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Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

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221–230 of 412 posts

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being politically correct vs getting the job done, I'll always choose getting the job done. I am absolutely baffled at the idea that there is ever a situation where getting the job done requires a choice to be politically incorrect as implied here. Do you have an example of the phenomenon you're discussing?

For example not calling a problem in the code “a problem” but “possible place for improvement” as to do so might lead people to think their code is “problematic”... then i resigned...

I’m unsure if this is the sort of politics that’s the context of the article in question. For clarity, the article in question spawned off of an email thread regarding calling women by nicknames in a condescending manner without their consent.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I've read it numerous times, thank you very much, paying close attention to the rhetorical structure and trying to understand the overall point he was trying to communicate.

Clearly, you and I are inclined to interpret his overall intent differently. It does not help your case to put words in his mouth that are patent contradictions of what he actually said.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#223
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman’s guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.

> Making diversity a goal is identity politics I think you may be being too absolutist here? This would only be true if literally every demographic thought identically about every aspect of a project or product and brought the same point of view. Then everyone would be interchangeable beyond pure technical competence. However I don't think that's always true, and when it's not that means that diversity can have some…

What you're saying makes sense, and I don't think anybody would disagree that having a diverse PoV on a project would be beneficial. In practice though, organizations saying that they strive for diversity normally don't bother to look any deeper than skin color and gender. That's one of the common criticisms of big tech companies; they claim to value diversity, but they still mainly hire people from a handful of top schools, creating a largely homogenous culture that share a similar PoV, but they say that they're diverse just because a lot of their employees have different skin colors.

As an example, I'm a white male without college experience, raised in a single parent, lower income household. Most people hiring for "diversity" would overlook me just because I'm a white male, but would welcome my wife's vietnamese friend, even though she comes from a wealthy background and went to a prominent school that makes her much less diverse culturally than their existing employees.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#224
post #151

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 ex…

For #1 and #2, there is a thing called emotional resilience that we have lost today. More importantly, the conversations do not get any less antagonistic in communities with this policies. If anything I have seen them get more vicious towards those in the "out group". In times past it was very rare when people were banned from groups. Today it is a regular occurrence, often made with threats of bringing in the police, ruining ones career etc..

Her post actually does a pretty good job at that. But to summarize, as a women in tech she does not feel that women should be given preferential treatment and she is outspoken against lowering the bar and etc. to increase diversity numbers.

For example with one group they held a hackathon. In most hackathons they focus on tech and participants are encouraged to talk about it. One Women in Tech group however held one for women only and actively encouraged the participants to not talk about tech and focused on identity politics, marketing and celebrity endorsements (I was a volunteer and observed this first hand and actively ignored, went against the organizers wishes with the groups I worked with by encouraging them to explore, talk and learn about the tech). Their mentors, with encouragement from the organizers, even went so far as to discourage participants from talking about the tech because it is "boring". The medium post author spoke up about this and ended up with a big target on her back for daring to suggest that the women should be held to the same standard, encouraged to talk about the tech and level up if they are not their yet.

> 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.

Marlene, the author of the medium post and a women in tech who wants to be recognized for her skill when she's at a job or conference etc. and feels that many of the initiatives that lower the standards etc. work against that goal. She, along with many other women and prominent scientists came to a very different conclusion after reading this. Yet this intelligent, independent thinking woman is ostracized for daring to not go along with the narrative. One of the organizers of these women in tech groups suggested that her husband needed to control her, you can't make this up, and another female organizer who, unlike Marlene, literally had no real tech experience, said that Marlene, an experienced women in tech is being banned from a woman in tech group because her views that are "harmful to women and under represented people".

She is pro-women etc, but if we are being honest, it's because she is not a progressive and is not afraid to speak the truth.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemd, invented by the guy you are quoting, is, however, objectively crap. I am about to start a separate, new service and have wide leeway in how it will run. I am moving away from Linux towards a mix of BSD and Solaris/Illumos. And Systemd played a part in this technical decision.

Feels like you might not know the meaning of the word "objectively".

systemd violates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_concerns to an extent that ought to be measurable in syscalls and in number of packages that in practice depend on systemd.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#226

> 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…

>>I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action; there is no need to scramble desperately to recruit some Ds. >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 demogra…

> By the way, has anyone done studies that showed that women respond much more negatively to harsh online exchanges than men? I have a feeling they would be called sexist if they were published, but...

On an unrelated note, this is one of the main problems resulting from too politically-correct culture: we can't even study differences to learn about them and see how we can help each other, as even the notion that such differences may exist is unwelcome (practically speaking, in a very concrete way - in terms of grants, academic career development etc.) As if admitting that we differ in some ways was a kind of sin rather than something to acknowledge, learn from and use.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#228
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…

What you've written here sounds like the preaching of a religious person.

We must correct our "biases, conscious or not"? What evidence do you have that all of us are laboring under the weight of some kind of original sin of "bias"?

Can any one of us investigate these claims scientifically, or must we appeal to an authority in your belief system to get answers?

Your virtue signaling is unimpressive. Please take it elsewhere. What RMS is doing here is clearly a step in the right direction.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different people saw those emails in different ways. In fact, some people are invigorated by strong words as opposed to being cowed and driven away by them. I'm not saying that you didn't perceive them as vicious attacks, I'm saying that the spectrum of human behavior includes people who think being harsh is fine, and give and take it freely. You can't just throw out everyone that behaves in a way that makes you unco…

I think you realize that at some point a line has to be drawn, given you called "targeting another person's emotions" wrong; and also that everyone's line is in a slightly different place and what's reasonable to some will be uncomfortable or hurtful to others. Given that, why is it wrong for people to try and influence their community in such a way that it minimizes people's discomfort? Shouldn't every community hav…

I've always believed that you should be liberal in what you accept but conservative in what you generate. It's fine to strategize your own behavior to come across well to as many people as possible (for example not eating meat in front of a conscience-driven vegan) but when it comes to other people's behavior you have to be very judicious about the difference between uncomfortable (but natural) signals and malicious actions.

In this case, I'm highlighting intent when I say "targeting." I shouldn't become upset when someone that always comes across as abrasive comes across as abrasive to me, but if someone goes out of their way to consciously be more abrasive than usual then that's a signal I should pay attention to. If someone who is usually very meek says something slightly harsh, then I should multiply it by a large factor to get back to their internal mental state (which is what I really care about). Likewise if it's a case where I should take what they say and divide it.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's assuming the child really doesn't have a choice. First of all, if I give a child a choice then I will accept the answer they give. I will try to persuade them of why it is good to go before giving them the choice, and I would express disappointment in a mature and reasonable way if they choose something that I think is counter-productive, but I wouldn't lie to a child about their choice. Children are much smar…

Your first paragraph reinforces Zizeck's point, at least the portion quoted.
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