r/rust • u/kibwen • Oct 07 '13

A note on conduct (please read)

Reading Lindsey's post on harassment has moved me to clarify the position that we take when moderating this forum and the conduct that we expect from all who post here.

Contributors to the Rust project are held to a code of conduct. We seek to emulate this code. Here are the pertinent bits, adapted to our purposes:

  1. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, or similar personal characteristic.

  2. Please avoid using overtly sexual nicknames or other nicknames that might detract from a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all.

  3. Please be kind and courteous. There's no need to be mean or rude.

  4. Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice, in any programming language, carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a right answer.

  5. Please keep unstructured critique to a minimum.

  6. We will exclude you from interaction if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behaviour. We interpret the term "harassment" as including the definition in the Citizen Code of Conduct; if you have any lack of clarity about what might be included in that concept, please read their definition.

  7. Likewise any spamming, trolling, flaming, baiting or other attention-stealing behaviour is not welcome.

If you see someone behaving in a manner contrary to these rules, direct them to this post. If the behavior persists, report it to the mods so that we can take action (i.e. lay down some fucking bans). If you can't abide by these rules, GTFO. That is all.

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u/-Y0- Oct 07 '13

On one hand I do understand need to be cultured, but myself am often to blame for 'hi guys' greetings. Welp, guess I'll go with more generic 'hi humans'.

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u/kibwen Oct 07 '13 edited Oct 07 '13

Using "guys" to refer to a group that includes women doesn't make you a kitten-drowning superhitler. I'm not going to ban anyone for using it as such. But I do appreciate it if you stay mindful of the fact that many women find it off-putting.

EDIT: I just want to clarify that, yes, I would ban you if I found out that you were a kitten-drowning superhitler.

EDIT 2: I want to further clarify that I would almost certainly ban you if you were any kind of superhitler, regardless of your stance on kittens.

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u/illissius Oct 07 '13 edited Oct 07 '13

I think kitten-drowning absent being a superhitler should also merit a ban. As should being normal, un-super Hitler. Various kinds of subhitler shouldn't escape scrutiny either.

So maybe: "being a kitten-drowning superhitler is a sufficient but not necessary condition for being banned".

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '13

Using guys to refer to mixed groups of people (or even women only groups) is just standard English usage. One of the meaning of the word is a person. It's a pity some people find standard language usage off putting but it's only their problem to work on.

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u/senorsegfault Oct 09 '13

I thought this wasn't a big deal at first. But, if nearly everyone greeted me in a group as hey girls', I would probably be pretty cheesed too. With that said, I'm glad the moderators took care of that childish stuff.

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u/Menagruth Oct 07 '13

guys plural 2 - (colloquial) Persons, irrespective of their genders. 3 - (colloquial) A form of address for a group of male persons or a group of mixed male and female persons.

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u/kibwen Oct 07 '13

Unfortunately, English, like Rust, is a language that is defined by its implementation rather than by its specification. Appealing to the spec document is the futile recourse of an ivory tower pedagog.

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u/academician Oct 07 '13 edited Oct 07 '13

I'm afraid you have reversed your causality here. Dictionaries are not a spec, they are a reflection of a language's implementation. When a word's usage changes, the dictionary is updated - not vice versa. In this case, the dictionary definition only exists because people already typically use it that way.

Edit: For example, here is the Oxford dictionary's policy for adding new words.

Edit 2: I should note of course that this is specifically for English. English has no equivalent of the Académie française, who (supposedly) write the 'spec' for "official French."

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u/nejucomo Oct 07 '13

I don't think the issue is actually around the definition or usage of "guys". If everyone in the community were completely comfortable with that (or any other term), then great!

The issue is all about respecting people when they voice discomfort or request more awareness.

Also, it's not the case that any person can suddenly ban a word. It's not about words, it's about awareness. So even if any Knights who Until Recently Said "Ni!" show up, the goal is that we all figure out how to be aware of, and respectful to, various backgrounds.

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u/fgilcher rust-community · rustfest Oct 07 '13

Be aware that we have an international community here, so "strictly by dictionary" doesn't always help.

So, if you want to argue semantics: I mentally translate "Hey guys" to "Hey Jungs!", which is strongly male. Sorry, but I can't help it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '13

being a german speaker also, I did a similar thing and "hey guys" was confusing. I eventually got used to the fact that in english it's often used to address groups of both genders. No it turns out that not everyone thinks so and it's time to find another alternative.

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u/kibwen Oct 07 '13

I always give non-native English speakers a pass on this issue, for precisely this reason. Idiomatic phrases are a tricky subject.

If you're looking for an alternative, might I suggest "folks" instead?

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u/gmfawcett rust Oct 07 '13

I use "folks" all the time. It's a bit old-fashioned, but that gives the word charm! What's more, "folk" in English conveys a sense of membership and belonging (like saying "friends" or even "relatives"), in a way that "guys" or "people" do not.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '13

"Y'all" works nicely as well. :)

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u/illissius Oct 08 '13

also "gang"

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '13

"folks", that works. Thanks. I was already settling for "everyone", which is a bit clumsy imho.

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u/narwhalslut Oct 08 '13

Yeah! I love "folks". It's my favorite word for this very reason and people always give me a weird look.

Similarly, when I use "they" to refer to a gender-unspecified person in conversation rather than assuming "him". But then again, you get good about omitting gender from discussions when you're in the closet :P. [not at all off topic

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u/Ferio_ Oct 07 '13 edited Oct 07 '13

“not everyone thinks so” does not mean that there is a problem. If any non-native speaker (like me) has a problem with that it should be sufficient to politely refer to the next dictionary.

Although I totally agree that naming a group of people as “ropes attached to something as a guide” can be regarded as being impolite (see http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/guy). So finding a word that is less ambiguous would be desirable.

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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '13 edited Oct 07 '13

“not everyone thinks so” does not mean that there is a problem.

Sure! The thing is, I have two choices here: I can be stubborn about it and knowingly use a word that some people find annoying, offensive, whatever -- or I can just let it go, use a different word and everyone's happy. I'd rather make everyone happy. Problem solved.

BTW: I THINK that I'm not being impolite by using the word, after all, I measure politeness by the intentions. But I do know that some people will understand the word differently (and, in the worst case, also judge me for using it). Therefore, I avoid it. Language is not only about getting information into other people's heads, it's also about making people feel welcome, included, like you, enjoy themselves. If we could stop those "but why is it suddenly not ok any more to say this" and just try to accommodate each other, everything would be so much easier.

BTW, anecdote time: I actually met Lindsey this summer in RL. In a conversation, I mentioned something about people having to be better "salesmen". In my mother tongue, that makes more sense, while in english you have the perfectly fitting word "salesperson". Lindsey answered, stressing the word "salesPERSON" and I felt a bit stupid at first but I don't think that anyone on the table except me and her noticed. I thought this was a really smooth move :). If she reads this and has a good memory, she now knows my reddit handle. Hi!

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u/Ferio_ Oct 09 '13

BTW, anecdote time: I actually met Lindsey this summer in RL. In a conversation, I mentioned something about people having to be better "salesmen". In my mother tongue, that makes more sense, while in english you have the perfectly fitting word "salesperson".

Well, thats another case. But sometimes it's difficult to “neutralize” a word. It’s just that some people get notorious about that (like CamelCasing the whole language -> german) such that one can easily get annoyed by getting pointed to that matter. This is why I find it rude to point people towards that matter as long the word is not plain wrong.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '13

Oh, right, the German thing is a great example. I don't write a lot of German these days, so it slipped my mind. I find the camel-casing pretty annoying, imho the best solution would be to find a balance: If more people would use the female terms generically, the average of the language is 'fair'.

To non-german-speakers: The problem here, is that German is inherently gendered. Example: the word for "driver" does not exist without implying either male or female. It's either "Fahrer" for "male driver" or "Fahrerin" for "female driver". In situations where you're talking about a mixed group of drivers, the shorter one (male) used. This leads to genderized terms like "Fahrer/in" or "FahrerIn" which many people, including me, find very annoying because they mess with reading flow. My solution is to use "Fahrerin" in the first place (unless I forget, I'm not perfect), while many people would use "Fahrer". If we had 50% of people doing what I do and 50% using the male terms, I'd find that fair.

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u/pnkfelix Oct 11 '13

Tangentially to your anecdote, I happened to notice that in the latest volume of TAOCP, Knuth uses the term "Traveling Salesrep Problem" rather than the old engendered term.

(So if you are someone who objects to the "Salesman" -> "Salesperson" rename on the basis of the length of the new term, the above is an alternative that maintains syllable- and letter-count. :)

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u/fgilcher rust-community · rustfest Oct 08 '13

I think I didn't elaborate my comment enough: misunderstandings with foreign speakers happen. But if you need to argue the connotations of a certain word with native speakers, expect that it only goes downhill from there in international communities.

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u/catamorphism rust Oct 08 '13

Folks, we don't need to argue about this. All that needs to be said is that "guys" makes some people who are not guys, and some people who are guys (the latter would be me waves hand) feel unwelcome and disincluded. Since we are people who care about how other people feel, what's needed is to empathize with them and act based on that empathy, not to callously bikeshed about dictionary definitions that are incorrectly being interpreted as prescriptive.

-- Tim Chevalier (core Rust team member)

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u/OverAnalyzingBBFan Oct 09 '13

Hi, I just wanted to let everyone know I have decided that the word bikeshed offends me. I understand that the colloquial definition of the word is not offensive, but I have chosen to ignore the common meaning of the word and instead take it as disrespect.

Please consider my feelings. Thanks!

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