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

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

#271
post #49
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These updates have a very nebulous definition of harassment. According to the new CoC, almost anything can be considered harassment. As far as the "intent and impact" of the intentions, assuming that someone acts in bad faith is a good way to turn a misunderstanding into actual hatred. Such a result should be considered worse than having to deal with a few bad apples who try to take advantage.

They're meant to further empower accusers and reduce burden of proof and remove the need for critical thinking, empathy, and nuance. Accusations equal guilt.

Or maybe it just puts more responsibility on people to think "how could my intent be read?", "what impact might it have?"

It's quite common to have someone express a personal opinion that they themselves don't interpret as harassment (e.g. because they don't belong to the group they're talking about, they see no issue with the way they talk or maybe they might be upset) only to be incredibly surprised and defensive when someone later calls them out.

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

#273

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…

i am so done with OSS communities.

Understandable reaction, but too broad. Like a lot of other areas of the culture war, there's a big faction you'd agree with. I'll never have a CoC on any project I work on. I consider protecting my projects from wokeism the same as protecting them from cancer, and I'm not the only one who thinks like that.

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

#274
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't have made the joke, myself, but it's also not really insulting to anyone. It's not saying that women are bad at math, or that women broke date arithmetic to seem younger, it's just referencing that phenomenon.

What about a joke where adding weights resulted in quantities too large, and it's suggested that it was written for dudes who want to say they can bench press more than they really can?

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

#275

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…

The very core of the problem is that impact of anything on human minds is, in fact, not objectively measurable. Even formalized attempts to do this - e.g. psychology - suffer from a major replication crisis.

In that scenario, the situation degenerates into "he said - she said". Traditional response was "in dubio pro reo" = "in doubt, let the accused go free".

But modern woke movements generally hollow out this principle and replace it by "believe the marginalized / weaker / oppressed side" and "be strict and hostile against the privileged side", as defined by the contemporary academic ladder of oppression.

This leads to a very paranoid society and I think it will take at most 10-20 years to reverse again, as bad cases start to heap. One of the universal qualities of humanity is that we can all be manipulative dicks, regardless of gender, color and creed, and once you shift the balance of power to the accuser, you will empower manipulative people across the board. And they are perfectly able to poison the common well for everyone.

Edit: 2 downvotes within 20 seconds and zero attempt at rebuttal.

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

#276
It's no big surprise. The cult of woke, having wrapped itself around the neck of the project, is now going for the squeeze. Expect it to continue in this vein for a few years until the people who pull most of the weight get annoyed and leave or fork it or whatever. This is how woke cancer kills everything it touches.

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

#277

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 g…

> to weaken the specificity and balance of the CoC.

This is a feature, not a bug. When the rules are clear and specific, they can be enforced fairly. When they're vague and unclear, then the only consistent principle is that the people who "enforce" the "rules" can do whatever they want and you have no recourse or due process.

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

#278
post #266
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#279
post #266
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Basically you take the word stem, add the asterisk and then append the female ending, you pronounce it by putting a stop where the * is and then saying the feminine ending (at least that’s how I’ve seen it done). This probably wouldn’t work in French since they hate putting stops anywhere :)

Some info and alternatives here https://www.goethe.de/ins/th/en/m/spr/mag/21967217.html

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

#280
post #7

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…

Yeah - no longer assuming good intentions is a weird thing to change. I guess it makes it easier to claim bad intentions?

It covers the case when someone makes an inappropriate joke then defends themselves saying it was just a joke.

The person being inappropriate will always hide behind their intent because they can only argue about their own role in the exchange (e.g. they can't argue that the target person/group isn't really hurt).

When a conversation is derailed away from the damage caused to the intent, the harasser wins. What are you going to do? Establishing a default assumption takes that away. Always have good defaults :)

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