Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#151

Post by rotw » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

lgleason wrote: post #121

Long term I expect to see the quality of GNU and Linux software falter over efforts like this. This is not because I don't advocate for treating other people well, on the contrary I do. It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software. I've personally watched the activists pushing these target women an…

> It is because in practice these are politically motivated trojan horses meant to tear down things like a meritocracy, the very thing that created this great software.

1. Why is respecting gender identity a "trojan horse" - in what way is it deceptive?

2. How is a project a meritocracy if it scares away potentially better contributors with an antagonistic discussion climate?

> tried to do it to a guy who dared to express his conservative views on Twitter in a personal capacity etc..

I feel like you and the Medium post are missing out crucial information here. What were these views? How did they relate to the workplace? The Medium post mentions she is friends with James Damore - who was clearly fired because his manifesto by implication, but unmistakebly deemed women developers less competent than men, thereby creating a hostile work environment, which the author completely glosses over. This leads me to suspect that the "disagreeing with the narrative" is a euphemism for anti-women, anti-minority views and policies.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#152

Post by jf- » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #145

jf- wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you prefer that the circumstances be entirely up to each individual maintainer's discretion Exactly so that the same judgement isn’t applied everywhere. Different maintainers will end up having different audiences. I see that as acceptable, maybe even preferable.

This makes sense for technical judgement, but what about kindness, respect, or good intent changes when I tab over from gcc to gnome?

Why should it be any different? If people have different sensibilities does it not make sense for them to have separate communities? Sure there should be some baseline, but as said elsewhere what one person may take as abuse another may take as a joke. Maybe these people just shouldn’t play together.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#153

Post by KirinDave » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #129

KirinDave wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other. Can I ask an honest question? Do you really think that men advocating for molestation of women, or open racists, are just... you know... undereducated and waiting for you as a thought-savior t…

> Do you think that Ts'o just needed you to step in and explain how domestic sexual abuse is rape and that he's just being insufficiently awesome[0]? So you believe that Ts'o claimed that domestic sexual abuse is not rape? Let's see what he actually wrote: > Also in the survey, in the rapes that were reported via a randomized telephone survey, in 66.9% of those cases, the perpetrator did not threaten to harm or kill…

> OK, so it seems that his own words contradict your assertion. Care to explain?

To quote the conclusion:

>> Please note, I am not diminishing what rape is, and or any particular person's experience. However, I am challenging the use of statistics that may be hyperbolic and misleading, and ultimately may be very counterproductive if it causes people to become afraid when the reality might not be as horrible as the "1 in 4" numbers might at first sound.

"Please note, I am not diminishing what rape is but I'd like to diminish the statistics around rape because when I think of rape I think of 80's movies where a brute forces a woman's legs open and not, you know, casual nonviolent stuff."

Ts'o tells us his aim with this, to try and cast doubt on the the way statistics are reported or used by attempting to draw a line between what he nonsensically separates as "violent" and "non-violent" rape. The idea that Rape is not Harm is a bit like suggesting that it's not really Home Robbery if you're not home while the burglar is there. It's like suggesting that if I take your wallet while you're drunk and passed out, I didn't steal from you because you were asking for it. And that you'd be in the wrong if you tried to call it theft, because there were no knives brandished and basically it wasn't stealing.

Did you read the citation carefully? It seems very obvious to me. Your pullquote doesn't even really invalidate my point. Forgive me, but it looks to me like you'd never actually read this article but you went looking through it for the very first quote that met your exoneration criterion, without regard to how it fit into the whole rhetorical structure.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#154

Post by rationalfaith » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

The level of "aggression" is extremely high on the male side rather than women.

This is a very welcome add. Hopefully less ego's to deal with and actually objectively good work being done.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#155

Post by mcguire » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #128

debacle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need this kind of accusatory commentary on HN, I don't think.

On the contrary, I think more often than not, people here need reminders like this. Nothing they said was wrong.

I agree. Check out the voting patterns in this thread, or the way this thread has not been flagged the every other similar thread has.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#156

Post by coldtea » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

jowsie wrote: post #135

ubernostrum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> my retort to this would be that you are obviously attempting to censor my free speech Do you not realise that free speech doesn't apply to whatever random online forum you decided to sign up too?

The idea that "free speech" == "only protection from state censorship" is an americanism, and not some universally accepted dictum.

Historically it wasn't even always the state that suppressed free speech - it was often some church, mobs of "concerned citizens", the private interests owning the press, the profits of cinema studios concerned with citizens boycotting lewd movies and thus self-submitting to things like the Hays code (which was self-imposed by the "motion picture industry", and so on.

If "free speech" is good, there's nothing wrong for asking for less or no censorship in the media, in social media, in the workplace, in arts, and other places...

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#157

Post by mcguire » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

defgeneric wrote: post #142

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…

> correcting the biases, conscious or not This insipid attitude was destructive when it first appeared during the academic "culture wars" of the 1980s. It's also extremely authoritarian--everyone is already guilty, not merely of incorrect conscious thoughts, but also unconscious thoughts!

Please do not take a harsh tone towards other participants, and especially don't make personal attacks against them. Go out of your way to show that you are criticizing a statement, not a person.

Please avoid statements about the presumed typical desires, capabilities or actions of some demographic group. They can offend people in that group, and they are always off-topic in GNU Project discussions.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#158

Post by reitanqild » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 5:00 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…

> In particular, by writing that codes of conduct are "punitive spirit", RMS shows a misunderstanding of how these texts came into existence.

I'll not argue over why they came into existence as the idea seems good enough (and if you'd asked me a few years ago I'd even said it was a good idea), but now I'll ask:

Over the years I've heard a number of times where a CoC has been used to make a lot of trouble in projects that where originally more or less healthy.

I read my it and open source news from Ars Technica, HN and from time to time Slashdot though, so I might be heavily biased.

Can anyone point me to one ore more projects where CoCs have actually improved open source/free software projects or communities?

As I already mentioned I guess originally I would have thought it was a good idea, but over the last few years I've heard either nothing or problems from projects that adopted a CoC.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#159

Post by mcguire » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #139

Spivak wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking counter to not only RMS but also the tide of popular opinion not only on HN but the internet at large I'm sure takes a lot of courage -- and I just want to say thank you.

This isn't Reddit and downvotes, if any, don't come with jail time. Can we maybe dispense with making it sound like the above poster is reporting on free speech in Saudi Arabia? It's kind of inappropriate.

...something, something, ..., could have a negative effect on the career,... something...

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#160

Post by M_Bakhtiari » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

> For instance, call them by the names they use, and honor their preferences about their gender identity

That's a backhanded way of cementing the validity of the concept of "gender expression" throughout the GNU project.

I would have been perfectly on board with a guideline that simply said not to police people's gender expressions, the question being rather off-topic and disruptive in the given context. That would do the job regardless of what your political opinions on the gender question are.