Someone could go stalk their account to check, I can't be bothered with that right now.
[0] https://github.com/Christian-Schiffer/servicelayer.chat/issu...
Appearances can be deceiving... even the profile photo could be generated and not a picture of a real human, as this other item currently prominently on the front page reveals:
> it's not something an engineer should ever do.
But what if it wasn't Santa but it was like a different religious icon - like a menorah? I feel like literally thousands of American christians would have banned using VSCode or even Microsoft products for something like that.
A) It ignores entirely the modern day usage of the Santa hat (it is not really a religious symbol, it is more like a general holiday symbol)
B) Even if it were, say, a menorah, it could mean that the developers are Jewish. Why would someone of a different religion celebrating the holidays offend you? That would imply to me that you're intolerant of other religions.
C) It was obviously not placed there with bad intentions. It is clearly intended to be festive and fun.
D) It is a waste of developer resources to remove something they just added in.
E) It devalues issues that people with genuine offenses might raise in the future, i.e. the boy who cried wolf.
That reminds me of another "cultural artifact in software" with an interesting backstory --- T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM.
He's literally a saint in every form of Christianity that has saints.
People like to be offended and will ruin things for other people. It's sad that we're in such a sensitive society but tolerance isn't what is practiced, sensitivity is.
As a Christian I find the idea of Santa offensive, honestly. Santa and his powers (as presented in media) are a replacement for God. I'm not going to go crying to anybody because they have Santa as an icon.
In the US, sure. In many other countries the related symbology is still heavily linked to "Saint Nicholas", not "Santa Claus".
I don't think that Santa Claus, the mythological person who lives at the North Pole and has elves to make toys, is venerated by any Christian denomination.
Don't forget getting children drunk on rum eggnog made from molested cows and unfertilized dinosaur descendant's ovums.
Of course he's religious, it's a mascot for a Christian holiday. Don't confuse American commercialism's exploitation of Christmas & Santa with its religious roots.
I guess you could use a snowflake or a cornucopia or something as a generic 'winter holiday' thing, and people have been doing that for awhile; "Happy Holidays" usurped "Merry Christmas" decades ago. Or you could use a bevy of emojis representing the holiday's secular roots, but would it have been better if they added emojis for St. Nick's mythological companions like Belshnickel, Zwarte Pete, and Krampus next to the santa hat? Maybe if they really wanted to polish this essential feature for production use, they could have different emoji sets for different holidays and a modal to choose which one you wanted.
I dunno, I feel so bad for people who haven't had the drive to do anything fun or playful beaten out of them yet. "Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear."
There are people who find "Happy Holidays" offensive, as they consider it part of the manufactured war on Christmas.
I guess this is why politics and holidays don't mix!
Gift giving around the end of the year has been around since before 0 BC.
(And before someone screams "citation needed," I'll just say that it's well known, and if you didn't know it by now, there's a thing called Google and Wikipedia that you can go look at.)
Lots of beliefs are "well known" and nevertheless wrong. Just look at all the people, even in this thread, claiming that Santa Claus was invented by Coca Cola, even though a simple google image search will reveal illustrations of Santa from before Coco Cola was founded. As for the pagan traditions around new years they are not very well documented and a lot is speculation.
Of course gift-giving is known throughout history, but the figure of Santa Claus is associated with the Christian celebration. I'm pretty sure you wont find any reference to Santa Claus or Father Christmas from before Christianity!
So? Most religious traditions were stolen, whoop de do. What matters is how they're practiced in 2019, in which case Christmas is almost synonymous with Christianity.
> I'll just say that it's well known
There is no actual confidence in how all of this stuff came to be, just a lot of conjecture - and so no, it's not well known at all.
Christianity has no monopoly on Christmas.
You see similar things going on for Valentine's day, Easter, Saint Patricks day, etc. Sure, there is a religious aspect, but the non-religious celebration is dominant.
My colleagues in India had a Christmas celebrations in their office. I asked them if they celebrated it growing up, and they told me they first started celebrating it in University.
We have Diwali parties in our US office. Everyone has fun.
As a symbol of American capitalism it's rather fitting that Microsoft are using him.
St Nicholas (sinterklaas) is celebrated in The Netherlands on 6th of December. You may remember it from The Daily Show and other US TV outlets who were covering the archaic tradition of black face in the celebrations.
"Dear <user>, We apologize if you found the icon offensive. Please be assured that no offense was intended. Thank you for bringing up the issue so we could clear things up."
Was not a sufficient response and an end to the conversation? Leave the icon where it is. Now that the user knows that the icon wasn't meant as an offense, he can move on with his life.
If he finds the swastika offensive, he shouldn't visit India. Swastikas are everywhere. The context matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
>Saying "I'm sorry you feel that way" to someone who has been offended by a statement is a non-apology apology. It does not admit there was anything wrong with the remarks made, and may imply the person took offense for hypersensitive or irrational reasons. Another form of non-apology does not apologize directly to the injured or insulted party, but generically "to anyone who might have been offended".
>Ifpology: Attorney and business ethics expert Lauren Bloom, author of The Art of the Apology, mentions the "if apology" as a favorite of politicians, with lines such as "I apologize if I offended anyone". Comedian Harry Shearer has coined the term Ifpology for its frequent appearances on "The Apologies of the Week" segment of Le Show.
On a more serious note though. It is cool that there is a label for something like this, but to me it is just a polite way of de-escalation. You could be confrontational and say "I didn't do anything wrong, you're the one who is wrong to think what I did was wrong!" or you can say "I'm sorry you thought what I did was wrong, but my intention was not to wrong you or anyone.".
There is nothing wrong with being polite and tactful.
Can someone fill me in on what this is referring to. I know my history knowledge is a bit lacking but I normally am able to get references like this so I must have missed something.
Whether or not the complaint is genuine is also much harder to figure out than "is it sufficient to replace this with a snowflake"
The complaining person is displaying abusive behavior and should be treated as such. Warn them. Then ban them if they persist. You stand up to bullies or you drown in them.
Mods can trivially and entirely disregard the non-problem (as it actually is). They're choosing not to and are making a community handling mistake in the process.
The only proper response is to ignore the complaint as not meaningful enough to warrant action. Otherwise you'll eventually have to remove every possible symbol. Somewhere, someone's mother was murdered by a cog and they feel very, very sensitive about the matter.
Abusive behavior in communities occurs at both extremes. You can be too sensitive in social situations in fact, to such a degree that you abuse other people with your need to control your environment specifically to your aggressively selfish satisfaction.
Not really, see https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/12/131219-santa... and https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/51928?lang=bi for very different perspectives.
Santa is about as non-religious as you can get. IMO, I think Microsoft really put their foot in their mouth on this one.
Edit: Because I can't let this go, it's important to point out that what we find offensive is subjective. I wonder if whoever wrote that is really just trolling Microsoft, or just has an axe to grind.