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

Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 637 posts

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#261

Post by OJFord »

bawolff wrote: post #71
simonsarris wrote: post #4

Almost more surprising is that this was removed: > When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. In favor of this: > Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent. Also changed yesterday: > Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. became: > Behaviour which ca…

Isn't protected class an american legal term? Seems weirdly ameri-centric for a document of this nature. Not to mention that gay people weren't even a protected class in the usa until last year afaik. Not exactly a very inclusive definition. Not to mention the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class? I appreciate minorities get a lot of shit that others don'…

Protected characteristic in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights

EU has the concept but doesn't name them in that way, countries implementing them may do in their respective language (someone else has already commented as such for German): https://ec.europa.eu/info/aid-development-cooperation-fundam...

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#262

Post by goodpoint »

josephcsible wrote: post #173

- Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. + Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated. That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". Isn't that then adding abuse-enabling language, not removing it?

A lot of trolls use the strategy of painting themselves as victims for being unable to harass minorities.

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#263

Post by DonHopkins »

koonsolo wrote: post #187
koonsolo wrote: post #185

I think this is a big difference between US and EU. In EU we like to joke around, tease each other, and not get fired over that. When we tell a sexist joke with a woman present, you will get a witty reply from them, not a call to HR. I hope this US bullshit stays in US. Seems that EU women are not victims but can stand their own ground.

Haha, thanks for the downvotes. Let's see what happens when EU is awake.

Thanks for choosing this hill to die on. Now we know what kind of person you are.

In case English isn't your first language:

https://grammarist.com/idiom/the-hill-you-want-to-die-on

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#264

Post by p2t2p »

jrootabega wrote: post #248
seattle_spring wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried really hard to follow the threading in that but I came away being completely unable to parse it, at least on mobile. What was the attempted "joke"?

Guy reports a behavior where date math doesn't return the result he expected and jokes that it might have to do with how women don't like to admit when they're aging.

I am fairly conservative libertarian leaning guy made in Russia and even I find this kind of joke absolutely unacceptable in professional setting.

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#265

Post by goodpoint »

conradfr wrote: post #215
sarlalian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about not telling offensive jokes, not making offensive assumptions, or just not being offensive. Its a programming language mailing list, what exactly is it about a sexist joke that you think belongs there?

Oh how far we have strayed from the early Internet.

I was there and in most places people were way nicer than now.

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#266

Post by OJFord »

jamil7 wrote: post #227
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in English you have the neutral word "they". In french you only have the plural of "he" or "she". This means that when you point to a mixed crowd, you must choose which of the plurals you use. The grammatical rule is that one male flips the plural gender to male. If you do not know the sexes, the plural is male. As a French, the construction comes naturally because we've been taught that at school since kind…

German is also developing (unofficial) gender-neutral nouns using an asterisk ending but I think it’s also an open discussion about how best to handle it. It’s mostly often seen when referring to a person’s role, position or job in a way that includes all genders and non-binary people. I speak the language but it’s not my mother tongue so native German speakers might explain it better.

As in things like ~fireman~ -> fire*? How do you pronounce it?

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#267

Post by undecisive »

simonsarris wrote: post #4

Almost more surprising is that this was removed: > When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. In favor of this: > Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent. Also changed yesterday: > Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. became: > Behaviour which ca…

One of my many misgivings about CoCs is their over-reliance on the unenforcable.

This is an excellent example - because the original said exactly what needed to be said, but it wasn't being interpreted correctly. Instead of improving the wording, and saying something like "participants should always assume good intentions. However, intention does not make a person's actions immune from criticism, and while assuming good intentions we will kindly encourage each other toward a higher standard of behaviour." ... they instead have chosen to weaken the specificity and balance of the CoC.

Throughout the discussion, and on the twitter thread, the overriding message is: Triggering the hurt of a protected party is always punishable.

And it's a sad viewpoint, because it becomes not "Matz is nice and so we are nice", it becomes "We are nice to avoid the ire of a protected party"

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#268

Post by inglor_cz »

not2b wrote: post #94
tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit buried in the GH discussion, but someone else posted it here: "Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)" If I were in charge of a community or mailing list, I would kick the person who wrote that off. But I simply don't see how (a) the existing rules didn't do enough to cover this, or (b) the changes will resolve those issues without causing other problems.

As I understand it, some people who want to make sexist jokes on the mailing list with impunity pointed to the language about tolerating opposing views to claim that their desire to belittle women on the mailing list must be tolerated. Maybe they should point to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance edit: evidently someone thinks this comment is worthy of a downvote. I…

I did not downvote you, but unfortunately you trivialize Popper by invoking his paradox of intolerance in such context.

Popper lived in a world where democracy was threatened by very powerful totalitarian movements and its demise in Europe at least was a very credible scenario. His paradox of tolerance addresses those violent, brutal movements that left a trail of blood and destruction on the continent.

There is zero evidence that Popper intended to micropolice or censor uncouth / rude verbal or written interactions among people. He was mostly concerned about outright tyranny and genocide. And there is a long way from bad jokes to tyranny and genocide, even though the Anglo-Saxon world has evolved a rather thin skin in the last decades and seems to think otherwise.

Making sexist jokes on a mailing list should probably be rebuked or punished by moderators for being in bad taste, but not because of Popper's ideas. A person joking about some girls age almost certainly does not want to enslave/kill women and does not have to be forcibly prevented from doing so.

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#269

Post by DonHopkins »

andrew_ wrote: post #33

And another project skews into the digital manifestation of an HOA [1]. May the next generation put an end to this madness. [1] Home Owners Association, for those outside the U.S. and unfamiliar with the term.

Are you saying that the Ruby community is trying to ban Black people? Where did you get that idea? What exactly is your point?

https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-...

>When homeowners associations were first created, they helped keep Black people out of the neighborhood. They're still doing it today.

>Homeowners associations exploded in popularity in the 1960s as suburb development was booming.

>Some HOAs used racist deeds and covenants to bar Black buyers from purchasing homes.

>Today, HOAs are majority white and Asian, and Black homeowners say they experience targeted discrimination and harassment by their HOAs.

Re: Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC

#270

Post by OJFord »

occamrazor wrote: post #209
david38 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if a woman accused a while man of having “small hands” for having some opinion, that’s not sexual harassment because white men are not a protected class?

White men, identified by race and sex, are legally a protected class. People with small hands are not, unless the smallness of their hands is considered a disability.

This is correct, assuming US 'protected class' works broadly the same as UK 'protected characteristic'. I don't know why this comment is being objected to?

It's about discrimination on the basis of the value of someone's , not that particular values ('white', or 'female', etc.) are held in some special regard.

The obvious example is hiring: you can (should) hire white people, black people, men, women, and so on. You can't (legally) hire someone because of one of those traits, or allow it influence your judgement.

(It's why I find quotas/diversity reporting a bit troubling - it sort of assumes an equal outcome, or something close to it, is a natural state, since you can't say 'hire more women' if you find that's what's lacking; you can only try to remove existing (illegal! conscious or not) bias in the other direction. But what if the lacking group didn't have equal opportunity, so on merit they really weren't the best hires? - I know, that old argument - point is, if that's the case, hiring for an equal outcome, so-called 'affirmative/positive action' is actually illegal.)

(IANAL but I have to assume there are exceptions where an otherwise protected characteristic is actually required due to the nature of the work. The police need a certain number of women, (and men, but that's the problem side) diversity aside. Primary schools presumably have the opposite problem.)

Post reply on HN