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GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

phoronix.com

271–280 of 387 posts

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dbt slack community has a bot that says > Hi! Reminder: “guys” is an inherently gendered term. Great alternatives include “everyone”, “folks”, “team”, "friends" or “y’all”. Thank you for helping us build a more inclusive community! The only thing that really bothers me personally about this is the mistaken idea that language can be "inherently" anything. The meaning of a term varies based on usage, it is not inhe…

You're entitled to an opinion about it, but a Slack bot that pings you when you say "guys" is not remotely comparable to bullying (which is the top-level claim in this thread).

He's responding to the parent:

> I have never seen or heard someone chastised for using “guys” informally

A bot that is doing this is tantamount to a person doing it, since a person made the bot and a person installed the bot.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#272
post #92

The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's…

I'm from a part of the US where "guys" is used as a gender neutral collective noun. My mom and grandma would call out "guys, dinner is ready!" to the whole family to call us to the table for example. So it's definitely whiplash inducing for the same group of people preaching inclusion and tolerance, and how we need to accept regional and racial dialects in the workplace, to then turn around and implement slackbots th…

Another data point: I’m from Ireland and grew up in the 80s. For as long as I remember, the plural form “guys” always referred to groups of any gender. I’d be just as likely to use it to greet a female-only group of colleagues as a mixed or male-only group of colleagues.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look…

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I know that dang hates culture war shit when it shows up here, but this is one of those times when I can't bite my tongue.

> the majority of CoC documents have been templated and written by one particular in-group of people who share extremist beliefs, and so it has been instrumentalized to drive their communities further into extremism and exclusionary tactics which eject people who believe differently or have dissenting political views.'

> [...]

> And that is why Codes of Conduct are vehemently opposed by people of good will, because they are designed to push an agenda and exclude individuals, not to keep the peace or make safe environments.

Lordy lordy lordy, what a mess. Let's zoom out a bit and add some context to what you've said here. The original open source CoC drama happened because one trans person got tired of being targeted with anti-trans harassment.

One of the primary arguments made against CoCs since then have matched yours in both spirit and even exact wording, as an attempt to frame harassment as "free speech" and shield harassers from the consequences of their own actions.

Your post copies, thought for thought and sometimes word for word, arguments from that time that were created by people that desire to silence and eliminate trans voices.

The real giveaway that demonstrates this is the "eject people who [...] have dissenting political views" thing. This specific talking point was invented to frame the mere existence of trans people as a thing of politics that is open to debate somehow. The emphasis of "one particular in-group" attempts to elevate trans peoples' attempts to stop being harassed for existing as some grand crusade by a strong united front of some kind.

So, for anyone that reads this thread before it's nuked from orbit, the post I'm replying to is the core counterargument from the anti-CoC crowd: they want to be allowed to be bigots and experience no pushback, nor suffer any consequences.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#274
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that mediation would be a good thing. Yet we never hear about that, even in "progressive" workplaces that are all about Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & all the other keywords. It's remarkable - your supervisor behaves in an increasingly unhinged manner towards you, and you go look for informal conflict resolution and none is to be had. Yes, there is a code of conduct, there is the diversitylady, but no way of…

Aren't the "diversitylady" and the committees supposed to be the mediators during conflicts between 2 people? Can you guarantee that you'd be happy with those mediators, and won't just request another level of mediation?

No idea what the diversity lady's job description is, but she did not mediate the conflict nor was she of any assistance at all. That experience fixed my opinion of D&I and the CoC movement, all window-dressing, no further questions required.

In a different workplace I have worked through mediation and the outcome could be accepted.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look…

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So I think I hear you but it's hard for me to really grasp what you're trying to say because you're not using specifics. I'm not sure if that's an attempt to protect yourself from backlash, but as somebody who doesn't see the same thing as you, these are some things that I feel the need to clarify:

* "the majority of coc documents" - this feels unquantifiable, but maybe you mean a particular template? Could you point me to one that you take issue with?

* "one particular in-group of people who share extremist beliefs" - which group? Is it the same group for all of the communities or one group per community? Could you help me with an example? Which extremist beliefs? Again, is this per-community or one group with one set of beliefs?

With these concrete examples, what do you personally think could be done by these communities to make would-be well-intentioned-codes more like their abstract, theoretical tool?

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#277
post #203
post #35

I see a lot of people here forgetting a real case of CoC abuse. There was this famous Drupal dev that wrote a transcript of a fetish wedding on his fetish social media profile. An enemy of his on Drupal quoted that transcript and used it as examples the Dev should be punished. Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished,…

I got hit with a "code of conduct violation" once for, in a social chat space with many people, saying that I thought "homeopathy is a load of bullshit", or something to that effect. It was worded rather sharply and I apologized; probably shouldn't have put it like that. I'm not the "internet atheist" type of person who enjoys challenging other people's beliefs in an attempt to come off as "smarter" or "more rational…

Calling homeopathy bullshit is a kind way to put it, given the potential harm it could cause if people choose it over evidence-based medicine. I like the Mitchell and Web take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLoMGb5CaXE

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#278

What I don't get, sorry for my own reductive attitude, is that if you volunteer for one of these projects you're working for free . If you don't like terms of project, just don't work for free? Kind of like reddit moderator situation atm

Most people who contribute to gcc aren't doing it for free, they work on behalf of large corporations.

But more importantly, most people who complain about the CoC are not contributors.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a brief Google search, I think you're referring to Coraline Ada Ehmke, but I can't find anything problematic about her, what she's said, or her goals — unless you're referring to the fact that she's transgender and cares about social justice. Is that why you're being deliberately vague? Would you mind elaborating instead of vagueposting? What are your specific concerns? What is "extremely objectively poor" abou…

Not the OP, but from what I remember they would seek out every possible opportunity in every single possible open source community they could find and propose the CoC that they wrote. 0 contributions to the projects, with the exception of demanding that people implement incredibly verbose CoC's in their projects under the guise of "protecting the minorities contributing to the projects". Most infamous instance is pro…

It was pretty funny when she shook down the venerable SQLite project, and they responded by adopting the Rule of Saint Benedict. (They later capitulated.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273530

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dbt slack community has a bot that says > Hi! Reminder: “guys” is an inherently gendered term. Great alternatives include “everyone”, “folks”, “team”, "friends" or “y’all”. Thank you for helping us build a more inclusive community! The only thing that really bothers me personally about this is the mistaken idea that language can be "inherently" anything. The meaning of a term varies based on usage, it is not inhe…

You're entitled to an opinion about it, but a Slack bot that pings you when you say "guys" is not remotely comparable to bullying (which is the top-level claim in this thread).

> Hi! Reminder: “guys” is an inherently gendered term.

That's not a ping, that's imposing your language on others. A ping would be something like "guys is a gendered term for some people"

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