This part of survey is really weird and full of American racist bigotry. What does "Person of color" mean considering people all around the globe? In Africa or India whites are super-minorities so should they vote as "persons of color"?

Yes, minority is geographical, yet somehow it's come to mean not white male, a western view point. Not sure how female keeps getting classified as minority.

It just means underrepresented in the computing technology community.

You may be interested in the discussion on this topic from when the survey was posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4ikawg/launching_the_...

What terms would you recommend that they use instead?

As national/racial/other "minorities" issues as well as their common understandings are very different around the World, I would like to avoid any questions following any paradigm, if we're building truly globalized community, not a racist one following American views on American problems.

Amazing how a bigger focus is placed on getting certain demographics to use a programming language rather than focusing on improvement of the language itself.

Where did you get "bigger focus" from? It seems to me they are hard at work improving the language all the time.

Programming languages are for programming, not capturing token demographics. This shouldn't even be a consideration.

Programming languages are used for and by humans. The experience of the people using the language plays a massive role in the success of the language and of the software built with it.

So why are we needlessly injecting race and sexual orientation into something that used to be just about programming? Are we tracking the demographics for lawn sprinkler users with equally bated breath?

Stop trying to insert your identity politics into everything. Let's just leave a few pure things in this world, please.

What I don't get is how you consider this such an important crusade to go on. Is collecting the opinions of under-represented groups such an objectively damaging thing that you're going to spent your limited energy and time on earth fighting that? Can you seriously think of no better things to be concerned about?

oh come on. just stuck it up, we don't need grand standing on this topic here.

Rust has had a code of conduct from the beginning too; that's their choice. Its also part of the Mozilla charter I believe.

If you don't like it, tough luck.

Run your own project however you like, but you've got no ground to stand on how others run theirs.

I would argue that the language will benefit from having more diverse feedback.

Does anybody actually believe that diverse cultural backgrounds are at all relevant to ideas about programming language design or compiler programming? Claims that diversity is good for project organization sound believable, but I see no reason to think the diversity of background has any impact on technical contributions.

There is no moral obligation to have a diverse group, just to have a group that is tolerant of diversity, in the interest of fairness for members of minority groups. Encouraging actual diversity is just a strategy to avoid letting people who don't care about this stuff develop bubbles of intolerance in homogenous bubbles where intolerance isn't challenged regularly. The presence of diversity indicates a lack of intolerance, but a group consisting entirely of one demographic could be just as tolerant, and its homogeneity just a coincidence or a result of lack of advertising. So I find it a little strange when a group is "congratulated" on its diversity.

Thank you for coherently and politely saying what others have said in... less eloquent terms. I think many people feel this way but find it difficult to express in these contexts without coming off as (or at least being accused of) a bigot or something.

My post above was a super-passive expression of this.

> but I see no reason to think the diversity of background has any impact on technical contributions

Exactly this. The internet is the great equalizer. There is no need for anyone to know anything about me unless I choose to bring it up.

For a technical project, conducted and run over the internet, my work can stand entirely on its merits in a way that would not be possible in a regular office environment.

Since you are prepared to make that argument, in what way will it benefit?

Does the color of my skin, my gender or my sexual orientation matter when providing feedback for a project such as this?

I would argue that those things are entirely irrelevant in this context, and wouldn't want them connected/associated with any contribution I made.

The general idea here is that when you are part of a majority, it's alarmingly easy to accidentally set up your community in such a way that makes those from a minority feel less welcome. It's a potential unknown-unknown. I assume the Rust community is trying to find out if this is the case.

Put another way, your skin color, sexual orientation, gender, etc. likely will not change your contribution. But if it turns out that people of a particular skin color, sexual orientation, gender, etc. are somehow disincentivized from contributing, that's a problem.