[khm]

Hi. I made that image. I was searching for 'rails documentation' and accidentally hit the 'Images' link. That photo was in the first page of results. Its presence was so absurd and out of place that I felt like I had to do something with it. It was made in an era before actual Nazis had re-entered the public dialogue, so it felt like Google Image Search was denigrating Ruby on Rails by including this sort of imagery in the results.

Generally speaking, 4chan types read it as an endorsement, which sucks. More recently, people who are not assholes have also begun to read it as an endorsement, which is even more unfortunate.

I had a conversation on Mastodon with the author, where I explained some of this, but the author's followers filled my client with Nazi (and more) accusations, and then the author started demanding names of responsible parties and I didn't really feel like he was engaging in good faith. Probably could have gone better, but here we are.

This whole sort of thing has led to much confusion, which is why over the years the project home page has sprouted explicit anti-Nazi and Black Lives Matter links. As far as I am aware, there are no anti-semites (or other brands of racist) involved in the project.

and an edit: A couple of replies here ask the reasonable question: "why not just remove the image?" Bluntly, if we removed everything that confused or angered people, it would be a full-time job. It's more likely that we'll include some version of the above in order to further clarify our rejection of Nazi values and provide the context that was missing.

Besides, if we just delete the damn thing then the next message will be "9front devs are secret Nazis, look at archive.org" -- we've been down this road before with other contentious content.

[hencq]

I don't really understand why you wouldn't just remove the image then. I get that you added it for its absurdity, but if many people take it as an endorsement, isn't it just a joke that didn't land? Personally I think it's a joke in poor taste, but even if you don't, it seems like such a weird hill to die on.

[cycloptic]

Can you please just remove the image? The context is obscure and long gone, and I doubt there is any way for an outsider to see it as anything other than a hateful meme targeted at ruby, given the context of the rest of the memes on that page.

Edit to respond to your edit: please can you commit to removing or changing anything else in your documentation that confuses or angers people? I think you have an understanding that having good quality, accessible documentation is important. So why not commit to having that? It's entirely what documentation writers are supposed to do. It doesn't have to be a full time job unless someone wants it to be, you can do the process of improving things slowly, one step at a time with everyone chipping in. Do you really want things to stop here where some of your documentation pages look like a twitter feed?

And I say this because I think it's somewhat of an inevitability -- over time, someone has to remove the memes and in-jokes. There is no way a newcomer is ever going to understand what they all mean. Yes people can look in archive.org but that's less important than what's actively on the website.

[chaganated]

Some people watch too much History Channel. My first thought on that page was, "These people must hate rails as much as I do."

[_b8r0]

> then the author started demanding names of responsible parties

Kurt, so good to see you again! As I said in: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/105510076754785649

> Was it Uriel that committed that section? I could kind of understand not wanting to remove it if it was. If that's the case then context in the FQA might be helpful for people who stumble across it.

That's hardly demanding names, unless you're referring to somewhere else in the convo. In that case please feel free to point it out.

[khm]

There's also this: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/105510025405203167 which I interpreted as some kind of invitation to disavow the project and name 'the real villains' or something, which would of course be the same deal.

The whole vibe just felt like it was more about who did what than what any of it was supposed to mean, which isn't really how we operate in general.

[_b8r0]

> There's also this: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/105510025405203167 which I interpreted as some kind of invitation to disavow the project and name 'the real villains' or something, which would of course be the same deal.

Sure, I can see that and thanks for raising that. It wasn't intended that way but I can see how it came across. Some mediums are just poor for discussion and text is always poor for expressing context.

> The whole vibe just felt like it was more about who did what than what any of it was supposed to mean, which isn't really how we operate in general.

I got that sense from you at the time. I get that you've all been attacked heavily at different points. I don't think there's any way you couldn't have felt that vibe. I've seen people call you guys out to me since on a scale that I've not seen elsewhere.

The bit I didn't know is the how you operate in general. As an outsider that's just not info I have.

I genuinely had links and samples for Appendix L's C section - if you look at the post you'll see the drawing screenshot and references to building blocks. Not knowing how you guys worked, I perhaps wrongly assumed that this might've been welcome, but wasn't comfortable putting it in with that image there. I genuinely wasn't trying to gotcha you.

[khm]

This was the other post, which I had trouble finding quickly: https://mastodon.social/@stevelord/105510258237207655

I'm sure you can imagine how I received that: "we don't care what you actually believe, we only care about appendix L of the documentation."

People have been calling us Nazis since day one -- we have several German developers so we make VW and BMW jokes about 'German engineering' and of course all the early-cold-war German rocket scientists. It's the reason we've got the photo of Bowie at Victoria Station -- photographed while waving to the crowd, he had to repeatedly deny being a Nazi afterward, because it sure looked like a Nazi salute in the photo.

Once the actual Nazis started showing up we had to get more explicit in our condemnation of their evil, and that's okay -- rejecting hate is the easy part. Defending ourselves against the people we agree with is much harder.

[_b8r0]

> I'm sure you can imagine how I received that

Yeah I can see that now. Thanks. I guess once you process the first bit that way the rest drops off.

By the no nazis bit not meaning anything what I meant there was that with everything else it can be hard to tell what's intentional on the site and what isn't.

I honestly don't care who calls you guys nazis or not. Even if I wanted to (which I don't, I gain nothing by doing so) I wouldn't need to. There are plenty of people doing that already. The harder thing to do is to try to understand without pre-judging. Thanks for clearing a lot of this up.

EDIT: I noticed this in another subthread:

> I do think the image should be provided with context.

I'm editing here because I don't want to add to the pile-on in the other thread. You mentioned this above:

> Once the actual Nazis started showing up we had to get more explicit in our condemnation of their evil

If you want to keep the picture, what would your thoughts be on a log of that condemnation linked from somewhere in the FQA? Not necessarily Appendix L. No skin off my nose either way but I thought I'd mention it in case nobody had thought of it.

[khm]

We've been discussing it; we'll probably remove the image but add the context. Next time you find something that makes you like this, would you please send a patch (or at least report a bug)? It's sheer chance that I ran across your original Mastodon post at all.

[pvg]

'vibe' seems like an odd concern what with the imagery of an extermination camp

[NelsonMinar]

" Bluntly, if we removed everything that confused or angered people, it would be a full-time job."

What a stupid cop-out. If you can't see how uniquely offensive this particular thing is, well, there's words to describe you.

[aflag]

If the other stuff that upsets people are of the same caliber, you should definitely take the time to remove them too.

[shakingmyhead]

except you aren't being asked to remove everything that offends anyone, you are specifically being asked to remove this one instance of holocaust imagery. You are hiding behind a slippery slope fallacy to avoid doing this. You can remove the image then immediately go back to your policy of not removing things. see how easy that was? And as for people complaining about archive.org, can't you just ignore them like you are ignoring this? Your logic doesn't hold up. You either don't want to admit you were wrong or you just don't want to remove the image period. That's your decision but you should have the guts to stand behind it.

[khm]

I don't want to just silently remove the image. I'm not in the habit of editing myself to suit the passersby. I do think the image should be provided with context. It is not the only thing associated with 9front that people have targeted for removal.

I am not 'ignoring this.' I am addressing it right here, and on Mastodon. I enjoy it when Internet people make throwaway accounts to accuse me of cowardice, but I'm confused about which 'guts' I'm lacking. Is it the one where I did something, took responsibility for it, explained my actions, and then engaged in conversation with people who were concerned about my motives?

[shakingmyhead]

It's where you claimed you couldn't remove it because then people would make more demands of you. That's the gutless part. Hiding behind a hypothetical. Glad I could clear it up. Also this is my first hacker news account not a throwaway.

[_ofdw]

This is a weird flex, to choose to dig your heels in on this particular image/issue.

[khm]

Given a choice between deleting things that might make me look bad and explaining the choices that I make, I will always choose the latter. It's the only surefire opportunity for me to learn.

[slater]

"might"?

[shakingmyhead]

I suspect he doesn't want to face the fact that it was maybe a bad idea in the first place. It's hard to own up to mistakes. I've been there.

[basscomm]

I suspect that the argument of "You should violate your personal principles because I want you to (just this once for me, and then you can go back to not violating them)" coming from an anonymous account on an internet message board is too flimsy to consider.

[shakingmyhead]

I think his principled stance that his contributions to an open source project have to include holocaust jokes is not very compelling or principled.

[apricot]

You wrote: "If we removed everything that confused or angered people, it would be a full-time job"

If I rephrase it as "Let's keep the Nazi pictures that confuse and anger people because it would be too much work to remove them", does that help you understand why people aren't happy with your decision?