Jon did post a thread. I can’t find it anymore. I did also find it horrendous, as I could easily see how some of our community members would obviously take it as a direct attack against them, and that they would feel “attacked because they are members of a minority”.
And this attack was perpetrated by a powerful person from the within community: the current Release Manager.
This post was very calm and was only asking one simple question. Yet, it was impossible not to see how a powerful direct attack against minorities it was. Maybe this question could be asked, but obviously not in this way, at this time, and by this person. And he did plead guilty.
@nixnewb: you are asking if “anyone in these forum” “writtien anything against a minority” (sic). I have an answer for you: yes, I think at the very least Jon, in that post. But please ask your questions in a more civilized way: I find your rant unwelcoming, and therefore unwelcome, especially in post 37.
Profile - jonringer - NixOS Discourse doesn’t list it though, so I guess it was deleted. And my memory is not perfect: I mostly recall my interpretation and my feelings.
dedguy21 ? I think he state that, given his experience as member of a minority, he doesn’t see how one could feel threaten.
Yet, we have plenty of evidence of other nix community members from minorities stating they felt attacked, especially since some of those left our community, loudly or not, either for Aux or for plain nothing.
(I’m terrified of this “plain nothing”. How could one abandon all the technical promises of beloved Nix ? This is still what eg. Xe is doing, as they try to migrate to Ansible.)
So let’s use logic here: some people don’t feel attacked, and some other people do feel attacked. Can we deny that it is possible to feel attacked ? I don’t think so. Does anyone stating they don’t feel attacked change anything ? I don’t think so.
I also think we want this community not be shattered: “The community is more important than the product”. For this, I think we should ensure our members will not feel attacked.
Btw, claiming this community is safe while some of its member expressed they don’t feel safe imply denying them their own feelings. Which is attacking them even more, and reinforcing their unsafe feeling, so not helping.
I think we should have a moderation team overlooking this to block attacks. And I think our current moderation team is doing what they can, but that their task is way too huge.
I’m not saying they are perfect (they are humans, what do you expect ? Who ever said they were perfect ?), not saying they couldn’t do better, but I think we should be very thankful for their huge work and dedication, and try to help them.
I am not sure about that, and can provide this as a list of counter-examples to consider: Capital punishment for homosexuality - Wikipedia
I guess this is because minorities asked for specific protection against some class of attacks they regularly take. Those class of attacks may not be obvious for everyone until enough people get educated on some specific points. Therefore, I think we just have to make them clear and known by writing them at the right place.
In a more general way, why do we even write a CoC ? Because there are individuals who are not able to properly be respectful with all other members of the community. Maybe because they are new, and/or they don’t know all represented culture / orientation / background / etc well enough, so it can be hard not to offend anyone. Specific protection rules can help with that, by providing hints to avoid most common wrong scenarii, and be used as reference when someone doesn’t understand their wrong doing.
I agree that once we will have observed a fair amount of time without any offense against one of those “specific” rules, we might be able to remove it, and I will be very happy as it will signal the world would be a better place with more tolerant and more educated humans.
I agree this is something that must be considered. But I do not think this is a good enough reason to deny protection to those who ask. And we are talking about protection, not immunity.