Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by arthurcolle » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

tgv wrote: post #323

MadeThisToReply wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean "of literally every country in the entire world".

I don't like taking things literally, but in this case that would be necessary, as it's the whole point. "Master" is an English word. If it isn't, "main" is primarily translated to "haupt" in German, and we all know what a Haupttruppführer was, so that should go too, as should every other word that possibly has a negative connotation somewhere in the world.

Minitru is hard at work yeet'ing all the double-plus-ungood words out of the lexicon for sure

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

#462

Post by uselesscynicism » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

sdfkljs wrote: post #366

mlang23 wrote: post #357

I realize CoCs were introduced to make certain supposedly marginalized groups more at home at conferences. But my personal experience/feeling is the complete reverse. I am a member of a minority as a person with a disability. In all the years I was interacting with the community, I haven't had a single issue with someone I couldn't handle myself. I never felt uneasy interacting with others. But the day I saw the firs…

I had similar experience. Went to an art installation run by group of young lefties, and upon entering they say: “if you see any racism or sexism, you should come to us and report it”. I was taken aback and immediately felt uncomfortable. Why did they need to say this? Do they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place. The real question is does any of this stuff…

> they have a problem with racism and sexism? Which would have been unusual because it was a lefty place.

I'm sorry but the critical theories of gender are incredibly sexist, especially towards mothers, so I would personally expect a "lefty" place to be all about erasing biological womanhood, which personally I view as incredibly sexist.

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

#463

Post by bjt2n3904 » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

Locke wrote: post #406

I wish we responded to situations more proportionally. In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not. Does it warrant responses like…

You are asking all the right questions... And you will never get an acceptable answer beyond "Some times you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette."

Sadly, the CoC wars were lost several years ago. The victors had the simplest tactic: projection.

"We are just against all the bad things. We are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-prejudice. Why aren't you on our side?"

Well, I have two things to say. First, I eagerly await your omelette. Judging by how tolerant society has become, it should be any day! And second, why be against the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea? Democracy is in the name!

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

#464

Post by cryptica » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

Locke wrote: post #406

I wish we responded to situations more proportionally. In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not. Does it warrant responses like…

Over-sensitive, politically-correct people are going to end up in a hermetically sealed bubble of their own making, hooked up to virtual reality and drugs while the rest of us enjoy the real world. I have no problem with that. It's natural selection. Some people are too fragile. I'd rather let them lock themselves away in some virtual universe driving up virtual asset prices than have them in the real world drive up real world asset prices.

I can't believe that so many people are so suggestible. Part of me feels like they can't be serious; they're just acting out, conspiring in an attempt to incite (fool) others to adopt this strange vulnerable mindset.

It's easier for me to believe that it's a conspiracy than to believe that so many people are so gullible. Why am I not richer if the world is so full of gullible people? Where are all these suckers? Maybe I've been overestimating my neighbors and competitors.

What kind of world have these people been living in all these years?

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

#465

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

This headline appears to be inaccurate?

https://github.com/jacobherrington/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/ma...

Removing "Participants will be tolerant of opposing views" was proposed, but I don't see where the proposal was accepted or merged.

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

#466

Post by vimy » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #399

jeltz wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it seems they want to ban non-Americans. These CoCs are very hard to understand for anyone not familiar with US politics.

Without being aware of the fact that they were originally meant to and still do discriminate against Black Americans who were brought to this country against their will in chains to be slaves? I still don't see the parallel with the Ruby community. I'm American and quite familiar with American politics, and I still don't see the point. The Ruby community has certainly had its sexism problems [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] […

You are the only one talking about black people and completely missing the point. HOA = Petty people on power trips.

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

#467

Post by unethical_ban » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #65

zkldi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to actually look for the sexist joke, couldn't find it anywhere.

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.

Really? You would permanently remove someone from a community for one joke in bad taste? You wouldn't use any social skills of your own to, say, tell the person their joke isn't well received and they need to be more polite?

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

#468

Post by prancer_or_vix » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

ungamed wrote: post #355

gbanfalvi wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> Or maybe it just puts more responsibility on people to think "how could my intent be read?", "what impact might it have?" How can you possibly read any possible minds. Even if you can predict the 'reasonable' person, outliers can take offence and you don't know what can offend them. People can and do take offence at anything. This leaves two possible solutions. 1) Eventually fuck up. 2) Immediately leave the commun…

You act like fucking up is the end of the world.

In my experience, when someone "fucks up", I can reflect on my rapport with that person to determine whether or not it was intentional. Either way, I can say something to them about it.

It is a sign of maturity to say "oh, I'm sorry. I didn't think that my words could be perceived in that way. My intent was.."

If your intent is harmful, that's great, because I can help you with #2 by not interacting with you in the future. However, if your intent was reasonable, then no harm done. I walk away having set a healthy boundary for our relationship and you got to keep me around and strengthen our rapport.

> I've taken #2 in almost all cases, because I'm definitely going to screw up because I'm human.

This makes it sound like you're not willing to accept the effort of empathy.

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

#469

Post by rich_sasha » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #325

rich_sasha wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm realising this might be a bit of a male point of view (European here). Sometimes women put up because they feel they have to. But I agree with the general point. Banter is banter, jokes are jokes. Boundaries are boundaries. Jokes around "haha women are less smart and do the dishes" are not OK. A joke about moving your birthday because you're a woman, not so funny but wow so not sexist. "Be nice" is the lo…

Surely as long as social conventions such as “don’t ask women for their age” persist, such topics should be considered fair game for jokes? Otherwise, we enter the field of “elective equality” - “equality where it benefits me, favoritism elsewhere”.

Well I’m saying that this joke shouldn’t, in my books, count as sexist. I’m just saying it’s not that funny, or overly tasteful.

Like documenting a “shrink” function with “men won’t use it for fear of having their willies shrunk”.

If you’re making a joke about something, make it more funny than offensive. A very unfunny joke has a low tolerance on offence :)

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

#470

Post by faeriechangling » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

banannaise wrote: post #408

josephcsible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class. Sure, but isn't harassment something that should never be okay, not something that should be okay as long as the basis isn't an axis that defines a protected class?

This helps with the common abuser's refrain of "I'm being harassed by everyone piling on to call me out for my [repeated, abusive] behavior!" That's not on an axis of protection, so that argument is easier to dismiss as not germane to the code of conduct.

Such a person should already be banned by the current CoC, and thus should not be subject to harassment. Furthermore, if he is being harassed by everyone, they already have no de facto power to begin with.

I absolutely understand this discourages people from harassing harassers. This is a good thing. There is a class of harasser who will target people who are socially weak in a given community, because they broke some sort of social norm, and even if they apologized and were punished will follow them around harassing them. The motivation to me frequently seems to be getting sadistic pleasure out of it while wanting to express their sadism in some sort of socially acceptable framework and somehow believe that they have outsmarted the system and are UNTOUCHABLE. If ever called out they will feign injury and go into paroxysms of outage over how DARE we target a concerned community member such as them when this harasser is STILL on the loose in the community and how they're the only one who actually CARES about upholding any sort of morality around here!

The end result though is they make an awful lot of trouble pretty much constantly and will eventually get tempbanned for annoying everybody around them with needless drama. This will usually fill the original harasser with glee that nobody wants to see, but this is really the fault of harasser #2 rather than the community. No code of conduct will ever change this sequence of events from happening, it happens again and again in online communities over and over.