[HN Gopher] Golang: Code of Conduct Updates
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Golang: Code of Conduct Updates
Author : 0xedb
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-09-16 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (go.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (go.dev)
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > The paradox of tolerance is that the one group of people we
| can't welcome are those who make others feel unwelcome.
|
| I really hope Google takes a strong stance and bans Muslim from
| all projects due to their views on homosexuality. While a
| minority of Muslims might not personally have an issue with
| homosexuality I don't think it's fair to ask people to tolerate
| members of such an intolerant religion.
| alpinex100 wrote:
| CoC proponents and committees talk with angel tongues about their
| good intentions. In practice, it comes down to roughly 3-5 people
| who play the "deciders". Here's a well known result of power
| abuse:
|
| https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/
|
| Most cancellations are plain abuses of power, with no fair
| hearing (or no hearing at all!) of both sides.
|
| Characteristically, these power grabs occur when languages are
| done and people (representing their corporations) fight for the
| pieces. And they fight dirty.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The more specific a CoC is, the more loopholes there are that
| people will exploit. We just expect "professional behavior", and
| for those who want to argue about what that means, we refer them
| to Emily Post's books.
|
| This works out quite well for us.
| wmf wrote:
| That can work if you have moderators who are trusted, fearless,
| and ruthless. Most communities don't have those people.
| travisd wrote:
| This is a good change. It doesn't allow people to hide behind the
| shield of "good intentions" while refusing to change their
| behavior. Refusing to change your behavior after learning of its
| negative impacts on others is negligent best.
|
| "Any sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from
| malice."
| asguy wrote:
| > This is a good change. It doesn't allow people to hide behind
| the shield of "good intentions" while refusing to change their
| behavior.
|
| I just had a negative emotional response to your perspective on
| this subject. It made me slightly upset that someone would
| think that this is a good change.
|
| Should you change your perspective now that you've `learn[ed]
| of its negative impact on others`, or should I get over it and
| recognize that other people can have different opinions and I
| shouldn't let that affect me?
| Nicksil wrote:
| You're being down-voted but you're spot on.
|
| >This is a good change. It doesn't allow people to hide
| behind the shield of "good intentions" while refusing to
| change their behavior. Refusing to change your behavior after
| learning of its negative impacts on others is negligent best.
|
| Is woefully flawed logic. Expecting someone to change their
| behavior when someone else says they're offended is awful.
| The assumption is that the person speaking is _always_ in the
| wrong and the complainant is _always_ being genuine.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Avoid snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
|
| On the other hand...
|
| 9 out of 10 really skilled devs/engineers or profs that I met had
| tendency to be kinda snarky, especially when somebody's trying to
| do bullshit
|
| Is lack of subtle/direct snarkiness a good thing?
|
| It's like putting constrains on language/tools to express
| yourself, maybe too harshly?
|
| Maybe it's considered normal in "cultures" where people are more
| straightfoward
| diob wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience, and thus worked to make my
| team a safe place for folks where they don't feel the need to
| hide from snarkers (who often are trying to put themselves
| above others by pulling everyone else down).
|
| As a senior engineer / team lead, I really have no patience for
| bad behavior.
|
| Directness is the opposite of snark. If you think something is
| a bad idea, propose an alternative. Or work with the person.
| Anyone can throw out snark, it takes a "really skilled" person
| to do something productive instead.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Companies hire you because you're opinionated, and they retain
| you because you're obedient. You can mix and match the two to
| reach whatever desired effect you want, but them's the rules.
| awb wrote:
| Freedom of speech is important but I think some underestimate how
| destructive hostile speech can be towards collaboration and
| constructive conversation.
|
| With a little effort it's possible to use non-violent
| communication (NVC) to express yourself fully without blaming or
| criticizing others.
|
| And sure it's also a worthy goal to not take things personally,
| but collaboration just works better IMO when we're as kind and
| respectful as possible.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I personally find non-violent communication to be the most
| insulting way anyone can ever communicate. It's infantilizing
| and incredibly demeaning.
| google234123 wrote:
| One thing I dislike about our new moral arbiters is their view
| that intent doesn't matter. They will use anything (e.g. a
| microaggression, a usually inadvertent tiny slight) to justify
| cancelling someone. Tolerance for them also only has only one
| meaning: tolerate us.
| Spartan-S63 wrote:
| It's the paradox of tolerance. If you tolerate intolerance
| (regardless of intent), you pave the way for intolerance to
| take hold.
| light_cone wrote:
| Of course, no one has ever felt to be the intolerant one in
| the story.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Oh, that's not true. I lived in a town, briefly
| fortunately, where the folks did, in fact, know they were
| intolerant when they ran off black families that dared to
| move in through various harassment tactics (horribly,
| mostly directed at the children since the adults had
| thicker skin). They just didn't care.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| >If you tolerate intolerance (regardless of intent)
|
| So should people tolerate people who don't tolerate the
| intolerant? And should other people tolerate them?
|
| I feel like Mr. Garrison's take on it sums it up really well.
| Tolerating someone doesn't mean you like them or support
| their views. It just means you have to live with them. And
| you kind of do, or you have to be willing to remove them from
| society by any means necessary. And at that point, you're
| kind of worse than the intolerant people so long as they
| aren't actively trying to remove people from society by any
| means necessary.
|
| I guess it all depends on how you define intolerant. When I
| hear the word I take it as "refuses to tolerate and will not
| allow coexistence". If that's the case, and that form of
| intolerance is what cannot be tolerated, then it's a full-
| circle mind fuck that makes no sense unless you put yourself
| on a pedestal where you're brand of intolerance is the only
| intolerance that must be tolerated.
|
| And yeah, I don't think that kind of intolerance should be
| tolerated, however I don't think it's as common as people
| make it seem, and I feel like people conflate too many things
| with the genocidal form of intolerance than they do with
| someone who might think something is morally wrong but
| doesn't actually do anything about it. For instance, I know
| some religious people think being gay is morally wrong but
| they don't care what people do or if they can get married. I
| think they're morally wrong for having those beliefs but so
| long as they don't violate the rights of gay ppl I don't see
| why it matters. I mean, I can judge them as much as they can
| judge me.
| light_cone wrote:
| I agree, that is exactly what I think people always
| misunderstand about tolerance: You cannot tolerate
| something you agree with. That is called agreeing, not
| tolerance, by definition.
|
| Tolerance is the wise behavior you should have, reserved
| for things you don't agree with, or even detest.
| [deleted]
| sreque wrote:
| You should read Michael Knowles' Speechless: Controlling
| Words, Controlling Minds. Political radicals have explicitly
| defined tolerance to mean "don't tolerate dissenting views".
| I don't have the exact quote on hand at the moment or I would
| share it, but they were very explicit about their censorship
| goals.
|
| The book also discusses how there has never been unbridled
| free speech. There has always been a standard of speech that
| allows something said and disallows other things said. What's
| changed over time is the standards themselves, and many would
| argue they have changed for the far worse in recent years.
| jsight wrote:
| I only dislike it when its asymmetric. Our policy says intent
| doesn't matter for you, but the policy itself is vague and only
| works if you trust the implementers intent.
|
| I don't see anything obvious in this policy that would cause
| such an issue.
| awb wrote:
| Intent does matter but it's only half the picture. The impact
| is the other half. If you don't intend to run over someone with
| your car, but you do, you still get in trouble (assuming their
| intent want to get run over). You need to be more careful
| because your actions (even unintentional ones) impact others.
|
| From the post, they say that they have a conversation with
| anyone that's the subject of a complaint at which point if you
| express some interest and concern about the impact you're
| having on the community, your intentions will probably be
| respected more than if you just want to focus 100% on your
| intent, impact be damned.
| jchw wrote:
| But this case is interesting. Because when you run someone
| over, you can physically observe the damage done to them. But
| when you communicate in a manner that upsets someone, it's
| impossible to objectively observe the impact. And worse: it
| is strongly personal.
|
| And that is where a truly ridiculous but also entirely
| reasonable question comes in: how much of someone being
| impacted by speech online is really kind of their
| responsibility? It can't be zero because zero would be
| completely incompatible with free society; protected speech
| can necessarily cause discomfort or pain, and realistically
| with increasingly many perspectives you're bound to find
| someone hurt by something. It probably shouldn't be 100%
| either, because there's no amount of thick skin that can't
| ever be broken. Somewhere down the middle is a spot where
| people have to conduct themselves reasonably, but there is
| some expectation for personal resilience in the face of
| adversity in communication.
|
| I suspect that a whole lot of conflict regarding CoC's,
| moderation, etc. comes from people who believe more or less
| responsibility belongs with the person who is impacted by
| given speech. And it is not culturally universal, either.
| People may scoff at the concept but if your vernacular
| differs in a way that is upsetting to someone due purely to
| cultural differences, there may never be a position to stand
| in that is truly "inclusive to all."
|
| Effective inclusivity in a community without some degree of
| compromise by its members is probably impossible, and I worry
| the group dynamics of modern communities does not mesh
| terribly well with this concept, on an internet where
| everything is constantly decontextualized.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| The "you didn't mean to hit someone with your car" thing is
| certainly a fun way to look at it, but what about people only
| get tapped by the bumper and then act like they flipped
| through the air 500 times before slamming their head into the
| concrete? And before anybody pretends like these people don't
| exist, let's think about the football(soccer) players that
| act like their leg is broken when someone sneezes near them.
| And if ppl will be that petty and insincere in a professional
| sporting event, it's fair to say that ppl will do it on the
| internet.
| sreque wrote:
| A better analogy is if you don't intend to run over someone
| with your car and they jump out in front of you, then you are
| not at fault, nor were you doing anything wrong.
|
| Results do matter more than intentions, but sometimes results
| are out of your control or even disconnected from your
| actions. You may say something perfectly reasonable and yet
| someone takes unreasonable offense. Who is to define what is
| reasonable to say and what is reasonable to take offense to?
| In the past decades, the political left has taken us too far
| in the direction of giving a small minority tyrannical
| censorship power to silence by taking offense at whatever
| they dislike, and then cancelling the person who said it.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| > if you don't intend to run over someone with your car and
| they jump out in front of you, then you are not at fault,
| nor were you doing anything wrong.
|
| Not if you are in a pedestrian crossing (especially
| unsignalized one).
| awb wrote:
| What? I can't call someone a "f*** f*" anymore?
|
| Every generation thinks the next generation's rules are
| tyrannical. Speech and culture is messy and it's not black
| and white. To say it's all been bad is ignoring a lot of
| violent speech that is no longer acceptable and the benefit
| that has brought to the the same small minority groups
| you're referencing, from being less subjected to verbal
| attacks.
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| >What? I can't call someone a "f** f*" anymore?
|
| If this is what you honestly think they're referring to
| then I feel like that says a LOT more about you then it
| does about them. They were very clear that they aren't
| talking about situations like this one you've just
| described.
|
| Are you being disingenuous or do you honestly need
| someone to explain what they meant? They're talking about
| crybullies who will disingenuously misinterpret what
| someone says and take offense to it. Very much like
| you've just done.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| > our new moral arbiters
|
| Can you be specific about who you are referring to and what
| your concern is?
| profmonocle wrote:
| > They will use anything (e.g. a microaggression, a usually
| inadvertent tiny slight) to justify cancelling someone.
|
| Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent open
| source project? The debate over COCs is a few years old at this
| point, so if this type of abuse were a common problem I'd
| imagine there'd be some major examples right now. (I freely
| admit there may indeed be some, and I'm just not aware.)
| type0 wrote:
| > Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent
| open source project?
|
| Open Source Initiative itself expelled Eric S. Raymond (a
| founding member) from their mailing list
| grey-area wrote:
| Well one of the people who helped draft this coc have
| themselves been banned from go spaces using it:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/peterbourgon/status/1438597459383.
| ..
|
| I don't know all the drama in this case and don't
| particularly care to know but the punishment seems excessive
| and arbitrary.
|
| This coc seems excessively wordy to me, and subject to
| arbitrary interpretation and enforcement, and thus a waste of
| time for all involved, I don't plan to read it or abide by
| it, but instead to use common sense. IMO community rules are
| enforced by example and gentle encouragement, not by encoding
| a long set of dos and don'ts.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Plus the arbiters tend to be the least moderate, and most
| forthright in their views. It's considered ridiculous when a
| small town dweller attempts to force their morality on the
| world, but apparently perfectly fine when it comes from the
| Californian chattering classes.
| TheCondor wrote:
| Doesn't this address inadvertent slights and micro aggressions?
| google234123 wrote:
| The concept of micro aggressions is based on teaching people
| to feel harmed by inadvertent slights
| _moof wrote:
| I agree that cancelling someone over an accidental
| transgression is a vengeful overreaction. Separately, let me
| ask you this: If I step on your foot, does it hurt less if I
| didn't mean to?
| type0 wrote:
| that depends if you are wearing high heels or not
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(page generated 2021-09-16 23:00 UTC)