Fine with me. It's an offensive term and GitHub has every right to police their service and ban content like this.
Am I supposed to be concerned by this, and if so, why?
Am I supposed to be concerned by this, and if so, why?
Does Github have the right to take it down? Yes.
Is it unethical for Github to take it down? Not at all.
But should they? I don't know, I don't think I would have. It's kind of scary to use cloud services where it's hard to tell if your content might be judged in violation of some rule and might suddenly disappear as a result. If the offensiveness were more extreme (say, a repo dedicated to making fun of the mentally disabled), then yes, remove it... but the actual case here looks pretty benign to me. A poor choice of words, but with no intended malice. Coming down hard in this case looks arbitrary and unexpected, and arbitrary and unexpected rule enforcement is scary.
Certainly, though, it's Github's choice what kind of rules they want to enforce and whether or not they care if this scares users.
Can we stop saying this as a universal truth?
You find it offensive. I and millions other people don't. You deal with it.
Should everyone live to the strictest thinkable standards because somewhere out there is a semi-large group of people who find your behavior offensive?
Such semi-large groups might be religions for example that take various kinds of behaviors you take for granted as offensive.
You want to draw the line at marginalizing a group of people or trivializing something serious like racism. But you want to make sure you are doing it in a way that isn't inhibiting legitimate thoughts, studies, projects, etc. from making it into the public sphere.
Every time you censor speech you stifle legitimate dialog because people will be uncertain whether their thoughts are legitimate or just offensive.
Nobody cares that you are offended. Get over it.
Should they? Yes.
I feel slippery slope arguments get brought up way too much sometimes. Every issue is turning into a binary all-or-nothing ordeal, with no room for nuance or context.
As long as what Github did is 1. ethical (removing a generally accepted as offensive word), 2. legal, then I see no problem with it.
If, IF Github starts making more arbitrary calls, then I think its the time to be angry or worried.
If the ultimatum were, say, 30 days, then I think it's in the realm that I consider sensible. That's long enough to get back from vacation without finding all your stuff is gone. The file had been there over a year, so surely it wasn't that urgent.
Maybe they could have sent an auto-generated pull request to make things easier.
Also, I must have missed the memo when 'retarded' became "generally accepted as an offensive word". Are "stupid" "moronic" and "idiotic" also offensive? I guess I need to keep up with the times--as soon as I think I've figured out the list of everything that could possibly offend someone, we come up with something else.
As I've mentioned in my other comments, I get that the author is just having fun... But:
- not everyone will see it that way
- it will reflect poorly on the author and GitHub
So, in short, just be careful of what you put out in public. If we can all agree on a code of conduct (and maintaining civility), then we shouldn't be having this conversation ever again :)
1. This itself was an arbitrary call.
2. So the issue needs to escalate to a certain arbitrary number in order for you to be worried? One person's repo getting fucked over is not enough, you want it to happen to 20?
'The Dummy guide to ...' can be more offensive than 'The retards guide to ...'.
It depends. Maybe to you and maybe to me (it isn;t). But we are both english speakers. Github has a global presence. What if I am a french speaker and I want to say something is delayed or running a little slow?
What if the word "fail" offended somebody at github? Should they take down projects that have that variable name in their source? (Not asking whether they have the right to do it--asking whether they SHOULD do it)
EDIT:
A couple more things to point out:
1. Think of yourself as an investor who has put money into GitHub. Someone drawing a salary using your money is sending out a message telling a developer not to use a potty-mouth word on the Internet. Do you feel they are putting your investment to the best possible use?
2. As a developer, I now have a new attribute to use to compare GitHub with competitors. I wonder if I have potty-mouth words in my source code. Maybe BitBucket wouldn't put my project in jeopardy because of it...
3. GitHub's own "remove sensitive data" link (referenced in the takedown E-mail) suggests their users use a tool called "BFG Repo-Cleaner". I'm sure they don't think BFG stands for Big Friendly Gun....
Someone drawing a salary using my money is also: playing foosball in the office, buying a foosball table in the office, probably watching cats on Youtube. This is a silly line of reasoning.
3) Profanity and derogatory language are not the same thing; the difference is critically important. Similarly, if you tell someone to FOAD, the FO isn't the most offensive part of that statement.
But it's worth noting because decisions like this are somewhat arbitrary, and we invest in this platform (the visibility/monoculture of github and your "stars" are what make it sticky). So what happens when your repo doesn't conform to their interpretation of social norms?
It's a relatively obscure repo (and I'm sure we all have a few of those ;)), that adds to the whole "arbitrary" narrative.
Another reason it's worth noting: it runs against what Github has made headlines for in the past couple of years: fighting pressures to censor content. What happens if/when leadership changes at the company (it already has over its lifetime): will the policy won't be relaxed even further? Thought exercises like this help us appreciate how invested we are in the monoculture that is Github
var x = getX(); // this is retarded, needs fixing
I didn't write the said offensive code nor did I even know it was there, and GitHub possibly doesn't even tell me why the repo was deleted. At this point my trust with GitHub of keeping my code is safe is broken. When users lose trust in GitHub or feel they've gone big brother then users will jump to newer, emerging alternatives.
This repository had been disabled for several days before this.
It's surprising how little intellectual honesty there is in modern society. It's even more surprising here that some people (perhaps you) are willing to abandon any rational thinking in favor of their feelings. You seemingly can't comprehend (or are willing to ignore) the logical conclusion to where we're headed.
It's ridiculous for GitHub to police the content on their site in this way. Where does it stop? Will they block commits with "trigger" words?
This sort of censorship/filter/whatever-you-call-it is bad because it add way too much value to words. So it's not about what is actually said or the context but only about words.
By that logic it's completely PC if someone is actually offended but in such a way that no bad words are used. But as soon as a Bad Word (TM) is used -- bam.
This is really really dishonest, shallow, and disgusting.
Edit: Also, people can decide to find something to take offense over in order to attack a targeted individual. This should be very concerning to you - are you sure you've never committed anything that an uncharitable person could take offense to? Imagine a few dozen very angry people combing through your work, trying to find something to get outraged about.
Some people feel entitled to say what they want on any platform they choose and cry "censorship" when their offensive speech is removed.
My guess is GH doesn't actively monitor things like this, but someone complained. So they're removing it, and it's just a matter of time before we hear a thousand "slippery slope" arguments.
It's also a verb which means to slow down.
For example, it is necessary to retard the ignition timing of a gasoline engine, and more so at higher RPM, to prevent detonation.
I don't think anyone's out there trying to ban the word "retard" for its non-derogatory usages. Seems like a weird straw-man to worry about.
This is not like a completely separate context like "fag" (cigarette) versus "fag" (homosexual).
The long form "mentally retarded" isn't offensive, yet "mental retard" is so offensive that it violates terms of service and gets you a shutdown threat?
Absurd.
> there's no indication that this was some sort of automated email that was sent purely because a use of the word was detected.
I would find the action less distasteful if it was such a bot. That would still leave open the possibility that the bot isn't expressing its author's intent.
I beg to differ. There's a reason the medical community doesn't use that term anymore.
> any more
I.e. they did! Lay people still do.
Anyway, what matters here is not the standard used by the medical community. I suspect that if a github project had some code that "assists the mentally retarded", it would not bring on the TOS violation police.
>I.e. they did! Lay people still do.
As do rude people.
Here's what you can do: invent a time machine and go back to a time when the term wasn't offensive. Then your statement that the term isn't offensive will be true. Right now, it isn't.
>Anyway, what matters here is not the standard used by the medical community
If you notice, what I said was "there is a reason [...]." My point, then, was about the reason, not the medical community. It doesn't matter what the medical standards are. What matters is that the term is offensive, a fact which prompted the medical community to stop using it.
http://www.wowktv.com/story/29652314/missing-mentally-retard...
The URL has "retarded" in it! And Google's index still has the original article text, which uses the term in the body. They changed it to "challenged".
"Officers are looking for a mentally retarded man they say walked away from a supervised group home where he was ordered to stay."
"Mentally retarded" isn't so offensive that a TV station in America wouldn't initially use the term in July 2015, only to be corrected by some PC people into changing it.
It's just kind of a very direct term for something that is delicate. There is (or should be) some range of separation between "insensitive" and "offensive".
The term ‘autistic’ was endorsed by a large percentage of autistic adults, family members/friends and parents but by considerably fewer professionals; ‘person with autism’ was endorsed by almost half of professionals but by fewer autistic adults and parents.
Well my brother is not autistic. My brother has issues with understanding language and expressing himself. That does make it had for him to relate to ordinary people. But it doesn't mean that he has issues with socialization and emotional attachment. He desperately wants to fit in with people and have meaningful relationships with people.
As such I find the term Autistic, which assumes that he doesn't care about human emotional attachments. And assumes that he's somehow 'sick' to be extremely insulting.
I'd much rather people use the term retard because at least that just generally says that a person has one or more learning deficits and picks certain tasks slower than normal.
And frankly you're never going to get off the euphemism treadmill. That said for the reasons above, the concept of 'retard' is better than autistic by a long shot.
If you're talking about people in the street then I agree with you. That must be infuriating. If that's what you're talking about please do ignore the rest of this post because it's not relevant at all.
But if you're talking about medical professionals, especially those with LD and autism specialism:
Your lack of understanding of autism isn't a particularly good reason to chose to use a word that doesn't fit just because it makes you feel better. ASD is not learning disability, although people with austism can have learning disability as well.
Your stigma around autism is a poor reason to chose to use the wrong word for a condition.
Importantly there is no cure for autism, but there are treatments. By rejecting the autism diagnosis you risk rejecting useful treatments.
> As such I find the term Autistic, which assumes that he doesn't care about human emotional attachments. And assumes that he's somehow 'sick' to be extremely insulting.
There's quite a lot bundled here. About the word sick - what's the difference between retarded (a medical condition) and autism (a medical condition)?
About the social stuff: That's not true, where did you learn that? That's a caricature of autism.
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autistic-spectrum-disorder/Page...
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/introduction/what-is-a...
People with autism have trouble with human interaction; they can have trouble understanding emotions in other people. That does not mean that they do not care about other people or that they do not crave friendship and relationships.
One of the reason that suicide is higher in people with autism is because they desire human interaction but haven't been given the skills to acheive those.
> And frankly you're never going to get off the euphemism treadmill.
Retard is an imprecise euphemism. It has been used to deny people segregate people from society; to experiment upon them without their will; to deny them medical treatment; to kill them. Learning disability (or autism, if that's what someone has) are more precise, and more neutral, terms.
Feel free to call your brother what you like. Just don't be surprised if it causes strongly negative reactions in people you meet.