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Totally agree. I think the maintainer here did a stellar job. The only thing that I don't think was considered in his response, and is the reason I came here to

Totally agree. I think the maintainer here did a stellar job. The only thing that I don't think was considered in his response, and is the reason I came here to comment, is that I don't think we're fully thinking through the unintended consequences of placating everyone who is offended by something no matter how minor. A environment that is overly sensitive and where people are easily offended is an environment that is not welcoming of people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, especially on the internet where you don't know whether someone is neurotypical or not. People who are neurotypical tend to assume that everyone else is neurotypical as well. Open-source was and has always been a place where those on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum can and do excel. Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy and don't really get offended themselves. Between making open source welcoming to people who are neurotypical and making it welcome to people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, we all lose by favoring the former. The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic. [citation needed]
- throwaway43232 12y ago
  It's anecodotal based on many years of experience in the industry, but if you have real data or even many anecdotes that contradict my observations, I'm keen on hearing them. I'm more than happy to accept being wrong here if I am.
saraid216 12y ago
> Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy and don't really get offended themselves. Except that's what you're doing here. There isn't a technical issue under discussion; there's a discussion over feelings. And while you certainly have the right to ask that your feelings be respected in order to offend another's, you really can't pretend objectivity. What you can do, and have done, is claim that aspie sensitivities are more important than female ones because aspies are somehow a greater contribution to the world. The interesting thing is the implication here that aspie sensitivities are likely to be sexist, because otherwise, there would be no conflict between the different sensitivities. In making an apparent defense of this group, you've managed to pretty thoroughly condemn them. So... good job?
- throwaway43232 12y ago
  > What you can do, and have done, is claim that aspie sensitivities are more important than female ones because aspies are somehow a greater contribution to the world. Not at all what I claimed. I'm talking about overly sensitive people, not women. I know tons and tons and tons of people, women included, who are not overly sensitive and who are able to handle situations like an adult and focus on the task at hand, which in the case of open source is building software and writing code. It's not a therapy session. It's about building things and that is more important than feelings. Your feelings are my distraction. I'm actually the go-between at work between those people think are assholes and some people that are overly sensitive. I quietly hate the role I play and wish I didn't have to waste time trying to protect people from their emotions. It's exhausting. The overly sensitive people often hijack technical discussions and try to make those discussions about something that matters to them personally and that makes the discussion no longer about the code and technical matters that the group is trying to solve. Furthermore, just as many overly-sensitive men as women are responsible for hijacking technical discussions to talk about feelings. In fact, I probably witness men being overly sensitive about some social issue with greater frequency (probably due to base rates in our industry). I also didn't claim that aspies tend to be sexist, but that they tend to either not place importance on how their word choice might be interpreted or they might not even be aware that their word choice did offend. It's mentally taxing and expensive to deal with overly sensitive people who lose focus on the task at hand because they feel offended or hurt. Terms like "microagressions"[0] aren't even part of the aspie vocabulary. Due to my own morbid curiosity, I spent a bunch of time reading about microagressions and I was like, "yeah, a bunch of these types of things happen to me all the time too. What's the big fucking deal?". I don't think anything of them. People who dwell on them are only blocking themselves. All I could think of when reading them was Bob Newhart's skit "Stop It!"[1]. It's bad enough that people do that to themselves, but the people who are vocal about them are forcing others to dwell on their own personal issues, wasting everyone's time. That's exactly what Sharp did by calling out Torvalds. Calling Torvalds out and playing the victim card was a massive waste of everyone else's time and did nothing to contribute to the technical discussion at the time. If people want similar project with different culture to exist, there is a more civil solution, go write a project from scratch or fork a project written by assholes and recruit all the overly-sensitive people to participate in trying to make it better. I wish you the best of luck, but what you shouldn't do is come into anyone else's house that they built and call them out on how they behave in their house. [0] http://microaggressions.tumblr.com/ http://microaggressions.tumblr.com/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw
nona 12y ago
> The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic. Well, let's assume for a sec that you're right about this (I personally don't think so). I don't know how many neurotypical people we lose by favouring aspies. If we assume a prevalence rate of 1% or 2%, or even 5%, it may mean losing a good chunk of the neurotypical 95% – we _are_, after all, chasing away a good number of developers (check for example the stats for women in opensource, but I'm sure we chase away quite a number of men as well who prefer to stay away from toxic environments). Are you saying that these 1-5% provide more contributions then that huge chunk of the 95% that are, in your words, "overly sensitive"?
- throwaway43232 12y ago
  > Are you saying that these 1-5% provide more contributions then that huge chunk of the 95% that are, in your words, "overly sensitive"? Not at all. The 1-5% are usually the ones working by themselves creating a project from scratch and then maintaining those projects as others join the project. The capacity to remain highly focused on solitary tasks (like starting and building an open source project until it is useful enough for others to get involved) is more common in people on the aspie side of the spectrum. The other 95% are not overly sensitive. Maybe just 1-5% are overly sensitive and lack the capacity to function with abrasive and insensitive people. The middle 90-98% plus the 1-5% that are the linchpins of any open source project are responsible for most of the open-source world. We basically only lose the overly-sensitive ones (men and women), which is an acceptable loss until we start seeing open-source projects of significant technical importance written largely by people who are overly sensitive. I don't see that happening because overly-sensitive people are generally pre-occupied with being overly sensitive instead of getting things done. When I read complaints by someone being overly sensitive, I check their github profile and look for other technical contributions. Typically there isn't much to look at. Technical contributions entitle you to your opinions. Lastly, I honestly have nothing against people who are overly sensitive so long as they either stop being overly sensitive or at least keep their overly sensitive thoughts to themselves and focus on the technical issues of the task at hand. I just exhausted of people derailing technical discussions because they are overly sensitive. Anyways, I'm being overly sensitive about overly sensitive people in open-source, which is a massive waste of my time. Back to coding.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic. [citation needed]

throwaway43232 12y ago
It's anecodotal based on many years of experience in the industry, but if you have real data or even many anecdotes that contradict my observations, I'm keen on hearing them. I'm more than happy to accept being wrong here if I am.

saraid216 12y ago

> Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy and don't really get offended themselves. Except that's what you're doing here. There isn't a technical issue under discussion; there's a discussion over feelings. And while you certainly have the right to ask that your feelings be respected in order to offend another's, you really can't pretend objectivity. What you can do, and have done, is claim that aspie sensitivities are more important than female ones because aspies are somehow a greater contribution to the world. The interesting thing is the implication here that aspie sensitivities are likely to be sexist, because otherwise, there would be no conflict between the different sensitivities. In making an apparent defense of this group, you've managed to pretty thoroughly condemn them. So... good job?

throwaway43232 12y ago
> What you can do, and have done, is claim that aspie sensitivities are more important than female ones because aspies are somehow a greater contribution to the world. Not at all what I claimed. I'm talking about overly sensitive people, not women. I know tons and tons and tons of people, women included, who are not overly sensitive and who are able to handle situations like an adult and focus on the task at hand, which in the case of open source is building software and writing code. It's not a therapy session. It's about building things and that is more important than feelings. Your feelings are my distraction. I'm actually the go-between at work between those people think are assholes and some people that are overly sensitive. I quietly hate the role I play and wish I didn't have to waste time trying to protect people from their emotions. It's exhausting. The overly sensitive people often hijack technical discussions and try to make those discussions about something that matters to them personally and that makes the discussion no longer about the code and technical matters that the group is trying to solve. Furthermore, just as many overly-sensitive men as women are responsible for hijacking technical discussions to talk about feelings. In fact, I probably witness men being overly sensitive about some social issue with greater frequency (probably due to base rates in our industry). I also didn't claim that aspies tend to be sexist, but that they tend to either not place importance on how their word choice might be interpreted or they might not even be aware that their word choice did offend. It's mentally taxing and expensive to deal with overly sensitive people who lose focus on the task at hand because they feel offended or hurt. Terms like "microagressions"[0] aren't even part of the aspie vocabulary. Due to my own morbid curiosity, I spent a bunch of time reading about microagressions and I was like, "yeah, a bunch of these types of things happen to me all the time too. What's the big fucking deal?". I don't think anything of them. People who dwell on them are only blocking themselves. All I could think of when reading them was Bob Newhart's skit "Stop It!"[1]. It's bad enough that people do that to themselves, but the people who are vocal about them are forcing others to dwell on their own personal issues, wasting everyone's time. That's exactly what Sharp did by calling out Torvalds. Calling Torvalds out and playing the victim card was a massive waste of everyone else's time and did nothing to contribute to the technical discussion at the time. If people want similar project with different culture to exist, there is a more civil solution, go write a project from scratch or fork a project written by assholes and recruit all the overly-sensitive people to participate in trying to make it better. I wish you the best of luck, but what you shouldn't do is come into anyone else's house that they built and call them out on how they behave in their house. [0] http://microaggressions.tumblr.com/ http://microaggressions.tumblr.com/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw

nona 12y ago

> The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic. Well, let's assume for a sec that you're right about this (I personally don't think so). I don't know how many neurotypical people we lose by favouring aspies. If we assume a prevalence rate of 1% or 2%, or even 5%, it may mean losing a good chunk of the neurotypical 95% – we _are_, after all, chasing away a good number of developers (check for example the stats for women in opensource, but I'm sure we chase away quite a number of men as well who prefer to stay away from toxic environments). Are you saying that these 1-5% provide more contributions then that huge chunk of the 95% that are, in your words, "overly sensitive"?

throwaway43232 12y ago
> Are you saying that these 1-5% provide more contributions then that huge chunk of the 95% that are, in your words, "overly sensitive"? Not at all. The 1-5% are usually the ones working by themselves creating a project from scratch and then maintaining those projects as others join the project. The capacity to remain highly focused on solitary tasks (like starting and building an open source project until it is useful enough for others to get involved) is more common in people on the aspie side of the spectrum. The other 95% are not overly sensitive. Maybe just 1-5% are overly sensitive and lack the capacity to function with abrasive and insensitive people. The middle 90-98% plus the 1-5% that are the linchpins of any open source project are responsible for most of the open-source world. We basically only lose the overly-sensitive ones (men and women), which is an acceptable loss until we start seeing open-source projects of significant technical importance written largely by people who are overly sensitive. I don't see that happening because overly-sensitive people are generally pre-occupied with being overly sensitive instead of getting things done. When I read complaints by someone being overly sensitive, I check their github profile and look for other technical contributions. Typically there isn't much to look at. Technical contributions entitle you to your opinions. Lastly, I honestly have nothing against people who are overly sensitive so long as they either stop being overly sensitive or at least keep their overly sensitive thoughts to themselves and focus on the technical issues of the task at hand. I just exhausted of people derailing technical discussions because they are overly sensitive. Anyways, I'm being overly sensitive about overly sensitive people in open-source, which is a massive waste of my time. Back to coding.