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Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
51–60 of 152 posts
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#52Can 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…
I think the concept is "a purely-meritocratic system cannot be achieved without equal opportunity". This is because one's contribution to governance is proportional to their merit and to their opportunity to express this merit. For a concrete example, a programmer in Seattle has much higher opportunities than the same programmer in rural Burundi, so he can put the same effort into much more work, and ultimately be mu…
Note that the cited study actually shows PR from women are approved more often than average. Study authors themselves state this.
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#53I 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…
The governance documents of a open source software project are not being used to shut down debates about sexism and racism.
The Mozilla and Rust communities are by far the most inclusive communities on the web and more inclusive all the time.
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#54As someone who comes from a minority group, I absolutely want to be judged on the technical merit of my contributions and not my skin color, gender or genetic background. Implying that people who aren't white males can't succeed in a meritocratic environment is racist and condescending. I don't see how this helps diversity one bit.
I have thought about this and I too find it patronising and racist indeed. I don't care about your race, I only care if you are the best.
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#55Meritocracy, 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…
> "good thing" words to describe values are kind of bad.
This makes no sense to me. Values are principles or standards of behavior. If I try to keep good values, this makes me evil somehow? Why would common standards of behavior for a group with a common goal be bad? Wouldn't it help the group continue in the same direction?
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#56Earlier 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…
What control do you feel these figures will gain by removing the word meritocracy, specifically?
They are already attempting to control use of language and the foundational view of how open source works, based on their world view that equality is an illusion and only through use of selective discrimination against unpopular groups, as dictated by them, can equality be achieved.
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#57Meritocracy, 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…
Well meritocracy means we will try to select and give influence/recognition based on merit. When someone tries to push an idea like "let's have more Asians" or "let's have more men" in the project we can direct them to the very first statement where they see we do selection based on merit and not skin color, gender or sexual orientation. Any attempt to introduce gender/race/sexual orientation quotas will promptly be rejected on those basis. There is value in wording it like this beyond "let's do good".
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#58Can 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…
In a true meritocracy, all candidates are judged on equal footing so P(x|a) isn't compared to P(y|b). In practice this is very possible (albeit expensive) to achieve, given a set pool of candidates. Although judging based on past achievement has the problem you describe, it can be used in place of a fair test (eg, judging candidates based on resumes instead of technical interviews) since high past achievement is strongly (but not perfectly) associated with high skill.
Mozilla doesn't appear to be addressing your version of meritocracy, but the actual definition of meritocracy, which still gives those who had the opportunity to build skill an advantage.
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#59Why 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.
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?
Re: Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic”
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is a really weird critique of the idea that people with fewer opportunities should be given a few more chances to show their skills. It's directly increasing the metric you're interested in, but you're still against it for... reasons?