| > he's saying that for the sake of the open source community, it's very important to be sure that there's a fire when you scream it, lest people stop responding to the word "fire." No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that most people who claim prejudice are "mentally disturbed, drama queens, and political carpetbaggers" and calling for people to be thrown out of the community. > In America, if you go to the police to report a crime, they will consider your claim based on how realistic it seems and if there is any preliminary evidence. ... Would you prefer to be in a world where feelings and claims are more important than evidence? What the hell are you talking about? In this post, ESR is claiming the open source community is practically magically immune to prejudice because of "hacker culture" even though it is somehow an issue in industry, academia, and everywhere else. The idea that a community overwhelmingly populated by white males is free of prejudice is ridiculous: It would be totally unlike every other such community that exists. [Edit: I meant to specifically refer to communities on the scale of the open source community here. I don't meant to say a startup with five white male employees is somehow automatically problematic. When a large community is primarily composed of members that haven't experienced discrimination, they do tend to be bad at noticing the subtle effects of discrimination and the lack of obvious diversity does tend to make people feel unwelcome.] This isn't about my feelings. Prejudice exists. Studies have shown prejudice exists. Something as simple as having a foreign-sounding name causes people to judge you as less trustworthy. The idea that this doesn't carry over to hackers is laughable. Besides, this is not about going to the police and reporting a crime. This is about ESR denying the open source community has any problems that need addressing. This is ESR saying everything is 99.99% based on merit and everyone should feel welcome and almost everyone who doesn't is either mentally disturbed, a drama queen, or a political carpetbagger. It's ridiculous! > I can't believe how quickly this article has become useful. You are exactly the sort of problem we have to contend with. Keep taking ESR's claim about the mental illness of those who claim discrimination at face value while you refuse to even entertain our claims unless we have evidence sufficient for a jury trial. You're disgusting. |