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Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

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Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#131

Post by jakelazaroff »

cucumberferity wrote: post #118
ssivark wrote: post #22

This is the suggested modification: "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both volunteer and employed community members as they show their ability through contributions to the project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority through active interventions that engage and encourage participation from…

It also adds language about debias. So it doesn't simply remove meritocracy to appease the far-left activists. It specifically inserts language to appear them, reaffirm their world view. Is it really necessary to create a safe space for fringe political activists to create substantive diversity? No. It's also promoted by high-level Mozilla employees in response to a recent anti-meritocracy movement. After what happen…

> It also adds language about debias.

I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of authority does have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the project", why wouldn't they want to fix that?

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#132

Post by jakelazaroff »

cucumberferity wrote: post #95
tjpnz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what might preclude someone who happens to be of a different race or gender from also being the most competent person for the job?

The people pushing this radical view on diversity and equality tend to paint all people they see as marginalized as unable to compete on a level playing field.

This is bad faith interpretation. The prevailing viewpoint is that the playing field is not, in fact, level.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#133

Post by xg15 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #33
autarch wrote: post #12

I think this bit from the email is the most important: > To sum up: > -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge evident bias in representation in the project. > -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is unhelpful to us. > -Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit. > -We should also acknowledge the importance of measures we take…

> The real issue here is that some people get really upset by the word "meritocracy". Clearly you have never dealt with a white man who is better off than certain women, or people from ethnic minorities, and thinks it's because his being white/male makes him inherently better and invokes "meritocracy" all the freaking time. I have. And I'm a half-Asian male - I can't imagine what it's like to deal with that jerk if I…

But the problem in this example would be that this man is using a warped, deeply racist definition of "merit". I don't see how that would invalidate the concept of meritocracy itself.

> When the word "meritocracy" is used to structurally shut down debates of sexism and racism, it is no longer about meritocracy.

There seems to be a strange logical fallacy where "Our group aspires to be X" morphs into "Our group is X" - and then, the "conclusion" is drawn, that "evidence Y that were not X must be wrong, since after all, we are X".

From what I've seen, I'd apply the same thing to the concept of "color-blindness". As a society you can aspire to be "color-blind" all you want - if you still have cop violence against PoCs and "random searches" where the randomness is conditioned on skin color, you obviously aren't color-blind.

So this logical fallacy seems to exist and be widespread. However, I don't see how it would invalidate the concepts themselves.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#134

Post by danharaj »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #105
danharaj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to separate the word from the underlying concept(s). They're not the same thing. If they were the same thing, I could conjure of invisible pink unicorns with an utterance and make all the world utopia by having everyone recite "I am a good person and I won't do anything bad". Words can fail and everyone acknowledges that at least tacitly. Hypocrisy is the purest form of words failing. Let's put it that way:…

If your argument against the use of "meritocracy" is true, it would apply just as much to "diversity" or "equality", meaning that you are arguing those generically good words should not be used as well. Am I missing something?

Those words are also empty if they are not provided along with a rubric of what they mean. Equality is perhaps more troublesome than meritocracy while diversity is somewhat better.

It is not obvious that diversity is a good thing, so it has more bits of information if you make it a value. Not much, though, if you do it like most corporations in a shallow and vague way.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#135

Post by syshum »

21 wrote: post #80
nostalgeek wrote: post #36

Interesting, just when the "post-meritocracy" manifesto was published, Mozilla changes sides on meritocracy : https://postmeritocracy.org/ authored by Coraline Ada Ehmke who is already well known for their activism in IT and open source with the contributor convenant https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ . Coincidence? or consequence?

Quote from the covenant link: > People with “merit” are often excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Watch out, they are coming for Linus :)

I dont fear for Linus, I fear for linux the project once Linus Retires....

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#136

Post by pseudalopex »

trgv wrote: post #85

It seems that some people view the term "meritocracy" negatively because they believe it implies that everyone has the same opportunities. I don't see that implication, but if enough other people do, maybe it's worth re-wording their governance docs. At the same time, the proposed replacement seems off the target: > "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual organization. Authority i…

I think their proposed language could use some work, but a key difference from yours is the commitment to "active interventions". It's easy for an organization to pay lip service to something in a mission statement and go on to neglect or unintentionally discourage it.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#137

Post by orbitur »

bluecalm wrote: post #10

Can someone explain how striving for meritocracy stems from assumption of equal opportunity? I want projects I am part of or benefit from to be guided by meritocracy. It means some people have better chances to contribute or gain influence there than others. Those are more competent people who often got better opportunities through life. I want that because I care about those projects. I don't see how chances not bei…

Why is there an assumption that competence is lost by allowing for equal opportunity?

We can prioritize equal opportunity and then meritocracy within that. There's no need for all this handwringing about loss of quality, when there's been no demonstrable evidence of that.

Things get better for a subset of educated people, and nothing gets worse for anyone, but we still get 1000s of comments like the one above.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#138

Post by tomp »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #131
cucumberferity wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also adds language about debias. So it doesn't simply remove meritocracy to appease the far-left activists. It specifically inserts language to appear them, reaffirm their world view. Is it really necessary to create a safe space for fringe political activists to create substantive diversity? No. It's also promoted by high-level Mozilla employees in response to a recent anti-meritocracy movement. After what happen…

> It also adds language about debias. I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of authority does have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the project", why wouldn't they want to fix that?

Exactly, it’s equivalent to saying “meritocracy”, except that it uses words approved by the far-left in place of a word disapproved by them.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#139

Post by tomp »

djajshgsjja wrote: post #74
tjpnz wrote: post #24

Why exactly do people contend that meritocracy somehow clashes with diversity? The implications being made by suggesting the two be mutually exclusive are frightening.

Suppose: 1. There exist some quality “merit” with a random uniform distribution across the population. 2. Some systems used to measure merit are biased for and against different subgroups of the population. 3. People obtain power and wealth based these biased measurements. 4. Subgroups with more power and wealth expend resources optimizing their performance on the tests, further biasing the results. 5. The winners in…

So what you’re basically saying is, meritocracy is awesome, we just need to measure “merit” better.

Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”

#140

Post by jakelazaroff »

tomp wrote: post #138
jakelazaroff wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also adds language about debias. I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of authority does have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the project", why wouldn't they want to fix that?

Exactly, it’s equivalent to saying “meritocracy”, except that it uses words approved by the far-left in place of a word disapproved by them.

Insofar as many people's definition of meritocracy seems to preclude any consideration of someone's race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc, they're not equivalent.

Bias can't be addressed by ignoring attributes you suspect to be affected by it. In the new wording Mozilla explicitly commits to address bias, which is important.

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