Hacker News Reader

Copying a trollish comment that was rightly flag-killed for breaking the site guidelines is a terrible thing to do in an HN thread, nor did you need to to make your point. It's a wonder this didn't revert to a tire fire; normally it would have. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Should we accept the status quo in all cases because somebody might speak up in upset?

The diversity initiatives in the Rust community are one of the primary reasons I attempt to stay part of it, file bug reports, fix code, and attend conferences, in a way that I don't in communities which appear divided over whether or not it's socially acceptable to harass me based on my gender and/or medical history.

You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code, than that people feel comfortable enough to code on your project - that it's more important to make racists, sexist, and other bigots comfortable than their victims. That's your call, but to call it "uniting" is complete nonsense.

> You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code

I don't. That's you misrepresenting my point of view.

I've yet to contribute to a project which holds a COC, still I've yet to see any kind of harassament or abuse based on the ethnicity, sex, religious view or age of other contributors. In fact these things have not not ever been a subject. The subject was always the code.

My opinion is that we focus on the code, the commits and not who wrote them. Simple as that. Why construe that as me supporting abuse?

Yes, that means that if a trans "woman of colour" (or whatever is PC to write these days) submits a bad patch I should be able openly criticize it the same way I would criticize it as if it was written by a straight, white male. And how would I know that? Why should I even be expected to know that in the first place?

I'm also against using a disproportionate amount of energy on explicitly focusing on these things which we all agree should not matter. Many of these diversity initiatives do exactly this, and when they do, that's just utterly detracting to the task at hand: crafting good software together.

So my opinion is that these things are counter-productive and misguided, and my point is that I've yet to see any proof that I am wrong in holding that opinion.

I think that's simple and clear enough, without the need to read any ulterior motives into it.

Edit: Clarifications. Examples.

Who's writing that code? Do individuals write code and throw it over the wall, never having to talk to another soul? Or does it come from a community of people who have to interact with each other?

The practice of FOSS software development is, in part, an exercise in community management. It'd be great if we could all just focus on the code - that's a significant chunk of the point of active community management, so that the developers involved don't have to worry about their safety at conferences, about harassment from other members of the community, about whether they're going to be the only POC/woman/disabled person at the meetup and how to protect themselves from everybody else there, when they just want to build software. The people who want to do more than just build software are the people who decide it'd be a great idea to use their power within the community to harass us, assault us, or more, without social consequence.

As a result of FOSS software development being a community activity, figuring out how best to run that community for the benefit of all within it is a necessity. And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community? (Yes, the communities I'm part of do this, to a significant degree.) Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it? Do we intentionally create segregated communities so that women never have to meet misogynists and rapists, in order to avoid kicking anybody out? Do we try to avoid conflict from happening, or do we only ever react to it when it does? These are questions that need answering, and nobody will ever agree on the answers to all of them.

I've been a part of several communities and suffered harassment in a few of them due to my gender, medical history, and disabilities. Most notable is the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members. The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored. A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences - I'm picky enough about the conferences I go to that I'm lucky not to have suffered that. I'm also smart enough to figure out that when someone goes off on a rant in a project's IRC channel about how stylistic issues around gendered wording in documentation are going to bring the fall of mankind, I'm probably not going to be accepted there - if someone is that upset about a Bob being changed to a Barbara in the documentation, it's likely they have larger issues with women. I'm glad that you have not suffered any of this, and hope that continues.

What, exactly, would you accept as proof that a community has benefited from the existence of its code of conduct and other community management tools?

> suffered harassment in a few of them

How does this stuff even come up? Most websites have basically anonymous usernames.

Only when I use my facebook/instagram people will call me a white male. But I dont use that for online communities for the most part, and I mention they are racist for propagating race>merit.

While I think people say they wanted to be treated equal, they dont. They want to tell everyone their story and have pitty or debate over themselves.

> How does this stuff even come up? Most websites have basically anonymous usernames.

Because my photo exists on GitHub - like many men's - and I use my real name. I have no interest in hiding my identity when the men in the same community don't have to, and manage to receive no flack for it. I also occasionally attend conferences, meetups, and so on and so forth, and my various physical attributes are incredibly obvious there.

> Who's writing that code? Do individuals write code and throw it over the wall, never having to talk to another soul?

Individuals who I respect professionally based on their work and effort, but whose religion and sexual orientation is something I leave to be their own. Same as I leave mine my own and don't try to impose on to others.

> And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community?

If someone is detrimental to the community because of their actions within the community, that makes the resolution fairly obvious without a need to codify this in a document focused mostly on ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

In case a community member holds opinions outside the project which another member finds objectionable, and which that other member then actively or repeatedly brings into the project, in order to stir conflict or evict others, I also think it's fairly obvious who is causing actual harm to the community.

And in those cases I would be very cautious about automatically portraying this offended person as a "victim", because doing so will also automatically portray the other party as a offender, despite this person maybe not having any direct involvement in the "offence" at hand.

And then you've created/codified a source of polarization in your community. That's IMO even worse than occasionally having people get offended and squaring up.

> If someone is detrimental to the community because of their actions within the community, that makes the resolution fairly obvious without a need to codify this in a document focused mostly on ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

Funnily enough, it's usually highly political to suggest that someone might be detrimental to the community, even when it's obvious. I constantly see women leave communities because it's less of a hassle to find a group that actively seeks to protect its members than to try and gain enough political capital and put up with enough crap to get members thrown out. The people with no personal problems in those same communities never realise that there's a problem - they never realise that their community could benefit from kicking out the bigots, or even asking them to tone it down a little. And in fact they'll often actively fight to ensure that people suffer no consequences for their actions.

The hackers just write code and are generally nice to each other (with occasional flames). No CoC needed.

The activists and profiteurs who don't code see that there exists something that they can attach themselves to and increase their personal brand.

The make life difficult for hackers and do not give a damn. They want to be political officers, because that is the only thing they can monetize and profit from.

>Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots

I already replied to your other comment relating my work experience. To me, it's simple: no, you don't try to teach bigots better behavior, you reprimand them once (if their action wasn't too horrible), and after that you kick them out. Bad behavior can't be tolerated because of the effects you describe: it chases away other people. You don't need a "diversity initiative", you just need leadership willing to enforce some very simple rules of civility. If a project doesn't have that leadership, then find one that does.

>Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it?

Again, you kick out the trouble-makers. Why is this a hard concept?

>the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members.

Sounds like you (plural) needed to do something about the leadership, if possible. I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?

>The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored.

This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations. Putting an elevator into some old industrial building is not a cheap thing to do. If the organization doesn't have the money, they don't have the money. Would all the hackerspace members, yourself included, be willing to cough up $1000 to put in an elevator? I doubt it.

>A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences

This sucks, and unfortunately I don't know what you can do about that, because this isn't like a workplace or other organization where you can just identify the offenders and either discipline or eject them. It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.

> You don't need a "diversity initiative", you just need leadership willing to enforce some very simple rules of civility. If a project doesn't have that leadership, then find one that does.

I find projects that seem to care enough to kick uncivil members out by the presence of a code of conduct (very basic document that says "we welcome people, harassment is bad folks" and points at a resolution process most of the time) and leadership that's willing to talk about the issues that members of the community face. There's no other way to tell whether a community will have my back, and yet that gets classed as a "diversity initiative".

> I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?

It's a small group, 30-odd members, completely bootstrapped. Eventually I managed to gain enough political capital to convince a couple of people to talk to him, and it was eventually resolved - not before a lot of harm was done.

> This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations.

Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations, rather than - as a union that a friend is part of and that has plenty of money is doing - ignoring the needs of their members despite having the capital. I believe the hacklab is moving to a more accessible location in the near future primarily due to the increased accessibility, despite it costing them a little more money and potentially needing to raise membership costs or spend effort on recruiting new members, which is great.

> It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.

That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them. It's more painful to try and do something about it and then see the same person at the next conference anyway with no apparent resolution than to just try and heal privately.

I think we may be talking about different things. A simple CoC is fine: "act civility and decently or there will be consequences" is what any decent CoC should boil down to. It's sad that any project feels that it needs such a thing, but if the project has an incident with a toxic member, it's understandable that they would feel the need for one.

A "diversity initiative" is something else altogether, attempting to do some kind of social politics rather than focus on the work. Pushing to recruit people of certain genders or ethnicities is an example here. IMO, there should be no such thing: members should be welcomed no matter their background or physical features, as long as they can follow the simple CoC (i.e., act civility and don't harass, abuse, etc.).

>Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations

I see no problem here. You have to be realistic though, but it doesn't hurt to keep your eyes open to other possibilities.

>That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them.

Hmm.. definitely a tricky problem, and an indication of a toxic culture in some places. Maybe whatever organization that person is from should be disinvited from future conferences if they apparently condone such behavior? Otherwise, your organization could refuse to attend, citing such behavior. It does seem that some people (particularly those in leadership positions) need to take a stand here. Unfortunately, it does seem that usually, positive social change only comes about because of sacrifices made by some brave individuals.

It's easy to say all that when you are not being targeted or having to suffer the interactions that are the problem. Of course you don't see it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What you are describing is exactly what people want. They want to be able to do something they love and focus on that, not the rest of their world.

The issue is that some people do bring it into the conversation. It's not the choice of the people being targeted. These kinds of movements are about trying to ensure that those people can participate without having to deal with abuse.

No one is going to accuse you of being bigoted for criticising some code - that's creating a strawman.

Imagine you are trans and you offer up some changes, and they are rejected out of hand. You get a twitter DM full of abusive language. Should they have not had a twitter account with the same name as their github account where they talk about personal issues?

If you are acting as you say you are, (as most people do!), then you can ignore this stuff completely, because it won't affect you. What it will do, is ensure that people who do see that kind of harassment or abuse can get involved in the projects, and focus on the code.

Saying that people trying to stop abuse in FOSS communities are not focusing on the code is like complaining that someone getting punched isn't focusing on the task at hand. They were trying to! Blame the one doing the punching, not the one asking if we can stop them being punched.

> Imagine you offer up some changes, and they are rejected out of hand. You get a twitter DM full of abusive language. Should they have not had a twitter account with the same name as their github account where they talk about personal issues?

That's would be a problem anyhow, no matter who is affected.

Your ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation is not relevant to that particular case, so why bring it up at all? Why make it the core of your argument?

Believe it or not, the vast majority of abuse of this sort happens to members of minority groups due primarily to their existence as part of said group. Shock, horror, etc.

And do you know what? You're protected by the same code of conduct anyway, even if you do suffer that by some fluke. The Rust Code of Conduct has one line which states "We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all", followed by a listing of example characteristics under which people are commonly discriminated against - the basic assumption being that a person who isn't discriminated against doesn't need to be told that they're welcome, they already know that they are, the same as they don't need to be told that they're welcome before they apply to university or pop into their local bar or decide to rent a place in a "nice" neighbourhood or decide to take a midnight stroll. Later, there's a reference to a list of actions which are commonly considered "harassment", which includes things like "deliberate intimidation, stalking or following", which apply to anybody. Are you a man being sexually harassed by a man, woman, or non-binary person? That's included too, under "unwelcome sexual attention"!

It is relevant, because they are the people who get targeted repeatedly. Again, it's easy to say it shouldn't be the focus when you aren't the person getting harassed repeatedly.

It's fair that they want to know they can feel safe and contribute to a project - being explicit that they are welcome is important to helping these people overcome the adversity they face.

Why is it a problem for you that their issues are voiced? You said before it was a "disproportionate amount of energy being spent", but for the people spending that energy, it's not - it's their work or hobby being messed up time and again, and they are defending it.

Beyond that, the work being done is for anybody - it's not limited to those cases - but you say yourself you don't face these problems. These issues affect some people more - so why is it surprising that the solutions focus on them (but not exclusively)?

>The diversity initiatives in the Rust community are one of the primary reasons I attempt to stay part of it, file bug reports, fix code, and attend conferences, in a way that I don't in communities which appear divided over whether or not it's socially acceptable to harass me based on my gender and/or medical history.

>You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code

I don't know about your work situation, but I work in a pretty conservative industry as a software engineer, and many (but definitely not all) of my coworkers are probably Trump voters, and certainly conservative. But there's also women here, Muslims, one guy who's physically disabled, etc.

We don't talk about politics at work here, nor have I heard much open talk about politics in my last workplace that had a bunch of conservatives. People focused on the work. I certainly haven't seen any kind of harassment of people of religious minorities, people with medical problems, or women; everyone seems (and seemed at the previous jobs) pretty happy with the workplace. But there haven't been any "diversity initiatives"; they just seem to hire the best applicants, given the conditions they have (who's applying, etc.) and their goals (wanting to hire a certain number of "fresh-outs" for instance).

Why you seem to think that you need "diversity initiatives" to prevent harassment is completely beyond me. You don't need diversity initiatives to make sure people act civil towards each other and treat their coworkers with respect. In fact, most workplaces with college-educated professionals seem to have little trouble with their employees acting poorly this way. When they do, they get reprimanded or fired.

Workplaces != voluntary organisations. You could lose your livelihood and sink into crippling debt if you were fired - not so much if you're kicked out of a community. And, of course, people generally pick communities that they'd like to be part of and which contain people they generally agree with, whereas people are often willing to put up with a hell of a lot in return for money.

You do, in fact, need active community management in order to convince some minority of people to treat each other with respect if there's otherwise no downside to failing to do so.

I'm not so sure about your assertions here. AFAICT, the people I've worked with who are conservatives just generally wouldn't be that interested in working on a volunteer software project like that. They'd rather spend their free time with their fishing boat or something. I don't think they really care enough about software to get involved in a FOSS project. So I think FOSS projects may attract personalities that are more extreme than typical developers, with more personality defects.

But I completely agree about needing active management. I think this is true for any organization. You're just not going to get good results if you don't have some kind of leadership keeping people in line.

To be honest, I've never understood how people can see a code of conduct as being a divisive agenda. Every one I've seen has been strongly in favour of inclusivity.

I've seen numerous examples of such documents codifying that it's completely OK to indulge in both sexism and racism if the person on the receiving end belongs to the wrong race, sex or has the wrong sexual orientation. I find it hard to support such initiatives.

And again: It detracts from what should be the focus: code.

Could you cite one of these? It's not something I've ever seen.

TODOGroup's OpenCOC[1] would be the most prominent example:

> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding: Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’"

So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.

> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.

I think more people need to acknowledge that these COCs are

1. Controversial as opposed to universal. Trying to frame it as universal, and then excluding anyone who disagrees with that, just shows that it by definition is the opposite of inclusive.

2. The noise generated from the above controversy is detracting from other work on the project.

IMO such measures should be avoided at all cost, as far as possible, especially considering how most FOSS projects are healthy, an that in most cases controversy like this is not needed and will do more harm than good.

[1] http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/

I'm sure many workplaces were healthy before the success of feminism and the introduction of women to many traditionally male workplaces and jobs last century, too.

> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

> If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.

This is funny in a way because I said these things encouraged toxic discussions and exclusion of non-agreeing view-points. And now this entire thread is flagged.

Way to be proven right, I guess.

You may have a point there.

However, another reading of these facts could be that they the maintainers are human and have limited bandwidth to deal with such problems. If you observed that there was a high frequency of erroneous complaints that wasted your time citing "reverse-isms" you would be right to exclude them. Similarly if a lot of people wanted to try and bring you into debates that you didn't feel were productive, you would also ban those discussions.

I'm sure if they similarly experienced any cases where, say, cis white men were genuinely discriminated against, they would then revisit the code of conduct.

I tend to think code of conducts try and say that a community will be accepting and inclusive of people within it. They are made by people with limited bandwidth trying to do their best to deal with discrimination and harassment problems as they come up.

> So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.

Here is the crux of the matter. Their code of conduct does not explicitly ban the behaviour you outlined. I would not say that the code of conduct says that is ok. The code of conduct does not explicitly ban fox hunting, but I do not take it to say that it condones that. If the group started to have a problem with fox hunting disrupting all of the planned work and activities it would move to stop that.

To me it sounds like the group may have started having a problem with people wasting time by trying to incorrectly cite "reverse-racism" e.t.c. as a method of causing harrassment and moved to stamp it out. Seems very reasonable to me.

>Faced with constant reminders (like this) of how they keep causing toxic debates

I kinda agree. Instead of solving the problem, it only digs worse.