Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
Rimu
What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
Kicking from all Matrix PieFed rooms
Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rimu has been manufacturing non-stop drama for weeks. He ignores multiple offers from multiple parties to de-escalate, and now he bans someone for trying to promote non-discriminatory language. He has also now cut off a PieFed admin from any and all support and ability to contribute to the software.
Oh and the real kicker ? Rimu did all this after his big grand post about how he is stepping back from drama and hiding away from users.
I know Iām wandering through a nest of bees here, but this cuts both ways, I think. No, this particular word isnāt important, and changing it is fine. Any one word can be fine. But similarly why did this user show up asking it to be changed? Is it a huge negative impact to leave it for the majority of users either? It feels like someone pulled a dictionary of newly bad words off a blog and grepped through the source with the perceived mission of contributing to the healing of the world, as a most charitable assumption on their intentions.
I think no one is worried about any one word, or any one PR. The concern is that the goalposts seem to change from words that 95% of people agree are bad, to words 60% of people agree are bad, to words like this that maybe 1% of people feel are bad, and thereās a grey area here on what level of badness is bad enough for all of us to change to accomodate one or two peopleās sensitivities, and to what level those people should be responsible for their own sensitivities.
This is a civilization and cultural level spectrum which has āchange for your societyā and āsociety bends to you without changeā at its ends, and different people fall at different points on this spectrum, which will put that at different points on the āhow bad does a word need to be for me to be a bad person for typing it in my own codeā spectrum. And for me, I feel āstupidā is over my line and is a noisy change that might beget other more petty changes with no benefit to the vast majority, despite how simple it is. But you clearly feel more strongly, and I can tolerate that too.
All that having been said, I have no opinion or context about this particular user being banned from this particular chat, unrelated to the ethics of the PR.
They were looking at the code and noticed it? I donāt think there is much more to it than that.
As of now, I canāt see how. And if it did, it can be changed again. Its easy to revert as well. So why would an unlikely unknown factor in?
This one isnāt exactly new.
Think about a word that 95% of people agree is a really terrible word. How far back until that same word would have 60% consider it bad. How far back do you go before its a word used and considered completely acceptable and appropriate language to use? How were things for the people that word was applied to?
Just saying, maybe the percentage doesnāt matter too much. Maybe if its a change with only a net positive impact, then its not worth worrying about - now or some imaginary future where every adjective is banned. Maybe if just a few people are hurt by something, and the choice is between doing nothing (and them being hurt) and saying āno worries, send the changeā and not hurting a few people, we can justā¦ Not hurt them? Seems straightforward.
Again, I donāt understand why a āline needs to be drawnā based on some imaginary attack on the English language. Whatās the threat here? That someone submits a change while saying the word āaardvarkā is offensive? Just reject that pr and move on.
(Unless āaardvarkā becomes some sort of racist slang or something, then, of course, accept it)
I think we agree more than we disagree, but are at different points on the spectrum. For example:
This isnāt meant as a āgotchaā, but in this paragraph about not drawing a line, you drew a line. You decided aardvark was obviously too far, and that that PR should be rejected. How you feel about aardvark is how most of us already feel about the word āstupidā.
But more broadly:
I think most people (in this community, on this thread) are not pro hurting people. What I feel is more like: if you are hurt by the word āstupidā, or self-identify as stupid, you should not. No one is using it as a slur against your people. There are slurs! They exist, itās just that this isnāt one of them, in the way people mean it. And so I feel like, in this case, at this point in the spectrum, these people should heal themselves rather than change software / the culture / the world to suit their insecurities.
If course itās a squishy grey area, but if I found the word aardvark offensive because some kids called me aardvark at school growing up or something and bullied me, thatās tragic, and itās very real for hypothetical me, but thatās something I should work through in therapy, rather than something I should make the concern of everyone around me. In my opinion. And I feel like being triggered by the word āstupidā is in the same category, also in my opinion.
If anything, and Iām stepping in bees again, it feels kind of egocentric to see someone write āreplies are stupidā in their own code, in response to presumably their opinion about a standard or spec or something, and to see theyāve written that and think āthis is about meā.
It was meant as a random word that there is no known issue around. One that there arenāt years worth of discussions about, one that if you search you arenāt going to get page after page of links discussing. Thats it.
I agree!
If someone is so impacted that theyād like to see a word not being used, I donāt think āBut you shouldnāt feel that wayā is helpful.
Completely individualized example, not broad usage, wouldnāt really apply. That said - I would hope that the people around that hypothetical person would absolutely avoid the word āaardvarkā if it was triggering for that person. Wouldnāt you? Would you just say āaardvarkā randomly to a person who was teased for years?
Its a function used in the identification of low effort posts, absolutely nothing to do with self identification and everything to do with identifying the comments of others as, in this case, āstupidā. Its not about a spec or a standard. Its quite specifically and literally identifying user comments as āstupidā.
And letās circle back to the main point here, which is pretty straightforward - is even discussing the idea of a word being offensive to some a reason to ban someone?
I would say quite obviously it isnāt, and yet it is what rimu did here.
Furthering the point, it seems rimu banned me for my participation in this thread, along with a few dozen others.
It seems rimu would like to be the ultimate poster child for this community.