Explicit is better than implicit.
June 19, 2015 11:30 AM   Subscribe

 
Wouldn't it be even more explicit if the core values around diversity were listed in bullet points?
posted by Nevin at 11:39 AM on June 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Some bullet points. I leave it to others to decide it their guidelines for enforcement etc. are up to snuff.
posted by atoxyl at 11:48 AM on June 19, 2015


Nevin: "Wouldn't it be even more explicit if the core values around diversity were listed in bullet points?"

That's the only way to guarantee synergy, you know...
posted by Samizdata at 11:48 AM on June 19, 2015


This seems particularly relevant given the chaos going on in some parts of the Ruby community right now.

Things like this is why I like Python as a community above and beyond its language. (And correspondingly, why a language is more than the sum of its code.) This sort of thing spreads.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:51 AM on June 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's... pretty awesome, actually. It hits a point which for whatever reason is often neglected, that people of different views should be welcome, just as people of different identities should be. There's a bit of a kerfuffle in a couple of projects right now, centred on the adoption of a code of conduct (I'm intentionally not linking because why import that drama); it would be nice if this could serve as basis for a truce.
posted by topynate at 11:51 AM on June 19, 2015


That's the only way to guarantee synergy, you know...

I don't know what you're trying to say. I took the Django post at face value. It just seems to me that if you really want to communicate to your community what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, you have to be concrete.

The diversity statement meanders along with big chunks of prose, and the tone is a annoyingly chatty.

Maybe I have just spent too much time in the classroom, where anything that isn't spelled out in concrete terms has the potential to become the subject of much debate and drama later on.
posted by Nevin at 12:00 PM on June 19, 2015


What's going on in the Ruby community?

[memail me if you'd rather not add it to this thread, please]
posted by fatbird at 12:00 PM on June 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Nevin, they link their code of conduct as the basic mechanism for making the diversity statement material. It has the bullet points you're looking for.
posted by fatbird at 12:02 PM on June 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


@fatbird: Some users/developers are advocating for one of the core maintainers of opal to be removed from the leadership on the grounds of their views on diversity
posted by Hasteur at 12:08 PM on June 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


The text is largely taken from the Dreamwidth diversity statement, FYI: http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity
posted by capricorn at 12:51 PM on June 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


CrystalDave: "Things like this is why I like Python as a community above and beyond its language. (And correspondingly, why a language is more than the sum of its code.) This sort of thing spreads."

Exactly. Python (and any active language) is as much a community and a culture as a technical spec. The Python community happens to be awesome, and this reflects on the Django (sub-) community.

When I was learning Python and Django one of the things that kept me going was how friendly and non-jerky the community was. People answer your questions with close to 0% snark, project mods are generally accessible, etc.
posted by signal at 12:55 PM on June 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


For the last few years I've worked with Django, but not by choice. It's just what this job happened to require. In the last few months I've come to realize how extremely lucky I am, and have begun to contribute to the Django community more in return.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:00 PM on June 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


Got so much frission I couldn't finish the whole post
posted by unknownmosquito at 2:00 PM on June 19, 2015


This makes me happy that I work with Django all day.

Also, yesterday I ran into an odd problem, asked about it on the #django IRC channel, and pretty much immediately got (per signal's point) a completely helpful and non-snarky response. (Thanks, carljm!) They definitely have an awesome community.

I always thought Guido's basic philosophy of Python -- "there should always be one obvious way to do it" (which I came to directly from Perl's "there's more than one way to do it") -- to be one of the most humanist programming philosophies I've encountered. I think Django here is adding another plank to the notion that Python is fundamentally centered around people rather than technology.

Which I support as, you know, a person.
posted by bjrubble at 2:01 PM on June 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


Hasteur: "@fatbird: Some users/developers are advocating for one of the core maintainers of opal to be removed from the leadership on the grounds of their views on diversity"

Holy shit, that meh guy just does not get it with his whole "This is software we do not have feelings here we are robots beep boop" shtick.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:00 PM on June 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


He seems to also be under the delusion that his prejudices are not glaringly obvious.
posted by klanawa at 3:39 PM on June 19, 2015


Never let it be said that, when faced with a travesty, that it cannot come up with a larger one to top it:

Behold: No Code Of Conduct
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 4:21 PM on June 19, 2015


I like the disability part -- important and often ignored
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 12:14 AM on June 20, 2015


I also like the Computer Anonymous code of conduct.
posted by tofu_crouton at 9:28 AM on June 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Behold: No Code Of Conduct

That's the second time I see someone cite the "your race, your sex, your choice" tweet as evidence against transphobia - as if a Rachael Dolezal reference doesn't make it 99.5 percent likely to be a sarcastic dismissal of trans identity? I guess to be fair, abiding by the Django CoC and all, some of the people responding to this are not native English speakers, but I don't have a lot of doubts about how that message was intended.
posted by atoxyl at 3:06 AM on June 21, 2015


I do think it's interesting how the world hasn't quite come to terms with how one's social media identity relates to one's professional identity. Certainly there are a lot of forces encouraging you to link real-name identities with your professional life. It seems implicit in this to me that it's best to treat those identities as "work-related" - I don't mean this as a moral stance, just a practical one - maybe because I've been on anonymousish internet fora for ages? I was conflicted about Brendan Eich because it was over an action that was well-separated from his work with Mozilla. Opal guy mixes his politics and programming constantly which he wouldn't get away with at all if it were a "job" instead of an OSS project.

The "well are you gonna take his place?" problem can be a real one in the context of a single project and in those cases an influx of formerly-excluded contributors is probably not actually going to make up for that unless you already know them by name. But that's sort of a "this project is the most important thing" attitude, when most projects aren't that important to the world, not everybody who acts like an irreplaceable hotshot is, and the real gains are for the broader community around that language/OSS/programming in general and anyone who wants to be a part of it.
posted by atoxyl at 4:11 AM on June 21, 2015


I was conflicted about Brendan Eich because it was over an action that was well-separated from his work with Mozilla. Opal guy mixes his politics and programming constantly which he wouldn't get away with at all if it were a "job" instead of an OSS project.

I've followed this over the last few days, and I really don't think the Opal guy was mixing them in that way (note that "meh" was not the contributor who the complaint was about). He did politics on his Twitter (strict Catholic) and coding on Github; the connection was a line in his twitter bio saying that he was "@opalrb core". I don't believe that anyone has interpreted or could reasonably interpret this as a claim that Opal approves of his political and personal blogging. Of course, once the complaint was made, the whole thing snowballed.
posted by topynate at 4:56 AM on June 21, 2015


Looked back in his twitter a bit more and he talks code there too. I am, for the record, not in favour of some people getting to do that and others not, but if people are using him as a contact on twitter for Opal things, I would understand him having to choose what he wants to use that account for.
posted by topynate at 5:34 AM on June 21, 2015


I meant he mixes talking about his politics and his projects on Twitter - but it's true his actual contributions to Opal don't go through there.
posted by atoxyl at 12:54 PM on June 21, 2015


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