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Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

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Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#171

Post by svieira »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #144
serial_dev wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just having a hard time imagining someone who wants to be racist sexist xenophobe jerk to other people, but they saw you drafted a CoC last year in the root of your repository, so they won't... Or they were racist sexist xenophobe jerks, then you point out that "our community has a CoC", and they will stop. None of these things happen in real life.

Written rules aren't for the offenders, they're for the conflict-adverse community members who get uncomfortable when someone needs to be thrown out for community health reasons. They don't really have strong opinions supporting the person's behavior, but they're uncomfortable with the idea of people getting exiled from the community, so come slithering out to protest when an asshole is exiled for being an asshole. S…

Why wouldn't "I have taken a dislike to them. Pray I do not take a dislike to you as well" also solve these people's problems? There's surely something more than "dislike of conflict" here, or else they wouldn't invite conflict by disagreeing with the now decided and closed conflict's resolution.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#173

Post by svieira »

swiftcoder wrote: post #125
astanm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as these views aren't thrashed out in the collaborative spaces to which the CoC applies, it doesn't really matter. (As a personal preference, I'd rather not know the political views, legitimate or otherwise, of people I work with. It's not relevant.)

If said people kept their opinions to themselves, the issue would never arise in the first place. Pretty much the whole problem in semi-public spaces like this is that folks with strong reactionary beliefs don’t tend to leave them at the door

`s/reactionary//` and you'd be right in your second sentence. It doesn't matter if it's action or reaction, people with strong beliefs, strongly held tend to be holding them because of some core set of ethical or moral principles and those things eventually are revealed in the day-to-day work.

As to your first - if people with a strong set of ethical and moral principles "just shut up" about what they considered ethical and moral essentials ... then they wouldn't be who they are. The only people who don't show what they hold good are people who don't hold as good much of anything.

Now if we're just talking "opinions" here (about things that are not ethical and moral, merely matters of taste), then yes, a person with "strong beliefs strongly held as a universal principle" is someone who is just an ass. But if I know someone is a raving Detroit Lions fan "on the internet", what kind of a person am I if I can't work with them?

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#174

Post by [deleted] »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #155
notarget137 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It baffles me how much political every aspect of life has become. We can't just talk about things and hold genuine discussion. It always boils down to "us vs. them" standpoint.

What would genuine discussion look like on the topic of trans people existing? I'm not sure I would know how to identify it even if it existed.

[deleted]

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#175

Post by wastle »

kelnos wrote: post #152
wastle wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual divisive issue is whether people who say they are the opposite sex to what they really are should be granted access to spaces that are designated for the sole use of the opposite sex. This gets relabelled by activists for the trans ideological cause with phrases like "the right to participate in society" and even "the right to exist", but these are so far from what is actually being demanded that it's esse…

> The actual divisive issue is whether people who say they are the opposite sex to what they really are should be granted access to spaces that are designated for the sole use of the opposite sex. And of course that shouldn't matter for an online virtual space. But that's unfortunately not it. There are many many people who believe that being trans isn't real, and that anyone who claims to be trans has a mental illne…

> > The actual divisive issue is whether people who say they are the opposite sex to what they really are should be granted access to spaces that are designated for the sole use of the opposite sex.

> And of course that shouldn't matter for an online virtual space.

Depends on the space. It will matter sometimes. For instance: pregnancy forums, prostate cancer support groups.

But I agree this shouldn't be relevant for online spaces used to organise work on software development projects. These, almost always, are not intended as single-sex spaces, nor as venues for discussing people's differing views on this topic.

> It's not a "political stance" to say that people should call others by their preferred name and pronouns. It's just basic human decency to do that

I think that's more a philosophical stance. Appealing to "basic human decency" seems too subjective, both culturally and personally. There are many perspectives on what this might mean in practice.

Unfortunately the pronouns issue is difficult to avoid when communicating in English, because we have separate words to refer to female and male, and for most English speakers it's natural to use these to describe a person's sex. Overriding it because someone prefers (or demands) an opposite sex pronoun, or even some esoteric pronoun outside of the usual closed set, can be difficult even if that's something you've chosen to accede to. It's like a variation of the Stroop test but in everyday speech.

There are some reasonable arguments to be made for choosing otherwise too, though I expect you probably would not agree.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#176

Post by poncho_romero »

squigz wrote: post #106
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #23

CoC always appeared to me as a US issue which could pretty much be safely ignored by anyone living in the rest of the world. I generally dislike how they tend to be written as objective rules while actually being imperialist but most of them can safely be boiled down to act like a normal professional person. The implied subtext of "avoid topic the US finds morally objectionable and when in doubt act like an American…

> could pretty much be safely ignored by anyone living in the rest of the world. While it would be nice if all the ignorant assholes in the world lived in America... this is not the case :)

No, but Americans are more litigious than everyone else

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#177

Post by skissane »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #159
skissane wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely more than 50% of the world's population agrees with viewpoints that some would label "trans-eliminationist rhetoric". So if you are saying anyone who ever expresses such viewpoints–even in forums completely unrelated to the project–is barred from contributing to it, you are potentially excluding more than half of contemporary humanity.

Do you want me eliminated?

I don’t want anyone “eliminated”… the problem is what does “eliminated” mean? If it means “rounding up people and shooting them” then of course I oppose that. But what about the conservative Jew/Christian/Muslim who believes that when Moshiach/Christ/Mahdi comes/returns, gender dysphoria will cease to exist-is that belief also “eliminationist”? I think religious freedom means we need to tolerate the existence of such beliefs even if we believe they are wrong. Excluding someone from an open source community because they hold traditional religious beliefs on gender and sexuality-especially if we assume they keep those beliefs out of project forums where they aren’t relevant-that’s religious discrimination, and in my view it is wrong, and (in some jurisdictions) it may even be unlawful

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#178

Post by skissane »

sc68cal wrote: post #165
skissane wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely more than 50% of the world's population agrees with viewpoints that some would label "trans-eliminationist rhetoric". So if you are saying anyone who ever expresses such viewpoints–even in forums completely unrelated to the project–is barred from contributing to it, you are potentially excluding more than half of contemporary humanity.

Would you feel the same way if it were eliminationist language, but against Jews, or African-Americans, or Irish-Americans, or Men?

So, if a person is a traditionalist/conservative Orthodox Jew, who holds traditional “non-affirming” views on LGBT issues-do those views count as “eliminationist rhetoric”?

If a project decides it won’t welcome people who believe what almost all conservative/traditionalist Orthodox Jews believe (even if they keep those beliefs to themselves in project forums), it is essentially deciding that Jews (of that kind) aren’t welcome-isn’t that antisemitic, and in itself a species of eliminationism? (not with respect to Jews in general, rather with respect to Jews of that kind)

And the same point holds for “Sunni” or “Shi’a” or “Catholic” or “Protestant” or “Eastern Orthodox”

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#179

Post by EnergyAmy »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #155
notarget137 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It baffles me how much political every aspect of life has become. We can't just talk about things and hold genuine discussion. It always boils down to "us vs. them" standpoint.

What would genuine discussion look like on the topic of trans people existing? I'm not sure I would know how to identify it even if it existed.

[flagged]

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#180

Post by EnergyAmy »

lowsong wrote: post #63
mytailorisrich wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to new contributors from marginalized groups, For software projects that are overwhelmingly conducted online the very concept of "marginalized group" is close to irrelevant and meaningless [1]. I think what happens is that some people want to be very, very vocal about whatever "group" they belong to and want to feel offended and oppressed. In recent years, arguments and campaigns against specific technical terms ('…

> For software projects that are overwhelmingly conducted online the very concept of "marginalized group" is close to irrelevant I wish this were true, but it simply isn't. If a group is full of white cis heterosexual guys and someone turns up with a random screen name and says nothing about themselves, everyone assumes they are also a white cis hetero guy even if they're not. The implication is "you have to conform,…

Trying to fight "hey guys" is stupid and tilting at windmills. It's a great example of performative wokeness that achieves nothing but making some people feel good about themselves.
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