I have to agree with the author on this one.
For the most part, the Code of Conduct is pretty good, and address the issue with sexism/racism/etc. in the Tech community, in a pretty fair way. However, judgment based on offense seems like abuse waiting to happen, since offense is largely a personal matter and anyone can claim offense on anything.
I don't think it makes sense to crow about abuse of the CoC until it actually starts happening. And since we're talking about Github, any alleged abuses of the CoC will be in public, permanent. Just like all the other discussions that occur on Github projects. Two things could happen at some point in the future: 1. Someone abuses the CoC and gets a project pulled off github for offending them in some "trivial" way, and Github turns into a SJW dystopia with mandatory estrogen injections for all project admins. 2. Someone CORRECTLY uses the CoC to file a complaint, and then gets harassed and stalked and driven out of tech because of it. 2 is far more likely than 1, and I think you know that. What does that say about the trade-offs this CoC makes? I don't think it'll be difficult to filter out CoC abusers from legitimate complains. Do you have trouble doing that?
Additionally, the CoC only applies to Github's own projects, they aren't enforcing it across all of Github. A younger, angrier me would have seen it as the slippery slope, as I have been silenced for merely offending someone. Now that I'm older and more even keeled, I have faith that the humans actually carrying out enforcement will use common sense and I'm much more interested in getting traditionally underrepresented groups into programming and open source then I am in fighting off the PC Police.
Except that we can see what they've done in the past, e.g. the whole Django master/slave fiasco, and the general brigading mindset. I'm sure that GitHub will come up with a plan for this in the long run, but I am concerned that this move will cause unnecessary negative attention in the meantime. Mostly, I am concerned because any discussion about the CoC is being censored on Reddit right now.I don't think it makes sense to crow about abuse of the CoC until it actually starts happening.
The brigading mindset is dying out. The backlash from Gamergate has exposed some of the excess and lack of self-regulation of "SJW brigading". Ultimately it's a fine tradeoff. I'd rather that the average internet troll be anti-sexist and anti-racist, than the sort of shithead troll that's been the standard for the last 25 years. Think about it. There's always going to be angry people on the internet who don't mind offending people. Wouldn't you rather they be the sort that, on the whole, do some net social good? Making nerdy white guys feel guilty about how sexist and racist they are is a GOOD THING.
I really, really, wish that were true. Certainly, a lot more people are aware of how harmful it can be. But as it always is, that also means a few more people are aware of just how much disruption a small group can do. Mind, I think that increased awareness of the problem is a step forward. But "dying out" is not in the foreseeable future yet.The brigading mindset is dying out.
I don't think trivializing important problems by using them for fodder to make fun of people on the internet and pat one another on the back is socially positive. If anything it makes actual progress harder. At least with racist trolls you've got a clear sort of Goofus and Gallant scenario. These people are just muddying actual legitimate issues because it's fun to laugh at neckbeards. I don't know about you, but when assholes are assholes to me it doesn't make me feel bad about myself, it makes me annoyed that there are assholes.
Well I wasn't really referring to racism specifically. People abusing ideals of social justice to prop themselves up by arbitrarily deriding other people as ideologically impure doesn't constitute actual social justice advocacy, especially when they pack their accusations into a blunderbuss and fire at random. Just running about calling people sexist or racist for whatever reasons you can construct isn't social justice activism. Moreover, calling someone a racist or sexist doesn't make them racist or sexist. If a user joined Hubski and started following you around saying you're a big old homophobe (you personally), that's not something that would help gay and bi people. Why? Because unless I've sorely misjudged you you're not a homophobe. Calling out legitimate bigotry is just dandy, but pointing out bigotry where it doesn't exist is just a distraction. Instead of being a positive force for social change, your obnoxious new follower is the boy who cried homophobic wolf. To put it another way, you do not gain the affection of the fire department by running around town pulling all the fire alarms. Fire alarms are for identifying fires so they can be extinguished, not boosting egos and providing opportunities to ogle firemen. How? Because if we're constantly hearing groundless accusations of bigotry, accusations of bigotry don't mean much. To use the example of racism, if racism means that a person or a population were mistreated or systematically denied resources because of their race that's something people can get behind. If racism means that some people at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were wearing kimono in front of pictures of people wearing kimono (something that is, not frowned upon by Japanese culture, foreigners wearing kimono is seen as a positive sign of cultural appreciation) then significantly less people are going to be concerned with that. The reason should be obvious. The former are legitimate concerns and the later is ridiculous nonsense born out of ignorance. When you call white people in kimono racist cultural appropriators, you're diminishing the significance of the term. If a woman in a kimono is racist, suddenly way fewer people care about racism as a whole. Maybe they care about subtypes or racism that include basically the contemporary definition of racism, but they won't care about the version that extends to hypersensitivity to things like 'cultural appropriation'. And who does this confusion affect? All the people who don't recognize the significance of racism in the modern social context. Furthermore, possibly people who are subtly racist themselves but don't really see it. If racism is still a problem, which I certainly would say it is, then we ought to expect that there are quite a decent number of these people. If we want change and we want it soon, they're the ones who need to reconsider things. What's better for that? A racist troll that looks like a moronic caricature of their own bias or a "social justice" troll who looks like a moronic caricature of a legitimate social justice activist?How? And for which groups are the issues being muddied? What I mean is, who is actually confused?
In the general case? I agree, most people who talk about "SJW" are not talking about anything useful. But in the specific case I mentioned of the Django master/slave terminology problem? That's a case where enough important people agreed that the "problem" was important enough to violate the accurate, industry-standard terminology and cause friction any time people move or interact between projects. I would honestly not be surprised if the constant low-level irritation at not using the standard terminology costs, in the long run, more contributor effort than those few who get offended at mere use of the terms "master" and "slave" in a nonhuman, accurate, context.TBH, what gets called "SJW" brigading is a lot of the times a good instance of Poe's Law. Especially when people are going around saying "HEY LOOK AT THIS SJW ON TUMBLR" --mostly, Poe's Law.
https://np.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_open_code_of_conduct_isnt_for_me/ And note that /u/spez, the new/old CEO, is a moderator specifically of that forum.