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GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

• ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  I'm puzzled sometimes that the ACLU can defend the despicable behaviour of actual Nazis and yet still be lauded as a liberal force for good yet so many of the people online fighting the authoritarian SJW menace so often just come across as assholes. Best I can come up with is that one actually fights governments and doesn't seek to undermine people's concerns about Nazis or condone their actions, whereas online the bile seems reserved exclusively for those who wish to censor.
• prezjordan 11y ago
  Where do they threaten to shut it down? EDIT: The commit message is an imgur link of the original email: https://imgur.com/QC51FZz https://imgur.com/QC51FZz
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• clessg 11y ago
  Relevant image: https://imgur.com/QC51FZz https://imgur.com/QC51FZz Took me a while to notice it.
• schneidmaster 11y ago
  I am perfectly alright with this.
  • aerovistae 11y ago
    Can't say I am. People should be free to use the language they wish. The words that were offensive 200 years ago are laughable today. It's just such a superficial thing, almost arbitrarily deciding which words are 'sensitive' and which ones aren't, I cannot stand behind efforts to censor the world. Once upon a time 'idiot' was the more common word for the mentally disabled. Has GitHub banned 'idiot,' too? Good long while ago people would've been pretty offended by that. I get that we're more concerned with what people are offended by TODAY rather than 200 years ago; my point is that we SHOULDN'T be concerned.
    • schneidmaster 11y ago
      People are free to use the language they wish. They are not necessarily free to host said language on other people's websites. This isn't a legal ban or something, GitHub is a private company and they have the right to limit what content they want on their website.
      • aerovistae 11y ago
        Of course they have the right. I'm not saying they don't have the right. I'm saying that their choice to enforce this right doesn't make sense to me, on multiple levels.
    • KirinDave 11y ago
      > The words that were offensive 200 years ago are laughable today. Even if we take this at face value, we are not living 200 years ago. We're here now, and your words can have impact beyond what you realize. You're lucky that words don't affect you so. That's your good fortune. Some words evoke experiences and implications that can drive people to depression and suicide. Basic. Civility. Is. Not. Unreasonable. > my point is that we SHOULDN'T be concerned. Then you won't be concerned when I tell you your basic set of inalienable rights you take for granted has, by and large, been won on the backs of slaves and economic disparity for thousands of years. You are at the tip of a pyramid of privilege that expands backwards in time. Have some good grace about it and stop using useless and hurtful words just because you technically can.
      • aerovistae 11y ago
        Should we ban all these 'useless' words too? Like eggplant, spade, and oreo? After all, many people find them offensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs_by_ethnicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs_by_ethnic...
        • KirinDave 11y ago
          Would it actually bother you if you couldn't use those words in those contexts? You're arguing over a principle while dismissing the real harm people have suffered. The word that got banned has no meaning or use outside the most base kind of interactions. It's not like you can no longer say the word "eggplant" at the supermarket to refer to a vegetable.
• avolcano 11y ago
  Fine with me. It's an offensive term and GitHub has every right to police their service and ban content like this. Am I supposed to be concerned by this, and if so, why?
  • joeax 11y ago
    Here's my concern. Let's say I forked a repo and started contributing to it. I built an app that depends on that repo. Suddenly that repo vanishes because GitHub found it some word in it offensive, and my fork and all my contributions vanish. All because of some line like: var x = getX(); // this is retarded, needs fixing I didn't write the said offensive code nor did I even know it was there, and GitHub possibly doesn't even tell me why the repo was deleted. At this point my trust with GitHub of keeping my code is safe is broken. When users lose trust in GitHub or feel they've gone big brother then users will jump to newer, emerging alternatives.
    • avolcano 11y ago
      But, in this case, GitHub made an effort to get in contact with the repo owner and warn them of their violation of the TOS before taking action. Why do you believe they wouldn't do the same for you?
      • 0x09 11y ago
        > GitHub made an effort to get in contact with the repo owner and warn them of their violation of the TOS before taking action. This repository had been disabled for several days before this.
    • oneandoneis2 11y ago
      ..but it's git. Github don't host your repo - they host a copy of it. You still have all your work in your local checkout. What are you concerned about?
      • worklogin 11y ago
        Gettin' real tired of people parroting this. Anyone who has used Github knows there is plenty of data (issues, labels, wikis) that aren't forked when you clone a GH repo.
• ttaylorr 11y ago
  I don't see what's wrong here.
• rsingla 11y ago
  At least update your copyright at the same time!
• geowwy 11y ago
  Someone uploaded a repo with language Github found objectionable. Github asked them to remove the offending words. Person complied. I don't see the issue.
• pmalynin 11y ago
  Buy a $5 DO box and host it yourself. Use any language that you desire.
  • dchest 11y ago
    Pretty much every hosting provider has this in their TOS. https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms/ https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms/ 3.2 You agree that you will not transmit, distribute, post, store, link, or otherwise traffic in Content, information, software, or materials on or through the Service that (i) is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another's privacy, tortious, offensive, profane, contains or depicts pornography that is unlawful, or is otherwise inappropriate as determined by us in our sole discretion, (ii) you know is false, misleading, untruthful or inaccurate, (iii) constitutes unauthorized or unsolicited advertising, (iv) impersonates any person or entity, including any of our employees or representatives, or (v) includes anyone’s identification documents or sensitive financial information. DigitalOcean may permit, in its sole discretion, adult websites that abide by state and federal law and regulation.
    • pmalynin 11y ago
      There are things like Liberty VPS etc which "fight" for free speech. Or Tor hidden service.
• general_failure 11y ago
  Is there a list of objectionable words/language that one is not supposed to use? A quick search on the f-work gives thousands of hits on github.
  • shawnps 11y ago
    Interestingly, a search for "retard" in code on GitHub yields over 200,000 results: https://github.com/search?q=retard&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93 https://github.com/search?q=retard&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93 Not sure what made this particular case different.
    • barsonme 11y ago
      Or, decidedly even more offensive: https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=nigger&type=Code&ref=searchresults https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=nigger&type=Code&...
      • forthwall 11y ago
        Most of those are badwordlists.
        • barsonme 11y ago
          On the first couple pages, yeah. Skip 10+ pages and you get stuff like "nigger stole my bike" etc. As a side question, shouldn't it be fairly easy to flag those repositories and then sort through those who have it as an offensive word list and those who are just being derogatory?
    • austenallred 11y ago
      Probably that someone complained
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    • EugeneOZ 11y ago
• georganos 11y ago
  This is retarded.
• shawnps 11y ago
  It's in GitHub's TOS that they maintain the ability to remove content they find offensive. So they asked a user to remove something that GitHub found offensive.
  • brianpgordon 11y ago
    Literally nobody is claiming that this is illegal or against the GitHub ToS. The question is whether what they did was reasonable, and how this action impacts people's perception of them.
• bru_ 11y ago
  Getting upset about this puts you at the same level as the retards who requested this change. Also unknown who exactly at Github requested this, might have been some random dev with retarded children. Not a sign that the leadership at Github is retarded.
• mdekkers 11y ago
  Yeah, when you host all your code with a 3rd party, and you run all your services with a 3rd party, and you depend on another 3rd party for significant chunks of your functionality, you will find that starting up is a lot easier, as long as you don't mind giving up a very significant chunk of your independence and freedom to do as you wish. I don't understand the obsession with github, google, amazon and the like. Well, I understand it, but I don't understand why people fall for it. Hosting is dirt cheap these days, really very easy, and you can set up pretty much any environment you need in less than a day, for very little money.
  • rtpg 11y ago
    Are you serious? Maintaining things is hard. Even for relatively simple stuff, things fall over all the time and suddenly your job is "make sure your mail server is up" instead of "accomplish your core business task". I don't have that sort of free time anymore.
    • immibis 11y ago
      For git, literally all you need is a server with Git and SSH installed.
      • pankkake 11y ago
        More people need to know this. The prices of GitHub plans are hilarious; I've discussed this with paying GitHub users and they had no idea.
    • lfowles 11y ago
      Case in point: Ran update && upgrade on my server that runs a mailinabox container. Whoops, something broke and now the container doesn't recognize any of the owners or groups. Your family mail server is down while your wife is waiting on replies to job applications. Thankfully, it was fixed within a day, but I've had stressful weeks where I've considered just moving to fastmail instead of spending my limited time at home pounding on config files.
• vortico 11y ago
  I assume this project is 90% for 4chan, 8chan, etc. posters, so the name is nothing out of the ordinary for its users.
  • ebola1717 11y ago
    Actually though. The repo owner is part of a company that boasts 4chan as a client.
• meeper16 11y ago
  I suppose that edges out the Airline Industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HKN-FWNq0&feature=youtu.be&t=532 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HKN-FWNq0&feature=youtu.be...
• ndesaulniers 11y ago
  If someone was interested in moving their content off of GitHub, how would they go about doing so? Doesn't popcorn time use something else? Asking for a friend, of course... :3 Edit: Looks like they're running GitLab Community Edition https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/ https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/
  • girvo 11y ago
    GitLab is decent, Gogs is also useful (and has smaller system requirements, albeit slightly less features) http://gogs.io/ http://gogs.io/
  • gizmo686 11y ago
    Which content? If you are only interested in the repository itself, then you are already done, as everyone who cloned it would have a local copy of it. If you want to use a similar workflow (as in, an always available publicly addressable git server to push and pull to), you can do that with "git remote set-url origin <new repository url>". If you want to move the wiki, you can also 'git clone' that, although I believe github uses a slightly nonstandard markdown language. I do not believe their is a good way to migrate your issue tracker.
• Yver 11y ago
  They didn't just threaten to shut it down, according to their email (https://imgur.com/QC51FZz https://imgur.com/QC51FZz) they did disable it at the same time they disabled the parent repository a few days ago. (https://archive.is/XiTS9 https://archive.is/XiTS9)
• Tinyyy 11y ago
  A honest question, why are most people here okay with this, but they’re not okay with for example Facebook censoring certain content?
  • KirinDave 11y ago
    Probably because facebook is by design a mechanism of human communication. Github is a mechanism for sharing code. The words used and then rejected were useless, and substituting them did not affect the communication in any meaningful way. Calling vocabulary subs like this "censorship" greatly glorifies the users of said language, as unless they're deliberately trying to be offensive there is always an equally useful word at hand.
    • Tinyyy 11y ago
      I personally feel that offensive language should be censored because they’re intended to be offensive and hurtful to people, while OTOH if its obviously not purposely offensive but just a method of expression, it should be given a pass. Leave that to self-censorship / the readers / users. Also, given the semi-monopoly that these sites have, I think that they have some sort of responsibility to not exploit network effects and alienate users just because they can.
      • KirinDave 11y ago
        There is no right answer to this question, nor no clear line. We all have to decide where we draws the line between accommodation and self-determination. And the line moves over time, not always for the better.
    • paulv 11y ago
      > Probably because facebook is by design a mechanism of human communication. Github is a mechanism for sharing code. Is code not a mechanism of human communication?
      • KirinDave 11y ago
• CoryG89 11y ago
  For people who don't see what's wrong here. The issue is not about whether the word 'retard' is or is not offensive to anyone. You need to consider that GitHub currently hosts a large percentage of the web's open source repositories. This is censorship plain and simple, something that IMO has no place in open source. The issue is that there are plenty of things some people might find offensive on GitHub but you dont see them threatening everyone with takedown notices. It is the selective censorship of certain reasonable uses of free speech that is concerning here. Retarded is off limits, but cursing is okay (maybe?). Who decides what is and is not appropriate?
  • toehead2000 11y ago
    A bunch of retards apparently.
  • numbsafari 11y ago
    Github does. If you don't like it, fork it... just not on GitHub.
  • smrtinsert 11y ago
    They can do whatever they want, that is the market at work. If enough people find it offensive, they will produce/migrate to an alternative.
    • gruez 11y ago
      sure, they're legally entitled to do whatever they want, but you're failing to consider the most important point: >You need to consider that GitHub currently hosts a large percentage of the web's open source repositories would you be happy if google abused its position as the leading search engine to favor right leaning websites over left leaning websites? what about censoring websites that are "offensive" to muslims?
      • chipsy 11y ago
        Or what about if your comment were mass-downvoted on HN? Would you be happy? The censorship card ultimately falls into a relativistic trap - it's always okay to broadcast hate if it's the speech of you or your friends, because you and I can protest ignorance, humor, or lack of wrongdoing, and your more overtly bigoted friends "are good guys when you get to know them." Criticism of such speech, on the other hand, is never okay, and is "the real censorship". You don't even have to invoke a specific ideological dialogue - it is an everyday occurrence in your homes, schools, and bars. Now, you can go out there and fight and "win" by making your preferred flavor of speech dominant in your spaces, but that just exposes a different facet of this "gem of truthiness" - it doesn't reveal the whole thing, because you still get the same problem, no matter which side you take. The typical modern response to this is nihilistic or fanatical, but if you really feel challenged by a hostile environment, why not follow the path of the ancients and turn your speech into a puzzle or parable that hides its true intention? If your ideas are good, they will survive the transition and reach the readers who put in the effort to care and figure it out. OTOH if the whole premise is to police the surface aspects of the dialogue and Be Right, then you're speaking politically, not intellectually, and political speech comes with Consequences regardless of the legal environment.
• Randgalt 11y ago
  github is within their rights to do this but it's horrendous that they are doing it. The corpus of offensive speech (or code in this case) is getting out of hand. The code is clearly humor. Not everyone appreciates the same humor but humor is _meant_ to be offensive. So, the policy will proceed to be no humor in code that isn't bland. But, then, all of silicon valley is moving toward this. A github founder got into a lot of trouble for "objectionable" humor. I'm certain I'll get lots of downvotes for this. But remember the old tale that "first they came for the Christians and I didn't complain because I wasn't a Christian..."
  • scarlson 11y ago
    The Christian parable only applies if the puritans are in the minority. Judging by the comments in this HN thread alone, more people are in favor of whitewashing language than against. I, for one, do not look forward to an internet where the only allowable form of humor is some combination of popsicle stick jokes and regurgitated memes.
  • jonah 11y ago
    Martin Niemöller's quote[1] is an important one, possibly even more so today than when he first said it. We're so caught up in our own selfish bubbles, we're failing to consider those around us. There are many variations of the saying - several from himself, but the best known version goes: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_... [Edit 1] Removed editorialization. [Edit 2] Reverted it. Isn't that what this whole discussion is about? Being able to say unpopular things?
    • TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      Ah yes, the famous quote about Nazi Germany. So, do people use the same quote about how the German government banned Nazi symbols in the aftermath of that? Oh wait, no they don't. I wonder why that might be.
• BetaMechazawa 11y ago
  This obsession with making every single website a hugbox these days is moronic. The word retard/retarded is seldom associated with actual retardation instead it's just a synonym for moron. Even if you dissagree with that you should still be able to see that even if we did s/retard/moron/ or replaced it with git, idiot etc it would still violate the TOS.
  • dwc 11y ago
    > or replaced it with git Thank you so much for that. The irony is delicious.
    • to3m 11y ago
      'Git' and 'retard' aren't really substitutes...
      • _jgdh 11y ago
        No, they aren't. Git means "bastard", which I find awfully discriminatory towards people brought up by single parents. How will they ever feel comfortable in contributing to open source if all open source development happens on Github?
        • to3m 11y ago
          You're a bastard - in the strict sense - which is uncommonly used nowadays, other than mischievously - if born out of wedlock. Being brought up by a single parent is a separate matter. Urban dictionary has a definition for git that is a bit closer to how I've always understood it. See #2: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Git
          • _jgdh 11y ago
            I misspoke when I implied that all children brought up by single parents are bastards. In any case, my point stands. Github makes children born out of wedlock feel unwelcome and they should change their name.
• plicense 11y ago
  Lets all cry Github monopoly now!
• prasanthv 11y ago
  Good job GH. It's sad this is shocking to some people. Perhaps they haven't dealt with anyone with mental disabilities or seen what their families deal with, and that's not their fault, nor is it an excuse. It's called empathy.
  • hhandoko 11y ago
    Not sure why you are downvoted, but I thought it's relevant.
    • hhandoko 11y ago
      For the downvoters: some developers may think it is funny, but for others with relatives with intellectual disability, it will make them really uncomfortable. My point is, the language is unnecessary. Especially for a public repo that might get thousands and / or tens of thousands of views.
  • sklogic 11y ago
    Kinda stupid to think that euphemisms would help such people to cope better.
• Nyetan 11y ago
  This brings up a point that's been nagging at me for a while: does making a community more inclusive necessarily mean making it less distinctive? GenderDetector (formerly SexMachine [1]) is another example of this process, wherein what was formerly considered within the norm of politeness is now sufficiently far outside to cause outcry. I'm curious what other people think -- this has been on my mind for a while, and although I like parts of the predicted conclusion (more people for me to share my hobby with!) others frighten me (genericization to the point of losing meaningful cultural identity). [1] https://github.com/bmuller/gender_detector/pull/14 https://github.com/bmuller/gender_detector/pull/14
  • ebola1717 11y ago
    The parts of the "distinctiveness" and "cultural identity" we'd lose are exactly the ones we don't want in the first place.
    • Nyetan 11y ago
      Fair enough, I suppose. Still, I'll miss reading the occasional post outlining Linus' outbursts on the kernel mailing lists when that day comes.
    • MrDosu 11y ago
      Who decides what part of my "distinctiveness" and "cultural identity" is acceptable? You? The majority? Some higher authority? This is a slippery slope...
  • DanBC 11y ago
    You can make your project distinctive by yelling "NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS" or by actually being creative, innovative, interesting, useful, etc. Not yelling "NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS" doesn't mean your project turns into homogenous gray sludge, indistinguishable from all the other projects. If anything the projects that fling slurs are less distinctive - they're all so stupid that they limit themselves to English slurs so they end up with a very limited set of insulting terms. If they want to be hrave they could see all the stuff that's illegal in various countries and include those concepts. They should start insulting the ruling family of Kuwait, for example.
• betteringred 11y ago
  Time for GitHub follow their own rules and change their name to something that's not offensive.
  • mirimir 11y ago
    > Git is a mild pejorative with origins in British English for a silly, incompetent, stupid, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. It is usually an insult, more severe than twit or idiot but less severe than wanker, arsehole or twat.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28slang%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28slang%29
    • return0 11y ago
      So by naming itself as a "hub of gits", github has preemptively insulted all of us. Outrage!
• mirimir 11y ago
  It's not the word that's offensive, but rather the insult. Is it offensive to say "retard the cam by 15 degrees"?
  • DanBC 11y ago
    Obviously the word has acceptable uses (eg watch mechanisms). Equally fucking obviously the word is not being used in that way in this project. (Your English is very good, but maybe you don't speak English as a first language?)
    • mirimir 11y ago
      Yes, that's so in this case. But it's still not accurate to say that GitHub is censoring words. It's regulating behavior.
• fiatmoney 11y ago
  Not only did they ask them to change the name / verbiage; in a particularly Stalinist twist they asked them to delete it from the entire history.
  • bsimpson 11y ago
    Isn't "never alter the history of a shared codebase" the first rule of Git?
    • fiatmoney 11y ago
      Yes. The entire notion of the hash tree is designed to prevent it.
• pikachu_is_cool 11y ago
  I like how the parent repo hasn't been taken down. https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter
• zkanda 11y ago
  Oh no, what would happen to https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck?
  • scarlson 11y ago
    Go one step farther, is Github going to self censor? https://github.com/search?q=language%3ABrainfuck https://github.com/search?q=language%3ABrainfuck
• euske 11y ago
  It's sad that they had to "ban" them instead of having the community boycott/ridicule/shun the repo. The latter would be a healthier approach.
  • Asbostos 11y ago
    Are you saying that bullying and shunning people who don't behave according to social norms is healthy? Isn't that essentially the root of all racism, bigotry, sexism, etc? That's what already happens with large scale trolling of celebrities who become disliked and it can be quite harmful.
    • euske 11y ago
      These people were saying silly things publicly and they should expect some backlash. Of course any extreme behavior is bad, but I don't know how this is the root of all racism, bigotry, sexism, etc. In this case they are judged by their action, not by their looks/belief. edit: judged by what they said -> judged by their action
• Vozze 11y ago
  That means Chromium could not be hosted on GitHub anymore. The source contains 42 instances of "retard". So do probably many massive codebases. Example: predictor.h line 537: "The queue is a priority queue that will accelerate sub-resource speculation, and retard resolutions suggested by page scans." https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/chrome/browser/net/predictor.h&q=retard&sq=package:chromium&type=cs&l=537 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/c...
  • jat850 11y ago
    Completely different definition of the word. Not applicable or comparable.
    • chillacy 11y ago
      This one, however, does seem to be relevant: # assertTrue is retarded, use the normal assert statement assert L https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/third_party/cython/src/Cython/Compiler/Tests/TestParseTreeTransforms.py&q=retard&sq=package:chromium&type=cs&l=227 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/t... Along with: // TODO(darin): Fix this retardation! return buf_->RemainingCapacity() <= (2 * net::kMaxBytesToSniff); // HACK: I'm at a loss about how to get the syntax checker to get // whether a template is externed or not. For the first pass here, // just do retarded string comparisons. if (TemplateDecl* decl = name.getAsTemplateDecl()) { std::string base_name = decl->getNameAsString(); if (base_name == "basic_string") whitelisted_template = true; } And a bunch of french language files
      • jat850 11y ago
        Those examples you have picked fit the same problem as the initial argument, yes. "retard" in French means "slow" or "late".
        • deft 11y ago
          So hilarious that someone actually searched the codebase for 'retard' and then assumes it's a slur in french too.
• userbinator 11y ago
  It's particularly ironic to see this coming from a site named GitHub: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/git#Etymology_1 IMHO as far as offensiveness is concerned, 'retard' is pretty far down the scale... and regardless of whether they have the right to do this, I think this whole "politically correct" movement is a pretty disturbing trend. It's basically encouraging people to become offended more easily, and turns straightforward easy-to-understand conversations into watered-down vague doublespeak-ish verbiage. (If you've worked in any large organisations with similar policies, you'll know what I mean. I left that culture behind years ago and don't regret it one bit.) Are there any GitHub equivalents that support the ideas of free speech and expression (within what the law allows)?
  • hhandoko 11y ago
    I agree that the word may be down on the offensiveness scale, but it is still offensive to some people. Large organisations have such policies because they are aware that they are composed of people from diverse set of backgrounds. Unless you know exactly who the message is intended to, the delivery will always sounds vague / generic. Before coming to Australia, I never knew that showing picture(s) of a deceased Aboriginal person is a cause of offense. If, say for example, a fatality occurred and the last group photo with the deceased Aboriginal was circulated (e.g. in memoriam memo), they would regard it as an offense even with the best of intentions. TL,DR; Let's just be respectful and not call each other names.
    • hueving 11y ago
      >I agree that the word may be down on the offensiveness scale, but it is still offensive to some people. Who gives a shit? 'fuck' is offensive to some people and it's all over github. This enforcement is completely arbitrary and this is what is causing the backlash.
      • hhandoko 11y ago
        It does seem arbitrary... But, as I mentioned in some other comments, GitHub is made up by many individuals that holds different values (just like you and me), thus it is nearly impossible for them to be 100% consistent. I think the backlash happened mainly because there is a disagreement on the conduct. Just so happened, someone who stumbled upon the repo thought it was inappropriate, reported it, and the reviewer agreed (my speculation).
• Panino 11y ago
  Lots of misuse of the word "censorship" here and any time this subject comes up generally, not just on this site but anywhere the topic is discussed. What is/are the root issue(s) of this mistaken belief? I typed a few possibilities but they sounded preposterous so I just deleted all that. Could someone who thinks this is censorship please explain why Github doesn't have the right to control its own privately owned website, and how one single website monitoring the language used there is equivalent to a government "universally" (well, within its borders) coercively prohibiting all such content, such that the person in question is prevented from publishing it anywhere else, even by themselves?
  • makomk 11y ago
    Github certainly has the right to control its own privately owned website. That doesn't mean they have the right to stop people from complaining about how they control their website, or from deciding they don't want to use Github because of it, and neither of those things is an infringement of Github's rights no matter how much the "it's not censorship" brigade want to spin it that way.
  • otherusername2 11y ago
    Personally I think this is censorship because Github holds power in the development world. Basically every developer is on Github. I switched from Bitbucket to github not because Github is better, but because it's basically open source suicide NOT to be on Github. Disabling a repo because they don't agree with a word in it seems like an abuse of that power to me. So basically, I feel it's censorship because Github holds enough power over its users.
    • KirinDave 11y ago
      Why is the word "censorship" the problem here? Of course it is. Github is censoring what it is willing to host. This is roughly akin to you or I selecting which papers we'll read tonight, or which speakers we'd like to hear in a conference, or which links we'd like to include as related work on a blog post. Or which book we'd give to a friend. The western world has a lot of implicit censorship going on that we think is unfairly applied en masse, and that's where we start to see a problem. Women, for example, are consistently and provably discriminated against in a variety of ways in these subtle decisions. This creates a general vacuum of their input in our field (and many others!). Actions like this help to remove said implicit bias and apply the censorship principles we use in our daily lives more fairly, giving us a more accurate picture of the world without having to listen to every single voice.
• deleted 11y ago
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• Frozenlock 11y ago
  For those arguing that they are within their rights, and free speech laws don't apply there: that's not the point. (Like most of similar situations by the way.) It's about a company acting in a way that is alienating to its userbase. Now, many people might think retard is offensive and would prefer a sanitized environment... but many people don't. Saying "we disagree with what you did" is a way to the users to tell the company that they might be drifting away from what made them interesting in the first place. You can be legal AND an asshole. If every time your friend was being an asshole to you, he'd stop listening and said: "Well, it's legal.", he probably wouldn't be your friend for long.
  • onion2k 11y ago
    It's about a company acting in a way that is alienating to its userbase. Wouldn't that depend on the userbase? If there are more people using Github who would prefer it was a sanitized environment than people who think anything should be allowed then Github removing this content would be them acting not to alienate its userbase. The majority of users probably don't care either way, so we're only talking about the two extremes - and I'd hazard a guess that there are far more people who would rather Github didn't have an "anything goes" policy than did.
    • bad_user 11y ago
      How do you know that the majority of users don't care? Did you or anybody else run any surveys or was that thought pulled out of your ass? I'm hearing this argument a lot on HN, yet it is never accompanied by numbers and because it's always contrary to my experience. Would you say the same thing about Sourceforge? Of course, there's a difference between piggybacking on the work of others to distribute malware and censoring some words, however there's also similarity. GitHub censoring content means they are not a neutral platform for hosting public repositories and they are showing their potential for becoming the next Sourceforge.
      • onion2k 11y ago
        GitHub censoring content means they are not a neutral platform for hosting public repositories and they are showing their potential for becoming the next Sourceforge. In the same way that because I punched my brother as a child I might go on to be the next Stalin.
• ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  I'm rather concerned by this. Removing content for using the word 'retard' invites those who want to police behavior to try to do so by taking highly vocal offense. Furthermore, GitHub can't defend user content by falling back to free speech principles, since the obvious follow-up is to ask what the difference is between the next topic of contention and this one. This should be concerning to anyone who enjoys things that are at risk of social sanction. Here's a short list of vaguely-plausible examples from both sides of the political spectrum: Violent video games Pornography Privacy tools Penetration testing tools Abortion services LGBT+ rights Religious commentary Political activism
• bratsche 11y ago
  heh, with some clever social engineering and timing this could actually become a new form of attack. A lot of scripts (and Gemfiles and other things) point directly to projects on Github. Imagine an attacker managing to sneak a subtle offensive thing into a PR and get it merged in, then later complain to Github at a time when the repo owner is busy/unresponsive/on holiday. Then all the scripts or Gemfiles trying to pull down the repo fail.
• dognotdog 11y ago
  For those people (like myself) not wanting to be dependent on github and similar hosting services, there are alternatives to git+github that can do distributed bugtracking and are easily self-hosted, such as Fossil ( http://www.fossil-scm.org http://www.fossil-scm.org ).
• Akujin 11y ago
  I don't like framing this debate in the prism of government versus private company policing. Freedom of speech is not mutually exclusive to the government. Consider a programming club meeting once a week that is open to the public. You get there and it's 6 dudes and they are accepting of you as a coder but completely at odds with you on the social justice spectrum (using words like "gay" and "retard" as examples). You have two choices at this point. Either accept the group for who they are or leave. This is the context in which I see Github. There's a reason why Linus can run his mouth. It's because to the old "boys" club of programmers only results matter and not the social context of the group. They have no problem with Linus using their service while running his mouth. Why are they picking on this group in particular? It's quite simple. They are small and not important. Let me be clear. This is very very bad for open source. Github was once considered the automatic public place to share your code. For the most part most projects live in the world of a few singular coders who put their code out to the world for sharing sake and maybe to possibly intrigue others to join their project. Many of these guys are sitting in their bedrooms or garages hacking away and not looking to open themselves up to the SJW crowd when publishing their code. Regardless of what you think of the people doing the coding (which is reflected in the comments) the point of Github was to improve the accessibility of code. I fear this move will take that mission in the opposite direction. Successful software is almost always filled with expletives. The device you are browsing this very site almost certainly had at least one fuck in it's source code somewhere in the stack. Just look at the Linux Kernel http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/ http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/
  • kefka 11y ago
    "Lookie here, your compiler does some absolutely insane things with the spilling, including spilling a constant. For chrissake, that compiler shouldn't have been allowed to graduate from kindergarten. We're talking "sloth that was dropped on the head as a baby" level retardation levels here .... Anyway, this is not a kernel bug. This is your compiler creating completely broken code. We may need to add a warning to make sure nobody compiles with gcc-4.9.0, and the Debian people should probably downgrate their shiny new compiler." Linus Torvalds, http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1407.3/00650.html http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1407.3/00650.html
• forthwall 11y ago
  Didn't they read the TOS? I guess not, because otherwise they wouldn't realize that they can do this. They're a private entity and it's up to the customers to react. If more people are in favor of this action (which it seems so), why would they not keep doing this.
• thedz 11y ago
  Can I take a moment to just point out the silliness of worrying about the censoring or suppression of content in a distributed source control system? The very nature of git means you can just clone the repo and do whatever you want to it.
  • njharman 11y ago
    You are confusing and commingling git with Github. Even though one uses the other they are very much not the same thing conceptually or practically.
• seivan 11y ago
  It's kind of scary how many people here consider the word retard offensive. I assume words like "fucker" or "dicks" would also trigger you? I get that Github as a private corporation gets to decide what they want or don't want but that's driven on how many people genuinely get offended so I'm assuming a large portion of people genuinely got bothered by this compared to all the other shit happening in the world.
  • hhandoko 11y ago
    We're not discussing about private conversation between two friends. I would be offended if a stranger said that to me. Wouldn't you? Of course, I can see that this is done for laughs, but not everyone sees that.
    • seivan 11y ago
      This repository doesn't belong to you. For all intents and purposes this is a private conversation in public. Not to mention going out of their way and report it to the Githapo to have them take it down. This is insane. I'm I the only one who sees the insanity of grown adults shitting their pants over vulgarity?!
      • duncan_bayne 11y ago
        > grown adults Now there's an unwarranted assumption if ever I saw one ;)
      • hhandoko 11y ago
        It is a false analogy though. If it's just a commit message, then I can see why you would think this construes as a `private` conversation (i.e. message between committers). But, it's also in the README which, by default, the first thing you see when you open up the repository. The better analogy perhaps, is the author is standing with a signboard containing some offensive language in some corner of a public space.
        • malft 11y ago
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• im3w1l 11y ago
  Is there a code hosting solution that a) lets me self host code b) has identity system (common to all self hosted instances) c) has pull requests whose origin can be verified with the identity system?
  • drdaeman 11y ago
    You mean... git? You can self-host git repo. It's quite storage- and transport-agnostic - you can host it over HTTP, SSH, NFS, SMB/CIFS and even FTP if you're into perverse things. Every commit has your name and email address, and if you want authentication you can sign those with your public key. And, well, you can send and receive patches using any means you want. The patch is just a text (usually) file.
    • im3w1l 11y ago
      >And, well, you can send and receive patches using any means you want. I would prefer an built-in interface, which is why I asked for it.
  • pnathan 11y ago
    Kallithea might serve your needs.
• Zikes 11y ago
  I disagree with this in principle, however as a private company Github has the right to do as they please. Just make the rules clear and apply them fairly and consistently and you'll hear no complaints from me.
• anon3_ 11y ago
  GH already has set a precedent for favoring people based off their political tastes. - OpalGate: LGBT has been used as an excuse to harass people outside of GH for twitter messages. - C+=: satirical repository called C+= mocking feminism in tech was Shut down. - GGAutoBlocker: specifically targets a manifest of twitter targets users based off political persuasion. It's alive. (https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker/blob/master/sourcelist.txt https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker/blob/master/sou...) This blocker is literally based off targetting people because of their political beliefs. If you don't fall in line with the politics of certain people, they claim harassment - report your to these services - and get you shutdown.
• chuckreynolds 11y ago
  hmm... isn't "git" an offensive term in UK and/or Europe? Idk - I try not to use the word myself but interesting call here.
• sillygeese 11y ago
  I wonder what it would take for people to see that political correctness is a problem.
• chx 11y ago
  Funny how the parent repository username "WebMBro" basically tells you all you need to know... bro.
• msoad 11y ago
  Meanwhile the guy with Hitler profile picture is still enjoying GitHub despite multiple reports! https://github.com/followtheart https://github.com/followtheart
  • lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
    Who cares about this? If you felt the need to "report" an image of Hitler, you should feel very silly.
    • DanBC 11y ago
      Anyone related to a person with LD probably somewhat cares about it, especially if their relative has been the victim of hate crime or life-risking stigma. "Hate incidents" (not necessarily crime) are very common. In the UK a person with LD is more likely to experience a hate incident than someone who is gay, or someone who is a member of a religion.
      • ersii 11y ago
        Could you please elaborate on what LD means in this context? I'm not finding any suitable definition or explanation by searching.
        • shawabawa3 11y ago
          I think Learning Disabilities Not sure how that relates to an image of Hilter
  • rmoriz 11y ago
    That's not a real Hitler image, it's a photo of a wax figure at "Madame Tussauds" in Berlin. While I don't think this is the right place to use such a photo, I don't think it should be censored. You probably know the movie "Der Untergang" and all the fake-dub videos on youtube. Guess someone uses an angry Hitler face out of this movie? Most people know that it must be ironical, however… to cut it short: It's probably unprofessional, maybe childish. But that's not illegal.
• jlarocco 11y ago
  Is there any evidence that this is even real? The repo in question is a fork of a repo that's still up, with the word "retard" still in it. There's tons of foul language on GitHub, why would they single out this one relatively minor instance? Anybody could fake that imgur picture in about 30 seconds. Does anybody know for sure that the repo was actually unavailable? Has anybody from GitHub responded? This does remind me I wanted to clone my repos somewhere else, though.
  • makomk 11y ago
    The parent repo was taken down by Github too: https://web.archive.org/web/20150725130839/https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter https://web.archive.org/web/20150725130839/https://github.co...
• golergka 11y ago
  Github is a private company and they have the right to do that. However, as their customer (I pay them a little every month myself and I also work for a company that pays them a lot), I don't like that behaviour and I would start think about switching to other company's services if they continue to do that.
• jasonkester 11y ago
  ... As is their prerogative. It's their garden, so they get to decide which weeds to pull. The weeds have no say: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3586667
• tytytytyty 11y ago
  Oh look, it's hackernews! Business graduates discussing at length their irrelevant ideals that no actual developer gives a holy fuck about. I am removing everything I put on github, right now, and it's a lot. Don't like what their doing? Fuck them, they are popular because we shoved our code into it. The best part of this all is, I am willing to bet I know what Linus's (the creator of git for all you retards) opinion of this whole thing is. Fuck you github. fuck you.
• deciplex 11y ago
  For those defending Github by pointing out that threatening to shut down this repository was not an act of Congress, and therefore not illegal: you would need many km/s of delta-V to miss the point any more than you already have. Your argument sucks.
• return0 11y ago
  There's BitBucket, with even far better free plans.
• mukyu 11y ago
  Aaron Swartz's last interview is really apropos. [1] He discusses how speech has changed and why we should be concerned over private companies' suppressive actions now rather than just governments. Also, those arguing that governmental assertions of free speech rights only apply to government actions are not familiar with the relevant case law in the US. [2] Similarly, those claiming that censorship can only be done by state actors are using an incredibly idiosyncratic definition that basically anyone other than a hardcore libertarian would disagree with. [3][4][5] Say it is the 1980s and a college newspaper prints something that upsets someone. They then steal and destroy all copies of that issue once they are printed. How is this action by a non-state actor different enough to be put in another category? Scott Alexander also has a good read on these issues. [6] [1] http://www.wired.com/2013/04/aaron-swartz-interview/ http://www.wired.com/2013/04/aaron-swartz-interview/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship [4] https://www.aclu.org/what-censorship https://www.aclu.org/what-censorship [5] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Censorship http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Censorship [6] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali...
  • johncolanduoni 11y ago
    > Also, those arguing that governmental assertions of free speech rights only apply to government actions are not familiar with the relevant case law in the US. Note that that ruling does not establish that the first amendment provides the protection of free speech from a private company. It ruled that the California constitution did so, and was in fact allowed to expand upon the rights provided by the US constitution.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• peterwaller 11y ago
  Github has seriously harmed their reputation for me. Who is to define what's offensive? I'm reminded of someone who found the method "Hijack" offensive in the HTTP golang package, and the amount of animosity this created: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/golang-nuts/hijacker/golang-nuts/sN6BFoli5GE/u-hWZzV_mfQJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/golang-nuts/hijac...
  • maxerickson 11y ago
    Per their TOS for years and years now, Github gets to define what content they will publish and/or take down. I guess they haven't really tried to paint themselves as brave defenders of speech either. Which I don't think really says much about how people should interpret actions like this, it just means they probably shouldn't be so surprised.
• return0 11y ago
  Good call. I would like Youtube to follow with something similar. I mean, have you even seen their videos? it's gross (no offense to fat peeps).
• kuanlnaie 11y ago
  every git subscriber should create a retard-ish repository. problem solved!
  • arbatherkras 11y ago
    Heh, I'm way ahead of you there: http://morph.is/commit-9d25bf77a8a9240d4c74e63f4731b65cb137c489.txt http://morph.is/commit-9d25bf77a8a9240d4c74e63f4731b65cb137c...
• cheald 11y ago
  GitHub making value judgments on the political correctness of speech in the repositories they host makes me extremely hesitant to continue to use them. I want my service platforms to be neutral to content, so long as it's legal. This isn't some complaint about "freedom of speech" or some whine about how GitHub can't do this, but their doing so has substantially harmed my faith in them as a platform and as a company that I want to be dependent on. I'm voting with my wallet, and I've just deleted my private repos and downgraded from my paid plan. I don't wish to support these kinds of actions with my dollars.
  • shkkmo 11y ago
    I agree completely. Why the hell should Github care about this? These sorts of decisions reduce my confidence that Github won't make even worse decisions that actually materially effect me. Without confidence in them, I'll start hosting my code elsewhere.
  • brobinson 11y ago
    Bitbucket has free private repos if you're looking for somewhere else. Not quite as full featured as Github, but it's free.
• grkvlt 11y ago
  So, why on earth are similarly 'offensive' repositories like https://github.com/meh/retarded https://github.com/meh/retarded (may be NSFW based on language) still available? This seems either a very selective policy, or there is something else going on beyond the mere use of the word 'Retard' here. I found the example above with a simple Google search, and I'm sure there are many more that can be picked out, depending on the choice of obscenity or slur; so it seems like GitHub could be policing this fairly easily and automatically if desired (modulo obvious issues with false positives). Is it perhaps more likely that this is in response to a third party notifying them about the repo?
  • krainboltgreene 11y ago
    I'm hoping they get to his repositories soon. Fuck that guy.
  • IshKebab 11y ago
    Likely someone flagged this repo and not the one you linked.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Like every site, GitHub acts under safe harbour. It can't and doesn't police every piece of content uploaded. But it can respond to reports. That's what's happened here.
    • protomyth 11y ago
      "GitHub acts under safe harbour." This has nothing to do with a copyright or trademark violation so has nothing to do with any safe harbor provisions.
      • TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Legally-speaking, yes, but it's the same principle.
  • MatthewWilkes 11y ago
• systemz 11y ago
  Political correctnes, it's never fun.
• grkvlt 11y ago
  There's something odd about this. The repo in question is 'nixxquality/WebMConverter' which is where the GitHub notice was sent. However, this is a fork of another repo - https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter - and that parent repo seems alive and well (that is, not disabled, and unchanged, so still titled 'WebM for retards') so why the discrepancy? Did the WebMBro account get suspended initially, and then reinstated, and only the fork felt the need to change the text? If so, this seems like a lot of overreaction based on what may well have been a (well intentioned) mistake on GitHub's part?
  • ersii 11y ago
    According to the link in the commit message, this repository (nixxquality/WebMConverter) was disabled as a consequence of the parent repository (WebMBro/WebMConverter) getting disabled by GitHub. Presumably the parent repository owners also got a message like this when their repository was disabled. Also, as you've observed: Neither repository is currently disabled.
• ersii 11y ago
  It might be worth mentioning here that Launchpad.net (Owned, Operated by Canonical Ltd of Ubuntu fame) recently launched (rudimentary) Git support [1]. They obviously need to integrate it better, but that is on it's way. Launchpad.net might be a (more?) suitable option to consider if you're mainly developing Free and Open Source Software. [1] http://blog.launchpad.net/general/git-code-hosting-beta http://blog.launchpad.net/general/git-code-hosting-beta
• sytse 11y ago
  It is so hard to decide where to draw the line. At GitLab.com we face decisions like this too and it is impossible to please everyone. We have a code of conduct https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#code-of-conduct https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CONTRIBU... for contributing to GitLab but not for the SaaS service. You can't allow everything and you can't ban everything, so everything always is a judgement call. It would be nice to vote on these things, but a community vote might generate more problems that it solves. Maybe leave it up to the core team https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ but this group is more concerned with technical decisions. Having a committee for these things seems heavy handed too. In summary, no ideal solutions and I don't have a strong opinion about what GitHub is doing here. The advantage of GitLab is that people that don't fit in can always run their own server https://git.popcorntime.io/groups/popcorntime https://git.popcorntime.io/groups/popcorntime
  • savage884 11y ago
    Wow. Good to know. I actually just created an account at gitlab.com earlier today because of this. Now I know that was a waste of my time. You want to know where to draw the line? Draw it at staying out of other peoples' business.
    • sytse 11y ago
      I'm sorry to hear you feel this way. Staying out of other peoples' business was not an option with GamerGate, and I'm afraid it will not be an option in the future. I would love a clear choice in these matters but I don't see one.
• MrDosu 11y ago
  Goodbye GitHub A repository provider has ZERO say in what I write in my codebase. There are enough alternatives.
• probe_drone 11y ago
  They did shut down a project /and all of its fork/ just for that word. https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baac06fa7175677a4a1bf65860a84708d67#commitcomment-12417836 https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baa...
• probe_drone 11y ago
  They did shut down a project /and all of its fork/ just for that word. https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baac06fa7175677a4a1bf65860a84708d67#commitcomment-12417836 https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baa...
• learnstats2 11y ago
  The insult used as a replacement here - 'git' - is also problematic. 'git' itself literally means 'bastard' i.e. a person born of unmarried parents. We can claim to be an enlightened society which does not discriminate on the basis of parentage, but that doesn't bear out on so many levels, not least that single parents do not receive effective support. You can say I could make the same argument about 'dummies' as an insult, and I won't really complain. The brand name '...for dummies' was originally a bit shocking: that's part of its marketing strategy. This is not a strategy that I particularly like. I would not bother to censor here, I will continue just to privately think less well of this and other projects.
• kyberias 11y ago
  Let's monitor this https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=retard https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=retard
• adad95 11y ago
  So..... Can i have a list of block words in my repo?
• overpaidgoogler 11y ago
  For me the main issue is not that github removed offensive content, but the politicization of the concept. The most glaring discrepancy to me is that even though the word "nerd" is used to incite physical violence, that word is not considered inappropriate. The reason is that progressive political ideology asserts that violence that is perpetrated by "powerful" groups against "powerless" groups has an additional significance and importance, and violence against nerds falls weakly into this category, if at all.
• hartator 11y ago
  The most ironic part is "git" is in fact a synonym of retard. GitHub name can be seen as an offensive name by itself. (RetardHub)
• j-pb 11y ago
  As somebody who has multiple sclerosis and thus the prospect of disability (both physically and mentally), I find this trend worrying. I have other things to worry about than "bad words", I could spontaneously loose my vision, my ability to walk, type, speak, swallow or to breath, in addition to a variety of cognitive impairments. What keeps me up at night is wether that tingling in my hand is just because I lay on it or because my immune system destroys my brain again, not wether or not somebody used "retard" or "spastic" online. It makes me sad and angry that people can act and feel as if they've done something for the handicapped by being offended at some word, while they have literally done nothing to improve the lives of those affected. I wish more people would put their time and energy into improving medicine, wheelchairs & exoskeletons, and social-programs.
  • noir_lord 11y ago
    I have a spinal condition and there is a distinct possibility I'll end up in a wheelchair at worst and crutches at best. I also couldn't give a fuck about retard/cripple or anything else anyone else says, It offends me more that someone would get offended on my behalf as if I need protecting. This mob justice shit is getting ridiculous really fast.
• seanhandley 11y ago
  The word itself isn't the problem. It's the context in which a word is used which makes it offensive. If it's being directed at someone intentionally then you have a case for offensive behaviour. In the context here, it looks passive enough to me.
• golemotron 11y ago
  I think GitHub should stop policing language and the reason why is simple: it never ends. This is our future, people. Endless discussions about particular words, what they mean to particular people and particular groups of people, second guessing, and endless discussion threads. This is our future and it's not software development.
• samch 11y ago
  There has, for several years, been a campaign[1] promoted by the Special Olympics to end the r-word. I have signed on, and I encourage others to do so as well. I've known a lot of awesome people with intellectual disabilities who have had this label applied to them in the past. It's amazingly hurtful. No matter how you feel about Github's decision, I encourage all of us to consider how the r-word lingers in daily usage and pledge to stop using it ourselves. Thanks! 1. http://www.r-word.org/ http://www.r-word.org/
  • rlidwka 11y ago
    > I've known a lot of awesome people with intellectual disabilities who have had this label applied to them in the past. It's amazingly hurtful. Applying it to someone is hurtful. Using this word is not. It doesn't matter if you substitute "retard" with "r-word" everywhere, nothing will change. Even if you change the name of the condition, you don't change the condition. If someone wants to be offensive, I'd bet saying "Hey, you're r-word" will do the job just fine. If it was said with an intention to be offensive, it is offensive. And trying to censor certain words doesn't change it. Because words aren't the problem, people are. I'll quote George Carlin here: "They're only words. It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. {...} For instance, you take the word 'nigger.' There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word 'nigger' in and of itself. It's the racist asshole who's using it that you ought to be concerned about." [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUvdXxhLPa8#t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUvdXxhLPa8#t=50s
    • samch 11y ago
      I'll just have to admit to a difference of opinion with you on this. I believe there is something inherently wrong with the n-word. I took the time to seek out its etymological roots via the Oxford English Dictionary, and the earliest evidence of its use is entirely negative and demeaning to those being described as such. You don't need any additional context when the word itself was contrived as a convenient brush to disparage a people. It is, to its very roots, a bad word. I also think you missed the point of the r-word campaign. They are not trying to get people to say "r-word" instead of the r-word. They want people to be more thoughtful and stop using the term altogether. Most people in polite society have stopped using the n-word, and they didn't substitute the literal phrase "n-word" for it as you suggest might be done. I would like to see these same people do this for the r-word. For example, I've heard a few of my coworkers use the r-word on numerous occasions when I know they would never dare use the n-word. The r-word campaign is simply asking for the same type of consideration.
• cmiles74 11y ago
  I don't understand how censoring something because "it's offensive to someone" came to be acceptable in the first place. Nearly everything is offensive to someone, it's simply too low a bar. I'm certainly not campaigning for more use of the terms "retard" and "retarded". On the other hand, I've experienced first hand the very common, reflexive and thoughtless use of these words. Whenever it's used in my presence I make a point to express my distaste for the term and I encourage others to stop using it. I've gone through these motions with countless co-workers and two people higher up on the management chain, including my direct supervisor. But where I live, it's practically a regional colliquialism. In this case, perhaps removal or correction is reasonable and Github is acting responsibly; I've already established that I have problems with these terms and do find them offensive. Still, I am uncomfortable with the whole episode and I don't feel at all confident that the next time this happens, it will seem as reasonable. On the contrary, I expect that the next time this happens, it will end up being more about ideology as it seems more and more people conflate "I am offended" with "I disagree".
  • smrtinsert 11y ago
    I think that's not giving Github enough credit. They are clearly thinking very deeply about professionalism in a social coding frame, and I really doubt they will begin addressing every single complaint they receive. If they do, again, there are existing alternatives or the people are free to build their own. The alarmism over this "incident" is mind boggling. That people don't simple let Github conduct their business is incomprehensible to me. If I owned a Chipotle and someone came in yelling "retard" or any term I found offensive I would feel fine kicking them out. If the Chipotle down the street thought that was fine, they might get my business, but there is always choice.
    • mangeletti 11y ago
      Nobody is running into anywhere and "yelling 'retard'", the equivalent of which would be more akin to posting "RETARD" on comment threads all over GitHub. If that's what was happening, most would regard it as spam and would probably agree that the user should be banned (at least temporarily). That's not what happened. So, while I agree that using "retard" in a lighthearted manner is offensive, and I wouldn't do it myself, I don't decide what others are allowed to say, because I don't want others to decide what I'm allowed to say[1]? Instead, I'll make a choice about who I want to be friends with. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
• tempodox 11y ago
  As a non-“git”, I personally find the association of “git” with “retard” appropriate, correct, and a fair use of free speech. However, as a private company, GitHub has every right to define their own house rules and enforce them. It might even be mentioned in the Terms of Service somewhere.
• coreyp_1 11y ago
  I despise SJWs.
• kiproping 11y ago
  1. Fork the repo 2. Revert SJW bullshit 3. ??? 4. Profit
  • renata 11y ago
    Done and done. Let's see if they want to make this a policy. https://github.com/renataskyfire/WebMConverter https://github.com/renataskyfire/WebMConverter
• talles 11y ago
  People swear on GitHub all the time: http://commitlogsfromlastnight.com http://commitlogsfromlastnight.com That was really silly by GH folks.
• michaelbehan 11y ago
  FROM THE PAGE: nixxquality commented on c1ac0ba 4 hours ago They are not alone. I know many people who would find this offensive. It isn't like they shadowbanned them or deleted the repo outright. The maintainers were given 24hrs and instructions to fix it. -- @ybur-yug No, what actually happened is that somebody reported the original upstream of this fork (WebMBro/WebMConverter) but since @WebMBro himself left a while ago (which prompted me to make this fork in the first place), GitHub couldn't get a response from him, so they shut down that repo along with all forks, with seemingly no communication towards other fork developers. I had to contact GitHub myself in order to even get a notification of what was going on, and it took them about 3 days to restore any kind of access to my fork of the project.
• asadotzler 11y ago
  GitHub is not a public benefit organization. They are not public infrastructure. They are a for-profit company that does what's best for Github. Just because they have free (as in beer) hosting doesn't make them trust-able public infrastructure. It's worrying that so much of today's free and open source software development community doesn't seem to understand that.
• ackim 11y ago
  Everyone is offended by something; every snowflake has a trigger. If we start censoring because someone might be offended, ultimately everyone will be silent. The irony here is that GIT is British english for idiot. Github is therefore the network of idiocy.
• mdup 11y ago
  What worries me the most in this thread is the quantity of GIFs, memes, and blatantly useless "me too, lol" comments. Can you relate how A MESSAGE WRITTEN IN CAPS makes you feel the author is shouting? Well, in the exact same way, those ridiculous pictures and messages feel to me like teenagers joining a conversation with childish jokes adding nothing to the debate, except noise. Honestly, this looks more like a YouTube comment thread than a community of professionals discussing grown-ups issues.
• renata 11y ago
  Forked and reverted, let's see if they're willing to make this a policy.
• jgrowl 11y ago
  I would never use the word retard as an insult to someone with disabilities. I would use the word to describe things I find stupid. Even if I did find the word retard offensive, I wouldn't like what github did here. Yes, they have the right to remove words they don't like. Yes, I have the right to not use their platform. Github's time as a central source for code is limited anyway. If you don't like what they do contribute to projects that make the web more decentralized.
• babygoat 11y ago
  It's delicious how many who can't or won't understand the concept of being offended are now worrying aloud about being shamed.
• plonh 11y ago
  Link goes to s/retard/git/ commit Where is the issue mentioned in the title "threatens tonshut down"?
• ljk 11y ago
  I wonder where github is going; from a month ago: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
• dpc_pw 11y ago
  Idiocy of political correctness taking it's toll. Always relevant George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY In 20 years, next Github will be taking down projects that have "cognitively impaired" in it, because that's what we're going to be using to insult each other.
• jmsmistral 11y ago
  Boycott Github, use Bitbucket!
• wldcordeiro 11y ago
  More internet drama over trite things, hooray. This kind of stuff just reminds me of Steve Hughes' comedy bit on being offended.[1] [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs
• wrexsoule 11y ago
  The funny thing is that words differ based on context. So if Github wishes to get into the game of automatically banning repos based on "bad words", they'd need to consider it in the context of each language. For example "retard" in French means "late", so should a repo from a French dev be banned because he used "retard"?
• kefka 11y ago
  This debacle is what happens when feminism gets in the way. Meritocracy is now a "bad word" according to feminists. The start of this change began at GitHub 2 years ago, with getting rid of a rug. The rug said, "United Meritocracy of GitHub" source:http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug This goes down the social justice warrior, feminism, and racism avenues, so it of course had to change. Now, why is Meritocracy bad? "By discarding the difficulties inherent in being both objective and humanistic, leaders in the open source community ignore the moral impact of their value system and focus solely on the potential value of their creations. The comfortable elite benefit from the status quo and never have to question the circumstances that keep them in positions of power." The Dehumanizing Myth of the Meritocracy , by Coraline Ada Ehmke https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of-the-meritocracy https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of... Should I interpret the article as content based upon its merit, or should I take the fact a white (-3 points), female (+5 points), lesbian (+2 points), computer programmer (-4 points) wrote this article? Look at the bright side, if she can claim black (+10 points), then we have to view her content even more positively. My answer is that I should evaluate the points and content on its merit. I'm sure she would be appalled that I would want to give her "fake minority points" to falsely increase/decrease her perceived score... Then again, I may be wrong. But this, fellow programmer, is what we are having to fight against. I may be male. I may be female. I may be transgender. I may even be a nullo(just.dont.ask.). Or White. Or black. Or Asian. Or have a disability. Or be intellectually superior. Or completely average. But what I do have is my words, and how others read and interpret the content and worth of my words. It reminds me a document I read long ago... "We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals... ...Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for." \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/
• michaelbuddy 11y ago
  This kind of thinking will retard the development of web communities. Did that sentence above offend anyone because it contained the word retard? certainly the appearance of a word could offend someone. So what. doesn't mean the word doesn't work, doesn't mean the word was even directed at them, doesn't mean the word was used with the same vibrancy or harshness as another time in their past that same word was used by someone else in some other context. Frankly with words and being human you have to just deal with them. You have to develop muscles, use some fresh mental gymnastics to get on with your life. If this personal ritual of being offended is hurting you, look at where that comes from internally the core mechanism. Get some counseling, don't force thousands of other people to try to relate or modify just because of your narrow experience. People who get offended need to grow up and engage with a society with a personal strength. Focusing on real problems not imaginary ones helps a lot. Lately you see more coddling over supposed hurtful words than any victim of a real aggression gets from the public. "Oh a word hurt you?" let's put it on national TV. "Oh you were assaulted and blugeoned and put in the hospital?" well sorry we can't fit you in on the local news unless there's a real story here. don't let society continue to turn this direction. Solve real problems and ignore imaginary subjective ones.
• totony 11y ago
  Why didn't the maintainer just take it down? Why comply to such a stupid request? Github profits from people going to their service because it makes them more popular. Complying to the request is encouraging them (even if it's the switch between retard and git). I'd just have deleted the repo saying "We moved to * (ex. GitLab) with a screenshot of the email as a reason. If they don't want your content on their servers, fine, too bad for them
• flippinburgers 11y ago
  1) A person uses an "offensive" word (without intent or without directing it at a particular person) but only to highlight a dislike of an idea or way of doing things. 2) A person uses an "offensive" word to make somebody else feel bad by directing their language at their victim. I feel these two are in fact different uses of the word and I don't have sympathy for the "victim" in the first scenario. In the second scenario there is clear intent to hurt an individual. In the first scenario something like "Library for retards" is doing what exactly? The retarded reader sees the word retarded, remembers that they are retarded, and then feels sad because they are in fact retarded? Insulted by proxy. It, unfortunately, clearly implies that being retarded is bad. Lets be honest though. How many people here would switch their current level of cognitive abilities for that of somebody who is mentally disabled? Nobody. It is a terrible state of human suffering (I would say). But then again I am biased in thinking that life is "better" on the right end of most bell curves. - If somebody is actively trying to hurt another person physically this needs to stop. Full stop. - If somebody is trying to emotionally hurt another person because of who they are that should stop. So calling somebody retarded to their face? Not a good thing. - If somebody is trying to emotionally hurt another person by calling them names arbitrary names ("you fag" when the person is in fact hetero etc) is not a good thing. The above are based on intent and are targeted towards a victim. - If somebody tries to insult another persons beliefs or ideas? Perfectly ok. This, of course, isn't what is happening in this case on github, but since this thread seems to be talking a bit about slippery slopes, I would rather not see our society fall so far at to make criticism a punishable "offense". At the end of the day changing one single word is just fine, but I wish it had happened in a more positive way rather than github using the heavy hand of their "policy" (an undefinable totally subjective ambiguity that isn't applied uniformly to the whole site). By the way, I am looking forward to the day when an "offensive word" registry is kept that bans language from use on the internet. If a word is found to be offensive by 10,000 or more individuals anywhere in the world, we have to be sure to purge it from everyday usage (good luck keeping up with malicious grade school kids) /s ...It is a stupid idea. "Sticks and stones will break my bones and words will most certainly kill me." The new mantra.
  • flippinburgers 11y ago
    Also this sort of "drive-by looking to be insulted" scanning of online repos etc is pathetic in my mind. For instance: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 The individuals who threw their childish temper tantrums and caused the explosive issue will: 1) Never be back other than to "report" the original offender if they ever catch him violating the COC that they so proudly forced on an otherwise harmless community. 2) Never have and never will contribute anything to the code base. Ever! Talk about entitlement. It is the worst type of third-party drive-by policing ever.
• rza 11y ago
  Should we start banning repos with "master" and "slave" too?
• agnes49 11y ago
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• Enhex 11y ago
  You didn't get the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary?