
Introducing GitHub Community Guidelines - edmorley
https://github.com/blog/2267-introducing-github-community-guidelines
======
appleflaxen
I have no idea why github wants to be the referee for these issues.

There is a 2nd+ level comment by oridecon down-thread with a perfect example:

> I wouldn't want to be the person deciding where issues like this fits:
> [https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)

wtf do you do with that? who is making the complaint? are they part of the
community? can non-community members sabotage a community by making this type
of complaint? If no, why not? Their grievance from a moral standpoint is just
as legitimate. But if so, then it means that my actions in a personal arena
will spill over to my github account? And how do you prove that the person in
the personal account was me, and not just a person with the same user name on
a different platform? or a sock puppet designed to get me banned?

There is no higher-level of refereeing that is going to make this easy.
Ultimately, I predict that any enforcement of this policy by github will be
arbitrary and capricious. And if it's not enforced, then it's just a waste of
air.

I really doubt that they are solving a bigger problem (based on my own
experience using GH) than they are creating, but I wish them the best of
luck..

~~~
eli
If you believe the press reports, letting the community figure out how to deal
with abuse on its own seems to have had a negative impact on Twitter's value.

If GH isn't referee who else will be one?

~~~
qb45
It shouldn't really be a job of random private companies to police the
Internet.

It used to be the case that postal and telecommunication services were neutral
and not responsible for their users. If you have an issue with what somebody
sent to you or published you go to court and have it resolved legally and by
qualified people.

BTW, are there any laws regulating this kind of things? It certainly would be
very unfortunate if companies were allowed to use "community guidelines" as an
excuse for unjust discrimination. Can I make them actually responsible for
their decisions and sue them for kicking out somebody they shouldn't or for
failing to kick somebody they should?

~~~
eli
_> It shouldn't really be a job of random private companies to police the
Internet._

They aren't policing the internet, they're policing their users of their
service. If Github wanted to moderate the content on other people's websites I
agree that would be weird and problematic.

 _> Can I make them actually responsible for their decisions and sue them for
kicking out somebody they shouldn't or for failing to kick somebody they
should?_

I'm having a hard time understanding what you're getting at. Who do you think
Github is going to discriminate against? "Internet Trolls" are not a protected
class. The government does not require private companies to have to do
business with anyone (a good thing!).

~~~
qb45
> Who do you think Github is going to discriminate against?

Anyone at all. I don't think GitHub will be better than any random project
maintainer whom now they want to override.

But if you really need specifics and finger pointing, what about the fact that
GitHub hired the troll who, with no affiliation with the project whatsoever,
spammed Opal's issue tracker about private opinions that one member expressed
outside of the project and outside of GitHub and demanded his removal from the
project? See link in the top post here for details.

Will they start removing such spam once the guidelines are in place? Will they
ban the troll? Maybe fire her from the job?

------
aaron-lebo
> Building software should be safe for everyone.

Give me a break.

We are redefining words to the point of parody. There's nothing dangerous
about writing software or interacting with people who do.

Sometimes you have to wonder how people get through the day. Humans are
resilient creatures, but they can't be the more and more we try and shield
ourselves from everything.

~~~
eli
What's wrong with striving to create a community where people aren't subjected
to malicious, abusive members? Isn't that why pretty much every online
community (HN included) sometimes bans accounts?

~~~
white-flame
"Malicious and abusive" are also labels generously applied to people solely
based on extrapolating from their broad social or political beliefs, or
seemingly any hint of countercultural view to the local norm.

Do you really want people thoughtcrimed out of technical communities having
committed no ill within the community itself?

And with any scheme like this, are you fine if these weapons are turned on
you, and not just your preferred undesirables, with the same level of
subjectivity but wielded by someone else? Say some non-github post of yours
was taken out of context and caused a massive stink.

This attempt to codify morals, ethics, and general good behavior into quippy,
hot-topic, vague buzzwords is not a structure to build inclusive communities.
It's a structure to have everybody walking on egg shells, hoping they aren't
accidentally unaware of this week's trending sensitivity outrage, which can be
pointed at as enforceable through the Guidelines.

~~~
eli
Which specific parts of the guidelines do you object to? You think people
should be allowed to impersonate other users or send death threats? If those
are "thought crimes" then yes, I don't want them in my community.

~~~
white-flame
The worst:

\- "Threats of violence"

 _" If you think that someone else might interpret the content you post as a
threat, or as promoting violence or terrorism, stop."_

Arbitrary, subjective policing by anybody who wants to pitch in that they
don't like you or what you're saying, or even who they think you are because
of external stuff that has never been on github, no matter how non-threatening
you've been. This has happened, and guidelines like this legitimize and invite
the continuation of such behavior.

\- "Hate speech and discrimination"

 _" Just realize that talking about these or other sensitive topics can make
others feel unwelcome, or perhaps even unsafe, if approached in an aggressive
or insulting manner."_

Again, this is undefined and the existence of inflicting "hate" is left to the
sole interpretation of 3rd parties (ie, not you and not github). As respectful
and non-insulting as anybody can get, can and does still invite others to
place their own meaning into otherwise innocuous words. This has happened, and
guidelines like this legitimize and invite the continuation of such behavior.

\- "Bullying and harassment"

 _" In general, if your actions are unwanted and you continue to engage in
them, there's a good chance you are headed into bullying or harassment
territory."_

Again, solely left up to random 3rd parties to determine what's "unwanted"
from you personally. If you're a maintainer and your development actions are
repeatedly unwanted by some users, can they claim you're bullying them
according to the guidelines? If there are 2-way disputes, and both are
"unwanted" by the other, what does this guideline even mean? Any legitimate
argument between two firm sides can be claimed to be bullying, if either side
decides to bring that in and try to escalate to silence the other. This has
happened, and guidelines like this legitimize and invite the continuation of
such behavior. This is not good to have for a site which should host
legitimate technical discourse.

The others:

\- "Sexually explicit content"

 _" We'll know it when we see it."_

This is worded unclearly, and appeal to authority doesn't fix that. Any
application of it will certainly bring arguments over the artistic quality of
the content, and technical development of what inevitable stuff is going to be
coming through VR. Also, does purely textual content constitute "sexually
explicit" or "pornography"? It's vague, but at least it's more about the
content itself, as opposed to somebody's subjective reception of the content,
as in the case of the other problematic issues. Also it leaves the actual
classification of the content up to the hosting site, not to the whims of
random passers-by.

\- "Impersonation" \- has this been a problem? Since it relates to github's
data and technical presentation, it makes sense. In any case, it is
intentionally false communication which makes it defensible to remove from a
site often used to hold canonical data. It focuses on the content instead of
on its reception by 3rd parties.

\- "Doxxing and invasion of privacy" \- straightforward. should be handled
through legal systems, but I don't think those are in place yet. Plus, it
focuses on the content instead of on its reception by 3rd parties.

\- "Active malware or exploits" \- testable, applicable specifically to
github's content and role as a software repository. Focuses on the content
instead of on its reception by 3rd parties.

By the way, your whole rhetorical "You think people should be allowed to ..."
is a prejudiced view of others, making inappropriate and uninformed judgment,
placing words in others' mouths (could be construed as impersonating what I
might say if one only read your reply?), associating me with potentially
illegal behaviors, is not acceptable discourse, and is unwanted. Should you be
banned?*

(* = this entire paragraph is hypothetical, in case it's not clear)

------
sergiotapia
Don't forget about the time github forced a repo to change because of the word
"retard".

I was uneasy before but now this confirms it. I'll be moving my open source
projects to Gitlab. And if they start with this monkey business I'll just host
my own Gitlab instance.

~~~
tf2manu994
If anyone else is planning to leave, consider doing this:

    
    
        git remote set-url --add --push origin https://gitlab.com/name/repo.git
        git remote set-url --add --push origin https://github.com/name/repo.git
        git remote set-url --add --push origin https://bitbucket.com/name/repo.git
    

This way when you git push, it pushes simultaneously to all 3.

------
forgottenpass
_These guidelines are first and foremost community guidelines_

The only thing that bothers me about these guidelines are that they're
pretending to be about "community." Github is private company with ultimate
control of what they host. They should own their actions. It is patronizing
that they frame it as anything else.

They have a userbase, and are soliciting feedback a draft of rules they will
dictate to that userbase. I do not belong to a community by having a github
account. I use a tool that happens to be externally hosted. I'm not even a
community member on all the project's I've contributed to, some were just a
commit or two.

I hate this phony sense of connectedness and uniformity everyone wants to
project onto me based on my vocation and website usership. We're more like
strangers sharing a subway car. Nothing more. Stop telling me who to be. Stop
telling me we're friends/community/family, or that we share any other personal
connection.

------
flukus
Time to move my (paid) account to gitlab or somewhere similar then. I want
github to host my projects, not to be the PC police.

~~~
matt4077
Here's the list of behavior they're targeting. Which one of these do you
believe github should have to tolerate against their will?

\- Threats of violence

\- Hate speech and discrimination

\- Bullying and harassment

\- Impersonation

\- Doxxing and invasion of privacy

\- Sexually explicit content

\- Active malware or exploits

~~~
orblivion
By and large I agree that none of these things have any relevance to software
development. (And Github shouldn't be _forced_ to tolerate anything, not sure
where that came from.) But a couple edge cases may be relevant:

> Hate speech and discrimination

Gender as an entry field. People have a variety of views on this one. I
imagine that the prevailing view is going to call certain other views "hate
speech" no matter how politely expressed. It is up to Github if they want to
take this stance on it, but it is understandably going to get them called the
"PC Police" should it ever come up.

> Sexually explicit content

I understand not bringing this into discussions for no reason. But what if
someone is developing a Leisure Suit Larry clone? I think implementing a NSFW
warning for viewing a project is perfectly reasonable by almost anybody's
standards. But disallowing it entirely will preclude such projects from
Github. But again, totally understandable if Github decides that it's not the
place for such things.

~~~
qb45
Add:

> Active malware or exploits

Metasploit has been hosted at GitHub for few years and they never seemed to
have a problem with that. Are they going to kick them now? Why should they
care?

~~~
drvdevd
This in particular angers me because it's so broad IMO and antithetical to
open source and security research. This smells like political pressure and
censorship. Like the beginning of the end for GitHub...

------
minimaxir
> Sexually explicit content - Don't post pornography. To paraphrase the U.S.
> Supreme Court: We'll know it when we see it.

Interesting comment in the scheme of things, since the "I'll know it when I
see it" phrase is often cited as a _failure_ of having a concrete legal
definition
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)),
which is one of the things should be avoided when possible when making a list
of things which should not be done.

~~~
geofft
Hm, I would have thought the opposite - if you're a private group where
everyone in the group trusts the moderators to act in good faith (or has a
reasonable alternative if they don't trust the moderators), vague guidelines
let you avoid being rules-lawyered, because there's nothing to be rules-
lawyered, while being clear enough for participants who are also acting in
good faith. (For a government, you don't have a reasonable alternative, and
it's much more important to have checks and balances against one part of the
government not acting in good faith.)

Whether GitHub is too big for "people have a reasonable alternative" is
debatable, yes. But HN itself has vague guidelines
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
such as "Anything that good hackers would find interesting," and it seems to
work pretty well in practice: people know the moderators and have a sense of
whether they trust them to act in good faith.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
> Whether GitHub is too big for "people to have a reasonable alternative" is
> debatable, yes

Here is a (likely incomplete) list of GitHub competitors:

[https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitHosting](https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitHosting)

AFAIK bitbucket and GitLab are the serious contenders, both with large,
serious users and projects.

Edit: By this I mean, no GitHub is not too big for "people to have a
reasonable alternative"

------
matt4077
These discussions frequently suffer from an invasion of strawmen destined for
destruction. So it's probably a good idea to take a look at the actual list of
behavior that is addressed:

\- Threats of violence

\- Hate speech and discrimination

\- Bullying and harassment

\- Impersonation

\- Doxxing and invasion of privacy

\- Sexually explicit content

\- Active malware or exploits

Now most people will be up in arms about #2, "hate speech and discrimination".
I'm sure agreement is much higher for their rejection of "Active malware or
exploits".

I'd just like to submit that many people who spend a lot of time online have a
distorted view of what is meant with "hate speech and discrimination". I know
quite a few activists from what's probably the "left fringe", and I have never
found any among them that fit the prevalent stereotype of a "PC Police".
Instead, I've seen quite a few examples of the harm that can be done by
discrimination (fresh example: a group of 10 people at a conference, and the
police chooses to stop-and-frisk the only black guy. Twice. In front of his
colleagues, while wearing a Cisco T-shirt and the conference badge).

And that makes my assumption suddenly seem wrong: some malware is, except in
rare cases, some lost time or monetary damage, but probably not enough to
meaningfully change your life.

Discrimination hits individuals. Possibly only a small percentage, and I have
honestly no idea what it feels like. But I'm inclined to trust people,
especially because it doesn't cost me anything. I'll rename master/slave, I'll
sign community guidelines, I'll try to be a mentor, and when anybody wants to
censor certain words in old books I'll calmly explain why that's a stupid
idea.

~~~
zyx321
>many people who spend a lot of time online have a distorted view of what is
meant with "hate speech and discrimination"

That is exactly the problem.

There are a lot of people from a privileged upper middle-class background who
have never experienced (or even seen) real discrimination, and as a result
have a very warped frame of reference what "Hate speech and discrimination"
means.

These are the people who will be in charge of enforcing the rules.

------
cameldrv
The problem is that everyone's been treating GitHub as a utility, not as a
community. Imagine if my water company told me that I needed to be nice to my
neighbors, and if I didn't, they'd turn off my water. I don't want my version
control hosting provider be a community, I just want them to keep the servers
running.

~~~
josegonzalez
Ah yes because open source is a spigot you turn on that deserves to be awesome
for free.

I'm one of the top (50? 25 now?) Devs on GitHub. It's a community, not some
place I want people asking for support to be shoveling shit down my well. I
want a place where I'm happy to drink _your_ water, not one where I'm like
"why the fuck did they fling a bug in it."

I for one am excited for these sorts of changes and will be happy to keep
paying for the newsletters to fund them.

~~~
flukus
In a community you have to put up with people you don't like and/or people
with beliefs you don't like. Github is failing on the latter.

~~~
8fGTBjZxBcHq
As an individual you have to tolerate people you don't like. But as a group
you don't have to tolerate behavior that's damaging to the group as a whole. A
community doesn't have to accept everyone into it; its members can agree that
they all must hold a shared standard of behavior as a condition for
membership.

That's what's going on here. You've said elsewhere that you don't think github
should be a community or encourage community behavior. That's fine, you can
move along. Plenty of us do want to collaborate with others in a community
environment, and setting standards of behavior is a necessary condition for
that. So I'm happy with this change.

~~~
flukus
And in reality it gets used to suppress personal views that have no bearing on
the community. The pretend they're protecting the community while actually
harming in.

------
pwim
One of the first guidelines, "Assume no malice", is one I take to heart, and
wish it was applied by people here to this announcement.

Maybe you've never experienced any problems with the open source community.
Personally, I know I never had. Even if most of us have positive experiences,
there are some people who don't. These guidelines are trying to make it so
less people have a bad experience in the future.

Having community guidelines doesn't kill a community. Hacker News itself has
guidelines
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
and I don't think we've suffered because of it. While the language of GitHub's
guidelines is different, the goals seem very much the same.

Let's assume that GitHub is acting in good faith here, and trying to make
things better for the community.

~~~
alphapapa
> Let's assume that GitHub is acting in good faith here

This is not happening in a vacuum. I guess you haven't heard of "OpalGate."

> and trying to make things better for the community.

"Better" is in the eye of the beholder.

------
carterehsmith
Yup.

I am doing some dependency analysis, so as to identify weak points for our
business, e.g. DRP and so on.

So far, the creakiest points we identified are Github and NPM.

Github makes judgments on what is good and what is not, so they may shut down
my dependency. Not good.

NPM is the same. Any random person amongst the 5,000 dependencies can withdraw
their approval, and kill my dependency. Not good.

So I will recommend just removing both.

Github ->> Just host your own Git

NPM ->> Yarn or whoever understands "stability"

~~~
markdog12
Note that you can self-host with Gitlab, and it's pretty awesome.

------
dreamdu5t
I take issue with GH asserting itself as a community and proclaiming to speak
for its users. Is Walmart a community? Is Chipotle a community? Shouldn't
community members get a voice in the decision making? This particular notion
of community is absurd.

~~~
cmrx64
> Shouldn't community members get a voice in the decision making?

They _are_ asking for feedback, after all...

------
balupton
Reading the comments here, psychoanalyst Jordan Peterson's lecture series
critiquing political correctness could not be more needed right now:

\- fear of political correctness:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPgjg201w0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPgjg201w0)
\- skepticism on political correctness:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-7YGGCE9es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-7YGGCE9es)
\- the political correctness game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2u62u4entc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2u62u4entc)

A 10 minute summary:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDg8sP_atIA&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDg8sP_atIA&feature=youtu.be&list=PLYVl5EnzwqsRPSBKIn6qMatpxWopxs1eB)

------
mrits
Step 1: invent git. Step 2: have one of the most successful companies benefit
from your work Step 3: Get banned by that company because you are an ass

~~~
brockers
I am getting concerned about this juvenile concept of peoples emotions being
fragile eggs that could be destroyed at any given moment. Why is it the
HOSTING services job to decided community guidelines?

~~~
eli
A hostile commenting environment (e.g. racist or sexually explicit messages)
negatively impacts the UX of the site, particularly for new users. It's bad
for business.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"It's bad for business."

So is thought-policing your customers.

~~~
eli
Perhaps they disagree. I'm still keeping my paid corporate account.

~~~
Turing_Machine
That is their right.

Personally, I nuked my Github account months ago.

Dueling anecdotes!

------
WhitneyLand
Building good, strong, communities is hard. Does anyone know what stopped
YouTube from being able to make comments a friendly, welcoming environment?

~~~
thescribe
Maybe I don't want a community, I want a place to host software, or a place to
host videos.

~~~
serge2k
I'd like to be able to post a video without having fear of harassment and
threats.

That doesn't seem like too much to ask.

~~~
ClassyJacket
How are you at risk of harassment on youtube? Simply don't post your personal
details.

~~~
flukus
Remember the whole google plus integration and how google plus required real
names?

------
adamnemecek
Was this really a problem on github?

------
sremani
I am convinced the key moment for all this, is the Sexual harassment case and
subsequent Public relation moves GitHub made.

let no crisis go to waste. Indeed! Tip of my hat to "Warriors".

