sh, not all people outside Germany take that stance. I personally am sick of free speech being invaded by every possible person who gets offended. The bottom line is, you can’t please everyone, and things get taken to a level where we can talk of nothing.
You guys know, if you find his blog offensive, nobody is forcing your eyes open to read it. How hard is that, really? Do you need me to program a firefox plugin, or can you exercise the due diligence yourself to not read a blog that bothers you? I am going to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, and say the latter is true.
Related posts:
#1 by mc on May 28, 2007 - 12:59 pm
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Yet, you do force people to read it because you are syndicated on planet ubuntu.
#2 by James on May 28, 2007 - 1:06 pm
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A couple of things to think about:
You don’t know if there is offensive commentary in the blog until you read it. After that of course, you can choose to skip his blog.
I agree that people need to be less sensitive about this stuff, but based on the portion of the chat SH posted, HE was the one that went overboard – really whacked out in my opinion.
As to him quitting involvement with whatever – if his level of commitment – or his self-control – is so poorly developed that he can’t take a simple conversation that posits an opinion other than his own without threatening to leave – I say let him go.
#3 by admin on May 28, 2007 - 1:09 pm
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mc, the planet doesn’t force anyone to read it. You do have the ability to make your window scroll. I, infact, even have a button on my mouse called a mouse wheel that lets me do it.
#4 by Stoffe on May 28, 2007 - 1:13 pm
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But but but but but but but but but sex is so horrible and wrong! It simply is not natural!
#5 by mc on May 28, 2007 - 1:15 pm
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So, because people can scroll, you should be allowed to post whatever you feel like on the planet? Or they just shouldn’t read it at all in case somebody feels like posting offensive content?
How are people meant to know before reading your possibly offensive content that it is going to be offensive and so they should skip over it?
The planet isn’t somewhere where you are entitled to free speech, you seem to misunderstand that.
#6 by Leigh Honeywell on May 28, 2007 - 1:19 pm
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Censorship and criticism are not the same things. To conflate the two takes away from legitimate struggles for free speech and free press.
It sounds like Ubuntu needs to develop some sort of standard for what is or isn’t kosher on the planet; Melissa has the freedom to say that she didn’t think \sh’s post was appropriate. I think it’s worth considering \sh’s own statement on the matter:
“I’m sorry for not staying, but I’m stubborn as a mule.”
Good riddance to him.
#7 by Rawhyde on May 28, 2007 - 1:31 pm
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If he does not want to hear from people with different opinions than his, he should not be openly blogging and inviting them. I think he’s setting himself up for disappointment wherever he decides to blog. I’d say he’s doing the right thing if he feels like leaving, but he’s not hurting my feelings in the least. His message is baffling though–by leaving in protest, to me, he appears to be saying, “I will not tolerate intolerance!”
#8 by Matthew Garrett on May 28, 2007 - 1:59 pm
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It’s not a free speech issue. Free speech allows me to say that homosexuals are going to burn in hell, that anti-abortionists would be better off dead or that anyone who voted for President Bush is a moron/hero/whatever. That’s entirely separate from whether it’s appropriate to say so, and that appropriateness depends on the forum. What’s acceptable to say in the company of a set of religious fundamentalists may not be acceptable in the company of a set of gay rights campaigners.
Planet Ubuntu is part of the Ubuntu community. As a result it’s reasonable that everyone posting to it should adhere to the Ubuntu code of conduct. That includes not deliberately offending people, but it also includes taking the concerns of people who claim to be offended seriously. If you disagree over whether something is offensive or not, then it’s appropriate to discuss it with the wider community and attempt to gain some sort of consensus over whether it’s acceptable or not. It’s not appropriate to accuse people who are genuinely offended of trying to stifle free speech. Ubuntu is not run by the US government. It’s not bound by the bill of rights. And that’s ok, because unlike government-enforced laws you have the right to opt-out of following any of the rules here. Anyone can ask to be removed from Planet at any time. But while you’re here, then it’s your job to avoid offending people as much as is practically possible.
#9 by Leigh Honeywell on May 28, 2007 - 2:13 pm
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Thank you Matthew
#10 by anonymous on May 28, 2007 - 2:53 pm
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I suggest Canonical provide both he and she an iGasm to put smile back on their faces
#11 by admin on May 28, 2007 - 3:17 pm
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Matthew, I agree with your points, but we need to get back to the scope of the argument: The igasm.
#12 by MRiGnS on May 28, 2007 - 3:28 pm
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I’m really supporting sh in his point of view. Also I’m not getting elkbuntus point. He blogged about the iGasm because it’s a funny gadget not to advertise it and I don’t think it was inappropriate to blog this on the planet.
It’s a simple toy not pictures of a massacre or a hardcore porn.
right now I’m really disappointed and would like to know about the CC’s opinion on this matter.
#13 by Matthew Garrett on May 28, 2007 - 3:38 pm
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Did I find Stephan’s post about the igasm offensive? Not really, no. But that’s not the point – some people did, and in response Stephan (effectively) told them they were wrong without making any effort to find out why. That’s not an acceptable way to behave within the Ubuntu community.
#14 by admin on May 28, 2007 - 3:44 pm
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It might be easier to make my one sided points if you just stop bursting my bubbles
#15 by MRiGnS on May 28, 2007 - 4:08 pm
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He made his point clear telling and explaining her that he lives where you have the right of free speech and I don’t see where his post did interfere with the UCoC.
I can understand why he did not want to work with people with such behaviour any more.
#16 by anonymous on May 28, 2007 - 5:56 pm
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Mathew, sh did make an effort to tell elkbuntu why he thought she was wrong. He explained that given his background culture he could not see anything offensive in the post, but that did not help the situation. So he went a little overboard by telling her to complain elsewhere. Not exactly nice, but I personally can’t blame him. Don’t you think “if someone was to link to your blog in an Ubuntu channel, i’d ban them for adult content” is against the CoC? Threatning to ban people is not exactly being nice, you know.
Also, I belive planet is an aggregation of personal blogs from people that participate in the Ubuntu community. These people should use common sense, of course, but still it’s their own personal blog. It really annoys me when people criticize what others post on their blogs (usually it’s “who cares about your life, I read planet to read about ubuntu/gnome/debian/whatever”).
I think it’s reasonable to expect people to respect the CoC when they’re being confronted on Ubuntu’s IRC channel, but I can’t see how it should apply to what people do on their blogs.
#17 by Matthew Garrett on May 28, 2007 - 6:40 pm
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That’s the problem. Telling offended people that they’re wrong to be offended doesn’t stop them being offended. My original cultural background tells me that sex for any purpose other than procreation is a sin and people who use it are likely to go to hell, but that doesn’t make it ok to make posts to Planet telling Stephen that he’s a sinner no matter how justified I feel in believing it. It’s reasonably likely that he’d be offended.
People can post anything they like in their blogs, say anything they want to other people and engage in whatever activities they feel like providing that they’re not participating in the Ubuntu community while doing so – something that the CoC makes clear. I think it’s pretty clear that posting to Planet is an example of that participation. Most blog software allows you to provide different feeds depending on tags, so it’s pretty easy to separate out stuff that might be inappropriate.
Trackback: Joe Terranova
#18 by Karl Zollner on May 29, 2007 - 5:25 am
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It truly is a shame that all this has happened. Probably nothing can be done to undo the damage done. But I hope the community learns and grows despite such misfortune.
Melissa has been trying for sometime to raise awareness for issues which she(and doubtlessly many others) sees as being the “cause” for the pathetic levels of female participation in F/OSS projects.
It should be noted that the levels of female participation in F/OSS varies greatly from one language/nationality to the next-in Brazil there are high levels of female participation, in America female participation in F/OSS is so low that it is barely separable from the noise-factor of the margin of error in the studies made.
Melissa sees the “cause”- she identifies and redresses it,pointing towards behaviors which “cause” women to be absent.
The general gist of these causal behaviors is:
they are performed by males
(not exclusively but by and large)
they involve sexist(jingoistic) vocabulary, jokes, and witticisms which render women in a insulting/perjorative light.
The main thrust of the argumentation boils down to this: If men did not engage in these behaviors, then women would be present in much larger numbers.
There are a lot of issues with such an argumentation in general. I don’t wish to fully articulate here where these problems lie. Rather I wish to point out the identifications(equivocations) which actively undermine the goal sought in pursuing such argumentation.
Firstly if one identifies “sexism” as being the “cause” then any comment which has anything to do with sex can and will, inevitably(by some at least), be seen as a behavior, engaged in by a sexist, aiming towards sexist exclusion-ie. discrimination.
The effect of such identification is taboo-ization. Certain topics become taboo, for engaging in certain topics means engaging in sexist behavior.
In a community blog where no reference is made to sex there is no discrimination right ?
Look beneath the surface: if the supposed “cause” of the absence of women in F/OSS is the prevalence of sexist behaviors then the absence of said sexist behaviors should invariably “cause” women to participate in F/OSS. But if certain behaviors become taboo, behaviors which are acted out publicly, then these behaviors will become more virulent because they are not aired, not on public display, not visible and identifiable.
If men can’t comment on anything related to sex without being attributed sexist behavior then women can’t either-ie. double standard ?
But if someone wishes to call attention to sexist behavior how can they do so without that which they wish to say being related to sex, which itself is a sexist behavior, which is aimed towards sexist exlusion, ie. discrimination ?
The igasm is a sex toy-in one sense it is a palpable example of “objectification of sex”. The objectification of sex, is one of those behaviors engaged in by those wishing to discriminate. Anyone who comments on such is engaged in OO programming: the objectification of sex is itself becoming an object, being objectified, ie. second order object, and is accompanied by second order behavior.
At this point the equivocation and identification becomes absolute-only a sexist could comment on something so sexist.
To summarize:
There are a multitude of issues at work behind the phenomena of the incredibly low participation of women in F/OSS. Identifying sexist behavior as the cause of this leads invariably to a witch hunt in which any and all things said are evaluted in terms of their identity with that which is being sought, ie. one is looking for an example(behavior), looking for that which is the cause, finding the example(behavior) means finding the person, the space between eliminating the behavior and eliminating the person is vague and undefinable-because, well, it`s the same difference.
A community which cannot joke about sex is simply not mature.
A community which is governed by a taboo which only allows for any comment relating to sex in the form of appeals to end sexism is a community where people do not feel free to act as they are-in a community of paid employees this is normal-you are not being paid to be who you are, yet in a community of free contributors this identification, speaking as you are, is the actual economy itself-hence why those who feel wronged on this issue simply get up and walk away.
The issue of sexist discrimination will not go away by tabooizing the topic of sex. To the extent that the only legitimate reference to the topic of sex is to appeal to ending sexist discrimination this system will auto-regulate itself-perpetuating the taboo, hiding the bevahviors, and burying the problem-instead of solving it.
The real issues at work behind the low levels of female participation in F/OSS are much more mundane, probably even boring-as opposed to a classic good gal vs. bad guy. I suspect that a healthy dose of female economic pragamatism can more fully explain the phenomena at hand that sexist behaviors-but such is infinitely more difficult to solve, and such cannot be solved inside the community.
In Brazil F/OSS is tightly linked with left, progressive social ideologies of emancipation and liberation-engaging in F/OSS actively helps the poor and disenfranchised-immediately, whereas in the US these benefits are primarily secondary-I suspect that only where the results are immediately tangible are they sufficient to outweigh basic common sense economic pragmatism.
Whereas there are some cultural elements involved in these issues they play a different role as has been portrayed thus far. Melissas’ response is easily identified as being prudish. But this is not the case. Her response is a function of the equivocating logic of identity at work in the identification of the cause of that which she seeks to struggle against. To the extent that such equivocational logic of identity is at work in the discourse of sexism in the US society, the US will appear prudish, which logically is the reason why the US has the largest porn industry in the world.
I am just left wondering how many of those who attack others for sexism and who never, ever speak of sex publicly, end up at night wearing leather and lack…what is shown is not me, what is hidden is mine…..
#19 by Vek on May 29, 2007 - 1:34 pm
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I also have disagreement with the causal link between discrimination and female participation. I think its more of a historical trend. It takes many, many years of learning to ‘produce’ a competent open source programmer. I know I’m dating myself now, but… 15 years ago, when I was still at school, there were no female programmers being made. Its pretty much that simple.
Society -did- discriminate back then. I was in south africa, I guess, not exactly progressive, but, well, there were zero females in the programming/computer related classes. It was Frowned Upon(tm). They were relegated to the cooking/baking/sewing. Very sexist, I know. But that was 15 years ago. Look at it now! The ratio has evened up to a great deal, and many classes are almost equal in terms of male/female ratio.
This means that in 5-10 years time we might see a boom of female developers, and I expect the ratio to improve as the discrimination becomes a thing of the past. Its still going to be prevalent in cultures that still have that discrimination (you aint going to see female programmers coming out of Iran any time soon) but I really do think its a shadow of the past, not a problem of the present.
#20 by Matthew Garrett on May 30, 2007 - 8:42 am
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There’s no shortage of women who will tell you that existing discrimination in the open source community discourages them from being involved. The issue isn’t just the low proportion of female developers – it’s the even lower proportion of female developers working in open source.