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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

#491

Post by duxup »

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…

It seems like there does need to be some sort of method for RESOLVING these situations.

I'd hate to make more of a process for parsing a one sentence joke but ... how else do you do it?

So you throw it to a committee who comes back with "We told the user their statement could be seen as sexist and not to make that joke anymore."

There you go. Done. Issue is no longer relevant, time to move on with life. If it comes up again with the same user, then you can worry about bigger things.

I'm sure there would be some bickering after that but at some point you can't have the argument going on forever on every rando social media site and ... version control site...

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

#492

Post by [deleted] »

helen___keller wrote: post #483
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 cant really say why, but I feel I dont want to interact with groups which need rules like these. Asking in good faith here: is it possible your political mindset (wrt your opinions on CoC) is affecting your ability to relate to others in a context completely unrelated to CoC? The way I see CoC is that, whatever might be in a CoC, does not affect 99% of people 100% of the time and does not affect the remaining 1%…

[deleted]

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

#493

Post by CharlesW »

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…

> No links to the joke.

It's quoted in the GitHub link, and presumably it'd be trivial to find in the list archives.

This isn't as benign as you characterize it, since it's basically "this date handling bug must have been created by a woman since women lie about their age". Lazy misogyny is still misogyny.

> Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list?

I understand what you're doing here (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions) and so aren't looking for a real answer, but the actual answer is: Of course it's unprofessional. Make "women jokes" while working at any modern company and see what happens.

> Is this reaction proportional to the original joke?

Again, this is a mischaracterization. This comment wasn't the cause of the change, but a final straw.

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

#494

Post by tomp »

rich_sasha wrote: post #469
tomp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Probably depends on the person.

I personally love offensive jokes. Book of Mormon is one of my favourite shows, and I can't really think of a group/sect/principle they don't offend.

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

#495

Post by undecisive »

simiones wrote: post #354
MadeThisToReply wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Rules can be enforced however fairly or not the rulers want. Better rules don't make for better rulers - at best, they make it more obvious when a ruler is not being fair.

Maybe, but I think there are social contracts that you are overlooking. If I write a rule, and then I violate a rule (or refuse to censure someone for violating a rule) then I can be rightly accused of hypocrisy.

People believe themselves to be within a certain margin of "good people", and having incontrovertible proof of being "The Biggest Hypocrite" makes them uncomfortable.

There are of course those who don't feel that discomfort; there are even those that commit victim-filled crimes without remorse. Often, there are external forces we can lean on to bring those people into line or out of society - and agreed, in the case of Open Source Software communities, those external forces don't always exist or are not reliable for regulating something as insignificant as moderation policies on a mailing list.

There are also those that would leverage that discomfort for their own immoral benefit, and bad rules are equally good enablers of that kind of person.

But I don't think it's fair to say that the quality of rules is meaningless - if there is any level of accountability in the sub-community of moderators (or in the community as a whole), good fair and enforceable rules have power.

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

#496

Post by [deleted] »

MadeThisToReply wrote: post #287
bawolff wrote: post #41

The new version > "Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent." Huh. That's interesting phrasing. I don't think i like it. Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent, the sticky point in human interaction and morality is to what extent do we take results instead of intentions into account when evaluating the morality of an action. The s…

> Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent You haven't been paying attention - the (preposterous) idea that "intent doesn't matter, only impact" is a key premise of modern social justice activism and is taught to undergraduates as unquestionable fact.

[deleted]

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

#497

Post by bjt2n3904 »

badocr wrote: post #481
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eagerl…

"Do you agree with me or are you racist?"

This fabric is the most beautiful cloth, with the finest needlework! But it is invisible to fools (and bigots)!

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

#498

Post by gentleman11 »

prancer_or_vix wrote: post #468
ungamed wrote: post #355

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?" 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 act like fucking up is the end of the world.

People stopped forgiving and forgetting years ago. Every mistake people make follows them forever now. “Fucking up” is the end of the world for their careers since nobody wants to hire somebody who was publicly outed on Twitter for whatever they allegedly did

Apparently people who are concerned with this are “not willing to accept the effort of empathy”?

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

#499

Post by angelzen »

duxup wrote: post #491
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…

It seems like there does need to be some sort of method for RESOLVING these situations. I'd hate to make more of a process for parsing a one sentence joke but ... how else do you do it? So you throw it to a committee who comes back with "We told the user their statement could be seen as sexist and not to make that joke anymore." There you go. Done. Issue is no longer relevant, time to move on with life. If it comes u…

What you said is exactly right in a world of ephemeral speech, but difficult to employ in a world of permanent records. Anybody can simply link to the joke and stir outrage, over and over, out of the context of the larger learning process.

The Internet never forgets. It is genuinely unclear how to adapt pre-Internet norms. I would prefer presumption of innocence and of a learning process, that is summary dismissal of one-off out of context situations. But viral content (such a fitting expression!) begs to differ.

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

#500

Post by gattilorenz »

fritzx6 wrote: post #460
mlang23 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all the virtue signalling apparently leads to people like me, who are adults and can very well stand for themselves, not attending such conferences anymore. I truely think that people who are not willing or able to defend themselves in a social setting have bigger problems then FLOSS conferences. They have skipped a part of growing up. I feel sorry for them. But I dont agree that we should plaster everything with…

I am really sorry to hear you had such a negative experience at your recent conference. Small children can definitely be a disruption under any circumstances and I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to adequately hear a presenter with boisterous children nearby. As to your first comment, I would urge you to extend some compassion to individuals who do not or cannot stand up for themselves. An individual who has…

> And yes, I believe it is 'ok if the mentally weak feel welcome', I do not believe you should need to be an emotionally impervious hero to wish to attend a social or professional gathering.

That was not the question the op was asking, and you're misrepresenting his point by removing the second part.

Edit: The question was: assuming that there exist a risk that all this struggle for inclusivity will repel those people [from categories you are specifically trying to include] that already manage to fight and stand up for their rights, is the risk worth it? At least, that's how I read it.

And the answer can still be "yes", obviously, as long as we're clear about the question.

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