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GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

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Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#251

Post by Confusion »

avolcano wrote: post #6

Fine with me. It's an offensive term and GitHub has every right to police their service and ban content like this. Am I supposed to be concerned by this, and if so, why?

Because they are either wholly capitulating to a vocal minority or feel they are part of that minority. In both cases they are stepping on a slippery slope to insanity. The criterion used for this decision is necessarily wholly arbitrary, as what is deemed offensive differs with time and community. Now you have to worry whether your repo with a fortune file with some offcolor jokes is going to be banned. Whether your use of 'retard' for its original meaning is going to cause problems. Whether any other words I use may have connotations I don't know about

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#252

Post by DanBC »

kordless wrote: post #178
andylei wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kind of doomsday scenario are you imagining? all the open source repos in the world slowly die as github starts censoring increasingly larger portions of the english language?

I'm imagining a nightmare scenario where, by some vauge unwritten and immature consensus mechanism, we rationalize even a slight amount of censorship as being OK.

The actual nightmare scenario is that people with learning disability are killed by doctors because those doctors think "retards have no quality of life". When people toss around the word retard they contribute to a culture that doesn't care about the high levels of violent hate crime experienced by people with a learning disability.

And most posts seem to miss the point: their servers, their rules. No one is stopping you from having an open source project that uses the word retard, they're just stopping you from using Github. There's a bunch of other censorship that Github does.

> You may not use the Service for any illegal or unauthorized purpose. You must not, in the use of the Service, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright or trademark laws).

This, in particular, is restrictive.

(Also: we're all assuming the screenshot is genuine.)

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#253

Post by DanBC »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #209
Lazare wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is not a public service; they're a private company. > Who decides what is and is not appropriate? Github does. That's how that works. If you prefer you could try and lobby your government to set up some sort of national source code repo. Maybe you'd find the rules on such a thing more to your liking. (Note: You really, really wouldn't.) Alternatively, you could host your own source code repos, and then you can…

Github is not a public service; they're a private company. They're both. They're a private company that offers a public service. As such, they can't do whatever they want. For example, if they wanted to ban all repos written by black men, that would be illegal. Nobody is suggesting that banning a repo for using a bad word is illegal. A breach of trust, a breach of ethics and a breach of reliability[0], but not illega…

> fag

Are you talking about cigarettes or gay men? It's pretty easy for github.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#254

Post by Retra »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #193
andylei wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the original poem is about how germans systematically eradicated entire racial and political groups. you're comparing it to a website that won't let you save certain content onto their servers.

A website that, at the moment, retains a significant percentage of the entire free and open source software ecosystem. No, it's not quite as bad as genocide, but we're not suggesting putting anybody to death as a result either.

It retains that software using an open source software ecosystem. You can download git right now and start your own service.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#255

Post by EugeneOZ »

brandonmenc wrote: post #240
EugeneOZ wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they know it's offensive and their fight was exactly about freedom of speech.

Yes, they knew it was offensive - to others. There is no indication that it actually offended them . Which, unless it did, it's not the same thing.

They are caricaturists, nothing can offend them. You miss the point of their reasoning.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#256

Post by DanBC »

niuzeta wrote: post #33
avolcano wrote: post #6

Fine with me. It's an offensive term and GitHub has every right to police their service and ban content like this. Am I supposed to be concerned by this, and if so, why?

Because "retard" may not be the last time, but the first. A precedence would be set that a repository may be shut down due to an arbitrary(not the word I'd use here, but for the sake of argument) reason.

But that arbitrariness is baked into the user agreement and always has been.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#257

Post by paulv »

KirinDave wrote: post #50
Tinyyy wrote: post #39

A honest question, why are most people here okay with this, but they’re not okay with for example Facebook censoring certain content?

Probably because facebook is by design a mechanism of human communication. Github is a mechanism for sharing code. The words used and then rejected were useless, and substituting them did not affect the communication in any meaningful way. Calling vocabulary subs like this "censorship" greatly glorifies the users of said language, as unless they're deliberately trying to be offensive there is always an equally useful…

> Probably because facebook is by design a mechanism of human communication. Github is a mechanism for sharing code.

Is code not a mechanism of human communication?

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#258

Post by Confusion »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #108
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have every right to do it, but that doesn't make it productive. Is github really going to anoint itself word-police and comb through the source code of every project they host looking for words they [currently] consider potty-mouthed? Is that really where we have ended up? Do they have nothing better to do? What if the word "fail" offended somebody at github? Should they take down projects that have that variabl…

1) Yes, absolutely; they're creating a more friendly community, and that's a hard problem. 3) Profanity and derogatory language are not the same thing; the difference is critically important. Similarly, if you tell someone to FOAD, the FO isn't the most offensive part of that statement.

And in this case the word was used as profanity, to enable self-deprecation. It wasn't derogatory.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#259

Post by Retra »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #239
Retra wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't use Twitter. Any communication medium that severely limits the amount of text you can send is going to be prone to miscommunication, aggression, and triteness. Anyway, nobody is forcing you to not write free and open source software. GitHub doesn't have a problem with the software. Nor are they preventing anyone from getting it or using it. They've erected what I would call a rather trivial obstacle for t…

No, I don't use Twitter. You should pay attention to what's happening over there. It's a good preview for what's coming. Nor are they preventing anyone from getting it or using it. You have an odd view of banning. Yes, that does prevent anyone from getting it or using it. That's like saying banning a book doesn't prevent anyone from getting it or reading it. People will find a way, but that doesn't mean we should enc…

I don't need to use Twitter. Every time something interesting happens through twitter, people flock to forums and blogs to talk about it. Because Twitter is not a platform for mature, reasonable discussions. It's for self-promotion and advertising.

>Yes, that does prevent anyone from getting it or using it. That's like saying banning a book doesn't prevent anyone from getting it or reading it.

GitHub didn't ban anything. It edited it. In fact, it edited a part that you yourself said doesn't matter. "Code quality, not political ideology." Remember?

>The ridiculousness you would feel about being required to eat a cucumber sandwich before being allowed to commit code to github is exactly how I feel about being required to think politically correct thoughts before being allowed to commit code to github.

Or someone asking you to take your shoes off in their private home. It's so ridiculous. You should have a right to be rude in people's private spaces.

Re: GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

#260

Post by PopeOfNope »

DanBC wrote: post #253
PopeOfNope wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is not a public service; they're a private company. They're both. They're a private company that offers a public service. As such, they can't do whatever they want. For example, if they wanted to ban all repos written by black men, that would be illegal. Nobody is suggesting that banning a repo for using a bad word is illegal. A breach of trust, a breach of ethics and a breach of reliability[0], but not illega…

> fag Are you talking about cigarettes or gay men? It's pretty easy for github.

It's pretty easy to point and shriek at something out of context. It's also pretty easy to use the word fag in a seemingly offensive way until you consider the author of said code may himself be gay. It's pretty easy for anybody to tell the difference, but is that going to make a difference after it becomes a public controversy? Or will github just pull it to be safe?
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