Ben Noordhuis's Departure • Hacker News Board

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#201

Post by malandrew » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:01 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #174

malandrew wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community, because I do not think the view you and others nerd-raging here is aligned with reality. Ben was forcing the view that the commit policy had not been followed, which is a view that the rest of the community agrees with . This all got blown out of control when someone misinterpreted Ben's actions and started a bikeshedding tempest in a teacup…

The view forced was that the change was trivial. That's the same view you're trying to force here. But at least Noordhuis has the virtue of possibly believing that. You clearly don't; you've got 9 dismissive, rage-y comments on this article. That's not how people react to trivia, which you were helpful enough to define as of little importance. I think you correctly recognize the topic, which is the politics of gender…

I agree gender issues are important. Pull requests are the wrong place to begin that debate. NodeJS was not started as a asynchronous framework for server side javascript with gender inclusive comments.

The project was never gender exclusive. The comments could have easily used the pronouns she instead of he. Whoever wrote the comment chose he for whatever reason. Had someone else who has a different gender pronoun preference written the code being commented on, then it would have been different. It doesn't really matter because it's irrelevant to the purpose of the project.

Yes, I disagree with people wasting the committer's time with something that simply does not matter. Pronouns don't matter. He, she, it, user, dog, cat, lamp. If it's not code or comments that further clarify the code in question who cares because it simply does not matter. Knowing or not knowing the gender of the example user in the comment doesn't change anything about the code. Were we really supposed to believe that it was only going to send the nsent flag is the user is male and that we are not sending the flag if the user is female.

People should either code or not code, but they should not pretend to contribute with trivial pull requests that have been one huge net negative addition to the project due to the shitstorm kicked up. That's all the original pull request has accomplished ... one big massive net negative addition to the community. What an excellent way to make your point and endear people with your cause. I hope they are happy with the turd they left in the pool.

You know what statistic I would love to see. Lines of code contributed by those who think the change is trivial versus those that think it is not trivial. That's the only worthwhile objective measure of "important" that really matters. I bet you that the conversation on that PR is actually really really short once you eliminate everyone who has never contributed a pull request.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#202

Post by malandrew » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:09 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #193

millstone wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change was not "let's make libuv comments gender neutral," but "here's this one thing I noticed in this one place." A one-off change like that has a trivial impact on the overall gender-inclusiveness of the project, and that's the case no matter what importance you attach to it. If gender-inclusive language in comments is deemed important, then it ought to be treated as important from the contributor side. For ex…

Well, technically, it was two places. Your theory about Noordhuis is interesting, but there's no evidence for it, and some against. If he had thought it was a good change that just needed more in that direction, he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment. I think that's true for any change, really. If somebody had fixed a spelling mistake, would any reasonable proj…

    "he could have easily said that rather than closing the 
    pull request with a discouraging comment"

There are 129 open issues[0] and 25 open pull requests[1] for libuv right now on Github. That one didn't deserve his extremely valuable time that is better spent on considering contributions that matter, like the the 25 open pull requests.

You don't have a right to Ben's time and attention. He gives to the project out of his own volition out of a sense of duty to the community. The community here are people who have help build node.js and libuv to what it is today. Someone showing up in Nov/Dec 2013 issuing their first pull request and making it a trivial one isn't deserving of Ben's time. Ben doesn't owe anyone an explanation here. Had the PR request submitter made several prior code commits that had been accepted, maybe it would be fair to expect an explanation, but not for a trivial first PR.

[0] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/issues [1] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pulls

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#203

Post by malandrew » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:21 AM UTC

sampo wrote: post #154

malandrew wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community, because I do not think the view you and others nerd-raging here is aligned with reality. Ben was forcing the view that the commit policy had not been followed, which is a view that the rest of the community agrees with . This all got blown out of control when someone misinterpreted Ben's actions and started a bikeshedding tempest in a teacup…

> "Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community The view that the improvement to the documentation text was trivial.

Nope. At best that's a partial explanation of the view.

In Ben's own words:

    "... Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes 
    because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You 
    have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less 
    effective, etc."

Put yourself in Ben's shoes. You come across a commit that clearly doesn't fix a bug, add a feature or clarify some confusing comments (it's may not have been PC, but it certainly wasn't confusing). Next you check who is submitting the PR. It's from some user you don't recognize because they've never submitted a pull request before. Well before you can accept the commit, you need to check if they have signed a CLA. Well that's a pain in the ass to do. So you ask yourself, "Is it really worth my time to go look all this stuff up or should I just close it and move on to a pull request that actually contributes something valuable to the project?".

I would expect the overwhelming majority of people who have been committers of a large active open-source project to have done what Ben did. It's called triaging and it is in the overall best interest of the community.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#204

Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #201

wpietri wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The view forced was that the change was trivial. That's the same view you're trying to force here. But at least Noordhuis has the virtue of possibly believing that. You clearly don't; you've got 9 dismissive, rage-y comments on this article. That's not how people react to trivia, which you were helpful enough to define as of little importance. I think you correctly recognize the topic, which is the politics of gender…

I agree gender issues are important. Pull requests are the wrong place to begin that debate. NodeJS was not started as a asynchronous framework for server side javascript with gender inclusive comments. The project was never gender exclusive. The comments could have easily used the pronouns she instead of he. Whoever wrote the comment chose he for whatever reason. Had someone else who has a different gender pronoun p…

> Pronouns don't matter.

You keep turning your opinions into supposed statements of fact. Given how little you know about this topic, you're just embarrassing yourself.

Pronouns matter. The politics of it may not matter to you, but they matter to a lot of other people. They also matter in terms of reader perception. E.g.: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=3739560&u...

We are coming out of centuries of systemic gender discrimination. The tech industry still has substantial problems in this regard, and is under intense scrutiny, internal and external. Arguing to ignore improvements in favor of the status quo is arguing to support gender discrimination. Arguments like that are especially suspicious from somebody on the good side of gender privilege. Especially double-talk arguments about how vitally important it is to resist this one specific trivial patch.

Also, you can't blame the shitstorm on the person submitting the pull request. After all, you keep asserting that it's trivial, the very smallest of things. The shitstorm started with the rude, dismissive rejection of the pull request. If you'd like to blame something, blame that.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#205

Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:34 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #202

wpietri wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, technically, it was two places. Your theory about Noordhuis is interesting, but there's no evidence for it, and some against. If he had thought it was a good change that just needed more in that direction, he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment. I think that's true for any change, really. If somebody had fixed a spelling mistake, would any reasonable proj…

"he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment" There are 129 open issues[0] and 25 open pull requests[1] for libuv right now on Github. That one didn't deserve his extremely valuable time that is better spent on considering contributions that matter, like the the 25 open pull requests. You don't have a right to Ben's time and attention. He gives to the project out of…

That I don't have a right to Ben's time and attention is true, but irrelevant. I'm not demanding anything of him.

I do have the right to criticize him for his public actions, which is what I'm doing. I think he behaved poorly in relation to two topics I care about: leading open source projects, and ending sexism. He doesn't owe me an explanation, but I would read it with interest.

I also think people on the project have a right to criticize him. They have. He does owe them an explanation; any action taken in the project's name is subject to review by the project community.

I think the rest of your argument is more smokescreen for your true agenda, which is tiresome. I'm glad to discuss the actual issue, but I'm not interested in knocking down straw men until you get tired of making them. It seems like you've run out of new things to say, and I don't think either of us is learning anything here. If you want to discuss this further, feel free to email me.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#206

Post by sampo » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:39 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #203

sampo wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community The view that the improvement to the documentation text was trivial.

Nope. At best that's a partial explanation of the view. In Ben's own words: "... Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc." Put yourself in Ben's shoes. You come across a commit that clearly doesn't fix a bug, add a feature or clarify some confusing comments (it's may not have bee…

"Tiny changes" are his words. It was tiny in the amount of characters, but apparently some people consider it not so tiny in meaning, otherwise this whole storm would not have ensued.

Some people consider it tiny, other don't. There is no consensus.

Also, I don't think anyone can claim copyright over the change of 2 words (so in the intellectual property sense it was tiny), so if there was CLA- and other process-related complications, he could have done the same edits himself. Takes one minute, problem solved, shitstorm avoided. Would also have saved a lot of his and everyone's time.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#207

Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 1:44 AM UTC

millstone wrote: post #197

wpietri wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, technically, it was two places. Your theory about Noordhuis is interesting, but there's no evidence for it, and some against. If he had thought it was a good change that just needed more in that direction, he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment. I think that's true for any change, really. If somebody had fixed a spelling mistake, would any reasonable proj…

I guess I'm extrapolating from my own experiences. I review and merge pull requests on a semi-notable project, and I am often tasked with evaluating changes in unfamiliar areas, which means I am liable to misunderstand the significance of a change (as Noordhuis acknowledged he did, not being a native speaker). I appreciate PRs that clearly explain the issues and lay out their case, and I defer many one-offs that I de…

Wow, great example. That's exactly what I wish had happened here.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#208

Post by GalacticDomin8r » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 2:07 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

selmnoo wrote: post #7

For those who don't know what's going on: Joyent made a blogpost calling Ben, (one of _THE_ most prolific contributors to nodjs), an asshole ( http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun ) and said they'd fire him if he'd been working for them, because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral. Here's Ben's last response to the whole ordeal: https://github.com/joyent/li…

> I don't know how much truth there is to that, but as a general spectator I feel like wanting to remark that Bryan Cantrill only fanned the fire here in all of this. Pretty much every participating party in this whole thing came out looking like a loser, Joycent, Strongloop, the whole nodejs scene. Here's hoping Ben now finds a workplace that appreciates him for his talents and respects him as a person. If he's butt…

> I feel like wanting to remark that Bryan Cantrill only fanned the fire here in all of this.

You've expressed a thought, not an emotion. Please use "think" instead of "feel".

http://www.wildmind.org/applied/depression/distinguishing-th...

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#209

Post by malandrew » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 2:12 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #204

malandrew wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree gender issues are important. Pull requests are the wrong place to begin that debate. NodeJS was not started as a asynchronous framework for server side javascript with gender inclusive comments. The project was never gender exclusive. The comments could have easily used the pronouns she instead of he. Whoever wrote the comment chose he for whatever reason. Had someone else who has a different gender pronoun p…

> Pronouns don't matter. You keep turning your opinions into supposed statements of fact. Given how little you know about this topic, you're just embarrassing yourself. Pronouns matter. The politics of it may not matter to you, but they matter to a lot of other people. They also matter in terms of reader perception. E.g.: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=3739560&u... We are coming out of centuries o…

    "Also, you can't blame the shitstorm on the person 
    submitting the pull request."

Why not? You can't unilaterally decide that that person cannot be to blame here.

They could have made a contribution of utility (bugfix or feature for example) and included that minor comment change within that pull request, instead of using a pull request as their own personal soapbox. Github issues and pull requests are not forums for debating the politics of gender issues. As someone who had never once submitted a prior pull request with utility to libuv, Alex Gaynor should have made his change silently as part of a bugfix or feature and moved along. His behavior was antisocial.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#210

Post by Lazare » Thu, Dec 05, 2013, 2:14 AM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #209

wpietri wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pronouns don't matter. You keep turning your opinions into supposed statements of fact. Given how little you know about this topic, you're just embarrassing yourself. Pronouns matter. The politics of it may not matter to you, but they matter to a lot of other people. They also matter in terms of reader perception. E.g.: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27784423?uid=3739560&u... We are coming out of centuries o…

"Also, you can't blame the shitstorm on the person submitting the pull request." Why not? You can't unilaterally decide that that person cannot be to blame here. They could have made a contribution of utility (bugfix or feature for example) and included that minor comment change within that pull request, instead of using a pull request as their own personal soapbox. Github issues and pull requests are not forums for…

Or as an alternative, he could have privately emailed an existing contributor, discussed the change, and got support. If it had come from Isaac or Bert to start with, it would have sailed through without objection.

I really feel like a pull request was the wrong vehicle for what the original submitter was trying to accomplish.