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by rubiquity 3973 days ago
I'm out of the loop I guess but what is "the recent GitHub stuff?"
3 comments

The open code of conduct they have adopted.

https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-condu...

http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/

>Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop

>Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

    ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
    Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”
    Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
    Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
    Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
>Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and technical ability. We will not tolerate discrimination based on any of the protected characteristics above, including participants with disabilities.
> textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”)

People actually do that? Just thinking about a stranger writing that to me makes me a bit creeped out, like a minor version of how Merkel reacted when Bush gave her a quick backrub.

People do it instead of saying "thanks" in some contexts. "Hey, the foobar crashed when I clicked the widget." Here's a patch to fix it. "hug"
Yep, I'm creeped out a bit by reading that in a programming context. (In a tango context, that's a different matter.)
I had never heard the term "cissexual" before. I don't really see why it's needed.
> I had never heard the term "cissexual" before. I don't really see why it's needed.

Because people who aren't transsexual exist, and it sometimes is useful to refer to the group of people sharing that characteristic, and its more convenient to do so by a term that doesn't involve the negation of another trait.

Yes, that CoC is seriously creepy.

Saying "we're going to protect some groups but not others" is absolutely abhorrent. Either forbid all racism or allow everything (and just to make this clear: I'm very much on the side of forbidding all racism, no matter what race it targets), but saying "we'll allow hate speech about one race but we'll remove hate speech about another" is the literal definition of endorsing racism.

And then the bit about "tone"; they're basically saying that they explicitly allow blatant incivility. Now, that wouldn't be so bad if they had a "we never remove anything" policy, but they clearly don't. If they're going to remove bad content, then they need to have a policy of "keep a civil tongue in your mouth or get it cut out".

Also, as a trans girl, I don't tolerate anyone in my life saying "die cis scum" or #KillAllMen, and I call that shit out.

(edit: so, this apparently applies only to the projects GitHub maintains themselves and isn't a site-wide thing, so it's not as bad as I've feared, but I still don't like it)

> Either forbid all racism or allow everything.

It does prohibit all racism. ("We will not tolerate discrimination based on any of the protected characteristics above [including race]".)

It's impossible and unreasonable to forbid all discrimination. It deliberately discriminates against racists, for example.

"Blatant incivility" would not be welcoming, so would be counter to the stated goals. The statement is instead that 'Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial' is not an actionable complaint.

For example, if you believe otherwise then - and to use an example of a tone argument that I do not mean to direct to you - "Why don't you calm down and we can discuss this like adults?" This is a tone argument which implicitly and incorrectly assumes that only someone who is emotionally upset (and likely unjustifiably so) would have made that sort of statement.

I believe the overall policy is along the lines of "keep a civil tongue .." that you propose, though with more details about what is considered "civil".

I'm sorry you're being down voted. I'm thankful that someone this CoC is supposed to protect is speaking out against it because it discriminates against other people.
I heartily agree.

Feminism is sexism. As is MensRights. Any group that puts one sex above or "equal" (think Animal Farm version of equal) is sexist. Same also applies to race. Race shouldn't matter, period.

Much more significant to me than the Code of Conduct stuff (which just continues internal stuff like the purge of their meritocracy rug) is their precipitous disappearing of a repository that described itself as "X for retards", and without notice, its forks where all the current development was. See more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118 and some discussion here WRT their recent $240M round of investment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9971946
Just google "github open code of conduct" should provide a decent overview.
I did that and the first result was the GitLab code of conduct, hosted on GitHub.

https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/master/CONTRIBUTIN...

You're welcome.

Google 'thinks' highly of GitHub. Our CoC for GitLab the project is also hosted on GitLab.com https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CONTRIBU... Our canonical source is GitLab.com https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master#canonica...
I am aware of the mechanics of Google. In the context of the obvious stab of the parent to GitHub introducing a CoC and recommending to support GitLab was funny though, especially when throwing those terms in the ring.
Do you have any plans to revise that in order to preempt the sorts of problems that users are having with Github? I would imagine that most of the new users are expecting an environment there which isn't r-------.
That CoC is for GitLab the project. Not for GitLab.com. Right now we handle GitLab.com issues on a case by case basis. So far it was only Gamergate but I'm sure more will come up in the future. Gamergate opted to run their own GitLab instance http://gitgud.io/users/sign_in
Just want to say thank you for creating the free, open tools needed to host even more controversial stuff like this. Even if you're afraid to host it yourself, you've truly created a good for the world at large.
Perhaps some transparency behind such decisions when they happen again would help maintain a relationship of good faith between GitLab and its users.
I'm not sure if we really need to give them further exposure?