
Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice” - starman100
https://twitter.com/KatieFujihara/status/1144001204248125440
======
RickJWagner
Astounding. I work for a professional open source company, after many years of
working for (not open source) companies.

Open Source is more inclusive, more altruistically driven, and better in every
way I can imagine.

I am dumbfounded by the premise of the article. I have no idea what it could
mean.

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criddell
I don't understand what the problem was with her advice. Was it because she
didn't start with "in my opinion" or some other qualifier?

~~~
binarymax
There isn't any problem with her advice. There is a problem with the hosts.
The suggestion that encouraging contributions to OSS might expose someone to
being harmed in some way is absurd. You may as well say nobody should go to
the grocery store - there might be a racist hiding in the frozen food section!

~~~
criddell
I'd like to understand this better.

Is the microaggression the implicit assumption that you should be able to
handle the potentially negative people you encounter in the OSS community?

~~~
icebraining
I think the microaggression is not explicitly stating that those negative
experiences exist while making that broad statement ("contributing to OSS is a
good way to get started"), and thereby disregarding/minimizing/ignoring the
people who had those experiences, harming them.

~~~
criddell
Oy. An article or talk where every point includes a disclaimer (or even a
_YMMV_ ) would be pretty tedious. Katie started her talk saying it was an
anecdote and it's too bad that a blanket statement in the preamble isn't good
enough.

~~~
icebraining
Oh, I don't disagree, just passing on what I understood from the tweets :)

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binarymax
"microaggressions" and "othering". What is this nonsense. Is this how people
behave? Why is this considered acceptable? Someone musters the time and
courage to come speak freely at your event, and this is how they are treated?
Maybe all meetups should just be a cutout of Ghandi at the podium with a
static code cheat sheet on the projector to ensure nobody is offended.

~~~
stronglikedan
You'd be surprised how many people get their panties in a twist at the mere
mention of Ghandi.

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pbhjpbhj
I don't understand how "tech involvement is harder for URM" as URM appears to
mean "unaccompanied refugee minors"??

Can someone shed light on that?

~~~
detaro
URM = "Under-represented minority"

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Cool, thanks.

I don't work in programming but know quite a few people through their
contributions to OSS/software, but many of them I don't even know what sex
they are, nevermind what characteristics they hold that are minority in their
locality??

It seems really unlikely that any personal characteristic beyond your
programming ability (and not even that necessarily, UX/support/bug
reporting/etc.) could inhibit you from contributing to OSS?

I mean so people look at pull requests and say "does this smell like curry to
you?".

Is it a genuine issue?

~~~
detaro
Yes, it happens quite a bit, at least if people dare to use their actual
identities for their contributions instead of hiding behind something neutral.

~~~
owenversteeg
I agree that people should be able to use their actual identities and receive
the same treatment, but it's worth noting that in the programming world most
people create accounts that either simply don't show their identities or
obscure them. That does seem to be changing rapidly, though, and I wonder why.

I mean, right now in this very thread the 3 commenters are "0815test",
"detaro" and "pbhjpbhj". For most people I've worked with on OSS, I couldn't
tell any personal details if I tried.

(I do think this varies by community: in the Javascript world I usually see
Github profiles with real names, a photo, location, and a bio... for C, you'll
see mostly default photos, non-identifying usernames and no-nonsense bios)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>in the Javascript world I usually see Github profiles with real names, a
photo, location, and a bio... //

But do you bother to do a join to see if the people are URM in their locality?
Like you need to know if someone is in Nigeria, Nepal, Nebraska, or Nagasaki
before you can say they're an URM? OR are we supposed to only care if someone
is an URM in a particular area of USA -- which would be superironic.

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wildmindwriting
I believe in being careful with words, for sure, but having to modify and
monitor every piece of publicly accessible content because it _may_ be
triggering or aggressive is just too much. I feel like I must mention that I
am a left-wing, very liberal woman but I disagree with the culture we seem to
have created where we must talk softly around the issues for fear of offending
someone.

We, as a people, must be able to accept criticism and learn to live with
hardship. The world isn't a bunch of unicorns and marshmallows. Life can be
hard and the more resilient you are, the better you'll be able to deal with
those hardships. You're not going to strengthen and grow as a person if
everyone around you kowtows for fear of upsetting you.

~~~
icebraining
The argument is not that the advice is aggressive in itself, but that it
should have been accompanied by a warning about the potential bad experiences
in contributing to OSS, much like one might warn that a beach we're
recommending can have particularly strong currents.

EDIT: actually I'm wrong; the argument is _both_ that it should have been
accompanied by a warning, and that not doing so (and stating it in a
generalized way) ignores the experience of people who already had a bad
experience contributing to OSS.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's not like the beach analogy unless you think bad experiences are somehow
intrinsic to OSS.

It seems more like "$beach is a lovely clean beach" and someone gets upset
because they went there and someone had dropped a piece of litter.

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s0l1dsnak3123
This is non-news. Someone who shouldn't be in charge of enforcing CoC comes
into contact with someone who has the good fortune of possessing common sense.

Its important to try to be as inclusive is possible - the community engagement
person is wrong, but ultimately with their heart in the right place.

Its also important to use your brain, read the room, and if something makes
someone uncomfortable, let their voice be heard.

Next.

~~~
raxxorrax
Haven't seen that much constructive examples of applied CoCs to be honest. But
I agree, non-news.

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thrway1e34
can someone explain this in plain English? I read the tweets but I don't get
it. Thanks.

~~~
DanBC
It's pretty hard to explain.

Some meet-ups and projects had a problem with people being fucking arseholes.
They developed "codes of conduct" to help them deal with those harassing
abusive people.

This woman gave a talk to this meeting. She described her experience of
working in open source. She was careful to say it worked for her but might not
for other people; she was careful to say that it was anecdotal.

Someone at this meeting thought that she should have given stronger warnings
about open source. That person is saying that by not giving the bigger warning
the speaker was performing a micro-aggression against all the other people
who've had poor experiences in open source because she was supposedly erasing
their experience.

They're saying the speaker violated the code of conduct.

When the speaker asked for clarification the meeting organisers didn't
apologise for making a mistake; they persisted in their description of the
speaker as someone who violated the CoC.

So, that's roughly what the meeting organisers think. Clearly, they're wrong.
Micro-aggressions are a thing and they're something we should be mindful[1]
of, but this isn't an example of a micro-aggression. And there's a difference
between a woman saying "I had a good experience in open source, but other
people might not" and for example a man saying "there are no problems in open
source development you just need to toughen up".

[1] Mostly because people who are oblivious to micro-aggressions tend to be
taking discriminatory actions that potentially leave their companies open to
lawsuits.

~~~
sjcoles
So we're supposed to simply know what other people's past, present, and future
experiences may or will be?

Wouldn't using indicators like class, race, and gender to make these
assumptions be a micro-aggression in and of itself?

E: To be clear I am honestly curious. This whole argument gets into a circular
reasoning of "oh you should just know you silly cis het male, if I have to
tell you it won't make a difference/defeat the purpose."

~~~
DanBC
> we're supposed to simply know what other people's past,

Can you tell me how I can reword "be mindful of" to avoid the implication that
you need to know anything at all about other people? Because that's not what I
wanted to say. What I wanted to say was "being aware of micro-aggressions is a
small part of not being a complete cunt".

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't think the problem is with how you worded it. I think the problem is
with what happened at the meeting. How was the presenter supposed to know,
_before receiving feedback_ , that someone would consider her words to be
"othering"?

~~~
icebraining
But DanBC explicitly said the person admonishing the speaker was wrong, so how
are you expecting him to answer that?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I wasn't. I was agreeing with DanBC, not arguing with him.

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cultus
Ah, so we should not work towards inclusiveness because it could be scary.

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yankeehue
Here's one of my opinions: Everything anyone ever says is their own opinion
based on their own experiences.

Here's another: We'd all be better off if we held the opinion above, and
remembered it when assessing what people say. We'd be able to interpret
statements like "Contributing to OSS is awesome!" as "In my own experience,
contributing to OSS has been awesome", where such an interpretation doesn't
erase or override one's own opinions and experiences. Not saying this is easy
to do, just that it is beneficial.

~~~
criddell
You get that automatically if you try to be charitable when interpreting
somebody's words. More often than not, this will put you on the same page as
the person you are talking to.

~~~
yankeehue
Actually, I think it's easier to remember it's always an opinion than to
always be charitable. Maybe I really don't like a person and so it's very hard
to be charitable in a given moment, but that person's statements are still
their opinion and don't get to override my own experiences.

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ggambetta
I suppose this is the natural consequence of making "microagressions" a thing.
What a time to be alive.

~~~
asveikau
I think microaggressions are definitely a thing, but the term is being misused
here.

~~~
LaGrange
I'll go further: it's very common for abusive people to intentionally
misappropriate the vocabulary of people they abuse. This ranges from "telling
me to clean up after myself is a microagression" to "we're going to name our
fascist party socialist LOL."

Someone's waving their power around, plain and simple.

EDIT: also, this thread is going to be baaaaaad.

~~~
asveikau
Perhaps, but I think sometimes we are very eager to label people as abusive or
toxic as a shortcut to understanding them. So I would avoid being too casual
with permanently categorizing behavior of abusers.

I have also seen mental illness lead to behaviors that one could call abusive,
gaslighting, etc. The wrong kind of label doesn't get those people where they
need to be.

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icebraining
I'm flagging this because the inevitable HN thread will consist only of people
tripping over themselves to mock the people involved, and zero serious
discussion.

~~~
criddell
I don't think you should flag it until the discussion devolves. So far, it's
pretty reasonable.

