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Here's a rough draft of a CoC: <https://github.com...
# administrivia
i
Here's a rough draft of a CoC: https://github.com/futureofcoding/code-of-conduct I think it's a little too long-winded, overloaded with messaging that'd be more appropriate outside the CoC, perhaps in a "welcome to the community" page of some sort. I also think I need to be more thorough and specific about what sorts of harassment are disallowed. For instance, I want to more explicitly forbid discussions of any sexual matter, unwanted attention, etc. This is the most important part of the CoC as far as I'm concerned, I just haven't spent enough time on it yet. At this point in the process, I'd appreciate broad feedback — would you be okay with a CoC that looked something like this? Do you feel like it excludes any person or kind of behaviour that doesn't deserve to be excluded? Would someone kind and reasonable read this and come away feeling like the mods don't have their back? Feel free to suggest additions. I'll continue chipping away at it this week, and then submit a final draft for consideration in #C5T9GPWFL next weekend.
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o
I have just gave it a first read and I have a pretty positive feeling about it. Even though I am not very comfortable in general with CoC (it is not something that common here in France where it can be seen as unnecessary control over what people express). But, here I find it useful because it states what kind of content is welcome and what kind is not, with some examples. It helps explaining what is the mindset of the community. So I think it is a good idea to keep this kind of "welcome to the community" messages here. It makes sense to have positive indication of what we except people doing here alongside what negative behavior we see as inappropriate.
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n
I’ll just point out that homophobia is missing from the relevant section, even though it could be inferred 😇
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Otherwise seems quite reasonable
o
Something I have also seen elsewhere (from the Etiquette of OpenStreetMap community, see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette), it is encouraging gradual actions when problems arise, especially saying that "When we forget ourselves, our friends should remind us" (see "Best practices" section). I like it as it engages the community in the process.
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I have a question: have we as a community already been in situations where a CoC would have been needed? And in that case what was the problems and how were they managed? And is this CoC address those problems?
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Even if I am pretty sure the community is already pretty quiet and welcoming 🙂 (well, in fact it definitely is since I joined)
m
looks good to me, just reiterating the fact that homophobia is not on the forbid list, but I don't know if that's a comprehensive list or just examples.
d
Haven't seen any heated exchanges here, so not sure it's needed, but that aside, this is very well written! Happy to back it.
j
Thought experiment: would Curtis Yarvin be welcome here? He has been ostracized from many communities for (supposedly) racist statements made in unrelated places in the past. Is behavior outside the community restricted by the CoC?
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m
I think that if we welcome someone that thinks that some races are better than others then we are implicitly desinviting the people that yarvin is targeting with his ideas
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In his ideology I would be a slave, even if he never mentions it here, it's not something that is not implicit in every conversation
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y
One topic that a CoC should cover imho is misrepresenting other folks’ projects. It may be appealing for various reasons whether you are a start-up, academic, or just want to look cool, to say “I am the first/only to do X” etc, and of course it could also just happen due to not being aware. But the CoC could suggest correcting blog posts etc after such misinformation being pointed out.
m
would that regulate what's said in the FoC community or outside? we could ask internally to share things in technical terms and not sales terms, but what people do outside shouldn't be regulated by the CoC (I think)
y
I think that usually CoCs do have to do with things that happen outside of the specific forum. As an example let’s say a yoga teacher harasses his students in the real world, an online forum about yoga may regulate his ability to participate in it etc
m
I understand, but would that apply to me saying on the landing page of my product that we provide "Data Science for Everyone", of course that's more marketing than fact, but I can't add 10 paragraphs of context to explain what I mean on a landing page
y
My suggestion doesn’t have to do with your example, because I specifically talked about misrepresenting other projects. If your landing page knowingly spread misinformation like “unlike X which doesn’t have feature Y”, when that’s factually wrong, then that would be against my suggestion
m
if I understand you correctly then it seems it's a small extension of this section
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Criticism of the author of shared materials, even if they are not present in the community, must also abide by this code of conduct — they are no less deserving of respect than the members of our community.
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g
thanks for doing this! it’s not easy
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https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/CEXED56UR/p1582014539038100?thread_ts=1581999680.035700&amp;channel=CEXED56UR&amp;message_ts=1582014539.038100 @ogadaki I wouldn’t be surprised if people have felt excluded in the past but were reluctant to bring it up because there wasn’t a CoC in place to let them know who to get in touch with or that they would be taken seriously
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m
reminds me of the story of "the missing bullet holes"
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Military officers gathered and studied bullet holes in the aircraft that returned from missions. One early thought was that the planes should have more armor where they had been hit the most — fuselage, fuel system, the rest of the plane — but not on the engines, which had the smallest number of bullet holes per square foot.

Abraham Wald, a leading mathematician, disagreed. Working with the Statistics Research Group in Manhattan, he asked an odd question: Where were the missing bullet holes — the ones that would be all over the engine if bullets were equally distributed?

They were on the missing planes, the ones that had been shot down. So the vulnerable place wasn't where all the bullet holes were on the returning planes. It was where the bullet holes were on the planes that didn't return.
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i
Love that story.
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Thanks everyone for the initial feedback. This is a very difficult, divisive topic, and I truly appreciate everyone sharing their concerns and questions and suggestions. @ogadaki
I have a question: have we as a community already been in situations where a CoC would have been needed?
As others have said, a CoC is a sign that this community has principles — including taking a strong stand against harassment and hate speech — and we are willing to defend them. People have directly told us that they haven't joined because of the lack of a CoC. I want those people to join and feel good here! There's an emerging trend of startups using our community only to promote themselves. I want to establish the norm that someone sharing their own work is highly encouraged, but they should also participate in discussions, share interesting links, offer feedback on others' work, or otherwise use the community as more than a vehicle for self-promotion. If I do a search for someone's posts and pretty much all of them mention their startup, I will (and have) DM them and ask them to talk about other things too. There have been some exchanges deep in threads that have toed up to the line of needing moderator intervention, but nothing yet that would have resulted in a punitive response, as far as I'm aware. There was an account created with an overtly inappropriate name that resulted in an insta-ban. There's always the possibility that someone has been harassed via DM, but again no actual instances that I'm aware of. These sorts of things are increasingly likely to happen as our community grows, so it's worth being ready. @jonathoda
Thought experiment: would Curtis Yarvin be welcome here? He has been ostracized from many communities for (supposedly) racist statements made in unrelated places in the past. Is behavior outside the community restricted by the CoC?
That's an excellent point. Would Curtis Yarvin be welcome here — no, absolutely not. Is behaviour outside the community considered in light of the CoC when deciding whether someone should be allowed to join? Yes, in ways that should be explicitly bounded and stated. I don't want someone thinking that if they make a dirty joke on twitter or write a blog post saying a bunch of nasty things about Trump or Warren that they'll be banned from the community. But I think it's reasonable to make a strong statement specifically against hate and harassment even if it happens outside the community. If someone's twitter is full of racist or sexist posts, that's across the line — they've decided to publicly signal that they disrespect people in our community. As another example, let's look at Brendan Eich. I think we should allow him to join if he wants, but I'm open to being persuaded. I think someone's hurtful actions in the past should be judged based on the severity of those actions and how they've acted since. Someone's hurtful actions in private should be judged based on the severity of those actions and how they handle them coming to light. I think it's important to allow people to grow, and for us to recognize and reward that growth. But I think it's vastly more important to pay attention to the people who have been or could be hurt and support them. I will work on expanding and clarifying the CoC accordingly.
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d
You know I'm triggered by the word "CoC" 🤣 Seriously though, I would prefer an alternative acronym!
i
How about "Plan About Respectful Conduct"?
d
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k
Looks good to me as a starting point. In my opinion, many communities go into serious overengineering with CoCs. I like that this one is short and mostly formulated as a guideline. Let's start with this and see how it goes!
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d
I'd actually add a bit more heft to the issue above: to deprecate company promotion. But promotion of personal projects (which I'm personally rubbish at!) doesn't bother me so much.
i
@Duncan Cragg — What does it mean to "deprecate" company promotion? For instance — if Chris Granger were to do another startup, I wouldn't want there to be a guideline that'd discourage him from posting. He's always been great about sharing the ideas behind his work and relating them to the field, in a way that is valuable to the reader. But that sharing necessarily takes the form of "Here's what we're doing with Eve", which is absolutely a form of company promotion — it's just that it adds value to the community rather than extracting value from it.
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d
You seemed to be alluding to an exclusively commercial promotion style .. I don't think @ibdknox has that. (By the way, I'm using the word "deprecate" in the non-technical meaning)
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i
Ah. Yeah. So, given the following wording meant to address this issue...
We do not allow ... Exclusive self-promotion. While you are welcome to share and discuss your work, we ask that you also participate in other discussions in ways that go beyond simply directing people to your project.
... how would you suggest that I change it?
o
@Ivan Reese:
People have directly told us that they haven't joined because of the lack of a CoC. I want those people to join and feel good here!
This alone is a good reason to have a CoC (or whatever its name) that tell people that it is not a rude place! I know some local community slacks which are full of trolls and where lots of good people flew away only for that reason. And not only for harassment, etc. , but also because of the cognitive load to filter the noise and follow the interesting parts of conversations.
i
@Duncan Cragg Also... I'd like to understand what you don't like about "CoC" — is it just the acronym (thus my dumb "PARC" joke above), or is it actually the full term "Code of Conduct" that you'd prefer not to use? I'm happy to name this guideline something else, though it's important that people not be left wondering "Does this community have a code of conduct?" since that's the standard name and so that's what people will know to look for. Suggestions welcome!
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o
As for the naming, I also don't like much "Code of Conduct" (even if it is the standard name). What about something in the spirit of "Community mindset" or "Community participation mindset". I am not sure I found the appropriate words (excuse my english... 😉 ), but the idea is to show what we expect as behavior in this community.
s
I actually don't mind commercial promotion as long as it isn't too spammy. I've learned about quite a few products, either directly or indirectly from FoC that I wouldn't have learned about otherwise. I understand that showing up here only to market a product is slightly against the spirit of the community, but at the same time I want to hear about different commercial products in the FoC space
I guess that could be solved with stricter rules about promotion, we could have an explicit "products" channel where marketing is allowed (this is a little different than feedback)
n
I do very much mind if people come here just to give a sales pitch and point everyone to their product webpage. If I'm going to hear about a product, I want to hear a deep technical/UX discussion along with it.
i
@Scott Newson @Nick Smith I had originally included more specific wording to dissuade the sort of spammy #CC2JRGVLK posts we've recently seen from a handful of low-code startups. I don't like those. But after thinking about it more, I couldn't come up with a policy that'd prevent more harm than it caused. How do we know if someone is going to post once and then ghost, or later end up participating in the community in a good way? I like that people use #CC2JRGVLK to have a moment to proudly announce themselves, and that includes saying "Here's the stuff I'm making," whether it's a personal project or a startup. By the time we realized someone has "posted and ghosted", it's too late — we've already been spammed.
n
@Ivan Reese Perhaps make it a policy that if someone wants to announce a for-profit product, then they should include a technical summary/design rationale along with it, like a pre-written blog post
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This wouldn't dissuade people from posting about their prototypes
i
That's a really good idea.
o
I just throw an idea here on this topic. In an other slack (general purpose one) there is a channel named "#shameless-promotion" where it is clear anyone can promote things anyway they want. Not sure it is appropriate here, though.
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s
@Ivan Reese If there’s another CoC you want to read through for “inspiration” (although at this point I can understand if you had enough), make it this one: https://www.recurse.com/code-of-conduct The RC had (and still has) frequent discussions about it and about actual cases conflicting with it, and it has also the most diverse community I’ve seen so far in our tech bubble — it seems to me it has stood its test of time and has evolved out of the many different perspectives of a diverse community.
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s
Here's an example of folks not joining because we don't have a Code of Conduct: https://twitter.com/chrisamaphone/status/1199331327209824256. I'm completely OK with the Code of Conduct as proposed.
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d
I left detailed points of disagreement about this CoC in #C5T9GPWFL, but I didn't say much about what I think it ought to say instead. So I guess my main point is that a CoC should mainly be about _conduct_; I suspect that it shouldn't lay out the values or goals of the group because there is more diversity between individuals here than the CoC can capture, whereas we can probably agree more easily on what behavior is okay and not okay. (If there are values and goals we can all agree on, I don't know what they are, and in any case the list would not be exhaustive.)
i
I'll respond in the other thread, just to keep things organized.
v
Future of Coding is an online community with a welcoming, cooperative, and revolutionary spirit. We are unified in the belief that the common practice of programming is tragically less humane than it could be. There's a world of possibilities that get more beautiful the further away from the norm you go. We're here to explore this world together, to discuss ideas about theory and practice, and to champion and support our members' research and development efforts.
Any affiliation with certain political stances or policing for indecent behaviour outside of this community is not part of this beautifully put goal.
@Ivan Reese I found this CoC draft just recently. Here is my feedback: I liked the first paragraph a lot. I think it correctly pictures the spirit of this community. I like this rule about excessive self-promotion. Sometimes it gets really irritating and it seems that it doesn't help with the main goal of the community. However there are things that I found disturbing:
We encourage you to
Discuss politics, economics, class, representation, intersectionality, social movements and dynamics, and other related maters.
Is this really necessary? When people talk politics they get very divisive. When they get divisive, they don't work well together. Very list of topics already implies left-wing worldview (representation, intersectionality), which is already divisive. What if there are some very supportive and insightful members who have right-wing or conservative views? What if these left vs right wing discussions would develop here on FoC? I suspect it would divide people even more and make cooperation harder. I suggest to require in CoC to keep discussions about politics outside of community-affiliated spaces.
amplify the influence of historically underrepresented people in shaping its future
Again, this sounds like a political goal for left-wing group. This very idea of "underrepresentation" is specifically left-wing thing, that is not shared by people with other political stances. I suggest to not use that kind of politicized language in CoC and keep it politically neutral.
Delete posts or messages without notice.
This leaves interpretation what is hate and what is not, what is welcome and what is not to a very small circle of people, moderators. Even good people are limited and have flaws. I suggest to use that kind of power openly and publicly. Would be great if we had special channel where all bad posts are forwarded, where public could see how CoC principles are applied. This is good for moderators too, since this way they can share responsibility with other members. Make this burden of power lighter.
We have zero tolerance for people who commit acts of harassment, hate speech, or abuse anywhere, whether inside or outside the community.
I have two concerns. 1) Very hard to define what is harassment, hate speech and what is not. Internet is huge and contains diverse groups of people. So diverse, that a lot of statements that are perfectly fine for most of the people might be considered as very offensive by others. Imagine talking about Big Bang to creationists for example.Meaning of terms hate speech and harassment is subjective. It unreliable to use these terms for establishing code of conduct. I suggest to refrain from such vague terms as hate speech and harassment. Instead I suggest to define unwelcome behavior in terms that are more specific and are less subjective: use of curse words, doxing, unwanted texting, calls to violence, threats, name calling, etc. 2) Why behavior outside of community-affiliated spaces is taken into account? If person does not disturb work inside the community, but acts imperfectly outside -- why this should this person be removed? Even good people have flaws. Every person at least once in his life acted indecently. People will act incorrectly, because they are limited. I think this should not affect the work inside the community. I think that we should remove people from the community only when it is absolutely necessary. I suggest to apply any measures towards members only based on their behavior inside community-affiliated spaces. --------------------- In general, I suggest to align principles in code of conduct around single goal that was beautifully formulated in the first paragraph:
i
This is thoughtful, measured feedback. I'm not the least bit interested in using this document or community to push my specific political views, so it's good for me to hear that some of the language I used might needlessly come across that way. My interest is for this to be a community where we can discuss the hypothetical future of computing and all tendrils of fascination that reach out from it, with particular attention to how it interrelates with humanity. Crafting this CoC with this goal, and doing a good job of it, means being aware of not just the matters of interest for our community, but also the norms of other communities that exist around us and existed before us, and the issues they've encountered, and how they attempted to solve those issues, and what the consequences of their attempts were. So, many of the details you raised concerns about are explicitly meant to account for failings or struggles of other communities, or to replicate their successes in the face of difficult situations.
The tools for thought we want to build aren't just to help us do more thinking about our tools. We're trying to make tools to help people solve real problems in the world. That means we need to be able to talk about these problems.
Let's look at climate change — that's an inherently political topic, and it is inextricably interconnected with the tools for thought we study and build. I want to make it clear that it is okay for this community to discuss the relationship between our core interests and climate change. Now, some might worry about leaving the door open to discussions like, "Is climate change real?" and I don't think that that, in and of itself, is an appropriate discussion to have openly in this community. But we don't have anyone trying to start discussions like that, so it hasn't been an issue. But a discussion of how tools for thought would help people improve their mental models and come to understand the data related to climate change — that is absolutely the sort of discussion we should encourage, and we have had several good discussions like that.
But if you do not make it explicit that this sort of "how do they relate" discussion is allowed, you'll inevitably have people who play the "This is politics, and I don't think we should discuss politics" card. It's something that has already happened in some of our discussions about the world around our tools. This creates a situation where the conversation moves from something interesting (like "How does FoC relate to climate change?") to something polarizing (like "Is climate change political? Are politics off topic? Should we make an exception in this case?").
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So in this way, the CoC is meant to address an issue that has already arisen in the community (people shutting down conversations that read as political, simply because they read as political) at the risk of creating a new issue (people starting discussions that are not at all related to the core interests of the community). If the latter starts happening, then we'll need to do a #CEXED56UR discussion about it and revise the CoC.
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Now, given that that's the justification for this stuff to exist in the CoC, would it help if I revised it as follows, to be more explicit about focussing these discussions on how they relate to our core technical interests?
Discuss politics, economics, social movements and dynamics, and other maters of the world around us as they relate to the interests of our community. Computing emerges from humanity, and thus societal context is essential for a full understanding of the issues faced by programmers and users now and in the future.
(I also removed "class, representation, intersectionality" because, while I don't want to forbid discussions of those ideas, you're right that people might see these specific words as encouraging a certain politics.)
I would like to make it abundantly clear this this community has, as a foundational interest, a desire to improve diversity and inclusion both within the community itself and in the tech world at large. Inherent in that is a recognition that many people, simply because of the circumstances of their life, have had an unfairly diminished role in shaping the technology that now surrounds them. This is not some fringe left-wing ideal; this is both the opinion and lived experience of the vast majority of people. Seeking to empower these people is an inherently humane thing to do. I reject the premise that this matter is too political to include in the CoC — the very purpose of the CoC, as an enshrinement of the values of our community, is to take a principled stand on matters like this.
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Yes, the social contract of this CoC is that I (and hopefully someday, other people) are to be trusted by the community to be the ultimate arbiter of what is acceptable and what is not, and to perform appropriate moderating actions when needed. It's important to me to maintain that trust by acting with fairness and transparency — and all of these things are subjective.
Deleting things without notice — this is something that I just want to keep in my back pocket in case someone does something stupidly bad. We've had a very, very limited number of cases where people have done things that are obviously just meant to upset people, where there is no grey area. Like, if someone creates a new account and their first post is just a racial slur, I'm going to delete that post and ban their account, and that's not something worth bothering the rest of the community with.
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We haven't had any violations since the CoC was created, but when we inevitably do, I would prefer to discuss them openly (in #CEXED56UR) if the situation allows it. It's going to be entirely dependent on what the violation is and who might be hurt by it. But it's very likely that we'll have situations that land in the grey area, where sharing the details carefully won't hurt anyone, and where we will need to revise the CoC to be more clear. That should all happen out in the open as much as possible, yes.
There will be no way to generate an exhaustive list of what constitutes hate speech, harassment, etc. Earlier versions of the CoC included some lists like that, and after weighing various ways of articulating them, the consensus (and my personal preference) was to keep the CoC short and focussed on the principles and goals. This is about trust — people trust me to be a good arbiter, and I trust people to ask me if they are unclear about something they'd like to say.
Would it help if I added something like this?
If you're unsure about whether something you'd like to post would violate the CoC, you can, without consequence, ask a moderator privately first.
When it comes to assessing the public behaviour of people outside the community, this stems from some of the earlier rounds of discussion and feedback. Someone asked whether Curtis Yarvin would be allowed in the community. He absolutely would not. You can read my thoughts on this here: https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/CEXED56UR/p1582054654046700?thread_ts=1581999680.035700&amp;cid=CEXED56UR
This is an example of something that we're doing with this CoC to avoid issues faced by other communities in the past. It's the sort of thing that is very hard to articulate, but very important to include in some capacity. So I am not interested in removing it. I would consider revising the wording if you wanted to suggest alterations.
To anyone subscribed to this thread, sorry for the notification spam. To Vladimir, thank you for taking the time to voice these concerns. I hope I've done a good job of coloring-in why things are the way they are, and how many of the concerns you raised were already considered when drafting this document, albeit not leading to the result that you would have preferred. The CoC is inherently going to be deeply imperfect, but based on the feedback I've received from many people inside and outside the community, it stands as an appropriate encoding of the principles of this community for the time being. Let me know what you think about the specific revisions I've offered, and if you have a few specific revisions of your own that'd make the biggest improvement in your view, feel free to offer those.
o
@Vladimir Gordeev: just a quick reply to say I totally agree with what Ivan replied, and especially about making it clear that it is very welcome in this community to have discussions on politics in relation to programming.
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I also totally agree that moderation needs some trust (from all sides) to work. And the way @Ivan Reese conducted this CoC writing and the discussions around it, makes me think that we can fully trust him to manage all this appropriately.
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v
Hey!
I'm not the least bit interested in using this document or community to push my specific political views
I didn't want to imply anything like that, I am sorry if my words gave you such impression. I understand that you produced this draft in the interests of community.
the CoC is meant to address an issue that has already arisen in the community (people shutting down conversations that read as political, simply because they read as political) at the risk of creating a new issue (people starting discussions that are not at all related to the core interests of the community)
Okay, I think you are right. Probably it should be okay to discuss politics, as long as people stay civil.
(I also removed "class, representation, intersectionality" because, while I don't want to forbid discussions of those ideas, you're right that people might see these specific words as encouraging a certain politics.)
Thank you, I think this way document would look more neutral.
Would it help if I added something like this?
> If you're unsure about whether something you'd like to post would violate the CoC, you can, without consequence, ask a moderator privately first.
I think that would be excessive. Probably it would be better to keep this part unchanged.
There will be no way to generate an exhaustive list of what constitutes hate speech, harassment, etc.
I'm going to delete that post and ban their account, and that's not something worth bothering the rest of the community with.
This is about trust — people trust me to be a good arbiter, and I trust people to ask me if they are unclear about something they'd like to say.
I trust you, and I think almost all members of this community do too. Probably you right, relying on judgment of few trusted people would be easier and more efficient. I want to say that I am really thankful to you for voluntarily carrying this burden of community maintenance. I know it is a lot of work. However there are still things that I can't find agreement with. I will post it in next message.
this community has, as a foundational interest, a desire to improve diversity and inclusion both within the community itself and in the tech world at large.
I think this idea of "diversity and inclusion" is very North American specific (US, Canada). If you ask a person from Egypt, Poland, Singapore, India, Japan or Russia, people probably wouldn't even understand what does it mean. I think it is not as universal as it may look like. Still, majority of the members of this community are from North America and it has an impact on the discussions that we have, I understand that.
many people, simply because of the circumstances of their life, have had an unfairly diminished role in shaping the technology that now surrounds them
Seeking to empower these people is an inherently humane thing to do
Helping those who are struggling is a noble pursuit and hardly anyone would oppose that. I am sure that most members of this community would help a struggling stranger without any questions. I do that too. The problem arises when this pursuit conflicts with other value: one should be judged on his merits. There was a scandal in Harvard university. Some applicants were favored over the other solely based on their ethnic background in pursuit of inclusion and diversity[1]. That's clearly unfair towards hardworking applicants that happen to have unwelcome ethnicity or race (in this case Asian). I found that on some tech events due to diversity policies it is required that they should have "at least one person of an underrepresented group on the panel" [2]. Similar requirement is often applied for conference speakers selection. Again some people are favored solely based on their gender, ethnic background or race, their merits and achievements become secondary. This is clearly unfair and wrong. Person should be judged based on his merits, contribution and character, not by his gender, ethnic background or race. Ironically, that's what "inclusion and diversity" policies seem to lead to. In very second paragraph current draft calls to "amplify the influence of historically underrepresented people". If this would be understood and applied the same way it already happens in other places then I am afraid that it would eventually lead to: 1. Invitations to the podcasts would be based more on their gender, ethnic or racial background rather than how interesting guest and his work is. 2. Participation invitations in case of videoconferencing events with limited size of participants would be based more on their gender, ethnic or racial background rather than how much they can contribute. 3. When too many events happen at the same time only some can be included in the newsletter. Those that have authors with certain gender, ethnic or racial background would be prioritized. That would be clearly wrong and against main idea of this community. I don't believe that @Ivan Reese would ever allow something like that to happen. However, things may change when new people would come to maintain this community and start to interpret CoC in other ways. I don't think I am alone with my fears here. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html [2] https://samsunginter.net/diversity-inclusion-statement/
i
I don't appreciate that you're taking the very clear language of this CoC, interpreting it correctly (yes, these words do mean exactly what you understand them to mean), and then feigning, "I don't believe Ivan Reese would ever allow something like that to happen." Yes, this is exactly what I want to have happen, that's why I wrote this CoC. These are key values of this community and nearly every other tech community that gives a damn about humanity at large. How we express these values is absolutely up for debate. The values themselves are not. It pains me that every single person, without exception, who regularly posts to this community presents as male. I think that's a problem that we should work on. The majority of the community (and society at large) agrees with this general position — I have had an overwhelming number of people reach out to me publicly and privately to say as much. I've had multiple people tell me that this community looks like a boys club. Flatly: that sucks. Diversity is good, and we're not going to have more of it unless we make an effort. Wanting more diversity and inclusion is good just on the face of it — it's the right thing to do, full stop. But if that's not enough for you, there's also a compelling merit argument to be made for it — new people with different backgrounds joining the community will bring new ideas that we can learn from, ideas that we haven't previously been exposed to. That's exciting! It's the same reason I'm so excited when someone joins with an electrical engineering background, or an arts background, or a linguistics background — perspectives are tremendously important, and the more of them we can have, the better. So to restate it: The explicit goal to increase diversity and inclusion is not up for debate. You're absolutely welcome to not agree with that goal and to continue participating in the community, so long as you don't take actions to discourage anyone else from participating.
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In very second paragraph current draft calls to "amplify the influence of historically underrepresented people". If this would be understood and applied the same way it already happens in other places then I am afraid that it would eventually lead to:
1. Invitations to the podcasts would be based more on their gender, ethnic or racial background rather than how interesting guest and his work is.
2. Participation invitations in case of videoconferencing events with limited size of participants would be based more on their gender, ethnic or racial background rather than how much they can contribute.
3. When too many events happen at the same time only some can be included in the newsletter. Those that have authors with certain gender, ethnic or racial background would be prioritized.
These are hypothetical situations that have not arisen in practice. On the other hand, the lack of diversity in this community is a real, current problem. Like the discussion of politics, the effort to include people from more diverse backgrounds is something that is important and needs to be done, and if it leads to new problems then we can address those when they arise.
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v
Oh. It seems that we understand what is fair and unfair differently.
It's the same reason I'm so excited when someone joins with an electrical engineering background, or an arts background, or a linguistics background
This is wonderful, I would certainly welcome that!
You're absolutely welcome to not agree with that goal and to continue participating in the community, so long as you don't take actions to discourage anyone else from participating.
Thank you. I learned a lot from this community and got connected with many brilliant people. I got a lot of useful feedback on my project here. Would be sad to lose that.
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s
A long, long time ago I used to think of 'selection based on _merit_' as legit and actionable, perhaps even fair. But now I think there are flawed implicit assumptions in that idea. One assumption is that merit can be clearly decided - but by who? The 'field' can decide the merit of people wanting to join the 'field'? But how did the 'field' even arise? What kinds of values and selection criteria got encoded in the 'field' and where did they come from? How are they propagated? Can we even tell who will bring value, if they speak a slightly different language from a slightly different context, and that throws off our evaluation? What if potentially valuable folks don't even show up? Another broader assumption is the field exists independently and people are there to serve and better the field. This is wrong - in fact it is that people exist independently and the field should exist to serve the people, even if it needs to evolve into something different. The reality is that the field and its boundaries are a fabricated invention, and the field+community evolve in a self propagating, self-selecting way. I think there are a lot more human and cultural factors in the field that we may not notice. In our broad human endeavor with computers (the 'field'), how well are the machines serving humanity? Which groups are 'in control' and why? Honestly I don't think there is any deep conspiracy here, just the usual tendencies of humans to prefer the familiar and proximal (ideas, people, cultures, communication styles) over the less familiar and distant. (If you go to a party/event and see multiple tight-knit groups, which one are you most comfortable breaking into?) It was easy for me to join this group, but I suspect there are women with valuable ideas who hold back only because there is no existing diversity. This will not improve by itself and will instead get worse.
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o
On the question of what is fair or not, and about judging people based on their merit, I must say that one reason why I am here (or still here after one year 🎂 🙂 ), it is that I clearly identified that this community is absolutely not merit-based and is very welcoming. People are just here to share and discuss ideas, and even people with "no merit" (whatever one puts behind this concept), and the general tone is very peaceful (even when there are very opinionated debates). So, due to this community mindset, I felt welcomed and I stayed, which is fortunate for me because I learned so much from it (thanks to all!). But as it is not "merit" based, maybe somebody who values merit decided not to join the community one year ago. And what is fair or not between the two? Well "it is complicated", it is a matter of taste I guess, but I am very happy with the current situation. And I would be very happy if this brings more people like me that are "intimidated" by merit-based community. It can be seen as more "fair" to give them the opportunity to come in.
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And on the idea of "does inclusive statement brings people who haven't come without it" I must say, that at the extreme opposite, for a young girls only workshop on AI I organized last summer, some girls said that one of the reasons why they came was because there were no boys at all among the students. I understand it is a bit extreme on that case (not very inclusive for boys!) but at least it illustrates that before joining, some people are seriously considering the context of an event or community, and not only its subject.
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k
Hypothesis: many of the problems we are discussing here are due tech being the king of the world. The tech industry can do whatever it wants without being held responsible for the consequences. Not legally, but not even morally. So we need input from people outside of the tech industry. That’s a good reason to go for more diversity (much as I dislike that term, but I have no better one to offer).
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j
some points: • neutrality does not exist! or if it does, it's constantly shifting based on the "extremes" that surround it. • merit, also, does not exist! in case you didn't know, the term "meritocracy" was actually coined in the context of a satire, meant to be sarcastic like "haha wouldnt it be wacky if there was a system like this", but now that term is used seriously even thought all of our research into cognitive science (specifically: unconscious biases/cognitive shortcuts) show that there is no such thing glad to see such a healthy conversation here tho! <3
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k
@Julius I'd put it a bit differently: both neutrality and merit exist only within the context of a specific value system. The mistake typically made is to forget about this context and consider one's value system universal. Once you understand this, you can turn it around and deduce someone's tacit value system from what they consider neutral or having merit.
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