Codices of Conduct: A fundamental critique
Hello, We've recently had a bit of a tussle on the Factory list over LGBT flags, on the OpenSUSE subreddit to put it mildly. In that tussle, the code of conduct was used as a very blunt instrument in a bid to silence people who disagreed with flying such flags and/or forcing people to fly flags in general. I'd like to share a few observations about codices of conduct in general and the OpenSUSE one in particular (point 6 does not apply to it) that allow the very abuse we have seen: 1) The definitions of good and bad behavior are vague allowing for a lot of executive discretion in constructing actions or utterances as violations. 2) Enforcement is intransparent and arbitrary. There's a moderation team with "processes in place". Processes that are not even public! Determining and sanctioning violations is at the sole discretion of the executive (moderation team and openSUSE board - I'm not sure if these two are even separate/overlap free). 3) There is no appeal to an independent authority. The executive is judge, jury, executioner and authority for appeals. 4) It is insanely broad in scope: "openSUSE reserves the right to take actions against behaviors that happen in any context, if they are deemed to be relevant to the openSUSE project and its participants.". Yes, you can totally be Brendan Eiched for donating to the wrong political party under that rule. 5) Snitching is confidential and there are no codified repercussions to wrongly accusing or smearing somebody that way. 6) [This is not the case in the OpenSUSE code of conduct]: there usually is a err-on-the-side-of-caution clause that mandates removing people deemed in violation even while their guilt or innocence is still being determined. That is a reversal of the legal convention "innocent until proven guilty" democratic states have been operating on since Roman times. In summary I think codices of conduct are a horrible idea and should be done away with. They are regularly abused to force people to agree with or at least never speak out against the political ideology termed 'woke'. They create a climate of fear and division that simply has not existed before. Everyone is on constant notice, and has to weigh their words very carefully. Except for the ideologue themselves. They can abuse and denigrate everyone who speaks up against their ideology at will and will face zero repercussions for it. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On 5/29/23 07:09, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
Hello,
Hi, Just clearing up some specifics.
2) Enforcement is intransparent and arbitrary. There's a moderation team with "processes in place". Processes that are not even public! Determining and sanctioning violations is at the sole discretion of the executive (moderation team and openSUSE board - I'm not sure if these two are even separate/overlap free). 3) There is no appeal to an independent authority. The executive is judge, jury, executioner and authority for appeals.
Currently as far as i'm aware none of the email moderators are on the board, although there are former board members within that group, so if you believe an email is wrongly rejected you can raise it with the board who is a separate entity of 6 people. The Board itself is elected by the members with half the positions being up for election each year and a maximum consecutive term of 4 years. If the community really feels the need to replace the board there is also means to do so. This is all documented at [1]. I agree that mailing list moderation is not well documented, this is partly because its not something we generally do especially on a large scale. Generally the lists are unmoderated and if there is an issue someone simply raises a complaint to the board. The board does sometimes choose to place certain members under moderation for a period if there has been complaints about their behavior at which time the moderation team will just review those posts. With the number of complaints that have been raised by a number of people about a significant number of people in the past week, combined with the fact the original thread was off topic for the factory list, we decided the simplest solution for now was to put the whole list under moderation and once the board has worked through the complaints and decided which individuals should be placed under moderation for a period of time or just warned about there behavior the lists will go back to an "unmoderated" state other then for the specific members that the board may or may not decide to place under moderation. Finally thank you for your well written email, while personally I may not agree with parts of it as others in the community also may not I feel like it lays out your concerns well and maybe there are some places we can improve the current code of conduct and our processes 1. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Hello, On Monday, May 29th, 2023 at 9:00 AM, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
I can only speak for myself, but so far what did get rejected was a version of the post with rather pointed (let's make that razor pointed) language commenting on the situation at hand, so I guess that's fair enough as long as it applies to both sides of the debate. And while, on that basis I trust the current moderation, I wouldn't trust the board with an appeal, given the rather strong political attitudes they showed on that other thread. Moderation that bl**ps o*t sw**r w*rds I can live with, barely (I do like my cussing, after all). What I'm worried about is going beyond that, i.e. moderation that censors opinions like the ones I sketched in the start of this thread.
Now that is something, sure. But independent of who sits on the board, I'd like to see stronger protections of free speech. And sanctions on the kind of smear campaigns commonly referred to as cancel culture. I.e. a strong statement of "What happens here stays here, and if we ever find anybody reporting someone to their employer or an organization they are a member of for something they said here we exclude them." This kind of thing has been happening a lot to people disagreeing with any tenets of woke political ideology, even though the perpetrators like to deny it (just google "there is no cancel culture"). This makes for a very toxic social environment and it needs to stop.
Privately and without any risk to themselves.
Yes, that is one of the problems with private complaint mechanisms that have absolutely no repercussions for somebody leveling a complaint in bad faith. If you can rally 20 people to all voice the same complaint (and you absolutely can if you are organized) you can get someone you like into deep trouble. Especially if the arbiter of wrongdoing has got vague criteria for wrongdoing to work with and happens to be on your own side of the political fence.
Yeah. The process outlined in these two my main gripe. The decision rests with the board which is on one side of the political dividing line that runs through this community. There is no balance of powers. The board is not accountable and there is no oversight beyond the board. Who watches the watchers?
Thank you for responding in the same spirit. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On 5/29/23 16:58, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
At the end of the day the answer here is the community, for better or worse, if they start disagreeing with how the board is handling certain issues then they will vote in a new board. In my mind this is the least worst solution I can think of. Mailing lists are also a bit special because the moderation is less well setup because it hasn't often been a massive issue. On the Forums / Discord etc then normally it is the moderators making decisions and if someone doesn't like it then it goes to the board for a second opinion. As a project we also have community voting mechanisms so if the community was 50-50 on changing the CoC then we could have a vote of members on that. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 07:28:30 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
I feel like I might be a bearer of bad news but the board seems to be far more neutral of an entity than the moderation team.
The role of the moderation in the project is restricting free speech to some extent. We don't want to be overrun by spammers, stalkers, people who aim to discredit others in the project for whatever is specified within our standards. It does not mean that the goal is to cancel anyone though, the goal is community building, we don't want to end up in a scenario where half of the community hates the other half based on their identity, family or beliefs, so people that represent that do have their speech revoked for a limited amount of time or until they show improvement.
I'm not really sure what your expectation here is, the board was voted in by the project members, and so presumably reflects the views of the majority of the project, including their politics (the board is a political body by itself after all). Do you want the board to reflect the views of the minority of the project that did not vote for them? Is this the will of the people?
You probably should have read the election rules that Simon sent, there are quite a few options for the community to step into the process and mend the situation. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Hello,
I only have the one moderator I interacted with to go on and I could not complain about that experience. As far as the board is concerned I only have some board members' comments on that infamous factory thread to go on and these definitely were not fostering an inclusive climate for anyone disagreeing with the usual far left talking points.
The standard for that "improvement" is agreeing with the set of far left views commonly described as "woke". Departing from that set of values or indeed publicly disagreeing is dangerous. As long as that - rather unbalanced - situation persists, you will have a situation where there is (a) Radical leftists (I have never seen anyone on the right side of the political fence propose a code of conduct, ever) calling the shots. (a) A group of people who are not radical leftists and secretly hate the radical leftists calling the shots but cannot ever speak up for fear of getting excluded from the open source project and or losing their job because a smear campaign will usually be launched against anyone who angers group (a) with their real name attached.
Well. Do minorities not preserve protection? Or do just the minorities that happen to be the radical left's current revolutionary subject deserve protection? My expectation is for codices of conduct to be abolished, period. I am quite radical about this. For they sow exactly the sort of discord outlined above. They only ever are introduced at the request of vocal, radical leftists. And they are then being used to threaten and/or silence those who disagree with that particular demographic. In a pre code of conduct world, people were free to speak their mind. In a post code of conduct world anything can be interpreted as a violation of the code of conduct. I believe this is not an accident, especially given how suddenly this concept sprang up and how it spread like wildfire throughout the tech world, always justified the premise that the tech world was "toxic" and a "patriarchate" run by "old white men", to borrow the leftists' parlance. I disagree with this premise, and more so, I happen to think that this "cure" being peddled over the past five years or so created a quite toxic, divided environment.
The problem already begins with being able to talk about the situation, with campaigning for such change. I am posting under a pseudonym because I am worried about smear campaigns (including tens to hundreds of emails and Tweets getting directed at my employer, telling them I'm unbearable and should be fired). I've seen that happen before, to a guy who disagreed with the woke mob in public. His employer eventually fired him. Codices of conduct enable that very strategy or rather make it easier to apply because anyone out there can misconstrue something the target said in public to be in violation and launch an outrage campaign. Pretty much any employer/organization will fold in the face of such an assault and a code of conduct increases the attack surface even more. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On 5/29/23 22:28, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
My expectation is for codices of conduct to be abolished, period. I am quite radical about this. For they sow exactly the sort of discord outlined above.
So if the code of conduct was abolished, what would you put in its place to allow dealing with some of the unacceptable conduct that has taken place on these lists in the last week? In an ideal world I agree it would be nice if we didn't need a CoC but unfortunately the behavior on the factory mailing list in the last weeks from multiple people shows that the community still needs something. Having been on the board in the past I can say this is unfortunately not the first time its been needed either. Or do you believe people should be able to freely say whatever they want on the lists? regardless of the perception that leaves with people outside the openSUSE community about what our community is like. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 12:58:42 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
This feels like a seed of division, I don't like this way of thinking. People are not just divided into black and white, they don't have beliefs that can be categorized into just two groups. If that "right side of the political fence" you speak of doesn't propose codes of conducts, that seems like unwillingness to take part in the community process that tries to ensure that everyone can take part. It's disheartening to hear that.
Presumably you mean "deserve" and indeed they do, however as far as I know your right to become a contributor and take part in the voting process is not impaired based on the wording of the code of conduct. And if you have some doubts about the concept of democracy, and the will of majority, then I guess I will have to refer you to ancient Athens and the field of political science, this is not really my area of expertise. If you manage to find a better system then we could vote on adopting it.
We have had guiding principles that included similar precautions for over a decade at this point. I guess your "radical leftists" were actually Novell when they started this project. Feel free to talk to them about this.
I'm sorry to hear that happened to your friend, it must have been rough for him, being yourself is hard when you are surrounded by people who don't accept you. I hope he found a different way to support himself without the need to depend on a company that would prioritize its image over its employees livelihood and family's well being LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Hello, On Monday, May 29th, 2023 at 4:04 PM, Jacob Michalskie <hellcp@opensuse.org> wrote:
For me, it's disheartening to hear codices of conduct being proposed everywhere one steps. There's reams upon reams of legal disclaimers, CLAs and things you are supposed to do or not do. Can't people just treat each other decently of their own accord? Do they really need codices of conduct and hall monitors everywhere? And if they do, does it have to be as shoddy a piece of paralegal work with ambiguous language that lends itself to abuse by those in power? These codices of conduct do not work like law at all. There is no precision, there is no presumption of innocence, there is no clear definition of wrongdoing - nothing of the sort.
Yes, my apologies. Bit tired, and the Protonmail web UI is not exactly $EDITOR either.
The will of the majority is one thing. The ability of a minority to disagree with said majority without repercussions is another thing that is largely a thing of the past by now. In most of the allegedly "liberal" democracies of the Western world, no less. And by extension the open source world.
No we have not. Compare https://web.archive.org/web/20080208093107/https://en.opensuse.org/Code_of_C... to the monstrosity of pitfalls it has grown into: https://en.opensuse.org/Code_of_Conduct The former is a short reminder to treat people decently the way I outlined above. Nothing more, nothing less. The current one is a long list of protected categories that are beyond criticism by virtue of being listed as protected categories, very vaguely defined transgressions that allow for a case to be made from anythin and catchall clauses extending the reach of openSUSE into people's private life such as the "openSUSE reserves the right to take actions against behaviors that happen in any context, if they are deemed to be relevant to the openSUSE project and its participants." one. The blame definitely does not lie with Novell. I am not that familiar with the document's history but I can say that much with certainty.
The jury is still out on that. He's doing <something not gainful employment; sorry about being vague here but his life's story is none of the general public's business> right now using up savings. I've offered to put in a good word for him with my employer, but he declined, not wanting to endanger me by referring what might be a bad apple for said employer should he speak out about the things that gall him again. He's not too keen on ending up in an environment just like his previous job again. And that right there, along with what you said is the core problem. It is awfully hard to be surrounded by people who don't accept you. And harder still to maintain a facade of being like them at all times as seems to be necessary. His facade cracked. He got fired. He's probably right to be worried about dragging me into it. The only difference between us is that he publicly uttered wrongthink (yes, I believe the Orwellian term is quite right here) and may do so again whereas I am careful not to, despite largely sharing his views. Either of these two paths sucks, just in different ways. The "good" people are causing a lot of grief out there. It's just grief that's never visible because it only affects "bad" people. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 15:29:40 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if people treated each other well by default, without assuming malice and accusing each other of following an extreme ideology because they have a set of guidelines on how to behave in a space?
I did intentionally point at Guiding Principles because I know that code of conduct was just one paragraph out of them before. Guiding principles do mention how involved Novell was at that point, you should have a look there (on old-en.opensuse.org since there is an archived version which doesn't require you to go to archive.org). I'm fully aware of what the previous code of conduct looked like though, and how vague it was about everything it mentioned. That vagueness was a great way to justify banning nearly anyone for their "social discrimination" based on whatever that meant for whoever was moderating the platform you were on.
I don't really think that the issue lies within the people but rather the systems. Being able to ruin somebody by just firing them is an inexcusable error of the system we live in. People should not end up in a situation where their life is endangered like that, especially in a society that keeps replacing various industries with new ones, creating gaps in the market for people that would have to learn an entirely new thing in order to sustain themselves. It's inhumane. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Hello,
I have seen too much malicious abuse of codices of conduct by followers of an extreme ideology to give such documents the benefit of the doubt anymore. Funnily enough, followers of said extreme ideology can violate such codices of conduct at will as long as it is in the service of fighting their sworn enemies.
Did that sort of thing actually happen back in Novell times? I only got involved at an unspecified point in time in the last decade, and other than requesting the odd package inclusion on the factory list I did not really post on - or read - any mailing lists (or hang out on IRC a lot for that matter). I only stumbled upon this discussion by accident and it reminded me of various goings on (codices of conduct, people getting cancelled for views that collided with the radical lefts') I saw in other open source projects. Things have gotten very hostile. Everywhere. And the hostilities always break out across the same dividing lines of "let's have a rainbow flag (or more recently Ukraine flag)"/"let's introduce a code of conduct"/"let's rename our 'master' branch to 'main"/"let's police our code for non-inclusive words" and "let's leave things as they are". Most places the people in the "let's leave things as they are" get forced to shut up on pain of getting thrown out or leave of their own accord. This is a fairly recent development. I did not keep statistics but this encroaching of politics on every open source project happened over the last 5 years, I'd say.
Exacerbated by no-strings-attached, no-consequences-for-the-reporter-ever reporting and flagging systems and processes everywhere.
That point of view is a credit to you, but it is not common at all. There is no code of conduct reining in those that will gladly cut off this means of sustenance through smear campaigns. And as far as I can tell they have absolutely zero qualms about their action. That friend of mine who got fired...he kept in touch with a few former colleagues who were as appalled at their company's and the snitches' behavior. Said former colleagues reported the participants of the smear campaign were celebrating the fact he was out on the street - zero regret. Events like these is what I'd like to sow a few doubts about. For I do not believe they are worthy of celebration at all. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 18:24:02 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
Did that happen with the new code of conduct in the project? To me it doesn't seem like there has been all that major of a change besides the change of policies. There have been plenty of cases of people getting banned from mailing lists and forums for years as far as I could tell from migrating them over into the new software. So I'm curious about the perspective as it pertains to the openSUSE project specifically. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Hi, I can't help but notice Wouter that your language is changing a bit more aggressively with each e-mail. First it's an ideology. Later in the day all of a sudden it's an extreme ideology. How does a rainbow flag resemble an extreme ideology? From your e-mails posted here and in the factory mailinglist I gather you are no fan of the LGBTQIA+ movement. But to call a minority group that has to endure abuse day in and day out an extreme ideology, really? To surmise, I find your intentions less than friendly, not to say hostile. Hostile towards a minority group. I am not sure how this movement may have wronged you. What I do know is that you're victimizing yourself at the expense of other people, which is not 'nice' in my book. As for the happenings of your unfortunate friend we lack the context in which his firing came about. Regards, Natasha Op ma 29 mei 2023 20:39 schreef Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me>:
Hello, On Monday, May 29th, 2023 at 9:13 PM, Natasha Ament <stacheldrahtje@gmail.com> wrote:
The actions of those flying it.
I may have been a bit imprecise about this. I do make a distinction between the group itself and its, for lack of a better word, advocates. There are in fact some people in the LGBT community who regard this whole political movement with rainbow flags, pride months and a whole bunch of other things with quite a bit of unease. They feel like they might be getting used as revolutionary subject by leftists groups. The author Douglas Murray who among other things happens to be a homosexual man wrote an entire book about it, in fact "The Madness of Crowds". These advocates absolutely are extremists and I don't think they have the LGBT community's best interests in mind. They just need a revolutionary subject to take up arms on behalf of. In my opinion they care as much about the LGBT community as the communists of old cared about the working class.
Now I am indeed not too fond of the LGBT community purely in terms of their sexual orientation either, yes. I have been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual advances by homosexuals who absolutely would not take 'no' for an answer in my life. On two occasions I had to use violence to ward them off. As a consequence I am quite wary of them. I am willing to tolerate them, but I will always retain that wariness. And yes, this is another reason I do not want to fly that flag.
What I do know is that you're victimizing yourself at the expense of other people, which is not 'nice' in my book.
I guess I could accuse you of victim blaming now but since I've always been able to successfully defend the kind of virginity I plan to take to my grave, I won't ;-)
As for the happenings of your unfortunate friend we lack the context in which his firing came about.
I can only give the rather unsatisfactory "disagreed with woke people, got fired as a result of the resulting smear campaign" information I already gave. More information might allow somebody to identify him, and I want to avoid that. The specifics terribly important either, this sort of thing has been happening quite a bit over the past couple of years. I just want to put the information that this sort of thing _does_ indeed happen and that it affects real people in real ways out there and ask to people to think twice about taking part in smear campaigns. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
Op ma 29 mei 2023 om 22:08 schreef Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me>:
So basically anyone waving a rainbow flag is an extremist. Is it just the rainbow flag or all people waving flags? As far as I can understand the far right has a history when it comes to flag waving.
It is unfortunate you were assaulted. I find it important to separate these two individuals from a whole group of people who fight oppression, insults and abuse every day. The flag is just a symbol, nothing more nothing less. How you construe this as linked to your assault is beyond me. From what you have written thus far I get the impression that everyone who does not agree with your point of view is an extremist, far left or a combination of both.
regards, Natasha
Hello, On Tuesday, May 30th, 2023 at 8:00 AM, Natasha Ament <stacheldrahtje@gmail.com> wrote:
Those in the vanguard, yes. The masses just march along because somebody they unquestioningly follow, such as the nice man on TV or the leader of their peer group tells them to. A small subset of people disagrees with flying that flag. An even smaller subset speaks out about their dislike of it.
Is it just the rainbow flag or all people waving flags? As far as I can understand the far right has a history when it comes to flag waving.
So does the far left. Given the heavy involvement of card carrying communists waving the rainbow flag it isn't much of a stretch to compare it to the hammer and sickle flag quite a few atrocities were commited under as well. For now it's "only" people losing their jobs due to complaint bombing by woke mobs. Or a few "literal nazis" who surely deserved it getting a few windows smashed at night. But rest assured, it's going to get worse as this movement's purity spiral tightens. And at all points you will find "reasonable" people justifying and defending this movement's actions because it's the only beacon of hope merely standing up for downtrodden people's rights in an unjust words. Me, I'm not exactly asking anyone to fly the Confederate battle flag, though I freely admit I'm rather fond of it, not least because it's anathema to the very people who want to force me to fly theirs I feel the same about. I ask that people keep their flags in their pants when participating in this project. All of them. And I especially ask that no flag is privileged and flown while everyone else needs to keep their flags in their pants. Only discord can come of that.
You asked, you got an answer that might help you understand where I am coming from and the exact amount of tolerance I am willing to extend, especially where the 'G' part of the LGBT community is concerned. It is but a minor aspect of the whole matter to me. My main gripe is with the far left extremists using the LGBT community as a willing or at least tacitly agreeing revolutionary subject in support of pushing their own agenda. An agenda I disagree with.
Just like everyone on the right is a 'bigot' or 'literally Hitler'? Like most people on my side, I just want to be left alone. This is not possible in a world increasingly controlled by radical leftists who want to have a controlling interest in where I live, what car I drive (or whether I drive a car at all), how I raise my kids, how I heat my home, whether I get to eat meat, or even what words I am no longer allowed to use when writing code. This is why I speak out against them from time to time. Under a pseudonym because they would absolutely come for me in various ways were they to learn my real name. For the one thing they cannot tolerate is somebody openly disagreeing with them. If that happens too often, the climate of fear they have managed to establish to dominate discourse in most places will get cracks. Truth be told, I do not think I am going to get much of anywhere with my ranting and raving. But it still beats only preaching to a small choir of fellow far right dissidents in hushed tones. Most of them learned the hard way exactly how intolerant the "tolerant" left is and do not need convincing. Those who - perhaps even unwittingly - play along with that game of iron intolerance against the "intolerant" I may be able to convince or at least sow a few seeds of doubt in. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On Di, Mai 30 2023 at 08:22:40 +0000, Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> wrote:
We never objected to flying various national flags within the project, because we understand that people want to celebrate their origin. I'm kinda surprised that a citizen of confederate states of america is still alive though, never heard of anyone breaking 150 years of age, good for you! I find the association between communism and queer people a bit weird, since that wasn't an association I managed to ever make, though I don't know if it matters since presumably we are supposed to avoid social discrimination, which I assume includes politics and identity of other people. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Op di 30 mei 2023 om 10:22 schreef Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me>:
So basically all people blindly follow some leader? I think you have a poor insight into humanity. I leave it at that, anything else would be a waste of my time.
Hmmm sure.. So basically the people waving the rainbow flag are violent? I know only of violence the other way. Assaulted gay men, transgendered people etc. Never ever the other way around.
How would you know they are extremists when you are not part of the LGBT community? Is it because their politics is not yours? In that case you get to vote every four or five years (depending on where you live). Who private organisations invite or what flag they do or do not wave is their business and not yours. Same goes for openSUSE. The majority decides and not some loud minority demanding this or that. Further discussion with me about this is fruitless.
You want to be left alone but you do insist on telling others what they should or should not do. That does not make much sense. As a closing remark I would like to note that free speech is by no means unlimited. Insults, Slander and Libel are examples of limitations of free speech. Private Organizations as openSUSE can deviate from that even without a code of conduct. Welcome to the world of free enterprise. The code of conduct is to give some insight in how the organisation expects participants to behave. IMNSHO This beats the hell out of the situation without the Code of Conduct. If you feel this is not the place for you then please make sure the door doesn't hit you on the way out ;-)
Regards,
An Anonymous Techie
Regards, Natasha
On 5/30/23 18:51, Natasha Ament wrote:
Id like to think that rather then encouraging people to leave because they disagree with something the more tolerant approach would be to encourage people to agree to disagree and continue to contribute to the project in there preferred manner. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
I'm not going to get into my opinion on either side of this debate, and please don't construe my comments otherwise. I just wanted to say that we need to be tolerant of one another. We clearly have a wide range of opinions in the openSUSE community, and that's a good thing! If we only fostered an organization where everyone had the same point of view, then we would struggle to find new ideas. We need differences of opinion. So let's be tolerant of each others differences. I think we're all tempted to just ponder on how others can be more tolerant of ourselves, but each of us should take a good look in the mirror and think about how we can be tolerant and supportive of others. -- David Mulder Labs Software Engineer, Samba SUSE 1221 S Valley Grove Way, Suite 500 Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 (P)+1 385.208.2989 dmulder@suse.com http://www.suse.com
Simon Lees wrote:
The problem with that Simon, is that 'An Anonymous Techie' is insistent that their non-tolerance of tolerance be the default, status quo. And not just here, in openSUSE, but indeed in the world at large. That we go back to the 'wild west' as it were, of not having a 'Code of Conduct', where anything and everything goes. Where you could say or do anything you like. Where if you wanted to insult people, under the guise of 'free speech', then that was OK. Where making 'off color' insults and jokes - towards women, gays, people of color, or anyone else, wasn't just tolerated, but expected. And if you were in the room, or vicinity, you were expected to smile, laugh, and generally 'go along to get along'. If you were the one to stop, and say 'hey, asshole, that's not funny' - well then, you were uncool. And quite likely to be fired unceremoniously shortly thereafter. Not for making an uncool, racist, or sexist joke, but for daring to call one out. Not for being an asshole, but for daring to call an asshole out. THAT is what 'An Anonymous Techie' want's to go back to. 'Agreeing to disagree' isn't OK. We can't all just sit back and smile and nod and 'go along to get along'. That's how you get an unsafe community. That's how you end up with a community full of people who all look, sound, and act the same. And all, as a result, have pretty much the same ideas. If that's what you, and the rest of openSUSE really want, then by all means, get rid of the Code of Conduct. If it's not, then please, stop asking people to 'agree to disagree'. 'Tolerance of intolerance' isn't a thing. -- Emily Gonyer
On 5/31/23 03:20, Emily Gonyer wrote:
I really think this depends on how we "agree to disagree", which always involves some level of compromise and often more so on one side then the other. For example in this case it might look like "An Anonymous Techie" is free to express there opinions in the correct forum, using civil language which to this point they have done. But at the same time agreeing to disagree might mean that they understand that a majority of our current active community supports the code of conduct and therefore they will continue to follow it when contributing to the parts of the community that interest them. At the same time for others who strongly agree with having a code of conduct it may look much more like not bullying, harassing, hindering someones work or telling them to leave because they've stated they don't like the code of conduct when none of there actions or contributions to the project fall outside the code of conduct. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
Again. You're equating insisting that simply *having* a code of conduct is a good thing, with bullying. While pretending that others' use of language insinuating that minorities of all stripes - whether they're gay, people of color, women, or otherwise, should simply be quiet. That's not OK. You're asking people to sit down, and be quiet. To not stand up for themselves, to speak out on their own behalf, when people are asking them to not exist. When people would prefer that they go back to living in the 1950s and before when the world was segregated (and in some places, far, far after). I know, that's what some people would like. If that's what you would like, please just say so. I'm sure that's what 'An Anonymous Techie' would like. But, it's not a world in which at least I for one want to live in. It's not a world that, I would like to think most of us in openSUSE would like to live. And that's why we have the Code of Conduct. It's why we wrote it a year+ ago - to ensure that we don't. So that I, and no-one else, has to sit down and be quiet. So that when people like 'An Anonymous Techie' come around, and tell me to be quiet, I can speak up and say "No". So that when they ask us to stop speaking out on behalf of Everyone, we, as a community, can say "No". That is the whole point of this conversation. That our Code of Conduct, protects ALL of us, as a community. It's a safety mechanism. If 'An Anonymous Techie' doesn't like it, that's on them. Not me. Not you. That's on THEM. But this nonsense of trying to pretend like simply having a 'Code of Conduct' is a problem? That right there is a problem. No-one is harassing them. We're simply defending the CoC, while they attempt to bully the entire community into removing it. The CoC isn't going anywhere.
On 6/1/23 03:21, Emily Gonyer wrote:
No I am most certainly not, please don't put words in my mouth. To clarify I am simply saying if someone is willing to be pleasant, enter into discussions in good faith and most importantly follow our code of conduct while arguing against having it. Then I personally believe we shouldn't as a community be actively asking them to leave or even suggesting they leave and give up there valuable contributions elsewhere in the project because they disagree with the code of conduct while still being willing to follow it.
You're asking people to sit down, and be quiet. To not stand up for themselves, to speak out on their own behalf, when people are asking them to not exist.
No again I am saying exactly the opposite. To start with I haven't heard anyone in this thread actively or passively asking any person or group of people not to exist. If I had I would have expected that the email get rejected. This list is the correct place to discuss project wide issues such as the code of conduct and whether it could / should be modified or even removed. I can certainly see a time and date where we as a project decide it needs changes and this is the correct place to rather then being quiet raise those issues. It may be that its clear the majority of the community doesn't agree with the proposed changes or maybe on the other hand there isn't a clear consensus and we need a vote of the membership. Either way this list isn't a place where people should need to keep quiet if they are passionate about a certain topic provided they are willing to follow the list rules which includes following the code of conduct. At the same time just because someone has disagreed with someone else about a topic raised on this list it doesn't mean that they can't then go work on other parts of the project that interest them and nor should it. I strongly agree that people taking the time and effort to post suggestions to this list are doing so because they desire to make openSUSE a better place and are willing to put in the time and effort to make a change. At the same time just because someone posts an idea that they personally believe will make the project a better place it doesn't mean that the community has to accept follow and endorse that idea. They of course are more then welcome to raise there voice and respectfully disagree as many on this list have.
But, it's not a world in which at least I for one want to live in. It's not a world that, I would like to think most of us in openSUSE would like to live. And that's why we have the Code of Conduct.
This I also agree with.
It's why we wrote it a year+ ago - to ensure that we don't. So that I, and no-one else, has to sit down and be quiet. So that when people like 'An Anonymous Techie' come around, and tell me to be quiet, I can speak up and say "No". So that when they ask us to stop speaking out on behalf of Everyone, we, as a community, can say "No".
That is the whole point of this conversation. That our Code of Conduct, protects ALL of us, as a community. It's a safety mechanism. If 'An Anonymous Techie' doesn't like it, that's on them. Not me. Not you. That's on THEM. But this nonsense of trying to pretend like simply having a 'Code of Conduct' is a problem? That right there is a problem. No-one is harassing them. We're simply defending the CoC, while they attempt to bully the entire community into removing it. The CoC isn't going anywhere.
This whole part of the thread started because someone told "Anonymous Techie" "If you feel this is not the place for you then please make sure the door doesn't hit you on the way out" And I spoke up because I'd like to hope that we as a community can do better and be more tolerant when disagreeing with each other. While at the same time personally I was trying to avoid singling this comment out too much because there have certainly been many many worse things said on these lists in the past but at the same time history has shown that all it takes is a comment like this from one side to encourage the other side to start down the path towards personal attacks so I was trying my best to encourage the conversation to stay civil and I am glad that in this thread so far it has. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 2023-06-01T10:12:52, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
I'm going to disagree with you on this one. Even if they pay lip service compliance to the CoC and phrase their toxic hate "civilly" and "just are asking questions" (sealioning) or pretend to be just ignorant (such as pretending that they can't see the difference between celebrating Pride as support for threatened minorities vs celebrating religious holidays), some of them *do* show their true colors *outside* the community. Have you *looked* at what the person so concerned about being banned here publishes on his "journals" for example? They *absolutely* should be banned for their demonstrated behaviour and positioning outside the openSUSE project: active trans hate, misgendering, heck, calling for the boycott of this very project. Even if they behave superficially "civilly" here, they mere presence and toleration makes the community less welcoming, less safe. I do not want to share the same community as them. Don't fall for that tactic.
No. Don't fall for this. Some post here because they actively work towards making openSUSE a *worse*, less inclusive place. Do NOT assume good intentions when people say they "disagree" with political movements to ensure equal rights for everyone. That's like saying the GPL is less free because it prevents people from using the code in proprietary products.
But no. This is indeed the kind of thing we cannot, must not tolerate. We must not tolerate people who publicly say they disagree with equal right, safety, care, shelter etc for all members of our community. Those people *should* leave. Those are not reasonable points to disagree on. Someone feeling threatened by those positions (because it threatens their health, life, safety) and potentially misjudging their own tone then being "policed" is exactly how their playbook works. Don't fall for it. There's not always good people on both sides. Regards, Lars (personal opinions, not representing SUSE) -- SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Boudien Moerman (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg)
On 2023-06-01 11:10, Lars Marowsky-Bree wrote:
On 2023-06-01T10:12:52, Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
The Code of Conduct _explicitly_ says that the following may be within scope: "Social media conversations may be considered in-scope if the incident occurred under an openSUSE event hashtag, or when an official openSUSE account on social media is tagged, or within any other discussion about openSUSE. openSUSE reserves the right to take actions against behaviors that happen in any context, if they are deemed to be relevant to the openSUSE project and its participants." The recent social media articles which Lars references include tags/direct links and screenshots to openSUSE social media and these mailinglists. This, and the fact that the articles are clearly relevant to the openSUSE Project and its participants. Therefore I wholeheartedly agree with Lars' suggestion that they are considered with extreme relevance in any decisions being made regarding breaches of the Code of Conduct.
On 6/1/23 18:40, Lars Marowsky-Bree wrote:
If the person that I personally am willing to agree to disagree with was showing any of this behavior I certainly wouldn't be agreeing to disagree with them.
Have you *looked* at what the person so concerned about being banned here publishes on his "journals" for example?
If it is any indication, I already publicly said that I agreed with the post that was blocked being blocked.
Yep, that person is not someone I am willing to agree to disagree with. Where as someone else has acted in good faith and has been completely reasonable in all there interactions with me so for good or bad its in my personal nature to also extend that good faith as long as I can see they are.
This I agree with 100%, however, I have been privileged enough to work in many smaller communities where it has been possible to have "equal right, safety, care, shelter etc for all members of our community" without needing a code of conduct. So from that perspective I can see why someone who cares about all those things may have the view that its possible to have all those things without needing a code of conduct. My response to those people is the same as my response was to "The Anonymous Techie" which is my experience of spending 4 years on the board is that openSUSE very much needs a code of conduct because even with one within the openSUSE community sometimes there is a distinct lack of "equal right, safety, care, shelter" and having a code of conduct makes the board and other appointed moderators lives much easier when they unfortunately have to deal with such behavior. As per the theme of this "Sub thread" i'm happy to agree to disagree with people on this because I know its not an opinion shared by all.
No, but if there is good or even reasonable people on both sides and I have the time i'll atleast have enough of a dialog with them in good faith to try and understand there views and why they hold them. Sometimes I learn something even if I don't agree with them and its great. Other times it quickly becomes obvious they are just trying to cause trouble and I equally quickly stop. As always these opinions are still my own and not that of my employer or projects i'm associated with. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Tue, 30 May 2023 17:50:08 -0000, Emily Gonyer wrote:
100%. If someone - anyone - does something that constitutes an assault (verbal, physical, etc), that's not appropriate and shouldn't be permitted or tolerated. If a group wants to celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion in the project, that's fine. If a group wants to celebrate various religious holidays, I don't have a problem with that, so long as it's administered equally (if we do something to celebrate Christmas, then we should also be fine with doing something to celebrate Diwali or Eid). I personally don't celebrate any religious holidays myself (I observe several that have a secular element, such as Christmas), and people whom I wish "Happy Holidays" to generally are receptive to it. Those who insist that I wish them a "Merry Christmas" instead or who shove their religion in my face tend to not get my attention in the future. I tolerate the fact that we have 2-3 months out of the year devoted to this religious holiday and it is shoved in my face *everywhere I go*. I do not insist that those who celebrate Christmas keep it to themselves. I let them have their fun and to celebrate however they want, so long as they're not being assholes about it. What we say/do affects people, and kindness should be our default stance. I agree that "tolerance of intolerance" isn't a thing, and that if someone is acting inappropriately, then they should be dealt with, and if the bad behavior is repeated, *tolerating* it isn't acceptable. Actions have consequences. "Free speech" doesn't mean speech free of social consequences - if you say something people don't like, they have the right to say so (in a "free speech" context). But in a private community (and the openSUSE Project is a private community), the community gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable behavior, and they get to set and enforce rules. Just as when you invite someone into your home; if they behave in a way that you don't like, you have the absolute right to ask them to leave, and if they don't, to remove them (or have them removed). That holds true - and always has held true - in online communities. I've been involved in online communities since the 1980s, and *every single one of them* has had rules that the membership was expected to follow - and those who didn't either left of their own accord or were booted from the group. Freedom comes with responsibility - and in my mind, we have a responsibility to be kind to each other, and as long as that social contract is upheld, then the kindness is to be returned. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
Natasha Ament wrote:
As does the moderate left wing and virtually everybody else. Maybe you need to work on your "understanding" a bit. https://paste.opensuse.org/pastes/468e9dfbca45 -- Per Jessen, Zürich (22.3°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
Dear Natasha this debate is the first time I have seen your name appear. I have also googled and there are no applicable hits. I would be curious to understand more about your connection to our community? are you perhaps a user, a contributor, a packager? If you do not have much interest in our community, other than plain curiosity, perhaps you ought to keep your mouth shut. Just something to consider. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (20.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On 2023-06-01 22:40, Per Jessen wrote:
Er... I see him/her back in 2013. Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:12:05 +0100 From: Natasha Ament <...@gmail.com> To: suse <opensuse@opensuse.org> Subject: [opensuse] nagios update requires unprovided monitoring daemon Four or five emails back then. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 2023-06-01 23:43, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
The Wouter person is apparently someone that is here normally under another name and contributes things, just that is afraid to use his own name in this discussion and hides it under a different name and email. I am also curious about seeing in this discussion names that I have never before noticed. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 2023-06-01 22:40, Per Jessen wrote:
How about considering this Your above mail reads to me as a clear and obvious breach of our guiding principles and our code of conduct We’re meant to be a community welcoming to new folk - this discussion shouldn’t just be open for old has-beens I am very glad you’re not a moderator but I am also disappointed this clear personal attack towards a Natasha was allowed through the active moderation I trust the Board will deal with this alongside all the other mess they’re handling at the moment, but really you should know better Per.
Richard Brown wrote:
Richard, how about considering this - your opinion counts exactly as much as mine. Even perhaps less.
We’re meant to be a community welcoming to new folk - this discussion shouldn’t just be open for old has-beens
Are we talking about you or me?
Maybe you ought to volunteer for the so-called "moderators team". Myself, I am not a moderator because (1) our community has never made a call for volunteer moderators. (2) because I don't believe in the need.
I trust the Board will deal with this alongside all the other mess they’re handling at the moment, but really you should know better Per.
I see nothing wrong in questioning the biased contribution of an apparent newcomer in a heated debate. Much as I would or might question the biased contribution of any old dimwit. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (18.5°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On 2023-06-02 00:25, Per Jessen wrote:
Richard Brown wrote:
Richard, how about considering this - your opinion counts exactly as much as mine. Even perhaps less.
Our code of conduct clearly states that we should be “respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences” It also states that unacceptable behaviour includes “Saying insulting/derogatory comments and making personal attacks Public or private harassment, including doxing” Your posts to Natasha, myself and others clearly run counter to these aspects of the Code.
Well I do see something wrong with it. We, collectively, and you, as an individual, have no right to try and dismiss the opinions of others, be they from a biased source, an old source, a new source, or any such combination. We all come to the table with our biases, our experiences, or our lack of experiences, and we’re should all be expected to be allowed to contribute to the Project regardless of them. Your actions here are a clear and obvious attempt to push out people you disagree with (Natasha, myself and others), and that really should not be acceptable at all.
On Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:12:13 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:
We’re meant to be a community welcoming to new folk - this discussion shouldn’t just be open for old has-beens
Big +1. 'Welcoming" someone to our community by telling them to STFU is *very* poor form. I hope they're not deterred by that "introduction". -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
Per Jessen wrote:
Dear Natasha
If you do not have much interest in our community, other than plain curiosity, perhaps you ought to keep your mouth shut.
No, you don't have the authority to tell Natasha nor anyone to keep their mouth shut. Natasha has the right to civilly speak up as much as others did in this list, and to whom you remained silent about. I support the sentiments and concerns Natasha has expressed. Are you gonna ask me to keep my mouth shut too? Best regards, Maurizio openSUSE Board Member and Xfce Maintenance Team
Hello, On Friday, June 2nd, 2023 at 6:46 AM, Maurizio Galli <mauriziogalli@opensuse.org> wrote:
Funnily enough, nobody ever jumped into the breech like that for me. Plenty of people - including Natasha - told me to shut up and/or leave.
Natasha has the right to civilly speak up as much as others did in this list, and to whom you remained silent about. I support the sentiments and concerns Natasha has expressed. Are you gonna ask me to keep my mouth shut too?
Why not? Ample precedent has been set for that, after all. With nobody on their side rebuking them crossing that particular line. Apparently the Just And Righteous play by slightly different rules. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
------- Original Message ------- On Friday, June 2nd, 2023 at 3:40 AM, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
You should refrain from personal attacks as you just violated the CoC. With that said I think you should consider taking your own advice, and don't take part in a conversation that gets you worked up so much. -- A.
Dear Per, Well I've been using openSUSE or SUSE Linux back then (9.2 i believe). Does that qualify me to participate? (Don't worry it's rhetorical). I am by no means a troll if that's what you think. Let me introduce myself. I'm Natasha, 48 years of age. I am transgendered as Carlos tried to point out. That process was way back in 2002. This doesn't bother me and I hope it doesn't bother you or anyone else. There is nothing much I can do about that, you see. I think I'm rather impartial. However, when someone tells me inclusivity is (and now I paraphrase) a leftist hobby, I will speak up as this does not affect me alone. The "Wouter" person (who started this) stated in an email that was refused by the moderators, but sent to me off list by "Wouter" also contained racial remarks. As others have said it's rather odd to single me out, telling me to shut up since you couldn't find me on google and you didn't see me contribute. Which Carlos proved to be wrong, albeit a long time ago, maybe too long. Can you please tell me what I've done to deserve your wrath? Kind regards, Natasha
On 2023-06-02 07:00, Natasha Ament wrote:
Huh. Sorry, I didn't. I simply can not always guess whether it is he or she if the name is not in my own language, which is not English. Even more in the context of this thread. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 29.05.23 22:08, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
(I'm not saying it does accomplish that goal or such, I personally am also not the biggest fan of these kinds of paperwork) -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
On Tue, 30 May 2023 13:27:02 +0200, Stefan Seyfried wrote:
Generally, a CoC doesn't prevent people from doing things, but it provides the organization an means of protecting itself and its membership when those things happen - by giving them a means to say "you broke these rules and are no longer welcome here". Look at organizations like SFWA or DefCon for examples of places where this has happened (just two off the top of my head that I know of). In the SFWA instance, some very well-known and (for some previously-) well- regarded authors acted very, very badly and were told they weren't welcome to return in the future - the CoC that was adopted for those organizations helped with enforcing those decisions. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
Hi, Codes of Conducts exist primarily to project people from insults and abuse. Secondly they are designed in such a way to facilitate in smooth and professional communication. They are there because common decency was lost ages ago. The time of flame wars etc. Free speech does not mean you can insult and abuse people if you so desire. There are other venues where you are allowed that. Private corporations or foundations can create any set of rules the board deems appropriate permissible by law of course. They can decide what the limits of free speech on e.g. mailinglists are. Those who do not agree have the right to bring that up. However I feel that can't be done indefinitely. As far as politics is concerned being decent and using common sense are not leftist, nor are they woke. Regards, Natasha TL;DR: abolishing the CoC is opening the door to flame wars! Op ma 29 mei 2023 15:15 schreef Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me
:
Jacob Michalskie wrote:
Jacob, that is not bad news, that is catastrophic news. Surely the so-called "moderation team" should be neutral too. Why is the so-called "moderation team" not being neutral? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (25.2°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 19:00:01 +0200, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
On one hand it's the lack of volunteers and on the other it's difficulty of finding suitable candidates, both being closely related to each other. The moderation team is also not public enough right now and requires a wiki page that I didn't have the time to set up. I have discussed this a little bit with some mods and the board during oSC23, and hopefully we can work on this and arrive at something a bit more functional though. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Jacob Michalskie wrote:
I have not seen a call for volunteers, nor have I seen a profile for suitable candidates. That might explain why they are difficult to find :-) However, it does not explain why our so-called "moderation team" is not being neutral.
The moderation team is also not public enough right now and requires a wiki page that I didn't have the time to set up.
Surely the "moderation team" would have an interest in doing that themselves.
Not to be too picky, but you did not actually answer my question. Being neutral seems to me to be one key quality any moderator absolutely must possess. Assuming you are right in your observation about their lack of neutrality, I suggest the so-called "moderation team" be dismissed forthwith and a new one appointed in due course. (if at all necessary). -- Per Jessen, Zürich (22.5°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On Do, Jun 1 2023 at 21:19:23 +0200, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
Indeed, I've been kinda slow on writing the wiki page for the team, so that translated into not doing much of an active reach-out, since I wasn't really able to explain the role of the team without one.
However, it does not explain why our so-called "moderation team" is not being neutral.
In this case the answer is fairly simple, bias on the account of some of them being queer
That's a good point, since they have to read this message as it will be held in moderation queue, maybe they will get a hint ;)
I didn't say they aren't though. While they are less neutral than the board I still believe they can deal with the issues in a neutral way. We do have the board as the place of the ultimate conflict resolution for a reason and they are voted into the position for a reason. I can't expect a smaller team of volunteers to be able to deal with both the pressure and the responsibility of approaching the problems in the same way as the board. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
Jacob Michalskie wrote:
I was certainly not accusing your personally, it seems to me to be purely a failure of the openSUSE Board.
You are suggesting being queer makes you unable to be neutral? Sounds like like something that ought to go into the profile for new "moderator team" applicants.
That's a good point, since they have to read this message as it will be held in moderation queue, maybe they will get a hint ;)
Hope springs eternal, but I am not going to put my money on this one. Have added it to my calenar to check back in a month.
Yes _we_ can expect just that. It is not _your_ problem, for starters. If our so-called "moderation team" is incompetent, they need to be dismissed and if necessary another one appointed. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (20.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On Do, Jun 1 2023 at 22:59:32 +0200, Per Jessen <per@opensuse.org> wrote:
I do think that putting people in front of a danger to their existence makes them take a side that won't kill them, yes LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/
On 2023-06-01 23:41, Jacob Michalskie wrote:
Exactly Wanting moderators to be purely neutral is nonsense I want our moderators to be wholly aligned with our Guiding Principles and Code of Conduct and to act upon them with determination, passion, their own judgement, and confidence that they are doing something for the good of the community. Will they be perfect? No, no humans are But I’d rather take imperfect moderators that work hard to make openSUSE a safe and welcoming environment than a bunch of time wasters striving for “neutrality” and alienating vast numbers of actual contributors in the process.
Richard Brown wrote:
I want our moderators to be neutral. However, as the openSUSE community was never even given the opportunity to choose our moderators, I guess neither opinion counts for much. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (18.8°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On 6/2/23 00:33, Per Jessen wrote:
Yeah, I agree. Full neutrality is important. Once upon a time in the 90`s I joined the technology world, because real-world problems, politics, whatever did not exist within technology projects. No matter of the background (far left, far right, etc.), you could work together on wonderful projects. And that is how SUSE / openSUSE worked for at least two decades (I started using it in 1996 with S.u.S.E. Linux 4.3). Just think of ReiserFS: we kept using it for a long time, as the focus was technology, not how people behaved outside the technology world. I'd prefer to see this level of neutrality again. Peter
Full neutrality is also an illusion and a fairytale. We all have our viewpoints and perspectives we can't dissociate ourselves from and you can't neutrally judge between two positions without making a, well, judgement call. And eve. "not taking a position" is a position in and on itself (usually one that serves to reinforce whatever the status quo happens to be) It's pointless to ask something that's both unachievable and possibly doesn't even make sense on a concept level, so maybe it would make to specify what exactly you are asking for here. On June 2, 2023 9:30:29 AM GMT+02:00, Peter Czanik <peter@czanik.hu> wrote:
On 6/2/23 09:30, Peter Czanik wrote:
This is a completely incorrect --but wholly understandable--reading of how the world works. "Water may be invisible to the fish [that swim in it]" but the water is definitely still there. Politics is a function of humanity, and surrounds us as an activity or expression much as language or art or technology do: it is everywhere. Just because we are not aware of them (how often do we think of the technology of writing itself as an invention?) does not mean they are not functioning--or integral. Indeed, the more integral or substantial a politics or technology is, the less we think of it or see it. It becomes our water. Technology in the 90s probably would have been less concerned with ideas of "political" valence due to the (relatively) homogeneous group of humans engaging with it (universities and corporate research hubs, populated by educated male engineers in the industrialized global north). The world has always-already (always, always) been this noisy--full of disagreement, often violent--but historically, those with less access to power (marginalized groups) did not have as much voice. What we hear now are not _new_ conflicts, but simply we hear _more_ in general. Politics is not a dirty word, it is the very process of negotiating a shared world--this world--with the fellow human beings we live alongside. It's not an easy process, if it were then our ancestors (no less capably human than we) would have "solved" the "problem." Returning to our example--the fact of inclusion is political (and properly considered here) _because the community feels that it is_. Discussion or "seeking resolution" _is just such_ the process of making a shared world (or mailing list). My vote is keep the rainbows--more rainbows, more explicit acceptance of all the flourishing manifestations of humanity!
Peter
-- Cameron.Cn 柯智明 只要努力,就能成功 With hard work, success is possible.
On 2023-06-02T09:30:29, Peter Czanik <peter@czanik.hu> wrote:
There's three ways for moderation to be fully neutral: - Reject everything. - Accept everything. - Randomly do one of the two with a 50:50 distribution. That's obviously non-sense. The whole point of "moderation" is not to be neutral, but to enforce the rules to the best of their ability (and that will always be imperfectly, because social interactions are complex - just like gender, if I may make that pun).
Look, I've been ignorant in the past as well; how could I not have been, having grown up in small-town Germany? There were a few things I could deduce, but for many others, I simply lacked the input. That's not an excuse. In fact, it is the opposite: it's the active rejection of growth and learning. If anything, I don't want to go back to that time, I want to write my past self a (rather long) booklet of how to be more aware - since that's impossible, the best thing one can do is do better, starting now. Those problems already existed. The whole _point_ of Free Software was a heavily political stance. Copyright and licenses are legalese, and you know who makes laws? The politicians. The very fact that you did not see significantly different voices back then was because capitalism had exploited large parts of the world while denying them access, colonialism, and because LGBT rights were so much worse than today that they - we - just didn't speak up as much. Free, Libre, Open Source software - heck, even those three terms have different socio-economic, financial, and political implications. Apoliticality is just as impossible as not communicating. As the communities grew, so has our understanding and our *need* to have a somewhat fuzzy-but-largely-shared set of rules, because more people are more diverse (unless you've got rules that prevent that, such as ... a lack of rules), we want to be more inclusive actively, and honestly? Not all people have always the best of intentions. The impact and reach the community and our projects have now on literally *everything* make it *impossible* for it to be apolitical. One can't treat a community of 5 the same way you treat a community of literal millions, or even hundreds, maybe thousands (if we stick to the openSUSE community at large). The FLOSS community - and society as a whole - is *still* doing a ... not-great job of this (outside limited groups who're doing better than others). Just look at the gender balance. The geographical distribution. The privileges needed to participate, financially. Etc. That some countries, some states, are actively unsafe for members of our community travel to. (How does this relate to the CoC and values? Well, for example, not hosting in-person events in legislations or areas that contradict our CoCs. Having them provides a compatibility matrix, for everything from venue selection to membership. And helping people overcome an absence of privileges, and being open to accommodate different needs and abilities.) Growing a community requires people to know they're safe, and what that means. The only people who (fell they) don't need that are those with the privileges to be certain (rightly or wrongly) that they'll be safe anyway, or because they, themselves, are the bullies and don't want the community to have the tools to take a stance against them. Would that be the best community? I very much don't think so. Isn't one of the key points here a complaint about how conflicts are handled? How moderation is handled? Does anyone else see the irony? The absence of a CoC doesn't mean those decisions won't happen - they're just even more ad hoc.
Yes, but Hans was excluded from the communities and no longer employed and for some reason hasn't sent a patch in quite awhile. Because, you know, he violated the societal "code of conduct" rather severely. That we did not rename the file system was not one of the greatest moments; having something named after a murderer is not something to be proud of, I think. A murderer - a toxic masculinity femicide, no less! - as a reason not to need a CoC - and, ultimately, in a discussion about coming out in support of threatened groups? I'm uncertain you've picked a great example. Regards, Lars -- SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Boudien Moerman (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg)
Hello,
Amen to that. These times are but a fading image getting ever smaller in the rearview mirror, though. And I believe that the introduction of politics into technology is actively harmful. There is a constant buzz of politics now. Vast minefields of things that cannot be said. And like the void in the Neverending Stories, these minefields are growing. And at an alarming pace. One needs to spend considerable amounts of time keeping up to date on what's banned language. You don't do that, you get cancelled. For wokeness is a jealous god that will quickly and mercilessly punish even the smallest offenses. Technology is not fun anymore. Neither is open source. I still enjoy tinkering with code, enjoy the elation of "well damn, this thing works". But lots of things end up staying somewhere in $HOME, never even making it to Github. For while this was always a thankless endeavor, publishing any software adds attack surface that may by pure stroke of bad luck draw a cancel mob - or a concern troll submitting a code of conduct pull request, ready to call up a cancel mob if you reject it. Do we really want to live like that? Walk on eggshells at all times? I for one don't. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On Fri, 02 Jun 2023 22:42:26 +0000, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
Do we really want to live like that? Walk on eggshells at all times? I for one don't.
It's really not that difficult. Treat people with respect, and own it and apologize, sincerely, when you hurt someone. You can't control others' reactions. You can control yours, so control what you can. That means (for example), when you misgender someone and are corrected, accept the correction, apologize for the error, and then don't do it again. Same with deadnaming (using a name that someone no longer uses). The vast majority will appreciate that you're at least trying, at least, that's what I've found. I'm still learning, for sure, but making the effort really counts for the vast majority. As a non-LGBTQ example of this, I recently ran into a former high-school classmate in a professional setting. I knew him as "Bob". He no longer uses that name, he prefers "Robert". I noticed that nobody was calling him "Bob", so I didn't. I called him "Robert" and didn't make a big deal about it - didn't call out that when I knew him in school, he was "Bob", I just went with it. So if Alice now prefers to be identified as Bob, and is using "he/him" or "they/their" as their pronouns, *use it*. Don't argue with them about it. Give them the respect and dignity of being called by their preferred name and gender identity. This is nowhere near as difficult as writing solid code. ;) -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
* Knurpht-openSUSE <knurpht@opensuse.org> [06-04-23 11:26]:
then why not go back to "technology" and *drop* all the hatred? -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet oftc
100% agree. Also to come back to the issue raised in this post: there's nothing wrong with supporting vulnerable minorities. The problem is that the flag we are talking about goes much further than that. It's been waived by queer theory activists promoting an agenda based on ideology and quite remote from its origins in human rights, mostly in the context of gender dysphoria: - promoting the use of hormon blockers and surgery to "help" allegedly dysphoric minors modify their body -- almost always rendering them infertile; - refusing the acknowledge evidence that gender dysphoria might admit of a variety of treatments -- not just surgery and hormon blockers (context: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-sweden-puts-brakes-on-treatme...) - bullying lesbians into have relationships with men (context: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385) Because of this I'd argue that the flag is as tainted politically as the Confederate flag in the U.S, and thus no longer a suitable symbol for expressing solidarity with vulnerable minorities.
On So, Jun 4 2023 at 10:17:21 -0000, SingletonW Lernais <sngltnw@gmail.com> wrote:
This is as much a social as a medical issue, but...
- bullying lesbians into have relationships with men (context: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385)
Calling trans women "men" does not help the cause socially whatsoever. Puberty blockers are an interesting subject, and I feel like you are missing out by not having a look at the research, for example [1] (which includes notes about impact of fertility, though most of the research here has been done on kids younger than 13), [2] (about using hormone blockers + hormones at later stages, past the subjects being minors, having a larger impact on fertility) or [3] (psychological impact of no transition, social transition and social transition with puberty blockers). In terms of surgeries, Sweden had a pretty cool study about the subject too [4]! There is in general not really enough research done about the subject though, that was also the conclusion of Swedish government and why they decided to take the step that they did, I'm sure blocking this field with a general ban won't have an impact on it though.
The queer community had to deal with much worse thrown its way, most of the terminology in those circles is derived from slurs for a reason after all. Using controversial words and symbols was always the case because it has helped spread the word of the issue on a much larger scale, because those have been the words and symbols other people have used for the community too. Don't act surprised that this is still a thing, since clearly people still manage to call trans women "men" on the openSUSE mailing lists. LCP [Jake] https://lcp.world/ [1] https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/3/5/965/5421014 [2] [3] https://academic.oup.com/jsm/article-abstract/12/11/2206/6980064 [4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applic...
That makes about as much sense as saying national openSUSE communities shouldn't use their countries' flag because there are some people doing bad things in the name of nationalism. People do bad things in the name of X, so we won't associate with X just isn't feasible, because that leaves us without nothing to associate with. By that same logic we would have to take issue with anyone wishing "Merry Christmas" because the list of atrocities committed in the name of Christianity isn't exactly short. Also I want to call you out for very intentionally misgendering trans people. The bbc article you linked talked about cis- and trans-women, not about men, but you still went out of your way to misgender here. So together with your over the top stramanning wrt to HRT I'm gonna make a bold guess here and assume that your problem with the pride flag isn't that it's somehow an unsuitable symbol for supporting minorities, but rather that it also includes a minority group, you don't seem to have a whole lot of respect for and take issue with. Which just makes raising that flag seem all the more necessary. On June 4, 2023 12:17:21 PM GMT+02:00, SingletonW Lernais <sngltnw@gmail.com> wrote:
* Lil Frogg <lilfrogg@posteo.net> [06-04-23 09:49]:
so the simple and most applicable solution would be to embrace all individuals w/o any advocation to any group and to discuss technology. I always thought that was the real purpose. we certainly have drifted from the purpose. and this entire thread would not have happened. and all those "sensitivities" would have been spared. odd such a simple solution! -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet oftc
On 2023-06-04T11:47:22, Patrick Shanahan <paka@opensuse.org> wrote:
Funnily enough, the openSUSE *community* is not just about technology, but *also* about the people that make up our community. If you read the Guiding Principles, you'll find it mentions "community" before it talks about software, even. Growing the openSUSE project means growing the community, strengthening it, getting new impulses from diverse points of view and backgrounds. A "huge and strong" community is explicitly listed as a goal, as is "heterogeneity". As is making people "feel accepted and safe". And coming here to find transphobic, homophobic, LGBTIQA right-wing talking points, or naïve tech-centric reality-warping nostalgia _definitely_ does not make me feel any of that. I'm quite proud of the community for largely opposing these points. The whole notion of having technology that is decoupled from society and politics, much less a movement like Free, Libre, Open Source software, is rather ... short-sighted. Software doesn't do itself, ChatGPT non-withstanding. We still need people to do that. And in particular, we need real people to have a lot of fun. I agree though. This is completely disproportionate to a sub-community expressing support for another/overlapping community via a fun logo (note how it didn't even use "the flag", but just the color scheme). Happy Pride month :-) Regards, Lars -- SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Boudien Moerman (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg)
Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
That is your personal problem. If the Board is not competent enough to deal with this, and have also chosen/appointed an incompetent so-called "Moderator Team", what are we to do? Dismiss the Board? I agree that self-policing the lists is by far the best option, but that idea was taken away when the Board decided to appoint a so-called "Moderator Team". -- Per Jessen, Zürich (18.2°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On Mon 2023-05-29, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
Following this thread, I believe there has been some confusion of who is, and is not, currently on the board. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board has the up-to-date list.
This is a good point. Indeed one can reach out to the board as a group, to a subset, or individual members. And request anonymity when asking for help or raising a concern (and we'll honor that as board, subset, or individuals). Gerald PS: Coincidentally via a ticket regarding a bug in our mail archive, I got reminded of this mail of mine from December 2020: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/message/...
Simon Lees wrote:
Simon, I suggest that is merely an excuse - the Board appointed external, unknown moderators at some point, yet neglected to document it. It is also not clear what exactly their duties and processes are.
Generally the lists are unmoderated and if there is an issue someone simply raises a complaint to the board.
More often, to the list itself.
Why isn't the "moderation team" actively following the lists they are assigned to? Seems dereliction of duty to me. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (25.0°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On 5/30/23 02:23, Per Jessen wrote:
Unfortunately some years back the board was put into the position of choosing to either ban certain members from lists for a period or place them under moderation for a period of time. The second option seeming more preferable but also requiring the rapid setup of a team to handle it. The restrictions on those individuals lifted quite some time ago so until this week there was practically no moderation happening on any lists.
I think that's a general miss understanding, the moderation team were previously only moderating the emails of certain members as requested by the board. I was talking with members of the board at the openSUSE conference and we agreed that the best solution to the current issues was to put the lists on moderation while the board sorts through the complaints they have received. If the board would like the list more heavily retrospectively moderated by a mailing list moderation team rather then complaints just going directly to them that is something we can address in the future. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
Right.
I suggest it would be appropriate to document the duties of the "moderation team", as well as document who they are and how they are appointed and why/how they are qualified, i.e. their credentials. I can't help thinking that the current situation is oddly reminiscent of the old days of the DDR. Anyone who goes to our CoC page: https://en.opensuse.org/Code_of_Conduct will notice that the "moderation team" also maintains and updates our CoC. I guess their duties were expanded at some point ? I explicitly write "moderation team" in quotes, because there seems to be only one member contributing: https://code.opensuse.org/project/coc/commits/main
Agree.
It is perhaps an issue of wording - a moderator usually actively moderates a debate, ready to act when someone oversteps the line. I was not aware that our "moderation team" only subsequently reviews the held queue. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (23.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On 6/2/23 04:37, Per Jessen wrote:
That is fair, in other parts of the community, forums discord etc. The board or community appointed the first couple of moderators and after that those moderators are then responsible for deciding they need additional moderators and appointing people they believe are suitable from the community.
Well yeah, in reality we never quiet got that far but also until the last couple of weeks there also hasn't really been anything that needed moderating. It also doesn't help that people were traveling, and personally I was sick otherwise I probably would have suggested putting the whole list on moderation sooner. In the future doing that sooner is probably an option, also in the future we could look at issuing warnings and putting individuals under moderation sooner so that the board doesn't have to act, in the same way that the board generally doesn't have to deal with issues that arise in the forums or on discord. But to do that Ideally we need to intergrate with the rest of the moderation teams so its easier to share info about who is being moderated where and why so issues don't just jump between platforms. Right now we are at the point where the board has already recieved a number of complaints and its easier just to let them resolve the issues. But in the future we can look at doing more if its needed. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
The Board appointed "external, unknown moderators"? I'm fairly certain that this information is incorrect.
Why isn't the "moderation team" actively following the lists they are assigned to? Seems dereliction of duty to me.
Our team has been inactive since *checks group* 25 September 2022. We're attending our duties individually on our designated channels, the mailing lists were never one of those. We - or the Board - never appointed anyone to moderate the mailing lists. Hope this helps cleaning up the misinformation. -- A.
On 5/31/23 03:06, Attila Pinter wrote:
while the current board may not have appointed anyone, but a previous one certainly did which is why there are people with "Moderator" Privileges in the list software. I did mention during the time moderation was being revamped for "other" communication channels that it probably should include mailing list moderators and people with irc opps, but I don't recall hearing anything back on it. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Sun, 28 May 2023 21:39:02 +0000, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
Personally, I wish it weren't necessary to have them. The problem is that when it comes to marginalized groups (LGBTQ+ groups, racial groups, and so on) who have no control over the characteristics that cause them to be marginalized, they are made to feel unwelcome in the group. It has been my experience (and I'm speaking very generally here, not pointing fingers at any specific individuals) that the people who get wound up over that feel that they are discriminated against for things that they have chosen to do, rather than immutable characteristics. That is what led me to quote Karl Popper in the Factory thread. The idea that intolerance should be tolerated destroys the idea of tolerating anything. Put another way, tolerance is a social contract; those who don't abide by it (by, for example, making people who are LGBTQ+ unwelcome, overtly or otherwise) are saying that they are more "important" to be tolerated than those who are part of that group. That is just wrong in my book. I'm not looking to get anyone fired from their jobs. I agree that there are cases where a community goes too far. But with groups that have been marginalized because of their immutable characteristics, it's important to say "you are welcome here" pretty explicitly specifically *because* the group *has* been marginalized to the point where the default stance is "I won't be welcome in that group". Would that we all could just get along - that people didn't feel it necessary to engage in homophobic attitudes in public, didn't feel it necessary to make sexually inappropriate comments to women who are part of the community (or worse, to decide to make unwanted physical advances). Organizations like this project have been sued over that type of thing because it's not spelled out. I cannot tell you the number of times that I've had to deal with homophobic hate in the FB group. The banner goes up at the start of June as a sign of "you are welcome here", and invariably there are a dozen, two dozen, or more people who use the puking face emoji in response to it. That is just unacceptable. We're supposed to tolerate *that* behavior, which makes members of that community feel unwelcome? That's just nuts. The goal is inclusion and tolerance, but "tolerate my intolerance" simply doesn't work. How do you propose that we ensure that those marginalized groups are made to feel welcome without telling them "hey, you're welcome here" when for many of them for their entire lives, they've been either specifically told "you're not welcome here" to the point that that's the default assumption? You get bit too many times, and you stop trying. As I said before, this is a community. Without the people, the technology doesn't happen. Excluding diverse groups has been shown to limit innovation, and for my part, I would far rather see inclusion of those marginalized groups whose ideas haven't been done, and if some self-select by declaring their "hate" or "distaste" for someone's personal life to be more important than bringing in those ideas, that's on them. The things we say and do affect other people. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
Hello, On Monday, May 29th, 2023 at 8:18 PM, Jim Henderson <hendersj@gmail.com> wrote:
Marginalized groups? Every major corporation, government agencies, banks, NGOs - everyone flies the rainbow flags these days. There's hiring quotas for any group with "diverse" attributes. NASDAQ requires at least one director with "diverse" credentials on a company's board for them to list the company. That is a very funny kind of marginalized.
My experiences in life shaped me. Without going into detail, I didn't exactly have positive experiences with LGBT people - on multiple occasions. I did not chose to be a heterosexual white male either. Case in point, the more extreme members of the woke movement tell me to be attracted to trans women, even though I am not. Why the double standard in who you must change their sexual preferences and who can carry on as they wish?
There is quite the continuum between "enthusiastically embrace", "tolerate" and "be intolerant" about something.
It's a rather unilateral social contract. Merely tolerating LGBT people is not enough, you need to enthusiastically embrace them, fly their flag. In my book, the "tolerate" end of the spectrum can be "avoid LGBT people but take no active measures against them". You know, there's flags I like myself. I'm not asking anybody to fly them. Why do I have to keep my politics hidden away on pain of getting excluded from a community while more equal kinds of animals get to force me to fly theirs without me ever being asked? I signed on to fix a couple of packages I discovered to be broken, you know. Not to take up somebody else's banner and battle cry. That was never part of the deal. I contributed to this opportunity for free and I get rewarded with having to fly a flag I do not want to fly. Or else.
Times have very much changed. What you describe is the default in all communities nowadays. Including hiring quotas, promotion quotas and all that jazz. At the same time harsh prejudice against the reviled Old White Man is treated in a pretty laissez-faire manner. After all everyone knows he's an oppressive bastard who is constantly plotting and scheming to oppress women, minorities and LGBT people, right? It's entirely fine to make him feel unwelcome, at least a lot of people flying the rainbow flag appear to think to. That is one of the things that flag represents to me. I've been called that of-course-totally-not-an-insult moniker a couple of times myself, you know.
Would that we all could just get along - that people didn't feel it necessary to engage in homophobic attitudes in public,
Can't help it. Bad experiences.
It is absolutely ok if a homosexual male does these sorts of thing to a heterosexual male because it would be hate speech to notice or - god forbid - complain about it.
Organizations like this project have been sued over that type of thing because it's not spelled out.
This sounds like FUD to me. Who got sued? By who? How about, you know trying to win such a case rather than give in to what might well be an attempt at concern trolling?
Some of us are supposed to tolerate a flag that sticks in some of our craws, too. Not a nice feeling either and nobody ever asked us about it.
The goal is inclusion and tolerance, but "tolerate my intolerance" simply doesn't work.
Unfortunately that "inclusion" just shuffles the ingroups and outgroups around.
I have been told that same thing quite a few times because I live in one of these countries where there is a massive push to cast the majority population in quite the villain role. At the same time elevating various "marginalized" groups and putting them on a pedestal, granting them privileges I did not begin to have, never in my entire life.
You get bit too many times, and you stop trying.
It took me a few decades, but yeah, I'm getting there. These days I often wonder whether I shouldn't just be a hermit somewhere deep in the woods. It's not like I feel very included in a society that is being told about the oppression perpetrated by old white men in every TV documentary, in tons of opinion pieces, in a flood of virtue signalling posts on Facebook, Twitter and tons of other channels. And yet here I sit in a medium sized, mediocre apartment - not a volcano lair - working a job I'm worried about losing, driving a rusty used car, scratching my graying head and wondering where exactly I took a wrong turn to end up where I am. After all I'm this fearsome oppressor who should be wallowing in luxury, cracking the whip over an army of slaves. Yet I'm not.
You know. A whole bunch of bad things happened to me and others under that flag. I don't care about the LGBT people and am fine with tolerating them as long as they treat me respectfully (which they haven't always done). I do not want to fly that flag though. Since I do not ask anybody to fly flags I care about either, I happen to think that's a fair deal.
The things we say and do affect other people.
Not a lot, in my experience. Especially the things we say. It's quite rare for people to listen and even rarer for them to understand. Regards, An Anonymous Techie
On Mon, 29 May 2023 19:39:11 +0000, Wouter Onebekend wrote:
And yet you only have to look at recent US laws enacted that prevent gender-affirming care and prohibit even showing movies that depict gay characters in public schools to see the marginalization that people in that community deal with on a daily basis. Or the fact that in Texas, the state can separate a trans child from their parents on a charge of *child abuse* because they support their child's discovery of their actual gender identity. The fact that rainbow flags are flown is to say to people who are in that community that it's OK to be who they are.
Well, I'm sorry to hear that you've had bad experiences with LGBT people. I can't speak to those experiences, but in general, people in that community have had to deal with being repressed for their entire lives (due to religious upbringing or other factors) where their very lives were at risk. So the vast majority in that community know what it is to be told they can't be who they are, and generally do not behave in the way you experienced.
"It's OK for you to exist" is not an "enthusiastic embrace" in my mind. But your interpretation is your interpretation, and I'm not going to try to change it.
You can personally adopt that stance - but demanding that the rainbow flag not be flown would be seen by many, very likely, to be taking an active measure against them.
And you aren't asked to take up their banner. You can just focus on the technology you want to focus on and ignore the rest. That's your right.
Times really haven't changed. We have more members of the LGBTQ+ community who are 'out', but just look at Florida, or Texas, or other places in the US that have passed laws denying gender-affirming care or other anti-LGBTQ legislation. Teachers getting fired for daring to show a Disney movie that had gay characters in it - and the relationship wasn't even fundamental to the story (from what I understand). We saw a similar thing during the Civil Rights movement here in the US - slavery was "ended", so racism was over, right? Well, no, not really.
No, it isn't OK, and if it happens in this community, I'd expect you to report it to an appropriate authority.
Google turns up a number of results, but I've heard about potential lawsuits against SFWA and DefCon for harassment happening at their events that wasn't dealt with. You used to hear about it more in sci-fi conventions as well until they started adopting codes of conduct as well.
The difference is that one group is a group that formed by choice, and the other is one that didn't. Hate is a choice. Gender identity or sexual orientation is not.
Groups that have been marginalized because of who they are (not because of choices they've made) can appear to be 'elevated' or 'put on a pedestal' when they emerge from the shadows because we're not used to seeing them there. We don't think twice about heterosexual couples in popular film and media. We see it all the time, and it's just what we're used to. Now that we see an increase in storytelling that includes LGBTQ+ relationships, that's not "putting them on a pedestal". That's just telling stories that include people who look like/act like/are like people we're not used to seeing.
Hey, I get that feeling. I'm an old-ish white heterosexual cis guy as well. My take on it is to acknowledge that that gives me a 'leg up', even when things are not great (I'm currently taking time off from working - voluntarily - because of health issues; I've had times where I couldn't pay the rent/mortgage). I do my best to default to kindness - there's a saying that people don't remember what you do, but they remember how you made them feel. I'm reminded by people who are to my left that when they say "white men do x" that a response of "not all men" or "not all white men" isn't necessary, because if I don't do that, *they're not talking about me*. I try to be kind and tolerant of people. I recognize that even when I have it bad, there are many, many people in those groups who have it far, far worse than I do, and compassion is my default stance. If someone from that community acts like an asshole or is aggressive/ abusive (and certainly, because people are involved, there are going to be some who are like that), I try to not look at that person as representative of the community as a whole - because they aren't. Everyone's dealing with their own struggles. I try not to add to them. Sometimes I even succeed.
I mean, it sounds like you've had some things that happened to you or that were said to you that have shaped a lot of your opinions around the LGBTQ+ community, and those experience affected you enough that you've devoted a lot of time to this discussion. Food for thought. I am genuinely sorry that you had those experiences, and I hope you find a way to heal. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
Le 29/05/2023 à 20:18, Jim Henderson a écrit :
are cases where a community goes too far. But with groups that have been marginalized because of their immutable characteristics
some comments... We shouldn't have to care about "immutable characteristics". Religions, for example are not immutable, but we (as openSUSE group) don't have to mind about this. *nobody* should be marginalized for opinion not related to openSUSE, here. However, displaying any flag may be seen as a *promotion* of a group or an idea. An Ukrainian flag could mind the group is only Ukrainian friendly. This don't have anything to do with openSUSE and shouldn't be done here. I don't read the factory list, only the project one and so don't know how the discussion starts. *if* it is a matter of *mail signature* I'm uncertain of what can be done, the netiquette allows usually to accept almost anything there (is it?) it's always good to read again: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1855 jdd -- c'est quoi, usenet? http://www.dodin.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Usenet.Usenet
jdd@dodin.org wrote:
Finally some common sense. An excellent example. Thank you jdd. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (21.7°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes (2016 - present) We're hiring - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes
On Mon, 29 May 2023 22:25:33 +0200, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
I don't disagree with that.
Context matters. I personally wouldn't have a problem with showing support for Ukraine, given the current circumstances. At the same time, I also recognize that all Russian people do not support what Russia is doing (and those who do are likely being coerced or influenced by propaganda campaigns).
A very good reference. It's always good to bring back the classics like this one. :) -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits
participants (22)
-
Attila Pinter -
Cameron R. Cumberland -
Carlos E. R. -
David Mulder -
Emily Gonyer -
Gerald Pfeifer -
Jacob Michalskie -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Jim Henderson -
Knurpht-openSUSE -
Lars Marowsky-Bree -
Lil Frogg -
Maurizio Galli -
Natasha Ament -
Patrick Shanahan -
Per Jessen -
Peter Czanik -
Richard Brown -
Simon Lees -
SingletonW Lernais -
Stefan Seyfried -
Wouter Onebekend