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.
Yeah, this one feels like an overreach to me. Calling a person stupid is bad, fair, but that's because the word is negative, and calling a person a negative word isn't nice.
But in this case, "replies_are_stupid" has nothing to do with a person. They're inanimate. So calling replies stupid is labelling replies negatively, but that's fine because they're inanimate. I'm not sure "loweffort" is better or even applicable. I guarantee someone will have a problem with "loweffort" in the future. Maybe "ill-advised" would be better in this context?
And before I get strawmanned by someone saying "would it be the same if they called it replies_are_gay" or something, I think that is different, because that's implying gay is bad, which is the actual problem with that usage. It's inaccurate to the problem, and only makes sense if gay people catch strays.
If you read "replies_are_stupid" and felt attacked, you need a better therapist, because "stupid" isn't an identity you should feel for yourself or those you love.
I think its more historical. Stupid, idiot, and moron have been clinical / legal terms for people with intellectual disabilities, and are often seen as a continuation of that in common use.
That said - is it really important to defend "stupid" as a word choice? Does rewording it, maybe to "senseless" or "ignorant", create some huge negative impact for a user? It seems like kind of a minimal effort solution that can accommodate users, so why make it a big deal?
I know I'm wandering through a nest of bees here, but this cuts both ways, I think. No, this particular word isn't 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 there's a grey area here on what level of badness is bad enough for all of us to change to accomodate one or two people's sensitivities, and to what level those people should be responsible for their own sensitivities.
This is a civilization and cultural level spectrum which has "change for your society" and "society bends to you without change" at its ends, and different people fall at different points on this spectrum, which will put that at different points on the "how bad does a word need to be for me to be a bad person for typing it in my own code" spectrum. And for me, I feel "stupid" 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 don't think there is much more to it than that.
As of now, I can't 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 isn't 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 doesn't 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 "no worries, send the change" and not hurting a few people, we can just... Not hurt them? Seems straightforward.
Again, I don't understand why a "line needs to be drawn" based on some imaginary attack on the English language. What's the threat here? That someone submits a change while saying the word "aardvark" is offensive? Just reject that pr and move on.
(Unless "aardvark" 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 isn't meant as a "gotcha", 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 "stupid".
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 "stupid", or self-identify as stupid, you should not. No one is using it as a slur against your people. There are slurs! They exist, it's just that this isn't 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 it's 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, that's tragic, and it's very real for hypothetical me, but that's 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 "stupid" is in the same category, also in my opinion.
If anything, and I'm stepping in bees again, it feels kind of egocentric to see someone write "replies are stupid" in their own code, in response to presumably their opinion about a standard or spec or something, and to see they've written that and think "this is about me".
I'm not going to remove an innocent insult from use just because a few people dislike being called that.
petty insults are not human rights violations. and I refuse to cater to a few individuals who are incapable of getting over that fact.
everyone thought "retarded" was fine too. Backlist, whitelist, master, are all making a gradual exit from the programmers vernacular. Software doesn't have to be hostile
As an unfortunately pedantic person, it really bothers me that blacklist and whitelist get caught up in all this. Like, yeah, I can see why people think it's related to skin colour, and I can see the argument that even if it wasn't originally about skin colour, it leaves an impression of "white good, black bad" regardless of its original intentions. But fuck do I wish we didn't call white people white and black people black. It's not accurate, and would solve a whole bunch of these "colour-related phrases becoming racial" problems. We should just stop using colours to refer to people! But that ship has long sailed, and its harder to advocate in that direction, so I guess I'm fine with it. But I can dream 😛
Also "master" has other uses, like a Master Sculpter making a masterpiece, and more relatedly things like the "master tape" being the tape other tapes are copied from, a la "remastered". But I concede it's pretty hard to make that argument when DBs and BIOSes have "masters" versus "slaves" 😬😅
So absolutely zero technical reasons, right? The code change has absolutely no impact on the operation of the software.
Its purely your desire to use the word "stupid" that makes you against this change?
Edit: Which, btw, your ability to use the word "stupid" is not at all being prevented here. That reference could be changed to "unicorn_glasses" and function the same.
no. its that it's an innocent insult. it truly is not that deep. nor does it need to be.
if you choose not to use it that is fine. but shaming others for that is just silly.
...or am I not allowed to use "silly" as well?
where do we draw the line?
Who is shaming?
"Don't shame me!" seems an odd response to "Hey, changing this reference will make some people feel better, and has no functional impact".
Whats the problem?
Just to mention, moron, imbecile, and idiot were used (as nouns) for the person as a clinical definition of intellectual disability, with stupid used as the adjective to describe. I would have to disagree that it doesn't have roots beyond an "innocent insult", but I personally don't put it anywhere near the same category as the others, especially without context. Its use for stunned or astonished is now archaic, and personally I prefer foolish, but I also can't see a reason to complain about a simple word change in code for a reference.
Are you worried "stupid" won't be used as a word anymore?
Why do you feel a need to "draw a line"?
I'm not trying to make this into some discussion on word choice here, I'm more trying to point out why I think the response from rimu is ridiculous to me. It has the same energy to me as getting mad when someone offers to update a guide with gender-neutral language, and the response is angry blog posting and calling it "political".
"Who is shaming?"
...you apparently? with a whole-ass paragraph. giving examples of other words and their history as if that has any significance to my choice to not honor your request.
let me explain just in case I was not clear, I will not be doing as you ask. and i believe it's unreasonable for you to demand it of me.
you claim you're not guilt tripping and shaming then do exactly that.
it comes off as an overbearing parent and not a reasonable request. apologies if we do not agree. but understand that we do not have to agree. Sorry, that's just how life goes sometimes.
What request? Its a discussion. You debated the validity of any historical context, and said you "researched it", I shared some historical context. I think you're taking this very personally, and I really don't understand why.
Can you point to where I made some sort of demand? I asked a question. How is "whats the downside" or "why is it a problem" a demand, a guilt trip, or shaming? I think you're interpreting something here that isn't there, or maybe confusing me with someone else.
I didn't assume we needed to agree, I asked why you think its not reasonable to have a change to code that would have some small positive benefit (for the people bothered by it) and no real negative other than, say, accepting a pr?