NixOS is electing a committee that will elect the new governing body and design its systems.
One popular proposal is for this committee to consist of five people, of which two are intersectionally marginalized. (That is, marginalized in at least two ways) That is, of course, a quota.
Aaron Hall, who objects to all of this, has arrived.
I value fairness and treating everyone equally regardless of their class status. I would be wary of any statements that make some users feel they will be treated less preferentially to others due to their class status, sowing distrust and conflict.
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It's a meta comment about distrust and conflict. There has been several comments made on this thread about privileging some people over others. We're on the internet. Nobody knows who is what class. I suggest we not make those kinds of comments because they are controversial and will lead to arguments and distrust in the broader community if users think they will be treated unfairly because their class is being unprivileged.
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I know everyone looks at statements that privilege some over others and thinks they are sketchy. (In what way are they privileged? How does that work? Does that mean we get suboptimal decision making so that some class-privileged person can have a seat of responsibility and privilege?)
Nix is very cutting edge, and we'd like to see more diversity. Diversity will come with growth. Controversy will stifle growth. These kinds of statements are going to cause controversy and conflict, stifling the growth that will result in diversity. Instead you may be able to rope in tokens of diversity, but you won't actually achieve real organic diversity because the growth just isn't there.
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Can you explain what did you put in place to obtain that diversity, can you qualify a bit that diversity? I'm looking at statements like "There was BIPOC", etc. Also, how did you measure that diversity?
We grew. We advertised on Meetup.com. We let companies know we existed so they could host us. We let colleges know we existed so students could find us. We were open to everyone. We made every effort to help everyone who was trying to help themselves.
One of the things we did that helped: We treated people fairly. We did not talk about elevating anyone with privilege over others because of their class.
Who? Black (native, island, African), White (European, Russian, native (all ethnicities)), Asian (Korean, Chinese), Islanders, Native American, Transgendered, very old, very young. etc.
I'm highlighting this because it's a reoccurrence of the discussion Jon Ringer kept having in apparent bad faith.
fucking hell, zulip is painful to scroll through on mobile. this is one of the most broken lazy loading implementations I’ve ever seen.
aaron’s stunning logic and evidence, excerpted from a way too long post:
so this fuckhead’s evidence is that he never personally saw any diversity issues completing his entry-level CS degree and running the AI club at the university of west fucking florida or when he “worked” as a Stack Overflow moderator, but you wouldn’t know his work, he somehow calmed the community and built cooperation invisibly behind the scenes
it’s unfortunate that the Nix discourse and zulip (and probably github too, I haven’t checked) is flooded with shit exactly like this. it’s a great way to sap the energy from a movement, and I fear that’s exactly what’s going on.
Aaron notably doesn't comment on governance. "Some marginalized people attended some meetings of the group" implies to him that the system is inclusive.
it’s kind of amazing how many open source spaces I’ve left after the organizers have said some vacuous shit like that — no problems recognized, no changes needed, just “we’re already inclusive because marginalized folks are interested in what we’re doing (and a lot of them don’t have a choice but to engage with us)”. folks like Aaron never bring examples or anecdotes of how they’ve helped marginalized folks — because they haven’t.