| 4 Nov 2021 |
 Irenes | (I was able to say the above because it's all stuff I've thought through many times, I didn't have to come up with it on the fly) | 09:50:47 |
 problems | i'll just say that i agree with what irenes and joepie91 have said here. the conflicts we've seen lately are a symptom of stuff that's already existed under the surface. it's good to talk about it in the open, so we can actually work to make it better | 09:57:02 |
 @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @irenes:matrix.org
because the world in general is not, you know... that work hasn't been done at the world scale I feel like this warrants highlighting a bit more - a lot of the conflict avoidance that I see around moderation topics seems to be founded on the idea that broader society has already figured stuff out, and so we should just 'go with it' (or as the Dutch would say, 'act normal') and it'll all work itself out... but in reality there's plenty of injustice, plenty of power imbalances, plenty of discrimination in broader society, and if we want the NixOS community to be a broadly welcoming and productive community, then it needs to be better than the societal status quo | 10:41:04 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | and that's what requires asking the uncomfortable questions | 10:41:34 |
 @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | is the scope of the problem in current nixos community described somewhere? | 10:54:27 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | like "Do not allow the Nix community to be a place for spreading ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" does not quite seem likely | 10:55:33 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | I think wording like that is maybe a reason for the backlash, but I would not know | 10:56:03 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | or at least something that will catch attention | 10:57:02 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @jkarlson:kapsi.fi
like "Do not allow the Nix community to be a place for spreading ideas rooted in fascism or bigotry" does not quite seem likely what do you mean with 'does not quite seem likely' here? | 11:28:50 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | as in not gab | 11:32:08 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | I probably read that more strong interpretation than you | 11:32:36 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I mean, I can think of at least one person in the NixOS community (or well, previously in the NixOS community) who was decidedly peddling fascist ideology and who went off the deep end during the freenode drama | 11:32:46 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | * I probably read that stronger interpretation than you | 11:32:54 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | gab would be very much their speed | 11:33:11 |
 @piegames:matrix.org | I've seen people quote a known industry bigot and not back off when pointed out. And probably a lot of other stuff that I'd know if I had the strength to read all messages. | 11:33:26 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | that is anyway one part of the description of the scope of the problem | 11:33:52 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (I'd rather not name them to prevent this discussion from becoming about a person rather than a broader concern, but I suspect that those who have been around on IRC know what I mean) | 11:33:56 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | how much harm did that person do and how were the current tools insufficient | 11:34:12 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | Emil Karlson: this feels like a very reactive approach to the problem, and I suspect you might be misunderstanding the purpose of RFC98 | 11:34:41 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | the goal of this RFC is not to resolve an acute obvious problem; it's to observe that our community is growing and these kinds of things are beginning to surface, and we need to have the conversation about what we consider acceptable before it escalates | 11:35:16 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | and I can tell you what specifically were the issues that we ran into with said unnamed person on IRC, but that's only ever going to be an illustration of a broader cultural issue | 11:35:52 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | not the full picture of what this RFC is trying to accomplish | 11:36:13 |
| * @joepie91:pixie.town is trying to find a way to explain what happened without distracting from the broader problem | 11:37:13 |
| * @joepie91:pixie.town * is trying to find a way to explain what happened without distracting from the broader problem, please hold | 11:37:18 |
| @piegames:matrix.org | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
(I'd rather not name them to prevent this discussion from becoming about a person rather than a broader concern, but I suspect that those who have been around on IRC know what I mean) I was very probably talking about somebody else, but that illustrates the point: hang around for long enough and you'll see those things come up here and there eventually. | 11:37:22 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | Emil Karlson: okay, so essentially they were doing the Just Asking Questions thing where they were framing things as a 'debate', while making hurtful and/or ignorant and/or bigoted comments in the process, or asking loaded 'questions' that were really just abusive statements masquerading behind a question mark.
this happened repeatedly, and it turned out to be very difficult to call out what they were doing, because the mere framing of it as a 'debate' almost magically excluded their behaviour from scrutiny from the perspective of a number of community members, who pattern-matched it as a "we should keep communicating and keep asking critical questions" argument (which would normally be a good thing), but who failed to recognize a) the bad-faith intentions behind it, and b) the impact that it was having on making the channel uncomfortable for others.
so when calling out their behaviour, instead of the discussion going towards "we should make sure to remain empathic and respectful and inclusive and this is what you can do to make the community a nicer place for others", it veered towards "but I have a right to freedom of speech", which incidentally is precisely what you see happening in the alt-right (including gab) - and more importantly, this pulled along some community members who are less familiar with the dynamics behind bigotry and who took the 'debate' and 'free speech' argument at face value
| 11:43:07 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | this is the major cultural problem in many tech circles, and while it is less present in the NixOS community than many others, it's still very much there: people think too much in terms of 'rational [adversarial] debate' under the belief that it is a technically optimal path to answers, and not enough in terms of the human on the other end whose emotional state is impacted in some way by what others say | 11:44:34 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | but in the reactive viewpoint, was that the typical case of an issue in nixos community? | 11:44:48 |
| @jkarlson:kapsi.fi | or more like there is no typical case? | 11:45:11 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | the NixOS community has so far been small enough that not many of these cases have surfaced; I can also certainly say that there are not many people with problematic viewpoints and bad-faith intentions like this, at least not yet... so indeed there isn't much of a 'typical case' simply because the community has been small and cohesive enough so far | 11:45:42 |
