Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic” • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by vanderZwan » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #30

Meritocracy, like all words that reduce to "good thing", are always troublesome. No one ever claims to be a "bad thing"ocracy. The issue is the opacity of the concept of merit. How do you distinguish being a meritocracy in some good sense from insisting you are a meritocracy and thus poisoning any discussion that you are not one? Using words to maintain a culture has a sort of Newton's third law. It might push you to…

Very nice way to put it.

What do you think of Google's "don't be evil" clause and that it was recently removed? Same thing, or subtly different? Not trying to be inflammatory, I don't know what to think myself: rationally I think it should feel the same, yet somehow it feels different.

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

#42

Post by sanxiyn » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #23

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…

Let's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a). But what if y only had "b" tries, where b And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates, just because "x" candidates ha…

This assumes meritocracy we want is based on skills. I think "working as intended" is actually based on "shown skills", not "skills"; people with mad skills which didn't show it in the project don't have merit. I've seen "do-ocracy" used instead for this reason.

Do-ocracy does not assume equal opportunity.

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

#43

Post by connorelsea » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #35

connorelsea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you sound like a conspiracy theorist. it is changing an inappropriate word, not shifting control over the entire company Mozilla. i doubt you care about diversity or improving the quality of the open source project

Really? People who interpret 'meritocracy' in a narrow, little known historical context, as being a conspiracy against miniorities, rather than it's currently accepted form, sound like conspiracy theorists.

that is quite the stretch. thinking a word should be updated or clarified does not make me a "conspiracy theorist". What am I conspiring against? people fighting so hard against a simple change to make the sentence more inclusive are just fighting to keep their antiquated system of bias in place

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

#44

Post by cucumberferity » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

davidgerard wrote: post #28

fake editorialised title, please change to original

What about it is fake? A senior-level employee and strategist for Mozilla made this proposal to the governance listserv. It's up for serious discussion.

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

#45

Post by danharaj » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

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.

It is easier to see the issue when thinking what "meritocracy" means as a process as opposed to a state of being. The word "meritocracy" has no procedurality to it, it solely signals values without providing an effective method of achieving it. Signalling values can in fact hurt achieving those values by poisoning discussions about them. Everyone has their own idea of what "meritocracy" means, so it allows people to pretend that they're all on the same page even if they're not. It also invites people to presume that the organization is already a meritocracy and be less self-critical about maintaining that state.

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

#46

Post by guitarbill » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

connorelsea wrote: post #14

cucumberferity wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words are important. Diversity is important. Changing words like "meritocracy" does not improve diversity. It is the illusion of diversity, a feel-good opportunity for well-intentioned bystanders. The true intent is for a small group of highly politically motivated people to gain more control. The governance documents are about control and changing those documents means a shift in control. The movement we are seeing…

you sound like a conspiracy theorist. it is changing an inappropriate word, not shifting control over the entire company Mozilla. i doubt you care about diversity or improving the quality of the open source project

and yet Mozilla put out a proposal to discuss this, not something people just do for trivial matters. so they clearly feel strongly about it, but this dude can't?

also, there's no need for the ad hominem attack. if he is a conspiracist, it should be easy to point out a more simple explanation.

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

#47

Post by sanxiyn » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #30

Meritocracy, like all words that reduce to "good thing", are always troublesome. No one ever claims to be a "bad thing"ocracy. The issue is the opacity of the concept of merit. How do you distinguish being a meritocracy in some good sense from insisting you are a meritocracy and thus poisoning any discussion that you are not one? Using words to maintain a culture has a sort of Newton's third law. It might push you to…

This is why I support measured merit instead of merit. If you have merit but didn't show it, it doesn't matter.

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

#48

Post by connorelsea » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

bnav6 wrote: post #38

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.

They clash. You either have a meritocracy or diversity quotas; you either choose people because they’re competent or because they are of a certain sex/race.

this is an extreme oversimplification. those aren't mutually exclusive and diversity isn't just "quotas". read a book

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

#49

Post by hrktb » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

CapacitorSet wrote: post #18

>The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open source project governed as a meritocracy.” >The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer from a lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as problematic: it proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity. Is there evidence that the assumption of equal opportunities does not hold for Mozilla? It seems to m…

I don’t usually follow Mozilla, what efforts do they make that for instance effectively offsets issues of access to education or social discrimination outside of just Mozilla ?

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

#50

Post by ddtaylor » Sat, May 26, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

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?

> But meritocracy has consistently shown itself to mainly benefit those with privilege, to the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology. The idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.”

That seems strange to me, because most projects are basically saying if you have no commits you're voice is essentially noise to them, which I agree with. If you want to join an FOSS project and a make a difference put your money where your mouth is - otherwise don't expect most people to listen. All the flowery words and PR likely won't change this reality, for good reason.