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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'

#691

Post by weland »

valdiorn wrote: post #418
weland wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who decides what is and is not appropriate? GitHub, because that stuff is hosted on their servers. This is not about Open Source . This is about GitHub. Yes, it has no place in Open Source. Whether or not it has a place on GitHub is, however, up to GitHub itself.

Your logic becomes flawed when you realize how many % of the world's open source projects are hosted primarily on Github. Their actions are all legal and good, and since I don't live in America, the freedom of speech argument is invalid to me. That doesn't make this sort or action OK, and should in fact be cause for alarm. To quote my favorite comedian, Steve Hughes: "What offends me may not offend you. And you want…

Don't get me wrong, I think GitHub's move is retarded.

It's just that no one has a right to whine about it any more than they have a right to whine about what their retarded neighbour does in their apartment. If your retarded neighbour has a "no cursing" policies in their home, you can either not be his guest, or not swear while in his house. Either way, it's his right.

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

#692

Post by nols »

dwmtm wrote: post #683
nols wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same thing though. Calling someone a git is just calling them stupid, calling someone a retard is saying they're so stupid they're mentally disabled and they should feel ashamed for it. It's pretty insulting towards people with mental disabilities. Even Linus has said he named git after himself because he's so egotistical.

You're telling us a lot more about how you use speech in an attempt to shame other people and a lot less about how shaming and insulting 'stupid' is relative to 'so stupid'.

The problem is the historical usage of "retard" toward the mentally disabled and the trend to use the word to call not mentally disabled people mentally disabled as an insult. The "mentally disabled as an insult" part is why people don't want "retard" to be used.

I don't use either of the words because I'm an adult who isn't British.

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

#693

Post by michaelbuddy »

shkkmo wrote: post #662
kefka wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's going on at Github is rather perverse. And it happens to be around the word "Meritocracy". Because of the "feels", the word meritocracy is a 'disempowering word'. It makes people with less skill feel 'less valuable'. So the impetus is to raise your skill? No. It's to devalue others who call you on it, or disregard your uninformed opinion. What this accumulates to is the Github rug in the headquarters. "The Uni…

Feminism is not to blame. Feminism is wonderful and empowering ideology. There is a distinct difference between the ideology of feminism and the behavior of a specific group of feminists. Lumping the two together like that is like blaming Islam for terrorists.

Nope. And yes you can blame a doctrine that people follow that succinctly makes recommendations to violence for being a cause of violence. Perfectly acceptable and so far quite accurate.

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

#694

Post by jazzyk »

kefka wrote: post #633
kefka wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's going on at Github is rather perverse. And it happens to be around the word "Meritocracy". Because of the "feels", the word meritocracy is a 'disempowering word'. It makes people with less skill feel 'less valuable'. So the impetus is to raise your skill? No. It's to devalue others who call you on it, or disregard your uninformed opinion. What this accumulates to is the Github rug in the headquarters. "The Uni…

Source: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug Because mobile.

Thank you for providing this link. Even though the rug story happened last year (somehow I missed it), it is relevant to this thread (and a scary read).

Taken together (the attempt at censorship and the rug story) indicates to me that Github seems to be overly preoccupied with political correctness and not keeping their eyes on the ball. If this continues, watch for decreased quality/innovation coming from them as we go.

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

#695

Post by serge2k »

thedz wrote: post #116
CoryG89 wrote: post #40

For people who don't see what's wrong here. The issue is not about whether the word 'retard' is or is not offensive to anyone. You need to consider that GitHub currently hosts a large percentage of the web's open source repositories. This is censorship plain and simple, something that IMO has no place in open source. The issue is that there are plenty of things some people might find offensive on GitHub but you dont…

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…

They didn't ask, they said do it or else. Extortion.

If someone was upset enough to complain, why not file a PR or start a discussion instead?

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

#696

Post by GauntletWizard »

DanBC wrote: post #571
sklogic wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you use the word retard you dehumanise people with LD. No. When I use the word "retard" I'm pointing out on a lack of mental ability demonstrated by a particular person. And I do not even want to discuss anything that contains the SJW newspeak like "dehumanise", "empower", "exclude" and all that crap. > You contribute to a culture where it's okay to deny those people work; to segregate them in specialist housi…

People with learning disability have been the target of eugenics in various forms. They've been subjected to sterilisation sometimes without their knowledge and sometimes against their will. They've been interned in segregated care homes. They've been murdered - either directly killed because they have LD or allowed to die by doctors refusing to provide medical care or placing DNR notices without the patient's (or th…

Good. Let us have genocide, then, for people with learning disabilities, starting with you.

This is not an isolated incident - A large portion of the population legitimately believes that allowing people with learning disabilities to live and breed will lead to negative outcomes for all involved, including the disabled.

I do not want to kill, or even order mistreatment. I want everyone, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, to live long, healthy, productive and fulfilling lives. I'm not going to pretend that we're anywhere near that point, nor that I think we can achieve that if we declare ourselves there too soon. We need to, as a society, be working towards accomplishment and achievement, and there are classes of people who are a net drain. We are human, and we can do our best to make life comfortable for them, and to attempt to reduce that drain, but we cannot allow such time and money sinks to grow unbounded.

And yes, part of that is flat our eugenics - Making certain that Downs Syndrome and other serious developmental disabilities are caught in the womb and aborted early. The pain of an early abortion and the possibility of everything working out alright (as it has for a small percentage of persons with downs syndrome) are not, on balance, worse than seeing my cousin figure out that she will never learn how to drive, that she'll never have a job, and of her mother, who is afraid she will die before her daughter and leave her to a world that cannot care for her (and already doesn't, and never will).

Call me hitler, but I'd rather put down a wounded animal than watch it suffer in pain that it will never escape - and while the calculus is different, humans are animals, too.

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

#697

Post by zurn »

pkinsky wrote: post #597
zurn wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, government censorship is qualitatively different. It is specially regulated for good reason. The term isn't even usually applied in contexts like this one. This here is usually called moderation or content policy or editorial standards etc. And most people don't consider it a bad thing. But certainly are arguments for largest market share holders to have some kind of neutrality standards, like implemented in comm…

>The term isn't even usually applied in contexts like this one. This here is usually called moderation or content policy or editorial standards etc. And most people don't consider it a bad thing. This is false. Facebook's ban on photos showing female nipples is constantly referred to as censorship. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lina-esco/facebook-war-on-nipp...

I definitely agree there is such a thing as censorship by non-government actors, but Facebook plays a very different role from Github. There's also a lot of uproar about Facebook and Twitter doing too little to weed out objectionable things.

But it's still qualitatively different from government censorship, which is imposed on third party media.

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

#698

Post by nols »

kenrikm wrote: post #690
nols wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same thing though. Calling someone a git is just calling them stupid, calling someone a retard is saying they're so stupid they're mentally disabled and they should feel ashamed for it. It's pretty insulting towards people with mental disabilities. Even Linus has said he named git after himself because he's so egotistical.

Stupid, Git, Retard, Idiot, Dimwit etc.. In the context they are used all have very similar intentions to put someone down for not being smart. There is one really important point to keep in mind, when someone is offended about something someone else says or writes that is their decision and it is their problem not the one who did the offending. I personally don't generally use the term "retard" I also don't generall…

No, they really don't. Retard has historically been used to classify the mentally disabled, it literally was a definition. Using it to call someone mentally disabled as an insult is more offensive to the mentally disabled than calling someone stupid. That's the issue.

You're free to use retard in your code as much as you want, apparently not on Github though. They, as a private company, are allowed to pick and choose what they want on their site.

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

#699

Post by michaelbuddy »

This kind of thinking will retard the development of web communities.

Did that sentence above offend anyone because it contained the word retard? certainly the appearance of a word could offend someone. So what. doesn't mean the word doesn't work, doesn't mean the word was even directed at them, doesn't mean the word was used with the same vibrancy or harshness as another time in their past that same word was used by someone else in some other context.

Frankly with words and being human you have to just deal with them. You have to develop muscles, use some fresh mental gymnastics to get on with your life. If this personal ritual of being offended is hurting you, look at where that comes from internally the core mechanism. Get some counseling, don't force thousands of other people to try to relate or modify just because of your narrow experience.

People who get offended need to grow up and engage with a society with a personal strength. Focusing on real problems not imaginary ones helps a lot. Lately you see more coddling over supposed hurtful words than any victim of a real aggression gets from the public. "Oh a word hurt you?" let's put it on national TV. "Oh you were assaulted and blugeoned and put in the hospital?" well sorry we can't fit you in on the local news unless there's a real story here.

don't let society continue to turn this direction. Solve real problems and ignore imaginary subjective ones.

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

#700

Post by smrtinsert »

kefka wrote: post #610
cmiles74 wrote: post #551

I don't understand how censoring something because "it's offensive to someone" came to be acceptable in the first place. Nearly everything is offensive to someone, it's simply too low a bar. I'm certainly not campaigning for more use of the terms "retard" and "retarded". On the other hand, I've experienced first hand the very common, reflexive and thoughtless use of these words. Whenever it's used in my presence I ma…

What's going on at Github is rather perverse. And it happens to be around the word "Meritocracy". Because of the "feels", the word meritocracy is a 'disempowering word'. It makes people with less skill feel 'less valuable'. So the impetus is to raise your skill? No. It's to devalue others who call you on it, or disregard your uninformed opinion. What this accumulates to is the Github rug in the headquarters. "The Uni…

So when you have a request to the remove the word "retard" from a repo, and that request is complied with, feminism is to blame.

Got it!

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