Qbyte wrote:...a mob of professional victims crying over what amounts to a bunch of petty insults. Politics is taking precedence over common sense here.
I will talk about the world outside of OSDev only, because I don't want to come across as adding fuel to the fire of the specific case here. But I welcome this discussion, because I think (and have pointed out before) that it is the much more important discussion than what a moderator may or may not do with a moderator's privileges.
Part 1 -- "Tolerable behavior" is not a stable state, but a process.
The boundary between "tolerable" and "intolerable" is constantly being redefined; the mechanism here is "what you can get away with". Something may be perceived as "intolerable" by a huge majority, but if transgressing that tolerance has no or little negative repercussions, transgressions will continue to occur, and over time, what had been "intolerable" has become everyday behavior. Kissing in public, wearing a t-shirt, or admitting to homosexuality are among the things that would have caused outrage a couple of decades ago.
It works the same vice versa: Things that might have been common occurrence before could start being sanctioned by society, be it by law or public perception. What had been "tolerable" becomes shunned. Smoking in a restaurant, domestic violence or racial segregation spring to mind.
This is a dynamic that we should be aware of, and realize that it is not something we can or should leave to politicians, media or other "influencers". It is something every single one is actively involved in, whether we realize it or not. At the workplace, at a party with friends, at home with our family. And, of course, on the internet.
Every time we hold our peace when someone does or says something questionable, we allow the border of the acceptable to be pushed that little bit further out. Sometimes that is a good thing. You don't want to confront someone and have a shouting match at your friend's wedding over something that was said that had been mildly offensive. Sometimes that is a bad thing. When two people in a bar engage in openly racist diatribe, and every decent person in the bar that couldn't stand it just gets up and leaves, it surrenders the field to the offenders, and they will feel justified in going on as they were.
Social rules are made, enforced, and retired by us, by our everyday behavior. "Higher ups" might be opinion multipliers, but they, too, define and redefine their point of view by what they experience in their everyday interactions.
Part 2 -- Taking offense is not a sign of fragility.
Where there is a transgression into the intolerable, there's a victim, which has experienced real hurt. Whether that was intended, objectively justified or whatever, and the exact extend of the hurt inflicted
does not matter. The experienced hurt is very real to the victim, and denying them the reality of their hurt is in itself a very cruel thing to do.
Consider a child that feels unfairly treated. Even if the treatment was entirely justified, the hurt experienced by the child is very real. A parent can rationalize the treatment with the child (if it listens), but you should not deny the child's emotions. And while we probably all grew up with lines like "be a man!" or "man up!", that doesn't change that adults, and yes, even men, can be hurt. We just "learned" to suck it up, because admitting to hurt is not "manly". We're being cruel to ourselves, and once we end up on a psychologist's couch, we have to unlearn it all and admit to our hurts and weaknesses because denial has made us ill. There's a lesson in there.
Then there might be the person unwilling to tolerate the offender's behavior, as per Part 1. That might be a bystander, or it might be the victim itself. There is a lot of range from someone in complete outrage to someone who is able to very calmly confront the offender. Every point on that range is as valid as any other, and we should consciously resist the temptation to judge the amount of hurt experienced by the victim based on the amount of emotional reaction, or lack thereof.
And we should not forget that it is quite normal behavior to avoid confronting the perpetrator altogether. Because it is "easier", because it's "quicker", because there is a good chance that there will be more where the original offense came from.
So, speaking up about perceived offense, either as a victim or as a bystander, is everything BUT a "sign of fragility". To the contrary, it means someone found the courage to admit something hit a nerve. This can, and should, be handled with respect and kindness; renegotiating the line between "tolerable" and "intolerable".
If the offender instead starts lashing out, calling others "insincere" about their objections, "fragile", "snowflakes", or "a mob of professional victims", that is denying them their reality.
We are human beings. None of us are superhuman, and everyone of us will be offended by something at some point.
There is nothing wrong about it, as well as there is nothing wrong about bringing this out in the open and discussing it. The offender might make excuses for having transgressed unintentionally. The offender may be educated that others are unwilling to tolerate that kind of behavior. Or the offender may be unapologetic about what was said and done, and accept the consequences of it -- and it is up to every single one of us to decide what those consequences should be.
But denying someone their reality from a position of strength, calling someone "weak" for having a problem with something you don't have, is in itself a transgression, and a rather severe one. It's commonly called bullying.
Dudley Dursley style.
Part 3 -- Same rules for everybody.
There are people who did great things for their respective communities. It's quite natural that people will judge a person not in the isolation of a given situation, but in the context of what else they know about the person in question.
But in the end, personal achievement is utterly unrelated to social behavior. Indeed, as prominent members of a society -- and our tolerance of their behavior -- are basically "opinion multipliers", if anything they should be held to a
stricter code of conduct than "mere mortals".
Unfortunately, we tend to do the exact opposite: We tolerate behavior from "celebrities" things we (hopefully?) would not let e.g. our neighbor get away with.
Torvalds wrote:...let's go back to one of the things where I think the designers of subversion were complete morons. Strong opinions, that's me, right? There are a few of them in the room today, I suspect. You are stupid.
"Strong opinions" you may have, but calling other people names like that should not be tolerated. This is a social cancer. We have come to accept transgressions in ever greater steps and in ever shorter intervals, basically giving in to the bombardment, becoming spectators in the deconstruction of decency.
Trump wrote:And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the *****. You can do anything.
Nobody is doubting their achievements. But there is no "tearing away
their community from underneath them". First of all, it never was "their" community. Mr. Torvalds might have been the author of the original Linux kernel, might have made invaluable contributions (or not). But in the end, a community is not "owned" by anybody but self-regulating (again, see Part 1). And also in the end, every single person in a community should be judged
as a person.
The danger is as follows: Let's say we allow persons that have contributed positively in the past to "get away" with behavior that is harmful on the social level, because of the benefit of their contribution. How are we to judge the amount and quality of contributions that might have been made by other people, if they hadn't been driven away? How are we to judge the overall social impact that our tolerance of harmful behavior has? Inside our community, and beyond?
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All the above is something I feel needs to be addressed by
any community, large or small, online or offline. Perhaps I have made some of you reconsider how they handle themselves in the future, what they will tolerate in themselves and others. Perhaps I just made the world a bit a better place. Perhaps not.
But to come full circle back to the issue at hand, and with regards to this statement:
Qbyte wrote:Say what you want about his personality, but he's been arguably the single most valuable and active member of this community...
Quality of contribution is hard to judge, and I don't really want to throw my person into the scales myself. But in this thread alone we see that he had antagonized
Combuster in the past (who has more posts as Brendan and pre-dates him as moderator), he was on the way of de-modding Antti and Candy for disagreeing with his conduct. Adding to that any contributions that might have been made by others if this had been a friendlier and safer place, where does "valuable but difficult" cross into "all things considered, detrimental to the community"...?!?
And yes, I am quite willing to be held to the same standards. I have had my own share of heated arguments here, but I hope it stopped short of personal insults, or outright bullying. If it didn't, I'd be ashamed, and willing to make amends.