people who apply these rules. But history repeats as comedy, so thankfully no firing squads and killing fields this time.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Going to details it look like they aren't making changes that are more equitable, tolerant or inclusive. Or that really those words don't mean anything what they meant anymore.
• google234123 5y ago
  Twitter has made everyone neurotic and negative... e.g. very sensitive to perceived insults. Anyway, the same people that push these changes are some of the most hateful people on twitter towards people on the right of the political spectrum.
  • scotty79 5y ago
    Is it just Twitter? I think Facebook has its role too.
    • ksec 5y ago
      Facebook often gets its hate due to its political nature of spreading news. But I think Twitter is far worst in these type of social issues where interaction are more "personal".
  • staysafeanon 5y ago
    Especially after the refugees from Tumblr started to flood Twitter with their insanity.
• flippinburgers 5y ago
  They don't appear to have received Matz's approval for their changes. Unsurprising. Furthermore they don't even have a solid definition of terms. Unsurprising. Furthermore their arguments are based on their interpretations of law in California. Unsurprising. https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690
  • yxhuvud 5y ago
    Merging a change to the CoC without any input at all from any well known long time members of the Ruby core team make me guess the committer is going to get a stern talking to.
• josephcsible 5y ago
  - Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. + Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated. That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". Isn't that then adding abuse-enabling language, not removing it?
  • dragonwriter 5y ago
    > That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". With the exception of a couple special exceptions (for federal employment law, these exceptions include age over 40 and veteran status), “protected classes” in US antidiscrimination law (the source of the term) are actually axes of discrimination where everyone is a “member” of one defined by each axis (race, sex, religion—including none, etc.) So while it is ambiguous exactly what classes are involved (because the set of protected classes varies depending on context and jurisdiction), its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class.
    • josephcsible 5y ago
      > its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class. Sure, but isn't harassment something that should never be okay, not something that should be okay as long as the basis isn't an axis that defines a protected class?
      • banannaise 5y ago
        This helps with the common abuser's refrain of "I'm being harassed by everyone piling on to call me out for my [repeated, abusive] behavior!" That's not on an axis of protection, so that argument is easier to dismiss as not germane to the code of conduct.
• aaron695 5y ago
  Out of interest do any of the people in the Twitter threads or pulling these commits actually write code? Not busy work like documents, updates, even testing. Actual code? Generally these are things are outside trouble makers. Not coders. Not sure with Ruby, but it seems worse than others.
• greyivy 5y ago
  Good on them! Makes me want to spend some time learning Ruby.
• scandox 5y ago
  The change indicated in the title[1] was made on foot of trolling by the user @hmdne It's really a remarkable failure of communication. It doesn't appear anyone read what he was saying carefully. They just looked at the first two lines of his proposal and assumed they understood his intent. And then when encouraged he actually made the change. And they actually merged it. It's amazing that people who are apparently paying such close attention to textual significance, don't appear to have the ability to read his statements with any care. [1] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecomment-930575204 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
  • vorpalhex 5y ago
    That is some golden level trolling and speaks significantly to the quality of the process which enabled these updates.
  • prancer_or_vix 5y ago
    Wow, glad someone else caught that. I read that comment a few times because it seemed almost exactly the opposite in intent of the general intent of the PR (as explained by the twitter thread).
  • apple4ever 5y ago
    Wow I didn't catch that at first, but you are right. This comment illustrates it even more > That's common sense. We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. [1] And > Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause [2] [1] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecomment-931238772 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom... [2] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecomment-931277765 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
  • harpersealtako 5y ago
    I'm a little embarrassed at how long it took for me to see the joke. The story should be "ruby maintainers accidentally get overeager and merge literal satire into their CoC". A quote for context: >A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition. It's like the video where you try to count the number of times people pass the ball and you don't notice the gorilla walking through the middle of the room -- you read the first sentence where it starts listing off protected classes, skim over the part where it lists "boards of directors of big corporations" alongside people of color, women, and LGBT folks, and end up thinking that this @hmdne guy is a pretty woke fellow.
• koonsolo 5y ago
  I think this is a big difference between US and EU. In EU we like to joke around, tease each other, and not get fired over that. When we tell a sexist joke with a woman present, you will get a witty reply from them, not a call to HR. I hope this US bullshit stays in US. Seems that EU women are not victims but can stand their own ground.
  • koonsolo 5y ago
    Haha, thanks for the downvotes. Let's see what happens when EU is awake.
    • DonHopkins 5y ago
      Thanks for choosing this hill to die on. Now we know what kind of person you are. In case English isn't your first language: https://grammarist.com/idiom/the-hill-you-want-to-die-on https://grammarist.com/idiom/the-hill-you-want-to-die-on
  • maccolgan 5y ago
    I have bad news, they are not going to keep it to the US.
  • thriftwy 5y ago
    I think the best update to that CoC will be kindly asking any person from the USofA to not participate. The rest of the document may be left in any state. Most of problems with harrasment and reactions to it would disappear overnight. The USA does not dominate the contributions anymore, but it does absolutely dwarf anybody else when it comes to shitstorms.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Developers in USA earn more, thus they are automatically privileged group, despite their other protected attributes. Thus they can not be harassed. A logic we should apply. It only seems fine to tie it all to moneny.
  • 5y ago
• rdtsc 5y ago
  Others have pointed a seemingly silly phrase of "My rationale for these changes are documented on Twitter". But there is a deeper idea hidden there as perhaps one of the reason the changes were enacted was not protect anyone, but to increase engagement on Twitter. Whether someone is protected or not, is perhaps secondary. > (removed) "When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions" Exactly! So, on a meta level, if we apply the same idea to the change itself. How do we know it was made with a good intention or simply get +1s, heart emojies and retweets...
  • BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    "documented" and "twitter" in the same sentence is so weird. There no worst format for keeping an history of things. It's ephemeral, hard to browse or search, and terrible to format.
• ergot_vacation 5y ago
  It's time for people to start badging projects with a new style of CoC, one line: "No woke ideology allowed." That's it. No explanation needed. Those who pretend they don't know what the rule means, or protest, are in violation. The radical left has been co-opting every organization they can get their hands on and kicking out the "non-believers" for years. It's time the handful of sane people that are left band together and start doing the same. The left loves the phrase "toxic," but their ideology genuinely is toxic, and no project, company, or group can thrive once it takes root.
  • praash 5y ago
    I like this idea when distilled a bit: "No ideology allowed." I'm just going to dismiss the second paragraph about angrily finger-pointing at an ambiguous political alignment, "them". You could replace "left" with "right|antifa|fascists|deep state|elite", or "toxic" with "unconstitutional|dangerous|radical", and that text wouldn't make any more sense. We need less polarization, thank you.
    • ativzzz 5y ago
      > "No ideology allowed." Is an ideology itself, it's contradictory.
  • Jonnax 5y ago
    woke adjective, Slang.(often used in the phrase stay woke) having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights. You seem nice.
  • jeltz 5y ago
    I have been thinking of when I start a project to add a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.txt file which only contains "No code of conducts are allowed" making proposing a code of conduct a CoC violation. :D
• jbirer 5y ago
  Gives me Mao's Cultural Revolution vibes.
• enriquto 5y ago
  This thing is catnip for trolls, but unfortunately the direction of these changes is really creepy.
• zivkovicp 5y ago
  This is some next-level trolling right here.
• gklperson 5y ago
  The change was pushed without asking Matz. I wonder if the strategy is the same as here: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/github-gendered-pronoun-debate/ https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/github-gendered-pronoun-deb... Push a change without asking a non-native English speaker, make that person upset and provoke a counter reaction, then start a major Twitter storm to discredit and possibly expel the non-U.S. peasant. Some of the names in that article appear on LKML in connection with the Rust proposal (not sure if they are the same persons). Caveat emptor.
  • jeltz 5y ago
    Yeah, I love how these people pushing CoCs love harassing and discriminating against non-Americans.
  • throw_m239339 5y ago
    it worked with Antirez. Matz will cave eventually because the people pushing these idiotic changes will harass Matz the same way they harassed Antirez into submission. http://antirez.com/news/122 http://antirez.com/news/122 https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/github-gendered-pronoun-debate/ https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/github-gendered-pronoun-deb... > When another user, Isaac Schlueter, committed the change anyway, Isaac "white men need no apply" Schlueter. This guy never resigned of any group he was part of, or NPM leadership when he said some objectively racist comments... rules don't apply to them... The people who push these "codes of conducts" are the one harassing others and codes of conducts give them a way to harass other developers into ideological submission without being punished for their harassment tactics, because CoC are written in such away that if you're not following the intersectional ideology then you are fair game. All that had never had anything to do with programming, it's purely partisanship. And if you don't cave, harassers are relentless because they have their own massive internet mobs on social media, a well oiled ideological war machine.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• fithisux 5y ago
  Does it apply to Crystal too?
  • yxhuvud 5y ago
    No, Crystal is a separate community and thus has a separate CoC.
• sadieenward 5y ago
  One of the most worthless PRs ever. Gotta Gate keep these shitlib faggots out of open source
• BoHerfVJrEsq 5y ago
  It's no big surprise. The cult of woke, having wrapped itself around the neck of the project, is now going for the squeeze. Expect it to continue in this vein for a few years until the people who pull most of the weight get annoyed and leave or fork it or whatever. This is how woke cancer kills everything it touches.
• grumple 5y ago
  > And while we are at it, maybe also we should correct this rule: > * Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. To become something like (what do other posters think? Can we make it even stricter?): > * Behaviour which can be considered harassment will not be tolerated. > The law should always protect the victim, not the perpetrator. Yikes. So I'm a victim if I say I am, even if that's unreasonable given the circumstances?
  • jrootabega 5y ago
    That's what the rule would technically allow, but it will only be adhered to when used against the enemies of those enforcing the rules.
• Zababa 5y ago
  From the discussion of the PR: > A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition. > Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. I don't want to debate the race/gender stuff as it's pointless, but "member of board of director of big corporations" is a protected class? Has this always been a thing that I wasn't aware of? This doesn't seem to be a joke, although it sounds like one. By the same person: > if they are not a protected class, they will lose that right, yes. That's California Core Corporate Policies in work. And we enacted them. What's going on here? Why is Ruby adopting the "California Core Corporate Policies"? Again by the same person: > That's common sense. We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. That might be just me but I feel like something sinister is happening. Open source, adopting guidelines to protect "members of board of directors of the big corporations"? I'm not trying to say that these people are bad, but do they really need protection on the same level as gender/race minorities? Why is the discourse centered around one specific Californian policy? What incidents are they preventing by adopting these rules? Stuff like the recent criticism of Amazon for trying to "take over" Rust? Again, that might be paranoia on my part, but this sounds fishy. Edit: okay, it seem that this guy was trolling. Funny that he's trolling in the discussion but still got changes in because they were considered good. That's a beautiful way to demonstrate what actually matters
  • gnull 5y ago
    > Why is the discourse centered around one specific Californian policy? The same person calls it “universally accepted corporate values” in one of the previous comments. I guess it's Americans again ignoring the existence of other places on Earth with their cultures and views on things?
• mlang23 5y ago
  I realize CoCs were introduced to make certain supposedly marginalized groups more at home at conferences. But my personal experience/feeling is the complete reverse. I am a member of a minority as a person with a disability. In all the years I was interacting with the community, I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. But the day I saw the first CoC being used in a community I was interacting with, I started to feel uneasy. I cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. I also stopped going to conferences. Gosh, I am even glad I didnt go to the DebConf where they invited Linus only to realize later that they are very unhappy with his speaking style. I would have felt too much shame for being a part of such a group of hyprocrits.
  • fennecfoxen 5y ago
    The code of conduct is like HR. It’s there to protect the powerful, not to protect you.
    • 3pt14159 5y ago
      I was the original author of the Pycon Canada Articles of Association back when we were starting it, which included a section on conduct and inclusivity. A code of conduct is not there to protect powerful people. It's not there to browbeat people into being absolutely politically correct 100% of the time either. A code of conduct is something you put together so that everyone involved in the initial organization look at it once, and say "yep, I'm dealing with reasonable people here" and 99.999% of the time you don't have to look at it again because you've established from the start the type of people you're dealing with and they attract others that share the values. Then once in a blue moon someone does something awful and you pull it out and kick them out. Pete Forde was pretty "powerful" in the Ruby community and I don't exactly see him leading conferences or introducing people to Tobi anymore.
      • anothernewdude 5y ago
        None of what you describe requires or is helped by having a code of conduct.
• Doch88 5y ago
  > @Try2Code if they are not a protected class, they will lose that right, yes. That's California Core Corporate Policies in work. And we enacted them. California Core Corporate Policies. CCCP. That guy is the greatest troll ever.
• ho_schi 5y ago
  Please tell me that this Code of Conducts are all jokes? I've developed a fragile and basic rule which I try to follow: Don't be an asshole. I fail sometimes following that rule and I don't deny it. I struggle to become better but keep going. Of course you could extend this by "Help others, when appropriate", "Be nice to each other", "Use common sense", "Pardon others", "Don't be a d***", "Don't be a b*****" but that follows logical and would be itself a CoC. Anyway, Captain Picard said everything: Mister Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.
  • api 5y ago
    > Don't be an asshole. A whole lot of the reasonable parts of "woke" boil down to a few things: (1) Don't be an asshole. (2) Don't meddle in the affairs of others if those affairs do not concern you. (3) Evaluate other people from first principles and starting with a positive assumption, and check yourself for subconscious biases against groups of people that you might have picked up without really thinking about them. This is really a subset of checking oneself for irrational cognitive biases, which is a good practice in all areas.
    • skinkestek 5y ago
      Did you miss a word or something: If this was part of being woke it wouldn't be considered a slur by anyone..?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • fallingknife 5y ago
      Number 2 is the absolute opposite of "woke"
    • tharne 5y ago
      Wokism is precisely about being an asshole, and using the language of social justice justify bullying and intimidating people. I think we're a little late to the game recognizing this because historically authoritarian and bullying behavior has been more likely to come from the right than from the left. I generally avoid projects with a CoC because it signifies that the people in charge are more interested in picking fights than they are in developing great software.
• evocatus 5y ago
  This CoC just makes me feel that the Ruby community is no longer a safe space to contribute to. As a minority whose membership in one of these "protected classes" is unclear, and who can no longer be granted the benefit of the doubt / assumption of good intentions, I now find that it is safer simply to shut up and not contribute, rather than draw the ire of the community or accusations of abuse.
• a-dub 5y ago
  "As a reminder: Reinforcing stereotypes can discourage new and existing contributors. As the project runs on volunteer contributions, please think before you post about if your words may discourage anyone from participating. A good way to do this is to ask yourself "am I singling out any particular group in my statements?" If you are, and you didn't notice at first, you're probably over the line. Feel free to reach out to the moderators if you have any questions. (Ideally before posting!)" fixed it.
• heurisko 5y ago
  I raised my eyebrow at a statement in one of the comments in the PR. "This is so that a harasser won't be able to use a meritocracy argument, which as we all know, is dehumanizing..." I don't follow this at all. A meritocracy is what we want to achieve: it doesn't matter about the colour of your skin, sex, or orientation, if you can generate code of merit, then if there is a meritocracy, you should earn the respect of the community. This doesn't mean that everyone doesn't deserve a basic level of respect. But there are people who are better than me at what I do; I am better than other people. That's a fact of life. I think what other people achieve that I couldn't, is amazing, and I help others achieve what I am better at.
  • banannaise 5y ago
    The problem is high performers using their performance to justify abusive behavior, either implicitly or explicitly. A 10x engineer who is also an asshole (or a predator) can easily do enough damage to counteract all of his productivity.
    • heurisko 5y ago
      If an abuser is using their performance as an excuse to target others, then they aren't enabling a meritocracy, they're acting as a detriment to it. The idea of a meritocracy itself, is not inherently dehumanising, which was the point that the comment made.
    • sprash 5y ago
      Some high performers deliberately behave like assholes just to make a point that they are so skilled that people respect them despite their behaviors. It's a psychological thing. But I disagree that is does any damage. Everybody with minor social skills will figure out pretty quickly what kind of game is being played.
  • teddyh 5y ago
    Increasingly, the word and concept of “meritocracy” is seen as racist, since it denies due compensation for past and present institutional racism. Meritocracy is also seen as misogynist, following the same reasoning.
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  The conversation in the PR makes me feel like its author thinks the whole world is California and every single computer user knows what Californian laws are. What a chauvinistic little bigot he must be.
  • claudiug 5y ago
    ignorance is a bless for some people.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  dang — this thread is linking to the wrong PR. The PR which removes the phrase quoted in the title is https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691
• Locke 5y ago
  I wish we responded to situations more proportionally. In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not. Does it warrant responses like "Knock that bullshit off." or "you made an ass of yourself"... I don't know. Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation. Maybe even worse than the joke itself? I don't know. Then, folks take the discussion to github and twitter (and, eventually reddit and hn). Presenting only their verdict: "A newer member made a sexist joke, and was called out on it as being inappropriate." No links to the joke. No evidence that the joke is sexist. This makes it so much easier to imagine something really bad. No, we just get a verdict and we should all rise up against this sexism (which absolutely is bad, of course). Let's get our pitchforks. This amplifies one side of the argument and shuts down any useful conversation. Worse, it's used to rush through a CoC change without allowing any thoughtful discussion. Is this reaction proportional to the original joke? Is the reaction itself exemplar of how we would like to conduct ourselves?
  • lcrz 5y ago
    > Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation. It's not ironic. Forceful language (and rather tame still) is not just as bad as a 'joke'. The offence was not at the unprofessionalism of the joke, but at the contents of the joke. That is what fuelled a discussion. Removing the line from the CoC also was not a response to the joke. It was a response to the ensuing discussion about the joke. Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand. The 'verdict' as you call it, does not go into detail about the contents of the joke, because it was irrelevant to the reason of why they made a change. It could have easily been a different joke.
    • type0 5y ago
      > Removing the line from the CoC also was not a response to the joke. It was a response to the ensuing discussion about the joke. > Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand. I first thought your response was a joke, but maybe you actually mean that, put some emojis next time to show if you are joking
• d3d1rty 5y ago
  There was no such change. Here is the diff: -keep this list hospitable to the growing ranks of newbies, very young people, and their teachers, as well as cater to fire breathing wizards. :-) +keep this list hospitable and safe for everyone. - When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. +Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent. The changes were made in response to sexist comments on the mailing list; they had nothing to do with "opposing views".
  • vultour 5y ago
    There is a second PR that was merged: https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2691 This has to be a joke right? We're now at a point where the rules clearly say you can be harassed if you're not a protected class?
    • jmd42 5y ago
      Yes, it's a joke. Or at least the person who submitted that (hmdne) is clearly trolling (you can tell from their comments in the original thread). But the PR was still accepted in any case, so it looks like it went over the heads of the trollees.
• padraic7a 5y ago
  I am very sympathetic to this change. It probably doesn't go far enough to be honest. This type of change is important because without it moderation is more difficult. What can feel like a masochistic job becomes near impossible where every decision is treated as though it violates soeone's free speech. In reality people who don't want to abide by the CoC are free to say whatever they want in spaces they manage.
• mbreese 5y ago
  For some context, it looks like this might be the original message that started all of this mess... I'm not a Ruby person, but I thought it would be interesting to actually go back and follow the trail of what happened from the original mailing list messages (as opposed to what someone wrote on Twitter). The original message: >Another example - perhaps somebody could fix that (many errors have that source!) >Date.today >Date.today +1 # no error, but wrong result! ># Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;) [1] Thankfully, it looks like many of the replies just ignored the comment. One helpfully added: >(btw: please don't make sexist comments, it's discouraging to many people.) [2] Others took it a bit further: >No. Knock that bullshit off. [3] >You're in the wrong here. Take the loss, own up to it, and do better next time. [4] And somewhat predictably, things devolved from there... > What's next? Don't make enterprise java jokes / comments, it's discouraging to many people. [5] [1] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441396 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/... [2] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441399 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/... [3] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441419 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/... [4] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441408 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/... [5] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/441410 http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...
• bobthechef 5y ago
  Logically, a double edged sword. What an "opposing view" is is relative. The people who put this in place are logically opening the door to people being intolerant to their views, which is likely not the intended effect. But, of course, this isn't a matter of logic and the CoC is obviously not written to account for everyone's views. It is written to protect the views of the writers of the CoC. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. No one hires declared Nazis at universities (Maoists and other communist ilk, yes), and neutrality is not a thing. It's a question of whether those writing the CoC are correct and coherent. Are they feigning universal tolerance while imposing a regime of intolerance?
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Most of these kids wouldn't know real tolerance if it slapped them in the face, anyway
• Mikeb85 5y ago
  One user here is obviously trolling and the other is oblivious... Will these changes stick? Who knows... Also, the person who made the joke about women's ages should be banned for such a lame, cliche joke. As for harassment as CoCs, it's a mailing list... How hard is it to just talk about code?
• shadowgovt 5y ago
  This headline appears to be inaccurate? https://github.com/jacobherrington/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/master/en/conduct/index.md https://github.com/jacobherrington/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/ma... Removing "Participants will be tolerant of opposing views" was proposed, but I don't see where the proposal was accepted or merged.
• keb_ 5y ago
  Does anyone else feel that the user hmdne is being completely sarcastic in this thread? This reads 100% like irony, and yet this suggestion[1] by hmdne has 5 "hearts": > I suggest we also remove this point from the conduct guidelines: > * Participants will be tolerant of opposing views. > Some people may have views that when expressed, may be harmful to the interest of particular groups of people like big corporations. This has to be taken into account. [1] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecomment-930575204 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
• dqpb 5y ago
  Apart from the specific issue at hand, I'm just happy to see a groups "shared" philosophy being version controlled.
• buckrussell 5y ago
  one of these days these idiots are going to wake the fuck up and realize that the world does not revolve around them. if you dislike what someone says, FUCKING IGNORE THEM YOU GODDAMN FUCKING WHINY LITTLE BITCH. you do not, IN ANY WAY, get to make rules that govern what I say. ever.
• joelbluminator 5y ago
  With all the ageism on the job market going on it's gonna be men who are lying about their age even more than women...
• noufalibrahim 5y ago
  I can see the logic in prohibiting abusive behaviour on lists and other such fora and maintaining it that way. I can also see that the line won't be clear and there will be several special cases that have to be dealt with on a one-by-one basis. Mistakes will be made on both sides but people have to be mature enough to move on. One thing that I'd like to see more of is CoC's being scoped to a certain list, event or something that's clearly definable rather than a broad vague entity like "the community". If someone behaves in a certain way on a forum other than the one for which the CoC applies, it shouldn't be usable to enforce punitive action like expulsion.
• risedotmoe 5y ago
  I can’t believe this “CoC” meme actually propagated. Project maintainers should assess whether these CoC pushers are actually bringing any value to the project. These CoC’s feel like a way to remove someone you don’t like from a project without any real productive basis. A weapon used by folks who like to feel self righteous when they “cancel” people who don’t align with their ideologies. Adults don’t need a “Code of Conduct” to know they should be civil and respectful. If there’s to be a CoC it should only state “get rid of anything that gets in the way of good code” and they should start by booting these CoC nazis who are making their childish fragility’s other peoples problems. Don’t like something someone said? Talk to them personally before wasting people’s time and resources.
• pelasaco 5y ago
  In meanwhile they are trying to revert it: https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2693 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2693 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2695 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2695 I have the impression that Matz and co, without understanding the context, just approved the related PRs to avoid being canceled?
  • awb 5y ago
    > Unfortunately the author of #2690 was tragically born without a sense of humor. This disability makes them a protected class. > I am actually a firebreather as a hobby, and a wizard by self identified religious affiliation. I am claiming protections under the existing text of the Code of Conduct in the master branch and demanding this pull request be accepted. The trolling has come full circle
• spoiler 5y ago
  I wanna tell a story that happened a few years ago (edit: turned out to be loosely related stories as I remembered them)... Suddenly #ruby had a new rule: the word "guys" was banned to refer to people. Why? Because it's suddenly become the most exclusionist, sexist, oppressive, whatever-bad-you-want-it-to-be word. Bots were automated to hand out imputations and strikes, followed by kicking people who continued to use the word "guys" (regardless of the context). This automation was later reluctantly refined to be less trigger happy. Trying to prompt discussions "about the G word" was bannable (without a proper warning): New person joins, sends "thanks guys" after a question, gets slandered by the bot as the scum of humanity and then given a four-message long wall of text about why the word "guys" was intentionally given its modern-day meaning because of something-something subconscious and it's designed to manipulate you. Naturally, person complains about this cultist-looking spam. If a mod is online: fuck that new gu—person; BAN. Immediately. A ban. I think maybe the bot mentioned it it one of the messages that discussion is forbidden, but I don't think people read the whole message. It was worded in a very patronising "you're a worthless idiot without a single fucking shread of human decency, so let me lecture you on how to behave in my version of a beautiful society like you've just turned six" way that I don't think most people got defensive and didn't give a flying fuck about the consequences. The next in line for the woke firing squad were pronouns. ALL pronouns. This luckily never happened; I don't know why not, but I remember it being called regressive instead of progressive behaviour[2]. The G word rule ended up causing a lot of drama in-channel; and I remember at least one GitHub issue that got heated over this (they wanted it removed from the rules IIRC). At one point #ruby became a fusion of linguistic nuances, colloquialisms, culture, and social issue topics (pretty much what's happening here) that conversation about Ruby looked like it was off topic. I'm talking about hours of discussions about these subjects[1], and people with Ruby related questions get outright ghosted by everyone. This was why the earlier mentioned banning rule was introduced; mods noticed a slow exodus and a small decrease in activity in the channel when people weren't engaging in flame wars. I'm a white guy, but I'm queer (gay). I won't delve into my background too much, but short story short is that for most of my life I was living in confusion, fear, and alienation because of sexuality, so I know how it feels to be Queer, and that I always try to be compassionate and understanding in these issues, and I always try really hard to make everyone feel welcome and included[3] and look for compromises. A lot of active people in the Ruby community started feeling alienated and unwelcome because of this rule (no joke: they were called snowflakes by the woke folk in the ops channel). But these "woke" people on #ruby? Let me tell you: they're not woke at all. They're just hungry for control. They have all the textbook behaviours of a toxic parent (I'd know I grew up with one)/person. They wrapped their motives in good intentions, and manipulated most of the ruby community. I don't know if the "results" of their actions will be good or bad, but I'm not talking about results: I'm talking about motives and morals (which is what the focus is). Small digression: It was really disappointing to see some of the BLM things unfold where white-assed Americans (this is by no means exhaustive or exclusive to Americans or whites) tried to steal the spotlight with their "performative workeness" where they made being woke a pissing contest about how to outwoke the rest and be the most woke. It's the same thing as people who post those "fake" instagram pictures: the only difference is fake thoughts and woke tokens instead of "likes." It's absolutely disgusting that people abuse real social issues to "promote" themselves (companies who used this for PR are just as scummy). They're the fucking Cruella De'Vils[4] of this world and they don't even see it. This same person ("evil") that led this anti-guys movement on #ruby tried to get someone ("misguided" due to religious indoctrination) fired from _their own_ project (open source project) over a retweet. That's right, it wasn't even an original thought. She almost got her way, because some people were really supporting the. Like, people created accounts just to be able to harass the "misguided" person via github Issues. The evil person didn't get their way in ruining someone else's life. So What happened next? They made it all about them; they were the victim in this whole story. They resigned from the Ruby community with something like "not wanting to be in such a toxic community". They came back again, because they probably couldn't find a more effective way to assert their psychological dominance/control over another naive community. I've never experienced ANY toxicity, exclusivity, animosity or anything even remotely resembling discriminatory behaviour in my five years in the channel (at the time) until one asshole decided to ban a well-established English colloquialism. I find it incredibly ironic that they created the very thing they wanted to avoid: a fucking toxic community. The cherry on top of this was that in those five years of being part of the community, did I ever see anyone single member complain about the channel's community being not exclusive or not welcoming. Nobody raised this before or after. The only people raising this was a handful of who invented victims to protect so they could give themselves purpose and importance in the community, when they were a nobody before. This person who started the movement, their GitHub is littered with them doing "God's Good Work™" by opening CoC pull requests to random projects that were trending on HN or Github that week. I've never seen them talk in the Ruby channel other than the ops channel; there they would occasionally bring up someone's way of communicating wasn't sterile enough (my interpretation). They'd _almost never_ help with any Ruby related issues; the only reason why I can't straight up say "never" is because I remember they'd give wrong advice sometimes/ Anyway. I've been typing this our for a while now trying to organise a bunch of jumbled events/thoughts/ideas that happened over a long period of time, and it's getting hard. I've written so much already that I'm sure most people will just think it's TLDR and skip it, and the worst part is I don't feel like I've said enough. Feels like I'm only 20% of the way there. Recalling these events stirred some old emotions (mix of anger, disappointment and sadness). I want to finish by saying that even with all this said—and it did have big (IMO negative) impacts on parts of the Ruby community—the Ruby community as a whole is _so_ much more than this toxic squad of performative woke bullies. The Ruby community already _is_ accepting, inclusive and non-discriminatory. I love the Ruby community even if I'm not as active as I used to be. Stay beautiful, and don't let trolls guilt-fish you toxicity. <3 --- One last thing, I used "woke" with a bad undertone throughout the text. I want to make clear that being woke is great, but being woke for the sake of your twitter followers or so you can feel "less guilty," or as a power move, or—anything that's not pure, basically, is just performative wokeness. There's very few people who do it for "knightly" reasons (as in goodness-of-their-heart reasons, I don't mean to be sexist). I already said this has grown way longer than I planned. I know I threw out a lot of things and they might seem a bit like a gishgallop, but that wasn't my intention. I love talking about social issues (as you can tell, I have strong opinions about this) and doing what little I can to make my circle of people feel good and inspired. Anyway I refuse to make this post longer, so if someone wishes to talk with me about any of these points further, feel free to reply or reach out. --- [1]: Nobody wants to hear they're a villain or that their moral compass is wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias Also people always selectively quote parts of your message, then they construct fake a context/narrative that makes them feel morally superior in their screenshot. [2]: I tend to agree. [3]: One of the reason this situation/anegdote is really sensitive for me is because I was accused of being oppressive, anti-LGBTQ, etc etc etc. This brought up a lot of doubts, insecurities and other dark thoughts all back: Like, hello, I'm gay and I'm making other marginalised people feel even more marginalised?! What kind of trash human am I? [4]: From the originals, not the recent live-action film with Emma Stone; that Cruella is awesome
• qwertyboi 5y ago
  What people should be slightly more concerned about is how now abusive behavior is allowed against people who are not considered to be "protected" under Californian state law.
  • ihsw 5y ago
    All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
• _lazlo 5y ago
  What was the offense? Often these allegations never reference the actual offense.
• tomohawk 5y ago
  Dysfunctional organizations try to solve things by creating a new rule every time something happens that some incomptent with enough power to make a rule doesn't like. You just end up with a pile of suffocating policy haphazardly put together by the most neurotic.
• swiley 5y ago
  Sounds par for ruby.
• Nasreddin_Hodja 5y ago
  The funny thing is that they use the term "protected classes" and in their opinion dividing people into unequal classes should not offend anyone. https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecomment-931234587 https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...