

CleanUpGitHub – What You Need To Know - codeoclock
http://ethicalco.de/events/cughinfo/

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zacharypinter
> When making a pull request, be clear about what you’re changing and why.
> Please include the following: “This comment has been identified as either
> hateful, hurtful or discriminatory as part of a project to #CleanUpGitHub.
> This pull request was made by a human. For more info, please check
> EthicalCode’s website at www.ethicalco.de/cleanupgh”.

Hard to say for sure without more insight into the types of pull requests
you're looking to make, but I worry that starting with "hateful" might
immediately put people in defensive mode.

Perhaps it could be rephrased?

E.g. "We're working hard to promote a more inclusive dev community and as part
of that goal, we noticed this comment and would like to suggest an
alternative..."

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euank
I personally don't like this idea. Different people will have drastically
different standards. What is wrong or right for a project, to me, depends on
the standards of the developers and users. In this case, the jury is neither.

In some communities, otherwise offensive phrases have been desensitizes or
misappropriated. Those communities might have projects which are only used by
them, but are public on github.

Somewhat similarly, most of the repos on github are single-contributor
"private" projects that just happen to be public. I see nothing wrong with
them expressing whatever they want in their code and comments... but I do
think it's out of line for a third party to come out of the blue and cast a
ruling on it.

I can see the argument that "Oh, it's just a pull request, they don't have to
accept it", but I still don't like this project as a whole.

I don't think the repos with offensive words or hate speech are driving people
off of open source or github or coding, only off of those specific projects -
as they deserve.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Right. If I saw a project that (e.g.) had lots of racial slurs in the
comments, I either wouldn't use it or would fork it and clean it up myself. I
mean, if you're dealing with an actual bigot, what good is a pull request
going to do?

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jamescun
What is the likely outcome of this? I'm guessing a lot of pull requests that
never get merged. This is essentially the application of one very subjective
morality over lexical sentiment and embodies the wider issue of offence.

Offence ultimately derives from intent and we, as the end user, don't have
intent inferred to us while reading code. It may be misguided for a developer
to use "faggot" or "bitch" as a placeholder variable, but these make no
implication of the developers sentiment or any wider statement about such
respective issues.

In reality, the better solution is don't use software you disagree with. If
there is no better alternative, fork it and create a version you do agree
with. That is the joy of open source.

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Turing_Machine
It would be nice if they gave links to actual examples of the "hate speech"
they're attempting to police.

I honestly don't remember ever seeing any, and I use github quite a bit.
That's not to say that it doesn't exist (I'm sure it does, given the sheer
size of github), but it seems dubious to me that the problem is widespread
enough to warrant a project of this nature.

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burntroots
"Clean Up" = "Ideological Cleansing"

~~~
burntroots
Cowards. Tell me how I'm wrong.

