There are a few different motivations for making such a channel. One reason to have a controversial channel would be to free people up to be more direct or emotional in their communication. To be more free to vent frustration, say. Another reason to have a controversial channel would be to host discussions that are likely to polarize our members or lead people to say things that might inadvertently be hurtful — politics, social issues, etc. The unifying theme seems to be something like: this is a place where your feelings might get hurt, so if you don't want your feelings to get hurt, stay away. Here's what I've previously said about this, and I think it still applies.

I can't imagine that a flame channel would successfully draw the combative messages away from everywhere else. So whether or not we have a channel like that, we still need a way to solve the issue Doug Moen encountered, where his thread was derailed with a tangential rant. I also don't love the idea of a channel where we encourage negativity.

Not only would it not draw away all the controversial discussions, but it'd also create a new way of derailing threads — people posting that a thread is too controversial and should be moved. I don't see how such a channel truly solves any problems, and I believe it would create several new ones.

Another thing that I might have mentioned before is Recurse Center‘s social rules: https://www.recurse.com/social-rules That doesn‘t directly solve the problem at hand, but I think it‘s a good example to be aware of.

I believe the future of coding (not necessarily this group in particular, but the generalized version) must deal with really hard topics. Privacy, racism, sexism and more must be dealt with for us to move forward, and it may be that even the way our keyboards are made can contribute to this in subtle yet important ways. We are missing voices in the conversation that have a hard time even getting to the table because there are so few places where they are even welcome to suggest that there is a problem and that it might be hardwired into our languages; it might be the water we are swimming in. The only way to understand it and fix it is to foster a safe place for those conversations to be had. Where else should those conversations take place than a place where we are trying to explore the future of coding?

I also would like to point out that so far, we have a lot of white male voices in this meta conversation. On the original thread there were a lot more voices saying that it's not just about the machine's indifference to who is on the other end of the keyboard. Those voices haven't spoken here and maybe that is because we aren't listening not because they have nothing to say. I think we should listen even if it's hard to hear. We need to go above and beyond and make space for the voices and perspectives we don't normally hear, and we can only do that if they are affirmed that their perspective matters, we want to hear it and will really listen. If I am wrong, I welcome being told so, but I think it should be by those whose voices we tend to silence by avoiding the hard topics and sticking with the status quo.

@Robert Butler Have you seen our CoC? It articulates a lot of the same goals you're putting forward. The CoC is relatively new — it's the 2nd thing I did after taking over stewardship of the community at the beginning of the year (the 1st being a survey to learn about the composition of our community and what issues people would like us to address). We had a few expansive, difficult discussions about diversity and inclusion in the first three months of the year. I think that moved the needle on the confidence that folks have here in saying "(A) we're going to have to talk about difficult things, (B) this community is unabashedly pro-inclusion" The big issue we face now is that.. this focus on inclusion is relatively new. Historically, this community has not been particularly welcoming to women and North American minorities, and it's something that will likely take a while to change — but the overwhelming majority of folks here are interested in seeing that change, and it's now just a matter of letting the community run forward with these new priorities for a while, sorting out legacy habits and hopefully doing a better job retaining the underrepresented folks who find us next than we did with the ones who found us in the past.

(I highlight "North American" minorities because a few folks have pointed out that some of the language we use to address racism is less applicable the further you travel outside North America. There are similar issues everywhere, but the way they manifest is different, and so the discourse needs to reflect that difference.)