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Could Go Community's Threat of Public Shaming, Lifetime Bans Make Go a No-Go?
theodp writes: At first glance, the proposal for A Code of Conduct for the Go Community (attributed to Google's Andrew Gerrand) seems reasonable enough. How can you argue with the goal of treating everyone with respect and kindness? But the Devil is in the detail, and the proposed Code notes there soon could be consequences for calling someone an "idiot" or saying something is "so simple even my grandma could understand it" (the latter "marginalises women and the elderly by implying that something need be simple for an old woman to understand it"). And the punishment meted out by the Go Code of Conduct Working Group to those who find themselves on the receiving end of an anonymous complaint could be anything from nothing to "a request for a private or public apology, a private reprimand from the working group to the individual(s) involved, a public reprimand, an imposed vacation (for instance, asking someone to 'take a week off' from a mailing list or IRC), or a permanent or temporary ban from some or all Go spaces (mailing lists, IRC, etc.)." And no, this doesn't appear to be a goof. So, might individuals and companies think twice about embracing a programming language whose community's Code of Conduct threatens to ruin reputations and ban people from technical support resources for life? Too late to get this added to the list of questions for Alan Donovan and Brian Kernighan?
"This is a departure from the typical proposal process, since discussions Around Codes of Conduct tend to devolve quickly. By restricting the discussion Of this proposal to 1:1 conversations between myself and members of the Community, I hope to better hear everyone’s specific concerns without generating unnecessary noise."
This is a typical excuse from people who want to push things through without public discussion. They call public discussion "noise". I have no idea who this guy is, but he sounds like an egomaniac. Well guess what? We are calling you out. You don't get "1:1 conversations between yourself" and everyone else. This is the Internet.
The problem is implementation - once a community gets past a certain size, you have enough people that the marginal nutcases can band together and be a signficant force.
Because most people don't want to spend half their time fighting to maintain a sane community, they just want to participate in the community.
It's not just online forums, I've run into this with fan volunteer organizations and condo associations - there's always someone with more time than you who wants to enforce their overly restrictive moral code on everyone else.
Usually one tiny little semi-reasonable step at a time.
This is not adult behavior, this is childish behavior. They are attempting to coddle, marginalize, dictate speech, etc etc in an effort to control intent Adults can say that's stupid or you're a moron as part of normal healthy discourse it's intent that matters. Healthy razzing friendly banter etc etc is part of normal adult communication.
No sir I dont like it.
If he just removed the line about "microaggressions" and the following two lines (and examples), it would be a reasonable code of conduct.
Of course, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The whole point of this exercise is to use the CoC as a means to promote an ideology.
Now, given all the complaints this will surely generate, do you think he'll take his own advice?
Somehow I doubt it.
Expecting decent behavior is not the same as enforcing hypocrisy.
"Go" fuck yourselves, 'kay?
Hey Andy, have you ever wondered why Plus failed so miserably?
Well, good news - You'll get a second chance to learn this lesson in the very near future!
Even Andrew's Grandma would think his code of conduct silly, he should talk to her about it
Anyone trying to push through a CoC into what is basically a public forum has already gone too far. The only reason for it is to punish people they don't like.
I simply cannot see how having a code of conduct based on treating other people in a respectful manner will result in discouraging desirable developers and companies from joining the community. Quite the reverse in fact!
I know the 'microagression' thing is a beloved trope of the left and fearless Social Justice Warriors. But the thing is, in order to show what a good person you are in this context, you have to keep moving and moving further and further to the left. It always comes to a point where it becomes ridiculous and counterproductive.
Remember the "Black Lives Matter" people who deliberately disrupted the furthest left presidential candidate America has ever had, the openly socialist Bernie Sanders? Yeah, that. If there is anyone who is a friend of the extremists in BLM, it's him - and yet they treated him like an enemy. Even if you're on the left, or the hard left, there are always others who are ready to show you just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
Now, this is just a programming language, this isn't the literal jackboot of oppression as employed by left-wing governments of the past. Nobody is going to be sentenced to slavery or sent down to the countryside for defying Andrew Gerrand. So, let's keep some perspective here. However, this is showing all the classic signs of the ever-ratcheting extremism that is a hallmark of the political left. They'll come for you too, even if you have a stellar record of social justice warrioring. A single offhand comment is sufficient. I thought I recognized the "theodp" account, and sure enough it's one of Slashdot's solidly left-wing contributors, with a long record of approved social justice friendly submissions. But even SHE is turned off by this kind of thing! :(
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Some people really love gigantic CoCs. It seems like big CoCs are the in thing right now, but personally, I find massive CoCs to be uncomfortable.
Dick jokes aside, while I'm in favor of having some community expectations of conduct, I'm not in favor of building a huge body of rules to cover every single situation. What you need are some simple rules ("conduct yourself with courtesy and professionalism", "don't be an asshole", etc) and a group of trustworthy moderators who enforce those rules fairly regardless of the political views of the person the rules are being applied to.
Even if your rules are well-intentioned, the trouble is that the larger and more specific the rule set, the more easily one clique or another will be able to manipulate those rules to their advantage. It's better, as a moderator, to be able to identify individuals who are toxic and remove them from the community than have a set of arbitrary and overly specific rules that you'll ultimately fail to enforce fairly. All too often, you'll end up deciding that you *want* to get rid of a particular community member due to them having an overall negative impact on the community, and then watching them like a hawk so that you can ban them for the tiniest violation of your rule set, all the while your regular (and less toxic) users are constantly committing tiny rules violations themselves.
To be honest, large rule sets *invite* toxicity, because a) people tend to see them as a challenge, and b) some people realize they're part of the in-crowd and can get away with flouting the rules while other people who *aren't* part of the in-crowd get banned for small infractions.
And this is to say nothing of CoCs which *aren't* well-intentioned. The GitHub projects CoC, for instance, explicitly carved out rights for people to bully others based on race, sex, orientation, etc, simply based on whether that person is part of the majority with respect to those particular attributes. I'm all for disallowing gendered and racial harassment, but I have to suspect the motives of people writing a CoC that gives certain people carte blanche to engage in that kind of harassment. Harassment is *ever a good thing*. You aren't losing anything by disallowing *all of it*.
SJWs are pushing these 'code of conduct' policies on open source projects so they can infiltrate and take over, just as they've done on everything else. This is why you never, ever, accept any of them into an open source project, and laugh when they suggest that you need a 'code of conduct'.
Of course, it doesn't really work with an open source license, since the coders they kick out of their own projects can just fork and start a new one. Except they'll presumably ensure that GPL4 has a section which prohibits cisgendered whitemales from using the code.
Or might individuals and companies embrace a programming language whose community that is polite and professional?
No, no they won't - When access to the community depends on the mercy of a self-appointed minimod with the power to ban you without recourse... No sane company will touch this with a ten foot pole.
If you read the actual proposal you will see that they have a range of options if someone is out of line.
Yep... Up to "a permanent or temporary ban from some or all Go spaces". Thanks for your five years of contributions, but you made the wrong person look bad without even realizing it - See ya, better luck next career!
The very fact that people keep mentioning Linus as a good example of why we "need" CoCs like this pretty much counts as its own best counterexample. He created the number one operating system in the world (if you include Android's market share), yet communities like this wouldn't even let him hang out in their playpen lest he hurt some poor snowflake's feelings. Yeah, thanks, I'll take a hundred productive-but-no-nonsense Torvalds over a kindler, gentler Gerrand any day.
If you want pablum, stick to Farmville. If you want to join us in the coding trenches, wear asbestos underwear.
"t Adults can say that's stupid or you're a moron as part of normal healthy discourse it's intent that matters. Healthy razzing friendly banter etc etc is part of normal adult communication."
Among friends yes it can be. In a working group of developers without any face to face social interaction no. At that point it is just harassment.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
On a positive note, the code they likely to produce will have very robust privilege checks.
There's no doubt he needs a code of conduct, and I agree with some of the provisions in there, but you have to read between the lines to get what he means, and it's not pretty. I'd like to quote them all, but there's too many, so I'll stick with the worst:
I sympathize here, as I agree: no everyone does learn English. However: you need to settle on a standard language, and English is the best choice most of the time. Forgive someone for writing sentences with a little awkward grammar? Definitely. Machen es so niemand kann mich verstehen? Nein.
Translation: judge a person on their social status first, and if they outrank you in developer status or connections, keep your mouth shut, no matter how bad the bug. (And yes, it will become this way.)
Hand in hand with the above. Make sure never to anything that could possibly start a confrontation, and if someone has a wrong answer or makes a bug, don't say anything for fear of making conflict.
Long list of things, but this is the worst. Basically, since anything could be offensive (because this totally specifies what's a ""microaggression""), always speak as reserved and uptight as you can, and never relax your guard.
Yeeeeah... Basically, never ever defend yourself, just immediately bow down and admit you were mistaken. The project leader is always right, he knows what's best, and never never ever ever never ever ever doubt him and his infinite wisdom.
YEEEEEEEEEAH... Okay. My grandmother uses that line a lot, and I occasionally do to. My grandmother lived through WWII, with a polish mother, and lost her entire family (save for her parents). I dare this guy to do what she did, to be even a 1/10th as badass. My grandmother and I never mean any disrespect when we say it, it's a very tongue in cheek thing, and only when this guy insists it's offensive does it become so. Why, you ask? I'd never take it serious before, because it's so obvious that my grandmother very well could do it, and yet he has the balls to seriously think my grandmother is not capable of, let's say, lifting a pan. That is way more offensive than the original phrase ever was, just wow.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The problem is that CoCs are always enforced by those with the thinnest skins, because, almost by definition, they are the only ones who care.
Which makes a CoC a solution looking for a problem. And whenever you have that situation, you know someone is trying to foist some bullshit on you.
There is no need for a friggin' policy just because .5 % of people in coding MLs get childish and unprofessional in a post or two every odd year!!
No, but there is a need because 0.01% are childish and unprofessional all the time. Any sufficiently-large community will eventually attract some jerks. You can shout them down, sometimes, but it's a distraction and doesn't always work. Better just to correct them quietly. Those that just can't behave, you ask to leave, because whatever their technical ability may be, there are others who are better and know how to act like grownups, at least most of the time.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Simpler explanation - power trip. Look at how many SJWs, hyper feminists, etc try to control the discussion by engaging in preemptive framing.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Thanks ok... in the face of politicly correct censorship we can always turn to Orwellian concepts for inspiration, enter: GoSpeak
Now just need to write a Go program to normalise the various offensive synonyms on their forum... fixed no need to ban anyone.
In Linus' case, I'll cut him slack. He's been doing it so long that anyone in his position would get tired of seeing the same crap coding being submitted. He's got standards, and if you're not willing to adhere to those standards you shouldn't be dropping stuff to him. It's not like he hasn't said the same basic stuff 1e6 times in the past, so expecting him to change his standards to not offend some poor snowflake that couldn't be bothered to figure out what was expected is asking a bit much.
In his current rant, yeah, that code was crap and should never have been submitted. Readability isn't security, but security and maintainability gets really harmed by unreadable code.
Maybe we *should* just ignore it. Along the lines of "don't feed the trolls" rather than giving them an audience. We've become too politically correct, and its time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The problem here is the same problem that plagues the rest of the Internet, and before the public Internet, dialup bulletin-board systems (BBSs): It's much easier to be a complete ass to someone when you don't have to do it in person to their face. People can and will say anything when it's just text on a screen, because there are few if any consequences. When you're able to be completely anonymous as well (no alias, just literally anonymous) it's even worse, because there are literally no consequences. Of course there's no help for it, as requiring everyone on the Internet to use their real name would destroy a large and very important part of what the Internet is all about. Civility and courtesy can't be legislated, they are qualities that an individual has to willingly adopt, and in my opinion the choice whether to do that or not is a great indicator of the character of the individual in question: Can you observe and respect the implied social contract that exists when you interact with people face-to-face, when you're interacting with them over the Internet?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
First they came for the BASIC programmers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a BASIC programmer.
Then they came for the go programmers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a go programmer.
Then they came for the canines, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a canine.
Then they came for me—and I told them to GTFO my mailing list.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Except that linus isn't constantly rude. He has rugburned a few people who should've known better. Good technical people know that stupid needs to be nipped in the bud. It can't be allowed to fester just so thin skinned people can retain their unwarranted self-images.
SJWs literally just put a young girl in the hospital for a suicide attempt because they didn't like how she drew some steven universe fanart.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I would argue the opposite. The mainstreaming of computers/internet has caused an influx of neurotypicals to join the party, and they are used to being able to save face when they fuck up. The aspergers programmer stereotype does not understand this, because, to such personalities, the system is everything, and assumes everyone else involved has the same mindset. In fact, it may be this attitude that allows the blunt honesty that's necessary in technical work. Reality does not care about feelings.
Do you even understand the definition of "harassment"?
Harassment, per Google is aggressive pressure or intimidation. An insult is not harassment.
If you call me an idiot, I'm not going to call that harassment. I might tell you to calm down. I might even ask you what I did (if I wasn't already aware of it) that made you call me that. Hell, maybe you're trying to get my attention because I'm a bit block-headed and can't see the forest for the trees sometimes. A lot of people need to inject something into the conversation to make it halt for a moment. Sometimes, it needs an emotional element (like an insult) to give people time to breathe.
However, if you call me an idiot repeatedly and without prompting, follow me around and start trying to goad others into doing the same, THAT is harassment.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Mellow greetings, special butterflies.
Today (not to disrespect those on the other side of the national dateline - when I say today, I mean everyone's today!) I (with full credit to everyone everywhere, of course) would like (this is not a statement of exclusion for things I don't like) to introduce SJW, the language you can share without fear (not that fear is wrong, of course.)
SJW:
o No insert() function: Instead, we have crafted a flawless nomeansno() function
o Fully complementary yesmeansno() and maybemeansno() functions
o No try:, because every function generates an exception!
o exit() has been replaced with aloha().
o Procedure calls have been replaced with the respectful request paradigm, which obey the global mood settings
o 100% private internal assumption for all functions; offering data requires guessing if the function will take it or crash (exceptions guaranteed)
o Every access from within a function to another function must be embedded in a call to politewrapper()
o politewrapper() implements infinite recursion by use of counters instead of ever returning up a level
o Every function ends with a sequence of calls to apologize(), cleanup() and washreturnvalue()
o All programs will be created equal: all code is treated exactly the same and does exactly the same thing, which is apologize for running.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I heard there were strings attached, but no one could really get a grip on them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No. CoCs are now about shielding children from reality. It's all about appealing to insecurity in order to control narrative (and thus the organization). Once implemented, they encourage people to say/do stupid shit and then hide behind 'oppression' or 'discrimination' instead of facing up to mistakes and fixing them. Really, the end goal is to burn the project's resources in 'signal boosting' particular political ideologies towards society at large. The more relevant the group, the bigger a target it becomes.
This probably started at the topmost institutions in society (government, ivy league, corporates). Most of the individuals pushing these at lower levels are probably clueless about it, but some are not. These would be the 'crusaders' that've been discussed here before.
I'm offended by the mailing list name golang-nuts because "nuts" is a slang term used to refer to testicles. By naming the mailing list golang-nuts it indicates that it's a male dominated mailing list where women (those without "nuts") are not welcome. Please change the mailing list name to be more inclusive.
Your post gave me PTSD, you should be banned.
You laugh, but that crazy bitch Melody Hensley claims she got PTSD from twitter after she received some spirited criticism for some of her stupider comments.
She also tried to get some active duty military folks fired for daring to suggest that she might not actually have PTSD.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
No, it's not really autistic people who are pushing this crap. It's people who think they can use engineer's own perceptions of their social skills (whether due to "autism" or not) against them. They come in saying "you're all a bunch of assholes, here's the code the Good People follow". And some number of engineers, knowing their own social skills are not the best, actually believe them. At it's heart, it's basically just a new form of nerd-bashing (even when done by other nerds).
'Steven Universe' fandom is melting down after bullied fanartist attempts suicide
Actually, we should just move them all into padded rooms with speakers that repeat over and over "you're safe in here, please relax, everyone loves you and the world is bright, fluffy place. Be sure to report any offensive colors or angles to the volunteer asylum worker who serves you your conflict-free food."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Oh please. This seems like an American fixation: the idea of being free from being offended. It's a great divergence of what Americans should believe in: Freedom of speech. Being withering daisies prevents important things from being said. That is what ALL censorship does. It interferes with the most efficient operation of a community or government.
Linus says that his sensibilities are only "cultural" and I am inclined to agree with him. I've had exposure to other cultures that aren't nearly as pansy as Americans. So I know it's not just Finns.
Even Brits seem less uptight.
Without the ability to fire idiots, some harsh language is probably necessary.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I don't know what idiot modded this off topic. It's s straightforward joke that even my grandmother would find funny...
Linux is very carefully only be rude to people that deserve it. Of course some of them claim they have been wronged without good reason, but of you look closer, that is only because they would prefer not to have to listen to an analysis of how they messed up. The problem with politeness is that some people (often the really incompetent ones) prefer to misunderstand what you are saying. After all you were still nice, so your screw-up could not have been that bad, now could it?
Personally, I prefer cutting people to shreds in a polite manner, but unfortunately that does not work often as it requires a minimal level of insight into themselves in the targets.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Shut up, Wesley.
Your footnote is a perfect example of the SJW credo of "Do as we say, not as we do".