A request [LWN.net]

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 14:32 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1)
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

Please: this seems like an especially good opportunity for the comments to show our community in its best light, not its worst. Let's be constructive and respectful with what we post here.

to post comments

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 14:46 UTC (Mon) by richmoore (guest, #53133) [Link] (11 responses)

The fact you felt the need to make that comment simply reinforces the message that she is quite correct.

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 15:03 UTC (Mon) by welinder (guest, #4699) [Link]

Lwn is far wider than the kernel community so I don't think you can draw any conclusion in that direction and lwn has been known to suffer the occasional troll. I am not fully convinced that corbet's request will make any difference with that particular clientele, though.

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 15:48 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

Greg K-H's quote-of-the-week a couple of weeks back seems very appropriate here ...

Thing is, different people are different, and it sounds to me like there are certain people who just can't respect other peoples' differences. Men and women are different emotionally, East and West are different culturally, and the stereotypical USian seems to think "everybody should be USian". Not a good recipe for an international community.

(Apropos Linus, and moderation, there seems to be a strong correlation between his harshness, and how well he knows the person. Maybe the best rule is "if you don't know the person, treat them with kid gloves. If you do know them, then you know what is acceptable".)

Cheers,
Wol

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 16:35 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

> if you don't know the person, treat them with kid gloves. If you do know them, then you know what is acceptable

While that's a good rule in general, when you're talking on a public mailing list, you're not just talking to that one person; you're setting an example for an entire community.

A request

Posted Oct 5, 2015 20:15 UTC (Mon) by emunson (subscriber, #44357) [Link]

And I think many people will see the harsh reply without knowing of the personal connection and generalize that behavior as acceptable in the community.

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Posted Oct 5, 2015 23:54 UTC (Mon) by gwolf (subscriber, #14632) [Link] (6 responses)

Thing is, she is perfectly correct. We as the free software developer community are particularly bad towards welcoming different people — Be their difference gender, race, or whatever. Look at any tech conference, and you will see only white guys like myself or, most likely, as yourself.

In some communities, we have had serious advance in our tolerance and welcoming of others. Say, I am involved in Debian — I was present at the (in?)famous presentation in 2003 about the ftp-master suite of tools that had a female swimsuit model in each slide, and prompted the creation of the debian-women project in 2004. And our community has become way, way more open.

But, yes, white-male participation is still >90% of the project. Yes, the project feels much more mature and welcoming... But have we really made a change, even a slight one? With the demographics we still sustain... I'm not confident to say our "change" has had enough repercution.

A request

Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:29 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] (5 responses)

The thing is, I haven't seen anything sexist in the kernel community, at least not in the last 7 years. In Seattle, I sat through a talk about how to interact with the community, and it was basically a subtle bash against Linus. Personally, I felt that the presenter was more insulting to Linus than Linus is to others. Now, there are some examples where Linus said things he probably shouldn't, but that's more the exception than the norm with him. We all have bad days, but when Linus does, it makes the news.

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 13:41 UTC (Fri) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (4 responses)

People who are not the target of sexist behaviour usually don't notice it unless they pay extra attention.

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 16:34 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] (3 responses)

I actually try to look for sexist comments, but as you said, as I'm not a women. I may indeed miss some. But please, by all means, show me an example of one in the last few years that was made on LKML by a kernel developer (I don't count random emails from unknowns that sometimes get into the mailing list. LKML is a public channel and anyone can post. I'm limiting it to only those that actually do contribute to the kernel source).

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:18 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

Is "deep-throating Microsoft" sexist? Either way, it's disgusting communication. Completely unacceptable in any context.

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:40 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

I wouldn't call that "sexist" but I would agree that wasn't appropriate, and he should have used better terminology on that one. He's human, and it's not easy when every single word you say is scrutinized. I'm sure he learned not to say something similar to that again. That was what? 2 and a half years ago.

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Posted Oct 14, 2015 17:13 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (subscriber, #85867) [Link]

It's only sexist if you're heteronormative first.

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Posted Oct 6, 2015 0:57 UTC (Tue) by realnc (guest, #60393) [Link] (15 responses)

IMO, this request already made things worse. You just made it a gender issue, rather than it being about a kernel developer stepping back due to LKML toxicity. You already implied that this case is "special" because the kernel developer in question is female :-/

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Posted Oct 6, 2015 1:15 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

No. Sorry. Corbet has requested commentators to be polite for topics which typically have been controversial. This does not imply a gender issue at all.

A request

Posted Oct 6, 2015 10:33 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Hmm...I don't believe I said anything about gender? I made a very similar request on this article; was that a gender issue too?

A request

Posted Oct 6, 2015 11:01 UTC (Tue) by HIGHGuY (subscriber, #62277) [Link] (12 responses)

And your comment highlights that there's always at least one person who misreads/misinterprets or otherwise misunderstands a message, regardless of its formulation, intent or ambiguity level.

I honestly think that some of the toxicity is also perceived rather than real. A jerk stays a jerk no matter how you twist it (and they should be dealt with appropriately), but many people write well-meant text only to find out later that someone took offense. With written media, this is a fact of life. Unfortunately, this is first-hand experience written down here. And this doesn't just happen with (perceived) toxic e-mails. Try having an internet discussion on any non-technical subject.
You can't make a statement without someone reading it the wrong way and calling you an idiot for it or, at best, completely side-tracking the topic.

So, does this mean that the medium (i.e. e-mails on a public list) needs improvement? Should the FOSS community find new ways of (transparently) communicating through new tools and media? Is the blame just human language (with all of it's ambiguity)?

In short: what tools are there to raise the bar on what is perceived toxic, to the point where in any group a majority would be unanimously in agreement about what is or isn't toxic.

This is very much the same discussion as: "we need more blue on our streets to increase our feelings of safety". But in this case, it's reincarnated in the form where we need to be better equipped to deal with perceived toxicity such that everyone feels a bit more welcome. It still doesn't fix real crime (ever saw a cop actually get the bad guy *wink*?).

PS: For all intents and purposes: I'm just trying to disambiguate between wrongfully perceived toxicity and real toxicity. In no way am I trying to hide or otherwise favor real toxicity. These problems exist and should be dealt with. This is also in no way a judgement of Sarah's decision. Just trying to be constructive by throwing in my $0.02.
PS2: I'll be waiting for the first person to say he's offended by the remark about cops never catching the bad guys ;)
PS3: It's funny that I feel like I need to preemptively add disclaimers about my intent to the bottom of this post.
PS4: See what sort of meta-discussion and self-fulfilling thing this is becoming?
PS5: I'll stop here.

A request

Posted Oct 6, 2015 20:29 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (7 responses)

> I honestly think that some of the toxicity is also perceived rather than real. A jerk stays a jerk no matter how you twist it (and they should be dealt with appropriately), but many people write well-meant text only to find out later that someone took offense. With written media, this is a fact of life. Unfortunately, this is first-hand experience written down here. And this doesn't just happen with (perceived) toxic e-mails. Try having an internet discussion on any non-technical subject.

And even within the English-speaking community, it's easy to give offense because I speak English and you speak American ... there's the classic Churchill/Roosevelt situation when Churchill wanted to table something or other. In English, that means put it ON the table for discussion. In American, it means put it UNDER the table to be forgotten.

I gave up talking about race on Groklaw - in English, not only is the word "black" acceptable, it's about the only usable word. But in American, it was offensive enough to get my posts instantly censored ...

Throw in all the other variants of English, such as Strine, and it's incredibly easy for someone to take offense :-( - Firefox is taking offense at my use of the word "offense" :-)

Cheers,
Wol

A request

Posted Oct 8, 2015 5:34 UTC (Thu) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (6 responses)

> But in American, it was offensive enough to get my posts instantly censored.

Well, there is tradition and there is stupidity. I was working for some time with Eugene Rivers of the Azusa Christian Community in Boston, Ma. (Google him, he is certainly not shy to speak up his mind), who is very careful to talk about himself as a black man. I had a very nice chat with him about it, and he was adamant that "black" is the right word, because all issues of racism are about the color of his skin, nobody cares where is ancestors came from (besides, my another friend, who was Kenya had a long and passionate fight with somebody from the Black Boston neighborhood arguing who of them is the true African-American ;)).

Encouraged by Mr. Rivers I always use the word "black" and if anybody has a problem (and that happens very rarely; I guess most people who disagree with the word ascribe it to my English as a second language) then I explain myself. If you were censored just because of the B* word, then the community is probably not worthy to be participate in it.

A request

Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:33 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

I'm going to attempt a quick explanation... The United States has tried multiple times to adopt more nuanced and sensitive terms than 'black'. All of them ended up getting used in overt racist discrimination: 'negro water fountain', 'colored playground', etc, presumably because they were supposed to sound more acceptable.

Now all the sensitive words are absolutely polluted with loaded meaning. Calling someone colored is discriminatory and revolting. The only term we're left with is black, saved perhaps because it was too coarse to be posted in hotel lobbies and restaurants.

(just found this, explains it even better: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30999175/warning-wh... )

It's an absolute embarrassment that all this happened so recently in my country. I can't understand it.

And, you're right, calling someone African-American is like calling someone Oriental. You sure you know their blood lines that well?

A request

Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:41 UTC (Thu) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, African-American has so many problems ... I was asked by somebody in the States what is the capital of Africa (I know most Americans end with their geography studies in the sixth grade or so). So, yes, “Oriental” is a good parallel.

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Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:53 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

"African-American" also has the problem that they want it to exclude whole categories of people who are American and came from Africa. I've heard of some Authors who decided to make a stink about being excluded from "African-American Safe Spaces" at a conference because their ancestors further back came from Europe

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 16:32 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

I've said this before ... I'm "British of WHITE Caribbean descent" - a second-generation Caribbean Brit. But the word "Caribbean" implies *black*. Although, not surprisingly, I'm not culturally Caribbean at all.

The other little problem with all this is that blackness is actually a genetic adaptation to living on or near the equator. I've not met that many, but I've certainly met some Indians (that's India, not America) who, at first glance, you would take as being black. Okay, they have other racial characteristics that show them up as sub-continentals, but that's beside the point.

(Plus, there was an article on the radio recently, I just caught the gist of it, but although it's well accepted that pretty much all non-Africans are descended from a small group of humans that crossed the African-Asian landbridge, apparently there was a relatively large REVERSE migration of Eurasians into Africa about 3000 years ago (they were farmers, as opposed to the indigenous African hunter-gathers) and most African tribal genetics have been well contaminated with Eurasian genes.)

Cheers,
Wol

A request

Posted Oct 11, 2015 16:27 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

More precisely, non-black skin is a genetic adaptation to *not* living in the tropics. (Our ancestors all had black skin once, after all.)

It's probably the need for vitamin D in less sunny climes that's the ultimate cause of melanin reduction.

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Posted Oct 15, 2015 8:26 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]

The only term we're left with is black, saved perhaps because it was too coarse to be posted in hotel lobbies and restaurants.

"too coarse"? I mean, the appropriateness is not a property of "black". If there was a sign "No blondes" in a lobby, it would be offensive. Not because "blonde" is offensive but because it is offensive to discriminate according to epidermis coloration as if it carried any inherent meaning.

If you are looking for a more politically correct way of saying "No blondes", you are making a mockery of sensitivities.

If you put up a sign "Black patrons are welcome like all our other customers" in a country where such a sign is sadly not redundant, will you get the political correctness police breathing up your neck? Maybe.

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Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:36 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] (3 responses)

Nicely written. I've worked in private industry for 10 years before doing open source programming. I've been in meetings and even email threads that would make Linus's rants look like child's play. But that's a great comment about social media. So many times have I seen innocent comments taken with great offense. Now how do you go about criticizing someones code with a guarantee to not offend someone.

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:26 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Now how do you go about criticizing someones code with a guarantee to not offend someone.

There are no guarantees, but you can make a genuine effort.

I do this all the time in my job. I say things like: "This code will fail under these conditions: [example]" or "This code will take time O(2^N) and needs to be redesigned" or "The function names in this code are insufficiently clear; please give them more descriptive names such as [example]" or "This piece of code is idiomatic C, but Perl has its own idioms for doing this such as [example]"

And that gets results. I've owned Roaring Penguin since 1999 and employed developers since 2002 and I have never, not even once, had to call someone's code "stupid" or say to someone "learn how to program" or anything like that.

I also don't try to cushion code criticism by saying "It's improving since last time" or "you're making progress" or any other corporate platitude because people can tell when you're feeding them a line. And when I do say to someone "Wow, that's a beautiful piece of code" they know I mean it and they appreciate it.

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Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:55 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

And believe it or not, that sounds like 99% of the communication style on LKML. But that 1% is what gets the headlines.

Now, you said you employ people that you make these comments to. I'm sure you don't hire just anyone. You vet them out via interviews and such. You look at their previous work, and other such methods to make sure you hire a decent employee. In such an environment, I would hope that you would never need to be uncivil in your approach.

The fact is, Linux gets patches from *anyone*. Anyone can post patches to LKML and to the maintainers. There is no vetting process except for the review of the code. And sometimes, the civil responses to people just doesn't cut it, and it takes a stronger voice.

Now to be honest. I've been working in the Linux kernel community since 2003. Only once in that period did I have to insult someone, but that was after months of trying to explain why what they were doing didn't work.

I try very hard to be civil and "nice" in my replies. But sometimes, I'm a bit blunt in my review, just because I need to stress the way the code should not be changed. And saying something too nice where the developer doesn't understand my thoughts on it, may cause that developer to waste time in doing it. The term I used was "I hate this code here". "hate" was a strong word, but I really wanted to let that developer know not to continue with the approach they were heading. I pointed out the way I wanted it done, and they were fine with it. I'm sure some people may have been offended by my "hating" some of their code (Note, this wasn't the insult I was talking about above).

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Posted Oct 12, 2015 18:27 UTC (Mon) by mcpierce (guest, #69508) [Link]

I think, at least in part, the problem is that Linus has a reputation and feels comfortable living up (or down) to that reputation.