Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#71

Post by ubernostrum » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

exprA wrote: post #65

ubernostrum wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Observing a bias, quantifying it as best as possible, and deploying countermeasures in corresponding degree to reduce its impact, is not racism.

But if you believe anything which assigns admission/hiring/recruiting scores on any basis other than objectively-measured individual merit is "racist", you cannot plausibly be in favor of current hiring, recruiting or admissions practices, and have far larger fish to fry than the relatively small number of people whose admission/hiring is solely due to affirmative action.

In all seriousness: look up the ratio of "legacy" admits to, say, black students admitted at top colleges, and then remind yourself that "black" is not synonymous with "affirmative action admit", and then ponder which of "legacy" and "affirmative action" would cause the greatest overall change toward fairness if eliminated. Then focus your efforts accordingly.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#72

Post by codeulike » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

de_watcher wrote: post #19

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.

I'll assume good faith before we overflow the stack.

I was going to make a comment like this but yours is much better.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#73

Post by allannienhuis » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

> Please don't argue unceasingly for your preferred course of action when a decision for some other course has already been made. That tends to block the activity's progress.

I've seen this so many times in non-oss work too. Why do some people have such a hard time letting go? Even more so for Open Source projects - If you care _that_ much about your ideas - fork and move on; otherwise spend you and your co-contributors time advancing the project in other ways.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#74

Post by whatshisface » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #60

So, I read through the list of guidelines, and while I have some minor quibbles with them, overall they seem fine and reasonable. But what happens if someone refuses to be kind? What happens if that person is a major contributor? What would happen if, in some strange alternate reality, Linux was a GNU project, and Linus-of-2012 said he'd really rather not care about all this politeness nonsense, and would prefer to c…

How much damage have Linus's snippy emails really caused, in light of how they have benefited us? I and many other people like reading them because they are fun, so you have to take that in to account. Different people like different things, and that principle extends to writing styles and personalities. Indeed, if you really want to have diversity you should have some emails that I like to read in addition to having emails that you like to read, which by necessity implies that every email thread needs at least a few glib comments. I have heard that Matz and by extension the Ruby community is nice, maybe that project needs to recruit a Linus to fill out their personality lineup.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#75

Post by skybrian » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

LiterallyDoge wrote: post #29

Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?

Yes. Respect is a tricky concept. Even people who know better frequently fail at it, often spectacularly. There's no reason to expect it to be easy.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#76

Post by folknor » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #58

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…

Your uncharitable interpretation of the tweet you linked cannot be read as accidental.

Yes it can, when you realise the fact that I linked to it, and that anyone who cares enough about the subject can investigate and apparently instantly realise that my face-value interpretation of the tweet was entirely mistaken.

Then it should be obvious that it was an accident. If not, I would not have linked a source that instantly disproves what I said.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#77

Post by Sir_Substance » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #60

So, I read through the list of guidelines, and while I have some minor quibbles with them, overall they seem fine and reasonable. But what happens if someone refuses to be kind? What happens if that person is a major contributor? What would happen if, in some strange alternate reality, Linux was a GNU project, and Linus-of-2012 said he'd really rather not care about all this politeness nonsense, and would prefer to c…

>But what happens if someone refuses to be kind?

Then you work as a group of not-socially-incompetent people to find a compromise solution that hits the local maxima of what can be done with the situation, or make a considered decision to move down from the local maxima in the short term to find a higher maxima in the long term.

Maybe discuss with that person the possibility of continuing their work but having a small group of other people between them and the general public as an interface layer that handles the less important work.

If you think that setting up such a compromise might either be too expensive, might risk burning out the interface people or has some other downside, maybe have a frank discussion with them about the benefits and costs of their contributions to the process.

Talking to people always works better than talking at people.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#78

Post by village-idiot » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #66

village-idiot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't appreciate you putting words into my mouth.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#79

Post by tomcooks » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

LiterallyDoge wrote: post #29

Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?

When all the complex array of emotions you try to convey are filtered through a handful of letters, numbers, and symbols, it is very complicated.

On top of that add:

- instant communication promoting brisk communication

- multicultural participation, and different approaches to communication

- reward for snarky comments (karma points/likes/dislikes/retoots/retweets/etc.)

- age differences

- language barrier

- lack of netiquette training after the smartphone boom (second Eternal September)

- lack in education and proper grammar

- trolls

Excellent communication is never a trivial matter.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#80

Post by jordigh » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

civodul wrote: post #28

As co-maintainer of GNU Guix, I want to point out that the views expressed in Richard Stallman's message are his and not those of the Guix maintainers. In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence. More importantly, by writing that he disagrees with "making diversity a goal", RMS seems to deny the role we free software peopl…

You're not the only GNU maintainer who is unsatisfied with Stallman's response. GNU Octave also stands with Guix here, and I think I speak on behalf of at least of a few other co-maintainers. Maybe we should be drafting our own CoC.