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Yeah, I presumed the only sensible reading of that sentence was "don't use sarcasm and jokes, as sarcasm and jokes are things that can be misinterpreted". Don'

Yeah, I presumed the only sensible reading of that sentence was "don't use sarcasm and jokes, as sarcasm and jokes are things that can be misinterpreted". Don't get me wrong - I understand that with an international community, sarcasm can be problematic. For example, the ruby community had lots of "fun" just over a month ago with a joke on a mailing list intended to be poking fun at traditional chivalry, that many mistook to be sexist. Then further jokers submitted pull requests changing the CoC wording in humorous ways that looked fine to non-native eyes, claiming those changes would fix the problem, and so the maintainers accepted those changes, until the sarcasm was pointed out clearly. It was pretty embarrassing for all involved. Is the only solution to ban all jokes and all sarcasm? I don't think so. But as a sarcastic pr*k at heart, I may well be biased. I certainly don't think you should lose access to all your email over it though.

pseudalopex 5y ago
The joke was maybe a date bug was written for women who calculated their age. The joker said they thought all girls would appreciate it. They said they didn't insult blondes. They said no one was hurt if the list was 100% male. I didn't see anywhere they said it was supposed to be about traditional chivalry. Even people who defended the joke linked it to a current stereotype. What made you think it was about traditional chivalry?
- undecisive 5y ago
  Yep, let's be specific, the comment in question was: # Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;) Given that this person is clearly not natively english-speaking, there is a possibility that you are absolutely right. I know he - and others - doubled down on the unhelpful "nothing to see here" thing, though I didn't read the full mailing list. Reading it charitably however (which nobody ever seems to want to do) it may well be saying that someone else is calculating a woman's age. This would lead me to suppose it is a common chivalrous humour (at least round these parts) linked to the idea that you should never ask a lady how old she is, which is to send birthday cards with exaggeratedly low numbers. e.g. you might send a 60-year-old lady a birthday card saying "Happy 21st birthday (again)" - but you would never do that for a man (often the opposite, in fact). Now then, you could argue - and some have - that this is still a form of sexism. Indeed, orthodox feminism* dictates that all forms of chivalry are antiquated and cause more harm than good, and there are some good arguments to support that, while many staunch feminists point out that it is a real shame to have to legislate against kindnesses towards women (especially when even if true social equality is ever achieved, often the biological encumbrances bias life against women anyway.) So yes, you may well be absolutely correct. And even when "people who defended the joke linked it to a current stereotype" they might be doing so with full understanding of the charitable reading. I should also point out, I have never spoken to this chap, I have no idea what kind of person he is. Is he a raving misogynist? No idea. Does he spit on the cake at women's birthdays? Maybe. Is he a cat pretending to be a human? Probably. All of these are completely and entirely beside the point though. The reaction was to legislate away from attempting compassionate dialogue. I don't know what would have happened if someone off-thread had said "Hi, just to let you know, some people might be reading this as X and I'm sure you didn't mean that - can I recommend you get ahead of it and say Y before someone gets offended?". Maybe it would have been exactly the same. Instead, a bunch of people invoked their right to offence, and insisted that the CoC be changed to codify that right. * [Just to clarify, I meant orthodox feminism in the sense of feminism that follows the arguments to their logical conclusions and adheres to them strictly, rather than what Google seems to think I mean]
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    The point was you said it was intended to poke fun at traditional chivalry like it was a fact. But it was just your speculation. We define chivalrous differently apparently. And I never heard of someone trying to flatter a 21 year old man by wishing him a happy 60th birthday. What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1] Well meaning people accept constructive criticism. I know people who would like what you wrote better. I know people who would think telling them you're sure they didn't mean something was insincere and condescending. The 1st reply that mentioned the attempted joke just said please don't make sexist comments.[2] It was appropriate for an aside on a technical mailing list. The joker could have replied off list if they didn't understand. They doubled down instead like you said. Someone else called it cancel culture and called other people hypocrites. Someone else compared it to witch burning. Someone else implied assuming good intentions meant ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable. The reaction to that was someone proposed a different standard. The reaction to that was trolling. [1] https://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc https://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc [2] https://rubytalk.org/t/simple-operations/75577/4 https://rubytalk.org/t/simple-operations/75577/4
    - undecisive 5y ago
      > The point was you said it was intended to poke fun at traditional chivalry like it was a fact. But it was just your speculation. In a situation where the only thing anyone has is speculation, and speculation on top of speculation. This gaslighting is disgusting and needs to stop. But yes, in retrospect I should have added an IMHO. On every HN comment anyone's ever written, probably. > What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1] That's an interesting and potentially useful youtube video, so thanks for that. However it presupposes a couple of things that I don't think hold true here. One of the most important is that you cannot know intent. The person spouting racist crap could be misinformed or miseducated or just didn't realise that what they said is commonly used to cause hurt - but just as equally, they might be a fundamentally hateful person spouting hatred. In that case, it is sensible to treat the comments based on the likely harms achieved, and not the intent, up to a point. (Even then, it's helpful to have people who will choose respectful education rather than abrasive condemnation) In this case, pretty sure everyone agreed that the intent wasn't malicious, but that it wasn't appropriate or helpful or necessary in that forum, and the confused delivery didn't help either. (I would also accept arguments that his "at least it wasn't a blond joke" comments indicated a level of culturally normalized misogyny, but that's a far cry from malice) But there's another issue, which brings us back to the origin of this thread: What kind of discourse do we want in our communities? It seems we have a choice - to either assume benign intent, or to assume malice. In the first quote of this comment, I assumed malice - that you're trying to be dismissive and gaslight me. I'm pretty sure you're not. Not that your statement wasn't dismissive, but I don't think that's your intention - you were simply explaining how you read my comment. And hopefully, when you read that, it seemed out of place - because I try to be respectful and balanced, and I highly value a well-reasoned discussion. But discourse where we treat people with respect and assume best intentions leads to better outcomes. If, in the absence of any certainty, we assume good intent and push people - with kindness - towards behaviours that are helpful instead of problematic, then we make the world a better place and make each other better people. The only other option* is to choose the worst possible interpretation of a person's words. More so, this form of discourse almost guarantees that you will be alienating people based on language and culture, and is more painful for people on the autism spectrum and other neurodivergences. * (you could argue there's a middle ground, but in terms of how you legislate community values, humans usually spin off towards any available edges, especially when in pain) And actually, in this case I don't find fault in the way most of the mailing list started by calling out the behaviour. The person making the problematic comment doubled down, tried to explain themselves, failed to do so and made the problem worse. Again, maybe if it had been off-list, a better approach could have been found, and the situation was not helped by people feigning injury on someone else's behalf. The problem that I was addressing was the after-effects - trying to change the CoC to flip the discourse from being explicitly expecting good intentions to expecting everyone to assume malice. And that's not to say there aren't some hard questions in this. In trying to be quick and brief (and in some cases angry), nobody managed to articulate to the poster in a way they understood what their statement could be misconstrued as saying. Whose job is that? In the case where people are genuinely hurt, there is an absolutely valid principle that it's not the hurting party's job to educate their abuser. There is a widely accepted principle that being an Ally is a good thing because it fortifies the hurting party's morale. There was a vaguely understandable principle mentioned that a person does not have to be the target of a hurt to feel the hurt of a target that may or may not exist. But that should not encompass the whole community. We need people who recognise that the person who causes hurt unintentionally will themselves be hurt in the backlash and the mob justice. And this is where the concept of "Ally" becomes wholly problematic. Those people should not defend the problematic behaviour, or dismiss the reaction as baseless, or invoke cancel culture or witch burning or hypocrisy etc, but instead work towards reconciliation. It's hard to say "These ally behaviours are fine, those ally behaviours are evil" because in each case, both parties are just being who they are. "assuming good intentions [means] ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable" is a false dichotomy, a lazy one at that, and needs to be called out as such. I agree we should propose a different standard, and I agree that trolling is a poor substitute for reasoned advocacy. It seems society increasingly favours "trauma-response ping-pong", and it seems the tech sphere is one of the few places on the internet where you can advocate against that without getting your head bitten off. It makes me sad, but maybe I should just shut my emotionally-stunted mouth and get with the times.

pseudalopex 5y ago

The joke was maybe a date bug was written for women who calculated their age. The joker said they thought all girls would appreciate it. They said they didn't insult blondes. They said no one was hurt if the list was 100% male. I didn't see anywhere they said it was supposed to be about traditional chivalry. Even people who defended the joke linked it to a current stereotype. What made you think it was about traditional chivalry?

undecisive 5y ago
Yep, let's be specific, the comment in question was: # Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;) Given that this person is clearly not natively english-speaking, there is a possibility that you are absolutely right. I know he - and others - doubled down on the unhelpful "nothing to see here" thing, though I didn't read the full mailing list. Reading it charitably however (which nobody ever seems to want to do) it may well be saying that someone else is calculating a woman's age. This would lead me to suppose it is a common chivalrous humour (at least round these parts) linked to the idea that you should never ask a lady how old she is, which is to send birthday cards with exaggeratedly low numbers. e.g. you might send a 60-year-old lady a birthday card saying "Happy 21st birthday (again)" - but you would never do that for a man (often the opposite, in fact). Now then, you could argue - and some have - that this is still a form of sexism. Indeed, orthodox feminism* dictates that all forms of chivalry are antiquated and cause more harm than good, and there are some good arguments to support that, while many staunch feminists point out that it is a real shame to have to legislate against kindnesses towards women (especially when even if true social equality is ever achieved, often the biological encumbrances bias life against women anyway.) So yes, you may well be absolutely correct. And even when "people who defended the joke linked it to a current stereotype" they might be doing so with full understanding of the charitable reading. I should also point out, I have never spoken to this chap, I have no idea what kind of person he is. Is he a raving misogynist? No idea. Does he spit on the cake at women's birthdays? Maybe. Is he a cat pretending to be a human? Probably. All of these are completely and entirely beside the point though. The reaction was to legislate away from attempting compassionate dialogue. I don't know what would have happened if someone off-thread had said "Hi, just to let you know, some people might be reading this as X and I'm sure you didn't mean that - can I recommend you get ahead of it and say Y before someone gets offended?". Maybe it would have been exactly the same. Instead, a bunch of people invoked their right to offence, and insisted that the CoC be changed to codify that right. * [Just to clarify, I meant orthodox feminism in the sense of feminism that follows the arguments to their logical conclusions and adheres to them strictly, rather than what Google seems to think I mean]
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  The point was you said it was intended to poke fun at traditional chivalry like it was a fact. But it was just your speculation. We define chivalrous differently apparently. And I never heard of someone trying to flatter a 21 year old man by wishing him a happy 60th birthday. What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1] Well meaning people accept constructive criticism. I know people who would like what you wrote better. I know people who would think telling them you're sure they didn't mean something was insincere and condescending. The 1st reply that mentioned the attempted joke just said please don't make sexist comments.[2] It was appropriate for an aside on a technical mailing list. The joker could have replied off list if they didn't understand. They doubled down instead like you said. Someone else called it cancel culture and called other people hypocrites. Someone else compared it to witch burning. Someone else implied assuming good intentions meant ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable. The reaction to that was someone proposed a different standard. The reaction to that was trolling. [1] https://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc https://youtu.be/b0Ti-gkJiXc [2] https://rubytalk.org/t/simple-operations/75577/4 https://rubytalk.org/t/simple-operations/75577/4
  - undecisive 5y ago
    > The point was you said it was intended to poke fun at traditional chivalry like it was a fact. But it was just your speculation. In a situation where the only thing anyone has is speculation, and speculation on top of speculation. This gaslighting is disgusting and needs to stop. But yes, in retrospect I should have added an IMHO. On every HN comment anyone's ever written, probably. > What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1] That's an interesting and potentially useful youtube video, so thanks for that. However it presupposes a couple of things that I don't think hold true here. One of the most important is that you cannot know intent. The person spouting racist crap could be misinformed or miseducated or just didn't realise that what they said is commonly used to cause hurt - but just as equally, they might be a fundamentally hateful person spouting hatred. In that case, it is sensible to treat the comments based on the likely harms achieved, and not the intent, up to a point. (Even then, it's helpful to have people who will choose respectful education rather than abrasive condemnation) In this case, pretty sure everyone agreed that the intent wasn't malicious, but that it wasn't appropriate or helpful or necessary in that forum, and the confused delivery didn't help either. (I would also accept arguments that his "at least it wasn't a blond joke" comments indicated a level of culturally normalized misogyny, but that's a far cry from malice) But there's another issue, which brings us back to the origin of this thread: What kind of discourse do we want in our communities? It seems we have a choice - to either assume benign intent, or to assume malice. In the first quote of this comment, I assumed malice - that you're trying to be dismissive and gaslight me. I'm pretty sure you're not. Not that your statement wasn't dismissive, but I don't think that's your intention - you were simply explaining how you read my comment. And hopefully, when you read that, it seemed out of place - because I try to be respectful and balanced, and I highly value a well-reasoned discussion. But discourse where we treat people with respect and assume best intentions leads to better outcomes. If, in the absence of any certainty, we assume good intent and push people - with kindness - towards behaviours that are helpful instead of problematic, then we make the world a better place and make each other better people. The only other option* is to choose the worst possible interpretation of a person's words. More so, this form of discourse almost guarantees that you will be alienating people based on language and culture, and is more painful for people on the autism spectrum and other neurodivergences. * (you could argue there's a middle ground, but in terms of how you legislate community values, humans usually spin off towards any available edges, especially when in pain) And actually, in this case I don't find fault in the way most of the mailing list started by calling out the behaviour. The person making the problematic comment doubled down, tried to explain themselves, failed to do so and made the problem worse. Again, maybe if it had been off-list, a better approach could have been found, and the situation was not helped by people feigning injury on someone else's behalf. The problem that I was addressing was the after-effects - trying to change the CoC to flip the discourse from being explicitly expecting good intentions to expecting everyone to assume malice. And that's not to say there aren't some hard questions in this. In trying to be quick and brief (and in some cases angry), nobody managed to articulate to the poster in a way they understood what their statement could be misconstrued as saying. Whose job is that? In the case where people are genuinely hurt, there is an absolutely valid principle that it's not the hurting party's job to educate their abuser. There is a widely accepted principle that being an Ally is a good thing because it fortifies the hurting party's morale. There was a vaguely understandable principle mentioned that a person does not have to be the target of a hurt to feel the hurt of a target that may or may not exist. But that should not encompass the whole community. We need people who recognise that the person who causes hurt unintentionally will themselves be hurt in the backlash and the mob justice. And this is where the concept of "Ally" becomes wholly problematic. Those people should not defend the problematic behaviour, or dismiss the reaction as baseless, or invoke cancel culture or witch burning or hypocrisy etc, but instead work towards reconciliation. It's hard to say "These ally behaviours are fine, those ally behaviours are evil" because in each case, both parties are just being who they are. "assuming good intentions [means] ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable" is a false dichotomy, a lazy one at that, and needs to be called out as such. I agree we should propose a different standard, and I agree that trolling is a poor substitute for reasoned advocacy. It seems society increasingly favours "trauma-response ping-pong", and it seems the tech sphere is one of the few places on the internet where you can advocate against that without getting your head bitten off. It makes me sad, but maybe I should just shut my emotionally-stunted mouth and get with the times.