🎺 Episode 46 of the podcast is now a thing that exists in the world! Oh what's that? 📊 The results of the first ever Future of Coding Community Survey are now published! Can we do one more? 🎙️ I made a 10+ minute long audio piece exploring what the future of coding means. In the bastardized words of the crazy one — Episode 46. Survey results. The true meaning of FoCmass. These are not three separate projects. https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/046 🍰

So 54 want to leave and 36 stay with Slack. If you split the not-bothered 50:50, that's about 71:53 to leave. So no, not overwhelming, but a clear signal that Slack isn't the favourite option

Genuine question: was the topic of diversity excluded, or not considered at all?

So 54 want to leave and 36 stay with Slack. If you split the not-bothered 50:50, …

I don’t think that is how this works. But I do understand a little better how we got to Brexit now. 😜

@jarm — I had thought about asking for gender, but didn't feel comfortable about it at the time I wrote the survey. My thoughts about this have changed in the time since, though. Next year, it's something I want to get more info about, not to mention the fact that it signals, "This is related to a problem here and we care about solving it!" Aside from gender, are there any diversity-oriented questions you wish had been asked? I have a pretty bad blind spot here, and it's something I want to improve.

@Ivan Reese if you don’t feel comfortable it’s a sign that you should do something about it, not turn away from it. That could start with simply starting an open discussion here, and then having breakout discussions with those whose views and backgrounds aren’t well represented here. And then forming positive actions for the community as a whole. It wouldn’t be too much to do an additional diversity survey as an addendum to this rather than waiting a year. I would recommend to consult outside of this community to write such a survey. Diversity means different things in different contexts. There is a wealth of diversity here in some dimensions, and a dearth in other dimensions, gender being the most obvious one. The issue also is a broader sociopolitical one: the lack of gender diversity reflects structural inequalities and oppression across society. This community can either be an ally towards justice by working actively to dismantle that, or it can continue in its bubble implicitly excluding everyone else from the “future of coding” conversation, and ignorant of its own biases and weaknesses.

There have already been some conversations over in #CEXED56UR, especially in light of the new Code of Conduct, about the dire lack of diversity here. We need a clear signal to the outside world that this is something we care about and want to improve. I'm excited to find many ways to send that signal. With respect to consultation specifically, there are ways it can backfire — creating additional work for people who are already disadvantaged; implicitly asking individuals to act as representatives of a class. I want to do it, but I don't want to do it badly. That's what made me uncomfortable to ask about gender. On one one hand, asking is a signal that it's something we care about and want to learn about. On the other hand, I've seen instances where the very people I'd like to reach are bothered by the tone-deaf way in which others have tried to reach them. To some, a survey question about gender might be seen as interest. To others, it might be seen as a gate. I like the idea of a diversity survey. I'm going to spin up a conversation about that in #CEXED56UR, so if you have thoughts on what that could look like I'd love to have your input.

@Ivan Reese I just want you say thank you for doing all the work in putting this together!

Regarding consultation, I was imagining more along the lines of asking other community leaders who are further along in their journey than here to lend some advice. I'm sure there must be readily accessible resources out there.

I'm pretty proud of it: https://github.com/futureofcoding/code-of-conduct

I think it is wrong to delete some messages just because they don't fit your particular political bias. You started a political line of questions, people should be able to express themselves, as long as hard rules are not broken (such as incitement to hatred or discrimination).

I'm also inclined against censoring uncomfortable views, especially in these days of increasing state-sponsored corporate censorship. I would be a hypocrite to support what you're doing here at the same time as being vocal against such suppression of speech.

Achraf, the rules were broken, as I said. I reached out to you and others privately, explaining this move and offering to discuss it, and in those private messages I also told you directly that I feel bad doing this. Instead of responding to me, you've come back to this thread and continued to push it off topic. If you'd rather discuss this out in the open rather than in private, that's fine — please take a look at our existing diversity-focused discussions in #CEXED56UR and add your thoughts there, or start a new meta thread to discuss how I've handled this situation. If you are going to discuss this in public, please respond to the substance of what people have said and done. Don't just slap on a label like "political bias" or "identity politics" — please explain what underlies your concerns and how you're being affected by what we're doing here, and help me do a better job of making the community work for you.

There's a rule in the CoC that I very much like: "Discuss politics, economics, representation, social movements and dynamics, and other maters of society". It means there is no point in abstracting away from politics. Ideologies all over. One ideology has been freely expressed above: "the lack of gender diversity reflects structural inequalities and oppression across society". I reacted calling it "group identity politics". Others have reacted too. But those reactions got deleted, and only those reactions. I will elaborate: I don't even buy into the premise of "we need more women in here". Maybe I am a woman. Maybe my female partner is enjoying the conversations in here every week. Maybe my daughter is currently learning how to program and is inspired by many posts and links posted here. Or maybe not. The point being: I wish to not correlate people's identity with their gender, or to single them out in that way ("look it's a woman!"). I'm not saying gender or ethnicity or religion are not important identity holders. I'm saying that they may or may not be. People have various paths in life. My ideology is that I wish to build a path toward a situation where everyone, indeed, can afford to say what I've had just said. I.e. that I can express myself without defensively adjusting for a thousand prejudices due to my gender or ethn.. wait never mind. And so we get to the topic of style and tacit rules. A community has clearly a dominant style. For example, some communities like banter, others have little taste for it. There are certainly ways of talking and writing that pervade this community. The very concept of an asynchronous board is not obvious to everyone (nor is Slack). If someone (who happens to be a woman, but not necessarily) stumbles across this forum and feels uncomfortable to contribute, why would you attribute that to the community being all male? Or worse even, as has been said in another thread: a community of "comfortable white men". Why do you feel the need to bring gender into this? Or race? I am sure that intentions here are good. I even believe that the author of the phrase "the lack of gender diversity reflects structural inequalities" means well. I question however the tactics used to act on those good intentions. The first tactic is to define groups of people by gender and such, which to me utterly defeats the whole point. The second tactic is to silence whomever expresses opposition to the first tactic.

(I'm not a moderator but I want to add my voice as one member of the community, and I'll try to be direct here.) I completely fail to see how actual efforts towards improving diversity would adversely affect anyone here in particular. Like, if you don't think it's a worthy goal, you don't have to participate in any real efforts (no different than any other project!). All I (and I think the CoC) would ask is to don't make statements or take actions that would discourage any group based on the diversity definitions. If all you want the ability to say anything and everything, offend and put-down, make any statement without any regard to sensitivity of other folks and social groups, sorry you are not welcome here. You can make your statements in your personal blogs or plenty of other places. In that sense this is no different than any workplace or other community (or indeed, society itself.) It's true that the boundary of what's ok and not ok isn't always clear cut - this is no different than how the law works as well. We try our best to be fair and balanced, even though it's never one-size-fits-all. This is why we have moderators and a process to report and handle incidents. This connects to the Paradox of Tolerance and Popper, etc. E.g. "I'm offended by diversity and what about me and my group? How come you want to exclude us?". Well then sorry, this is not the place for you. If you're not offended by diversity but are not particularly interested in it then there's no problem, is there? Participate in all the non-diversity related discussion (which is most of the slack) and try not to sabotage the diversity efforts. If there are things that offend you, then please speak up! Either directly to the moderators or in public, as you feel comfortable.

Given: 1. Discussing politics is allowed by CoC 2. Various members reason in left-wing terms, thinking that it is the only way 3. Objecting to reasoning in left-wing terms(group identity) is not welcome 4. Arguing that left-wing reasoning is not the only way is not welcome either Computes to: Gradual removal of all members of community that don't align politically with left-wing ideas in the long term. Am I wrong in my reasoning? @shalabh

@Achraf Kassioui — It is not okay that this community is predominately male, because lots of people, women and men, have expressed that it makes them unhappy. That's what this "diversity" stuff is about, at the end of the day. I think that's plenty good enough reason to do it. @Vladimir Gordeev — You're generalizing, and sensationalizing, which makes it hard to respond to you constructively. Arguing against our diversity initiatives in this thread is not welcome, because I started the thread to talk about the podcast and survey, and I asked for folks to take the diversity discussion back to #CEXED56UR. It didn't happen. It just sucks that it looks like we don't get to have a discussion about the survey now. There are a ton of other interesting things we could learn from it. I have elsewhere said something to the effect of.. further objection to the diversity initiatives is not welcome. That was a mistake on my part. Of course people need to be able to say, "Hey, this particular diversity initiative is not a good idea. I have suggestions for how we could do something better." And while I don't like it, it's not against any rules to say, "I don't think we should do diversity initiatives at all, because [for example] they'll drain resources from other initiatives, and I think that there's going to be a bigger problem if that happens." What I should have said is: There are a lot of people who are unhappy about the composition and tenor of the community, and it would be very hurtful to say that we shouldn't at least try to help them, so I will kindly ask that you not do that openly. @Achraf Kassioui and @Vladimir Gordeev — I didn't delete your comments because of politics. Please stop simply labeling things as "left-wing" and instead explain what you mean by it. The term "left-wing" is too vague and open to interpretation because of how many different ways its used in the broader world, so if you want to make your arguments carry weight, you should instead use your own words. You're also stating that things are left-wing as though that's inherently a reason to not do those things. If that's a point that you intend to make, you'll need to explain why that is. So again, it's not about politics for me — I deleted Vladimir's comment because, after reflecting on it for hours and in my judgment as community moderator, I felt it was sexist in a way that'd cause harm. And since I was going to delete that comment, I decided to remove the other comments that had moved this thread in a hostile direction. Achraf, you characterized our interest in diversity as an infection. That's not against the rules, but it's absolutely mean spirited. Jack's comments were not mean spirited, so they remain.

Maybe start another thread for the survey, Ivan? 😊

I'm going to take a break from this stuff for a few days. This has eaten up about 15 hours of my weekend, which I was looking forward to spending on Hest. What I may do from there, if I feel up to it, is start a new thread about one of the many interesting new things I've learned about our community from the survey, like the fact that my attempt to categorize what FoC topics we are interested in was way more controversial than I expected (but like.. controversial in a good way, haha), and there's probably a lot I could learn from hearing how people would have.. you know what, I'll start that thread now. Thanks for the suggestion. <3