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Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

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Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#91

Post by opello »

quinnchr wrote: post #74
aroman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your reply. > Yeah for sure the english language couldn't possibly itself be influenced by sexism. That's just how it works. We should just accept it. That was not my point, nor do I believe I implied that. I acknowledge that the original reason why English's nonspecific/neuter pronoun is the same as the masculine is almost certainly because of ages-old sexism and masculo-normativity. > The pronoun itself…

It's an example of gender bias. By using exclusively he, there is an implicit assumption that whoever reading the doc block is a man, reinforcing the gender norm of programming being male dominated. I would say that falls under sexism. I don't think sexism was intended, but that doesn't mean it can't be sexist. I'll be the first to admit it, I say sexist shit all the time, most of the time it's unintended. Fact of th…

Do you really think that it assumes the reader is male? Why not the caller? Can't the function written in the user's code be masculine, just like boats are feminine?

(This was largely intended as hyperbole, I don't know why "it" is not the answer. Distancing and dehumanizing language seems appropriate when talking about function calls.)

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#92

Post by austinz »

Lazare wrote: post #89
piscisaureus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there you go: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

Joyent is looking worse and worse as the dust settles.

Ben: "If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else."

After this all-smoke-no-flame shitstorm, one big company carrying out a character assassination and publicly wishing they could fire him and his current employer dangling a Damocles' sword over his job...I really can't blame him.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#94

Post by richardfontana »

dmourati wrote: post #20
itafroma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original issue was a pull request[1] made to the libuv code base to change "him" to "them". It was rejected[2] by one of the committers, Ben Noordhuis, as being too trivial. That decision was reversed by Isaac Schlueter (another committer) and committed[3]. Noordhuis reverted that commit[4], chiding Schlueter for not following procedure, but that revert was quickly reverted itself. Bryan Cantrill of Joyent, one o…

Not exactly. There are two Isaacs. Isaac Roth at StrongLoop, author of the OP, he didn't come into the story until today. Isaac Schlueter works for Joyent, and originally committed the requested change.

Roth is actually Issac, not Isaac.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#95

Post by acdha »

kmeluna wrote: post #77

From the blog post: > If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. Reforming the use of English pronouns has nothing to do with the employee's professional activities. No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism. There is no consensus in society about how pronouns should be used or their cultural significance [1]. No one should have their livelihood threatened for…

> No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism.

You should read before commenting: the problem wasn't his choice of wording but rather how he turned a trivial change into an argument and reverted another committer's action complete with a threat.

If he didn't want to get involved, simply ignoring it was by far the easiest course of action. Instead, he twice chose to escalate to an unnecessary level of confrontation.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#96

Post by acdha »

austinz wrote: post #46
mintplant wrote: post #31

From Joyent's blog post [1]: > But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2] that the post is referencing:…

Ben was called a bigot and his rejection of the pull request was ascribed to the "principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered" (from the Joyent blog). The problem is, all of this is being extrapolated from his statement "sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that", which could be seen as a flippant dismissal of gender issues in the tech industry - or it could be simply a curt response acknowledging sta…

Your spin attempt ignored the part where he reverted someone else's commit with a threatening message. Nobody would ge talking about it if he had simply ignored it or asked Isaac about it first.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#97

Post by cjbprime »

dmpk2k wrote: post #22
kika wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus for example isn't the nicest guy in town either. I know a few devs who are parsecs ahead of me, in knowledge and/or productivity. None of them could qualify as a nice and polite person. May be observation bias, but I see a connection here.

I think that's an example of sample bias. There are many excellent developers who are nice too, you just don't hear as much about them because they're not causing drama. Again. All the great developers I've worked with have been fantastic people too. Maybe I've just been lucky. As a counterpoint in the node community: isaacs is pleasant, amazingly patient, and an excellent developer.

Excellent point, thanks for making it.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#98

Post by anatoly »

ijroth wrote: post #30
adriancooney wrote: post #8

> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. That statement feels a little to intimate for an outsider to the company. Ben made a mistake but to single out and threaten him like that in public would surely alienate him further. This entire situation has gotten extremely out of hand. It shows how activists can turn into extremists when faced with an adversary. I'm in no way advocating what Ben did but it's despicable how eve…

I wrote that. I didn't mean it literally. It’s a response to Bryan saying that failure to be sensitive to gender issues would be a firing offense at his company. We take it really seriously, and I’d like to point out that two of our senior leaders are women and we are proud to employ talented women engineers. If this remained an issue, I’d need to find a way to rectify it with Ben, and that could get as serious as fi…

Issac, I realize that you had the best intentions in this, I see that you were trying to put out stupid fires rather than start another one, and I appreciate your willingness to criticize the crass and inappropriate response from Joyent. All that said, and please take it as friendly criticism: your tone towards the developer came across as unnecessarily belittling, and the phrase about firing, even if not meant literally, crossed the line. Yet another post would probably just add fuel to the fire, but I would seriously consider a private face-to-face apology, if I were you. Thanks for listening.

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#99

Post by skwirl »

acdha wrote: post #96
austinz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben was called a bigot and his rejection of the pull request was ascribed to the "principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered" (from the Joyent blog). The problem is, all of this is being extrapolated from his statement "sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that", which could be seen as a flippant dismissal of gender issues in the tech industry - or it could be simply a curt response acknowledging sta…

Your spin attempt ignored the part where he reverted someone else's commit with a threatening message. Nobody would ge talking about it if he had simply ignored it or asked Isaac about it first.

What was the threatening message? Could you link to it?

Re: Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

#100

Post by anatoly »

mintplant wrote: post #31

From Joyent's blog post [1]: > But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2] that the post is referencing:…

The post at Joyent is eye-popping and Bryan Cantrill comes across as a horrible person. In just four sanctimonious, power-hungry and smug paragraphs he makes Joyent look like a toxic entity I would never want to deal with.
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