[JadeNB]

Is this anything but a fit of pique on the part of the maintainer of the mirror? It seems that the maintainer is mainly saying "because I have done many good things, no-one is allowed to complain about anything I do." It seemed that the notification was polite and professional, and made very clear that it involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand. (The free-speech issue seems to be a red herring; no-one is, as far as I can tell, denying his right to name his mirror as he pleases. As the saying goes, "free speech is the right to say whatever you please, but not the right to have anyone listen.")

[zimpenfish]

To be honest, if I was the Arch people, I'd boot him from the project just for the ridiculous self-preening nature of that email. And also for calling himself "Alucard".

(This is why I'm not in charge of things, mind.)

[Foxboron]

It's a random person offering to host a mirror. He isn't affiliated, and havent contribute in any other way to the project. There is nothing to boot here.

[microcolonel]

You'd be making a huge mistake, and if I were at a higher station than you when you did that, I would be very close to booting you if could be argued as a net good or neutral to do so.

[zimpenfish]

Why would I be making a huge mistake? They are clearly incapable of behaving professionally and, since the whole thrust of that thread is "Arch wants to behave professionally", booting them would align with that perfectly.

[microcolonel]

Maybe the laid-back, results oriented nature of Arch Linux is what got it here. The IRC and mailing list are openly hostile to people who do not read the manual, and yet it has consistently been the best goddamn Linux distro on the planet earth for the solid five years I've used it. It is on the backs of people like this that Arch Linux was built, and if that laissez faire atmosphere deteriorates, I suspect the productivity will deteriorate with it.

[jrimbault]

(I am a full time arch user and occasionally read some of the mailing lists)

I don't see how the RTFM mentality and what you call "laid back" mentality are compatible.

Imo, Arch is one of the more severe/strict distros and communities.

Guess it's all perception.

[microcolonel]

I know what you're getting at, and that's fair from one perspective.

To people who are socially sensitive it can be very stressful to work with these folks. When I say laid-back I figure I mean that it is more tolerant/friendly to autistic behaviour. The low standard for social skills brings in a lot of people who do productive work, at the expense of the perception of people who don't work well with autistic types. More men and boys are autistic (or close to it) than women and girls, so you'll see an even bigger split here than usual.

Basically, this domain name is typical autistic weeaboo trash (in keeping with the weeaboo handle). It's obviously not a literal endorsement of child trafficking; probably a morsel of dark humour which is more offensive than humorous if you're sensitive; or perhaps it's a tool for his work at NCMEC.

Emotional sensitivity is effectively a cancer to these communities, because a large portion of the members are incapable of it. If it takes hold in the Arch Linux community, it could collapse almost entirely.

HN has a lot of sensitive/agreeable people, so (understandable) outrage in this thread has cost me ~50 karma. It's a matter of personality, whether you see this as a sign of a healthy community, or possibly the end of an era.

Seems like this guy has a history of being a grade too abrasive for different communities. I understand why he sounds so upset in his response here.

[kw71]

When your goal is to have a wide audience as possible it is a good practice to avoid bad taste.

We could have the same scenario with smart alecks committing code that has "fun" var and function names.

[viraptor]

I'm tempted to say it could've been a provocation planned for some time. The original name for the mirror was cuntflaps: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51870 and only changed after a request.

[zimpenfish]

And my "they are clearly incapably of behaving professionally" gets a +1 buff.

[konart]

> involved no personal judgement, only a response to user demand

So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended? Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then? I'm pretty sure many people will find band's name offencive.

[sigi45]

This is not black and white. There is no 'if someone things young girls sexualised istn fun' than 'rammstein should be cencured'.

[smhost]

> So it is okay to remove stuff just because somebody was offended?

Yep.

[konart]

So... do you mind answering the second part then? Will they change ycombinator.com to something else if somebody is offended? Or will you change your "smhost" if I'm gonna tell you it offends me?

[AndrewDucker]

Context.

Bands get to name themselves how they like. Concert venues get to decide whether they care about the name.

"Loli" is a reference to underage girls, usually in a sexual context. Some people will be offended by this, and it's up to any organisation whether they want to be associated with this.

Similarly, if you tell someone "smhost" is offensive, and describe _why_ and _how_ it's offensive, it's up to them to decide whether they want to continue to be associated with it, or if they want to change.

[mijoharas]

To be fair to the parent comment I don't think it's equivalent.

If someone gets offended, you look and say "Why were they offended". Ask yourself if it's reasonable, if the case is that the name is referencing trafficking underage girls then you might think, OK, maybe this is a joke, but it is something that a reasonable person might get offended by and if you want to foster a professional atmosphere then you would change it.

I think if you went to the the arch maintainers and asked them to change the name pacman because you were traumatised by nightmares of the game pacman as a child they would tell you to get lost. However, that isn't really what is happening here.

[viraptor]

> Why nobody is banning Rammstein concerts then?

Because they choose not to. Each venue, organisation, or city which lawfully has influence over such events has the right to refuse. Neither case is "banning".

[zimpenfish]

e.g. Rammstein have been refused on safety grounds before now.

2001: "Rammstein were unable to play their show yesterday at the Astoria in London due to significant restrictions to their stageshow and pyrotechnics. The band feel it would be unfair to their fans, to see a show that would have become highly compromised. If these issues can be resolved the band promises to return to the UK later in the year for live shows. Rammstein apologize for letting their fans down due to a problem which was out of their hands"

[majewsky]

That's entirely irrelevant to this discussion.

[blowski]

You're arguing from a "it can't be right in any case without being right in all cases". This is a judgement call where they think it's likely to cause more damage to their brand than benefit. It's their brand, they get to make that judgement, whether they are right or wrong.

[JadeNB]

> So... do you mind answering the second part then? Will they change ycombinator.com to something else if somebody is offended? Or will you change your "smhost" if I'm gonna tell you it offends me?

At least in my original post, a key part of my argument is that no-one is requiring alucard to change the name of the mirror. The only question is whether the mirror will be listed. Thus, I think it is analogous to asking whether I would remove a link to ycombinator.com from a page I controlled if I were offended by the URL, or if I might try to hide posts from smhost if I were offended by his or her handle; and either of those seems like a reasonable response (even if taking offense itself would clearly be unreasonable).

[konart]

>The only question is whether the mirror will be listed. >I would remove a link to ycombinator.com from a page I controlled

Let me reword this then. Why should an entity remove something from their listings when the offended entity can remove it from the local listing on its machine? The thing is - in the first case we are talking about public lists available for everybody. Why should the majority of users be left without and additional source of distribution (for example)?

But yes, obviously it's up to Arch maintainers wether they want this to be there or not.

[7952]

In Oxford a lot of things are named after "Isis". Isis is the local name for the River Thames, presumably named after the Egyptian Godess. We should not change that name, just because it is used by a terorist group. But it would be a bit distasteful to use it as a new name. Especially if you use it intentionally with the intent of causing offence. Nuance matters.

[JadeNB]

Poor Softcard, née Isis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcard).

> But it would be a bit distasteful to use it as a new name. Especially if you use it intentionally with the intent of causing offence.

I think that your second sentence is an important qualification. I almost wished that they'd stuck with the name, just to emphasise that a bunch of terrorist asshats don't get to dictate what words others can use; I think that such a useage would have been (very mildly) heroic rather than offensive.

[zimpenfish]

The new (~2014?) English Language school in Greenwich was called ISIS. Up until ~2016, anyway. Huge big flashy signs it had, too.

(I like to imagine all the children telling their parents they were going to London to "study with ISIS" causing huge parental conniptions until the penny dropped.)

[microcolonel]

I think the point here is that a) he did everything right b) he did nothing wrong and c) it doesn't really matter what characters go into the name.

I think the complaint is quite petty, and it doesn't really solve any problems. Approximately nobody is going to have a worse opinion of Arch Linux because of the content of a url in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, and it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue.

[scrollaway]

> it's basically a waste of time to address this as an issue.

It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it. Arch has hundreds of mirrors and dozens come and go every month. Dropping one takes less time than it took me to reply to you here.

[microcolonel]

> It's just as much of a waste of time to defend it.

If by "defend" you mean "not spend more money on registering yet another domain", then I'd say it's worth defending. A hundred dollars is worth at least a few emails, especially if it is at the expense of a productive community member, on behalf of some anonymous whiner.

[scrollaway]

Nobody is forcing the person in question to host an arch mirror. Being included in the official mirror list does not come without rules and if one of these rules is "don't have a shitty domain name", I don't see the problem.

PS, domain names on non-egregious TLDs are 5-10 bucks a year.

[viraptor]

Domains don't cost hundreds of dollars if you really don't care about the name. You can find some for $5 a year for one which nobody needs to remember/type.