undecisive

In a situation where the only thing anyone has is speculation, and speculation on top of speculation. This gaslighting is disgusting and needs to stop.

But yes, in retrospect I should have added an IMHO. On every HN comment anyone's ever written, probably.

> What they said and what kind of person they are are 2 different discussions.[1]

That's an interesting and potentially useful youtube video, so thanks for that. However it presupposes a couple of things that I don't think hold true here.

One of the most important is that you cannot know intent. The person spouting racist crap could be misinformed or miseducated or just didn't realise that what they said is commonly used to cause hurt - but just as equally, they might be a fundamentally hateful person spouting hatred. In that case, it is sensible to treat the comments based on the likely harms achieved, and not the intent, up to a point. (Even then, it's helpful to have people who will choose respectful education rather than abrasive condemnation)

In this case, pretty sure everyone agreed that the intent wasn't malicious, but that it wasn't appropriate or helpful or necessary in that forum, and the confused delivery didn't help either. (I would also accept arguments that his "at least it wasn't a blond joke" comments indicated a level of culturally normalized misogyny, but that's a far cry from malice)

But there's another issue, which brings us back to the origin of this thread: What kind of discourse do we want in our communities? It seems we have a choice - to either assume benign intent, or to assume malice.

In the first quote of this comment, I assumed malice - that you're trying to be dismissive and gaslight me. I'm pretty sure you're not. Not that your statement wasn't dismissive, but I don't think that's your intention - you were simply explaining how you read my comment. And hopefully, when you read that, it seemed out of place - because I try to be respectful and balanced, and I highly value a well-reasoned discussion.

But discourse where we treat people with respect and assume best intentions leads to better outcomes. If, in the absence of any certainty, we assume good intent and push people - with kindness - towards behaviours that are helpful instead of problematic, then we make the world a better place and make each other better people.

The only other option* is to choose the worst possible interpretation of a person's words. More so, this form of discourse almost guarantees that you will be alienating people based on language and culture, and is more painful for people on the autism spectrum and other neurodivergences.

* (you could argue there's a middle ground, but in terms of how you legislate community values, humans usually spin off towards any available edges, especially when in pain)

And actually, in this case I don't find fault in the way most of the mailing list started by calling out the behaviour. The person making the problematic comment doubled down, tried to explain themselves, failed to do so and made the problem worse. Again, maybe if it had been off-list, a better approach could have been found, and the situation was not helped by people feigning injury on someone else's behalf.

The problem that I was addressing was the after-effects - trying to change the CoC to flip the discourse from being explicitly expecting good intentions to expecting everyone to assume malice.

And that's not to say there aren't some hard questions in this. In trying to be quick and brief (and in some cases angry), nobody managed to articulate to the poster in a way they understood what their statement could be misconstrued as saying. Whose job is that? In the case where people are genuinely hurt, there is an absolutely valid principle that it's not the hurting party's job to educate their abuser. There is a widely accepted principle that being an Ally is a good thing because it fortifies the hurting party's morale. There was a vaguely understandable principle mentioned that a person does not have to be the target of a hurt to feel the hurt of a target that may or may not exist.

But that should not encompass the whole community. We need people who recognise that the person who causes hurt unintentionally will themselves be hurt in the backlash and the mob justice. And this is where the concept of "Ally" becomes wholly problematic. Those people should not defend the problematic behaviour, or dismiss the reaction as baseless, or invoke cancel culture or witch burning or hypocrisy etc, but instead work towards reconciliation. It's hard to say "These ally behaviours are fine, those ally behaviours are evil" because in each case, both parties are just being who they are.

"assuming good intentions [means] ignoring anything unintentionally objectionable" is a false dichotomy, a lazy one at that, and needs to be called out as such. I agree we should propose a different standard, and I agree that trolling is a poor substitute for reasoned advocacy.

It seems society increasingly favours "trauma-response ping-pong", and it seems the tech sphere is one of the few places on the internet where you can advocate against that without getting your head bitten off. It makes me sad, but maybe I should just shut my emotionally-stunted mouth and get with the times.

Which, now that I say it out loud, do sound very very similar.

But this feeling that they are all liars is not new.

In fact, at least with politicians they have a very easy "tell": You know when a politician is lying because their lips move.

(That joke has been around since before I was born, and I was born in the 80s.)

The difference isn't that the country thinks politicians are liars. That has not changed. The difference is that there has always been this "honour code" in politics, where if your sleaze was found out, you fell on your sword. But this was not ever backed up with any law with teeth, and so when the likes of Boris repeatedly lies, he can just throw another flunky under the bus to appease the crowds, or do something stupid to make the crowds laugh, and carry on as normal.

I don't think politics ever needed any outward credibility. It never had any. It needed external accountability. And without encouraging the media and the public to hold them to account when they do lie, we'll never get that accountability. In effect, the post-truth weakness you describe should never depend on public perception. In a well functioning government, repeated unrepentant deception should always trigger some form of legal jeopardy.

The media - not just traditional print media - is feeling increasingly fragile since the shift away from newspapers.

So while there's an appetite for it, news sites will cover any topic that needs covering. So, for example, the existence of Bolsonaro would have mostly gone under the radar had the septic spraytan not endorsed him, at which point the media felt it could start calling out the BS that was coming from there.

But it isn't just the slimy swampcleaner salesman, when antisemitism scandals that mention Israel erupt, that becomes an acceptable time to talk about their bad behaviour, under the guise of "these are the legitimate criticisms that this person is / could be raising". Do Israel stop being human rights abusers when antisemitism is not in the news? Of course not. But it isn't seen as newsworthy enough unless something local has piqued our interest.

When people are killed in racist attacks by american cops, BLM activism and systemic racism become part of the news cycle again. Does racism stop whenever there hasn't been a high-profile racist murder recently? Of course not. But without that hook, people looking to follow the story won't be clicking on every link.

And unlike traditional newspaper, where you could buy the thing just for the crossword and the advertisers will still pay, only the individual stories and individual page loads bring revenue. And so the media can no longer afford to finance investigative journalism that might not resonate with the public.

So I don't think it's that the rhetoric that has changed. News cycles are responding to what they think our attention span is, based on the numbers they see in the ad revenue. And in this specific instance, while China has had an uneasy relationships with the Uighurs since at least the 1950s, it's the secret and courtless detention and "reeducation" centres that have really got people riled up (shhh... don't mention Guantanamo) and that's only been happening since around 2017.

This reminds me of a recent British politics round-table interview, where a member of the ruling party told the world that we shouldn't call politicians liars - despite the current Prime Minister lying through his teeth at almost every opportunity simply because he can get away with it - because it would undermine people's faith in the political system that keeps lying to them.

It seems that saying the things that need to be said about the political systems that need to be called out is not as important as getting the money (or savings) that the countries attached to those political systems can generate.

Or, as a great man once sang:

    For china (f'china x 4) is a country that can bring us to our knees.

- They are under no obligation to keep your data if they delete your account

- They are under no obligation to give you your data in a human-readable format

- If they are unable to securely validate your identity, they would have a stronger obligation to refuse

- There are caveats for when extracting your data would be disproportionately difficult.

For example, if they encrypt emails individually at rest and then throw away the decryption key attached to your account login record, I don't know what legal recourse you would have.

That's not to say categorically you're wrong. I suspect you might be right, and I imagine that Vivaldi themselves might be extremely helpful. It's quite a new service though, and I haven't seen any evidence one way or another.

    # Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)

Reading it charitably however (which nobody ever seems to want to do) it may well be saying that someone else is calculating a woman's age. This would lead me to suppose it is a common chivalrous humour (at least round these parts) linked to the idea that you should never ask a lady how old she is, which is to send birthday cards with exaggeratedly low numbers. e.g. you might send a 60-year-old lady a birthday card saying "Happy 21st birthday (again)" - but you would never do that for a man (often the opposite, in fact).

Now then, you could argue - and some have - that this is still a form of sexism. Indeed, orthodox feminism* dictates that all forms of chivalry are antiquated and cause more harm than good, and there are some good arguments to support that, while many staunch feminists point out that it is a real shame to have to legislate against kindnesses towards women (especially when even if true social equality is ever achieved, often the biological encumbrances bias life against women anyway.)

So yes, you may well be absolutely correct. And even when "people who defended the joke linked it to a current stereotype" they might be doing so with full understanding of the charitable reading. I should also point out, I have never spoken to this chap, I have no idea what kind of person he is. Is he a raving misogynist? No idea. Does he spit on the cake at women's birthdays? Maybe. Is he a cat pretending to be a human? Probably.

All of these are completely and entirely beside the point though. The reaction was to legislate away from attempting compassionate dialogue. I don't know what would have happened if someone off-thread had said "Hi, just to let you know, some people might be reading this as X and I'm sure you didn't mean that - can I recommend you get ahead of it and say Y before someone gets offended?". Maybe it would have been exactly the same.

Instead, a bunch of people invoked their right to offence, and insisted that the CoC be changed to codify that right.

* [Just to clarify, I meant orthodox feminism in the sense of feminism that follows the arguments to their logical conclusions and adheres to them strictly, rather than what Google seems to think I mean]

It feels like the "right thing" to have a CoC, and it only makes sense if you make it enforceable, and that only makes sense if you make it comprehensive.

So I understand how we get to this point with totally good intentions - whatever misgivings I might have about CoCs in general.

I use Vivaldi (not their email service, but their browser) and I like it a lot. I wish it were based on FF and not Chrome, but unfortunately it makes a lot of sense from an operational perspective. I've seen nothing malicious in anything they have done to date.

So I'd rather they saw this and fixed it. And I'll still happily recommend people give it a go. But if they insist on keeping this wording in their CoC, I'll certainly advise people to steer well clear of the webmail service.

Sounds totally implausible, now that I think about it. It's a conspiracy theory, and I'm sure we're better than that. Let's move on.

Don't get me wrong - I understand that with an international community, sarcasm can be problematic. For example, the ruby community had lots of "fun" just over a month ago with a joke on a mailing list intended to be poking fun at traditional chivalry, that many mistook to be sexist. Then further jokers submitted pull requests changing the CoC wording in humorous ways that looked fine to non-native eyes, claiming those changes would fix the problem, and so the maintainers accepted those changes, until the sarcasm was pointed out clearly. It was pretty embarrassing for all involved.

Is the only solution to ban all jokes and all sarcasm? I don't think so. But as a sarcastic pr*k at heart, I may well be biased. I certainly don't think you should lose access to all your email over it though.

If you are arguing against the phenomenon of CoCs in general, then I agree - they are a blight, rife with overreach and often easily misused to justify prejudice or condemn innocent misunderstandings. While I won't deny the emergent behaviour of self-policing based on fear, I suspect the origins of the CoC are actually less subtle and more an attempt to assign power to marginalised and persecuted groups, without recognition that actually causes a net increase in inequity, that power corrupts and in turn causes more persecution thanks to the bad taste left in people's mouths when being victimised unfairly due to prejudices mislabelling themselves as anti-prejudices.

But that's an aside. Power will always be, inequality will always be, prejudice will always be - and the point of the CoC was never to improve that, merely invert it. It has, in some ways (along with other cultural and corporate shifts) worked beautifully and now has dominance over the Open Source community landscape at least. I don't see us putting that particular genie back in the bottle any time soon.

But we can try to keep the potential harms in check. And raise the alarm when we see potentially dangerous overreaches.

In the current climate of escalating prejudice on both sides of the fence, I'm not sure there's much more we can do.

[When I wrote this, you had been downvoted. Though it only occurs to me now that the sarcasm might have been completely lost on some people!]

In other words, I'd like to assume the best intentions, and they might yet choose to rectify it.

Losing your email account for being too sarcastic on a forum about your browser software seems weird, to say the least.

On the other side, if someone doesn't like what you say on the forum for whatever reason (example reason given: Telling jokes or being sarcastic) and enough people report your posts, you may find yourself losing all access to your emails. That seems potentially disproportionate.

Stealing bread if I'm poor - It's okay

Stealing bread from a millionaire if I'm poor - It's wrong

Stealing bread from a duck if I'm poor - It's wrong

Stealing bread from a homeless man if I'm poor - It's okay

Dismembering a robot - It's wrong

Dismantling a robot - It's okay

(I could play with this all day though - very interesting work!)

:o

I mean, I get it - I would avoid undescriptive commit messages myself, and I might mandate it for projects I own or am in some way responsible for.

But I would never complain about it in some stranger's project. Of all the things to complain about...

- at least opens 180 degrees: I often find myself having to do the odd bit of work in the car - which is a nightmare generally, but having a laptop that can open flat is essential.

- Fingerprint reader (that works well under Linux): this is one of the saddest things about my current computer. It's a nice to have, but a very nice to have - especially if I end up doing work in a coffee shop with a thousand CCTV cameras.

(that said, if/when this feature does land, opt-in is definitely the way to go for Brave to show themselves to be completely non-scummy)

a) We are a reactionary species, unfortunately. And that served us well when the burning questions of the day were "Tiger friend? [BITE] No, tiger never friend" but less so when discussing the social weight felt by minority and historically persecuted groups, the benefits and pitfalls of hyper-vocal "allies" and the social disenfranchisement felt by potential allies bitten by persecutions that they are told do not exist.

b) We are a reductionist species, unfortunately. That helps us when understanding the complexities of mathematical infinities and physics and the workings of the human central nervous system, because - between similarly educated peers - a scientific community can abstract away the irrelevent bits and share groundbreaking research outcomes with relative ease. But when "normals" try to enter the discussion, they mistake the simplified abstract descriptions for a simple concept and end up contributing nonesense or reporting falsehoods to the rest of the world (e.g. are we moments away from fusion generators? Are we on the cusp of ignition? No, no we're not).

And so, when discussions take place about the relative protections and privileges inherent with social majority groups and justify the particular resource expenditure on helping to rebalance centuries of systemic prejudices, people will misread what they understand of the zeitgeist and say "Your social privilege, as defined by your [race / gender / sexuality / ability / age / etc] means that your feelings need no consideration"

c) We are a self-absorbed species, unfortunately. It contributes to our survival and that of our dependants to ensure that we take the resources we need so that we are in a position to then help the rest of our clan. Weirdly though, we also have faculties for patience and imagination. And so we are happy to imagine ourselves in the shoes of someone we consider as "sufficiently other" to the point where we will fight for them as if they are our own clan, which is in a way wonderful (not always - see "white saviourism") but it means that those similar enough to be relatable receive a negative consideration, being not different enough to be worth the emotional investment, but not similar enough that they are truly "in the same boat", though we feel like they are. For example, try to analyse your perceptions of the poor and homeless that live near you, compared to the poor and starving people from distant countries.

It just "feels different", right?

That "local mistrust" is just as much an undeserved prejudice as the fact that you probably imagined those "people from a distant country" with a particular skin colour.

And lastly:

d) Our emotions deceive us constantly. That small racism dig in part C - if that affected you (sorry!) might make you susceptible to further emotional manipulation, because (see A) we are a reactionary species, and so from there it's easy for someone to manipulate us to reduce (see B) the world into "overprivileged vs underprivileged" clans, take on the underprivileged as our own (see C) and thereby increase our prejudice under the guise of eliminating prejudice.

Then echo chambers, then reinforcement by media, friends, catchy superficial soundbites, our employment... and finally our own selves, because once you've declared your unwavering support for a vaguely positive cause, it's very hard to walk that back.

And convincing someone to reverse a commitment they have made that has superficially positive soundbites because they are taking a damaging approach is a lot harder than reversing a prejudice they fell into through normal upbringing.

Maybe, long-term, that isn't a problem. Over the generations, we'll react ourselves to a position where everyone is protected. Short-term though, we'll have to use our privilege to be a force for good in between protected factions.

People believe themselves to be within a certain margin of "good people", and having incontrovertible proof of being "The Biggest Hypocrite" makes them uncomfortable.

There are of course those who don't feel that discomfort; there are even those that commit victim-filled crimes without remorse. Often, there are external forces we can lean on to bring those people into line or out of society - and agreed, in the case of Open Source Software communities, those external forces don't always exist or are not reliable for regulating something as insignificant as moderation policies on a mailing list.

There are also those that would leverage that discomfort for their own immoral benefit, and bad rules are equally good enablers of that kind of person.

But I don't think it's fair to say that the quality of rules is meaningless - if there is any level of accountability in the sub-community of moderators (or in the community as a whole), good fair and enforceable rules have power.

I will speak to the motivation however, because I'm a reconcillatory kind of person most of the time, and unlike this CoC I do believe intent is important.

I believe that the intent behind those adopting these documents is protection and general social good, and I believe their adoption is very very bad because those adopting them are blindsided.

Because the people writing them are not lawyers, and are not expecting them to be used as laws to be enforced, but as "good feeling reinforcers". Effectively, corporate virtue signalling (and, in some cases probably also personal virtue signalling - with all the negative connotations that brings).

The fact is, when you introduce a set of rules, you have to expect those rules to be interpreted by people with some extreme biases, and ensure that the wording produces a fair outcome regardless. It doesn't matter whether you call these rules "guidelines", or a "code", or even a "statement of intent". They will be used as rules, and if they aren't, then what is the point of writing them?

(Though, if you feel Hanlon's razor is a better motivator for you, I won't judge)

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"

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]