Mentoring and diversity for Python [LWN.net]

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 13:23 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604)
In reply to: Mentoring and diversity for Python by Ranguvar
Parent article: Mentoring and diversity for Python

I wonder if there is true merit in having a lot of people who "think differently" in a single project. It sounds like a source of conflict more than a source of more quality contributions (which should be the goal).

It's also interesting how often people underestimate the diversity of open source projects, by virtue of being open you'll usually have a lot of people from different backgrounds contributing. Of course this is usually limited to English speaking people with sufficient economic resources / free time to contribute.

Pointing out that certain groups are under-represented usually comes with an implied allegation of sexism, racism or another -ism. I think there should be some burden of proof for that.

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Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 15:10 UTC (Wed) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link] (1 responses)

I do not understand, you are the one suggesting there is something implied, shouldn't the burden of proof regarding the implied allegation be on you ? As otherwise, it would seems that you are making stuff nobody said, and then asking to prove while no one said anything. That sound really weird and I do not get the logic.

Also, yeah, that is really interesting how people misunderstand numbers and several studies regarding diversity instead of seeing how different are people from West coast and East coast, indeed.

Mentoring and diversity for Python

Posted Jun 27, 2018 16:01 UTC (Wed) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link]

To give one example, people often say that a different CoC (code of conduct) is needed (it says so in the article), saying that the CoC adopted by the PSF is insufficient while the CoC of Pycon is better. The Pycon CoC lists a lot of "unacceptable behaviors". To me it follows if you need to spell out what is unacceptable or inappropriate these things are alleged to happen on a regular basis and a new CoC is needed to purge these destructive elements - the latter being conjecture on my part, perhaps there is a more innocent explanation and I'm being hypocritical here.

> Also, yeah, that is really interesting how people misunderstand numbers and several studies regarding diversity instead of seeing how different are people from West coast and East coast, indeed.

To which continent/country are you referring? Assuming you're thinking of the United States, you're kinda making my point for me since some US Americans often have somewhat warped views on that topic (categorizing people by somewhat arbitrary races). Of course when you look at a community that predominately communicates in English you'll find a lot of "white" people, it's an easy categorization to make but far too broad to assess a whole group.