That's not true. In fact, it's a specific misrepresentation of the CoC. Whoever planted that idea, did it in bad faith:
> This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces
when an individual is representing the project or its community. Examples of
representing a project or community include using an official project e-mail
address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed
representative at an online or offline event.
It's very specific. If you're representing the community, and you say something bigoted, then, yeah, that might be brought up. But that should be the case. No project wants its representatives doing stuff that reflects badly on the project or which creates a bad culture in the project community.
Besides, it's also just not a very good idea to post bigoted things, both in terms of making a better society and culture, and in terms of just following the Golden Rule and being nice to other people.
Well sure its never a good idea to post bigoted things online but truth is even if the CoC wasn't meant to socially persecute individuals for what they do in their private time, it will most likely happen regardless.
This is the way of life for most now. If you say anything remotely offensive and it ends up online/traceable to you. You will loose your job and most, if not all other actual job possibilities.
Yes you may argue that one should never do that (and I certainly agree) however, everyone is human and we all make mistakes. So what happens when we as a society decide to totally condemn individuals for their mistakes without allowing them to learn from them in the first place? I would wager, probably something not so nice.
You're probably outside the 95th percentile on that one, though, and good design targets the rest of the user base. I think most people probably just got annoyed by accidentally hitting those, or by them taking up real-estate or cluttering the view.
> You're probably outside the 95th percentile on that one
In what way? If you mean one handed usage, it's pretty common here when people are standing on public transport, you need to hold on with one hand. If you mean the infrequency I need it, take a look through you're list of installed apps and tell me how many require zooming? Almost all are designed specifically to avoid it.
I agree with all you have written, but there is a way to zoom in or out without using your other hand: use your lips. "Muaa" zooms out, and "auum" zooms in. This will make public transport journeys more interesting (for the others).
I probably am. I spent some time in northern Europe, where the temperature would go as low as -25°C, around the time I stayed. I was loath to deglove my barely warm hands, and used my nose instead, for some basic operations.
IIRC for trackpads at least it's been enabled by default for some time (though I believe the default gesture is a double-tap rather than a tap in the bottom-right corner).
But it's been considered a terrible design choice since 1984. It's not one of those things that we decided against long after it was put in place, Unix philosophy types were complaining about the inconsistency of that choice the day it came out.
Somewhere around 4.9 or 5.x is when I think it was best. They'd added library functionality for movies, TV, and audiobooks, which meant it was a one-stop shop for my media library on my Mac at the time. It was also still fairly lightweight, because it didn't have loads of stuff tacked on to it yet.
Really, the biggest thing I miss from iTunes, as a Google Play user, are the Smart Playlists. I loved being able to pull in every song I had from a set of artists and then shuffle through that. The "radio" features from Google just doesn't do it for me. I rarely want to listen to a bunch of music that's not in my library but which is similar to something I do have there. I'd much rather self-curate what I'm listening to. But I don't think the demand is there for that as much, now. I still wish they'd at least remove the 1000 song cap on playlists, so I could manually do this.
If you think that's unprofessional, you should see some of the drivel the FSF itself puts out.
I understand taking a position against proprietary code and systems. But to take an extremely hardline stance like they do, and to do it as childishly as the FSF often does, doesn't strike me as something that advances the cause of Free Software.
At least this is just editorializing. The FSF often engages in rhetorical flourishes that would be at home in an elementary schoolyard.
Presumption of innocence implies that the default attitude towards accusers is healthy skepticism plus a willingness to listen. This is necessary because if we are not skeptical nearly anyone can successfully attack anyone else with impunity and destroy their reputation and if we aren't willing to listen we risk ignoring victimization.
In this case the proposed victim is silent on the matter and there is not only no proof there aren't even any details. My default assumption of skepticism leads me to conclude in the total absence of any other information that the individual was fired for some other reason and the accusations of bias was erroneous.
I completely agree. My grandmother is in the Alzheimer's wing at her local nursing home, and I cannot begin to understand how the staff can do their jobs day after day. It's almost like running a daycare for elderly people.
They are so kind, and helpful, both to residents and their families, and they are just so superb at what are really difficult jobs. They deserve much more than most of them are making. They're some of the higher-paying jobs in the town, but relatively speaking, they're not high-paying.
Back when I was in middle and high school, my other grandmother was in the same home, though not in the Alzheimer's wing, and they seemed to take really good care of her, too. I wasn't as cognizant of it at the time, but talking to my parents and looking back, I can see that it's the case.
It's foolish, and, honestly, kind of offensive, to imply that pushing diversity and at the same time pushing business success are somehow at odds with each other. There was an excellent segment that talked about almost this exact thing on Reply All a few weeks ago. If you skip to the second half, I'd recommend listening to it. They talk about how businesses benefit from diversity, how diverse groups perform better and get better results than groups chosen just on "qualifications", and they also address the annoyance at the fact that "success" and "diversity" are seen as competing goals, in stark rejection of evidence. They also talk about how things that don't seem like a big deal can really wear minority employees down:
I didn't say or imply anywhere that they were at odds, nor do I think they are in general.
Rather, the business success part of the narrative was missing in this particular case, leaving an inconclusive feeling.
I recommend that you give others the benefit of the doubt and make a real effort to understand what they are trying to say, rather than assuming they are wrong merely because the comment triggers a politically-incorrect reflex. You're comment leads to an environment where people are afraid to contribute new ideas to the discussion.
"It's foolish, and, honestly, kind of offensive, to imply that pushing diversity and at the same time pushing business success are somehow at odds with each other."
Offensive? We're not even allowed to disagree with you about meta-level issues now? Nobody is being insulted or harassed, no one is being subjected to prejudicial remarks about any facet of their being -- and yet it's still, somehow, offensive?
By saying, "Pushing to get more even representation is at odds with business success or product quality," which is often outright stated and even more often pretty directly implied, people are basically saying, "Those 'diverse' people are inherently poorer workers with worse quality output." That's the subtext, and that's what I think is kind of offensive about that line of argument.
I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.
As I understand it from friends and acquaintances, being asked again and again, "So where are you from?" becomes exceptionally irritating over time and can feel isolating. It might be a question that anyone can get asked, but it gets asked much more frequently of people who appear to be "foreign" in some way. It's not a big deal once or twice, but those incidents pile up over time and it can get disheartening, especially when asked of people who are from the US. When they answer, they often get the follow up question, "No, no, where are you really from?" It's a good way to unintentionally make a person feel unwelcome or like an "other" in a group, because after many repetitions, it hammers home the point, "You don't fit in, and I can plainly see it."
And the problem with the math question is that when asked of a woman or a girl, it generally does come loaded with "because usually women suck at math". Math isn't juggling, which is an uncommon talent; math is a basic, fundamental skill in STEM fields. Acting surprised or questioning how a female coworker "got so good at math" is just one more way that people accidentally perpetuate outdated, outmoded stereotypes about women in STEM fields. It's a question that almost nobody would think to ask of a male coworker. Because math skills are taken as a given in these sorts of fields.
These things don't seem like a big deal until you're on the receiving end of them again and again and again, day after day, month after month, year after year. Just like a little trickle of stream will eventually erode a valley where there wasn't one previously, over time all the little slights and knocks can wear people down.
Nobody is saying, "Don't be nice to your coworkers, and don't be social." They are saying, "Be mindful of the things you say, because they can hurt people unintentionally." Maybe you don't see the problem, personally, but if it's something that bothers a lot of people and they ask you to please cut it out, is it really that big a deal to try to cut it out? It's not like it's some kind of major encumbrance upon you.
> I think that you're failing to see the context of these things. You're looking at them as isolated incidents when they are not.
No, what you're doing is inventing a context (bad man hurt woman, bad white man hurting good minority etc), and arguing for a lexicon that implicitly nurtures the contextual penumbra and emanations of left-wing culture warriors. And you're singing a soothing melody of how this tool (it is a tool) will be used to fight injustice. But that's not how it goes. That's never how it goes.
Given that I'm a man, I'm certainly not inventing any context that involves caveman speak about "bad man hurt woman". I wasn't even really talking about the direct interpersonal context of the remarks, I was talking about the remarks in the context of the larger experience of the person on the receiving end of them.
You can't just ignore the larger life experiences that people have. You can't treat every social interaction in some kind of hermetic isolation. Because that's not how social interactions happen. There's the context of the interpersonal relationship(s) of the people involved in an interaction, their history, their previous interactions. And, as I said, there's the context of each person's life experience that they bring to any social interaction.
Obviously, we don't think about this sort of thing on a deep level all the time. It'd short out every social interaction if we constantly tried to puzzle out every nuance of this context.
But we don't have to, we have short-hands, and we have "models" that we follow that work well most of the time. But when some large portion of a group of people says, "Hey, this part of the social interaction model is broken, and it's hurtful," there's no good reason to not at least reevaluate it and think about it. It's good to spend some time considering the nuances sometimes, even if it's not good to do it all the time.
If you really don't like the academic term "microaggression", then just think about it as "mild rudeness". Mild rudeness isn't the worst thing ever. But it's still not a way you should behave toward colleagues. You should endeavor to be polite, professional, and courteous towards those you work with. Personally, I'd want to know if I was accidentally doing something rude. I'd be a bit mortified a first, but I'd rather know so that I can curtail that behavior.
I think it's kind of absurd how negative the reaction is to, "Hey, can you please stop saying that; it's honestly a bit rude." It's not like it costs people anything. Courtesy is free, and it's no great imposition. And even when the courteousness involves more delicate matters of race, gender, marginalization, etc. it remains free.
> This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community. Examples of representing a project or community include using an official project e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.
It's very specific. If you're representing the community, and you say something bigoted, then, yeah, that might be brought up. But that should be the case. No project wants its representatives doing stuff that reflects badly on the project or which creates a bad culture in the project community.
Besides, it's also just not a very good idea to post bigoted things, both in terms of making a better society and culture, and in terms of just following the Golden Rule and being nice to other people.