Dear GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear GitHub

#471

Post by pron » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

talmand wrote: post #458

pron wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that the majority rules, just that the majority defines what is mainstream. If you want to run an open-source project that promotes misogynistic values, be our guest -- just don't do it on GitHub. I don't understand what the problem is. In anything -- from TV to theater, music, architecture and social clubs -- there is the mainstream and the fringe. Maybe one day, fringe ideas will become mainstream and…

>> I didn't say that the majority rules, just that the majority defines what is mainstream. Sorry my friend, that is majority rules. The problem is we already know what this form of thinking eventually leads to. It's happened several times throughout human history. The problem is one group feeling they have the power to dictate to the "other". Especially when the group dynamic and what is considered other changes fre…

> The problem is one group feeling they have the power to dictate to the "other".

Nobody is dictating. Do whatever the hell you want. Just don't put on an off-Broadway shown on Broadway. That's it.

> What you consider your mainstream ideals today may be somebody else's fringe tomorrow.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you NBC should broadcast Oz. That's what HBO is for (again, I'm not comparing HBO with misogynistic communities or that I think misogyny would become order of the day; but even vile ideas have their place). People know that broadcast TV has certain rules and certain audiences, and if you don't want to follow the rules or address that mainstream audience, your show will not be aired on broadcast TV. You want to call that censorship? Fine, but as long as those "censored" opinions have 100 other cable channels that will air them, that's perfectly fine by me.

> that someone recently decided was wrong because they want to somehow change the context of the usage of words.

BTW, as a former student of history I can tell you that people always decide to change the context of the use of words in order to make society better (of course, what they think is better). And this pattern is never restricted to just one political group. It is just that political groups always find the others' new contexts annoying.

Re: Dear GitHub

#472

Post by danielrhodes » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

ketralnis wrote: post #58

monkmartinez wrote: post #42

I do not operate a popular OSS project, but I have experienced the +1 spam and it sucks. The suggestions, in my opinion seem rational. Interesting side note: With the exception of Selenium, most of signees are maintainers of JS/HTML OSS projects. I wonder if we could objectively compare JS to projects in terms of the problems mentioned in the document. For example, there is a strong correlation between +1'ers and JS…

I think it's just monkey see->monkey do. As soon as one person said +1, everyone that saw it thought that that's just how you voted for stuff. It's the same reason you see comments on HN or reddit that just say "This." or that if you leave your shoes by the door, everyone else will do the same. I doubt these people keep doing it if you ask them not to.

"This." or "+1" is a more expressive way of showing support beyond anonymous voting mechanisms.

Re: Dear GitHub

#473

Post by pron » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #452

pron wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now they are in the business of regulating the content of open source projects That is a very good thing. At this point in time we're beyond speculation. We have some good evidence about the direction online communities take with and without content moderation, and the serious players (most recently Reddit) have come to realize that top-down moderation is absolutely necessary. Fringe, unmoderated activity has a pla…

so what do you think of saudi prince becoming second twitter biggest stakeholder. He is free to censor anti saudi govt speech on twitter?

I don't know what you mean by "free". Of course, a business owner is free to direct their business as they wish within law. Would I like it? No. But businesses are rarely ideologically neutral, and they often reflect the ideals and world views of the societies that created them. As Twitter is a Western company, it reflects Western notions, so I wouldn't be happy when it starts reflecting Saudi world views, but if it does, I guess someone will start another Western Twitter. If you want Twitter to be a public infrastructure rather than a private business, make it a government-owned company.

Re: Dear GitHub

#474

Post by teen » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 12:53 PM UTC

danielsamuels wrote: post #183

I know they've only recently released new permissions for organisations, but they're still extremely lacking. As far as I can see, there's no way of setting permissions at a group level. As an example of how this would be used, we have a Github team within our organisation which is used for non-technical people to post bugs. These people have no reason to be able to see or push code to the repository, they only need…

I just create a single repo for all issues, cross repo, and manage it with waffle.io. Works well for me, but ymmv

Re: Dear GitHub

#475

Post by sethammons » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

oneJob wrote: post #419

jonobacon wrote: post #116

Hi Adam, Addy, Andreas, Ariya, Forbes, James, Henry, John-David, Juriy , Ken, Nicholas, Pascal, Sam, Sindre, My name is Jono and I started as Director of Community back in November at GitHub. Obviously I am pretty new at GitHub, but I thought I would weigh in. Firstly, thanks for your feedback. I think it is essential that GitHub always has a good sense of not just what works well for our users, but also where the pa…

Respectfully Jono, I think your reply is symptomatic of the issues at the heart of the matter. GitHub is, whether it expected to be or not, whether it wants to be or not, now at the heart of the OSS community. For the "Director of Community" at a company which plays such an important role in the OSS community, which itself plays an enormously important role in the broader software and civic communities and is populat…

Your response, specifically #3, makes me wonder if you have ever worked in a medium to large business. Forgive me if I read it wrong. I think his response is solid and the best that one could expect from his role. I could not imagine some director from a different department by passing the product team and coming to my development team and saying, "stop what you are doing, and handle my request! I read something on HN! I need a plan of action that directly addresses issues that were raised!". I would, however, expect him to say that he knows or can find out (he is new still) who needs to see this and make sure the discussions happen to ensure that product team has the information required to make an informed discission allowing for a roadmap to be formed that could be shared with the community. He can totally guarantee the right people see it. He can't ensure they do anything about it, but he can champion the issue. I would hope/expect to hear back after all this has happened. What's wrong with saying he is still getting an understanding of how things work at github? And what approval are you dismayed with? His acknowledgment that feedback is important? That was just civility.

Re: Dear GitHub

#476

Post by pron » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

13thLetter wrote: post #470

pron wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that the majority gets to decide. It doesn't really matter what is mainstream and what isn't, as long as there's a place for both. Broadway and off-Broadway are both fine, but mixing them can cause confusion and for both audiences to be disappointed.

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of situations where the "majority," at least of those who speak up, are (for example) opposed to heavily restrictive codes of conduct proposed by outside groups, yet the code is forced through anyway by project leaders. Majority rule seems to be valid only when the majority votes the "right" way.

OK, but do you have a better system? The large, mainstream platforms need to be managed somehow, and their content has to be not too far from the consensus. You don't have to like it, but that's how the mainstream operates. As long as you have other venues where you can do stuff that's outside the consensus, I don't see the problem. I think that the way GitHub is managed now in terms of content (including code of conduct enforced by project leads) is very reasonable for a mainstream platform.

Personally, I don't know if research shows open-source code-of-conduct helps curtail the very real, very serious problem of online-community marginalization (I have seen research on that) or not, but I'd rather defer to the experts, and in any case, it's worth a try. Just as code should be written by expert programmers, community management should be directed by the advice of social experts. Again, I don't know if this is backed by research or an experiment in itself to see if the approach is effective, but I'd rather trust people who devote their lives to studying the issue than to programmers who just "feel" this is wrong. If programmers want to run their own communities and not rely on the advice of experts, they're welcome to do it outside the mainstream platforms. If their approach works better to decrease marginalization, I'm sure the experts will take it to heart.

Re: Dear GitHub

#477

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #426

pron wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now they are in the business of regulating the content of open source projects That is a very good thing. At this point in time we're beyond speculation. We have some good evidence about the direction online communities take with and without content moderation, and the serious players (most recently Reddit) have come to realize that top-down moderation is absolutely necessary. Fringe, unmoderated activity has a pla…

And who exactly gets to decide what is "fringe"?

[deleted]

Re: Dear GitHub

#478

Post by yingbo » Sat, Jan 16, 2016, 8:53 PM UTC

Funny. It's like "Hi, you are rich. We like you. You should onate your money".

There are tradeoffs, so pick services you like.

Re: Dear GitHub

#479

Post by oneJob » Sun, Jan 17, 2016, 6:38 AM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #475

oneJob wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully Jono, I think your reply is symptomatic of the issues at the heart of the matter. GitHub is, whether it expected to be or not, whether it wants to be or not, now at the heart of the OSS community. For the "Director of Community" at a company which plays such an important role in the OSS community, which itself plays an enormously important role in the broader software and civic communities and is populat…

Your response, specifically #3, makes me wonder if you have ever worked in a medium to large business. Forgive me if I read it wrong. I think his response is solid and the best that one could expect from his role. I could not imagine some director from a different department by passing the product team and coming to my development team and saying, "stop what you are doing, and handle my request! I read something on H…

I have indeed worked at a very large (both capitalization and payroll wise) company. I've also worked at small and medium sized companies. But, as relates to my experience at the very large one, this guy would have been eaten alive for putting out that response. Perhaps your definition of large is different from mine. However, my point had nothing to do with the size of the company and everything to do with the role the company plays within the OSS movement.

Re: Dear GitHub

#480

Post by 13thLetter » Mon, Jan 18, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

pron wrote: post #476

13thLetter wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of situations where the "majority," at least of those who speak up, are (for example) opposed to heavily restrictive codes of conduct proposed by outside groups, yet the code is forced through anyway by project leaders. Majority rule seems to be valid only when the majority votes the "right" way.

OK, but do you have a better system? The large, mainstream platforms need to be managed somehow, and their content has to be not too far from the consensus. You don't have to like it, but that's how the mainstream operates. As long as you have other venues where you can do stuff that's outside the consensus, I don't see the problem. I think that the way GitHub is managed now in terms of content (including code of con…

Oh, I agree with you as far as majority rules. It's not great, but you need something and that's less unjust than most other options. What I'm complaining (pointlessly) about is that in these cases majority does not rule: some administrator or corporate functionary has already decided, and that's that.

With regards to who should be trusted to manage communities, I'm afraid I can't convince myself to believe in the experts. In most cases, these "experts" are not people who have successfully managed communities or are even particularly well educated on how they work; they are self-appointed thought leaders with, often, fringe agendas and little concern for who gets trampled in the process of enacting them. They are generally the last possible people you would want to put in charge of anything.

>. If programmers want to run their own communities and not rely on the advice of experts, they're welcome to do it outside the mainstream platforms.

Not if the "experts" do everything in their power to marginalize and poison the public image of those non-mainstream platforms, unfortunately. I think it was either Scott Alexander or one of his commenters who pointed out that, if you take over a community and impose anti-witchcraft policies, you can then easily dismiss any alternate communities -- with a certain amount of accuracy, even -- as being full of witches.