481–490 of 845 posts
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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.
No, the people who run the website find it offensive, it's their house, so you deal with it or leave.
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1. This isn't censorship of the type that is illegal or not allowed. It is a private company deciding a word was inappropriate. 2. It seems like most in this comment thread agree that this action, as a singular act, is a good thing. The word was offensive. Github asked the repo to change it. They did. The end. 3. As for the larger context, the problem with the frequent use of slippery slope arguments and cries of "ce…
> 3. As for the larger context, the problem with the frequent use of slippery slope arguments and cries of "censorship" is that people are choosing to die on some pretty ridiculous hills. > 4. If or when Github actually does something truly abusive of their power to censor, then I'll worry. This is bizarre. Your thinking goes directly against our human nature: recognize future danger and try to avoid it. The danger i…
Imagine a source code repository where you have to be mindful of your comments, lest you become the target of a SJW out to destroy your career, friendships and reputation? Where is the utility in that?
It's bad enough on twitter now that you can only post dry comments if you use your real name. It's too risky to even post the teeniest joke or quip.
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The cognitive dissonance of people downvoting comments when they are complaining about censorship is baffling. The hypocrisy is weird.
Downvoting isn't equal to censorship. The content remains available for anyone with an account. The commit history of this project remains available too... however, they forbid the authors to use the word in the live version if they want their project to be hosted on github. Now, I guess it's their prerogative to set the rules for people using their service. But I think it's also fair to say that being the facebook o…
I agree. In this thead I'm assuming that the email is real.
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1. This isn't censorship of the type that is illegal or not allowed. It is a private company deciding a word was inappropriate. 2. It seems like most in this comment thread agree that this action, as a singular act, is a good thing. The word was offensive. Github asked the repo to change it. They did. The end. 3. As for the larger context, the problem with the frequent use of slippery slope arguments and cries of "ce…
"This isn't censorship of the type that is illegal or not allowed. It is a private company deciding a word was inappropriate." As a Github user, that kind of thinking worries me. Google Code went away, and Sourceforge started packaging adware and spyware with other people's projects. They could do this because "they were a private company". Now Github's management is starting to throw their weight around. We now need…
If you wanted some liberal principle, there's an organization lying neglected in the corner whose charter says it more-or-less cannot censor anything under any circumstances. Or you could start it as a commons trust, or a users' cooperative, or some other form of organization that would ultimately leave your source repo company more accountable to its users than to baying mobs of internet raiders trying to threaten ad revenue with bad publicity.
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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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I think this is an unfair jump because they do have a legitimate business model with enterprise revenue - they don't need to start owning your life to continue to exist.
Advertising is a higher margin business.
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The cognitive dissonance of people downvoting comments when they are complaining about censorship is baffling. The hypocrisy is weird.
Downvoting isn't equal to censorship. The content remains available for anyone with an account. The commit history of this project remains available too... however, they forbid the authors to use the word in the live version if they want their project to be hosted on github. Now, I guess it's their prerogative to set the rules for people using their service. But I think it's also fair to say that being the facebook o…
Except when it is. Given sufficient downvotes, a post will fade to the same color as the background, making it easy to scroll past and not see it. Whether you want to admit it or not, brigading happens here too, and once in a while a perfectly valid, thoughtful, and reasoned response is silenced because it doesn't fit in with the group mentality here.
The only solution for this issue would be for everyone to adopt a personal policy of only downvoting trolls, intentionally misleading comments, off topic comments, spam, and "me too!" style comments that don't contribute to the discussion. Unfortunately we're only human, and instead of rebutting a comment one disagrees with, many of the users here take the lazy path and downvote. There's no easy fix for that, so the brigading continues, as does the censorship of valid but controversial ideas.
As for the topic at hand; while I agree with most people that the word "retard" is offensive and derogatory towards a specific group of people, I find it hilarious that its use is being questioned by people running a site/service named after an equally offensive and derogatory word.
GitHub making value judgments on the political correctness of speech in the repositories they host makes me extremely hesitant to continue to use them. I want my service platforms to be neutral to content, so long as it's legal. This isn't some complaint about "freedom of speech" or some whine about how GitHub can't do this, but their doing so has substantially harmed my faith in them as a platform and as a company t…
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It's not about meaning, it's about usage and impact . Slurs like "r@t$rd" are used against people with mental health issues and make it hard for them to participate in such spaces.
r-at-t-dollar-rd? how do you even pronounce that? Anyway as a git I am offended by the use of the word git and it makes it hard for me to participate in such spaces.
github is within their rights to do this but it's horrendous that they are doing it. The corpus of offensive speech (or code in this case) is getting out of hand. The code is clearly humor. Not everyone appreciates the same humor but humor is _meant_ to be offensive. So, the policy will proceed to be no humor in code that isn't bland. But, then, all of silicon valley is moving toward this. A github founder got into a…
Humour can be offensive. Some great humour is.
Not all humour is offensive. Some great humour isn't.
And when humour is offensive, it's pretty widely agreed that it should "punch up" and never "punch down".