Re: removing toxic emailers

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

There are many things one can say, but when Richard Stallman talks
about computing, he talks sense.  I categorise him with Mathematician
Paul Erdos.  Furthermore, when I had disagreements with him, I never
got ousted.

> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 1:18 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "Nathan Sidwell" <nathan@acm.org>
> Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
> Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers
>
> Nathan Sidwell <nathan@acm.org>:
> > Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or
> > other toxic emails?  do we have a code of conduct?  Searching the wiki or
> > website finds nothing.  The mission statement mentions nothing.
>
> I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social
> dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book
> about that once.
>
> The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs.
> One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been
> burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks.  Another,
> particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to
> autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good
> code.  This is a significant percentage of your current and future
> potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem.
>
> Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people
> whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate
> if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points
> in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys";
> there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects
> with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one.
>
> Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and
> assholes is pretty much trivial.  That's hard to see right now because
> the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are
> hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of
> Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now.  I
> have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional
> online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET
> cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well.

All of this needs transformation, that can be agreed.  What you have said
makes sense - the fundamental purpose is to enhance our knowing and our
computing capability.

> You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and
> *without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and
> manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being
> out of bounds here is also helpful.
>
> You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code
> and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to
> play here and on what terms.  Choose wisely.

There has been an unfortunate history of discrimination at all levels.
Yet, many are simply talking activism originating from rudimentary ideas,
many picked up from the west.  People are mixing things.  There is
exploitation, but not necessarily discrimination.  Exploitation is not
just of the woman.  Anybody who is weaker than you, people are
exploiting - whether it's a man, woman and child.

Should one take Nathan's approach, it would be equally valid to state
that Nathan and some of his associates are in no position to give lessons,
considering the hidden history of exploitation perpetrated by their
employers.  Assisting a company that unleashes exploitative practices,
for income, is equally reprehensible.  Correct me if I am wrong.

> --

> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>