The NixOS community is relitigating quotas, now on Zulip

speaking of relitigating shit, all of Jeff’s posts are suspicious as fuck, and I’m hoping he’s not given a position of any actual power in Aux (though he’s certainly not the only one seemingly aiming for one today)

New developments -- someone proposes "OK, what if we're in irreconcilable difference with the racists?" and two people pile on to say (respectively) "Well, we'll have to find (vaguely specified) 'workarounds'" and "Well, we can't kick them out, that would be a disaster."

A third person points out that some of the people in the thread are opposed to quotas but implied they would support quotas if we made an applicant list first (and allowed for the possibility that only white men would appear on the list, rendering the quota system moot) -- so we should do that.

Specifically -- nat418 sez:

I believe that we live in a society in which some classes of people are exploited by others, and that the acknowledgement of this reality—let alone measures to remediate it—are often percieved as "unfair" or "conflictual" by members of the exploiting classes. I think the real conflict is already ongoing, we are enmeshed within it, and that if we want to live as honorable and dignfied persons we must take up the cause of justice and the common good.

nim65s:

I personally agree with @nat-418 here, but I acknowledge some others do not, and I don't think one side could convince the other. I also don't think we can compromise: this is a boolean question. Therefore, to find a consensus, I think we should explore workarounds.

nat418 sez:

What workarounds? Seems like if we can't agree on basic matters like "marginalized groups should be represented" then we should simply part ways.

tmarkov:

This is a very non-obvious statement.

The goal of the mix community is ultimately to make nix and NisOS as good as possible.

Parting ways is a huge negative for the ecosystem overall. If it is unavoidable, I guess I'll personally leave all other consideration aside and advocate for whatever would cause the least amount of people splitting off whatever it might be.

Colin:

i'm not confident that's pinpointing a hard disagreement. my read of this thread is:

1. marginalized individuals should be represented.
2. representation is better maximized by composing a diverse assembly from available applicants, rather than within the process by which we obtain applicants.
3. uncertainty around how "hard" this requirement is; how critical is representation within assembly composition to ensuring representation in its downstream processes; hypotheticals in what to do if there aren't enough applicants with which to form a diverse assembly.

"yo chat gpt can you regurgitate some arguments about why our selection policy shouldn't have DEI quotas kthxbye"

I don't know about you but for me growths are a medical emergency

My personal opinions. Note that I'm not on the NixOS zulip, or a user of NixOS:

• Of course some people are going to be excluded from the committee: it's 5 people.
• I've seen some groups become surprisingly diverse by accident but the groups were generally still run by white men.
• The minorities in groups I was in usually ended up in positions where they had to do emotional labor or damage control for the white men who made the decisions.
• The white men in groups I've been in usually behaved in ways that, to me, implied massive affinity bias. It was possible to shake them from that without dehumanizing them or being rude, but I had to actually be in the room.
• That doesn't make them inherently bad people. Or maybe it kind of does, but only in a conditional sense -- that is, if integrating the group they're in suddenly makes them stop being bad people, then it is a really good idea to do that.

With regard to this specific proposal:

• OK, with a quota of 2, you have three seats that white men are allowed to have.
• If you really need there to be 5 white men, increase the size of the committee to 7. Now you have 5 white male seats, the same as you would if this proposal were not adopted.
• If this is still objectionable to you, then your apparent problem with the quota system is not that it excludes white men.

I am possibly being unfair -- it seems like what Aaron wants is "there should be 5 people on the committee, not all of them should be white men, but that should happen by accident without needing to be set in stone on the Zulip."

This seems vacuous to me: the whole purpose of the Zulip is not to create a selection process -- it's to select a committee one time and then hand over power to that committee. There's, therefore, little distinction between "deciding to vote for X" and "setting a quota limiting the outcomes." There is no process external to the Zulip by which an outcome could happen by accident.

And to say the obvious: I think it's very unlikely a group consisting of 5 white men would have been selected on merit alone. So I would personally be likely to veto any such group based on that. Saying it's a quota offers a fig leaf to people with implicitly biased selection criteria -- mentally I am saying "of course you picked five fucking clones of yourself. Denied."

fucking hell, zulip is painful to scroll through on mobile. this is one of the most broken lazy loading implementations I’ve ever seen.

I feel like you're in disagreement with me but instead of disagreeing with logic or evidence you are raising it to a meta level so you can shut me down.

aaron’s stunning logic and evidence, excerpted from a way too long post:

My education is in political science (BS, FSU) and business (BS, FSU, and MBA, UWF), and I've nearly completed an MS in Computer Science at UWF.

I was an elected moderator on Stack Overflow where I worked mostly behind the scenes to calm the community and build cooperation, permanently cure problematic contributors and reduce the incidences of moderators becoming the story.

I've been an organizer of meetups and clubs, most notoriously as a co-organizer of the NYC Python meetup group, holding free weekly office hours for over a year, and most recently as president of the AI club at UWF.

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.

I don't want to give this more oxygen than it deserves by making a separate post, but Jon Ringer has finally exhausted Reddit.