Unacceptable behaviour
Posted by George Wright Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:38:00 GMT
I’m not usually one for jumping on flamewar bandwagons, but after seeing this, I felt I had to say something.
After having skim read the comments (there are a lot and most of them repeat each other), I did notice one disturbing thing; the people backing up the original post tend to be male, and the people objecting to the image are female. Or at least, that’s what I can muster from the usernames.
This is a horrendous rift in the community. There’s a big debate taking place on the original post’s comments section which basically involves two disjoint arguments, but I think that the majority of them are missing the point entirely.
Most of the supporters are simply pointing out that it’s legally fine, whereas the opposers are pointing out that morally it’s unacceptable. In the end, neither of these matter because whether you feel it’s acceptable or legal or not, this is pushing women away from the open source community and the comments in the post reflect this. If you don’t believe me, ask a few women how they feel about the post and I’m sure you’ll find the majority will find it offensive.
I’m not going to get involved with giving my opinion on the picture or the surrounding text as, quite frankly, the opinion isn’t what matters. How we perceive it is irrelevant; how the rest of the world perceives it is what really matters, and being a public blog that represents the community, this matters to us as a whole.
Ridiculous outcry about a pair of legs.
Get over it already, okay? Jesus…
As I said, missing the point.
Someone got their blog hits :) who cares, the moment anyone starts to voice an opinion on any of these subjects on a planet the original post just hangs around for longer and gets more hits.
Well it’s a general problem on the Internet. Once you are mostly anonymous you will do/say all sorts of things that you would probably never try to pull if you were in the middle of a crowded park. Even if you are the type of person to forcibly and intentionally embarrass or harrass someone or a group of people there are ways to deal with that in meatspace with proper procedures. We need a set of procedures to deal with them as a community. Griefers are Griefers. They exist. Simple question is do we deal with them and if so how.
Wow. Anyone who thinks that is appropriate to post to a syndicated blog has problems. I don’t care if it’s legal or not.
In fact, all the people arguing if it is legal are not… Yeah, they also have problems.
I’m glad that most of the people in the open source community that I deal with aren’t like this.
Most people who are ‘supporters’ (this is your black/white definition of it) talked about how the real perversion is trying to see the devil in each human action (I’m quoting one of the reactions literary).
In fact is the argumentation about the legality of this not very often used, at all.
So you are actually lying publicly to back up your own argument.
Your argument is that females are being pushed away by this single event or by males posting pictures of a female’s legs. You claim that I should ask a few women about this and you promised that they would all find this offensive.
That means I must have a quite specific taste in females (I don’t believe that, btw) because of all the females I asked, none of them found it offensive.
I kindly invite you to back up your argument better instead trying to do this holy war of purism using stupid propaganda slogans like the ones you posted here (females being pushed away because somebody posts some photos of a female’s legs).
It’s always the same with you hypocrites. On all of our community places (like forums, mailing lists and IRC) you guys go on and on about how great you guys are because you can point to people who said or did something wrong to . And at the same time making this false picture of how much better it would be if this or if that about social interaction would be like how you want it to be.
Fact is that we are talking about human behaviour and that human behaviour is not black and white. Therefore neither is social interaction among humans.
Let humans be humans and let them interact in a normal way. Stop trying to make the people within the many opensource communities perfect robots that behave exactly the way you or your ideology want. It wont happen. Get over it.
Because THAT behaviour of YOU is pushing away much more people than posting one photo of a female’s legs is. Your attitude of dictating people what is bad and what is good is also pushing away females.
What I think is pushing away females really a lot is holy boys like you telling people how we should take special care of delicate feminine sensibilities of females. Females just want be treated equal.
I’ll quote one of the few female coders in the GNOME community:
“The idea that women need to be treated as delicate sensitive creatures just makes me feel patronized and separate from the rest of the community”
This indeed doesn’t mean that we must all start posting photos of females’s legs. It also doesn’t mean we have to start trying to find the devil and evil in each and every questionable action of all of the community members.
Because that’s exactly what you guys are doing. And it truly is sickening.
Please start your own community of purity if you want that. And don’t invite me.
I was simplifying massively because I have better things to do that to give a detailed statistical analysis of the comments posted. Accusing me of lying is, quite frankly, outrageous given that my statements are, in fact, true. Maybe ‘most’ was a little too strong a qualifier, but I’d certainly say a significant proportion are debating the legality.
In any case, this is all irrelevant as I said because I don’t care about the content. What I do care about is that people are offended by this and nobody seems to have spotted that.
I’m not trying to be some “holy boy” or even trying to treat women as “delicate flowers”. I’m simply unhappy that a significant proportion of people are offended by this post and that nobody has even remotely apologised yet.
This isn’t one person who’s upset. It’s an entire group of people.
Maybe you should read my post more thoroughly before replying.
And resorting to personal insults? Poor show.
@pvanhoof
I think your definition of “treating women equally” is off if you think it includes posting photos like that of your fellow developers.
Yes, I know the photo wasn’t of a developer. But it sounds like that’s what you think what treating women equally is?
Honey, try that with me and I’m hurting you.
agree with everything that pvanhoof said
ugh. I’m glad kde developers seem to be more socially developed than the twits defending that blogger… but now some poor woman has an embarassing photo of her up on teh intarwebs and it’ll probably be there forever. hope she doesn’t find out. and now I’m more paranoid about wearing nice clothing in public. it almost makes me want to go back to wearing sweat pants and baggy shirts so that I can pass as a guy. :P well, I guess at least we live in an age where I’m allowed to do that :P ugh.
blauzahl,
we don’t really want to take pictures of you…
I find it slightly worrying that people are commenting in this way and obviously haven’t got the point of this post.
Either that, or they’re quite happy to annoy a lot of people and use free speech as a justification for it.
What you are basically saying is that if you want to be part of a opensource community, you have to become a perfect robot that behaves exactly like how you want the person to behave.
Because otherwise it affects the community as a whole.
Right?
This is propaganda and bullshit. Fear uncertainty and doubt.
In case you will reply with that I didn’t read your blog, here’s what you wrote that is specifically related to this:
“How the rest of the world perceives it is what really matters, and being a public blog that represents the community, this matters to us as a whole.”
1) You are aware that not all of the people who end up being syndicated on the planets asked to be policed by people like you, right?
2) Why would the world perceive this as representing the community, at all? Please elaborate (because I disagree and I don’t believe you, at all).
3) Why does it mean that being syndicated on a planet you also have to be robot-perfect. Actually, ‘perfect’ is the wrong word for it. What you really seem to aim for is perfect according to George Wright. What makes you think the community as a whole agrees with your point of view of what is perfect?
Hint: I seem to disagree, yet I sometimes do some opensource code myself. Nothing much, just small things. Nonetheless I don’t feel persuaded to join you on your opinion of what you think is perfect or rather the right behaviour towards females or rather having the right attitude when posting.
Nobody needs to tell me what I can write and what I can’t. Nobody except me, myself and I needs to police my behaviour, my actions and my writings.
You, George Wright, don’t.
I never said everyone should be perfect; stop exaggerating what I said for your own benefit.
All I am saying with this blog is that people are upset and that people should be civil to one another.
I should think that is fairly obvious if you read the post, but you’re clearly trying to find little technicalities to trip me up with (such as debating over the definition of “world”), and failing to see the whole picture.
Of course if you don’t want to be civil to other people then that is your right. Just don’t expect any respect in return.
Now that’s a good idea. Fight people’s blog content with your own personal respect for the individual and let people decide for themselves individually.
Instead of policing in blog items and comments what people can and what people can’t write in their own personal blogs that accidentally happen to be syndicated on one of the planets.
Try that instead of speaking on behalf of a group of people.
@pvanhoof
“Nobody needs to tell me what I can write and what I can’t. Nobody except me, myself and I needs to police my behaviour, my actions and my writings.”
You can write whatever you like. I don’t really care. I, however, reserve the right to not flirt with you at parties. :D
But if your behaviour or actions infringe on me or anyone I care about, I’m coming down hard on you.
No, this post of his will NOT take females out of FOSS. I am a female, and I don’t give a damn about the “incident”. I don’t feel insulted, and I won’t delete my ubuntu partition over it.
In other words George, you and everyone else, are overreacting. Get over it. Don’t expect a Balcan person, or a Chinese person, or an Amazonian tribal person to have the same behavior as you do – even if the moral code is the same. These are different cultures and respond differently on the SAME moral values. Meaning, that Nicu knew it was wrong, but it was alright, because his social experiences allow him to do that.
Sure, Nicu could have removed that post from the planets, but if Nicu has never lived abroad he can’t guess the western taboos. For all he knows, all the porn he rents is all made in the west.
And that girl, if she didn’t want perverts, she should have worn something longer. I was young once, and I was careful what I was wearing, exactly because: “This. Is. BAAAALCANS”.
I never said anything about my own personal respect; I used a general case whereby I said that if you are not going to be civil to people, then you should not expect respect in return.
Unfortunately, in this case, he’s acting in an uncivilised manner which is reflecting on the community and it will be the community which loses its respect as well as him.
If the guy has accidentally been syndicated (I find it hard to believe it was an “accident” but fine, let’s go with that), then it is up the people who added him in the first place to remove him if he doesn’t want to accept the responsibilities of not pissing people off by acting in an uncivilised manner. Unless of course, those people don’t mind him angering their readers, but I can’t see why they’d want that.
ps. (@George) And no, you don’t need to protect females against blog items. They can take care of themselves just fine.
And if you truly want equality, you better let them take care of it themselves.
After thousands of years of human interaction among both males and females, have both genders developed surprising interesting strategies for dealing with the typical behaviour of members of the other gender.
If you really respect the female gender as much as you seem to want to show respect, you would instead of over protecting them be puzzled by their ingenious strategies in dealing with things like male arrogance. Let them play their game.
That means allowing a certain variety of behaviour among human beings.
Perhaps until one human being hurts another human being. In which case the law system is hopefully more capable at handling the problem than any of us is.
@blauzahl: Yep, it’s your right (and probably a good strategy) to ignore my presence me at such parties.
If my intent would be to hurt somebody, I would likely accept that this somebody or somebody who cares about the person is going to come down hard on me.
My instinct might try to escape, though.
The original post had no intention of hurting anybody personally. So that is not related to this case in my opinion.
Eugenia: It won’t push out those already in it, because, hey, I already know that most people aren’t like that. But newbies? Do you really want that to be how your community is perceived? I think the comments have been more telling than the original post.
And, yeah, I could wear a burqua, but some days I really don’t want to. Having other people force you to wear something because “they can’t control themselves” sucks. And that’s a really stupid argument. Unfortunately, it does play out that way to some extent…
Maybe I’ll blog about it. Maybe not.
Oh, and “western taboos”? From his post it was clear he knew that what he was doing wasn’t considered “ethical” and that it was something she would have disapproved of.
This is stupid. Perhaps you should stop the non-sense and delete this blog-post because it’s counter-productive.
Any regular post can be liked or disliked by people. Love it or hate it.
Women like to be appreciated. Nothing wrong with a pair of legs. We all (erm..) have legs. Chill out. You see that everywhere on the internet, on the TV (music video clips?), on the real life.
You guys are acting like you have something against women. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny
You see naked chicks on deviantart.com along with anime and other stuff. Nobody complains about that.
Take it as it is and stop whining about useless things and get something real useful done with your precious time.
Citing human evolution as a reason to not be civil to people (in this case, females) is ridiculous.
You keep pulling my statements out of context and making up more over and above what I’ve been saying.
If you don’t agree that people should be civil to one another then I fear the sort of world you’d like to live in.
The fact is that a proportion of people are offended by this post (I know that for a fact, given private conversations and looking at the public outcry), and you’re sitting here hurling insults at me for pointing this out.
I haven’t expressed any opinions one way or the other about the original image posted or the text surrounding it, nor do I intend to. All I did was merely point out that it is causing a rift in the community and that arguing over such things was irrelevant and that what does matter is that people are offended and that this is a problem.
And yet you seem to have extrapolated all sorts of bizarre and creative things about my worldly view and attitude towards other humans (amongst many other things) from what I can only think is your imagination.
George, you seem to be stuck in a backwards way of thinking, akin to the idea of men dueling one another for the honor of a maiden, and quite frankly, I find that offensive in and of itself.
This is the 21st century. Women have fought hard to not be seen as weak and sensitive and needing to be taken care of by men. It is not people who take lewd pictures of women that threaten this evolution, it is people like you who refuse to recognize the change.
Furthermore, I disagree with your claim that the commenters who side with the poster seem to be male, and the commenters who are offended seem to be female; in fact, I would say that it seems to be the other way around to me, in that more planet-syndicated women have voiced non-offense than what you’re suggesting, and the vast majority of the offended are clearly male.
The woman chose to wear the clothes she wore. She obviously had a reasonable expectation that people would look at her legs, since they are completely visible. Male passers-by who admire their legs are a given. Women admire physical traits of men just as much.
The picture in question has no identifiable traits that could lead anybody to guess who the woman is; if the woman herself were to see the picture a week or a month later, even she probably would not recognize herself. As far as anyone is concerned, the picture has no identity.
Now quit trying to drag us back to the feudalistic era and grow up.
That’s nature. If I go out shopping naked, there will be a lot of men who won’t “control themselves”. In the west they might just leave the matter to a few cellphone photographs, but in the East might get you raped on the spot.
This woman knows that.
So it’s not about YOU, here in the US or UK or whatever. It’s about HER in Romania. She knows the world she lives in, and she HAS to adapt, or she will get eaten alive. If she doesn’t like it, she should move to the west. I DID. I don’t like the Mediterranean/Balkan mentality any more than you do, but I have come to accept how things are run over there.
And there you come, a westerner to tell this person that he was wrong and that you are angry at him. Sorry, but this is not right. You know nothing about this person, about his society’s values, about how things work over there, about what’s acceptable over there or not. You judge the case with YOUR values and that’s just not fair.
And nobody said to wear a burqua, let’s not be silly here. But challenging men to “contain themselves” is not logical either. It’s like you have this very aggressive male goat, and you go poke at his eye all the time, and then you are actually WONDERING why the hell he hit you with his horns.
Sorry, but that’s how it is.
You have also managed to miss the point of my post.
I will spell it out here in a much condensed version:
“There are people offended by this. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s acceptable or not. A significant proportion of people think it’s not. You have a duty on a publically syndicated blog not to be offensive.”
You have also fallen into the trap of stating that I, apparently, have tried to heroically defend women here. I haven’t. As I said in the original post, I haven’t (and will not) express any opinion about the image or text.
What I have done is pointed out that everyone is missing the point and that it’s irrelevant whether you think it’s acceptable or not, given that people are offended and nothing is being done about this, which I find rather sad. I also pointed out that it seems that many of the people who are offended seem to be women, and that many of the supporters seem to be men. I even went so far as to say this is a dodgy statistic.
So maybe people should look at what I’m actually saying before they jump to conclusions. I am not simply stating what everyone else has said, because I deem it all irrelevant.
I’m also disappointed with the number of personal insults that have been directed at me as a result of this. This is another area where the open source community fails it, in much the same respect as the original blog post, because people seem incapable sometimes of being civilised.
Thanks for cutting right to the point!
So far nobody has really stood up and said “this is wrong because…” …and given the right reasons. George did. You’re saying he should stay out of it because he’s male? “Women can take care of themselves… hold on while I grope another.” Come on! Plenty of guys are offended by this attitude. (As shown by a few irc channels I’m talking in.)
Saying that “women want equality, therefore we should , otherwise you are medieval” is the wrong argument to use. Do you even see the irony?
Eugenia: So if the blacks in the States didn’t like racism, they could’ve just moved, right?
>You have a duty on a publically syndicated blog not to be offensive
Have you ever thought that for Nicu and his peers this was not offensive and so he didn’t see the need to censor himself in the eyes of the westerners?
I am sure not.
You know, if aliens ever land on this rock, how are you going to deal with their normal behavior for them of “eating of old”, “killing the opposite sex during sex”, or “smell like pigs”?
“Civilised”. You keep using that word. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.
And it isn’t your job to be the censorship police. It isn’t your job to protect people from being offended. There will always be someone offended by something, and if they’re loud enough, they can cause more trouble than they prevent.
>So if the blacks in the States didn’t like racism, they could’ve just moved, right?
Racism is different. It does not come from naturally endorsed sexual endorphins, but from society. In our case you ask men to battle their nature while challenging them constantly. In racism is just a social thing that is developed later in life in some societies.
And besides, you honestly think that many blacks haven’t moved to avoid racism? They have! They moved to different cities, states, neighborhoods. It’s not a nice thing, but it has happened. Until the society straights up, this might be the only thing left to do.
You can’t just change a society in a day, neither you, who lives so far away from Nicu’s world, have the right to straight up a person who all his life knows no better.
So, don’t change the subject to racism, because I could start saying the same things about how the westerners see muslims and how they despise their way of life. Unless you learn to embrace other cultures, get to THEIR SHOES, I suggest you let this go.
Well almost never agree with you Eugenia, but in this case you’re making a whole lot of sense.
I don’t see anything wrong with an anonymized picture of someone’s legs. As has been pointed out, if your skirt is that short, then you have made the conscious decision to have your legs viewed up to the point where your skirt covers them. Nothing is visible in that picture that was not intended to be made visible (and in fact, since her face is tactfully not shown, even less is visible than was intended).
Sure, some people were clearly offended. So be it. Many cultures and religions have values that are easy to offend, and trying to dance around them is fruitless and regressive. See the controversy over the Mohammed cartoons. The sooner we can all freely make fun of everything equally, the better this world will be.
That said, nicu would have done a lot better to tag the post in such a way to avoid having it syndicated on the planet, mostly because it just isn’t OSS related. I’m equally bored by people posting about what they made for dinner, as someones random pictures from the subway. Luckily planetkde seems to have much less of these trivial posts.
How can the Westerners control their nature?
I’m not trying to change a society in a day, I was hoping that after 20 years of change it would at least not become worse. I know Nicu’s world, and that’s exactly my problem. That’s why I say it’s typical Romanian stuff, I’m sure he doesn’t see a problem with it.
And “embrace other people’s culture”? Really. While trey’re trying so hard to be “European”, now that they’re in the union. Is that the image you want to portray? Ah… boys will be boys.
There are many people like him who knew no better and have changed. Even without moving. Staying in Romania does not give you a free pass to be a jerk, I’m sorry.
Eugenia: From nicu: I didn’t had the guts to reach my backpack and take out the SLR with really big lenses
I think it is very clear from this line that he knows it is not a proper thing to do. And it sounds like if he’d done so, she would have done something. So I’m imposing my morals on him? If anything, I’m stating my morals, as I’d like other prospective women out there to know that not all FOSS developers are jerks — most of the guys are very sweet.
Otherwise, I don’t know what to make of your post. It sounds like:
Burquas? Don’t be silly, but otherwise you’ll get raped, kthxbai.
And Greek, and Turkish, and whatever in the region. It is “typical”. So if it’s “typical”, why are you even offended from it? It’s normal – for them!
Excuse me, but do you have any evidence that Nicu himself gives a flying monkey about the EU? Or that it cares about your moral values?
Actually, it does. That’s the part you don’t get. As I said earlier, if you don’t like the ecosystem there as a woman, you move out. It will take years and years to change it, so there is absolutely no reason to sit down and be “offended” about it. You just ignore it.
I mean, come on. It’s just some meat. Jeez. I have some, you have some. What’s the big deal about it?
My “moral values”? Haha. Cute. Thanks for the reply, but I’m out of this. I’ll forward your post to any relatives I have there.
Eugenia: Men can “control themselves” whether they like to admit it or not. I’ve “controlled myself” for 24 years now with no problems. Anything else is an excuse. Are you really trying to claim that Nicu was helplessly drawn to sneaking a picture of the woman’s legs?
Nicu knew it was offensive as well, he said so himself: “I didn’t had the guts to reach my backpack and take out the SLR with really big lenses” So while it’s nice to blame the controversy on those evil westerners with their values the fact is that nicu isn’t that innocent. :P
I know that! And I even wrote about it on my first post. But that’s not the point. The point is that he can get away with it, because that’s how his society is structured. I clearly wrote on my first post that different cultures will behave differently on the SAME moral values. Because their society allows, or disallows, certain behavior.
This is a classic free speech issue. What’s more important, the right to say whatever you want (within reason) or the image of the community?
As a liberal, I tend to think free speech is pretty important - this week it’s a pair of legs that is offensive, next week it’s any type of criticism of KDE, and the next week it’s everything except the talking points put out by the PR team.
There always has to be a balance, of course, but really this strikes me as pretty tame. I mean, an anonymous pair of legs? Really? Maybe the people getting offended here should get some thicker skin, because I can pretty much guarantee this is not the worst thing they’re ever going to see.
If people want to stop his blog from being syndicated in the future, then so be it. But I’m not sure he deserves this public witch hunt that some people seem to be on.
my my. i’ve no problem with people posting pictures like that, i don’t even mind the religiously inclined to speak up - i just don’t want to see it in a software dev related planet. in the context of the planet this post was published, it’s just wrong. this whole moral/legal debate is just annoying. morality is what you make out of it - best thing to really bash your heads in. and it’s beside the point. let people publish what they want. having a post syndicated is .. wee-ell .. something different. after syndication, a blog post is presented as part of a developer community. and that’s where the guy just stopped thinking what kind of light he sheds on fedora. to be quite honest: one childish blog post later and the guy should go back to hiding and mature like a good cheese (several years please). this is godwin all over again - you freaking can’t debate morality.
I’m amused that all the women in Romania were just told to move out.
I completely agree with your original post George – this kind of behaviour pushes women away from involvement in open projects.
The poster’s behaviour promotes an image of himself as an immature horny teenager – not exactly the kind of person the average lady would feel inclined to invest her free time working with.
I hope at the very least he gets a stern warning from the syndicators. If he insists on posting that kind of material, it should be tagged so that it doesn’t appear in an official community blog planet, or he should be de-syndicated.
I don’t believe free speech comes into it; he still has the freedom to say whatever he wants, but I don’t think that stuff like that should be syndicated.
And to those muttering the word “censorship” I emplore you to look up the meaning of that word.
It’s just a pair of legs.
You keep presenting this issue as if everybody secretly knows that Nicu’s act was bad and that everyone suggesting otherwise are a predominantly male minority of pedantics, misfits and bullies trying to cover up the holy Truth.
If anything, the reality is that hardly anyone is focusing on the legality of this matter and plenty of members of the community, male and female, have stated that they do not find Nicu’s particular post offensive.
There is nothing indicating that Nicu’s photo is pushing women away. There is nothing indicating that Nicu’s photo makes the rest of the world perceive our community as bad.
Just get over those freaking legs already (and yes, it really is just legs on that particular photo, even if the legs physically belong to a real woman).
Just because some people have stated they’re fine with it does not mean that it’s acceptable. Many people have also said they’re opposed to it. Are you saying that somehow because of your belief that these people are wrong their opinions don’t matter?
George Wright: When have I ever said that?
You implied it. I asked for confirmation.
Why didn’t this “Nicu” ganster just ask the woman out?
They could be off having a nice drink, and a little bit of kissing, and it would have saved us from having a retarded flamewar.
George Wright: I did not imply anything. You were the one making the argument that ”How we perceive it is irrelevant; how the rest of the world perceives it is what really matters”.
Now show us what the rest of the world perceives, in light of the fact that both males and females have stated they do not find the post offensive.
Plato: Hopefully, that’s what happen in most cases.
Just because you’ve found some males and some females who don’t find it offensive does not mean that EVERYONE does not find it offensive. I have stated that a significant proportion of the people who have commented on here and the original post (as well as other places like mjg59’s blog) have found it offensive. This is enough to make it a problem.
Just to repeat one last time: just because some people are ok with it does not mean everyone is.
Personal blog. Who gives a shit? If people don’t like it, DESYNDICATE. I hope someone posts goatse one of these days.
George Wright: Who have suggested that everyone is okay with it? (and no, I didn’t suggest it - I didn’t ‘imply’ it either)
Just to repeat one last time: just because some people are not ok with it does not mean everyone is.
So don’t speak on behalf of the community as a whole.
Thanks and don’t invite me to your opensource community of purism. I’m not interested in fanatic people - that includes the religious ‘free software or die’ idiots -. The fanatics are just wasting people’s time.
Most people who are into any of those opensource communities start with the core concept that with the right freedoms you can do better engineering.
They attach to that a bunch of morals and cultural values. Which is fine and human.
But act like a fanatic and I’ll ask you to leave me alone.
Puristic behaviour like condemning each and every act that isn’t 1000% according to your holy values and/or spreading propaganda like that it affects our community as a whole is perceived by people like me as stupid and false.
Now get back at your editor and do some more engineering in freedom.
I’m a bit surprised that you seem to keep blowing my statements out of proportion. I will repeat again that I have not expressed any opinion on the act in question; I have simply said that there are people who are upset about it, and that this is unacceptable in itself, whether or not the act is unacceptable in your eyes.
I’m not speaking ‘on behalf’ of the community. I’m simply pointing out what is there to see, plainly, but which nobody seemed to have picked up on.
You keep using such words as purity and fanatic, but yet I have not said anything about the act. I do, however, think that an apology should be forthcoming given that a lot of people are upset about it.
In this case, not everyone needs to be upset about it; if a significant proportion are offended then that is enough. It does not work the other way around; a significant proportion of people not being offended does not signify that it should be fine or acceptable to behave in this way.
As for ‘acting like a fanatic’, I fail to see how it is ‘fanatical’ to expect a bit of common courtesy in public places. I wouldn’t care if it was a private blog, but since it was syndicated in public in a place which reflects the views of the community then it is unacceptable. It is unprofessional at best.
I also still do not care for your personal insults. They are unwelcome and in a very similar vein to the complaint I have made here.
One final thing; where have I condemned “each and every act that isn’t 1000% according to [my] holy values”? I would like to see evidence of me complaining about “each and every act”.
I find it hard to take you seriously after you hurling several personal insults and making accusations up on the spot. It reads as if you’re clutching at straws.
Why would this person have to apologize for something that is, according to what you are now trying to explain, not wrong?
As if the people reading the planets are the ones who can dictate the content.
As if those (few) people who complained are worth apologizing for.
But it gets even better. According to what you just said, the blogger DIDN’T do anything wrong but JUST BECAUSE a bunch of whiners complained he HAS to apologize for something that was not wrong in the first place?
Dude … that’s not just fanatic, that’s sick.
Bloggers who are syndicated are not like gladiators who must die for the pleasures of the public.
Let me remind you that gladiators where slaves that had no human rights and had to perform until death.
In MY culture, George Wright, is slavery much more immoral than taking pictures of a female’s legs.
So NO, nobody must do any apology.
The fanatics just need to stop whining about something that was not a problem in the first place and they need to stop trying to pump their holy cultural values in our arses.
Because clearly, we’re not accepting them.
facepalm
Please, please, ‘pvanhoof’ or whoever you are, go back to school and learn how to present a clear and consistent argument.
You’re embarrassing yourself.
So you’re denying that the act isn’t unprofessional in itself?
I suspect most companies would disagree with you on that one.
I never said it’s not wrong; you’re ignoring the concept of context. Things can be fine in certain contexts but unacceptable in others. This is what I’m driving at, but you’re too busy claiming “religious fanaticism” to see this.
If it was a private blog your arguments would hold some weight, but unfortunately it’s not. It’s a syndicated blog on a free software technology blog site. As such it not only voices his opinions but is also perceived as those of other projects.
You’re quick to point out that only a “few” people have objected to it. I would like to see hard statistical evidence of this; at the moment you’re extrapolating hypotheses from a sample size that is statistically irrelevant. Because of this, the worst case scenario situation applies and in the interests of the community it should be assumed that a significant proportion of people have been offended.
I find it a real shame that you’re quite happy to pull conclusions and arguments out of thin air with no evidence to back them up whatsoever.
And one final thing: planets who syndicate private blogs don’t change the statute of the private blogs into a public ones.
It just means they syndicate.
If you want to complain, complain to the maintainer of the planet aggregator software. Not to the individual who has a private blog.
Doing that is just being aggressively offensive towards the individual’s rights to freely express his personal opinion, feelings and whatever on his personal online space.
My aggressively offensive I mean that you act as if only your culture should be the one in this world defining what can and what can’t be written.
ps. And by your culture I don’t mean: the UK. In the UK there are millions of subcultures.
The blogger obviously knows he’s syndicated. With the privilege of being syndicated comes responsibility.
If he doesn’t want to take those responsibilities he should request to be removed.
George Wright:
Of course it does exactly work the other way around - there is nothing magical about people who are easily offended that somehow grants them more rights than those who aren’t.
And would you care to elaborate on why your take on responsibility is more true than his? And don’t say ‘because some people are offended by his post’, because there is plenty of people who are offended by your inclinations at censorship as well.
Bullshit. The blogger has to do nothing and the planet maintainer should show gratitude for the free content the blogger provides.
The funny thing is that nearly ALL of the planet maintainers do this and that ONLY the holy boys who constantly whine about what we can and what we can’t write are the ones who think that it’s the bloggers who should have gratitude.
In fact, both the bloggers and the planet maintainers usually have a fairly good understanding already. They do just fine.
If you think you can do better, that your policing would be better performed, then please start a planet.gwright.org and stop whining about other people’s planets.
That’s called a free and competing market. My and your country, and therefore our cultures, are big supporters of free market values.
Doesn’t mean you must strictly share that opinion, because both of our countries, and therefore our cultures, are big supporters of freedom of thought, expression and speech.
Now please let humans be humans.
It’s called damage control. I would like to think that getting more people involved in the OSS community is one of our aims, and so offending and/or angering as few people as possible is obviously a consequence of this aim.
In any case, everyone I have spoken to (about 20-30 people so far) have agreed with me that this behaviour is unacceptable in a public forum (a fair few of them did not have any objection to the act itself but think it’s not right that such a post was made publically). 20-30 people is about 10-15% of the core KDE team, for example (assuming there are around 200 active contributors) and that is significant at this point. I know these statistics are very dodgy but it does put things vaguely into perspective.
An analogy to your argument would be that one should be allowed to start a brawl in a shop and the shop keeper should be grateful for the person’s custom.
No, it doesn’t work that way. People have a responsibility to exercise common decency when interacting with one another. If you don’t think that then I would not want to live in your world.
It’s not up to you to do damage control on behalf of people like me (on behalf of communities). Please stop doing that.
I’m doing just fine.
In fact, your damage control is causing more damage.
You see, you are damaging our communities by trying to inject the meme that having fun and the possibility to freely express and share your thoughts is something that should be limited.
I philosophically disagree with your meme. In fact I believe that we should not limit people at all, or at least not at all as far as you want to limit people in this.
Therefore you have not been given my vote to be the person to decide what people (like me) can and what people (like me) can’t write on their private blogs that happen to be syndicated on various planets.
In fact I would rather vote against you, against your principles and against your so-called moral values. I’m in fact in disagreement with them. Philosophically in disagreement.
So stop playing a role that was not given to you. I don’t want you to police anything on behalf of whole communities that I belong to and frankly, I don’t want to belong to any community that has given people like you that role.
Are you getting what I’m saying?
Finally?
You talk of freedom and yet you are trying to remove my freedom to express concern over someone’s actions.
I have not attempting to force him to remove anything; I have simply stated this is unacceptable.
Maybe you have double standards for things you agree with and things you don’t agree with?
Finally, I feel your responses to my blog are indicative of some of the unwelcoming nature of the open source community (personal insults when you disagree, lots of profanity, general abusiveness and accusations).
I’m not trying to remove that freedom, I’m criticizing your opinion.
We can go turtles all the way down on this one if you want.
Just as it is your freedom to express your opinion, should it be mine to criticize it.
And since I disagree with you, I am criticizing it.
That’s not the same as removing your freedom of expressing.
Again, you are making propaganda out of this: oh nooo! be afraid of this pvanhoof dude! He tries to remove my freedom to express my opinion!!
No he doesn’t. He’s criticizing your flawed point of view on moral values, on a blogger having to apologize while he didn’t even do anything wrong, on how you think planets change the statute of a private blog into a public one, of …
“Again, you are making propaganda out of this: oh nooo! be afraid of this pvanhoof dude! He tries to remove my freedom to express my opinion!!”
I’m afraid you’re the one who’s been guilty of that far more than me. You have accused me of attempting purification, holy wars and many other things in this blog.
All I have said is that this has offended a lot of people and that it deserves an apology. You, yourself, have started this entire argument on morality which I deliberately avoided from the start due to the fact that it is irrelevant.
You have failed to see this. If you continue to attempt to argue this point I will continue to say it is irrelevant, as I have said right from the very start.
It almost reads as if you are creating arguments then claiming I am using them in order to disagree with them. Either that or you’re jumping to many conclusions which I have not said.
“It’s not up to you to do damage control on behalf of people like me (on behalf of communities). Please stop doing that.”
That looks very much like an attempt to “shut me up” rather than an attempt to criticise me.
A truism, but you still fail to justify how a community based on censorship will offend less people than a community based on free speech.
(I’m not pretending free speech can’t produce crap, but the converse will offend people - many people)
This is not censorship. Stop throwing that word around; I am simply stating that such a post is out of place in a technology blog.
Imagine what the public outcry would be like if such an entry was made in a respected scientific journal.
And again, the fact that it offends some people does not mean that it deserves any apology. That is among the items in your opinion that I am criticizing.
Again, blog writers are not gladiators who need to serve their lives for the readers of the planets that their private blog happens to be syndicated on.
It’s not the readers of planets who dictate the content of the private blogs, it’s the blog writers who decide for themselves.
Those items are exactly the ones that I disagree with.
No, but common human decency should be such that people aren’t unwelcoming and offensive to people. As I keep saying, a significant proportion of people were offended by the post, irrelevant of content.
Similarly, a lot of people would be offended if I were to post a blog, for example (this is an extreme), denying the holocaust. In much the same way, the content does not matter, but I would issue an apology if I had done so because it would offend a lot of people, even if I genuinely am not offended with what I say. That does not make those who find it offensive “easily offended”, nor does it make their opinion invalid or wrong.
All I’m asking for here is a bit of common human decency, but clearly you’d rather hide behind a huge curtain of “free speech” to avoid being civil to people.
And about “damage control” vs. shutting you up:
As soon as you claim to act on behalf of other people you should expect those people to be extremely critic if you do it wrong.
In my opinion you have been doing it completely wrong and caused by that you are causing real damage to the very communities you tried to protect.
So I asked you to stop doing that.
If you want to continue doing that, then please mention that you do it for whoever you are doing it for except for *me*.
Because I disagree with you, because I didn’t vote for you and because I never gave you permission for this.
I don’t think you should apologize if people would be offended after you blog that the holocaust didn’t occur.
I would think you are an idiot (because there’s plenty of proof that it did occur) and that would be sufficient for me.
It’s not because a large amount of indoctrinated people are offended, that these people “deserve” an apology.
It just means that a large amount of people are indoctrinated.
Again, I disagree and I will keep disagreeing on this because your opinion doesn’t make sense at all if your value and moral is true freedom of speech.
You can’t have true freedom of speech if you have to accept the ‘truth’ from the opinion that the majority of people have.
In fact are the majority of people usually quite naive when it comes to the truth.
Actually, it’s all just bullshit. No one really mature even bothers getting dragged into moot discussions like the topic. Every mature person just ignores entirely such things, especially without writing shitty nonsensical blog posts about them.
George Wright:
Demanding someone to retract a previous statement or expression is exactly censorship.
And the only one hiding is you, behind your blurry whatever-supports-my-view-conceptions of common human decency.
Freedom of expression is not opposed to common human decency. Freedom of expression is common human decency.
There continues to be no evidence, explicit or otherwise, that a demand for retraction will appease more people than it will repulse.
George seems to keep getting back at the argument that ‘it doesn’t belong on a technical blog’.
But George is not the owner of the blog being questioned. In fact, he as not one single thing to say about that privately owned blog.
He tries to cover that fact up by saying that since the blogger is syndicated on a technical planet, that he should adjust his writing style to that planet.
Which is, of course, bullshit.
It’s the planet maintainer who is responsible for filtering content, not the blogger.
Nonetheless does George enjoy blaming the blogger for inappropriate content for the planet.
Since the maintainer of the planet did decide not to filter it, it means the maintainer of the planet decided that the content was not worth filtering.
If you disagree so much with that, George, then just start your own planet.
You are wrong that the blogger should change his writing style, behaviour or whatever just because you happen to prefer purely technical content.
If you dislike the nature of the planet that you are reading, then stop reading that planet and make a better one yourself.
Well, the reasoning is probably something like this:
The “community” has said that it wants more women to join. It has also analyzed the situation (actually asking women – fancy that!) and found that the most important property of the community that is making the women not want to join is behaviour like this.
Now, George notices such a behaviour and points out that given the wish that more women join, this is counter productive.
If the “community” didn’t have such a wish, it would probably be no big deal, even if I personally thinks that it shows that this blogger is immature.
But given the fact that the “community” does wish more women to join, the picture is counter productive to the wish of the community.
As for my personal views, I think George is right. I also think that he as every right to point out behaviour that is counter productive to the goals of the community. Further, I think that pvanhoof is uncomfortable with this (probably because he is also a person that is involved in counter productive behaviour) and wants to sensor George. >:-)
Inge Wallin:
Has it really? Where are these studies documented? Why is no one referring to them?
Oh, and let me guess: people who are against the war in Iraq are most likely radical Muslims themselves, right?
The community didn’t analyze anything. I’m puzzled at why you think anything got seriously analyzed.
I’ve seen a few pseudo scientifically sounding blog posts about the subject.
But so what? Is that ‘the community’?
A bunch of individuals once made a report and correlated things (usually out of context, or by incorrectly interpreting statistical data) to come up with a bunch ‘ideas’ of why they believe females stay away from opensource contributing. It seems some decided to put that in some sort of HOWTO to make it look as if it’s serious knowledge.
Problem is that probably none of the people who were involved in all that had any knowhow about psychology.
Nonetheless some people try to portray these ideas as facts. Which is of course silly.
I don’t believe one picture of a female’s legs has pushed away any lady who was about to contribute.
The only thing this specific picture might have done to some females was to show them that among the large group of software developers, at least one likes to watch the legs of females.
What a surprise!
What people like George have been doing, though, was once more explaining females that without ‘his fantastic help’, they are defenseless in our communities.
Which is simply not true at all.
In fact, there’s no problem. Maybe there’s a problem in some people’s minds, yes. But not a real problem.
If a female software developer involved in an opensource community would have posted the legs of a male, nobody would have whined. Now that the legs where female, suddenly a bunch of “lady protectors” need to jump the stage and start whining about moral values bla bla bla.
If they’d treat females equally to males, they’d let the females handle this one themselves individually. They wouldn’t try to act as if they are the boys who’ll protect the poor females against vicious attacks from the bad bad boys.
They wouldn’t scare away females by doing as if there’s a problem here.
This argument is going around in circles with van Hoof and I’ve actually got better things to do than to repeat myself over and over again because he’s too stubborn to reason sensibly and instead feels it’s better to resort to insults.
I will say, though, that if you feel it is fine to act in an unfriendly, unwelcoming manner in the name of free speech then you are thoroughly mistaken and, whilst it may be your right to do so, you will not get any respect from me and a lot of people I know.
Asking for an apology is not censorship and anyone who thinks it is is throwing keywords in to stir up an argument.
I’m not sure why people are assuming that people are religious prudes if they object to nicu’s post. That is missing the point, and going for a personal attack. You can show me all the naked photos of women you like, I won’t care.
I still think this is a silly argument:
“women can defend themselves, therefore it is ok if we kick them”
Furthermore, I’d like to back up George’s claim on statistics. All of the women across two irc chat channels full of developers were annoyed at nicu. As were all of the men. Or at least, if any of the guys on the one channel actually approved of nicu, they *didn’t feel comfortable saying so. Because they knew they’d be attacked by the community. And /that/ is what should be happening here.
It isn’t the person who is syndicating a planet’s job to police, its the community. As a woman**, which community would you rather be a part of? The one where they will attack a jerk? Or the one where they give a jerk a free pass and say “boys will be boys” and then attack anyone who disapproves of the jerk?
Funny how you yourself falsify the statistic that you make.
You say that didn’t feel comfortable saying so because they knew they’d be attacked. You append to that “by the community” but I pretty much assume that just a few people were probably bullying others to take that point of view.
Which basically means that your statistic is worth shit.
Scary is that you say: “And /that/ is what should be happening here”
No, that’s /not/ true. That is exactly what a healthy discussion wouldn’t be like at all.
Anyway, I’m starting to think you must be ironic or sarcastic. Because your arguments are not making any sense.
(My footnote formatting messed up the first time I posted this, I figure G can delete the messed up version when he wakes up, and I’ll repost this for clarity.)
I’m not sure why people are assuming that people are religious prudes if they object to nicu’s post. That is missing the point, and going for a personal attack. You can show me all the naked photos of women you like, I won’t care.
I still think this is a silly argument:
“women can defend themselves, therefore it is ok if we kick them”
Furthermore, I’d like to back up George’s claim on statistics. All of the women across two irc channels full of developers were annoyed at nicu. As were all of the men. Or at least, if any of the guys actually approved of nicu[1], they didn’t feel comfortable saying so. Because they knew they’d be attacked by the community. And /that/ is what should be happening here.
It is not the job of a person who is running a planet syndication to police, but the community’s job. As a woman[2], which community would you rather be a part of? The one where they will attack a jerk? Or the one where they give a jerk a free pass and say “boys will be boys” and then attack anyone who disapproves of the jerk?
[1] I highly doubt this, it went up in flames among everyone who was active at the time.
[2] Hell, even as a man. Why be sexist here? Besides, I’d want to be in the group with more women! And it won’t be the latter.
That is exactly what should never happen and it just shows which moralized and depraved discussion climate you are calling for with yo