4 ms·

The success of Go depends on a healthy community. I am quite happy to lose some talented people if they can't play well with others.

by enneff 11y ago

davecheney 11y ago
> The success of Go depends on a healthy community. I am quite happy to lose some talented people if they can't play well with others. Hear! Hear!
spotman 11y ago
What prevents someone like linus torvalds from being kicked out for cussing at people? Would linux be where it is today? Those are the type of people I am referring to. Not racist people, for example. Now I understand that his issues are not the ones that are ultimately the goal of fixing here. But where do you draw the line? And is is the programming languages responsibility to police this? Where is the CoC for C anyways:) ?
- enneff 11y ago
  It's pretty hard to kick Linus out of his own project. That's how he does things and that's what his contributors will apparently put up with. I guess it works for him. But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. The people who do contribute to the Go core are very talented hackers who also manage to treat each other with respect, so obviously it can be done.
  - spotman 11y ago
    Agreed on the hard to kick linus out of linux. However, this is an interesting discussion. Linus (to my knowledge, please feel free to post evidence otherwise) has not been racist or displayed misogynistic behavior, has he? So, here you have a very talented indivdual, who is very opinionated and uses some coarse language at times. While I could also go without the coarse language, he is often right (not saying 100% of the time, but he has earned his reputation) and I would absolutely hate if by adding a CoC you lose people like him. So, the CoC could clearly articulate that linus-like behavior is ok, and racism is not, it makes it hard to police. Especially when on this very thread, you say you would rather not work with people like that, so then do we add coarse language to the CoC too? Thoughts?
    - tptacek 11y ago
      You should read the Django Code Of Conduct before venturing further into this discussion, because what 'enneff is talking about isn't simply harassment. What they're trying to do is set expectations about decorum and professional courtesy; for instance, if you're on the mailing list or IRC channel and someone asks a question with an "obvious" answer that has been covered 10 times before, how are community participants expected to respond to that? Lots of communities without codes of conduct get testy, hostile, inhospitable, snarky, or obstreperous when those kinds of things happen, and that makes the community harder to engage with, especially for newcomers.
      - spotman 11y ago
        Thanks for your reply - I will read it. This is something that is interesting to me, and I hope it doesn't come across as I am taking sides - but more asking questions and expressing my first initial fears, given my experience with some engineers who are 'rough around the edges' but are invaluable in their experience. For the record I am in no way saying I want the community of golang to put up with this stuff. It should even be un-cool to use bad language, and of course completely not-ok-at-all to be racist, or harass people, etc. I certainly won't stop using go if there is a CoC. I simply hope that it doesn't turn into a framework for people not having thick skin when an someone who does not have a soft approach is giving out useful information. If it is truly gotten so bad that we have to have that to also have a wider effort of dealing with really bad stuff like racism or harassment then I guess so be it. Maybe my head is in the sand, but I was curious what has happened like this in the go community? More my bigger question which no one has really commented on, but, why not have this on the go-nuts forum as a CoC for the forum, and have it on the IRC channels? For example, HN has some guidelines, such as the don't be overly negative thing and what not. So, can communities like email groups, irc, and sites like HN not help our culture along enough? Curious to hear people's objective thoughts on this. I did some quick research. Django has a pretty elaborate CoC. Python is very brief, and leaves a ton open to interpretation. Ruby on Rails doesn't appear to have one. Ruby does not have one. C does not have one. What communities has this been a problem in? I have heard of some in Python. Just curious as this is a new issue to me, and being in this industry for 15 years, I have just gotten use to terse people, and have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky?
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. I, on the other hand, am all for it. I can't stand working with PC people though...
daily_dose 11y ago
This is a good example of an oxymoron.

The success of Go depends on a healthy community. I am quite happy to lose some talented people if they can't play well with others.

by enneff 11y ago

The success of Go depends on a healthy community. I am quite happy to lose some talented people if they can't play well with others.

davecheney 11y ago

> The success of Go depends on a healthy community. I am quite happy to lose some talented people if they can't play well with others. Hear! Hear!

spotman 11y ago

What prevents someone like linus torvalds from being kicked out for cussing at people? Would linux be where it is today? Those are the type of people I am referring to. Not racist people, for example. Now I understand that his issues are not the ones that are ultimately the goal of fixing here. But where do you draw the line? And is is the programming languages responsibility to police this? Where is the CoC for C anyways:) ?

enneff 11y ago
It's pretty hard to kick Linus out of his own project. That's how he does things and that's what his contributors will apparently put up with. I guess it works for him. But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. The people who do contribute to the Go core are very talented hackers who also manage to treat each other with respect, so obviously it can be done.
- spotman 11y ago
  Agreed on the hard to kick linus out of linux. However, this is an interesting discussion. Linus (to my knowledge, please feel free to post evidence otherwise) has not been racist or displayed misogynistic behavior, has he? So, here you have a very talented indivdual, who is very opinionated and uses some coarse language at times. While I could also go without the coarse language, he is often right (not saying 100% of the time, but he has earned his reputation) and I would absolutely hate if by adding a CoC you lose people like him. So, the CoC could clearly articulate that linus-like behavior is ok, and racism is not, it makes it hard to police. Especially when on this very thread, you say you would rather not work with people like that, so then do we add coarse language to the CoC too? Thoughts?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    You should read the Django Code Of Conduct before venturing further into this discussion, because what 'enneff is talking about isn't simply harassment. What they're trying to do is set expectations about decorum and professional courtesy; for instance, if you're on the mailing list or IRC channel and someone asks a question with an "obvious" answer that has been covered 10 times before, how are community participants expected to respond to that? Lots of communities without codes of conduct get testy, hostile, inhospitable, snarky, or obstreperous when those kinds of things happen, and that makes the community harder to engage with, especially for newcomers.
    - spotman 11y ago
      Thanks for your reply - I will read it. This is something that is interesting to me, and I hope it doesn't come across as I am taking sides - but more asking questions and expressing my first initial fears, given my experience with some engineers who are 'rough around the edges' but are invaluable in their experience. For the record I am in no way saying I want the community of golang to put up with this stuff. It should even be un-cool to use bad language, and of course completely not-ok-at-all to be racist, or harass people, etc. I certainly won't stop using go if there is a CoC. I simply hope that it doesn't turn into a framework for people not having thick skin when an someone who does not have a soft approach is giving out useful information. If it is truly gotten so bad that we have to have that to also have a wider effort of dealing with really bad stuff like racism or harassment then I guess so be it. Maybe my head is in the sand, but I was curious what has happened like this in the go community? More my bigger question which no one has really commented on, but, why not have this on the go-nuts forum as a CoC for the forum, and have it on the IRC channels? For example, HN has some guidelines, such as the don't be overly negative thing and what not. So, can communities like email groups, irc, and sites like HN not help our culture along enough? Curious to hear people's objective thoughts on this. I did some quick research. Django has a pretty elaborate CoC. Python is very brief, and leaves a ton open to interpretation. Ruby on Rails doesn't appear to have one. Ruby does not have one. C does not have one. What communities has this been a problem in? I have heard of some in Python. Just curious as this is a new issue to me, and being in this industry for 15 years, I have just gotten use to terse people, and have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky?
- coldtea 11y ago
  >But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. I, on the other hand, am all for it. I can't stand working with PC people though...

daily_dose 11y ago

This is a good example of an oxymoron.