This was a really weird read, and I let the essay sit in a browser window without responding for quite a while, because I wasn't sure that our goals and desires had enough in common to make my input useful, or seem like anything but trolling.
I can't recall ever seeking diversity for its own sake. I'm very much down on exclusionary behaviour, but if the people who turn up for e.g. a class in traditional Armenian cooking turn out to all have long lost family roots in Armenia, I'm not going to be unhappy about my failure to attract blacks, Asians, natives, and Hispanics. (I hope you wouldn't be either.)
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of "valuing the community and people involved more than the content being created." And having a goal being "that people _feel_ that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem" leaves me shaking my head and asking what % of empowered-feeling people are actually empowered, or for that matter competent - and what % of non-empowered-feeling people are both.
There are plenty of communities and friendship groups that exist for their own sake, and then go out and attempt to do some good. I don't see anything wrong with that in principle, though it's very much not my personal style.
The Turing Way is an interesting experiment, and seems to be doing what the organizers want. But in what sense is it better? And where else would such a sense of "better" apply - or not apply?
I become concerned about diversity issues when I find people interested in the topic/mission bouncing off the group in question, with comments ranging from "what a collection of assholes" to "I just couldn't figure out where to start". My first guess tends to be that the problem is due to a self-satisfied clique, on-boarding only those they already know and like. Or it's sheer incompetence - no one's documented anything, including "how to contribute" - or similar. Or there's politics among the existing clique, and you are only welcome to those whose side you may benefit.
But when the folks fleeing in disgust tend to share demographic attributes not shared by most of those who stay, we're in diversity territory, not mere cliquishness and incompetence. And when the people leaving identify the problem as sexism/racism/agism/ablism/etc. this gets even clearer. It's not certain -some people, sadly, presume every personal rejection they encounter is due to their least popular demographic attribute, even with strong evidence to the contrary. But usually where there's smoke, there's also fire.
And large swathes of the various open source communities display these signs very very prominently. This has been saddening to me for a while, even though it's been cliquishness that's bit me personally, not diversity issues. (I'm very much acculturated into open source norms, though more from the 1980s than anything current - even though I'm demographically not the stereotypical open source developer these norms supposedly favour. Sometimes I try to explain the norms to outsiders - who don't know it's OK to fork the source, or offer an unsolicited patch, or argue forcefully and without diffidence. Sometimes they'll listen to me, if I'm demographically similar to them, rather than to those they feel excluded by.)
I see _The Turing Way_ as one approach to addressing this.
The other one I'd like to see, is clearer explanation and fair enforcement of what I consider to be traditional open source/nerd culture norms. Those norms are unabashedly coming from a place that emphasizes facts, data, code etc. over personal feeling. We know it can hurt when someone fixes your mistakes, or even when they tell you about them, but the product will be better for it, so when it happens, we try hard to learn from the changes, and keep our pain and embarrassment out of the interaction. Code reviews can hurt, particularly when we have a lot to learn, but we model ourselves on the senior developer who respond "nice catch" and promptly pushes a fixed version, because that's how a "good" open source developer/engineer behaves.
These norms produce two things, done right: solid products, and improving skills among the developers. This should bring feelings of empowerment in their train, but this (sub)culture mostly doesn't talk about feelings.
Of course they are also very much European, Enlightenment, left brain, literate, and educated norms. And they are usually accompanied with some fairly giant levels of pride as well as self confidence, at least once one begins to routinely succeed. Some people will reject them for this reason. And I'm OK with that - provided I don't need to participate in their projects. I won't even snicker very loudly at their diversity claims, as they exclude people like me, thereby demonstrating ablism (these norms are very congenial for folks on the autistic spectrum), agism (some of this is passe), sexism (since many identify these norms with one gender), and of course racism (such norms are often referred to as "white".)
I'm waiting to see whether the diversity-seeking parts of the open source and engineering communities manage to produce good solid products. I'm also waiting to see whether they produce projects I'd want to work on, but with significantly less hope. (Neither autistics nor older people are wanted in any "diverse" setting I've so far encountered, and since I'm both ...)
Meanwhile, the more things that are tried, the better chances we all have - both of finding a place where we belong, and of decent products being produced.
This was a really weird read, and I let the essay sit in a browser window without responding for quite a while, because I wasn't sure that our goals and desires had enough in common to make my input useful, or seem like anything but trolling.
I can't recall ever seeking diversity for its own sake. I'm very much down on exclusionary behaviour, but if the people who turn up for e.g. a class in traditional Armenian cooking turn out to all have long lost family roots in Armenia, I'm not going to be unhappy about my failure to attract blacks, Asians, natives, and Hispanics. (I hope you wouldn't be either.)
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of "valuing the community and people involved more than the content being created." And having a goal being "that people _feel_ that they are empowered to contribute into an open ecosystem" leaves me shaking my head and asking what % of empowered-feeling people are actually empowered, or for that matter competent - and what % of non-empowered-feeling people are both.
There are plenty of communities and friendship groups that exist for their own sake, and then go out and attempt to do some good. I don't see anything wrong with that in principle, though it's very much not my personal style.
The Turing Way is an interesting experiment, and seems to be doing what the organizers want. But in what sense is it better? And where else would such a sense of "better" apply - or not apply?
I become concerned about diversity issues when I find people interested in the topic/mission bouncing off the group in question, with comments ranging from "what a collection of assholes" to "I just couldn't figure out where to start". My first guess tends to be that the problem is due to a self-satisfied clique, on-boarding only those they already know and like. Or it's sheer incompetence - no one's documented anything, including "how to contribute" - or similar. Or there's politics among the existing clique, and you are only welcome to those whose side you may benefit.
But when the folks fleeing in disgust tend to share demographic attributes not shared by most of those who stay, we're in diversity territory, not mere cliquishness and incompetence. And when the people leaving identify the problem as sexism/racism/agism/ablism/etc. this gets even clearer. It's not certain -some people, sadly, presume every personal rejection they encounter is due to their least popular demographic attribute, even with strong evidence to the contrary. But usually where there's smoke, there's also fire.
And large swathes of the various open source communities display these signs very very prominently. This has been saddening to me for a while, even though it's been cliquishness that's bit me personally, not diversity issues. (I'm very much acculturated into open source norms, though more from the 1980s than anything current - even though I'm demographically not the stereotypical open source developer these norms supposedly favour. Sometimes I try to explain the norms to outsiders - who don't know it's OK to fork the source, or offer an unsolicited patch, or argue forcefully and without diffidence. Sometimes they'll listen to me, if I'm demographically similar to them, rather than to those they feel excluded by.)
I see _The Turing Way_ as one approach to addressing this.
The other one I'd like to see, is clearer explanation and fair enforcement of what I consider to be traditional open source/nerd culture norms. Those norms are unabashedly coming from a place that emphasizes facts, data, code etc. over personal feeling. We know it can hurt when someone fixes your mistakes, or even when they tell you about them, but the product will be better for it, so when it happens, we try hard to learn from the changes, and keep our pain and embarrassment out of the interaction. Code reviews can hurt, particularly when we have a lot to learn, but we model ourselves on the senior developer who respond "nice catch" and promptly pushes a fixed version, because that's how a "good" open source developer/engineer behaves.
These norms produce two things, done right: solid products, and improving skills among the developers. This should bring feelings of empowerment in their train, but this (sub)culture mostly doesn't talk about feelings.
Of course they are also very much European, Enlightenment, left brain, literate, and educated norms. And they are usually accompanied with some fairly giant levels of pride as well as self confidence, at least once one begins to routinely succeed. Some people will reject them for this reason. And I'm OK with that - provided I don't need to participate in their projects. I won't even snicker very loudly at their diversity claims, as they exclude people like me, thereby demonstrating ablism (these norms are very congenial for folks on the autistic spectrum), agism (some of this is passe), sexism (since many identify these norms with one gender), and of course racism (such norms are often referred to as "white".)
I'm waiting to see whether the diversity-seeking parts of the open source and engineering communities manage to produce good solid products. I'm also waiting to see whether they produce projects I'd want to work on, but with significantly less hope. (Neither autistics nor older people are wanted in any "diverse" setting I've so far encountered, and since I'm both ...)
Meanwhile, the more things that are tried, the better chances we all have - both of finding a place where we belong, and of decent products being produced.