On Wed, 16 Oct 2013 23:13:33 -0400, Owen Jacobson wrote: > Last week, Elad Maidar wrote a fairly short but readable opinion > piece[0] illustrating some long-standing social problems in the Ruby > community, ending with a very specific call to action around naming > conventions for Ruby projects and gems. To save you the trouble of > scrolling to the bottom of this post and clicking, here's the relevant > bit: > >> What is missing you ask? I think that there is no consideration in >> women when it comes to gem naming convention, here are a few gems that >> i found in a 5 mintues search on Rubygems.org to demonstrate why women >> and other groups probably feel uncomfortable when trying to get into >> the Rails community:
I'm not part of the Rails community, but I wonder, really, is this treating the cause of the problem or just a symptom? How many Ruby developers find themselves in the situation of actually needing to use a package called "bitch" or "retarded"? If you didn't go out looking for them, would you even know they exist? I think that packages with this sort of name do the community a good service: they are a very strong signal as to the moral quality, emotional immaturity, and intelligence of the package author. The author is perhaps to be excused if he *actually is* an obnoxious fourteen-year old boy rather than just acting like one. Otherwise, with the very occasional exception, packages like the ones named are nearly as good a signal as a "Poor Impulse Control" tattoo across the forehead of the author. [...] > The good news: the specific examples Elad called out are STRIKINGLY > absent from pypi. By and large the published python packages are > inobjectionable. Well done, "us", in as much as there is an "us" to > congratulate. "Unobjectionable". > There are a few examples of the same sort of bad decision-making that > are, I think, worth discussing: > > * SexMachine (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/SexMachine/0.1.1 - an attempt > to detect the gender of names, which… well, ask the nearest boy named > Sue - or girl named Leslie) I'm curious as to what you consider a bad decision -- the name itself, or the very concept of trying to guess gender from names? [...] > So, two questions: > > 1. What social biases and problems *do* we unwittingly encourage by way > of community-tolerated behaviour? Chances are there is plenty we do that future generations will be horrified by, like *wearing yellow*. http://paulgraham.com/say.html Some of these things will include our most cherished beliefs. > Where, if not through the conventions > for naming, do we encourage sexism, racism, and other mindlessly > exclusionary behaviour? Oh, the assumptions there... 1) "Mindlessly" exclusionary? 2) Who says *we* encourage sexism and racism? > 2. What kind of social pressure can we bring to bear to _keep_ Python's > package naming conventions as socially neutral as they are, if and when > some high-profile dirtbag decides this language is the best language? > How can we apply the same pressures to other parts of the Python > community? I really don't like the idea that some package names are thoughtcrime. I especially don't like the idea that we need to *preemptively* police the community for "bad names" *just in case* some "high-profile dirtbag" decides to call her software "boobies" or something. > 3. How can we reach out to the Ruby community and help *them* get past > the current crop of gender issues, and help them as a group to do better > next time? Heh, I'm inclined to say "better them than us" and be grateful that the snotty-nosed emotionally-stunted yahoos are over there rather than over here, but that would be selfish, wouldn't it? Oh well. There's only so much I can do at once. I've got bigger troubles than trying to solve Ruby's problems with yahoos, and frankly, if I were a Ruby community member, I wouldn't exactly be pleased to have a bunch of strangers from another community come over to tell me all the things I'm doing wrong. Speaking of which, while you're welcome here of course, I see you aren't exactly a regular poster. How well do you know this community? > I'm very much on the side of education, tolerance, and social > consequences, not administrative fiat or organized retaliation. I think > Elad's call for the Rubygems folks to unilaterally drop libraries is > misguided, but well-intentioned, and I don't think the same sort of call > towards Pypi to drop "unacceptable" library names is a good idea either. > However, I think it's hugely important and hugely beneficial that we > welcome as many folks into the Python community as possible, and do our > best to foster an environment where people can succeed regardless of who > or what they are, and recent evidence suggests that that requires > ongoing conversation and engagement, not just passive acceptance. > > So, how should we be more awesome? We should give out free cookies! Everybody loves cookies, right? What *actual* problem are we trying to solve, right here? Is it ... - The Python community is a hot-bed for so-called "Men's Rights", a reactionary group of old-fashioned chauvinists? - Or perhaps childish, obnoxious "lads" who are trying to exclude women and minorities? - The Python community is insufficiently aware of the difficulties that minorities and women are under? - Regardless of how friendly and welcoming we are, the wider societies we come from are unacceptably sexist? - The evolution of Homo sapiens has lead to us behaving more like violent, hierarchical, male-dominated chimpanzees rather than promiscuous, egalitarian, female-dominated bonobos? - All of the above? - Something else? I'm not sure which problem(s) you think needs to be solved. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
