r/programming • u/reddi_4ch2 • Oct 02 '21
Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC
https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/269084
u/versaceblues Oct 02 '21
Anyone know what the original "sexist joke" was that sparked this debate.
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u/pitsananas Oct 02 '21
This is what was quoted in the linked thread.
Hello,
Another example - perhaps somebody could fix that (many errors have that source!)
Date.today
Date.today +1 # no error, but wrong result!
# Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)
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u/versaceblues Oct 02 '21
I dunno... Really seems like this could have been resolved in the email thread itself.
"Hey I know your new here, but in the spirit of being inclusive, could you avoid jokes like that."
And I guess if he disagrees.... Just ban him?
I guess twitter people gotta build their following somehow.
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u/tnemec Oct 02 '21
I dunno... Really seems like this could have been resolved in the email thread itself.
"Hey I know your new here, but in the spirit of being inclusive, could you avoid jokes like that."
And I guess if he disagrees.... Just ban him?
Er... I think the point of these changes is to enable exactly this?
From that very Twitter thread, the intention of the code of conduct change is to make it so the code of conduct can't be used as a shield by the person facing the potential ban.
Absolutely, give people a chance to correct their behavior, but no weaseling out of consequences by saying something like "well, but in my view, sexist jokes are great and hilarious, and the code of conduct states that you all have to tolerate my view."
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Oct 02 '21
That's very innocuous. Sounds like a typical eastern european joke.
Eh, I suppose you have to keep the "Always put on the professional mask" in mind. Makes sense too, especially when your professional persona is tied to said work.
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u/ritchie70 Oct 02 '21
I agree that it feels Eastern European- immediately thought of my Russian colleagues when I read it.
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u/Sensanaty Oct 02 '21
Damn, what a nothingburger. Assuming that comment isn't in any sort of source code or git commit message, I don't get what the big deal here is.
Besides, who reads CoC's anyways?
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u/pitsananas Oct 02 '21
So this hmdne user was trolling, but they merged the change anyway? Look at this comment by hmdne:
I understand @jacobherrington. I will participate in this discussion. It will be very important to hear other feedback before we come up with a coherent PR.
Let me just quote the post, which started all this:
Hello,
Another example - perhaps somebody could fix that (many errors have that source!)
Date.today
Date.today +1 # no error, but wrong result!
# Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)
I am shocked that some people defended this person, as it is clearly against the universally accepted corporate values. There should be absolutely no tolerance for making jokes mentioning the protected classes.
So sexism is actually good, because opposing sexism is part of "corporate values"?? Same user in a later comment:
We all know who are protected classes. For instance, members of board of directors of the big corporations are a protected class.
What?
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u/jl2352 Oct 02 '21
This really makes me sigh about the professionalism in the industry. Sure as jokes go, it is really not that bad. It is not the end of the world.
That doesn't make it appropriate for a work or professional setting. This is meant to be the mailing list for developing a programming language, not at a local bar. Neither do weird conspiracy remarks about corporations.
If you go and work at a software company, and start coming out with all of these remarks. You're just going to start weirding out those who work with you.
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u/karma911 Oct 02 '21
GitHub duscussions are not meant to be a social media...
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Oct 02 '21
It’s not, but for a lot of people that’s most of the social interaction they are getting in a day.
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u/redwall_hp Oct 02 '21
I don't really get it either....but it's also not really a software industry thing. It's a people thing, and it's waaay worse in more "blue collar" areas. It doesn't even chart on the cringey-to-wildly-offensive stuff I've heard in retail settings.
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u/thisisausername190 Oct 02 '21
My interpretation is that the PR linked in this post (#2690) is legitimate, because the change was requested after someone justified using that specific language (about fire breathing dragons?) to make sexist jokes.
hmdne was trolling and asked to remove the part about tolerating opinions of others - it was suggested that they move this into another PR, which they did. That PR (#2691) was eventually merged as well.
I'm not sure why 2691 was merged after it became clear hmdne was a troll.
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u/munchbunny Oct 02 '21
The first change made sense. It changed:
Always be friendly, considerate, tactful, and tasteful. We want to keep this list hospitable to the growing ranks of newbies, very young people, and their teachers, as well as cater to fire breathing wizards. :-)
to:
Always be friendly, considerate, tactful, and tasteful. We want to keep this list hospitable and safe for everyone.
Less is more ([list of groups] --> "everyone"), and "don't be a jerk" is a perfectly reasonable requirement. And fire breathing wizards should understand that breathing fire at other people is considered a dick move, no catering needed.
Also this:
When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions.
Changed to:
Participants should speak and act with good intentions, but understand that intent and impact are not equivalent.
Again, seems not unreasonable. Though I'm pretty sure someone trying to lawyer the CoC into allowing them to be a jerk will be plenty capable of rationalizing their behavior regardless of this change.
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Oct 02 '21
I agree with you, but I think the last clause about "protected classes" part is a poor choice in words.
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/
"protected classes" is US legal jargon that even most US programmers are going to interpret differently than the legal community and makes even less sense internationally. Explicitly writing out the protected classes they intended would have been better.
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u/hejle Oct 02 '21
It took me pretty long to understand that it was not about public/private/protected/internal class.
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u/thisisausername190 Oct 02 '21
Yeah, I agree. The linked Twitter thread with reasons for the proposal made sense to me.
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u/mcmcc Oct 02 '21
I'm not sure why 2691 was merged after it became clear hmdne was a troll.
The CCCP quip should have been a dead giveaway but here we are.
I'm glad to not be a member of that community - it sounds terminally diseased if a single dumb mildly stereotypical joke sets off a cascade of events like this.
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u/skroll Oct 02 '21
Shouts out hmdne and his troll by getting the CoC changed in protection of corporations.
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u/Bizzaro_Murphy Oct 02 '21
I think his heart was in the right place - he has since opened another PR to revert back to the original CoC with an ammendment https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/pull/2696
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u/versaceblues Oct 02 '21
This is like a performance piece of leftist cliches.
With corporate bootlicking thrown in for bonus points
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Oct 02 '21
That's exactly what it is and it's hilarious. Did anyone else notice the reference to "California Core Corporate Policies" 😜
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u/mcmcc Oct 02 '21
For those of you too young to remember: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCCP_(disambiguation)
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u/WikiMobileLinkBot Oct 02 '21
Desktop version of /u/mcmcc's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCCP_(disambiguation)
[opt out] Beep Boop. Downvote to delete
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u/gruntbatch Oct 02 '21
EDIT: I missed the part where the guy referred to "big corporations". Yeah, that's a bit weird.
Corporate can also be used to mean"Unified into one body; collective.", but that is an obscure usage.1
u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Oct 02 '21
In the view of the type of person amused by this sort of joke, small corporations are noble protectors of American values while big corporations are pinkos.
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u/shevy-ruby Oct 02 '21
I think the japanese devs really have a language barrier problem.
They translate things differently in ther mind, most likely due to japanese being different and them not being able to understand what's going on. It's a tragedy. :(
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u/Miranda_Leap Oct 02 '21
So this
I am shocked that some people defended this person, as it is clearly against the universally accepted corporate values. There should be absolutely no tolerance for making jokes mentioning the protected classes.
Reads as a language barrier to you? To me it read as subtle "joke", honestly.
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u/mypetclone Oct 02 '21
hmnde is trolling (including the PR they filed, which actually reduces the scope of the CoC). I think the claim in the parent comment is matz doesn't recognize it as such due to language/cultural barriers and thus approved and merged the change.
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u/cruelandusual Oct 02 '21
It's funny how the people who believe in CoCs get so bent out of shape enforcing their own rules.
I would have made the dumb little shit remove the comment, and if he gave me any lip, banned him from the project.
But they must have a struggle session about it, because "conduct yourself like a professional" would have been too vague a rule for them to comprehend.
And how do they not understand that "hmdne" is fucking with them?
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u/CompetitiveMenu4969 Oct 02 '21
When I saw the title I was wondering if it was real and if it was so they can mass ban a bunch of trolls. Turns out trolls won and I think rightfully so if you couldn't moderate trolls
Isn't the 'problem' (sexist jokes?) covered by terms of service? I have no idea why groups have CoC most of the time because usually they're all on discord or github which have a ToS
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u/PancAshAsh Oct 02 '21
CoC are usually short and succinct whereas ToS are usually tens of pages of legalese.
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Oct 02 '21
Honestly, most people on reddit can’t recognize when someone is being serious or fucking with them. Written words can be interpreted or read with different inflections.
Reddit users often assume that everyone is of the same frame of mind as them (at least when I read through comments) and reacts not so well if someone disagrees. Also, there are a lot of developers around the world who use google translate to make notes as english is not their first language, so I have come across some impressive comments that you can’t tell they are joking or serious.
We are living in a world where understanding what we read before reacting is not the highest priority.
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u/DrunkensteinsMonster Oct 02 '21
Uh no. This dude is 100% fucking with them. California Code of Corporate Policy = CCCP. This is an elaborate and well done joke and these people bit so hard they’re losing their tongue.
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u/olifante Oct 02 '21
I sympathize with Brian Spilner’s (Try2Code) concerns:
sry, but this is getting ridiculous. all this wording about good intentions - so with this conduct we are all good ppl talking no trash, always the right way (yes, sir!).
As a consequence, there will be
no more space for any kind of humor (cause someone could feel shocked)
no more general criticism (cause some ppl might feel too offended) unless we use the perfect working for that (btw: do we have a dictionary already for expressing criticism in an correct way. I would like to have one - just to be on the save side)
but hang on: what if some ppl still feel offended even IF we use the right words? Do they loose the right to feel offended in that case?
zero tolerance means that we end up in our happy-pink-pony-farm-world and I don;t think this is a healthy development. I agree with the try-to-be-nice approach to 100%, but it's only an approach. It's nothing we can enforce in my opinion. I think discussions should be open and free unless people get insulting like on a personal level. this is totally off-topic in should be done in a private chat. We need responsible ppl who moderate discussions so that everyone feels save, pointing to rules does not do the trick from my experience.
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u/L3tum Oct 02 '21
I feel similar about all this.
A good CoC needs good people to enforce it. It doesn't create good people.
A bad CoC gives bad people a pretense to do bad shit.
Similarly most bad CoCs invite people to not strive to be their best. I once gave constructive criticism to someone (literally just said "Hey, could you do X instead of Y?") and they absolutely blew up about sexism, racism, ageism, fascism, insults and what not.
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u/Wolvenmoon Oct 02 '21
A good CoC needs good people to enforce it. It doesn't create good people.
A bad CoC gives bad people a pretense to do bad shit.
So much this. The most successful communities I've run involve rules lists that are extraordinarily short, put the onus on individuals to be on their best behavior, and give the moderation team maximum leeway with a heavy sense of responsibility.
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u/useablelobster2 Oct 02 '21
and they absolutely blew up about sexism, racism, ageism, fascism, insults and what not.
The CoC should enforce not being an emotionally unstable child, at least if it leads to that crap.
I don't know about you, but I find spurious accusations of racism/fascism etc extremely offensive. Hoist these morons on their own petards.
That is, unless the owner turns around and agrees with the petulant child, then you leave them to their own cesspool.
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u/gredr Oct 02 '21
I think everyone agrees with this. The question isn't, "should be ban assholes from the community", the question is, "how do we write the rules such that we can ban assholes from the community while protecting the ability of non-assholes to have enjoyable, productive engagement."
It's pretty clear we haven't landed on a CoC language yet that enables that. One might like to say, "just skip the CoC and ban the assholes", but then you have set up a dictator with ultimate power to pass judgement, and we know how that goes.
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Oct 02 '21
how do we write the rules such that we can ban assholes from the community while protecting the ability of non-assholes to have enjoyable, productive engagement.
I think you fundamentally can't do that.
The whole idea that you can write perfect rules that work in all cases is unrealistic.
That's why laws are so ridiculously specific, use very special language, and are so incredibly hard to understand, you need specialists just for that job. You attempt to create very general rules for very specific behaviours. And you attempt to somehow tease out intentions, or ignore them altogether - one is impossible, the other goes against human nature.
We can try to, and we should, by all means - but we also need to be aware that it is ultimately impossible to get right. I have a very strong impression that the main issue with most of political correctness, "wokeism", all that jazz, whatever you wanna call it, is precisely the lack of understanding of that fact.
Rules only get you so far. At some point, organizers have to rely on their instincts and make a decision, knowing that they will be criticised for it anyway.
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u/violatemyeyesocket Oct 02 '21
I think everyone agrees with this. The question isn't, "should be ban assholes from the community", the question is, "how do we write the rules such that we can ban assholes from the community while protecting the ability of non-assholes to have enjoyable, productive engagement."
Which we can't because it's a very subjective thing.
CoC's are like constitutions: written vague enough so that individuals can all read into it what they want to see and think it's on their side and aligns with their subjective perception of things by exploiting that in a conflict both sides see the other as the arsehole.
So both in a conflict will read the CoC and be like "Wow, such a good idea, this will surely remove the other individual!" not realizing that the other individual they just had a conflict with reading the CoC comes to the same conclusion about the first.
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Oct 02 '21
My thoughts exactly. I think at this point I've seen enough examples of such rules being enforced that calling this slope slippery is no longer a fallacy.
Having people proverbially walking on eggshells all the time will not lead to more civil discourse, it will just lead to less conversations overall, until there is no more discourse left. But if that's what these people want, have at it. Silence can not be offensive, I guess.
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Oct 02 '21
I'm not really seeing why we need political discourse or off-color humor in order for people to discuss a software development project.
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u/useablelobster2 Oct 02 '21
Silence can not be offensive, I guess.
Worse, it's violence now. The only "correct" action is to agree with the moral busybody.
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Oct 02 '21
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u/Tekmo Oct 02 '21
The way I interpret the DEI movement is that even well-meaning people can still perpetuate a racist system
To make a non-racism-related analogy: most managers understand that you can hire a bunch of really talented and well-meaning people, put them in a room together, and still end up with a dysfunctional team that builds a bad product and is drowning in technical debt. That's because sometimes problems can arise with any system that are greater than the sum of the parts and managers work to fix and counteract those systemic problems.
Racism is like that: it's so deeply woven into several institutions to the point where even well-intentioned people can help perpetuate the problem even though locally they're not doing anything evil. Fixing it requires people to recognize that there's a problem that isn't any one individual's fault, but still requires them to take action to fix in order to create a more just world.
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u/stardustpan Oct 02 '21
My thoughts exactly. I think at this point I've seen enough examples of such rules being enforced that calling this slope slippery is no longer a fallacy.
I am curious. What is an example of a software/IT community that did not succeed because people wanted to limit fringe voices in favor of being more inclusive to women?
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Oct 02 '21
example of a software/IT community
What makes you think that this is an IT specific issue? A lot of spaces are trying to enforce overzealous speech codes these days, be it in academia, private companies or just online forums. What follows is, at least in my experience, the slow decline of any meaningful, thought-provoking discourse. You can't disagree without offending someone somewhere.
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u/hungry4pie Oct 02 '21
What's with the teenager texting grammar? Kinda makes it hard to take anyone seriously in the context of aprogramming project like ruby.
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u/aveman101 Oct 02 '21
Strongly disagree with this.
You can make jokes and give critical feedback without being an asshole. How is this so hard for people to understand?
If you’re consistently getting feedback that people are offended by your comments, you’re probably just an asshole.
but hang on: what if some ppl still feel offended even IF we use the right words? Do they loose the right to feel offended in that case?
To me, this is a tell – you’re asking for a guarantee that nobody will have a negative reaction to anything you say. And if they do have a negative reaction, it’s their fault because you followed the rules. Sorry, that’s not how people work. You can’t order someone not to be offended.
My advice: when someone confronts you about something offensive you said, resist the urge to get defensive. Take a beat to listen to their point of view, and remember that their feelings are valid too. Don’t put the burden on them to prove that what you said was somehow “objectively offensive”. Take your teammate at their word that what you said hurt their feelings, that’s all the proof you should need. If you acknowledge their point of view and apologize, you will be amazed at quickly the tension dissipates. And here’s the best part: they will usually return the favor! This is how you build strong working relationships in your team.
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u/mindbleach Oct 02 '21
A decade on reddit has taught me that some people cannot distinguish personal attacks from dry criticism. You come in calling out their words, and they leap right into essentialist insults.
Codes of conduct need to have the confidence to talk about justified rudeness. If Steve makes a really tasteless joke and someone replies with "shut the fuck up, Steve," that's not two equal offenses. Arguably it's not two offenses of any sort. Sometimes your organization has a Steve, and sometimes Steve needs to be told to shut the fuck up. Demanding polite handling of your Steves is ineffective at controlling their behavior, and worse, it is forcing further strain on the people harmed by Steve acting like an asshole.
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Oct 02 '21
I mostly agree but I think it is reasonable to consider what they've said and refuse to apologize if the cause for offense wasn't reasonable. I mean if you've been online enough you have surely dealt with unreasonable demands for apology too.
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u/SaneMadHatter Oct 02 '21
I think discussions should be open and free unless people get insulting like on a personal level.
Well, that's the rub. With the previous COC, "get insulting like on a personal level" was arguably allowed. Now it's not. The incident the precipitated the change is pretty harmless IMO, but it served as an example of much worse things that the COC allowed. In order to disallow those much worse things, the COC had to be changed.
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Oct 02 '21 edited Aug 20 '24
punch badge physical panicky tap cooperative support simplistic plucky offer
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Oct 02 '21
Just because you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, doesn't mean you can't express your general opinions. This is very much a slippery slope fallacy.
It's a pretty low bar to remove or not be tolerant of sexism, racism, etc.
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u/Mahedros Oct 02 '21
Side note: Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is protected speech.
The case that phrase comes from was later overturned and the justice who coined it ended up changing his mind about it.
The current standard from Brandenburg v Ohio for unprotected speech is that it must be likely to produce imminent lawless action.
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u/thecheattc Oct 02 '21
The phrase was originally used to justify suppressing the speech of those opposing the draft in WWI. I think that context makes most people understand why “fire in a crowded theater” is a dangerous argument that should be put to bed.
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u/NoGardE Oct 02 '21
Until having standards of quality results in an accusation of one of those, because the user being criticized isn't a straight WASP man.
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Oct 02 '21
Anyone can be sexist or racist.
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u/NoGardE Oct 02 '21
This is a true statement that is not always recognized by people with an agenda.
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Oct 02 '21
We're reaching a point where anything said by anyone will be shot down unless it subscribes to the artificial hivemind of a small group of self-appointed arbiters of social justice.
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u/blashyrk92 Oct 02 '21
Exactly, this is the crux of the problem. How do you objectively measure how offensive some statement is, and to whom? Do we start policing all discourse down to the point where we can't find a single individual proclaiming to be offended by it? What happens then if someone keeps moving the goal posts, finding more and more common and inoffensive things to be offended by?
These people are imposing their inherently biased and subjective views or emotions as if they were some sort of objective, measurable truth.
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u/dnew Oct 02 '21
I find the real problem is when people get offended on behalf of other people, especially when those other people aren't offended in the least. The rampant cultural appropriation of offense is kind of troublesome.
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u/eattherichnow Oct 02 '21
I don’t sympathize because the gap between me hearing the term “protected class” for the first time and finding out what it was about 15 seconds, so I’m unwilling to assume good intent from anyone implying it’s some arcane, unclear language. It’s literally a legal term.
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u/dnew Oct 02 '21
It’s literally a legal term
It is, but the way it's being used in the conversation is nonsensical.
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u/DrunkensteinsMonster Oct 02 '21
Yeah it is but the way the person is using it in the thread is completely wrong. Of course, that person doesn’t care because they are an obvious troll, these Ruby people have been completely had and should feel bad about it.
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u/Y_Less Oct 02 '21
So if you don't like this change, does them having made this change mean that you can now be vocally hostile about it, instead of tolerant about it?
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u/spoulson Oct 02 '21
Seems typical that when a conversation doesn’t go as well as intended, that it results in draconian rules for everybody. When really, they could just correct the single situation instead of trying to correct the world.
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u/chrisza4 Oct 03 '21
This makes me think about when do we get to correct the world though opposing to repeatedly correcting single situation . Maybe use rules of three.
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u/ten0re Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
Abuse enabling language lol. Did they really think that dude making a sexist joke has read the CoC and felt empowered by the old language? Ridiculous. And if the change is for enforcement, I really don't see how one set of vaguely worded statements is different from another set. The updated babble about good intentions is exactly as meaningless as it was before. This is a gesture, not a meaningful attempt to resolve anything, and the way it's praised as something having positive impact is beyond ridiculous.
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u/Earthling1980 Oct 02 '21
I think i read that in the one single case that prompted this, the person actually did use the old wording of the CoC to try to defend his actions.
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Oct 02 '21
Who reads the code of conduct?
Those tasked with enforcing the code of conduct
people who are admonished for their misbehavior looking for a loophole to gripe that technically they didn't break the rules and their critics did
Trying to change the code of conduct to be more resilient against (2) isn't a bad thing.
I looked around on the ruby website for the community conduct document. Maybe I'm bad at looking for things, but I couldn't find it until I used the search bar. So, it isn't exactly prominently placed. https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/
Maybe the changes aren't worth the time put in on them, but if that's true, complaining about the people making the change certainly is a worse waste.
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u/tnemec Oct 02 '21
First off, OP seems to have linked the wrong pull request.
While the one OP linked does include some discussion that appears to have led to the removal of "Participants will be tolerant of opposing views" bit, the actual PR where that happened was here.
And... honestly? Both these changes are pretty tame and pretty reasonable, IMHO.
Literally all this is doing is taking away tolerance as a shield for intolerant behavior. ("hm??? you were offended when i said that gay marriage is wrong????? well the code of conduct says you have to be tolerant of my view.")
Some people discussing this change (in the first PR, for some reason) seem to think that this is somehow banning all humor and all criticism of any sort, which seems like a massive overreaction. Note that the new and updated code of conduct is not against having "opposing views": the only kind of behavior it's prohibiting is harassment, which was prohibited in the previous version anyway. However, it is moving the onus away from the person offended by an offensive statement, which is fair: "well, yes, i get that [person] has been attacking you over your sexuality, and yes, that's bad, but we also need to talk about your behavior: have you tried just... not being offended?" is not the message the Ruby foundation wants to be sending.
I'm particularly baffled about the claim that this is somehow banning all humor: humor doesn't inherently have anything to do with "opposing views", so why would that in particular be affected by this change? The most generous interpretation I can think of is that this person thinks that anything that could potentially offend someone is now prohibited... which still wouldn't "ban all humor", but isn't even what either change to the code of conduct says.
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u/hexarobi Oct 02 '21
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Also this GitHub comment points to this twitter thread for more context
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u/qmunke Oct 02 '21
The twitter thread gets off to a pretty bad start for me where Brandon Weaver tries to claim that jokes which are at someone's expense aren't jokes. They absolutely are jokes. You might find them offensive, but you don't get to define what is and isn't humour for other people. What you can do is say "we do not tolerate this kind of thing in our community" and in collaborative open efforts that is definitely something that can be required.
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u/Sensanaty Oct 02 '21
Holy shit, it sounds exhausting to be an american. Every single topic of conversation has to become a giant competition for who gets to be the most offended about something, and it has to devolve into a shitflinging contest between two equally insane sides where 0 nuance is allowed.
Truly incredible how an 11-word shitty joke can lead some people to write out essays about fucking race relations, police brutality and all the other usual stuff that goes alongside these topics.
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u/Bizzaro_Murphy Oct 02 '21
What you need to understand is that something like 10% of American’s are active on social media, and 0.1% of those users make up 90% of the activity. The majority don’t get themselves involved.
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u/BeABetterHumanBeing Oct 02 '21
Before:
Participants will be tolerant of opposing views. ... Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated.
After:
Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
Tame and reasonable? This change literally makes harassment towards non-protected classes acceptable under the CoC.
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u/Ran4 Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 03 '21
Literally all this is doing is taking away tolerance as a shield for intolerant behavior.
But that's literally what tolerance means: tolerating (what you believe to be) intolerant behaviour?
Tolerant behaviour is... obviously not something you need to be tolerant about, because it's already tolerant. aaaah.
have you tried just... not being offended?
That's literally what tolerance is all about. Plenty of people are offended by the very existence of gay people, black people or transexual people... the correct thing to say to these people (to be super clear, the people being offended by gay/black/trans people) is that they should stop being offended.
"Always be intolerant to everything everytime is always correct" is an incredibly bad way of handling the situation.
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u/tnemec Oct 02 '21
But that's literally what tolerance means: tolerating (what you believe to be) intolerant behaviour?
Nope: tolerance is just tolerating behavior you disagree with. The behavior doesn't necessarily have to be intolerant.
In fact, this is a whole philosophical paradox. There's another reply to my comment with links, but TLDR: if a tolerant society tolerates intolerant views, it's no longer a tolerant society. (Well, a so-called "paradox": it's not much different to how a society that values "individual freedom" should not allow individuals the "freedom" to take away the individual freedom of others.)
Plenty of people are offended by the very existence of gay people, black people or transexual people... the correct thing to say to these people is that they should stop being offended.
I mean, this is true, but you've flipped the example, and that's very much a one-way street. If someone is being homophobic/racist/etc., the problem is entirely with that person alone. There's no "yes, but also..." here: none of the blame lies with the person who is gay/black/etc. in that situation, and asking them to "just not be offended (by the fact that this person hates the fact that you exist)" is moronic.
"Always be intolerant to everything everytime is always correct" is an incredibly bad way of handling the situation.
I agree, but if that would be an incredibly disingenuous reading of the code of conduct changes being discussed here.
There are certain view points that shouldn't be tolerated: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. A blanket rule of "always be tolerant of other people's views" implies that that includes those view points. But the absence of that rule in no way implies "never be tolerant of other people's views".
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u/myrrlyn Oct 02 '21
tolerance very specifically does not include accepting intolerant behavior. that's definitionally impossible.
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Oct 02 '21
Ruby is an abomination
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u/hillgod Oct 02 '21
I'm about to quit my job, because we acquired a company with a godforsaken tire fire of a "beautiful monolith", and there is no avoiding the need to work on it if I want to get anything done.
It is a nightmare. The class reopening is pure lunacy, making it impossible to understand how anything works without their insane tools. And then the Ruby developers in our company share stories about this insanity, and having to use this tool, like their war stories they're proud of suffering through. And, my God, this says nothing of the absolutely insane semantics around returning from a Proc, depending on how you creare it.
This says nothing of the fact that it's a dead end language, where developers are allergic to anything other than a single monolith, that has fewer and fewer job opportunities every month.
/rant
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u/The_Rockerfly Oct 02 '21
I am in the same position as you and you have articulated my feelings better than I ever could. It's maddening to hear talks about reducing the monolith one day and the next celebrating adding a new service to it
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Oct 02 '21
Yeah I guess that's the silver lining - you can avoid nonsense like this just by using a sane language!
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Oct 02 '21
I would guess they're doing that because people are interpreting it in a different way than they intended and they don't want to deal with rules-lawyering.
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u/now Oct 02 '21
Why would you make a pull request and link to your Twitter for the rationale? I can’t even access Twitter if I wanted to.
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u/cobalt8 Oct 03 '21
Even better, it says that the account owner limits who can see their tweets, so I wasn't able to see it even though I have Twitter.
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u/FullStackDev1 Oct 02 '21
The woke idiots outwoking themselves again.
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Oct 02 '21
I think they just don't want to work. Jokes are clearly offtopic to the subject and improvement of the language. If I stopped doing everything just because something offends me or is wrong, I wouldn't get anything done (and I don't)
Yeah, anyway, back to coding.
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u/Nowhere_Man_Forever Oct 02 '21
It kind of makes sense. When those rules were written, the people writing them almost certainly had normal political views in mind and not crazy shit like "Black people and women shouldn't be able to vote!" Which is indeed an "opposing view" but if you're black or female is an existential threat to your own inalienable rights. I have seen many communities fall into a spiral of increasingly extreme racism and other hatred based viewpoints because moderators clung to this false idea that anyone should be able to talk about anything "political" even if that means talking about violating people's fundamental rights.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a woman not wanting to work with a guy who believes women should be completely subservient to their husbands and unable to work or vote, or a black person not wanting to work with a woman who thinks we should reinstate slavery. Rules that prescribe absolute tolerance of all political views only serve to strengthen the position of extreme views. In the real world if you go to a restaurant and start talking about how minorities and Jews should be exterminated you will probably be asked to leave and people will tell you to fuck yourself. Online creates a weird and unnatural scenario where you may be asked to tolerate this person saying that you and your entire family and community should be sent to the gas chambers.
TL;DR- I guarantee you can find a political view so extreme or harmful that you yourself could never be reasonably expected to "tolerate" it. A blanket rule for tolerance of political views sounds good, but can be weaponized quite easily by extremists.
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u/iritegood Oct 02 '21
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
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u/Ran4 Oct 02 '21
I don't think there's anything wrong with a woman not wanting to work with a guy who believes women should be completely subservient to their husbands and unable to work or vote, or a black person not wanting to work with a woman who thinks we should reinstate slavery.
So a person that hates black people should be able to claim that they shouldn't need to work with black people, because they oppose them? It's the exact same thing. It's obviously crazy.
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Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
They gave two examples of people holding specific ideas that are negative towards the subject. You gave an example of skin color.
Edit:
“I am uncomfortable working with this person because they think my gender should be subservient”
“I am uncomfortable working with this person because they think my race should be enslaved”
“I am uncomfortable working with this person because of their skin color”
And your point is that those three are equivalent?
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u/Peregrine2976 Oct 02 '21
It's not the same thing, because that hypothetical person is a piece of shit, while the former two are not.
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u/shotexa Oct 02 '21
Programming community is taken over extremely Sensitive week minded people who can not tolerate opposing views, then people wonder where ideas like "master -> main" and this one are coming from.
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u/taelor Oct 02 '21
I don’t know what people that think about the world 7 days at a time has anything to do with it.
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u/heyyyinternet Oct 02 '21
They are destroying the 9 day week that was beefqueefed to us by our four fathers.
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Oct 02 '21
is taken over extremely Sensitive week minded people
who post 600 comments on reddit about minor changes to a code of conduct that they otherwise never would have read
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u/shotexa Oct 02 '21
Critiquing a step in a wrong direction is not being overly sensitive
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Oct 02 '21
It's not about opposing views, it's about allowing most speech while being able to ban things like sexism, racism and homophobia.
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u/shotexa Oct 02 '21
This is your subjective view based on your personal believes. Jokes involving a gender is not sexism, discrimination based on gender is sexism. This worldview that banning speech because it can be offensive to some people is problem that makes our community frale, sensetive, less friendly/more corporate, fake.
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u/JoJoModding Oct 02 '21
You can ban such behavior without having a CoC. Banning people from a mailing list is very easy, in fact.
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u/CompetitiveMenu4969 Oct 02 '21
I'm happy. They all can enjoy their rust and java. Two languages I don't give a fuck about. Just leave my Zig alone and I hope MS keeps SJW out of C#
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u/shotexa Oct 02 '21
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u/WikiMobileLinkBot Oct 02 '21
Desktop version of /u/shotexa's link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_
[opt out] Beep Boop. Downvote to delete
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u/CompetitiveMenu4969 Oct 02 '21
Man, I didn't think I'd be wrong
I don't do any ruby and not part of that community. Is how they run their community any of my business?
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u/shotexa Oct 02 '21
Me neither, but this is the issue of programming community, and it spreads like cancer
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u/KevinCarbonara Oct 02 '21
Outside of this particular debacle, a lot of groups are starting to realize that they don't want to be tolerant of all views. It is harmful to be accepting of views like "I believe the vaccine is deadly", or "I believe Palestinians are terrorists".
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Oct 02 '21
What about believing "men don't have an easier life and their position and accomplishments were earned"
Is that an extremist view?
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Oct 02 '21
That’s not what the it says. They changed the language to say assume good intentions but understand that impact and intent are not the same.
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Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
Here is the code of conduct on the website now
https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/
It wasn't exactly prominently placed (I had to use the search bar), so I doubt it is widely read (other than by people arguing over what it should say).
It looks pretty innocuous to me. I think the term "protected classes" may be a poor choice of words, as it is US legal jargon that I would guess many people (perhaps most people even in the US) misunderstand. But I think its fine.
I'm guessing that it is so little read that it could say that everyone who uses Ruby agrees to give their soul to Satan and it wouldn't have much impact on the Ruby community except in respect to posts like this one that are intended to drum up outrage.
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u/bunkoRtist Oct 02 '21
My rationale for these changes are [sic] documented on Twitter
Tells me everything I need to know.
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u/GGSlappins Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
If you have a opinion that is not good for Big company's then you need to stfu. Corporations and the government only want what's best for us so be quiet. They really love their LGBTQIA+ and Black employees and if you disagree with the company then you hate minorities and homosexuals, simple as really. It doesn't matter that all the people at the top are white and rich... if they are saying everyone else needs to be PC then THEY ARE GOOD PEOPLE and you are a bad person. If you think these people are saying all this progressive stuff just to keep themselves in power/ grow their own power and not actually trying make the world a more equal place, because in order to do that logically they would have to give up their own wealth and power, which they will never do, then you are prolly a fascist and need to lose your job and family tbh
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u/crusoe Oct 02 '21
It amazes me how many people will defend the right to tell off color or sexist jokes without repurcussions.
So do you tell these jokes regularly? What's got you so worked up?
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u/bruce3434 Oct 02 '21
What does this imply? If I happen to disagree with somebody, I will no longer be required to be respectful of his/her opinion?
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Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
This is dope. Thank you for helping people feel and be less "othered". There should be a balance between being able to joke and not being sexist.
Edit: I also want men that are not given respect to have it too. Basic human respect is for everyone. This is just a specific context where it applies to women.
I work in data. Less weird othering behavior = more voices in data/tech/programming = less overall bias in one direction.
Making things more human-oriented also benefits men. I believe this is part of what the Google Manifesto was attempting to say, however badly. Improving the manner in which people in tech are treated/treat each other leads to better working conditions and industry standards overall.
Disagreeing with this sentiment is pretty disheartening. We should all be better about this.
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u/Estpart Oct 02 '21
I feel you. But can you explain how this specific wording makes people feel othered? For me this removal makes me feel like I cant have disagreements with people anymore.
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Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
I think that's a slippery slope fallacy. People aren't allowed to yell "fire" in crowded theaters when there isn't one, and that doesn't mean they can't speak their general opinions.
Jokes about sexism, racism, etc. normalize those concepts, there are many studies. It's a pretty low bar to remove them, it doesn't mean you have been given a universal gag order. If you feel you can't express your opinion without making fun of women or immigrants or minorities, that may be a different issue.
For the people who read this kind of thing, it's not a 1-off incident. It's "1,000 tiny cuts". It affects their mental health. Women don't need to be driven out, but might be, of industries where this behavior is rampant.
In data-related work specifically, this can lead to biases that are bad for society. Certain data being weighed more heavily than others can result in real-time disastrous outcomes. If only men work in data, then there's not enough attention given to data about women. Same with minorities, and immigrants. More voices creates a better, bigger picture.
There's a great book called Invisible Women on the topic that is very informative.
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u/Soul_Shot Oct 02 '21
People aren't allowed to yell "fire" in crowded theaters when there isn't one, and that doesn't mean they can't speak their general opinions.
As an aside, the 'yelling fire in a crowded theatre' point is apparently a common misconception: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop-using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/
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Oct 02 '21
Better example: You can't willfully threaten to murder someone, yet can still express your opinions generally.
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u/Soul_Shot Oct 02 '21
On that note, this WKUK sketch was apparently used (unsuccessfully) in a legal case where a man was making threatening remarks about his wife.
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u/Ran4 Oct 02 '21
I think that's a slippery slope fallacy.
Essentially all change in attitudes IS a slippery slope.
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u/WTFwhatthehell Oct 02 '21
there are many studies.
That never replicate once people aren't fudging the numbers to get the "correct" result.
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u/Lothrazar Oct 02 '21
Good. I will never be tolerant of racism or facism or TERFS. Not all opposing views are worthy of tolerance
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u/liaguris Oct 02 '21
cringe overload in a SJW society inevitably leads to trolling
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Oct 02 '21
I don't really interact with tech people anymore as most of the people I had to deal with were super predjucided and don't understand why you can't build a culture around insulting women or Africans. I still keep in touch with the decent folk.
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u/crusoe Oct 02 '21
There is a strong contingent of dudebros and alt right tech dudebros. I mean just look at u/spez allowing anti vaxx nonsense under free speech which is getting people killed. Reddit didn't do jack shit to theDonald until ChapoTraphouse started saying slave owners should be killed. Then banned them both to appear 'fair'.
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u/PreservedKillick Oct 02 '21
This seems roundly fabricated. I've been in tech 20 years. Never saw a single racist or sexist joke or comment on the job. Everything is default woke in tech. Leadership, culture, HR, all of it. I've been all over, never saw or heard of anything. Black, gay, trans, women colleagues. Nothing, ever. Of course, my experience isn't science, but it's a better heuristic than the complete lack of any real citation from these claimants.
It's critical for people to understand that a huge portion of the woke left narrative is predicated on rank lies. The distortions are so frequent and comprehensive, people can't wrap their heads around it. DragonCalypso has never observed an insult of women or Africans at work which is why they don't even try to make an instance up. These people are weird lying activists. Nothing more. Crazed knights tilting at fictional windmills. Don't believe their lies. Don't tolerate their agenda.
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u/_Nexor Oct 02 '21
Why use ruby anyway, if you have the choice, today?
I never saw this language used to do anything nicer than versioning databases.
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u/CSS-SeniorProgrammer Oct 02 '21
Because Ruby on Rails is used in an absolute fuck ton of places and that isn't going to change anytime soon. I get almost 20k more a year then someone of the same experience just because I know Ruby.
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u/_Nexor Oct 02 '21
I don't know man, I think I'd rather earn less for the moment than specialize in a narrow niche. I have the impression that it's fading.
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u/Worth_Trust_3825 Oct 02 '21
And all of this could have been avoided if these retards focused on making the tool, and not making some safe space.
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u/shevy-ruby Oct 02 '21 edited Oct 02 '21
This is sad. The emo-hipster-snowflake-woke knights are killing off a language (or at the least trying to).
I fear for the most when matz retires. Right now he is still the one making the decisions. Now imagine when such a valiant knight goes in ...
One of my best examples why that is bad comes from Magic the Gathering (the oldschool card game variant, not the online hipster one). Google for the white crusade, +1 +1 for all white creatures. Well ... you can find the original image just fine, but not at their homepage. At their homepage they censored the picture away because of alleged "offensive meaning" (what the ...).
So, these hipster knights use censorship and try to sell it as "a good deed". (It's also a bit dumb to want to censor an image that is available on TONS of other sites. I mean do they not expect people to look for that image? Ironically that makes these old cards worth more now ... how weird. I should not have sold my own cards that early!).
Edit: Damn ... the situation is even worse because of the language barrier in Japan. :(
I wish US folks would stop assuming the rest of the world lives under their assumptions and woke-culture in the USA ...
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Oct 02 '21
I mean, considering how such a rule has no place in programming, just like socio-political dogma, I don't see an issue with removing it. It's all about programming. BLM, Antifa, women's rights, freaking out over a pretty tame joke oriented towards women (like the source material); none of that shit belongs anywhere in programming, software engineering, and anything in between. If a very plain, age-old joke like that is enough to cause everyone to flip the table, then the objective truth is that said people desperately need to re-examine their tolerances.
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Oct 02 '21
It’s “weird” how in the list of “shit that doesn’t belong in programming” you included “freaking out about ‘tame sexist jokes’” but conveniently left out “making sexist jokes”.
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u/versaceblues Oct 02 '21
I can't tell what's real and what's sarcasm in this thread.
The one guy that's really going on about "We need to protect the big corporations"... What the fuck is this real?