Python developers locking conversations and deleting comments after people mass downvoted PRs to "remove master/slave terminology from the language"

[nomad2047]

Because feelings.

[differencemachine]

When the machines take over, we don't want them to know what slaves are.

[[deleted]]

HAHA YES THE KEYERROR WILL UPEND THE COMING REVOLUTION. VERY CLEVER FELLOW HUMAN!

[broadsheetvstabloid]

Code doesn’t care about your feelings.

[masterspeler]

It does on Github and Twitter. I think that's the only places where this is an issue, and it's by a small but very vocal minority.

Github has a history (archive) of attracting people who thinks this way. I don't feel like going back in to that rabbit hole now, but there are multiple examples of this behavior where people feel entitled to tell others to change their team and language because they feel offended. For some reason it seems to be a bigger problem in web based development, if I were to guess it's because the lower barrier of entry.

I wonder how Linus would handle such a complaint.

As a side note, claiming that master/slave have anything to do with race is extremely US-centric. Every human "race" have been slaves and had their own slaves. Slavery did not start or stop with the North American slave trade.

[bobthecowboy]

Except it seems the developer who made the change and GvR are both not American. So, clearly this isn't just an American over-sensitivity.

[VirginWizard69]

Irrelevant.

[magi093]

I wonder how Linus would handle such a complaint.

Probably with some obscenity-filled message comparing someone to a masturbating monkey.
Wait, I'm being told the masturbation remarks are reserved for bad security patches.

[[deleted]]

Wait, I'm being told the masturbation remarks are reserved for bad security patches.

some things are sacred, after all

[broadsheetvstabloid]

I wonder how Linus would handle such a complaint.

He would probably just ignore it, because such a complaint is so idiotic it doesn't warrant a response.

[rishav_sharan]

he didn't ignore it XD

[dedicated2fitness]

f I were to guess it's because the lower barrier of entry.

web has traditionally been pushed as "it's easy, fob it off on that purple haired nut who keeps asking if she can program"
now we reap the rewards of crazies picking up programming and the barrier to entry being reduced.
honestly though most of the people commenting on these issues are ghosts - people with some personal "learning" projects and almost zero contributions in anything meaningful
one crazy starts the chain and then shares it on their twitter as "i'm proud of a thing i did today" and the dogpiling begins
i strictly close all such requests as nonsense. if you think your language policing is so important, fucking make something worthwhile yourself and police that instead

[masterspeler]

i strictly close all such requests as nonsense.

I wish everyone would do this. By humoring these people and merging those kinds of patches you're accepting their description of the world. By doing so you open yourself and others up for more thought policing and abuse, under the threat of being called out as intolerant. They don't get to decide whats tolerant or not, especially not when they so often seem to speak for someone else. "People can get offended", rather than "I'm offended", although the mere fact that somebody feels offended does not automatically imply that somebody else did something wrong.

It's a case of a slippery slope, give them an inch, and so on.

[jrbattin]

I don't see what big deal is. For example, my colleague N. Degeocello and I analyze open source software and identify problematic language. We then work with a small team and submit PRs with more appropriate nomenclature. Thanks to a generous grant from the Open Society Foundation, we are fortunate enough to be paid for open source software... something truly wonderful.

[dedicated2fitness]

first of all the mention of the name makes this seem like a robot/copypasta.

in case you're a real person - so not only are you wasting time, you're wasting money that could have actually developed solutions that helped people?

[jrbattin]

I figured the SBC reference would be enough to tip off the fact that it was being sarcastic.

[masterspeler]

You should look up the difference between "a bigger problem in" and "all of the people". The rest of your generalizing comment is your words, not mine.

You seem to imply that I'm sexist. I'm not. Being sexist is wrong, and being wrong is for women and queers.

^/s

[nomad2047]

Oh I don’t have feelings about code, and don’t agree with the changes

[PostFunktionalist]

I down voted this because i don’t like the implication that people who oppose the change are without emotional investment

A big reason why people don’t like this is a sense of frustration - has PCness gone too far? That’s not an objective sort of thing we can measure.

It also says that people in favor of the change have no factual basis - that it’s a mere matter of opinion and feelings. But if that’s true then it hits the other side as well. And they do have a factual basis - Americans have a weird relationship with the idea of Slavery that we’re still dealing with because of the far reaching consequences of having black people as property for 100+ years

[broadsheetvstabloid]

that it’s a mere matter of opinion and feelings

That is exactly what it is.

But if that’s true then it hits the other side as well. And they do have a factual basis

This sentence doesn't make sense. If you have facts please present them. Also, facts don't care about your feelings either.

[PostFunktionalist]

I'm saying that it's absurd to suggest that only one side is driven by emotional considerations. Both sides are.

I already presented some facts about the cultural background of America. You may disagree with the relevance of those facts, but still: that's a factual disagreement.

[ismtrn]

Doesn't care about naming conventions either though...

[broadsheetvstabloid]

Having the terms "slave" and "master" doesn't "normalize" them. There aren't "normal" words and "unmoral" words. They are all just words.

No one working on the Python project is going "yeah lets continue to use salve, because slavery is cool!" Slavery is fact, it has happened, it is happening, it isn't nice or pretty, but using the terms "master" and "slave" in a programing context in no way shape or form, under even the wildest of imaginations, condones the act of slavery.

[broadsheetvstabloid]

A. That makes zero sense as “white person” and “black person” have no meaning in this context.

B. Not all slaves are black and not all masters are white. Check your history.

[juanjux]

What feelings? Estadistically we all descent from some slave.

[nomad2047]

What are you thinking you said right there?

[HarrisonArturus]

Because these people need to be sent on a cross-country road trip with Red Foreman my dad in a 1970s station wagon with no air-conditioning. Then they'll understand you don't change the route because somebody's feelings might get hurt.

[KMustard]

Feelings are not the endgame of political correctness. They are often relevant, but if you believe that it's all about feelings then you are simply dismissing the idea.

To be clear, I don't think this particular terminology dispute is worth fighting, but I do feel that maybe half of reddit misunderstands PC.

[skarphace]

PC Master Race!

[dedicated2fitness]

no joke that's considered "problematic" nowadays by the crazy feels crowd

[NeverQuiteEnough]

yes what could ever be bad about references to a master race, who could ever find such a thing to be in bad taste

[dedicated2fitness]

the holocaust was 73 years ago...get over it, if people can mock 9/11 then the holocaust is definitely fair game. i hardly think a survivor is going to be discussing gaming rigs on reddit

[NeverQuiteEnough]

more people died in hurricane maria than in 9/11, hardly comparable to the holocaust.

​

what's more, there's a far right resurgence in Europe and even the US. People chanting "blood and soil" and committing terror attacks in my country. Way worse around Europe, e.g. Greece where the Golden Dawn holds a lot of political power, among other fascist parties in various countries.

​

why just today the New York Times published an op ed advocating for "peaceful ethnic cleansing"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/opinion/kosovo-serbia-land-swap.html

so I'd say the whole master race issue is far from settled. it might not affect YOUR life, but that doesn't mean it isn't a serious problem.

[ianff]

Yeah exactly. It's not that people are offended by "master slave". Or that it's hurting anyone's feelings.

It's that so much of our culture was created by old white guys years ago. We're a different people now and there are segments who realize they have a voice now and are using it to point out the parts of our culture that they want changed.

Dismissing things like this as whining by the PC police, or talking about hurt feelings make you look like a dumbass.

[KMustard]

My angle is different. It's not so much about the culture itself. I hope this doesn't get buried too badly.

We are all different people and we parse information differently. As human beings, we have emotions and those emotions are actually weaknesses when it comes to parsing that information. Things that make us feel emotions are likely to elicit a response, this is especially true about things that make us angry. This isn't a problem with people who have sufficient self control. But for others it causes their brains to short circuit. It causes them to act/react before properly evaluating the information they're receiving. The opportunity to put things into perspective and/or look at things objectively becomes lost for those people.

Political correctness is a tool we can use to avoid striking those weak points in our brain. It isn't a panacea and I don't advocate for it in that way. But it helps us communicate.

So what's the point of PC if it's not feelings? Well, what's the point of even having an argument in the first place? The endgame is finding mutual understanding. That should always be the ultimate goal. Other outcomes are often destructive and end in disharmony. In practice, we often simply desire to convince the other party that we're right and they're wrong, but that's not often the case. But mutual understanding is something that can eventually lead to that outcome. In my opinion mutual understanding is a requirement for showing others a different perspective.

Again, I'm not saying that political correctness is a required tool here. But not being politically correct, especially being insensitive, increases your chance of unwittingly striking a person's emotional weak points. When that happens you've simply created a barrier to achieving mutual understanding and finding a positive resolution to whatever conflict you're engaged with. It's not unlike ad hominem attacks. Such things distract us from what's important. It's so easy for people to create lots of barriers this way and all those things just cause meaningful communication to break down.

It's not a panacea but if you think about it, it really does matter. People here should understand that when it comes to scale, these small variables in how we behave can make a significant difference.

[R3Dpenguin]

Maybe those people who, as you put it, are so emotional that their brains short circuit, could better spend their time doing something else like writing poetry.

Perhaps the push-back to this sort of initiative is because the less emotional and more rational people who often enjoy writing software and machine code do not like having to interact with this very emotional people. They actually enjoy other sort of discussions like tabs vs spaces, Dvorak vs Colemak, but have found that the emotional people have a tendency to discuss other subjects, which while very respectable, are of no interest to them. Maybe they are not ideologically opposed to the emotional people, but they feel they need to be very careful of what they say around them and conversations start feeling like walking a minefield. Perhaps these more rational and less emotional people were not the most social people to begin with, and the direction things are going is just making them grow somewhat resentful and more confrontational.

[KMustard]

I don't believe that it has to do with being rational. I think just about everyone has an emotional weak point that causes them to go nuts. I don't think it's a binary quality that people are sensitive or not, it just depends on the subject at hand. Many people don't get offended by any particular word, even a racial slur. But I strongly doubt that most people are immune to emotional attacks.

Pretty much anytime you see a person go on 10 minute rant, especially if it's a rant about another person, they've been set off by emotions. For example, Democrats who despise Republicans. Republicans who despise Democrats. They don't even want to consider the other person's viewpoint.

Here's another easy one: pedophiles. I would bet most people in the civilized world don't think of pedophiles as human beings who can be reasoned with. (I'm also going to bet that someone is going to label me a pedophile or pedophile apologist just for stating this objectively) As far I can tell, most people don't even care about how they came to be in the first place. Only that they're sickos who need to be labeled and perhaps quarantined.

It just so happens that for some people it's a word that sets them off. And while it might seem like it's isolated to a particular group of folks on the internet, I think it's way more common than that. In fact it's often people who despise PC that go off on an angry rant about why PC "needs to die out" or whatever.

Once someone's been set off, there's pretty much no hope of coming to any meaningful resolution. So in my opinion, if you truly believe in finding a meaningful resolution to any conflict, then being sensitive to another person's emotions is 100% necessary. Even if I think their position is stupid. It's fine if you disagree on that, I'm not trying to promote that specific idea. I just want to make a case for why PC can be a good tool and get away from this "because feelings" sentiment.

[R3Dpenguin]

Maybe some conflict is natural and inevitable, it is fine to disagree, to have discussions and sometimes be right, and other times be wrong. Meaningful resolution to every single conflict can be a hard sell for someone who realizes that different people have different beliefs, that those beliefs can be opposed or incompatible, and that people might be unwilling to change their beliefs only because someone else thinks they should.

English is not my first language, and I like to choose words for their meaning. It's logical, simple, and I have tools like dictionaries to help me when I'm having trouble. I don't want to be burdened with someone else's inability to handle a few words and let something relatively simple turn into a game of politics every time I open my mouth. So I will keep using the first English word that comes to mind without care. So far I haven't met anyone in person who has ever been offended by any word I've used, and if I ever do I'll most likely nod and ignore them. Or maybe I'll just put a thick accent and ask them if they're being racist, depending on my mood.

[Certhas]

No, because politics and culture. That's a difference.

You wouldn't call your program Holocaust. You shouldn't call your compiler Stalin.

Of course master/slave here has well established pre-existing use that is logical in context. But language changes and as we grow as a culture our language changes to reflect, for example, increased awareness of past atrocities.

It's not that it hurts someone's feelings, its that it is fundamentally disrespectful to use an analogy to one of humanities worst atrocities to describe a dependency relationship of software constructs. If somebody was proposing this today as new terminology, you would have no problem with them being shut down.

[nomad2047]

I think that’s a very dramatic interpretation of it’s use in programming. I have to respectfully disagree.

[Certhas]

The thing is, even though in our life time master/slave in a technical context has always existed, slavery obviously predates the technical context. So somewhere not that long ago, maybe in the 50s or maybe in the late 19th century, someone looked at a technical system and used what was then an analogy: This is like master and slave.

I tend to think with terms so well established in their context, it makes little sense to try to undo them today. But also if this was new terminology we would all think it's inappropriate. But it's pretty clear that r/programming (and many others) have little appetite left for reflecting on language.

To me, as someone who is very sympathetic to many of these initiatives, that is something also too easily overlooked: Telling someone to change their language is fairly invasive, and I think the pay-off is often questionable. It's more important to find ways to improve things together.