
Mozilla to remove “meritocracy” from governance docs because it's “problematic” - cucumberferity
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/OQlS6-gUBLQ/u0Em5XKjCAAJ
======
danharaj
Meritocracy, like all words that reduce to "good thing", are always
troublesome. No one ever claims to be a "bad thing"ocracy. The issue is the
opacity of the concept of merit. How do you distinguish being a meritocracy in
some good sense from insisting you are a meritocracy and thus poisoning any
discussion that you are not one?

Using words to maintain a culture has a sort of Newton's third law. It might
push you towards striving to be "good thing", but it also pushes back, making
people resistant to the idea that you aren't striving for "good thing". This
is an inescapable fact of how humans hold values.

Better words are the ones that aren't exclusively evaluated by humans. These
are things on which people can agree there exists an impartial _measure_ of
the thing. There is no such measure of merit. Merit is an undecidable value at
best and an incoherent one at worst.

So, counterintuitively, "good thing" words to describe values are kind of bad.
It is easy to construe acknowledging their badness as thinking the _underlying
concept_ is bad. I think that is happening in this comment thread. I think
rewarding people with trust and responsibility based on merit is a great idea!
I think it is detrimental to the cause to codify that in your mission
statement.

~~~
bluecalm
Well meritocracy means we will try to select and give influence/recognition
based on merit. When someone tries to push an idea like "let's have more
Asians" or "let's have more men" in the project we can direct them to the very
first statement where they see we do selection based on merit and not skin
color, gender or sexual orientation. Any attempt to introduce
gender/race/sexual orientation quotas will promptly be rejected on those
basis. There is value in wording it like this beyond "let's do good".

~~~
guitarbill
Who gets to define merit? Say a certain style was more likely to pass code
review. And that style was more often associated with people with CS degrees,
vs self-taught programmers. Even though it's a stylistic choice, functionally
equivalent, one is "better" than the other and is introducing bias.

It's very easy to do, especially because consistency _is_ important for
legibility, but a stylistic choice nonetheless. I think a decent, practical
solution to some degree are prettifiers/code-formatters and linters. Because
the style is codified, and trivial for anybody to apply.

~~~
sanxiyn
You should follow the project's style when you start contributing. If style is
pointed out in code review, fix it.

~~~
guitarbill
Well yes, I agree. It's a bit of a toy example, simplistic, but hopefully one
we can all relate to.

It does illustrate the issue of using "meritocracy" without anything else.
It's like saying "we follow a style guide", and then not providing that style
guide. Obviously sub-optimal.

(The example breaks down since providing a style guide is doable, whereas
providing a "merit guide" is hard/impossible? In that case, is it better to
remove that? I don't know.)

------
quantummkv
This frightening shift away from meritocracy sounds suspiciously like what
happens in India. In India, everything from government jobs, admissions to
colleges and universities, etc is based on this quota system based on caste,
religion, and other subdivisions instead of meritocracy.

The intentions are undoubtedly good. But the actual results? Every government
department is horrifically inefficient because a whole lot of people who do
not know how to do work land up there due to these quota systems. In many
cases, if you fit in a special category, you can basically fail in your
university entrance examinations, even not _attempt_ more than one question,
get that question wrong, and still get admission.

People regularly riot, often violently, to pressurize the government into
declaring their group as minorities so that they can specifically get these
benefits.

ISRO and the Army are the only public institutions in India that operate on
meritocracy. And they are pretty much the only public institutions held in any
regard by the public.

This may have a feel good effect in the short period and some people may feel
like they are somehow morally superior. But this will always lead to a whole
lot of pain in the long term.

~~~
cucumberferity
This is about changing the very nature of how open source projects work for
people with radical political views to 'feel included', specifically to have
their political views validated.

It is not about improving actual diversity, Mozilla already has those efforts.
Mozilla should welcome and support contributions by everyone, I even recognize
the systematic barriers that some people face, but I don't think we should be
altering how key open source software projects function to affirm the believes
of a small but loud group of radicals, particularly when their solutions for
diversity don't actually increase diversity, they just increase the power of
that loud group.

------
bluecalm
Can someone explain how striving for meritocracy stems from assumption of
equal opportunity? I want projects I am part of or benefit from to be guided
by meritocracy. It means some people have better chances to contribute or gain
influence there than others. Those are more competent people who often got
better opportunities through life. I want that because I care about those
projects. I don't see how chances not being equal contradict any of it.

~~~
ggggtez
Let's say you get "a" tries to succeed. You'd expect equally talented
candidates x, and y, to have Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|a).

But what if y only had "b" tries, where b<a? What would y have to be to make
Pr(x|a) == Pr(y|b)? Our intuition seems to say that there will be a lot of
variance in Pr(y|b). But the candidate's skill hasn't actually changed, just
we aren't measuring it with the same fidelity!

And that's all there is to it. If you no longer assume everyone has an equal
chance to show their skills, then the meritocracy isn't actually working as
intended. Good "y" candidates are getting ignored for worse "x" candidates,
just because "x" candidates had more chances.

~~~
moduspol
I get the idea, but Mozilla is building _things_.

If I want the best _engineer_ to build my _bridge_ , I don't want to give
bonus points for skin color or private parts. It's not like the trucks going
over it will be any lighter or have smoother tires because the person building
it grew up in a single parent household or something. When the rubber meets
the road, some engineers are better than others and it affects the end
product.

My fundamental concern is that the moment that the deciding factor isn't how
good someone is at what you need them to do, you're driving a wedge through
"the world as it is (cold hard reality)" and "the world as you want it to be
(equal outcomes, diverse, empathetic)". The deeper that wedge gets, the
tougher of a time you'll have meeting goals in the real world, where whether
or not that bridge holds during a tornado is completely independent of the
background of those who built it.

I think employees should be judged on how well they can deliver toward the
company's goals, and for the most part, I think that happens. Actions like
these are more about virtue signaling than anything else.

~~~
thecrash
"When the rubber meets the road, some engineers are better than others and it
affects the end product."

This is overly individualistic. A given engineer is not better or worse in
some absolute sense. They are better or worse at a given job, which takes into
account many other contextual factors: the specific goal, the rest of the team
(who will be pursuing a that goal cooperatively), and the unique challenges
which face that team/goal combination.

For example, it may be that your engineer Dmitri is best at solving particular
types of design problems, but he only speaks Russian, and he's having trouble
on a team with no other native Russian-speakers.

In this case, the "best" engineer to hire for Dmitri's team is a Russian, even
if they're "worse" at solving design problems on an individual basis. In the
abstract, hiring an engineer based on the language they speak goes against the
meritocratic ideal, but in practice it is obviously the decision which best
moves the team toward their goal.

More generally, one could say that even though language-diversity is not
_obviously_ or _directly_ related to engineering effectiveness, it is still
related. Having many languages represented on a team increases the odds that
the performance of people like Dmitri will not be limited by a language
barrier in the first place.

It's funny you mentioned "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want it to
be". Because from my perspective, you're describing the world as you want it
to be: each person has an abstract platonic "skill value" which can be
objectively and universally evaluated, and which translates predictably and
directly into metrics like load-bearing capacity. This is a lofty ideal, but
does not reflect how organizations and teams actually achieve goals.

"The world as it is" involves orgs with lots of subjective, local,
interdependent systems which often involve interpersonal dynamics, norms, and
emergent social phenomena, all of which have an indirect but very significant
effect on metrics like load-bearing capacity.

~~~
moduspol
> A given engineer is not better or worse in some absolute sense.

I'll just address this first: Often they are. It is idealist and simplistic to
claim otherwise. Some surgeons are better at performing surgery than others,
some engineers are better at building bridges than others, and some
programmers are better at programming than others. They're not inherently
better _people_ , but that's not relevant.

I think the view expressed in your comment is overly reductionist. Of course
everyone works on teams, and of course there are more factors at play than
simply being better at some task in a vacuum. But that doesn't change facts
like:

* Some people are smarter than others

* Some people are more dedicated than others

* Some people have more experience than others

* Some people have life circumstances that allow them to contribute more than others

* Some people have values more in line with the company's success than others

This is kind of what I mean by "the world as it is" vs "the world as you want
it to be." The points above are common sense to people that don't have the
world view expressed in your comment. The idea that all people are equally
valuable is only true in the abstract sense. When you actually need to
accomplish a concrete goal (like putting a man on the moon), some people are
absolutely more valuable than others toward doing that, and an organization
that pretends that's not the case is shooting itself in the foot.

Having a meritocratic structure doesn't even inherently mean individualist. It
could be measured at the team or project level. It also doesn't have to be
(and typically isn't) exactly the measurable contributions ("load-bearing
capacity") to the goal itself that determines the best "engineer." More often
your "best" engineer is the one who is easy to work with, embraces tough
challenges, and can adapt well to changes.

But honestly: I think everyone already knows these things. That's why I see
this more as virtue signaling: it's one thing to change a governance
statement. It's another when it's actually put into practice.

~~~
thecrash
_Having a meritocratic structure doesn 't even inherently mean individualist.
It could be measured at the team or project level. It also doesn't have to be
(and typically isn't) exactly the measurable contributions ("load-bearing
capacity") to the goal itself that determines the best "engineer." More often
your "best" engineer is the one who is easy to work with, embraces tough
challenges, and can adapt well to changes._

Yeah I totally agree with that. To me, that shows that the measure of merit
is, #1: extremely subjective and #2: influenced by all kinds of factors that
would not traditionally be associated with merit.

Basically, I think that it often makes sense to do affirmative action within a
true meritocratic framework, but that the term meritocracy is generally used
to juxtapose against affirmative action. If the term is being used to argue
against its true meaning, then it's not a useful term and should be retired.

------
wtfstatists
Meritocracy means your elevation within a group is not influenced by your
ancestory, wealth, socail status, who are your friends with, how much you
were/are-being oppressed, charisma or twitter followers.

The group has a mission. You help with mission, you go up. You work against
the mission, you go down. Thats meritocracy.

~~~
danharaj
> The group has a mission. You help with mission, you go up. You work against
> the mission, you go down. Thats meritocracy.

Honest question. Do you think you've cleared anything up with this definition?
I don't think you've gotten anywhere closer to the truth. If _only_ it were so
easy to know what the mission is or what is in service of the mission. In
life, in software, there are enough derelict projects, aspirations, visions,
dreams to fill a graveyard. That should serve as a warning that it's not so
clear.

And anyway, does the mission really have to say "We are a 'help the
mission'ocracy"?

~~~
falcolas
> If only it were so easy to know what the mission is or what is in service of
> the mission.

This is how you get evaluated on a quarterly (or yearly) basis at a job. You
had goals. Did you achieve them? Did you fall short? You were given tasks and
a timeline (perhaps you even helped set the timeline). Did you complete the
tasks? Were there excessive bugs? Were you on time?

These are all relatively simple things to measure, which is why they're used
so often. If you tie merit to your performance in relation to stated goals
(and I think that's reasonable), it's pretty straightforward to measure.

------
minimaxir
It's worth noting that back in 2014, GitHub removed a meritocracy rug from
their office for similar reasons: [https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-
meritocracy-rug/](https://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/)

------
ssivark
This is the suggested modification:

"Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual
organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both volunteer and
employed community members as they show their ability through contributions to
the project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing
authority through active interventions that engage and encourage participation
from diverse communities."

While it removes the word "meritocracy" it clarifies and validates the exact
manner in which meritocracy is being promoted: "members as they show their
ability through contributions to the project". While there is a debate to be
had between the two formulations, the current HN title seems misleadingly
editorialized for two reasons:

1\. It is a proposal by two members, yet to receive ratification from the
organization.

2\. The suggested change still emphasizes the principle of meritocracy without
using the word.

~~~
cucumberferity
It also adds language about debias.

So it doesn't simply remove meritocracy to appease the far-left activists.

It specifically inserts language to appear them, reaffirm their world view.

Is it really necessary to create a safe space for fringe political activists
to create substantive diversity? No.

It's also promoted by high-level Mozilla employees in response to a recent
anti-meritocracy movement.

After what happened to FreeBSD's CoC you can hardly claim this is happening in
a vacuum, it's a cause now.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> It also adds language about debias._

I'm confused as to why debiasing here is bad. If your contention is that bias
doesn't exist, then this shouldn't have any effect. And if the distribution of
authority _does_ have a bias other than "ability and contributions to the
project", why _wouldn 't_ they want to fix that?

~~~
tomp
Exactly, it’s _equivalent_ to saying “meritocracy”, except that it uses words
approved by the far-left in place of a word disapproved by them.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Insofar as many people's definition of meritocracy seems to preclude any
consideration of someone's race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc, they're
not equivalent.

Bias can't be addressed by ignoring attributes you suspect to be affected by
it. In the new wording Mozilla explicitly commits to address bias, which is
important.

------
nostalgeek
Interesting, just when the "post-meritocracy" manifesto was published, Mozilla
changes sides on meritocracy :

[https://postmeritocracy.org/](https://postmeritocracy.org/)

authored by Coraline Ada Ehmke who is already well known for their activism in
IT and open source with the contributor convenant [https://www.contributor-
covenant.org/](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/) . Coincidence? or
consequence?

~~~
ddtaylor
> But meritocracy has consistently shown itself to mainly benefit those with
> privilege, to the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology. The
> idea of merit is in fact never clearly defined; rather, it seems to be a
> form of recognition, an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable
> insofar as they are like me.”

That seems strange to me, because most projects are basically saying if you
have no commits you're voice is essentially noise to them, which I agree with.
If you want to join an FOSS project and a make a difference put your money
where your mouth is - otherwise don't expect most people to listen. All the
flowery words and PR likely won't change this reality, for good reason.

~~~
cucumberferity
> an acknowledgement that “this person is valuable insofar as they are like
> me.”

Yeah, when evaluating PRs I rarely even look at the person making the
contribution, I look at the code.

------
autarch
I think this bit from the email is the most important:

> To sum up:

> -Declaring Mozilla to be a de facto “meritocracy” fails to acknowledge
> evident bias in representation in the project.

> -The word “meritocracy” itself has become a bone of contention which is
> unhelpful to us.

> -Meritocractic principles remain highly desirable and should be explicit.

> -We should also acknowledge the importance of measures we take to debias how
> authority is distributed.

In particular, note the second and third points. The real issue here is that
some people get really upset by the word "meritocracy". Is it worth fighting
that, or can you just use different words for the same thing?

~~~
vanderZwan
> _The real issue here is that some people get really upset by the word
> "meritocracy"._

Clearly you have never dealt with a white man who is better off than certain
women, or people from ethnic minorities, and thinks it's because his being
white/male makes him _inherently_ better and invokes "meritocracy" all the
freaking time.

I have. And I'm a half-Asian male - I can't imagine what it's like to deal
with that jerk if I were a woman or an ethnic minority he didn't consider
inherently intelligent (yes, really - he was actually surprised I was upset at
the things he said because _he wasn 't talking about me_, as if that was the
reason for me to disagree with him).

When the word "meritocracy" is used to structurally shut down debates of
sexism and racism, it is no longer about meritocracy.

~~~
_dps
> ... and thinks it's because his being white/male makes him inherently better
> ...

Could you clarify how you reached this conclusion about someone specific, as
opposed to a generalized fear such a person might exist?

In many years in the tech/engineering business I have never seen anyone
express such a sentiment, despite having worked with more than my fair share
of unpleasant people.

Presumption of competence, or obliviousness to one's own advantages are
certainly present in the community. But I have not seen anyone express such
supremacist ideas before.

~~~
davorak
>> .. and thinks it's because his being white/male makes him inherently better
... > could you clarify how you reached this conclusion about someone
specific,

I have seen/heard of this in academia. The specific case I know about was a
good chunk of a graduate math department. The attitude seemed to come from the
top down mostly, but the graduate students seemed to repeat/reflect the
attitude/culture.

Other conversations here give me the impression such ideas might be
experiencing an uptick in expression, if not popularity in tech.

------
tjpnz
Why exactly do people contend that meritocracy somehow clashes with diversity?
The implications being made by suggesting the two be mutually exclusive are
frightening.

~~~
djajshgsjja
Suppose:

1\. There exist some quality “merit” with a random uniform distribution across
the population.

2\. Some systems used to measure merit are biased for and against different
subgroups of the population.

3\. People obtain power and wealth based these biased measurements.

4\. Subgroups with more power and wealth expend resources optimizing their
performance on the tests, further biasing the results.

5\. The winners in this system label it a “meritocracy”.

This story rings true to me. That doesn’t necessarily mean merit-based systems
are all bad. They can still provide lots of opportunity to the poor who have
enough aptitude they can still beat the test despite the bias. Other systems
may have worse problems.

In practice, organizations like Mozilla still have a competitive merit-based
hiring process even if they say they oppose meritocracy. They might attempt to
apply a correction to unbias the merit measurement. Getting rid of the
trappings of meritocracy might make it a more welcoming place to work for
everyone and raise the total merit (even if there’s no way to measure it).

~~~
rich-w-big-ego
Why don't you come out and say what you really mean? djajshgsjja is attempting
to justify a handicap against the successful subgroups. But what amount of
handicap should there be? In what measure should the handicap apply? How can
you apply any sort of handicap without a massive bureaucratic intervention,
with swaths of each organisation dedicated to applying handicaps? Ah, but the
bureaucratic intervention is the linchpin. We arrive at the diversity and
equity offices in Universities across North America. We arrive at the
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion by Law Society of Ontario that requires
every law firm of 10 or greater to complete an annual report about how they
are advancing the goals of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Diversity,
equity, and inclusion are parts of an ideology based on absolutely no science
or literature, and ignores the deadly catastrophes of the 20th century whose
millions of dead were preceded by cutting off the successful subgroups at the
knees.

------
malvosenior
As someone who comes from a minority group, I absolutely want to be judged on
the technical merit of my contributions and not my skin color, gender or
genetic background.

Implying that people who aren't white males can't succeed in a meritocratic
environment is racist and condescending. I don't see how this helps diversity
one bit.

~~~
kgraves
I have thought about this and I too find it patronising and racist indeed. I
don't care about your race, I only care if you are the best.

~~~
malvosenior
It's actually a pretty popular opinion among high performing minorities (at
least the ones I know -- yes anecdotal). Sadly it's a position _entirely_
absent and forbidden in the debate around this.

While I'm not one for identity politics, I have to say there's just something
weird about watching wealthy and powerful white (usually) people debate this
issue and completely ignore the voice of those they are supposed to be
"sticking up" for.

For me the end goal looks like an attempt to remove the tool I and others used
to make social and economic advancement (legitimate skill and hard work) and
replace it with some sort of cherry picking of individuals from above. It's
definitely something I'm not comfortable with.

------
herrkanin
Sounds quite reasonable from my point of view. This idea that words should
only be judged in isolation and not in the historical contexts they have been
viewed is not very realistic.

------
sincerely
Isn't this a misleading headline? It looks more like "Someone proposes that
Mozilla remove 'meritocracy' from governance docs"

~~~
cucumberferity
Patrick Finch is a high-level strategist for Mozilla, has been there 8 years.

------
nextlevelwizard
Why is time spent on things that do not matter? If you want to contribute to
Open Source project the pull request literally doesn't care whether your
reproductive organs are inside or outside of you (or if they even exist at
all) just write some code.

People who have nothing better to do than cry about use of this kind of words
(and language in general) probably do not contribute to the project in net
positive manner.

------
mabynogy
Meritocracy is a word used by the right (you succeed by your will and your
skills). It's not compatible with the system of believes of the left (the
unlucky should be helped more - something like a rule, a rate must compensate
that injustice).

It's logical they change that and it confirms the political nature of those
subjects.

My advice is to avoid people dealing with that because it's not related to
computers.

~~~
rich-w-big-ego
This is the core conflict. Do we judge people on their competence, or do we
judge them by the degree to which they are oppressed?

~~~
mabynogy
I tend to evaluate them on their intents. Do they try to make the good?

~~~
rich-w-big-ego
Intention is also very important. Are they focused on people in the office, or
code on the computer?

------
plcancel
"This proposal does not seek to change how Mozilla is governed, only how we
talk about how Mozilla is governed, which may be reasonably be regarded as
contentious."

...said another way?...

"It is reasonable to expect a few questions after we emphasize the importance
of changing how we talk about x while we also emphasize that changing x is not
the objective."

The reasoning in this part of the email is pretty good.

------
bufferoverflow
This is insane.

~~~
connorelsea
Words are important. Devs will argue over a correct variable name for hours
but think names in other places have no meaning

~~~
cucumberferity
Words are important. Diversity is important. Changing words like "meritocracy"
does not improve diversity. It is the illusion of diversity, a feel-good
opportunity for well-intentioned bystanders. The true intent is for a small
group of highly politically motivated people to gain more control. The
governance documents are about control and changing those documents means a
shift in control. The movement we are seeing here opposes meritocracy on
political principle, as part of their worldview. It does not stop there
though. They believe the only answer for "diversity" to put them in charge,
beginning with government documents that reflect their radical worldview, see
FreeBSD Code of Conduct. Even if you support diversity, you have to realize
these people do not care about diversity or inclusion, they are little
authoritarians who want more power to dictate what people say and whose
opinion matters more/less based on immutable characteristics. We cannot allow
authoritarians with such warped views of the world to seize control of key
open source projects.

~~~
connorelsea
you sound like a conspiracy theorist. it is changing an inappropriate word,
not shifting control over the entire company Mozilla. i doubt you care about
diversity or improving the quality of the open source project

~~~
cucumberferity
The evidence cited for meritocracy being an inappropriate word, a study on
GitHub pull requests, has been widely debunked.

Meritocracy is only an inappropriate word if you believe that certain groups
of people will never be able to participate on a level playing field.

That notion is of course incredibly condescending towards members of those
groups.

The goal should be to advance everyone in the meritocracy through outreach and
training, not to abandon the value of meritocracy.

The proposal itself makes it clear the change is merely for cosmetic purposes,
to make certain people feel better, not actually increase diversity.

If you care about diversity you should oppose the notion that certain groups
of people are incapable of participating on their own terms.

This is about empowering a small but loud group of political activists who
want to remake a software project to fit their fringe world view.

Do you care more about affirming their politics or the quality of software?

~~~
connorelsea
your arguments are hypberolic in some cases, as changing or clarifying a word
or sentence even is not "remake(ing) a software project". and I think the word
meritocracy is vague, a overarching word used to describe many things to many
people, mozilla should instead simply be more clear about what that means.
what is the "playing field", that itself is a metaphor for sports and physical
ability I guess. How will the ability of those chosen for participation under
this meritocracy be judged

------
trgv
It seems that some people view the term "meritocracy" negatively because they
believe it implies that everyone has the same opportunities. I don't see that
implication, but if enough other people do, maybe it's worth re-wording their
governance docs.

At the same time, the proposed replacement seems off the target:

> "Mozilla is an open source project. Our community is structured as a virtual
> organization. Authority is primarily distributed to both volunteer and
> employed community members as they show their ability through contributions
> to the project. The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing
> authority through active interventions that engage and encourage
> participation from diverse communities."

What's wrong with something innocuous, like: "We strive to encourage
contributions/engagement/participation from diverse communities"?

~~~
cucumberferity
> The project also seeks to debias this system of distributing authority

Because this is not about the governance documents of an open source software
project, it is about affirming the radical worldview of a small but loud
fringe group in the name of diversity.

Except the only diversity is creates is diversity for people with the correct
political opinions. It has nothing to do with the actual diversity that
benefits an open source project.

It is time we stop listening to this fringe group about how to achieve
diversity, they clearly only want power and control for themselves.

We should not let them bully pragmatic moderates who generally support
diversity and inclusion into ceding them more authority and dictatorial
control.

------
cucumberferity
It's strange this has so many points and comments but almost instantly
disappeared from the front page of HN.

~~~
Rexxar
Story with more comments than points always disappear faster from front page.

~~~
cucumberferity
Gotcha.

------
jds375
After reading the comments in the linked google group it seems like the issue
is that they just need to more clearly define (and perhaps more fairly) what
‘merit’ is.

Each team/role should have this clearly defined to eliminate
bias/subjectivity. Also by clearly defining that, you help escape a
meritocracy where ‘authority’ decides what ‘merit’ is behind close-doors
(which isn’t really a meritocracy).

Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues, why
don’t they just fix the problems?

~~~
cucumberferity
> Instead of abandoning a meritocracy because it has implementation issues,
> why don’t they just fix the problems?

Because the small group of people pushing these changes don't want
meritocracy, they want power and influence merely for having the correct
political opinions.

They rely on the cooperation of well-meaning people who support diversity but
don't see it's ploy for control and power.

------
CapacitorSet
>The first line of Mozilla’s governance[0] states, “Mozilla is an open source
project governed as a meritocracy.”

>The use of the term “meritocracy” to describe communities that suffer from a
lack of diverse representation is increasingly seen as problematic: it
proceeds from an assumption of equality of opportunity.

Is there evidence that the assumption of equal opportunities does not hold for
Mozilla? It seems to me that they went to great lengths to ensure equality of
opportunities.

~~~
hrktb
I don’t usually follow Mozilla, what efforts do they make that for instance
effectively offsets issues of access to education or social discrimination
outside of just Mozilla ?

~~~
sanxiyn
They don't; it's not their problem.

I think addressing social discrimination is a great mission. But organization
needs to focus, and can't address every great mission. Social discrimination
is just not the focus of Mozilla's mission.

~~~
hrktb
But I guess that’s the point in rewording the mission. The proposal is to
align the mission statement with something closer to reality, and give more
leaway to adapt.

------
sanxiyn
The post cites "Gender difference and bias in open source" as a supporting
evidence, but it is super unconvincing.

The study found, in the study's own words, "Surprisingly, our results show
that women’s contributions tend to be accepted more often than men’s". They
still conclude bias against women (not men)! They have their reasons, but they
don't stand up to scrutiny. For more details than you probably want, see
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-
exci...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/12/before-you-get-too-excited-
about-that-github-study/)

Meritocracy may be problematic, but the proposition needs better evidence than
that.

------
cleanyourroom
"I know how to fix Mozilla."

Sincerely, Someone who cannot even keep zer own room clean.

------
baybal2
It is hard to be meritocratic for Mozilla when their C-levels get half million
US dollars of salary in cash and fly on chartered business jets

------
davidgerard
fake editorialised title, please change to original

~~~
cucumberferity
What about it is fake? A senior-level employee and strategist for Mozilla made
this proposal to the governance listserv. It's up for serious discussion.

~~~
egwynn
I don’t think I agree that it’s fake per se, but it definitely looks
editorialized to me with scare quotes around “problematic“.

------
plantain
I keep writing paragraphs to respond to topics like these, but every time I
find myself just linking to @aphyr instead, who put it so much more eloquently
than I can.

[https://lobste.rs/s/nf3xgg/i_am_leaving_llvm#c_ubyrb0](https://lobste.rs/s/nf3xgg/i_am_leaving_llvm#c_ubyrb0)

Paste:

Suckless makes a window manager: a part of a computer that human beings, with
all their rich and varying abilities and perspectives, interact with
constantly. Your choices of defaults and customization options have direct
impact on those humans.

For example, color schemes determine whether color-blind people are able to
quickly scan active vs inactive options and understand information hierarchy.
Font sizes and contrast ratios can make the interface readable, difficult, or
completely unusable for visually impaired people. The sizes of click targets,
double-click timeouts, and drag thresholds impact usability for those with
motor difficulties. Default choices of interface, configuration, and
documentation language embed the project in a particular English-speaking
context, and the extent to which your team supports internationalization can
limit, or expand, your user base.

With limited time and resources, you will have to make tradeoffs in your code,
documentation, and community about which people your software is supportive
and hostile towards. These are inherently political decisions which cannot be
avoided. This is not to say that your particular choices are wrong. It’s just
you are already engaged in “non-technical”, political work, because you, like
everyone else here, are making a tool for human beings. The choice to minimize
the thought you put into those decisions does not erase the decisions
themselves.

At the community development level, your intentional and forced choices around
language, schedule, pronouns, and even technical terminology can make
contributors from varying backgrounds feel welcome or unwelcome, or render the
community inaccessible entirely. These too are political choices. Your post
above is one of them.

There is, unfortunately, no such thing as a truly neutral stance on inclusion.
Consider: you wish to take only the best developers, and yet your post has
already discouraged good engineers from working on your project. Doubtless it
has encouraged other engineers (who may be quite skilled!) with a similar
political view to your own; those who believe, for instance, that current
minority representation in tech is justified, representing the best engineers
available, and that efforts to change those ratios are inherently
discriminatory and unjust.

Policies have impact. Consider yours.

~~~
cucumberferity
> At the community development level, your intentional and forced choices
> around language, schedule, pronouns, and even technical terminology can make
> contributors from varying backgrounds feel welcome or unwelcome.

The proposal is not to make Mozilla more diverse, nor would it accomplish
that.

The proposal is to change the language to make Mozilla seem more diverse to
people with very explicit radical views on diversity.

This will actually have the opposite effect of reducing diversity and only
serves to empower the people with the correct views.

~~~
plantain
That was literally in response to: "Thus, to make your software suck less, you
only take the best developers no matter what race, gender, heritage, etc.
these persons have."

Meritocracy perpetuates the status quo, which is just a local maximum and not
the overall maximum.

