Linux Dev's threaten to pull killswitch over CoC (somewhat clickbaity title)

[williamcll]

surprised this thread doesn't have a moderator message yet.
 

IMO I don't really care, it's not like having anti-discriminatory rules would somehow make coding harder. However, I find a lot of people who advocate these are often too radical.

[AlTech]

How to solve this issue in 2018

 

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

The CoC is so broad that it can be used to eject anyone for anything, that is the problem.

 

The Linux kernel is a purely meritocratic system, if commits get prioritized because the contributor is a PoC or LGBTblahblahblah, it destroys the concept of a merit based system.

The previous CoC was much more vague, if someone wanted to abuse it it would have been extremely easy to do it.

[Sauron]

11 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

This is the internet, you can commit code as an Anon, just like straight white males.

The Linux team doesn't accept anonymous submissions, it never did.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, mate_mate91 said:

Those women who advocate for CoC and are feminists tend to be lesbians or Bis or look like a man or something like that. Why is this always happening? Why some beautiful girls are not radical feminists and so on? Only uglie women are... just for thought.

Here's a quote from the CoC the project uses:

Quote

But free, libre, and open source projects suffer from a startling lack of diversity, with dramatically low representation by women, people of color, and other marginalized populations.

Part of this problem lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names.

Quote

Marginalized people also suffer some of the unintended consequences of dogmatic insistence on meritocratic principles of governance. Studies have shown that organizational cultures that value meritocracy often result in greater inequality. People with “merit” are often excused for their bad behavior in public spaces based on the value of their technical contributions. Meritocracy also naively assumes a level playing field, in which everyone has access to the same resources, free time, and common life experiences to draw upon. These factors and more make contributing to open source a daunting prospect for many people, especially women and other underrepresented people.

 

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

Here's a quote from the CoC the project uses:

 

they looked at the industry from macro level through a marxist oppressor/oppressed lens. They failed to look at individuals who have broken through class/gender barriers. Studying this and discovering how people have done this would produce something that I could advocate for, not blanket vanity policy at the macro level.

My parents are disabled. My mother is a cleaner. I did not turn out to be a cleaner. I hope my children will do better than me as I have done better than my parents. No diversity quotas required, but meritocracy very much is.

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Or maybe it's just a stereotype to avoid addressing any of their points. It's a little ironic to talk of "victimhood culture" while acting so butthurt over a CoC which states things that are mostly common sense.

I dont know where you get butthurt from. If I lost my job for a nonsense reason I would feel pretty butthurt but I would not cry about it online, I would get a lawyer. What I see here is people with genuine concerns over the Orwellian nature of the CoC, things that would make my lawyers job harder

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Or maybe it's just a stereotype to avoid addressing any of their points. It's a little ironic to talk of "victimhood culture" while acting so butthurt over a CoC which states things that are mostly common sense.

I love how you ignore the glaring issues every time you sweep aside complaints of the CoC.

 

Yes a lot of the main points argued for are "common sense".

 

But the way it argues for enforcement of them is insane.

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

The previous CoC was much more vague, if someone wanted to abuse it it would have been extremely easy to do it.

The old CoC never said to expel anyone who breaks the CoC or any moderators who don't strictly enforce the CoC.

 

The old CoC was vague and kinda meaningless. It really wasn't something designed for enforcement, and enforcement was to be done on a case by case basis as determined by the community. You can't really abuse something that's just ethical guidelines. You can abuse the lack of moderation which people certainly have done.

 

The issue with the new CoC is that it starts by portraying itself as the same kind of ethical guidelines just with greater precision. That part is fine. Great even. But problems start to arise when it gets into the later bits and starts to treat itself as a strict and rigid rules system.

 

It being less vague than the previous CoC doesn't make it not vague, and the issue here is not inherently it's vagueness but that it sets strict and aggressive punishment for these incredibly vague terms.

 

Take out the ridiculous parts at the end that already *have* been abused in other communities and you've got a fine CoC where a less severe infringement can be treated less severely and actual moderation can be encouraged.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, GlobalPentahedron Corp said:

I dont know where you get butthurt from. If I lost my job for a nonsense reason I would feel pretty butthurt but I would not cry about it online, I would get a lawyer. What I see here is people with genuine concerns over the Orwellian nature of the CoC, things that would make my lawyers job harder

The CoC is not a legally binding document, nobody is losing their job here, and the maintainers coud always expel you for whatever reason they like. This hasn't changed, the new CoC doesn't suddenly give them an excuse to do it, and the old CoC said pretty much the same things in much vaguer terms.

54 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

The old CoC never said to expel anyone who breaks the CoC or any moderators who don't strictly enforce the CoC.

Does the new one do that? All it says is that moderators will investigate complaints and act as they deem appropriate, and banning is one of the tools they may employ. If you can't tell the difference between the words "or" and "and" I don't think you have a place discussing the merits of a written document. NONE of the document's contents ever hints at the idea that any moderator must be banned for not expelling people who break the CoC. When someone has the responsibility for something it means that that something is entrusted to them and their judgement - not that they will be punished for not enforcing their power.

 

If any maintainer were to be banned or relieved from their role, it would be by majority vote among the maintainers; there aren't that many maintainers, and if most of them agree someone has to go they have the power to act regardless of what the CoC says. You keep talking about the CoC as if it were the ultimate power in the Linux community and its rules were absolute and uncontestable. That is just not true; it's not even a legal document.

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Take out the ridiculous parts at the end that already *have* been abused in other communities and you've got a fine CoC where a less severe infringement can be treated less severely and actual moderation can be encouraged.

That has nothing to do with this. Other communities have different moderators and if those moderators are abusive that's their problem. The CoC doesn't influence the ability of a moderator to abuse their power; their fellow moderators do. If @GoodBytes started banning people for no reason, you couldn't sue him because "he didn't follow the CoC". You could only hope that other moderators would notice and get him to stop. His abuse would be completely independent of the CoC, even if publicly he might state that he was simply following the rules according to his interpretation.

 

And honestly, if moderator abuse were to happen regularly then the CoC would be the last of the community's problems.

 

Could the new CoC be better? Sure, there's always room for improvement (although everyone seems to have a different opinion of what should be changed...). That doesn't mean it's worth destroying Linux over, or that it matters at all. If it specifically encouraged abuse I could see your point, but it doesn't.

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

I love how you ignore the glaring issues every time you sweep aside complaints of the CoC.

And for the record, I believe I've already said this - it's not that I ignore the complaint, it's that you don't listen when I address it.

and in my first post from that thread:

Quote

Furthermore, community moderators can (and always could) ban whomever they want for whatever reason as long as they're in agreement with each other - the CoC is not a legal document and it does not override the moderators, just like on this forum. It's just a set of guidelines, more of a warning than a law - any disciplinary action still depends on the context and the moderators' judgement. I would say that in this respect the current CoC is no worse than the previous one and asking for it to be reverted on these grounds is completely unwarranted.

May I stop repeating myself now?

[soorma]

Good, we need to fight SJWs to protect meritocracy

[Lady Fitzgerald]

7 hours ago, imreloadin said:

How did I miss your point? I said that I don't remember seeing a female in those trades and that I don't know if I've ever seen one working in those field before. I never said they didn't exist, so don't put words in my mouth. You replied that i just haven't beem looking hard enough. To which I replied that their percentage of those workforces is so small that it would take me a while to find one even if I was looking hard for it.

 

I am still confused as to why you are arguing with me about this to begin with. I was simply attributing the extremely low gender diversity in those fields to the fact that apparently the majority of women don't want jobs in those fields. You worked in those industries as a woman, more power to you, however you are in the vast minority in that regard which is what I was pointing out.

You're still missing the point and I have better things to do than trying to explain why.

[KarathKasun]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

The Linux team doesn't accept anonymous submissions, it never did.

In the world of the internet, you can pretty much be an anon and submit code.

 

Kernel patches especially fall into this type of anon-submission.

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

In the world of the internet, you can pretty much be an anon and submit code.

 

Kernel patches especially fall into this type of anon-submission.

No, unless you make up a new fake name every time you submit a patch. Even if your github account doesn't contain your real name it still allows people to see your past interactions inside the community.

[thedude4bides]

44 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You're still missing the point and I have better things to do than trying to explain why.

You literally both said the same thing: there are comparatively few women in said field.  So what if he never actually saw any?  Unless you have a different point which you failed to make clear, point remains the same.

[KarathKasun]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No, unless you make up a new fake name every time you submit a patch. Even if your github account doesn't contain your real name it still allows people to see your past interactions inside the community.

And how the hell does that reveal your race/gender/sexual preferences?

 

If you don't talk about personal stuff on git/in the mailing lists, then it will never be a problem.

 

If you want to see what a proper CoC should look like, check out the KDE CoC.

[imreloadin]

51 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You're still missing the point and I have better things to do than trying to explain why.

Your point must be so convuluded that you can't even understand it yourself then because I can only read the same thing so many times and try to take it dofferent ways.

5 minutes ago, thedude4bides said:

You literally both said the same thing: there are comparatively few women in said field.  So what if he never actually saw any?  Unless you have a different point which you failed to make clear, point remains the same.

This, I have no clue how else I'm supposed to take what she is saying when she is literally saying the same thing I am the best part is when she stormed off saying she has better things to do. Hopefully that includes a class about how to adequately communicate her ideas because I still have no clue why she was arguing with me...

[Sauron]

12 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

And how the hell does that reveal your race/gender/sexual preferences?

It doesn't, but if you're in any position of responsibility people will find out.

 

19 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

If you don't talk about personal stuff on git/in the mailing lists, then it will never be a problem.

There shouldn't be a problem regardless.

 

19 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

If you want to see what a proper CoC should look like, check out the KDE CoC.

The KDE CoC is better, therefore kill Linux...?

[KarathKasun]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It doesn't, but if you're in any position of responsibility people will find out.

 

There shouldn't be a problem regardless.

 

The KDE CoC is better, therefore kill Linux...?

No, the wording of the Contributor Covenant CoC is deliberately "hyper inclusive", and should be changed.

 

Wording like this points toward lowering standards applied to code commits...

Quote

Meritocracy also naively assumes a level playing field, in which everyone has access to the same resources, free time, and common life experiences to draw upon. These factors and more make contributing to open source a daunting prospect for many people, especially women and other underrepresented people.

Further, it links to http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Meritocracy as its source, which is a political action wiki.

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

No, the wording of the Contributor Covenant CoC is deliberately "hyper inclusive", and should be changed.

Ok, so now there's such a thing as "too inclusive" apparently... I thought you didn't care who writes the code. The CoC says nothing about favoring anyone, it doesn't matter how many times you claim it contains things it doesn't.

4 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Wording like this points toward lowering standards applied to code commits...

Except the person who wrote that is not part of the Linux development community.

[KarathKasun]

9 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Ok, so now there's such a thing as "too inclusive" apparently... I thought you didn't care who writes the code. The CoC says nothing about favoring anyone, it doesn't matter how many times you claim it contains things it doesn't.

Except the person who wrote that is not part of the Linux development community.

Too inclusive is a thing, it happens when you sacrifice quality in pursuit of tweaking representation for ideological reasons.

 

If you were to run everything like it was an online forum, with the general premise like this...

Quote

Project maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any contributor for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

there are no rules anyway.  It just comes down to what mods WANT to do.  So why is it important that there is a CoC to begin with?  The above statement should be all that is needed.

 

As a mod in this hypothetical community I can claim your dissent is threatening and harmful, and ban you.

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Too inclusive is a thing, it happens when you sacrifice quality in pursuit of tweaking representation for ideological reasons.

Which is not in the CoC.

10 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

here are no rules anyway.  It just comes down to what mods WANT to do.  So why is it important that there is a CoC to begin with?

The purpose of the CoC is to warn members so the mods don't have to warn or ban people every day. They tell you more or less what they won't accept so you can avoid it.

[I-r0k]

23 hours ago, Drak3 said:

The Chicken of Calamity.

 

Or the Code of Conduct.

Clash of Clans

[Brooksie359]

8 hours ago, imreloadin said:

How did I miss your point? I said that I don't remember seeing a female in those trades and that I don't know if I've ever seen one working in those field before. I never said they didn't exist, so don't put words in my mouth. You replied that i just haven't beem looking hard enough. To which I replied that their percentage of those workforces is so small that it would take me a while to find one even if I was looking hard for it.

 

I am still confused as to why you are arguing with me about this to begin with. I was simply attributing the extremely low gender diversity in those fields to the fact that apparently the majority of women don't want jobs in those fields. You worked in those industries as a woman, more power to you, however you are in the vast minority in that regard which is what I was pointing out.

Yeah that's like when people say why aren't there more women in certain careers like mechanical engineering and programming? When the simple answer is that not many women go to school for those fields so the fact that a business has vastly more men than women in those fields says nothing about the company but more about the available candidates. Obviously there are women present in those fields but it is small compared to the number of men. That's just how it is. 

[KarathKasun]

20 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Which is not in the CoC.

The outline for preferred status of participants is in the pledge...

Quote

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

It should read something like...

Quote

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, with no exceptions.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Sauron said:

The purpose of the CoC is to warn members so the mods don't have to warn or ban people every day. They tell you more or less what they won't accept so you can avoid it.

Compare this CoC with the previous Code of Conflict, what part of the new CoC is not covered by "Be excellent to each other"?  If there is nothing new covered, why did it need a change?

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Here's a quote from the CoC the project uses:

 

That is very dumb tbh. You pick the best candidate regardless of their background. I mean if you are just trying to force diversity it doesn't accomplish what is intended. They are using stereotypes and generalizations to advocate forced diversity. They assume that some from a certain group had more obstacles in their path purely based on their race. That's not always the case and is completely a case by case basis. If you want to help someone who has had issues in the past and needs help then that is fine. What's not fine is to use stereotypes to determine that people have had a harder life and deserve a handicap. That's a load of crap and needs to stop. If people really cared they would help people improve themselves to a point where they have the merit required to participate in a meaningful way. You help them rise to the challenge not lower the bar.