Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

lists.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 412 posts

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#251

Post by KirinDave »

atq2119 wrote: post #182
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…

In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads. Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being immediately tarred as a rape apologist. I do believe most of the people in favor…

> In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads.

Which seems fairly relevant to a technical conference's audience, don't you...

> Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being immediately tarred as a rape apologist.

Oh. So you think pointing out that many rapes are crimes of opportunity isn't relevant to tech conferences because... why exactly? It seems like exactly the sort of environment where such opportunities arise.

> but the first paragraph of your comment basically reads like an unsubstantiated attempt at character assassination

Ts'o said these things. He stands by them. He wants to try an draw a line between one type of rape and another to change the way people discuss statistics, specifically to affect how scaled social events are organized. It's amazing to me that folks are passionately defending such a textbook example of at-scale apologism. We would not even imagine suffering this argument if we substituted "rape" for "wallet theft." But Ts'o does level it for rape precisely because he believes it's appropriate to tactically blame victims and subdivide statistics.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#252

Post by KirinDave »

haberman wrote: post #196
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…

I don't think Ted Ts'o is a "rape apologist", nor a "reprehensible person." I don't think that calling him that is "educating people", I think it is expressing a particular narrative and world view, one I happen to disagree with. I agree that communities should be able to set standards for themselves. However, are you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with your personal standards? Many people would not agree…

> I agree that communities should be able to set standards for themselves. However, are you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with your personal standards? Many people would not agree with the way you have characterized Ts'o above -- should such people get a say in setting the community standards also?

It's certainly obvious that many people here have personal standard which include "selectively defining rape with many qualifiers to discourage people from citing aggregate statistics in social or organizational policy decisions."

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#253

Post by dorfsmay »

nabla9 wrote: post #43
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…

Agree. I'm fan of Nonviolent Communication a.k.a Collaborative Communication. NVC acknowledges that moralistic judgments and demands make communication harder, not easier. Still it's important that people should be able to communicate the feelings, needs and make requests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

I'm having a real time Baader-Meinhof phenomenon here...

Had never heard about it before late last week when reading https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-satya-nadella-nonv....

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#254

Post by KirinDave »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #214
mcguire wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" This appears to be the source of the 1 in 6 figure (17.6%). But it's worth going deeper. If you look at percentage of women reporting rape since age 18 (taking out the child abuse and statutory rape cases, which they also treat in detail), it becomes 1 in 10 (9.6%), and of those over 61.9% were at the hands of their intimate partner, as opposed to an acquaintance or stranger. Also in the survey, in the rapes that w…

In some states, definitely in the past and perhaps even today though I haven't kept abreast of the law, there were different ages deemed legal for a relationship based on the genders involved. To defend the statistic is to, likely unknowingly, defend the discrimination the laws hold in both structure and application. I am not saying one should discount all cases covered under the law, but it does deserve some context…

Things Ts'o said: not relevant or unfair. Things that might be problems with the statistics Ts'o didn't touch on? Somehow relevant and fair.

His context and intent were clear. Please stop making retroactive excuses for his rape apologetics.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#255

Post by gimmeDatCheddar »

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…

Do you have evidence that people will harass others out of a community under guidelines like these? Or is that just an assumption designed to justify weaponized guidelines / authoritarian responses?

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#256

Post by scrollaway »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #225
scrollaway wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of this makes it "objectively crap". You're arguing design concerns, and your preferred design is not objectively better than systemd's.

"Objectively crap" is inflammatory to begin with.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#257

Post by trhway »

pjc50 wrote: post #212
trhway wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good software engineering requires some minimal level of mental strength, and if a one cant take a snippy (in the one's opinion as in my opinion Linus' emails are very reasonable, precise and thorough explanatorial) email i'd question whether that one would be a valuable member at all.

Like the "you should be retroactively aborted" one?

yep. I think it gets the point - irreconcilable differences in the foundations and applications of intelligence - more efficiently across than the alternative of an attempt at long winded logical based explanation of that irreconcilable difference to somebody who just doesn't understand/share your logical apparatus because of that difference.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#258

Post by KirinDave »

lliamander wrote: post #222
KirinDave wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 clos…

> 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.

What do you think it is? Because I felt like his very clear definition of what he was challenging and why made his intent pretty clear. Your argument seems to be, "He doesn't want to redefine rape in all cases, just in THIS case which was pertinent to him at the time."

Unless you think there is a broader conclusion that somehow doesn't invalidate his (admittedly confused) post, please lay it out more clearly.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#259

Post by forapurpose »

ve55 wrote: post #215
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, that have led to the poor diversity of our communities What you're missing is a proof that the only reason a community is not 'diverse' is due to 'biases' within the community. You will find this is a very hard thing to prove as a general concept. Reminds me of the following paragraph: >For the record, here is a small sample of other communities where black people are strongl…

> What you're missing is a proof that the only reason a community is not 'diverse' is due to 'biases' within the community.

There's an enormous amount of research and evidence showing that biases, conscious and unconscious, cause a lack of diversity. It's like saying we are missing proof that smoking leads to cancer.

But here's a simple way to look at it: For a long time in the West, white males enacted in law, in custom, and extralegally (lynchings, for example), explicit biases that excluded others. In 2018, we know that some white males today explicitly endorse the same biases, and many more do so quietly. In areas where we say there is a lack of diversity, the same group, the white males, has the power and the resources (jobs or whatever), and the same groups are excluded.

What is the hypothesis that explains these facts? Is it that it's really a meritocracy now and that the same outcomes as the non-meritocracy are coincidence? In my judgement, that is very unlikely and very irresponsible to believe, and letting other people suffer because we don't want to deal with the problem is the corruption that comes with power.

Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

#260

Post by KirinDave »

jasonlotito wrote: post #171
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 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 to come and explain to them what's objectionable about their thinking? People don't advocate for the molestation of women, but they do it. They just don't see it as advocating for the molestation of women. They see it as "boys will be boys." They see it wha…

Can I be brutally honest for a moment? If by the time you're an adult you don't know that women have body autonomy, your degree of ignorance borders on willful and your opinion of women includes a lesser definition of freedom and autonomy.

The best way to get the word out, as it were, is to remind folks that this is not true via example cases. Expecting the same rhetorical strategy that has enabled men for so long to suddenly start working is absurd.

An we're seeing the "punish the worst offenders publicly" strategy making a huge impact. This is in fact in line with the (often lauded) work of First Wave Feminism, in that creating such a fuss that it cannot be ignored and becomes a focal point of social consideration is essentially what got women the vote. In this effort, I think western third-wave feminism has found a clear path forward. It's also a path we can apply to all people equally, to demonstrate that feminism is (despite its name) not a movement that puts women first, but rather on equal footing. Women can be rapists, and the current #metoo movement has shown it's willing to expose and punish its own. A movement a lot of MRA-leaning folks have been demanding for some time.

Post reply on HN