451–460 of 845 posts
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I don't understand why they don't filter it on upload stage ("push"). "git push" > "sorry, can't push because of words: [list of words here]". Is it more difficult than later disable whole repo because of one stupid joke?
Because you may need to put those words in a repo in a non-offensive context. For example, a list of "bad" words to look for.
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> it's about using a word that causes harm Words do not cause harm. It's a slippery slope to total censorship and thought policing to think otherwise.
Imagine you're a parent who happens upon a repo that uses the word "retard" as a replacement for "stupid person" or "idiot". You also happen to have a mentally disabled child. Perhaps you would have contributed to that repository and now you won't. That seems materially harmful to me, to reduce the sum total of people contributing to open source. Compare that to the potential of falling down a slippery slope to "tota…
> Compare that to the potential of falling down a slippery slope to "total censorship"
This is not a "potential". We're already rolling down that path with a very little chance to ever stop. Brendan Eich, Orson Scott Card, Matt Taylor, Tim Hunt - among the most high profile victims, with countless numbers under the radar.
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> it's about using a word that causes harm Words do not cause harm. It's a slippery slope to total censorship and thought policing to think otherwise.
Imagine you're a parent who happens upon a repo that uses the word "retard" as a replacement for "stupid person" or "idiot". You also happen to have a mentally disabled child. Perhaps you would have contributed to that repository and now you won't. That seems materially harmful to me, to reduce the sum total of people contributing to open source. Compare that to the potential of falling down a slippery slope to "tota…
"People with biases might not like it" gives basically everyone a heckler's veto. Now I recognize that you don't actually plan to give everyone with a bias such a veto - only the people you agree with - but your stated principle is not a good one.
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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 stoppin…
>The actual nightmare scenario is that people with learning disability are killed by doctors because those doctors think "retards have no quality of life". Woah, that escalated quickly. How the hell did we go from offensive words to hospitals as state run eugenics labs in one sentence?
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I know of one country that operates a web content filter to prevent its citizens from being exposed to offensive and objectionable content. The citizens of this country find it incredibly offensive that there exists instructions on how to circumvent this filter. However, github proudly hosts these instructions[1] in spite of repeated polite requests to remove it. Now I'd like to know why the views of Bay Area SJWs is…
So what you're saying is that you're afraid that GitHub will go down the slippery slope of censorship? If I reframe this another way, do you think this is an acceptable behaviour in a professional setting? Then the issue becomes less of censorship, but more of acceptable conduct. Calling names for laughs is probably OK in private, between friends, but perhaps not appropriate in a public setting. Again, I get that the…
Github's previous policy was to allow any content that did not expressly break American laws. I thought this was a good idea, and it was the justification behind keeping the GreatFire repo up, even in the face of DoS attacks by China. Very commendable, IMO. However, when they start censoring people who break no laws, I do think they are more likely to censor things in the future.
Lastly, I'd like to point out that "git" is an offensive word to some people. It was chosen by Linus Torvalds for that reason. Now that Github has demonstrated their willingness to censor words that hurt people's feelings, would they consider censoring this awful project? [1] While they're at it, could they change their name too?
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I'm tired of reading people nebulously defining "free speech philosophies" online to act as a shield to justify nefarious behavior on private property. This thread has been very instructive for me. I've come to the conclusion that you either get free speech as a social virtue or you don't. It's clear to me that most people don't and even can't understand it from that point of view. What that XKCD comic doesn't even c…
>you either get free speech as a social virtue or you don't. False dichotomy. Many people get that free speech is a social virtue, because many people see protection from government censorship as a social virtue. What it sounds like is that you wish was a social virtue is the ability to behave or act in any manor on privately-owned websites without having to face the consequences of your actions. We can consider hypo…
QED. Thanks for playing the home game. We'll mail you your prizes.
This obsession with making every single website a hugbox these days is moronic. The word retard/retarded is seldom associated with actual retardation instead it's just a synonym for moron. Even if you dissagree with that you should still be able to see that even if we did s/retard/moron/ or replaced it with git, idiot etc it would still violate the TOS.
Even the words "moron", "idiot", etc. all have an etymological root in referring to the mentally handicapped. I, for one, will think twice about relying on Github in the future if they try to police what is and isn't appropriate language.
The euphemism treadmill in action.
And I like to think of it as the prisoner-as-powersource kind of treadmill, not the fitness exercise one.
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So this entire thread has been a lesson in the pointlessness of pedanticism.
It's pedantic, yes, but on the other hand, I think it's important to distinguish between legal and illegal activity, regardless of one's opinions about the moral goodness of the activity itself.
'git' itself literally means 'bastard' i.e. a person born of unmarried parents.
We can claim to be an enlightened society which does not discriminate on the basis of parentage, but that doesn't bear out on so many levels, not least that single parents do not receive effective support.
You can say I could make the same argument about 'dummies' as an insult, and I won't really complain. The brand name '...for dummies' was originally a bit shocking: that's part of its marketing strategy. This is not a strategy that I particularly like.
I would not bother to censor here, I will continue just to privately think less well of this and other projects.
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>Is it offensive? Yes. Can we stop saying this as a universal truth? You find it offensive. I and millions other people don't. You deal with it.
You don't find it offensive. I and millions of other people do. You deal with it.
Should everyone live to the strictest thinkable standards because somewhere out there is a semi-large group of people who find your behavior offensive?
Such semi-large groups might be religions for example that take various kinds of behaviors you take for granted as offensive.