This is very weird because fundamentally it stems from a failure of the moderators. If someone makes a sexist joke you don't just let them because you're "assuming good intentions", that clause means that you tell them it's not appropriate here, and if they apologize you assume they are sincere, and if they don't you swiftly boot them. But there is no substitute for good moderation, shifting words around won't help much.
Aside: Open source discussion opening with "My rationale for these changes are documented on Twitter: [link]" also seems somewhat crazy. And I love Twitter, it just seems very odd to link to a thread of tweets instead of restating your case in the proper medium.
The very core of the problem is that impact of anything on human minds is, in fact, not objectively measurable. Even formalized attempts to do this - e.g. psychology - suffer from a major replication crisis.
In that scenario, the situation degenerates into "he said - she said". Traditional response was "in dubio pro reo" = "in doubt, let the accused go free".
But modern woke movements generally hollow out this principle and replace it by "believe the marginalized / weaker / oppressed side" and "be strict and hostile against the privileged side", as defined by the contemporary academic ladder of oppression.
This leads to a very paranoid society and I think it will take at most 10-20 years to reverse again, as bad cases start to heap. One of the universal qualities of humanity is that we can all be manipulative dicks, regardless of gender, color and creed, and once you shift the balance of power to the accuser, you will empower manipulative people across the board. And they are perfectly able to poison the common well for everyone.
Edit: 2 downvotes within 20 seconds and zero attempt at rebuttal.
Isn't protected class an american legal term? Seems weirdly ameri-centric for a document of this nature. Not to mention that gay people weren't even a protected class in the usa until last year afaik. Not exactly a very inclusive definition.
Not to mention the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class? I appreciate minorities get a lot of shit that others don't, but its not like bigioted assholes are the only people who harrass other people.
CoCs themselves, and the wider identity politics culture war, are also extremely Ameri-centric.
> the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class?
There is a subset (I like to think that they're the fringe, but have no numbers to back that up) of those who engage in identity politics who do believe that bigotry does not apply when the target is the dominant demographic.
You have what is unfortunately a common misunderstanding of the term protected class. Nobody is IN a protected class, because protected classes are not any particular group of people, like middle class or working class. In the civil rights act of 1964 protected classes are the classifications that the law refers to such as race, religion, etc. So it is illegal to discriminate against someone because of their religion, but it does not protect any religion over any other. For race, race itself is the protected class. So it is illegal to discriminate against anyone based on race, not just black people or Asians, for example.
> Not to mention the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class?
The GNOME CoC gleefully states they will ignore complaints of racism against whites and sexism against cis men because "we prioritize the safety of marginalized groups over the comfort of privileged groups".
Like it or not, the ameri-centric views spill around the world causing tensions and misunderstandings. In countries with practically no colored people and no history of slavery certain things seem a bit ridiculous if imposed on the whole community.
One of my many misgivings about CoCs is their over-reliance on the unenforcable.
This is an excellent example - because the original said exactly what needed to be said, but it wasn't being interpreted correctly. Instead of improving the wording, and saying something like "participants should always assume good intentions. However, intention does not make a person's actions immune from criticism, and while assuming good intentions we will kindly encourage each other toward a higher standard of behaviour." ... they instead have chosen to weaken the specificity and balance of the CoC.
Throughout the discussion, and on the twitter thread, the overriding message is: Triggering the hurt of a protected party is always punishable.
And it's a sad viewpoint, because it becomes not "Matz is nice and so we are nice", it becomes "We are nice to avoid the ire of a protected party"
> to weaken the specificity and balance of the CoC.
This is a feature, not a bug. When the rules are clear and specific, they can be enforced fairly. When they're vague and unclear, then the only consistent principle is that the people who "enforce" the "rules" can do whatever they want and you have no recourse or due process.
It has been brought into conformance with the standards of corporate HR departments, whose job it is to shield the company from discrimination lawsuits, not really to foster a kinder community.
If there are any CoCs left that do not adopt these standards, they will be brought into conformance soon. Corporate sponsorship depends on it, and open source is nothing without corporate sponsorship.
What is a higher standard of behavior exactly? More formal? More informal? What goal does it have? Fundamental Christians have a pretty high standard for behavior, I doubt this is the goal.
This is an undefined spiral to infinity mainly relying on de jure expectations.
Sexism - the believe that on sex is supreme to the other is already redefined to mean anything suggestive.
These updates have a very nebulous definition of harassment. According to the new CoC, almost anything can be considered harassment. As far as the "intent and impact" of the intentions, assuming that someone acts in bad faith is a good way to turn a misunderstanding into actual hatred. Such a result should be considered worse than having to deal with a few bad apples who try to take advantage.
They're meant to further empower accusers and reduce burden of proof and remove the need for critical thinking, empathy, and nuance. Accusations equal guilt.
In Australian law, and I'd imagine generally in many other countries, intent is a big part of judging a wrong. But of course, it's possible to cause harm without intending to, so there are other things to consider. Common phrases are 'reckless disregard', 'willfully ignorant', 'negligent' or sometimes 'lack of consideration' (which is different to intent).
Obviously it isn't a binary situation with either intent or impact being the sole arbiter - so the baseline used in almost all situations is the 'ordinary' or 'objective' standards. These can vary depending on the environment and context, and are simply defined because they are hard to define across all scenarios.
I guess I find it surprising that a code of conduct like this should sway between intent and impact in quite so binary a fashion -- human behaviour isn't software.
As well as being a bedrock principle of the law, it's also basic common sense. If I accidentally step on your toe, that's obviously different to me deliberately stamping on your toe in an intentional attempt to injure you. If you set out to deliberately injure your colleagues then this is OBVIOUSLY different from doing the same thing accidentally and should be treated differently - and anyone with a working brain can see this.
The idea that "intent doesn't matter" is preposterous. Accepting it as a premise leads to insane and preposterous conclusions that no-one believes. People who say that "intent doesn't matter" don't actually believe it.
It covers the case when someone makes an inappropriate joke then defends themselves saying it was just a joke.
The person being inappropriate will always hide behind their intent because they can only argue about their own role in the exchange (e.g. they can't argue that the target person/group isn't really hurt).
When a conversation is derailed away from the damage caused to the intent, the harasser wins. What are you going to do? Establishing a default assumption takes that away. Always have good defaults :)
"Protected class" means stuff like race, sex or veteran status. So if you harass a random conference-goer at a Ruby-focused event, that cannot be addressed under the CoC because you haven't evidenced harassment towards a protected class as a whole (e.g. all veterans)? How does that even make sense?
> “Protected class” means stuff like race, sex or veteran status.
“Protected class” is an (American) legal term, with situation-specific definitions. (It means different things in federal employment law, federal public accommodation law, federal fair housing law, and the various states employment, public accommodation, and fair housing laws of each of the States.)
It is entirely unclear what it means in the Ruby CoC, and the explanation in the discussion thread is literally “everyone knows what ‘protected class’ means” which is obviously entirely false. Its a term used by someone who has some overly precise, overly generalized idea of what it means, doesn’t realize that they are wrong, and thinks everyone agrees with them.
> @Try2Code A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition.
Side note: anyone follow what this means? “Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause.”?
Honest question - are young or old also a protected class? I disagree that CoC clauses should be based on protected classes only, because I think there are possible types of discrimination that should be addressed in CoC.
Interesting, that "Age (over 40)" are cited as "Protected class". So people over 40, which feel harassed by many of these "new rules" can actually do something about it?
Really developing backwards on all accounts. This is a purity spiral. If you allow it to infect your community, you can be sure it will at some point consist of toxic people that feel slighted on every opportunity they can get.
This is exactly why many people were not really open to COCs because this is an eternal battleground with creeping behavior expectations because of some unsolved personal problems.
So if a woman accused a while man of having “small hands” for having some opinion, that’s not sexual harassment because white men are not a protected class?
White men, identified by race and sex, are legally a protected class.
People with small hands are not, unless the smallness of their hands is considered a disability.
What is a protected class? I don't understand why harassment would be fine against some, but not others. That sound like the very thing that a CoC is meant to prevent.
Protected class if definition even exist can mean completely different things. Saying that US definition is the only one that matters is unwelcoming to people from other countries.
edit: non just unwelcoming, it can be considered discriminating
My thoughts follow yours entirely - the author is tweaked about the failure of the moderators and twitter is not a place for commentary on a pull request.
(There's a certain irony here to the author of the PR complaining about the difference between the intent and impact of a statement and then... completely missing the point of why their PR is meaningless).
> I don't know what specifically motivated this PR
It's mentioned in passing a couple of comments in. To highlight it (because it's easy to miss):
"I watched a group of people use these specific phrases to justify making sexist remarks over a communication channel that falls under these guidelines."
> Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
That's... interesting?
Some of the most vitriolic flamewars I've seen on the internet were between western straight white males. I don't see the point of special casing this clause.
Regarding the "good intentions" change, the explanation in the linked twitter thread makes sense to me: in some contexts, assuming good intentions is a way of excusing bad behavior.
It's hard to agree on the exact boundary between enabling a jerk and making an issue out of nothing. But the old "assume good intentions" policy does sound to me uncomfortably similar to "if you're offended it's your own fault". Which is generally how people treat victims of harassment in communities where that sort of harassment is tolerated.
That is misunderstanding of the principle. Of course you still need to use your head. For a community to be welcoming for people that aren't too extroverted, not fitting anyone on that mailing list really, your approach is very counter productive if you really want to empower voices that normally don't speak up.
It is also required for completely dry technical discussions. I am not sure I would want that in open source communities though, but that is certainly a preference.
I don't know. Assuming good intentions is an advice for you, so you don't get offended. And assuming good intentions doesn't justify the impact. Even if you assume good intentions of a driver, if he drove badly and did some damage he is still responsible for the damage. Assuming hus good intentions doesn't change anything. Skill, following the rules and effect are what matters when it comes to judging.
Next time you get in a car accident maybe the police should throw you in jail for wilful destruction of property. It doesn't matter if you did not intend to damage the other car since intentions don't matter. You did the crime you should do the time.
I wish we responded to situations more proportionally.
In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not.
Does it warrant responses like "Knock that bullshit off." or "you made an ass of yourself"... I don't know. Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation. Maybe even worse than the joke itself? I don't know.
Then, folks take the discussion to github and twitter (and, eventually reddit and hn). Presenting only their verdict: "A newer member made a sexist joke, and was called out on it as being inappropriate." No links to the joke. No evidence that the joke is sexist. This makes it so much easier to imagine something really bad. No, we just get a verdict and we should all rise up against this sexism (which absolutely is bad, of course). Let's get our pitchforks. This amplifies one side of the argument and shuts down any useful conversation. Worse, it's used to rush through a CoC change without allowing any thoughtful discussion.
Is this reaction proportional to the original joke? Is the reaction itself exemplar of how we would like to conduct ourselves?
> Does it warrant responses like "Knock that bullshit off." or "you made an ass of yourself"... I don't know. Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation. Maybe even worse than the joke itself? I don't know.
In my experience this kind of stuff is extremely counter-productive. It puts people in the defensive, and remember, you haven't actually said anything: you only gave them a (somewhat rudely phrased) command, which is just not helpful. If I object to some behaviour I typically contact them in private (not in public) whenever possible, and explain how a particular joke or comment made me feel. >95% of the time, you'll get an apology without drama and all is fine.
"Assume good faith" doesn't mean "anything goes" or "give people a free pass", but rather a recognition that most of the time, people really aren't such bad folk, even when they're behaving as less-than-perfect.
It all seems a bit much for a single new user making a joke phrased in such poor English it's barely comprehensible and the very short discussion that followed on that shrug. And there is no real mention that this is somehow indicative of a wider structural problem.
So in the name of being inclusive they're bullying someone who is not a native English speaker for not knowing the nuances of political correctness in a foreign culture? Cool cool.
It seems like there does need to be some sort of method for RESOLVING these situations.
I'd hate to make more of a process for parsing a one sentence joke but ... how else do you do it?
So you throw it to a committee who comes back with "We told the user their statement could be seen as sexist and not to make that joke anymore."
There you go. Done. Issue is no longer relevant, time to move on with life. If it comes up again with the same user, then you can worry about bigger things.
I'm sure there would be some bickering after that but at some point you can't have the argument going on forever on every rando social media site and ... version control site...
What you said is exactly right in a world of ephemeral speech, but difficult to employ in a world of permanent records. Anybody can simply link to the joke and stir outrage, over and over, out of the context of the larger learning process.
The Internet never forgets. It is genuinely unclear how to adapt pre-Internet norms. I would prefer presumption of innocence and of a learning process, that is summary dismissal of one-off out of context situations. But viral content (such a fitting expression!) begs to differ.
,if you look at the updated to the code of conduct it is clear what solution they are putting forward. the removed the sentence to honor the principle of charity(removed assume good intent), and gave permission to be public scolds ( added speak with good intent). it's a facisnating attribute of American politics that insist generally upbeat people become public scolds, as if them making a fuss is a convincing learning moment.
Even if its uncool, I agree that that response is uncalled for. I feel like the "dunking" style of social media activism has really become mainstream in wildly inappropriate situations.
You are asking all the right questions... And you will never get an acceptable answer beyond "Some times you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette."
Sadly, the CoC wars were lost several years ago. The victors had the simplest tactic: projection.
"We are just against all the bad things. We are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-prejudice. Why aren't you on our side?"
Well, I have two things to say. First, I eagerly await your omelette. Judging by how tolerant society has become, it should be any day! And second, why be against the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea? Democracy is in the name!
I don't think the CoC wars are lost, I'm hopefully we're on the cusp of the backlash.
The first project that succeeds with a CoC of "sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never harm you." is going to be a watershed moment that can recruit the growing population who are sick and tired of the leftist mob and their thought policing.
Over-sensitive, politically-correct people are going to end up in a hermetically sealed bubble of their own making, hooked up to virtual reality and drugs while the rest of us enjoy the real world. I have no problem with that. It's natural selection. Some people are too fragile. I'd rather let them lock themselves away in some virtual universe driving up virtual asset prices than have them in the real world drive up real world asset prices.
I can't believe that so many people are so suggestible. Part of me feels like they can't be serious; they're just acting out, conspiring in an attempt to incite (fool) others to adopt this strange vulnerable mindset.
It's easier for me to believe that it's a conspiracy than to believe that so many people are so gullible. Why am I not richer if the world is so full of gullible people? Where are all these suckers? Maybe I've been overestimating my neighbors and competitors.
What kind of world have these people been living in all these years?
The problem with political-correctness isn't that it's trying to be sensitive to people who have been harmed, it's that it's yet another form of centralized decision making, and thus bound to be wrong about many things.
As an employer, I would never hire someone who goes berserk and attacks others for perceived slights. Work is hard and it is much more fun when you can get along and joke with people you work with. If you feel like you are walking on eggshells all the time, no one has any fun.
It's quoted in the GitHub link, and presumably it'd be trivial to find in the list archives.
This isn't as benign as you characterize it, since it's basically "this date handling bug must have been created by a woman since women lie about their age". Lazy misogyny is still misogyny.
> Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list?
I understand what you're doing here (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions) and so aren't looking for a real answer, but the actual answer is: Of course it's unprofessional. Make "women jokes" while working at any modern company and see what happens.
> Is this reaction proportional to the original joke?
Again, this is a mischaracterization. This comment wasn't the cause of the change, but a final straw.
rationalwiki? FYI, citing rationalwiki in a debate is a big red flag in terms of taking the argument seriously.
And in this instance, it's also completely unnecessary to your point. So please don't cite these types of radical sources when making innocuous points. It would be like if I was having a debate about average rainfall, and said something like, "Well, according to the UnabomberFanSite, the average rainfall is 3 inches". It's just so needlessly inflammatory and provocative that your best bet is to cut that out and replace it with a more mainstream source.
As an aside, I do not trust Rational Wiki to be a reliable source of information.
Just one example: Their information about Alcoholics Anonymous’s effectiveness can charitably be described as a dumpster fire: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous (For example, they cite Brandsma 1980, which is a very outdated chestnut anti-AA polemics always bring out; the study is really old and its methodology was pretty bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandsma_1980 )
> Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation.
It's not ironic. Forceful language (and rather tame still) is not just as bad as a 'joke'. The offence was not at the unprofessionalism of the joke, but at the contents of the joke. That is what fuelled a discussion.
Removing the line from the CoC also was not a response to the joke. It was a response to the ensuing discussion about the joke.
Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The 'verdict' as you call it, does not go into detail about the contents of the joke, because it was irrelevant to the reason of why they made a change. It could have easily been a different joke.
> Removing the line from the CoC also was not a response to the joke. It was a response to the ensuing discussion about the joke.
> Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand.
I first thought your response was a joke, but maybe you actually mean that, put some emojis next time to show if you are joking
- Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated.
+ Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". Isn't that then adding abuse-enabling language, not removing it?
> That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class".
With the exception of a couple special exceptions (for federal employment law, these exceptions include age over 40 and veteran status), “protected classes” in US antidiscrimination law (the source of the term) are actually axes of discrimination where everyone is a “member” of one defined by each axis (race, sex, religion—including none, etc.)
So while it is ambiguous exactly what classes are involved (because the set of protected classes varies depending on context and jurisdiction), its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class.
> its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class.
Sure, but isn't harassment something that should never be okay, not something that should be okay as long as the basis isn't an axis that defines a protected class?
I've seen this in very incel-y contexts, but I can't imagine it being anywhere as pervasive in the context of GitHub. "Everybody hates me even though I'm a really nice guy, but man those class of people are ****" doesn't really have a place to show up.
> "Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent."
Huh. That's interesting phrasing. I don't think i like it. Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent, the sticky point in human interaction and morality is to what extent do we take results instead of intentions into account when evaluating the morality of an action. The statement as is isn't saying anything about how we should interpret intent vs result just that we should acknowledge that its different.
I personally believe that codes of conduct (both this current trend, but also in the traditional meaning of the word) should be specific about what behaviour is wanted, otherwise its a meaningless platitude. This says nothing about how we should interpret someone doing something hurtful while not intending to (or claiming not to). Is that ok? Is it only ok if a "reasonable" person would make the same mistake? Is it ok if they haven't made the same mistake before? Something else?
> Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent
You haven't been paying attention - the (preposterous) idea that "intent doesn't matter, only impact" is a key premise of modern social justice activism and is taught to undergraduates as unquestionable fact.
What amazes me is that the CoC doesn't actually say that. It just says they're different.
It relies on the reader to have already known that "intent doesn't matter, only impact" and anyone could actually interpret it as the opposite, especially if their culture already thinks that intent is the more important thing.
That's a highly disingenuous framing. A better framing would be "intent is not a sufficient excuse for impact".
Intent is not meaningless, but unintentional harms need to be remedied by understanding the harm and working to change the behavior. If someone commits an unintentional harm repeatedly, it ceases to become unintentional, because the refusal to learn is deliberate.
It's just laying out exactly what you seem to agree with, and that good intentions aren't a shield for bad results. Someone might say "you look really sexy today" and intend it as a compliment, but even if it is a compliment it almost certainly isn't going to be received as one.
Is it laying that out? I think you have to significantly read between the lines to get there.
> what you seem to agree with, that good intentions aren't a shield for bad results
I wasn't giving my opinion so much as sumarizing its an unsolved problem with no obvious correct answer.
If you want my personal view. I don't believe actual results should be taken into account at all.
"you look really sexy today" isn't wrong to say because the recipent was offended. It's wrong to say because a reasonably acculturized person would know that there is a high chance it would be offensive in context. If the dice were on your side, and for some reason the recipent was delighted at your "compliment", i would still say it was wrong because you had no way of knowing that that would be the outcome. The wrongness has nothing to do with what actually happened, only with what was reasonably predictable to happen.
There are pros and cons to this view, and reasonable people do disagree.
[And to be clear, even if something was not predictable and therefore not "wrong", that doesn't absolve you from having to apologize/make it right if you accidentally hurt someone]
What about "That shirt looks really good on you"? Is it a compliment or the receiver may think you just want to rip it off them and have sex on the desk right there and then??
What's with the recurring comments about corporations and businesses?
> Some people may have views that when expressed, may be harmful to the interest of particular groups of people like big corporations. This has to be taken into account.
> universally accepted corporate values
> That's California Core Corporate Policies in work
> For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class.
> Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause
Given the success of the pull requests, I can only assume that this is not a sockpuppet mocking the rules in question. Is it some kind of multi-layered joke?
I don't think it's a sockpuppet - I read it as a criticism via satire.
The idea is that any rule you apply should be done fairly and, where that isn't clear, equally.
So as an example. If I say "Pepsi tastes like cow urine", and a corporate shill from Pepsi who has built their self-worth around the company and spent most of their life defending themselves from the usual Pepsi-bashing jokes by bullies telling them that Coke is better, and maybe they fall into some protected class and maybe they don't.
Now, their complaint is valid and their hurt is real. But the intent of the original comment was not to bash this person (or corporation) - it was the spirit of valid criticism.
If the intent is removed from the evaluation of the rules, nobody is safe from those who would manipulate the rules and pretend to be the hurt party to the benefit of a corporation.
[Note: I've re-read everything that person said, and now even I'm not sure. It feels to me like highly honed satire, and if it is, hats off to them, though they've maybe forgotten that a large portion of the Ruby team is not natively English speaking - hence their PR got accepted. If it isn't satire... well, they're not gonna read this, so it would be a wasted education]
It's not just you... I was unable to follow it either. I kept going back and forth trying to figure out which "side" the commenters were on, trying to find hidden meanings and running the various points through a sarcasm filter... nothing worked.
I'm left to conclude that they are just simply "out to lunch," to put it politely.
I find it confusing too, but my reading of this is that @hmdne is trolling, but the actual changes @hmdne wants to make are fine and defensible in their own right and in fact make it easier to kick out trolls like @hmdne (e.g., a troll can claim that their trollish proposition is an "opposing view" that one needs to be respectful of), and so people are engaging in good faith to try to deflate the troll.
Some of these comments are obviously bait to me - e.g., the one about how we should privilege members of boards of directors - and this looks like a careful attempt not to take the bait.
Note that PR 2690 is not from @hmdne and was unchanged from how it was proposed. PR 2691 is, and perhaps should not have been accepted in its present form because of the "protected class" language, but there are good-faith comments in 2690 (with no mention of corporations) about why the "opposing views" line should be removed.
In this sense, that they would help protect the community from trolls - yes they are defensible. But otherwise, I would unfortunately disagree. It's like an argument that we should lock everyone in cages, so they wouldn't hurt themselves.
Please tell me that this Code of Conducts are all jokes? I've developed a fragile and basic rule which I try to follow:
Don't be an asshole.
I fail sometimes following that rule and I don't deny it. I struggle to become better but keep going. Of course you could extend this by "Help others, when appropriate", "Be nice to each other", "Use common sense", "Pardon others", "Don't be a d***", "Don't be a b*****" but that follows logical and would be itself a CoC. Anyway, Captain Picard said everything:
Mister Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.
No jokes allowed. Those CoCs are installed by paid assets in order to stifle and reduce the participation rate in FOSS projects. They poison the mood and create division so that voluntary participants leave and those holes then can be filled with corporate agents.
As pointed out in the Github issue comments, Californian corporate agents in particular. The new CoC represents "California Core Corporate Policies" after all.
> I fail sometimes following that rule and I don't deny it.
We all have different definitions of being a jerk. So, do you take responsibility when you’ve crossed your own line, or when you’ve crossed someone else’s line?
Depending on the context you should take responsibility in both circumstances.
Crossing your own line is obvious. But you should still take responsibility when crossing someone else's if you feel they're acting in good faith / being reasonable about the offense, even if you disagree with them. And probably another caveat or two I can't think of off the top of my head.
A whole lot of the reasonable parts of "woke" boil down to a few things:
(1) Don't be an asshole.
(2) Don't meddle in the affairs of others if those affairs do not concern you.
(3) Evaluate other people from first principles and starting with a positive assumption, and check yourself for subconscious biases against groups of people that you might have picked up without really thinking about them. This is really a subset of checking oneself for irrational cognitive biases, which is a good practice in all areas.
Wokism is precisely about being an asshole, and using the language of social justice justify bullying and intimidating people. I think we're a little late to the game recognizing this because historically authoritarian and bullying behavior has been more likely to come from the right than from the left.
I generally avoid projects with a CoC because it signifies that the people in charge are more interested in picking fights than they are in developing great software.
The change indicated in the title[1] was made on foot of trolling by the user @hmdne
It's really a remarkable failure of communication. It doesn't appear anyone read what he was saying carefully. They just looked at the first two lines of his proposal and assumed they understood his intent. And then when encouraged he actually made the change. And they actually merged it.
It's amazing that people who are apparently paying such close attention to textual significance, don't appear to have the ability to read his statements with any care.
I'm a little embarrassed at how long it took for me to see the joke. The story should be "ruby maintainers accidentally get overeager and merge literal satire into their CoC".
A quote for context:
>A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition.
It's like the video where you try to count the number of times people pass the ball and you don't notice the gorilla walking through the middle of the room -- you read the first sentence where it starts listing off protected classes, skim over the part where it lists "boards of directors of big corporations" alongside people of color, women, and LGBT folks, and end up thinking that this @hmdne guy is a pretty woke fellow.
Wow I didn't catch that at first, but you are right. This comment illustrates it even more
> That's common sense. We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. [1]
And
> Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause [2]
Wow, glad someone else caught that. I read that comment a few times because it seemed almost exactly the opposite in intent of the general intent of the PR (as explained by the twitter thread).
This github links to a twitter thread about rationale for the change which mentions a sexist joke that was in the ruby mailing lists but doesn't link to it. I feel like I've read entire news articles about kinds of events like these where no one will actually show what was said. We're just supposed to agree it was really bad sight unseen. Here's my guess at the joke at the core of this for anyone wondering: http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...
Edit: Appears it was copied in the git thread, as mentioned below.
The example is so anodyne and the pattern of CoC changes so regular that I can't help but expect that this was opportunistic - waiting for any such example to jump on and institute these changes.
The goal is to grant all offend/ed/ parties total, unimpeachable power against purported offend/ers/, and no amount of 'protected classes' cover removes the fact that this enables the same bad faith that harassing parties abuse, just for a different group.
Hold everyone to the same high standard. Period. Done. None of this thumb-on-the-scales nonsense.
It's a bit buried in the GH discussion, but someone else posted it here:
"Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)"
If I were in charge of a community or mailing list, I would kick the person who wrote that off. But I simply don't see how (a) the existing rules didn't do enough to cover this, or (b) the changes will resolve those issues without causing other problems.
Readit News
> When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions.
In favor of this:
> Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent.
Also changed yesterday:
> Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated.
became:
> Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
The updated CoC is here: https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/blob/master/en/con...
This is very weird because fundamentally it stems from a failure of the moderators. If someone makes a sexist joke you don't just let them because you're "assuming good intentions", that clause means that you tell them it's not appropriate here, and if they apologize you assume they are sincere, and if they don't you swiftly boot them. But there is no substitute for good moderation, shifting words around won't help much.
Aside: Open source discussion opening with "My rationale for these changes are documented on Twitter: [link]" also seems somewhat crazy. And I love Twitter, it just seems very odd to link to a thread of tweets instead of restating your case in the proper medium.
In that scenario, the situation degenerates into "he said - she said". Traditional response was "in dubio pro reo" = "in doubt, let the accused go free".
But modern woke movements generally hollow out this principle and replace it by "believe the marginalized / weaker / oppressed side" and "be strict and hostile against the privileged side", as defined by the contemporary academic ladder of oppression.
This leads to a very paranoid society and I think it will take at most 10-20 years to reverse again, as bad cases start to heap. One of the universal qualities of humanity is that we can all be manipulative dicks, regardless of gender, color and creed, and once you shift the balance of power to the accuser, you will empower manipulative people across the board. And they are perfectly able to poison the common well for everyone.
Edit: 2 downvotes within 20 seconds and zero attempt at rebuttal.
Not to mention the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class? I appreciate minorities get a lot of shit that others don't, but its not like bigioted assholes are the only people who harrass other people.
> the implication that harrasment is somehow ok against people who are not members of the protected class?
There is a subset (I like to think that they're the fringe, but have no numbers to back that up) of those who engage in identity politics who do believe that bigotry does not apply when the target is the dominant demographic.
EU has the concept but doesn't name them in that way, countries implementing them may do in their respective language (someone else has already commented as such for German): https://ec.europa.eu/info/aid-development-cooperation-fundam...
The GNOME CoC gleefully states they will ignore complaints of racism against whites and sexism against cis men because "we prioritize the safety of marginalized groups over the comfort of privileged groups".
Protected class ("geschützte Gruppe") is a commonly understood concept in Germany, too.
This is an excellent example - because the original said exactly what needed to be said, but it wasn't being interpreted correctly. Instead of improving the wording, and saying something like "participants should always assume good intentions. However, intention does not make a person's actions immune from criticism, and while assuming good intentions we will kindly encourage each other toward a higher standard of behaviour." ... they instead have chosen to weaken the specificity and balance of the CoC.
Throughout the discussion, and on the twitter thread, the overriding message is: Triggering the hurt of a protected party is always punishable.
And it's a sad viewpoint, because it becomes not "Matz is nice and so we are nice", it becomes "We are nice to avoid the ire of a protected party"
This is a feature, not a bug. When the rules are clear and specific, they can be enforced fairly. When they're vague and unclear, then the only consistent principle is that the people who "enforce" the "rules" can do whatever they want and you have no recourse or due process.
If there are any CoCs left that do not adopt these standards, they will be brought into conformance soon. Corporate sponsorship depends on it, and open source is nothing without corporate sponsorship.
This is an undefined spiral to infinity mainly relying on de jure expectations.
Sexism - the believe that on sex is supreme to the other is already redefined to mean anything suggestive.
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Obviously it isn't a binary situation with either intent or impact being the sole arbiter - so the baseline used in almost all situations is the 'ordinary' or 'objective' standards. These can vary depending on the environment and context, and are simply defined because they are hard to define across all scenarios.
I guess I find it surprising that a code of conduct like this should sway between intent and impact in quite so binary a fashion -- human behaviour isn't software.
As well as being a bedrock principle of the law, it's also basic common sense. If I accidentally step on your toe, that's obviously different to me deliberately stamping on your toe in an intentional attempt to injure you. If you set out to deliberately injure your colleagues then this is OBVIOUSLY different from doing the same thing accidentally and should be treated differently - and anyone with a working brain can see this.
The idea that "intent doesn't matter" is preposterous. Accepting it as a premise leads to insane and preposterous conclusions that no-one believes. People who say that "intent doesn't matter" don't actually believe it.
The person being inappropriate will always hide behind their intent because they can only argue about their own role in the exchange (e.g. they can't argue that the target person/group isn't really hurt).
When a conversation is derailed away from the damage caused to the intent, the harasser wins. What are you going to do? Establishing a default assumption takes that away. Always have good defaults :)
Assuming good intentions enable troll to engage in endless sealioning.
“Protected class” is an (American) legal term, with situation-specific definitions. (It means different things in federal employment law, federal public accommodation law, federal fair housing law, and the various states employment, public accommodation, and fair housing laws of each of the States.)
It is entirely unclear what it means in the Ruby CoC, and the explanation in the discussion thread is literally “everyone knows what ‘protected class’ means” which is obviously entirely false. Its a term used by someone who has some overly precise, overly generalized idea of what it means, doesn’t realize that they are wrong, and thinks everyone agrees with them.
> @hmdne commented yesterday
> @Try2Code A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition.
Side note: anyone follow what this means? “Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause.”?
> @peterc commented yesterday
> Since California has been mentioned, I'm guessing these: https://www.senate.ca.gov/content/protected-classes
Only american vetrens. Screwing with canadian vetrens is still fair game according to this CoC i guess.
This is exactly why many people were not really open to COCs because this is an eternal battleground with creeping behavior expectations because of some unsolved personal problems.
A reasonable moderator should flag a joke as this as not appropriate in professional conversation without any CoC changes:
When they say “there will be no jokes”: a joke told by professionals in professional setting might have different meaning than originally intended.edit: non just unwelcoming, it can be considered discriminating
My thoughts follow yours entirely - the author is tweaked about the failure of the moderators and twitter is not a place for commentary on a pull request.
(There's a certain irony here to the author of the PR complaining about the difference between the intent and impact of a statement and then... completely missing the point of why their PR is meaningless).
I don't know what specifically motivated this PR, but I assume something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning .
It's mentioned in passing a couple of comments in. To highlight it (because it's easy to miss):
"I watched a group of people use these specific phrases to justify making sexist remarks over a communication channel that falls under these guidelines."
...against a protected class. All others are allowed, apparently?
That's... interesting?
Some of the most vitriolic flamewars I've seen on the internet were between western straight white males. I don't see the point of special casing this clause.
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It's hard to agree on the exact boundary between enabling a jerk and making an issue out of nothing. But the old "assume good intentions" policy does sound to me uncomfortably similar to "if you're offended it's your own fault". Which is generally how people treat victims of harassment in communities where that sort of harassment is tolerated.
It is also required for completely dry technical discussions. I am not sure I would want that in open source communities though, but that is certainly a preference.
In this case, someone made a joke about women not liking to reveal their true age as they get older. It's a boring cliched joke. Something I've heard too many times in my life (and, most often from women). Is it sexist? I can see the argument. Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list? I don't know, perhaps not.
Does it warrant responses like "Knock that bullshit off." or "you made an ass of yourself"... I don't know. Seems a little ironic to use unprofessional language in this situation. Maybe even worse than the joke itself? I don't know.
Then, folks take the discussion to github and twitter (and, eventually reddit and hn). Presenting only their verdict: "A newer member made a sexist joke, and was called out on it as being inappropriate." No links to the joke. No evidence that the joke is sexist. This makes it so much easier to imagine something really bad. No, we just get a verdict and we should all rise up against this sexism (which absolutely is bad, of course). Let's get our pitchforks. This amplifies one side of the argument and shuts down any useful conversation. Worse, it's used to rush through a CoC change without allowing any thoughtful discussion.
Is this reaction proportional to the original joke? Is the reaction itself exemplar of how we would like to conduct ourselves?
In my experience this kind of stuff is extremely counter-productive. It puts people in the defensive, and remember, you haven't actually said anything: you only gave them a (somewhat rudely phrased) command, which is just not helpful. If I object to some behaviour I typically contact them in private (not in public) whenever possible, and explain how a particular joke or comment made me feel. >95% of the time, you'll get an apology without drama and all is fine.
"Assume good faith" doesn't mean "anything goes" or "give people a free pass", but rather a recognition that most of the time, people really aren't such bad folk, even when they're behaving as less-than-perfect.
Anyway, the actual email thread can be found here: https://rubytalk.org/t/simple-operations/75577
It all seems a bit much for a single new user making a joke phrased in such poor English it's barely comprehensible and the very short discussion that followed on that shrug. And there is no real mention that this is somehow indicative of a wider structural problem.
I'd hate to make more of a process for parsing a one sentence joke but ... how else do you do it?
So you throw it to a committee who comes back with "We told the user their statement could be seen as sexist and not to make that joke anymore."
There you go. Done. Issue is no longer relevant, time to move on with life. If it comes up again with the same user, then you can worry about bigger things.
I'm sure there would be some bickering after that but at some point you can't have the argument going on forever on every rando social media site and ... version control site...
The Internet never forgets. It is genuinely unclear how to adapt pre-Internet norms. I would prefer presumption of innocence and of a learning process, that is summary dismissal of one-off out of context situations. But viral content (such a fitting expression!) begs to differ.
[0]: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...
Sadly, the CoC wars were lost several years ago. The victors had the simplest tactic: projection.
"We are just against all the bad things. We are anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-prejudice. Why aren't you on our side?"
Well, I have two things to say. First, I eagerly await your omelette. Judging by how tolerant society has become, it should be any day! And second, why be against the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea? Democracy is in the name!
what does this mean?
The first project that succeeds with a CoC of "sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never harm you." is going to be a watershed moment that can recruit the growing population who are sick and tired of the leftist mob and their thought policing.
How about ‘let’s keep the discussion about Ruby’? Instead of poisoning another venue with woke drama.
I can't believe that so many people are so suggestible. Part of me feels like they can't be serious; they're just acting out, conspiring in an attempt to incite (fool) others to adopt this strange vulnerable mindset.
It's easier for me to believe that it's a conspiracy than to believe that so many people are so gullible. Why am I not richer if the world is so full of gullible people? Where are all these suckers? Maybe I've been overestimating my neighbors and competitors.
What kind of world have these people been living in all these years?
It's quoted in the GitHub link, and presumably it'd be trivial to find in the list archives.
This isn't as benign as you characterize it, since it's basically "this date handling bug must have been created by a woman since women lie about their age". Lazy misogyny is still misogyny.
> Is it professional to make such a joke on a ruby mailing list?
I understand what you're doing here (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions) and so aren't looking for a real answer, but the actual answer is: Of course it's unprofessional. Make "women jokes" while working at any modern company and see what happens.
> Is this reaction proportional to the original joke?
Again, this is a mischaracterization. This comment wasn't the cause of the change, but a final straw.
The joke was that the bug could be caused because it was written FOR a woman, not BY a woman.
And in this instance, it's also completely unnecessary to your point. So please don't cite these types of radical sources when making innocuous points. It would be like if I was having a debate about average rainfall, and said something like, "Well, according to the UnabomberFanSite, the average rainfall is 3 inches". It's just so needlessly inflammatory and provocative that your best bet is to cut that out and replace it with a more mainstream source.
Just one example: Their information about Alcoholics Anonymous’s effectiveness can charitably be described as a dumpster fire: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous (For example, they cite Brandsma 1980, which is a very outdated chestnut anti-AA polemics always bring out; the study is really old and its methodology was pretty bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandsma_1980 )
In particular, Rational Wiki’s article on AA completely ignores Cochrane 2020, which shows that Alcoholics Anonymous has a 42% success rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_An...
Is it? I don't see it, just a link to a Twitter thread that also never links to the actual joke.
It's not ironic. Forceful language (and rather tame still) is not just as bad as a 'joke'. The offence was not at the unprofessionalism of the joke, but at the contents of the joke. That is what fuelled a discussion.
Removing the line from the CoC also was not a response to the joke. It was a response to the ensuing discussion about the joke.
Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The 'verdict' as you call it, does not go into detail about the contents of the joke, because it was irrelevant to the reason of why they made a change. It could have easily been a different joke.
> Talking about proportionality as if the change was brought because of the joke is as questioning the proportionality of WW I to the death of archduke Franz Ferdinand.
I first thought your response was a joke, but maybe you actually mean that, put some emojis next time to show if you are joking
+ Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". Isn't that then adding abuse-enabling language, not removing it?
With the exception of a couple special exceptions (for federal employment law, these exceptions include age over 40 and veteran status), “protected classes” in US antidiscrimination law (the source of the term) are actually axes of discrimination where everyone is a “member” of one defined by each axis (race, sex, religion—including none, etc.)
So while it is ambiguous exactly what classes are involved (because the set of protected classes varies depending on context and jurisdiction), its pretty clear that the change is not about the person not being member of a protected class, but the basis of the harassment not being an axis that defines such a class.
Sure, but isn't harassment something that should never be okay, not something that should be okay as long as the basis isn't an axis that defines a protected class?
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> "Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent."
Huh. That's interesting phrasing. I don't think i like it. Literally nobody thinks impact & intent are equivalent, the sticky point in human interaction and morality is to what extent do we take results instead of intentions into account when evaluating the morality of an action. The statement as is isn't saying anything about how we should interpret intent vs result just that we should acknowledge that its different.
I personally believe that codes of conduct (both this current trend, but also in the traditional meaning of the word) should be specific about what behaviour is wanted, otherwise its a meaningless platitude. This says nothing about how we should interpret someone doing something hurtful while not intending to (or claiming not to). Is that ok? Is it only ok if a "reasonable" person would make the same mistake? Is it ok if they haven't made the same mistake before? Something else?
You haven't been paying attention - the (preposterous) idea that "intent doesn't matter, only impact" is a key premise of modern social justice activism and is taught to undergraduates as unquestionable fact.
It relies on the reader to have already known that "intent doesn't matter, only impact" and anyone could actually interpret it as the opposite, especially if their culture already thinks that intent is the more important thing.
I ask because the law, legal system and even democratic values as we know them are built on very different principles.
We definitely punish theft, burglary and fraud even if outcome giving to poor is seen as preferrable.
We dont punish legal tax shenanigans and some shady philanthropy, even if outcome is poor.
And when democratic majority is in favor of some stupid and harmful policy, we campaign against it, but still obey democratic majority.
Intent is not meaningless, but unintentional harms need to be remedied by understanding the harm and working to change the behavior. If someone commits an unintentional harm repeatedly, it ceases to become unintentional, because the refusal to learn is deliberate.
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> what you seem to agree with, that good intentions aren't a shield for bad results
I wasn't giving my opinion so much as sumarizing its an unsolved problem with no obvious correct answer.
If you want my personal view. I don't believe actual results should be taken into account at all.
"you look really sexy today" isn't wrong to say because the recipent was offended. It's wrong to say because a reasonably acculturized person would know that there is a high chance it would be offensive in context. If the dice were on your side, and for some reason the recipent was delighted at your "compliment", i would still say it was wrong because you had no way of knowing that that would be the outcome. The wrongness has nothing to do with what actually happened, only with what was reasonably predictable to happen.
There are pros and cons to this view, and reasonable people do disagree.
[And to be clear, even if something was not predictable and therefore not "wrong", that doesn't absolve you from having to apologize/make it right if you accidentally hurt someone]
> Some people may have views that when expressed, may be harmful to the interest of particular groups of people like big corporations. This has to be taken into account.
> universally accepted corporate values
> That's California Core Corporate Policies in work
> For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class.
> Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause
Given the success of the pull requests, I can only assume that this is not a sockpuppet mocking the rules in question. Is it some kind of multi-layered joke?
The idea is that any rule you apply should be done fairly and, where that isn't clear, equally.
So as an example. If I say "Pepsi tastes like cow urine", and a corporate shill from Pepsi who has built their self-worth around the company and spent most of their life defending themselves from the usual Pepsi-bashing jokes by bullies telling them that Coke is better, and maybe they fall into some protected class and maybe they don't.
Now, their complaint is valid and their hurt is real. But the intent of the original comment was not to bash this person (or corporation) - it was the spirit of valid criticism.
If the intent is removed from the evaluation of the rules, nobody is safe from those who would manipulate the rules and pretend to be the hurt party to the benefit of a corporation.
[Note: I've re-read everything that person said, and now even I'm not sure. It feels to me like highly honed satire, and if it is, hats off to them, though they've maybe forgotten that a large portion of the Ruby team is not natively English speaking - hence their PR got accepted. If it isn't satire... well, they're not gonna read this, so it would be a wasted education]
Someone with the same name invoked the old good intentions clause on the mailing list.[1] Apparently sincerely.
[1] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...
I'm left to conclude that they are just simply "out to lunch," to put it politely.
Some of these comments are obviously bait to me - e.g., the one about how we should privilege members of boards of directors - and this looks like a careful attempt not to take the bait.
Note that PR 2690 is not from @hmdne and was unchanged from how it was proposed. PR 2691 is, and perhaps should not have been accepted in its present form because of the "protected class" language, but there are good-faith comments in 2690 (with no mention of corporations) about why the "opposing views" line should be removed.
Don't be an asshole.
I fail sometimes following that rule and I don't deny it. I struggle to become better but keep going. Of course you could extend this by "Help others, when appropriate", "Be nice to each other", "Use common sense", "Pardon others", "Don't be a d***", "Don't be a b*****" but that follows logical and would be itself a CoC. Anyway, Captain Picard said everything:
Mister Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged.
Give yourself some credit. There's a lot of precedence for this rule. One of the original versions of it goes something like:
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..."
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We all have different definitions of being a jerk. So, do you take responsibility when you’ve crossed your own line, or when you’ve crossed someone else’s line?
Crossing your own line is obvious. But you should still take responsibility when crossing someone else's if you feel they're acting in good faith / being reasonable about the offense, even if you disagree with them. And probably another caveat or two I can't think of off the top of my head.
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A whole lot of the reasonable parts of "woke" boil down to a few things:
(1) Don't be an asshole.
(2) Don't meddle in the affairs of others if those affairs do not concern you.
(3) Evaluate other people from first principles and starting with a positive assumption, and check yourself for subconscious biases against groups of people that you might have picked up without really thinking about them. This is really a subset of checking oneself for irrational cognitive biases, which is a good practice in all areas.
I generally avoid projects with a CoC because it signifies that the people in charge are more interested in picking fights than they are in developing great software.
If this was part of being woke it wouldn't be considered a slur by anyone..?
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It's really a remarkable failure of communication. It doesn't appear anyone read what he was saying carefully. They just looked at the first two lines of his proposal and assumed they understood his intent. And then when encouraged he actually made the change. And they actually merged it.
It's amazing that people who are apparently paying such close attention to textual significance, don't appear to have the ability to read his statements with any care.
[1] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
A quote for context:
>A protected class is a group of people that has been historically discriminated or a group of people we (as humanity) want to privilege to offset the years of discrimination - but that's not all. For example the People of Color are a protected class, because of slavery. Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause. The non-heterosexuals are a protected class, because of discrimination. Women are a protected class obviously. I don't know how to better define it. The dictionaries should have a more understandable definition.
It's like the video where you try to count the number of times people pass the ball and you don't notice the gorilla walking through the middle of the room -- you read the first sentence where it starts listing off protected classes, skim over the part where it lists "boards of directors of big corporations" alongside people of color, women, and LGBT folks, and end up thinking that this @hmdne guy is a pretty woke fellow.
This whole thing is pretty juvenile but I must admit I found it amusing.
[1]https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2696
> That's common sense. We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class. [1]
And
> Members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class because they financially contribute to the cause [2]
[1] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
[2] https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2690#issuecom...
Edit: Appears it was copied in the git thread, as mentioned below.
The goal is to grant all offend/ed/ parties total, unimpeachable power against purported offend/ers/, and no amount of 'protected classes' cover removes the fact that this enables the same bad faith that harassing parties abuse, just for a different group.
Hold everyone to the same high standard. Period. Done. None of this thumb-on-the-scales nonsense.
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"Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)"
If I were in charge of a community or mailing list, I would kick the person who wrote that off. But I simply don't see how (a) the existing rules didn't do enough to cover this, or (b) the changes will resolve those issues without causing other problems.
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