On Thu Apr 15, 2021 at 3:40 PM BST, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> I intended the weaker observation that driving away a large number of
> smart autistic assholes (and non-assholes with poor social skills)
> is not necessarily a good trade for the people the project might
> recruit by being "more welcoming".
>
> Possibly that *would* be a good trade. I have decades of experience
> that makes me doubt this. I think the claim needs to be examined
> skeptically, not just uncritically accepted because we value being
> "nice".
I'm not even sure that this only applies to autists, over the years
I've had various interactions where I've thought someone was being
an asshole but it turned out English wasn't their first language and
they just lacked the depth of vocabulary to express a point politely.
There are also huge disparities in what cultures deem to be polite vs
impolite (high context vs low context cultures, cultural sensitivities
to particular phrases or concepts, etc). I remain unconvinced that
trying to define 'jerks' by a narrow-minded west coast American ideal
and enforce that on a global community is not, itself, jerkish.
More often than not, strict speech codes just encourage people to
assume bad faith of each other, and to tone police each other instead
of engaging in substantive debate on the issues. I also cannot remember
ever seeing one enforced equally against everyone, rather than become
a tool of an entrenched majority culture against a minority culture.
I have yet to see a project where a strict speech code has improved the
dialectic, rather than degraded it.
>>= %frosku = { os => 'gnu+linux', editor => 'emacs', coffee => 1 } =<<
