mjg59: Relating to my previous post, it's prett

Matthew Garrett (

mjg59) wrote,
@ 2007-03-29 22:36:00

Relating to my previous post, it's pretty clear that some people think of the Ubuntu code of conduct as (effectively) political correctness gone mad, and that anyone who thinks it's a good idea is clearly a wuss. nou suggested that this isn't inherently a bad thing, and that the range of different opportunities in Linux means that whether or not one distribution aims to be "fluffy" isn't really a problem.

I'd possibly go slightly further than that. We have basically three classes of people:

People who won't work on "fluffy" projects
People who won't work on "hostile" projects
People who will work on pretty much any project, independent of the atmosphere

So, think of it as an optimisation tactic - projects benefit from having skilled people working on them. Do you gain more skilled people from being "fluffy" or "hostile"? Ubuntu's betting on the former, and my gut feeling is that that's the right answer. I don't have any reason to believe that the number of people in category 1 is terribly large, while I think category 2 is potentially much bigger.

Right now, I've got no evidence to back that up at all. But that's ok. In the long run, we'll probably get a better idea. If you think that Ubuntu's wrong to have chosen those criteria, then that's also ok. You're not obliged to be involved. Perhaps I'll be wrong, and the "hostile" projects will end up out-innovating the "fluffy" ones. But criticising the "fluffy" projects because they've dared to try something different? No, I don't think that's reasonable.

(38 comments) - (Post a new comment)

	baljemmett 2007-03-29 09:57 pm UTC (link)
	Am I misreading you, or do you have category 1 and 2 swapped in "I don't have any reason to believe that the number of people in category 2 is terribly large, while I think category 1 is potentially much bigger."? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mjg59 2007-03-29 10:03 pm UTC (link)
	Entirely correct - I had them the other way around and then swapped them but didn't update the text. Fixed now, thanks for that! (Reply to this) (Parent)

aspbergers'/autism issue, perhaps
(Anonymous)
2007-03-29 10:32 pm UTC (link)

Geekdom has a large number of people who fall somewhere on the mild end of the autism spectrum. If they were kids today, they'd be diagnosed with high-function autism or Aspberger's Syndrome. Many people with these issues are brilliant and highly logical, and very good with computers, but have great difficulty relating to other human beings. As children, they don't understand facial expressions very well, they don't understand social rules and expectations, and don't understand why they are constantly pissing people off.

My daughter has been disagnosed with Aspbergers', and I probably would have been too as a child; as I've gotten older I've managed to figure people out, but it definitely isn't as easy for me as for many.

I'll bet that if you look at who is objecting to "teletubby rules" you'll find a lot of people in this category: they fear that they will never be able to follow the rules successfully, that they are illogical anyhow, and people should just deal with one of the few parts of the world where the social norms are friendly to the mildly autistic.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: aspbergers'/autism issue, perhaps reddragdiva 2007-03-29 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	Possibly. Or I would give more credit to the autistics and aspergics I know who aren't actually fuckwits on lists, even if they couldn't read a face or body language to save their lives. Autistic spectrum != Arsehole Personality Disorder. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: aspbergers'/autism issue, perhaps
(Anonymous)
2007-04-03 02:56 am UTC (link)

Hi, I have just today been "unoffically" told by my 8 yr old girl's teacher that she may indeed have Aspbergers. She is repeating yr 2 now and her teacher (like me) have been so frustrated for the last year or so as to "what is missing" with her. I just don't know where to go from here. The assesement is expensive here is Aust and I hear that it is very difficult to diagnose in girls. She is also very social and happy but reading your blog I am also concerned that I suffer from it too. It certainly would explain alot!!!!!! Are you in Australia??? What did you do when you first found out???

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-03-29 10:42 pm UTC (link)

"Politicallly Correct" is one of the most unfortunate newspeak phrases of our postmodern times. Originally invented by reactionary shitdicks to smear anyone who thinks it's racism or sexism is a bad idea, it has now morphed into some kind general club to bash everyone who's into civilized discussions.

It's also quite sad to see how the FOSS community, which is supposed to be full of clever people so steadfastly refuses to see prejudice and outright bigotry towards women. It happens time and time again, and every time apologists pop up from all directions.

As for the joke that started the furor, try to replace women with black people and see how haw-haw funny it becomes.

(Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2007-03-29 11:01 pm UTC (link)
	Sane and sensible as ever, from someone I miss on the Debian lists. Come back - all is forgiven :) A neat line in creative cursing at hardware and vendors, fantastic code _AND_ humanity - mjg59 should be a prime candidate for cloning at state expense :) Andy Cater (Reply to this)

	captain_aj 2007-03-29 11:02 pm UTC (link)
	Was that joke actually that hostile? I would have few qualms telling that joke in polite company, including friends, family and work colleagues, of mixed sex. Whereas a joke against blacks (as suggested elsewhere) ... I wouldn't be doing that. Are my standards of polite company wrong, or am I wrong in using standards of polite company to define conduct within Ubuntu? (Reply to this) (Thread)

mjg59
2007-03-29 11:23 pm UTC (link)

Yes, I think standards are different when you're with friends. If you've already established some degree of inter-personal context, then it's much easier to work out how reflective it is of your actual opinions. But I don't think it's just the joke that's the issue - it's the fact that when someone suggested that it was offensive, the response was "Get a sense of humour" rather than "Oh, sorry, I'll bear that in mind in future".

Returning to your original point, yes, I think using those standards isn't necessarily what's appropriate in Ubuntu. When you're posting to a mailing list, you're not just talking to people you know. You're talking to everyone else who reads that mailing list. Rather than thinking about it as telling a joke in front of your work colleagues, think about it as telling it during an academic presentation (perhaps with a slightly different lead-in - the guy asks God to provide him with a solution to the halting problem, or something). Sure, some of the people there will know you and just write it off, but others (who may be from different cultural backgrounds) may well interpret it as sexism.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

captain_aj
2007-03-29 11:28 pm UTC (link)

but others (who may be from different cultural backgrounds) may well interpret it as sexism.
I think I understand. I look at it, and go through the internal question "Does the person posting this dislike or look down upon women?", and without thinking about it get the instant answer of "No, of course not", due to my familiarity with such jokes and the kind of people that tell them. But people of different backgrounds wouldn't have this thought process. Does this sound about right?

However, if I were to start off with "An Iranian and a Jew walk into a bar ... " , things would be very different.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mjg59 2007-03-29 11:31 pm UTC (link)
	Right. In the context of not alienating people from the project, what's important isn't what's meant - it's what's perceived. And, in general, it's far easier to say things in such a way that they're not perceived wrongly than it is to get someone to change how they perceive such things. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

jldugger
2007-03-30 03:29 am UTC (link)

And that's what's most tragic about Caroline's decision to withdraw from the community. By not responding to direct requests to elaborate, what was perceived is left to be guessed by the peanut gallery. And its clear that many cannot fathom the task. It's certainly unfair that people have to take leadership roles in order to simply get people to treat one another with humanity, but I'm not sure how to solve the problem -- mailing list posts can't be unposted, words unsaid.

It feels somewhat ironic that a joke about men being unable to understand women turns into a situation where men don't understand what was wrong with telling it. But then, I had to be told that Alanis' song wasn't about irony.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	broonie 2007-03-30 09:00 am UTC (link)
	On the first time looking at it I completely failed to notice the sexism because I'd only looked at about the first and last paragraphs in deciding that it was a tired old joke that shouldn't have been posted in the first place and didn't read any of the references to women. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	reddragdiva 2007-03-31 03:01 pm UTC (link)
	Um, what the fuck. If you can't understand why a sexist joke is unacceptable in a working environment, you're too stupid to live. In a real job you'd be out the fucking door in minutes if not seconds. Jesus goatfucking Christ. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2007-03-31 07:11 pm UTC (link)

Interestingly, I shared the "joke" posting with my local user's group and, like the mailing list, nobody really understood what was offensive about it. Perhaps the distinction they're missing is between offensive and sexist? Or maybe Linux users are all too stupid to live, I guess. But many of them are quite comfortably employed. Even the other reply to my comment described he didn't notice the sexism in the post at first.

Personally, I don't share many jokes, because if I'm laughing, somebody should feel bad about themselves. I tried putting out a bunch of jokes about men to the user's group, just to see if they'd be a bit uncomfortable but I couldn't find many funny ones. And the best ones are clearly hostile:

"What's the quickest way to a man's heart?
Straight through the rib cage."

Please don't stab our users in the rib cage.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

nou
2007-04-03 03:24 am UTC (link)

And that's what's most tragic about Caroline's decision to withdraw from the community. [...] It's certainly unfair that people have to take leadership roles in order to simply get people to treat one another with humanity [...]

It's hugely unfair that Caroline's being expected to stand out as a representative member of her gender. Men in open source communities don't have to explicitly be men; they can just be people. Women, on the other hand, constantly find themselves bumping up against the "programmers are men" assumption, and if any one of them stands up and says "hold on, that sucks", they're immediately held responsible for fixing the problem singlehandedly.

(I was going to add some examples in here, but, really, pretty much my entire history of being involved with hackers has been permeated by sexism; some of it perpetrated by me.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

ffajeli
2007-04-01 08:00 pm UTC (link)

For what it's worth, captain aj, if I worked in your workplace, you probably wouldn't hear me speaking up very often. The problem with "standards of polite company" is that if you penalise people for speaking up, then they stop doing it. In the worst case, you end up with standards that really hack off a small group of people but they're too afraid to say anything, whilst the majority are blissfully unaware. And, because people normally feel a bit uncomfortable about complaining, it's really easy to discourage people without even noticing you're doing it.

I used to be a lot louder and more likely to say things directly when I was younger - and I found that as soon as I said something directly, I would lose so much credibility that nobody would listen to me, and in the worst case I'd make myself a real target for mockery. So now when I raise issues in an environment where leaving is very difficult (like work!) I do it in a very elliptical sort of way - where I try to get people thinking without putting up their barriers. Which is a huge amount of work for me so I don't necessarily always do it. It takes me a long long time before I feel comfortable being more direct with someone - and with many people that time will be NEVER.

I tend to think of it as having a limited number of "cred points" - when you get down to zero, nobody listens to a word you say anymore so there's no point saying anything. I lose some automatically for being an Ethnic Female, because people tend to expect me to be "Oversensitive" about such things (it doesn't seem to matter to these people whether I actually ever have been). If I complain about something and people aren't convinced, it costs me a bunch more cred points each time. It can actually cost me a lot to speak up - when if a male friend says exactly the same thing I want to say, it doesn't cost him so much (in fact sometimes it actually adds to his cred). I can't count the number of times that pointing out something has got me nothing but scorn, but exactly the same thing coming from a male friend and it's all - "oh, I see your point mate. Fair enough". I guess it just seems less threatening coming from someone like that.

So there you go.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	carissarunal 2008-07-16 11:46 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, I think it's the first thing people look for. They want to see if their region or tastes are covered. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	secretlondon 2007-03-30 02:12 am UTC (link)
	You couldn't tell jokes like that in the public sector - sorry. I guess it depends on where you work.. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	rmc28 2007-03-30 02:10 pm UTC (link)
	I would be pissed off if that joke got told in the office. In the pub, no problem. It's all about context. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

pavanne
2007-03-30 02:58 pm UTC (link)

I think it's already been round my office by email, raising a few smiles (it's simply not that funny).

But my office is about 50% female, and we're sufficiently unselfconscious for most things to be acceptable. Also, there's not much of a power gradient among people sharing the joke, so anyone offended is free to give as good as they get. That isn't the case if there are real or perceived differences in status between the person making the joke and the person who might be offended.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	reddragdiva 2007-03-30 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	It's a working environment, even if it's a volunteer one. You're all there with a purpose. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	makoshark 2007-03-29 11:14 pm UTC (link)
	I really appreciate these posts. I've been meaning to write a papers on Codes of Conduct based largely on my experience in Ubuntu and will probably contact you when I do so. I tend to agree with most of your conclusions and suspect we could, in fact, get evidence to back up such claims. (Reply to this)

	+1 Luis Villa [tieguy.org] 2007-03-30 02:19 am UTC (link)
	+1. Keep rocking. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	sneakums 2007-03-30 07:54 am UTC (link)
	Three more and he can start playing golf! (Reply to this) (Parent)

You have my support
(Anonymous)
2007-03-30 07:57 am UTC (link)

Even though I'm not really involved in Ubuntu, but in Debian, I fully support what you're trying to get with the CoC. I really wish you luck. Some changes are not that easy to do, are they? Anyway, don't let those awful comments about CoC let you down, I feel you're doing the correct thing, and it will show up in the long run. That's the only way of getting a better world, following the path you feel is the one.

I, for one, won't ever work in an hostile environment (I don't really think Debian is so hostile on the whole, parts of it might be, other parts are quite nice to be in).

Greetings and luck,
Miriam Ruiz

(Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2007-03-30 12:22 pm UTC (link)
	Maybe debian should create a CoC. Their social contract is nice, I think it would be a nice addition. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	emperor 2007-03-30 07:54 pm UTC (link)
	I suspect you'd never get the Debian Developers to agree to it. They seem to enjoy a good [sic] flame-war. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	lionsphil 2007-04-01 11:21 pm UTC (link)
	At least flame-wars can make for entertaining reading. I'm pretty much agog that people are wasting their time discussing sexism on the Internet again. Jesus. Some people are offensive cocks online; in the absence of being able to knee them in the balls over TCP/IP, just killfile them and get on with your life. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

nou
2007-04-03 03:15 am UTC (link)

I'm pretty much agog that people are wasting their time discussing sexism on the Internet again.

Sexism is an unresolved issue. It's there, it exists, it's considered by lots of people to be a problem. How do we resolve the issue without discussing it?

Some people are offensive cocks online; in the absence of being able to knee them in the balls over TCP/IP, just killfile them and get on with your life.

The obviously-offensive people are now easy to deal with, as you note. This is definitely a good thing, and something we should be pleased about; I know I'm less arsey than I was a decade ago, and I think that's progress. What we need to work with now are the less obviously offensive people who don't mean badly, but who haven't got any experience with perceiving situations where people who aren't like them might feel uncomfortable.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

lionsphil
2007-04-03 10:10 am UTC (link)

I'd agree, but I emphasised "again" for a reason. This is one of those discussions which never seems to actually ever make any blasted progress when discussed online, usually because most online discussions, aren't---they're frenzies of rabidly defending your own opinion from any critique while trying to discredit all others.

You're right about how to "deal" with people who are just a bit socially inept, though. And I'm not sure that sets of rules with penalties are really the way to do that.

-- Phil, socially inept geek

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	reddragdiva 2007-03-31 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	And now on planet, we see various leading lights (e.g. Jono Bacon) treat the CoC as basically decorative and ignorable in this case, and hence presumably cases like this. How fucking disappointing. (Reply to this)

	senji 2007-04-07 06:37 pm UTC (link)
	Of course it's inevitable that "hostile" projects will be hostile towards "fluffy" projects (and also other "hostile" ones!) (Reply to this)

	New explanation of the new pharmacy (Anonymous) 2007-06-04 09:35 am UTC (link)
	MESSAGE (Reply to this)

	Paxil shmaxil and butalbital (Anonymous) 2007-06-16 04:02 am UTC (link)
	MESSAGE (Reply to this)

	Lorazepam and friends (Anonymous) 2007-06-18 05:47 pm UTC (link)
	MESSAGE (Reply to this)

	Thank you! Your board is so helpful (Anonymous) 2007-07-07 04:30 am UTC (link)
	MESSAGE (Reply to this)

re: ubuntu forums "helpfulness"
(Anonymous)
2007-08-05 01:37 am UTC (link)

While I agree that Canonical may find more luck with the "fluffy" approach, I do have to protest specifically for one reason:

It seems that as many times as I have had issues in the past with various components of my Ubuntu experience, I have had people on the forums reply to my queries with a stock "you should run this package instead"

In other words, a person had issues with their sound card or some such, and rather than be helpful, the first ten or so people, rather than answer the question asked, instead offered suggestions for package alternatives.

I reacted poorly, and bitched out the people responsible, and was subsequently "modded" down.

I would rather have a "wild west" approach to speech.

But maybe that's because I hate self important busy bodies and their slavish, stupid enablers.

(Reply to this)

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