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Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

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Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#61

Post by busterarm »

marijn wrote: post #13

While it sounds very reasonable, friendly, and non-authoritarian, a big problem with an approach like this, without real teeth or rigidity, is that it is very easy to harass people out of a community while staying within its constraints, and provides very little recourse for those being harassed (who often are not in a position of power) to put on pressure for getting something done about it. The approach taken large…

The whole point of this is to not have teeth. It's not supposed to be used as a weapon.

Personally, I haven't contributed to (or not held my nose at) any open source project where contributors have enough free time to spend harassing other contributors rather than commit more code. Who has the time to be bothered, on either end of it? Maybe they're spending too much time in the politics of it rather than the work of it to begin with.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#62

Post by skybrian »

wpietri wrote: post #15

On the one hand, I'm glad that he's at least acknowledging that this is a problem. It's disappointing to me that he talks about the problem as if people first noticed it in August, when I've heard it discussed for a decade or more. But still, baby steps. There's also a crashing lack of self-awareness here. This bit sounds great: "The only political positions that the GNU Project endorses are (1) that users should hav…

Yes, but under the circumstances, I'm unconvinced that hypocrisy is a bad thing. Consistency is overrated. It's good when people change their minds. Rigidly sticking with the same bad position seems like a bigger problem?

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#63

Post by claudiawerner »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #17

> The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. This is excellent; using love and persuasion to help someone improve is so much better than by force, compulsion, and fear. How many children rebel against restrictive and domineering parents? but a child who is loved and taught, but allowed to make choices and pursue independence u…

On the relationship between persuasion and force from a psychoanalytical perspective, Zizek has a nice example showing in what ways persuasion can actually be more subversive:

>The psychoanalytic concept that designates the short-circuit between the repression and what it represses is the superego. As Lacan emphasised again and again, the essential content of the superego’s injunction is ‘Enjoy!’ A father works hard to organise a Sunday excursion, which has to be postponed again and again. When it finally takes place, he is fed up with the whole idea and shouts at his children: ‘Now you’d better enjoy it!’ The superego works in a different way from the symbolic law. The parental figure who is simply ‘repressive’ in the mode of symbolic authority tells a child: ‘You must go to grandma’s birthday party and behave nicely, even if you are bored to death – I don’t care whether you want to, just do it!’ The superego figure, in contrast, says to the child: ‘Although you know how much grandma would like to see you, you should go to her party only if you really want to – if you don’t, you should stay at home.’ The trick performed by the superego is to seem to offer the child a free choice, when, as every child knows, he is not being given any choice at all. Worse than that, he is being given an order and told to smile at the same time. Not only: ‘You must visit your grandma, whatever you feel,’ but: ‘You must visit your grandma, and you must be glad to do it!’ The superego orders you to enjoy doing what you have to do. What happens, after all, if the child takes it that he has a genuinely free choice and says ‘no’? The parent will make him feel terrible. ‘How can you say that!’ his mother will say: ‘How can you be so cruel! What did your poor grandma do to make you not want to see her?’

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#64

Post by KirinDave »

folknor wrote: post #47
dangerlibrary wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevance of the quote you've posted might be less obvious than you think it is.

It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC. This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel. They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of o…

That quotation is a joke, state in irony in a thread about how much abuse someone is receiving for even proposing a change to the rules.

It's disingenuous in the extreme to present that as a tweet that honestly reflected a goal, and anyone who takes a second to click "show thread" and looks around will see it's a tweet made in jest.

Actions like this are misinformation. The question I'm left asking is, "Did folknor know this is not what the tweet meant, and just doesn't care? Or did folknor just not bother to check if this reference was meaningful and valid?" Neither shines a positive light on this argument.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#65

Post by exprA »

ubernostrum wrote: post #49
fossdev wrote: post #39

Diversity as a goal is fundamentally flawed. It is what leads to policies like "affirmative action" which are in themselves simply a form of reverse discrimination.

Affirmative action is about noticing that a system was biased against a particular group of people, and attempting to counteract the bias. For example: if Group X is historically discriminated against, and you can quantify the resulting bias (which may not be conscious) such that on a 100-point school admission scale it works out to on average a 5-point disadvantage, adding some points based on membership in that gro…

Affirmative action is racist.

Accepting that, you can of course debate what sorts of racism we should allow, and perhaps even encourage. I probably disagree with you, but that's just my opinion.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#66

Post by ubernostrum »

village-idiot wrote: post #55
ubernostrum wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, here's the thing. Statements like this? Rather, the problem is that if we make demographic D feel unwelcome, we lose out on possible contributors. And very likely also others that are not in demographic D. This is not a new statement. This is what people pushing diversity have been saying for years and years. The only ways for this to be a new and refreshing thing to you are: 1. You were not paying attention, or…

The irony of unkind communication in a thread discussing new guidelines around kind communication is just painful. Please don't accuse others of not paying attention. It's not nice, and it does a bad job of communicating your message.

The irony of unkind communication in a thread discussing new guidelines around kind communication is just painful.

If I were the type of the anti-"diversity" person, my retort to this would be that you are obviously attempting to censor my free speech, by making certain types of speech out of bounds, and then assert that free speech is a good in itself -- one of the highest, if not the single highest such good -- and then rain down anger upon you for doing so.

Further, I would retreat into weaponizing your own advocated guidelines against you, by asserting that you have uncharitably read things (such as accusation) into my statement when they were not present in the plain text, and then calling for you to be held accountable for the violation.

Consider that that's what you are implicitly supporting when you suggest that a factual statement -- people either are not paying attention, or are being misinformed -- is unkind.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#67

Post by Spivak »

gweinberg wrote: post #45
noch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's always someone who tries to read between the lines and strawman people for what they did not say/express. The claim that there is always someone creating strawmen is itself the creation of a strawman. If you assume good faith of participants then it might be useful to assume good faith of those who criticise even if they misunderstand or misread or assume unwarranted implications.

Well, in the case of volunteer software projects, I think people who make significant contributions should be cut a great deal of slack, whereas those who criticize contributors without contributing themselves aren't entitled to any slack at all.

I mean that's pretty much how it works in practice, I don't think there's really a need to codify "you can get away with being insufferable so long as you're valuable enough." It's not exactly a goal to strive for and more something that is tolerated until another options presents.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#68

Post by folknor »

KirinDave wrote: post #64
folknor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC. This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel. They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of o…

That quotation is a joke, state in irony in a thread about how much abuse someone is receiving for even proposing a change to the rules. It's disingenuous in the extreme to present that as a tweet that honestly reflected a goal, and anyone who takes a second to click "show thread" and looks around will see it's a tweet made in jest. Actions like this are misinformation. The question I'm left asking is, "Did folknor k…

You're absolutely correct, I just took the tweet at face value, and did not bother to investigate the tweet, or any followups, at all.

I still haven't, and simply accept your statement that it's a joke, stated in irony.

I do not use twitter, and do not allow javascript. I've never clicked "Show thread" on Twitter. I had to jump through hoops to find the tweet, and to be able to copy+paste the text of it.

I just remembered it from a different thread here on HN where someone linked to an article that had a screenshot of it.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#69

Post by haloux »

folknor wrote: post #47
dangerlibrary wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevance of the quote you've posted might be less obvious than you think it is.

It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC. This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel. They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of o…

It's difficult to say that @coralineada started the wave . . ._but_ she certainly was an influencing factor in the most recent malignancy. To @folknor and others of like mind, take heart. People are noticing the trend as well. Just take a look at sqlite's coc (https://sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html). The point here, I believe, is that people are becoming aware of the absurdity of the constraints that are being placed on certain FOSS communities. What @coralineada 'started' is certainly having unintended consequences as it would relate to her.

To be honest, I'm surprised her tweet hasn't been deleted and that she hasn't been ousted by the community as being a SJW troll.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#70

Post by bitcynth »

I do agree with this trend, while there are some comments like "we just want to get the work done and not worry about being nice" I do think they are forgetting about a certain part. I as a developer might not contribute to certain open source projects due to the fear of being called things against my gender identity (I am transgender) or being yelled at. And the thing is that I am not getting paid or anything to do it, so instead I am just not going to contribute because I don't want to try to help and instead be yelled at. I think that the free and open source software community is moving in the right direction by making code of conducts or other similar things.
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