SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
Lest you think this is yet another CoC, the guidelines assure you that they are not a CoC.
Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
The GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, initial version, have been published in https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html. On behalf of the GNU Project, I ask all GNU contributors to make their best efforts to follow these guidelines in GNU Project discuaaions[sic].
[ . . . ] The difference between kind communication guidelines and a code of conduct is a matter of the basic overall approach.
A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them.
[...] The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind.
[ . . . . ] I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action
The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday October 29 2018, @06:52PM (5 children)
Problems with your thinking:
1. #2 has rarely, if ever, been shown to work in the real world. Once you accept the premise that diversity is a goal though, the failure to work always proceeds to #1 and destruction.
2., You also ASSume diversity, in the narrow SJW sense, is desirable. That of course requires total and absolute intolerance toward anyone who disagrees with the new project goal or even the approved $current_year version of the definition of diversity.
3. The only diversity that should be sought out in a software project is diversity of approaches and ways of thinking. If that comes from diverse ethnic backgrounds and such, great. But a project filled with people of every color and preferred sexual perversion thinking the exact California corporate approved thoughts brings no additional benefit and in the real world is always shown to produce unhelpful chaos and politics.
4. Most Free / Open software is developed on mailing lists and public repos. It is by definition color blind and blind to everything else for that matter. If "Diverse" people must always be demanding everyone else make special accommodation (that tends to lower everyone else's productivity) for them instead of starting their own projects it does raise fairly obvious questions that everyone seems to avoid. Better still, why aren't we occasionally noticing, after years of using contributing to a project, that the leader is a non-white male?
5. Freedom of association means freedom to NOT associate or it is merely doublespeak.
And above all else remember this
DIVERSITY + PROXIMITY = WAR
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @08:31PM
I'm sorry you're so scared of someone different from you.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @10:04PM
Diversity isn't the goal. It's a byproduct of not chasing away people who are different than you. But, if your goal is to mark your territory by chasing away anyone who is, or thinks, different than you then it's understandable that you would mistakenly assume that diversity is the goal (since it is antithetical to your goal).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @10:06PM
I hear whistles carried on the wind. Lo, what darkness falls upon this land? A fearful wind, tearing at the fabric of homogeneity is whipping up terrors unknown. The storm brings tricks for all the kids who dare be different, white ropes and smoldering crosses.
Jmorris cries for the first time in his life yet his therapist laments, tears of joy were not what they sent.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday October 30 2018, @12:32AM
No, it produces conflict, which, as I and others say otherwhere in this thread, is often a good thing.
These are actually the successes you don't hear about because working together was the goal, not having one or more token members of some protected minority group.
I don't assume such a thing. "SJW Diversity" is a destructive thing which is in fact not desirable, partly for the reasons you cite. What I am pointing out with #2 above is that when people say "Hey, there's (no|not enough) diversity", they are identifying a symptom of something, and not a problem that can be cured by diversity. Maybe there's no diversity because it's a small group from similar backgrounds and that's great, or maybe it's because people are excluding others who could be helpful.
Absolutely correct.
That's because of a few tautologies: people, in general, know what they know. And are uncomfortable outside their comfort zones. Someone from "outside the group" who is different in ways significant enough to trigger that "state of unknown"/"outside comfort zone" brings to light the fact that many people are very rude when brought to that point. This is the main reason why both #1 and #2 fail. For a project to develop natural diversity as it grows, people have to work against being jerks against their fear of the unknown and the different. Not all of them are up to the task without coercion.
It isn't blind in the way that you seem to think. Some groups spontaneously form as diverse groups initially, but most groups probably form as sets of similar people with similar prejudices. "Seeing" that the new guy is purple, or from another culture (or that the new guy is actually a girl), would often be better because some people, seeing such a thing, would knock off the pink-group racist jokes against purples or stereotypical male attitudes against women that they may have. But the "blind" group who is a group of similar people with similar prejudices just keeps it up "Hey you guys want to hear the latest Purple Woman Joke? Ha ha The pink guy who looks like us said you can't order a big mac here this is a hardware store!"
This "people often being jerks who are rude" is where the need for things like Niceness Codes and such spring from.
Which is enormously counter-productive. This erroneous thinking comes from people thinking that diversity *is* the goal, instead of recognizing that diversity is something that can advance the goal, whatever it already is.
Some groups have the "lightning strikes" phenomenon where the people aren't mostly jerks just by random chance. After all, every combination is just about as likely as any other, statistically speaking, if the process is initially "blind."
That's why the group of people from similar backgrounds working together for a common purpose is a good, noble, and fine thing to have, despite all the emotional, erroneous nonsense to the contrary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @11:06AM
DIVERSITY + PROXIMITY = WAR
Diversity can be created out of nothing, proximity is not a requirement anymore. Interests + power = war.