So, this thread https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/C5T9GPWFL/p1591498636036100 has exemplified something I’ve been thinking about lately. A lot of the communication breakdowns/conflicts over social issues that I observe seem to happen when people who have spent a lot of time thinking/reading/researching deeply about those issues encounter people who have not (and who likely don’t realize that that depth exists). Like if a beginner programmer was invited (explicitly or implicitly) to weigh in on most of the discussions on here, they would be unlikely to add value to the discussion. I think there’s some assumptions that can be made about this communities makeup as far as comfort/experience/interest with programming ideas, and usually people know enough to know when they don’t know something. I don’t think (and this is pretty obviously demonstrable) the same can be true of peoples engagement with social issues. I don’t have a conclusion here, but I’m curious if people have ideas for how to a) make sure these topics can and do exist here, b) avoid people being excluded due to ignorance of those topics.

I was just about to post the same thing here, so thank you Jared for taking the initiative! It's true that our discussions of social issues tend to break down into the most basic "is this even a problem?" form, but we've also had technical discussions break down in ways that feel very similar. One idea I've been kicking around is some sort of.. way of encouraging people to maintain the level of specificity of a given discussion prompt. For example, Will's post asks us to "reflect on what role people of color can and should play in the future of coding", and he provides some links to relevant papers. I would say that he's starting a discussion at a high level of sophistication, with a very specific scope. By contrast, here's a very open-ended discussion prompt: "What are people's thoughts on funding?" So the change would be.. first, looking for cases where conversations are being pushed to a lower or higher level of specificity/sophistication by a comment that doesn't fit on the original level. Upon finding such a comment, the response could be.. starting up a new thread, with a link back to the ill-fitting comment, so we can have a discussion with that commenter at the level they wanted to engage at. Then, in the original thread, link to the new thread saying something like "This comment is interesting and I've started a new thread to explore it. Let's keep this thread here focussed on [restate/summarize original prompt]"

Be wary about asking for specificity. As you highlight above, specificity in the prompts may be a great starting point, but limiting the responses to specifically can sometimes be a way of silencing a perspective. The simplest way of addressing the "is this even a problem?" is just assume it is. If some people think it is a problem, it probably is and it's probably worth affirming as a problem and exploring in more detail. Indeed, I think the most problematic response is "that's not a problem" because it invalidates the conversation, the other persons experience and their right to participate in the conversation. Once you recognize a problem, a great way to keep focus and make progress is to keep the conversation centered on the problem at hand. If you are focusing on a problem people can self regulate and ask if what they want to say helps address the problem.

Good thoughts — I appreciate you bringing your experience of other successful communities here. In the example where someone says "there is no relationship", what should the response from a thoughtful community member well-versed in our inclusive culture look like? I imagine it would be something like, "There's plenty of reason to believe that there is a relationship, and this thread was started specifically to discuss how to address the problems inside that relationship. If you'd like to discuss whether the relationship even exists, let's start a separate discussion." Am I on the right track?

I think that's in the right direction at least. I think I would encourage that person to speak from a position of "I don't see the relationship, help me understand your experience" rather than "I don't see or experience the relationship so it must not exist". One of the communities I'm a part of that does this pretty well is a religious community where everyone is welcome as long as they are affirming of others. You have this space where atheists, christians of various flavors, agnostics, mystics, witches, buddhists and more all talking in the same space having conversations. It's a rare place. Everyone starts from a place of listening first and people of all sorts of identities and with all sorts of thoughts and perspective share some pretty deep stuff.

That point about emotional energy is a good one. That's a new angle on the matter for me. I don't know that we're quite ready to add a diversity-focussed channel, since our past experience with topic-specific channels has been really poor. But it's something I've actually been thinking about for a few months now, and am keeping in my back pocket as a good option if the community moves in that direction.

That makes sense.