What sort of goobledygood is this?
What sort of goobledygood is this?
Posted Sep 12, 2024 0:50 UTC (Thu) by dvdeug (guest, #10998)In reply to: What sort of goobledygood is this? by khim
Parent article: A mess in the Python community
Links to a complaint about a tweet that says "I won't tolerate any harassment, violence, or threats towards devs, minorities or women...". Note that that can get you kicked from LWN, too. Are harassment, violence or threats really thoughtcrime? If that's thoughtcrime, isn't attacking him for posting that message thoughtcrime?
> You couldn't give someone means of punishment and protect said someone from any and all retaliations without these means being abused. You need angels, not normal humans, for such a thing to work. And yet DIE systems are built in precisely that fashion: the exact same people are instilled to act as judge, jury and executioners with no checks that govern their work and with everything shrouded in secrecy.
You're conflating two different things there.
There's a privacy issue here; there's value for justice to be done in the light, but there's the fact that snitches get stitches. Make a public complaint, and you can get death threats or even SWAT teams sent to your door. The woman who complained about inappropriate jokes at a Python convention got fired, so people may not feel they can publicly complain about stuff that violates the Code of Conduct.
On the other hand, trying to paint all of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity as without checks is absurd. In most cases you'll get all the hearing you ever have. Nobody is protected from retaliations, and we're discussing things here. "I disagree with the rules" is entirely separate from "I disagree with the way rules are enforced."
Posted Sep 12, 2024 8:41 UTC (Thu)
by spacefrogg (subscriber, #119608)
[Link] (1 responses)
Here is an observation that I have made. For everything that is wrong with the societal process of Linux kernel development, the community gets one important aspect right about it. And this, as I can see it, always brings the development back on track. That aspect is that the developer community acknowledges openly that they work in an environment of trust and competence hierarchy. Via those trust links, competence is delegated. This means that even the simplest newcomer with their first-time patch has to find the person, who has the competence to decide on it and gain their trust. By gaining their trust, the maintainer delegate their competence on you (for your patch) and it gets integrated.
I know that there has been fallout of the "highest ordah" due to disagreement. The question is whether fallout of this magnitude would have been avoided with a different governance system. Nobody knows and I call BS on everybody who claims they do.
The core feature of the kernel's development system is that it connects the social act of gaining trust, of convincing a person, of finding a common tune with the technical contribution. It makes it much more social (in a good way) than all these CoC-everybody-is-welcome-in-our-community-type of work cultures that put "behave yourself" before any consideration of your technical contribution.
Now that I think about it, the system has another interesting property. It is not overly attractive to attention seekers, because it does not separate governance from technical merit. The problem with pure "governance" positions is, that it attracts people who want to represent, speak for the whole community and want to be watched performing. This often leads to a conflict of interest with the original goal of developing a technical product. I think it is important to connect the power to mute somebody else comes with the responsibility for a technical aspect of the project. This makes it harder to just brush somebody off, because others will hold you responsible for holding back the development of your part of the project. This balance is harder (impossible?) to achieve when you have no technical duties to perform (such that others can measure you against them).
Posted Sep 12, 2024 16:27 UTC (Thu)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
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Posted Sep 12, 2024 10:24 UTC (Thu)
by khim (subscriber, #9252)
[Link] (2 responses)
Bad question. Good question: are imaginary harassment, imaginary violence and imaginary threats really a thoughtcrime? I would say the asnwer is “yes”. Note that these guys who are complaining about Gamergate-like crimes first tried to cancel guy who, AFAICS, did no harassment, no threats of violence, nothing like that. He merely provided marks to spot games ruined by them! All these “hate speaches”, and “threats” have only come after their failed attempt to cancel him (when they have found out that Steam really doesn't offer them that option). So, please, either provide an evidence that kabrutusrambo actually did some harassment and threats of violence before they started harassing him or accept the fact that these guys tried to cancel him merely because he provided helpful service to others, that they haven't liked, and they forgot that “no retaliation” clause doesn't work on someone who never accepted such clause. Yes. From people who are supposed to support “inclusivity”, as we saw. Your point? BTW who got SWAT team sent? We know quite a few guys who were fired at the insistence of “anti-harassment” guys so now it's time to show evidence from the other side. Isn't that how any other secret service that turns on its creators was made? Who is doing these checks? How is it done? If they don't hire white guys (and they are very open and vocal about that) then who guarantees they wouldn't oppress that group? I was told that majority (as in: over ”50%”) of positions in that system are filled with black. Can you disprove that (with some credible statistic) or show me how that majority wouldn't oppress the minority? As I have said: I'm pretty sure the system was made with good intentions in mind. But it's designed in way that essentially guarantees that it would go rogue, sooner or later. The only question worth asking is: have that already happened or not yet. We are discussing things here where DIE council doesn't exist yet. We couldn't discuss these things where it exists. Because the first thing typical DIE councils do is installation of system where retaliation against them are punished. And if that fails then they start smear campaign in press against X, against Steam, against anyone who refuses to pay them ransom. I don't really see how such system can bring any “inclusivity”. Normal law and court system also provide means to protect the victim and/or witness, secret courts… but they are rare exceptions which are only used in the critical cases where there is ample evidence that some hate words are not just said in the “heat of discussion” but can be expected to be actually executed. They don't arrest and send someone to jail if someone just says “Trump deserves to die, I would kill him if I could”, now, do they? But DIE systems are built on the assumption that any such promises are real and warrant as much secrecy and as much protection as possible. That's the central idea in any DIE training that I saw: you can trust us because there are lots of guards against anyone but us knowing about what you tell us… but I'm yet to see any that tells me anything convincing about what protects me from abuse by “protectors” themselves”.
Posted Sep 12, 2024 12:54 UTC (Thu)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
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All right, we get that you have a bug up your posterior about DEI. But repeatedly referring to it as DIE is pretty childish, no?
Posted Sep 12, 2024 13:04 UTC (Thu)
by corbet (editor, #1)
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I am asking you now to stop it. This stuff is off-topic for LWN, even on an article like this one. The misspelling of acronyms like DEI is a childish provocation. Talk of white males as some sort of oppressed minority is a ludicrous fiction. It does not belong here. This is the kind of thing that has made your account one of the most heavily filtered on LWN.
Code-of-conduct committees have a bit of power in their little realm. They are also populated by humans, meaning that, at some point, that power will surely be abused. For this reason, I believe that looking closely when such powers are exercised is warranted; that is what was attempted here. Let us look at the case in hand; do not use it to beat the drum on a different agenda. I will not be asking a second time.
What sort of goobledygood is this?
What sort of goobledygood is this?
> Are harassment, violence or threats really thoughtcrime?
What sort of goobledygood is this?
What sort of goobledygood is this?
Khim, I believe that you are repeatedly posting this stuff in the hope of provoking exactly the kind of reaction you have been going on about. I nice "I told you so" moment in the making.
Cool it, please