[malandrew]

I think we're allowed to be ignorant of the politically correct gender issues surrounding grammatical usage in a codebase. To do otherwise is to bikeshed. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. 99% of the time I have no idea if the person I'm talking to on Github is a man, woman or has a different gender identity, nor do I care. It'd simply doesn't matter. [0]

All that original commit did is set off a giant clusterfuck of nerd rage and bikeshedding. No one should ever submit a commit like that. If you want to edit executable code and make those pronoun changes in productive commits, fine. But to make those changes to the pronouns of comments and nothing else is pure unadulterated bikeshedding and shouldn't be in any project.

[0] http://programming-motherfucker.com/

[chc]

This isn't about political correctness. It's about a practical consideration of the impact of language usage supported both by anecdotes from community members and academic studies. The defining quality of the "color of the bikeshed" discussion is that it makes no practical difference — but there is a difference here. When you say "bikeshedding," what you really seem to mean is "something I don't feel the impact of."

You should consider that just because something isn't important to you doesn't mean it isn't important to someone. A commit like that doesn't measurably hurt you or me, so even if it only helps someone else moderately and in a way we don't entirely understand, it is still net-good. This isn't political correctness; it's objective practicality.

[jack-r-abbit]

Likewise... you should consider that just because something is important to you doesn't mean it has to be important to someone else. It does go both ways.

[chc]

Indeed, and I am not asking malandrew to act like this is important to him. My point is that we should not oppose it, not that you personally need to take action of some sort.

In other words, I'm fine if you don't want to go through and revise your docs to be more gender-neutral — it would be nice, but you should spend your time on what's near and dear to you. But to say that such a change "shouldn't be in any project" is a very different thing. It has practical benefits, even if they don't personally affect you, so opposing it is purely harmful.

[malandrew]

I totally respect that this is an issue that is important to people. I'm not opposed to these changes in the docs. I'm opposed to these being the only changes in the pull requests. You want to crusade on this agenda? Earn it. Submit a non-trivial pull request with a bugfix or feature and bundle these changes that matter to you in with them.

This is a perfect example of a group being it's own worst enemy. Alex Gaynor is not the group. The community is the group. If this matters to Alex then he should have bundled it with something that matters to the community like a pull request with changes of utility like a bugfix or feature.

If and only if Alex had contributed something of universal value to the community in the pull request and was still called out by people for that comment change in the pull request would he actually be correct in his accusation of misogyny and gender discrimination. Instead he led an unjustified lynch mob against someone who has contributed far more than him to libuv.

I'm staunchly opposed to the use of pull requests as a soapbox and unjustly crucifying someone who did not deserve it, and judging by the upvotes, I know I'm not alone in this opposition and support of an unjustly persecuted person.

[tedmielczarek]

This attitude is silly. Lots of volunteer contributors start out making trivial changes because they're trivial. We take lots of trivial documentation and comment fixes at Mozilla as people's first patches. They help contributors learn how the contribution process works, such as the ins and outs of posting patches, navigating the bug tracker, etc. Rejecting trivial changes because the contributor hasn't "earned it" is a great way to raise the barrier to entry on your project. (Also, bundling unrelated changes seems like a terrible practice to promote. We like to have separate issues addressed separately.)

[jacalata]

Do you feel that way about doc changes in general?

[malandrew]

If the doc change is trivial, yes. If it's a significant change in the meaning of the text and how it relates to the code it accompanies, then it should be a separate pull request.

A good litmus test is, "Is there value to the community in having this as a separate pull request when someone is browsing the commit history?"

In other words, if this only matters to me and is part of my own crusade (but one that the larger community is likely to actively object to), then I should keep it to myself.

The change in question here could have been part of a larger commit of changes to documentation and comments, where the overwhelming majority of changes would be considered valuable by the majority of the community.

[jack-r-abbit]

My point is that we should not oppose it, not that you personally need to take action of some sort.

Hmm... but isn't a lot of the rage toward Ben because he didn't take action on something that some people feel is a big deal while others feel it is not such a big deal?

[chc]

I don't think so. People are mad at Ben because he reverted Isaac's commit and they thought it was because he had an ideological axe to grind. They think that Ben wasn't indifferent on this matter.

[jack-r-abbit]

Then they should take great comfort that Ben reversed it based on his thought that proper procedure was not followed. Awesome! We can all calm down now and... oh wait... seems we still have rage. shucks.

[jacalata]

I do consider that. I am baffled that people are willing to go to the mattresses over something that they don't object to, but which they argue is unimportant to them. That they spend time arguing not 'this is something I think is bad' but 'how dare you spend time on this thing I find unimportant!'

[jack-r-abbit]

I believe people are going to the mattresses over the rage being directed at him. They are arguing more "how dare you be so enraged at him simply for not finding the issue as important as you do!" This is why I said what I said.

[jacalata]

Hm, that's true for a significant amount of the argument since the Joyent blog post, and that's a fair argument. But in my judgment another significant part, and most of the noise in the original commit thread before Ben even reverted the commit, is about the change itself, and featured a lot of 'why are you even touching this, this isn't important, go and teach high school girls to code if you care so much'.

[jack-r-abbit]

That is true... some people are angry about that. I don't understand those people too.

[jacalata]

Everyone is allowed to be ignorant, the problem is people who are not ignorant but simply dismiss issues as "unimportant" because they are unaffected. It is not the original committers fault that you and so many other people don't care about (or in some cases object to) gender neutral language, and bikeshedding is best stopped not by leaving the bikeshed unpainted but by you and others who fjnd it unimportant shutting up and not objecting to the damn color if you don't care about it. Be the reduction in trivial arguments you want to see in the world.

[malandrew]

I'm not bikeshedding on the topic of gender. I couldn't care less about that topic. That's not my battle[0], which is why I keep focusing on other aspects of all this that are important to libuv and open-source. I'm defending an unjustly persecuted person of great value to the community and the antisocial open source behavior of using pull requests as a soap box. If debating those two issues are bikeshedding, then I'm happy to bikeshed about them.

[0] but people seem to think it is and that I'm opposed. I don't know what I've said to contribute to that illusion.

[jacalata]

I think we're allowed to be ignorant of the politically correct gender issues surrounding grammatical usage in a codebase. To do otherwise is to bikeshed

I read this (from your grandparent comment) as meaning 'discussion of gender/grammatical issues is bikeshedding' - and that to me sounds like you think it shouldn't happen because you don't care about it, which is effectively opposing the idea. If that's not what you meant, I'm sorry for the misinterpretation.