Comment by appleflaxen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by appleflaxen | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea why github wants to be the referee for these issues.

There is a 2nd+ level comment by oridecon down-thread with a perfect example:

> I wouldn't want to be the person deciding where issues like this fits: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

wtf do you do with that? who is making the complaint? are they part of the community? can non-community members sabotage a community by making this type of complaint? If no, why not? Their grievance from a moral standpoint is just as legitimate. But if so, then it means that my actions in a personal arena will spill over to my github account? And how do you prove that the person in the personal account was me, and not just a person with the same user name on a different platform? or a sock puppet designed to get me banned?

There is no higher-level of refereeing that is going to make this easy. Ultimately, I predict that any enforcement of this policy by github will be arbitrary and capricious. And if it's not enforced, then it's just a waste of air.

I really doubt that they are solving a bigger problem (based on my own experience using GH) than they are creating, but I wish them the best of luck..

If you believe the press reports, letting the community figure out how to deal with abuse on its own seems to have had a negative impact on Twitter's value.

If GH isn't referee who else will be one?

To be honest, the repo maintainers.

Unless someone is doxxing, I see no reason for gh to step in.

It shouldn't really be a job of random private companies to police the Internet.

It used to be the case that postal and telecommunication services were neutral and not responsible for their users. If you have an issue with what somebody sent to you or published you go to court and have it resolved legally and by qualified people.

BTW, are there any laws regulating this kind of things? It certainly would be very unfortunate if companies were allowed to use "community guidelines" as an excuse for unjust discrimination. Can I make them actually responsible for their decisions and sue them for kicking out somebody they shouldn't or for failing to kick somebody they should?

>It shouldn't really be a job of random private companies to police the Internet.

They aren't policing the internet, they're policing their users of their service. If Github wanted to moderate the content on other people's websites I agree that would be weird and problematic.

> Can I make them actually responsible for their decisions and sue them for kicking out somebody they shouldn't or for failing to kick somebody they should?

I'm having a hard time understanding what you're getting at. Who do you think Github is going to discriminate against? "Internet Trolls" are not a protected class. The government does not require private companies to have to do business with anyone (a good thing!).

> Who do you think Github is going to discriminate against?

Anyone at all. I don't think GitHub will be better than any random project maintainer whom now they want to override.

But if you really need specifics and finger pointing, what about the fact that GitHub hired the troll who, with no affiliation with the project whatsoever, spammed Opal's issue tracker about private opinions that one member expressed outside of the project and outside of GitHub and demanded his removal from the project? See link in the top post here for details.

Will they start removing such spam once the guidelines are in place? Will they ban the troll? Maybe fire her from the job?

It would be nice to have a law against being a jerk if we had some foolproof way to enforce it. But the definition of being a jerk varies, and it's utterly impractical.

Therefore, society at large uses societal feedback to soft-punish people who misbehave: you can say whatever you want, but you will have to deal with how others react to your behavior.

It's an imperfect system, but it's the best we have found.

Github should be the same: step in when there are egregious issues where the law is broken (threats, stalking, subpoenas, hacking, etc), but otherwise let the individual development communities regulate themselves (like they did for the repo in the original comment).

Sometimes you will agree with how something was handled; sometimes you will disagree with how something was handled. But it will be handled by the individuals it affects.

An alternative available to GH might be to have an impartial entity available to provide objective input, if the community asks for it: "Ok GH community guideline arbitrator panel - this is what happened, with the primary documentation of the exchange being this pull request, this email exchange, and this glitter bomb which is photographed in the office where it went off.

Please give us a 3rd-person opinion (by a group of people who often think about these issues and are deft in handling them effectively) since we are obviously emotional about it by virtue of our involvement.

I'm just spitballing, but that would allow github to demonstrate their commitment to diversity without making rules that will be enforced subjectively and inconsistently.

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