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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”

#91

Post by hrktb »

sanxiyn wrote: post #79
hrktb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

They don't; it's not their problem. I think addressing social discrimination is a great mission. But organization needs to focus, and can't address every great mission. Social discrimination is just not the focus of Mozilla's mission.

But I guess that’s the point in rewording the mission. The proposal is to align the mission statement with something closer to reality, and give more leaway to adapt.

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

#92

Post by cucumberferity »

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…

> The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority

Because this is not about the governance documents of an open source software project, it is about affirming the radical worldview of a small but loud fringe group in the name of diversity.

Except the only diversity is creates is diversity for people with the correct political opinions. It has nothing to do with the actual diversity that benefits an open source project.

It is time we stop listening to this fringe group about how to achieve diversity, they clearly only want power and control for themselves.

We should not let them bully pragmatic moderates who generally support diversity and inclusion into ceding them more authority and dictatorial control.

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

#93

Post by deltron3030 »

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…

>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?

Context. Is it helpful for x business goal?

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

#94

Post by cucumberferity »

ddtaylor wrote: post #50
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'…

> an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like me.”

Yeah, when evaluating PRs I rarely even look at the person making the contribution, I look at the code.

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

#95

Post by cucumberferity »

tjpnz wrote: post #59
bnav6 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#96

Post by quantummkv »

This frightening shift away from meritocracy sounds suspiciously like what happens in India. In India, everything from government jobs, admissions to colleges and universities, etc is based on this quota system based on caste, religion, and other subdivisions instead of meritocracy.

The intentions are undoubtedly good. But the actual results? Every government department is horrifically inefficient because a whole lot of people who do not know how to do work land up there due to these quota systems. In many cases, if you fit in a special category, you can basically fail in your university entrance examinations, even not attempt more than one question, get that question wrong, and still get admission.

People regularly riot, often violently, to pressurize the government into declaring their group as minorities so that they can specifically get these benefits.

ISRO and the Army are the only public institutions in India that operate on meritocracy. And they are pretty much the only public institutions held in any regard by the public.

This may have a feel good effect in the short period and some people may feel like they are somehow morally superior. But this will always lead to a whole lot of pain in the long term.

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

#97

Post by malwrar »

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…

Better words are the ones that aren't exclusively evaluated by humans. These are things on which people can agree there exists an impartial measure of the thing.

What do you propose we replace it with then? I happen to think that the word "merit" is apt to describe what any good software company is looking for in its employees. If an individual brings value to the company, they have merit and should be rewarded for it.

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?

How is this relevant? If someone is voicing dissent about a culture there's a million barriers they can hide behind instead of facing the allegations ("we're committed to working towards a more diverse and inclusive environment..."). Are we to cower away from any word that can be twisted to justify bad things as well as good things, for fear that people will abuse them?

The word "meritocracy" doesn't seem like a line of code specifying an objective action that is to be taken to solve a problem, it describes a vision of how someone would ideally like their company to operate. How about we just call out bad behavior when we see it and not let it pollute the vision? That's what needs to happen, or we'll be locked in this battle until one political group manages to suppress the others (that, by the way, seem to have the exact same endgoals they do).

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

#99

Post by ggggtez »

moduspol wrote: post #83
ggggtez wrote: post #23

Earlier 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…

I get the idea, but Mozilla is building things . If I want the best engineer to build my bridge , I don't want to give bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the en…

For someone who doesn't care about private parts, why are you the first person to bring it up? If you care about delivering success, you should take a moment and think hard about why you feel so strongly about the race/gender aspect, and are not thinking about the probability theory.

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

#100

Post by MaupitiBlue »

danharaj wrote: post #45
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…

"The word "meritocracy" has no procedurality to it, it solely signals values without providing an effective method of achieving it."

So? Nor do democracy, aristocracy or kakocracy. However they are all useful terms for expressing where the power lies. Hackers are happy to let anyone contribute to the solution, but "f--- your feelings, we've got a job to do here" applies too.

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