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Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

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Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#21

Post by DanBC »

thrway1e34 wrote: post #11

can someone explain this in plain English? I read the tweets but I don't get it. Thanks.

It's pretty hard to explain.

Some meet-ups and projects had a problem with people being fucking arseholes. They developed "codes of conduct" to help them deal with those harassing abusive people.

This woman gave a talk to this meeting. She described her experience of working in open source. She was careful to say it worked for her but might not for other people; she was careful to say that it was anecdotal.

Someone at this meeting thought that she should have given stronger warnings about open source. That person is saying that by not giving the bigger warning the speaker was performing a micro-aggression against all the other people who've had poor experiences in open source because she was supposedly erasing their experience.

They're saying the speaker violated the code of conduct.

When the speaker asked for clarification the meeting organisers didn't apologise for making a mistake; they persisted in their description of the speaker as someone who violated the CoC.

So, that's roughly what the meeting organisers think. Clearly, they're wrong. Micro-aggressions are a thing and they're something we should be mindful[1] of, but this isn't an example of a micro-aggression. And there's a difference between a woman saying "I had a good experience in open source, but other people might not" and for example a man saying "there are no problems in open source development you just need to toughen up".

[1] Mostly because people who are oblivious to micro-aggressions tend to be taking discriminatory actions that potentially leave their companies open to lawsuits.

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#22

Post by 0815test »

binarymax wrote: post #8
criddell wrote: post #6

I don't understand what the problem was with her advice. Was it because she didn't start with "in my opinion" or some other qualifier?

There isn't any problem with her advice. There is a problem with the hosts. The suggestion that encouraging contributions to OSS might expose someone to being harmed in some way is absurd. You may as well say nobody should go to the grocery store - there might be a racist hiding in the frozen food section!

> The suggestion that encouraging contributions to OSS might expose someone to being harmed in some way is absurd.

Ironically enough, given the way this woman has been treated, and with CoC's that are explicitly open to being aggressively abused against "undesirables" of all sorts being increasingly ubiquitous in the OSS community, this suggestion is becoming less and less absurd by the day!

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#23

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

This is non-news. Someone who shouldn't be in charge of enforcing CoC comes into contact with someone who has the good fortune of possessing common sense.

Its important to try to be as inclusive is possible - the community engagement person is wrong, but ultimately with their heart in the right place.

Its also important to use your brain, read the room, and if something makes someone uncomfortable, let their voice be heard.

Next.

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#24

Post by icebraining »

wildmindwriting wrote: post #9

I believe in being careful with words, for sure, but having to modify and monitor every piece of publicly accessible content because it may be triggering or aggressive is just too much. I feel like I must mention that I am a left-wing, very liberal woman but I disagree with the culture we seem to have created where we must talk softly around the issues for fear of offending someone. We, as a people, must be able to a…

The argument is not that the advice is aggressive in itself, but that it should have been accompanied by a warning about the potential bad experiences in contributing to OSS, much like one might warn that a beach we're recommending can have particularly strong currents.

EDIT: actually I'm wrong; the argument is both that it should have been accompanied by a warning, and that not doing so (and stating it in a generalized way) ignores the experience of people who already had a bad experience contributing to OSS.

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#25

Post by ridaj »

LaGrange wrote: post #14
asveikau wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think microaggressions are definitely a thing, but the term is being misused here.

I'll go further: it's very common for abusive people to intentionally misappropriate the vocabulary of people they abuse. This ranges from "telling me to clean up after myself is a microagression" to "we're going to name our fascist party socialist LOL." Someone's waving their power around, plain and simple. EDIT: also, this thread is going to be baaaaaad.

[flagged]

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#26

Post by sjcoles »

DanBC wrote: post #21
thrway1e34 wrote: post #11

can someone explain this in plain English? I read the tweets but I don't get it. Thanks.

It's pretty hard to explain. Some meet-ups and projects had a problem with people being fucking arseholes. They developed "codes of conduct" to help them deal with those harassing abusive people. This woman gave a talk to this meeting. She described her experience of working in open source. She was careful to say it worked for her but might not for other people; she was careful to say that it was anecdotal. Someone a…

So we're supposed to simply know what other people's past, present, and future experiences may or will be?

Wouldn't using indicators like class, race, and gender to make these assumptions be a micro-aggression in and of itself?

E: To be clear I am honestly curious. This whole argument gets into a circular reasoning of "oh you should just know you silly cis het male, if I have to tell you it won't make a difference/defeat the purpose."

Re: Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

#27

Post by pbhjpbhj »

icebraining wrote: post #24
wildmindwriting wrote: post #9

I believe in being careful with words, for sure, but having to modify and monitor every piece of publicly accessible content because it may be triggering or aggressive is just too much. I feel like I must mention that I am a left-wing, very liberal woman but I disagree with the culture we seem to have created where we must talk softly around the issues for fear of offending someone. We, as a people, must be able to a…

The argument is not that the advice is aggressive in itself, but that it should have been accompanied by a warning about the potential bad experiences in contributing to OSS, much like one might warn that a beach we're recommending can have particularly strong currents. EDIT: actually I'm wrong; the argument is both that it should have been accompanied by a warning, and that not doing so (and stating it in a generali…

It's not like the beach analogy unless you think bad experiences are somehow intrinsic to OSS.

It seems more like "$beach is a lovely clean beach" and someone gets upset because they went there and someone had dropped a piece of litter.

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