On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 11:04 PM, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 8:35 PM Ryan May <rma...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When experts say that something is a bad idea, and when the people who
>>> a CoC is supposed to protect says it makes them feel unsafe, I feel
>>> like we should listen to that.
>>>
>>> I also thought that the points made in the Jupyter discussion thread
>>> made a lot of sense: of course it's possible for people to start
>>> harassing each other over any excuse, and a CoC can, should, and does
>>> make clear that that's not OK. But if you specifically *call out*
>>> political affiliation as a protected class, at a time when lots of the
>>> people who the CoC is trying to protect are facing governmental
>>> harassment justified as "mere political disagreement", then it really
>>> sends the wrong message.
>>>
>>> Besides, uh... isn't the whole definition of politics that it's topics
>>> where there is active debate? Not really sure why it's even in that
>>> list to start with.
>>>
>>
>> So I hear all the arguments about people feeling unsafe due to some truly
>> despicable, discriminatory behavior, and I want absolutely no parts of
>> protecting that. However, I also recognize that we in the U.S. are in a
>> particularly divisive atmosphere, and people of varied political
>> persuasions want absolutely nothing to do with those who share differing
>> views. So, as a concrete example, if someone were to show up at a NumPy
>> developer summit with a MAGA ("Make America Great Again") hat, or talks
>> about their support for the president in non-numpy channels, WITHOUT
>> expressing anything discriminatory or support for such views, if "political
>> beliefs" is not in the CoC, is this person welcome? I'm not worried about
>> my own views, but I have friends of widely varying views, and I truly
>> wonder if they would be welcome. With differing "political beliefs" listed
>> as something welcomed, I feel ok for them; if this language is removed, I'm
>> much less certain.
>>
>> IMO, "political beliefs" encompasses so much more things than a handful
>> of very specific, hateful views. People can disagree about a wide array of
>> "political beliefs" and it is important that we as a community welcome a
>> wide array of such views. If the CoC needs to protect against the wide
>> array of discriminatory views and behavior that make up U.S. politics right
>> now, how about specifically calling those behaviors out as not-welcome,
>> rather than completely ignoring the fact that 99% of "political beliefs"
>> are perfectly welcome within the community?
>>
>> The CoC is about spelling out the community norms--how about just
>> spelling out that we welcome everyone, but, in the words of Will Wheaton,
>> "Don't be a dick"?
>>
>
> I agree that it's worth clarifying in the text what this clause is
> intended to do. I think it has been misinterpreted as defining a legalistic
> set of protected classes along the lines of anti-discrimination laws and
> can be interpreted by itself outside of the context of the CoC as a whole.
> But it's not that. It's an aspirational statement, and a high one, at that,
> if we interpret it at its broadest. We will fail to meet it, in its
> entirety, and that's *okay* if the spirit of the CoC is being defended. I
> am perfectly happy to keep "political beliefs" explicit in the CoC and
> still boot the neo-feudalist for making the project's/conference's
> environment unwelcoming for a more vulnerable group of people, even if just
> by their presence. I *am* sensitive to how nominally well-intentioned
> "viewpoint diversity" efforts get hijacked by regressives looking to
> (re)assert their traditional power. But that problem is mostly confined to
> conferences who need to seek speakers and has less relevance to numpy,
> which largely doesn't run much except sprints. I think we can resolve that
> elsewhere, if not another document, then at least another clause. A CoC has
> to pull a kind of double duty: be friendly enough to digest for a newcomer
> and also be helpful to project organizers to make tough balancing
> decisions. We don't have to expect each sentence to pull that double duty
> on its own. I don't quite know what the phrasing would be (because, again,
> we don't run conferences), but I think we could make a statement that
> explicitly disclaims that we will be using "viewpoint diversity" to provide
> a platform for viewpoints antithetical to the CoC.
>
> None of these categorizations listed should be interpreted as
> get-out-of-jail-free cards for otherwise unwelcoming behavior, and I think
> maybe we should be explicit about that. Our diversity statement is an
> aspiration, not a suicide pact. Religion, neurotype, national origin, and
> subculture (4chan is a subculture, God help us), at minimum, are all items
> on that list that I have personally seen used to justify shitty behavior.
> Political belief is far from unique (nor the most common excuse, in my
> experience) in that list. But they all deserve to be on that list. I want
> the somewhat fringy progressive hacktivist to feel comfortable here as well
> as people more mainstream.
>
>
I was opposed to having a list in the first place, because the longer such
a list is, the more significant the omissions become. And indeed, the
arguments I have seen for omitting "politics" are that one should be
allowed to discriminate on the basis of politics, because, reasons. One
could marshal the same arguments to support discrimination on the basis of
religion, nationality, or culture. Such discrimination is always a
temptation and historically has led to conflict; the possibility of
conflict is precisely why they are put these lists. The list is a
declaration that we will *not* argue about these things because such
arguments are well known to be contentious and lead to bad feelings. There
are many places for such contention, but I would argue that NumPy
development is not one of them.
Chuck
_______________________________________________
NumPy-Discussion mailing list
NumPy-Discussion@python.org
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
