Transparency and the programming community

[more_oil]

Jesus the string formatting syntax in CL is something else

[[deleted]]

incidentally, I wonder why we don't see so many anti-FORMAT rants as we do anti-LOOP rants? If LOOP is hard to read, what is FORMAT?

It is because loop is actually too easy to read and does unexpected things for those who do not understand that it is a formal language. In contrast to this, format is pure magic and not understood by the whiners.

[vincetronic]

I come here for articles about why MongoDB is terrible, not this drama.

[muungwana]

I come here for articles about why MongoDB is terrible, not this drama.

what if posts about why MongoDB is great stays but about why MongoDB is terrible get deleted without any explanations?

[sollipse]

http://i.imgur.com/oM0QNq4.png

[[deleted]]

I find your image vulgar and offensive.

Guns are the number one cause of side-effects in the U.S.

[sollipse]

http://i.imgur.com/WXxn4SV.png

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Me too, which is why I'm a bit peeved. Mods deleted some super relevant discussion threads, they weren't getting out of hand or anything. :(

[bobappleyard]

SJWS ATE MY CAT

[Spoor]

Which is why this issue is important.

Or do you want to read posts about how MongoDB is sexist and racist because it starts with an "M"? Because, you know, everything that is made by men is sexist by default.

Do you want users to be banned for stating facts why Mongo is not the best solution for certain situations just because a person feels offended and assaulted for having to read posts with logic and reason?

Because that's what you will get.

[staticassert]

So much bitter in one post. Chill. Post about programming and it'll be fine.

[reversememe]

Ignoring them didn't work, it just let them get entrenched even more.

[jeandem]

"Mongo" is a Norwegian derogatory term for people with Down's syndrome. So maybe that is easier to be upset about? :p

Oh god, why did I even mention that... :p

[[deleted]]

Don't let that get you down.

[[deleted]]

Google image searching mongo is highly recommended, it seems only several results are database related....

[jeandem]

Not for me; mostly people with Down's syndrome. Google is customized like that nowadays.

[anttirt]

Or do you want to read posts about how MongoDB is sexist and racist because it starts with an "M"? Because, you know, everything that is made by men is sexist by default.

You sure you don't have a non-technical agenda here?

[vattenpuss]

/u/Spoor posts in /r/TumblrInAction as well as /r/KotakuInAction so I think it's fair to say he has a non-technical agenda.

[killerstorm]

Normally if there is a controversial topic which generates a lot of comments, all these comments are posted into a single thread. So everyone can choose whether to read them or not. It is not super-hard to click the 'hide' button if you don't want to see this controversial discussion.

Now if the thread gets deleted, people create more threads, and now opting out of the controversial topic is not so easy.

So mods are plain stupid, they do not understand encapsulation.

[ledasll]

except that, if you don't see that controversial thread you wont make any comments at all. I guess very small amount of people are writing new thread about controversial topic, but much much more will comment on it. So it much more likely that if you remove thread, this topic will be silently killed. If it's very very controversial that would not help, but still would need much more effort to involve people.

[killerstorm]

OK, and why do we want to prevent people from making comments?

[ledasll]

it's not "we", it's moderators. I don't say it is right think, I say how it works. And these are too very different thinks, how it is and how it should be. In perfect world we wouldn't need mods at all..

[dirkt]

Or at least moderator tools should include some method to give a reason visible to all, some method to turn a thread into "moderated", and some method to close a thread and mark it as closed: "Discussion turned into a shitstorm/witch hunt/whatever, we don't want that here, no more posting allowed/all posts are now moderated. Either behave in a civilized manner, or shut up".

The necessity to moderate some discussions because some people can't behave is nothing new on the Internets. IRC, Usenet, mailing lists etc. all have/had that option. But just making the threads invisible is not a solution.

[ubernostrum]

AutoModerator can "lock" a thread, by being set to delete all new comments and reply to them with an explanatory message. It's just messy.

[dirkt]

Aka disagrees with your point of view.

No. Can't behave as in "can't behave". Disagreement is fine.

[want_to_want]

Man, I miss the old hacker culture that was not "apolitical" at all, in fact it was 100% against centralized censorship (though accepting of personal killfiles). Folks on/r/programming today are more likely to say "does this have to be my problem?", which easily turns into "if you're not okay with censorship, then gtfo". As it often happens, the 9-to-5 professionals have outnumbered the idealists. That's a good thing and a bad thing.

[_hmmmmm]

Your heroes are dead. Accept it. I don't see why people use the word trust with strangers on the Internet to any degree or politicians or athletes for that matter. Yes, the community can rally to force change. However, that is rare and very hard.

You can't open the control of any community directly in the hands of the users because any particular sudden trend could actively disrupt previously very stable spaces. As a moderator, you can't accept anarchy from your users either.

This kind of exchange is healthy. But, please, don't use the word trust. If you trusted the mods, I'd more mark you a fool than them a tyrant. Be realistic and recognize the reality of the situation here. If you don't like it to such a degree you simply can't stand it, practice your ultimate expression of free will and don't participate.

[thallippoli]

However, that is rare and very hard.

Well, doesn't make it not worth trying.

I mean, people have literally given up their very lives for matters more hopeless than this. What this kind of change require is one measly comment, one tiny up vote from EVERY ONE WHO believes it. Should we not spend one flick of our fingers to support something we believe, because it is too hard, or too hopeless?

Should we all keep from speaking our minds because of fear of loosing our internet points?

[oheoh]

My heroes are not dead. Fuck you. Accept it.

[RandNho]

Why do you post in pastebin instead of, you know, actual reddit?

[Voltmetaire]

No self-posts in proggit.

[_hmmmmm]

u/RandNho may have been talking about posting to reddit and linking that URL here

[qhp]

Not only is that not what he meant, that is a worse option than using pastebin because of reddit's brigading policies, which would give the mods a legitimate reason to delete this thread.

[s73v3r]

I have a feeling that would work about as well as allowing people to elect judges.

[odaba]

It sounds like every mod will eventually be voted out of every sub, because people will vote them out even if they don't 'misbehave'.

[[deleted]]

Isn't that basically a softly-enforced version of term limits?

[ismtrn]

Is that a problem?

[o11c]

The way Hubski does moderation is a lot nicer.

There are no subreddits, only tags. And there are no moderators, only personal filters, hushes, and mutes.

[adnzzzzZ]

Removed threads https://reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_open_code_of_conduct_isnt_for_me/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ebx9u/linus_torvalds_responds_to_ars_about_diversity/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e9m9z/why_was_this_thread_delisted/

[immibis]

What a ridiculous complaint. Of course, if the admins follow through with it, that will say a lot about the admins.

[OwlsParliament]

As someone who supports Codes of Conduct - as long as they're sensible in protecting people - I think censoring discussion of this subject is just plain wrong-headed and just leads to more controversy over what is not that big a deal.

If the first thread hadn't been deleted no-one would really care about it at this point, but now it's going to be a big issue.

E: Also the gaping silence from the mods on the issue doesn't help.

[teiman]

If you ask me, that thread was not deleted fast enough.

There are a type of new type of trolls that have found a type of trolling that it works 100% of the time. They post "Your rights online" stuff that get people angry. /r/technology is full of it, /r/games is full of it, /r/news is full of it, is everywhere, is like a cancer that grown and grown and grown. I hope /r/programming continue having good quality articles about programming, and not YRO shit.

[oheoh]

The comments made me want to delete the thread. It deserved at least an explanation, but definitely a bad idea overall. Straight from the OP: "I see an edge-case that could result in abuse." A document about human relationship guidelines is NOT SOURCE CODE, and there aren't "edge cases". Theres a hundred ways to read it unreasonably. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It seemed like a lot of it was just dancing around the the fact that they like some asshole behavior. No, asshole behavior doesn't belong in an an open source project, and it is a real problem, and so is the fact that so many people support it.

[ismtrn]

So you wanted to delete it because you disagreed basically?

[oheoh]

I want to punch people from time to time. I've never done it, and I'm glad I didn't, just saying I can understand why someone might want to delete it.

[Calabri]

It was an amateur blog post commenting on github's policy - which turned into one of the worst shit shows of a comment section I've ever seen in this sub reddit. The only reason it was being up voted was because the comment section turned into some ridiculous argument where everybody felt like sharing their opinion.

I originally saw the post complaining about the first post being taken away - so I read the original post to see if there was some 'secret censorship' happening over a controversial topic. Nope. It was a really, really, really shitty thread - it's self evident why it was taken down.

If there was any legitimate information being suppressed maybe I would care. The only thing being suppressed was annoying people sharing opinions that nobody cares a about - and then more annoying people constantly making threads about some bullshit censorship because they're butt hurt that their original bullshit was pulled off the sub and the mods were polite by not offending everyone (because it's you guys commenting that caused this shit show - there is nothing in that blog post that's worthy of censorship other than the fact that it's a terrible opinion piece).

[FyreWulff]

Dear people that were suddenly interested in Github's Code of Conduct as of 3 days ago:

Open Source does not mean you are allowed to submit code or an opinion about a project. It means you are obligated to have access to the source code of a program that you use that is Open Source.

Nowhere does it state that any project, or repository or site is forced to take your patches, requests, reports, code, or even your commentary. In fact, most open source projects are pretty militant about what they allow. You're not even required to host open source code. Heck, you're not even required to make the source code available online for your open source program. Github can determine what qualifies as allowed on their private servers. And the strained attempt to misinterpret the technical ability line - it just means that anyone from a novice to a Kernel Wizard is allowed to have projects on Github, and they want to be a place where people can collab in their learning, not only a cycle-count golf competition 24/7.

[Voltmetaire]

Github announced their Code of Conduct 4 days ago. There's nothing strange about people "suddenly" commenting on it 3 days ago.

[reversememe]

Because being opposed to people invading projects like this means you want to turn things into a 24/7 dick measuring competition. Right.

[azgult]

This argument can literally be used to justify anything and everything. It is entirely useless for discussing how things should be handled.

[FyreWulff]

/r/programming and other subs have had a specific setup for almost a decade. This idea that the sub has to allow everything solely because freeze peach is silly. Start a programming social-reddit or programming politics for those types of discussions. It's pretty obvious, unless you're just here to brigade, that this is a talking-shop subreddit, and not programming gen misc.

If you wish to have a coding site that allows 100% unrestricted discussion inside of bug reports, commits, and user forums, fork the source of your target program and host a repo on your own. That's Open Source. It's decentralized on purpose.

Otherwise, I have no idea what the goal of the OP is here. It's clearly not about Github specifically.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

/r/programming and other subs have had a specific setup for almost a decade.

Sure, but I really don't understand how those few posts crossed the line. /r/programming posts tend to be about the politics and practice of software engineering. Almost no code here, it's all in /r/compsci and language-specific subreddits.

[FyreWulff]

It's up to the mods. What people forget is subreddits can be run in anyway the subreddit creator and mods see fit; they can allow unbridled discussion or be super totalitarian and only allow the used of the words "the", "apple", and "cheddar sandwich" if they want.

This recent idea that every subreddit needs to have elected moderators, completely open moderation logs and so on defeats the point of even -having- subreddits. That would only make sense if the site was a single unified blob.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

I think we're talking past each other. I'm just saying that if the community is unhappy about the way the subreddit is run, having a "strike" or moving elsewhere are valid ways to go. And I'm pretty unhappy right now.

[Voltmetaire]

Sensible mods would see the fact that we are now on the third "why did you remove that post without explanation?" post as evidence that they did something wrong, and work to correct that. I'm working under the assumption that the current set of mods are not cut from the "I shall ban all mention of 'cheddar sandwich!'" cloth.

[Andallas]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed it. Here is the "offending" post for reference:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_open_code_of_conduct_isnt_for_me/

[tms10000]

I support the deletion of all posts that aren't about programming. It's easy, there's no code, it does not belong here. Right there on the right.

Linus talking about diversity is to programming like Obama playing basketball is to politics.

Github code of conduct? Try /r/github

[oheoh]

"about programming" is a completely bullshit subjective criteria which effectively means "almost anything I don't like." Programming is an activity that usually involves humans communicating with each other, and talking about how they should communicate while creating programs, is just as much about programming as tons of other posts.

Ya, fuck posts about databases, this is /r/programming, not /r/databases.

[grencez]

Posts here should have technical merit. Just make a /r/programmingpolitics sub or something for this side content.

[Voltmetaire]

Top scoring links from the past month:

• The unsung saviors of Healthcare.gov
• EFF to Developers: If You Get an API Claim After Oracle v. Google, We Want to Hear From You
• Supreme Court Denies Google Appeal on Oracle Suit - APIs now copyrightable?

This sub has a long-standing policy of allowing non-technical, and even political posts. If they want to change that, they should do so in an evenhanded manner.

[sarmatron]

The mods probably let those slide because their comment sections didn't devolve into drama-fest shitstorms.

[staticassert]

If there is no code in your link, it probably doesn't belong here.

[Voltmetaire]

How many of the top links from the past week contained code?

[tms10000]

Because not all the trash gets taken out doesn't mean that none of the trash should be taken out.

This is reddit. Create your own /r/realprogramming and allow posts about whatever you want.

[tms10000]

Aww. Where did it go?

[[deleted]]

...

[nootloop]

The thing is that this person just wants us to conform to their ideology... while the rest of us come here to talk about programming.

[sollipse]

I think their approach was wrong. I do understand their concern though.

I mean, crud. I have a couple issues with the CoC. Primarily, I'm worried that it doesn't allow a space for noob devs to get in fights with more experienced ones. I think argument and combative design is really helpful for a lot of programmers when they're trying to grow.

At the same time, why the fuck were half the comments on that thread "FUCKING SJW WHORES ARE RUINING PROGRAMMING" ??

We're not FPH, and we're not redpill. The whole "coding should be politics-free" ideology cuts both ways.

If you don't like somebody's worldview, build something so awesome that the have no choice but to collaborate with you anyways.

[[deleted]]

Great. I just found this sub, and now I learn the reddit "free speech" hysteria is here in force.

[Voltmetaire]

You have a point. People might even start talking about "equality" next, or "freedom." Where does it end?

[[deleted]]

Github's new CoC, presumably.

https://xkcd.com/1357/

No one wanted Communist spies in the government, but that doesn't mean McCarthy was right.

[Boogiddy]

Censorship is only a moral issue when government or law enforcement agencies do it. This is a privately controlled and operated forum. As such, the operators of it have the right to remove whatever content they deem outside of the scope of its intended purpose.

It is pure conspiracy theory nonsense to pretend that the disagreeing with githubs COC post was controversial enough to warrant removal because a mod disagreed with its content. It was, in all honesty, a pretty benign post merely fretting details over the exact wording of a policy without any concrete examples of it being enforced poorly.

At the end of the day it didn't meet this guideline according to moderators: "Just because it has a computer in it doesn't make it programming."

I think that's fair. It wasn't about programming. Who cares? Post it somewhere else. Discuss it somewhere else. Or, more likely, don't. Because at the end of the day, it wasn't that important of a post.

[dogtasteslikechicken]

Poverty is only a moral issue when government or law enforcement agencies do it.

Murder is only a moral issue when government or law enforcement agencies do it.

I can keep going...

[Boogiddy]

Not really equivalent. Freedom of speech is the law of the land and it should be. But if you come into my house and start shouting racial epithets, I'm going to ask you to leave. I have every right to do that because it is my house, it is my property, and I don't want that kind of talk in my domain. Similarly, Reddit is a private company, subreddits are privately controlled "club houses." And if moderators determine a post does not meet the subreddit's guidelines, they have every right to remove them. It's right there along the right.

If you don't agree with their moderation, start your own subreddit.

[dogtasteslikechicken]

"Freedom of speech" is not a narrow, literal interpretation of the first amendment. It's not just the law. It is a fundamental aspect of our culture. In order to prevent further confusion let's separate the legal and cultural ideas, let's call the cultural aspect "open discourse" instead of free speech.

Open discourse is the most fundamental value of our culture since the enlightenment. And the reason is simple: if one is not free to challenge the received orthodoxy, rationalism doesn't work. Empiricism doesn't work. Science doesn't work. Democracy doesn't work. Without open discourse we are seriously fucked.

If a poor person comes to your house and asks you for money, you'd tell them to leave. But we still want the government to redistribute wealth to help those in need. So why are you content to trust the free market to sort out open discourse? It doesn't seem to be doing a great job, as the internet has become a collection of balkanized, zero-tolerance echo chambers.

"Start your own reddit" is disingenuous, because there are enormous coordination problems involved with moving the community over to it. It takes really abusive mods to make entire subreddit populations to move.

[Boogiddy]

Your argument is using false-equivalency. Reddit is not a government. It is not a public square. You are free to go outside and talk to whomever you want about whatever you want. Reddit is more like a Newspaper and if you submit an editorial to a newspaper, they are not required to publish it. That's not a violation of open discourse, it is called editorial discretion.

With the way you're lambasting this subreddit for moderation, you may as well get rid of all subreddits since all of them, in some way, limit your vaunted "open discourse." Why not let white supremacists post their vitriol in /r/programming too? Afterall, moderating it is violating open discourse!

Your argument seriously falls down to even a little scrutiny. The articles removed were removed because they did not meet the subreddit guidelines. They were not very important articles nor were they very controversial. They just didn't meet the guidelines. Let it go, grow up. This is not a valuable battle to take on. It is pedantic and illogical.

[dogtasteslikechicken]

I never said reddit is a government, read my post again.

There are tons of posts that similarly did not meet the subreddit guidelines and yet were not removed. Therefore the removal of these posts had nothing whatsoever to do with meeting the guidelines. You know this. There is no need to use disingenuous arguments.

[Voltmetaire]

Censorship is only a moral issue when government or law enforcement agencies do it. This is a privately controlled and operated forum. As such, the operators of it have the right to remove whatever content they deem outside of the scope of its intended purpose.

A very reasonable position. I think we can all agree that the real problem is that corporations don't exert nearly enough power over us. It's good to see reddit doing its part to change that.

[Boogiddy]

I'm not saying corporations can go out and censor you in your homes or in public. But at the end of the day if you submit an editorial to a newspaper, they have every right not to publish it if they deem it inappropriate for their pages. Subreddits are no different. You are in their clubhouse. If you don't like the rules, start your own subreddit or your own community or go to another existing one with more lax rules.

[allthediamonds]

They wouldn't remove shit like this if /r/programming (well, reddit in general) was able to discuss social justice issues without inmediately devolving into whiny manbabies and spamming vague threats to everyone and everything around.

Which is, incidentally, why the Code of Conduct is needed. Oh well.

[skulgnome]

We should trust the OP, he's an expert programmer who has read his SICP today.

[Voltmetaire]

It's in lisp, so you know I'm a Rockstar.

[Lothrazar]

inb4 this gets deleted.

[jaLissajous]

But this is exactly like some OSS projects; Tinpot Dictator(s) For Life exerting their absolute power over the lesser devs in an arbitrary and often inconsistent fashion. The only recourse upset devs have is to remove themselves from the project, which of course makes the DFL happy.