There is plenty of evidence for the presence of unconscious bias in almost all decisions people make. The simplest is that people, when they’re voting or deciding on appointments or hiring (which would include selecting board members) they tend to choose people who they perceive as “like themselves.” Meritocracy tends to emphasise this as most people believe they have their status and position through personal merit rather than benefiting from bias. There are plenty of indicators in use of language and other things both of people’s social and racial context and their gender. This can’t be avoided but making people aware of their biases (and feedback when these have apparently influenced decisions) helps in minimising it’s effect: everybody is capable of learning if they want, and I assume this audience are interested in fairness and learning.
There are 397 members of the openSUSE project. They are not housed in one building, paid by the same person. What they do have in common however is that they are contributors that follow simple principles. I would say that in our case, bias is more possible from different angle too then. What board candidate contributes to and what do they help creating. Github (which is example only for third of the project but closest to my heart) doesn't usually have data like gender/race/whatever else, but it shows what person helped to make happen. I'm sure many people saw beautiful poster from Ana, showing all the candidates together in grid. Before that I knew who I will be voting for, without knowing what most people I had voted for looked like. I just read their ideas and contributions, some of them I talked with on IRC/Discord. The only way we could have people voting without any bias would be removing all names and images, and leaving only list of ideas and contributions. At the same time, remember that we sometimes want to vote for people we appreciate for different reasons than contributions or ideas (attitude, excitement), which you can't pass through static text only (but shows up nicely in longer discussions). You can't remove bias without generating new one then.
The second is more insidious and difficult to address: the culture of an organisation. Torvald’s abrasive and abusive behaviour would deter anyone who isn’t thick skinned and equally abrasive. This self-selection preserves and propagates the culture and behaviour. OS will have an organisational culture and behaviour which may be having this effect - I don't know as the OS culture suits me. That is something which the board could investigate and address.
Not all of us are Kernel devs, it's not like Torvalds is the only influential person in all FOSS, depending on field you are invested in, it's combination of different kinds of people as well. From my point of view, jimmac and Sam Hewitt are definitely influencing parts of my work. I can see many people in this particular project being inspired in culture by Richard (Brown, not Stallman) for example. We are people with a burning passion for the openSUSE project, not Linus Torvalds appreciation ciclejerk.
Here are some readings in this area: https://www.berkshireassociates.com/balanceview/bid/284452/discrimination-an... http://www.law.virginia.edu/pdf/faculty/ImplicitBiasinOrganizationsandAdvers... https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1471&context=cahrswp
Believe it or not, I read those. They are written in a way which suggests collection of workers' data in some places (which is never a good idea), as well as creating self policing environment (which depending on environment, people and other connotations may by good, but usually leads to nervous environment). It only makes sense for me to disagree with ideas like those, as I see them as a little too strict for community depending on people joining it based on communities' overall vibe.
And before anyone objects about manipulation of the “free and fair” democratic system, the research shows that natural democratic systems are neither free nor fair but contain multiple biases and discriminations. All I’m proposing is that these are uncovered and discussed.
I agree, but at the same time, we need to consider changes like those carefully. Any bad code of conduct / policy changes will lead to Lunduke making video about how much we can't hug around here, and that's bad news for us and everybody else. So virtual hugs to you and I would like to hear suggestions that don't involve personal data / self policing around our community ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org