It's a bit buried in the GH discussion, but someone else posted it here:
"Maybe this has been written for women, having calculated their age ;)"
If I were in charge of a community or mailing list, I would kick the person who wrote that off. But I simply don't see how (a) the existing rules didn't do enough to cover this, or (b) the changes will resolve those issues without causing other problems.
As I understand it, some people who want to make sexist jokes on the mailing list with impunity pointed to the language about tolerating opposing views to claim that their desire to belittle women on the mailing list must be tolerated.
edit: evidently someone thinks this comment is worthy of a downvote. I didn't say whether I approved of this action or not. I looked through the threads to find out why the decision was made. I don't think a sincere effort to provide more information should be punished because of disagreement.
But...like...just say no? Am I missing something? If the current CoC covers offensive jokes like the one in question, then simply assert that the CoC covers it and be done with it.
If someone is willing to go through the CoC with a fine tooth comb, they're likely going to find something they could potentially use to defend themselves. Just say no!
The changes open up so much interpretation that anyone could use it to kick out people for all sorts of silly reasons.
It is somewhat of a modern cultural failing that we cannot moderate without having a CoC to point to and say "see? You're bad, it says so here". A good moderator can make the value judgements necessary to keep a community relatively healthy. For some reason a lot of folks have forgotten a CoC does not change that at all.
I think that the problem is that some people read CoCs as essentially _legal documents_; and thus attempt to act as CoC lawyers. Thus the "I'm allowed make sexist jokes with impunity because Ruby's constitution says that opposing views must be tolerated" take.
Obviously, CoCs generally aren't written as foolproof legal documents, and there's no caselaw or court system, so this is kind of absurd. But one approach to rules-lawyering is always to tighten the rules to remove the loopholes that are being exploited, so... Personally I think it'd be better to add language emphasising that the CoC is merely a _guideline_, and that the moderators are judge, jury and executioner.
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
Can sexist humour be kept in check with rational argument and public opinion?
I did not downvote you, but unfortunately you trivialize Popper by invoking his paradox of intolerance in such context.
Popper lived in a world where democracy was threatened by very powerful totalitarian movements and its demise in Europe at least was a very credible scenario. His paradox of tolerance addresses those violent, brutal movements that left a trail of blood and destruction on the continent.
There is zero evidence that Popper intended to micropolice or censor uncouth / rude verbal or written interactions among people. He was mostly concerned about outright tyranny and genocide. And there is a long way from bad jokes to tyranny and genocide, even though the Anglo-Saxon world has evolved a rather thin skin in the last decades and seems to think otherwise.
Making sexist jokes on a mailing list should probably be rebuked or punished by moderators for being in bad taste, but not because of Popper's ideas. A person joking about some girls age almost certainly does not want to enslave/kill women and does not have to be forcibly prevented from doing so.
This is not a good use of the paradox of tolerance. There was no threat of the ruby mailing lists being taken over by sexists using violence.
Popper was talking about groups like the Nazis coming to power. When overwhelming violence is near, you have to make a choice or else you’ll lose the capacity to make that choice. And even then, determining when overwhelming violence is near is extremely difficult and should be the absolute last resort.
It’s astounding how often this is linked with respect to online discussion.
I down voted you because I felt your comment was off topic to the comment you replied to. I do not see any reason the old CoC or no CoC at all would have preventing banning that user. Just because you should assume good intent does not mean you cannot ban or give a talking to user who make sexist jokes. I see no paradox of tolerance here.
Really? You would permanently remove someone from a community for one joke in bad taste? You wouldn't use any social skills of your own to, say, tell the person their joke isn't well received and they need to be more polite?
I could see it going either way, but come on, no one in their right mind would think that that's an appropriate joke to make in a public thread with members of a professional community.
"No one in their right mind" - Again, maybe it's because I see a version of my younger self, but it seems oversensitive! Yes, I know we are now in a world where any joke in the workplace that bases itself on "protected class" is theoretically off-limits. But that switch has flipped rapidly, and on top of it, that joke was truly minor. If it was an aggression, it really puts the micro in microaggression. But to read the comments, you'd think he made a Holocaust joke on Passover.
It was foolish to make the joke, it was even more foolish to make it on a digital format that cannot be rescinded. It's also foolish for people to immediately call for this person's removal from the community in perpetuity, rather than have a chat and explain that those jokes aren't funny.
Yeah like I said, I could see it going either way. I think your response would be reasonable, and I would be on board with it. I've never been in charge of an open source community so it's hard to say exactly what I'd do, but you're right that typically these kinds of decisions persist in perpetuity. With that in mind I'd be more likely to have a conversation, so long as the person can demonstrate that they understand why those jokes can't be tolerated.
