http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/12/14/1618239/github-takes...
god, this repo is reprehensive.
It satirizes a certain vacuous style of writing. Saying that it threatens feminism is like saying that satirizing jargon-heavy research papers threatens science. Is the jargon really all that matters?
I went to Slashdot through the link above which led me back to HN. The reactions just seem bizarre. Even if offensive to some, the readme.md is fully within the traditions of American comedy. You don't get all angry about Jeff Foxworthy's You Might be a Redneck, right? You don't proclaim that he misrepresents the rural poor and trivializes their hardships? Or do you?
edit: why the downvotes? honest question.
Meanwhile, it would be nice to have a reusable code of conduct written with the same attitude. E.g., it would only forbid personal attacks, credible threats of violence against other contributors and violations of the law (like committing warez to the repository). It would deny any responsibility for what the contributors say elsewhere on the Internet and state an unwillingness to discuss their speech on the project grounds. It could include anti-blackmail clauses like that agitating people on social media to "support" your issue by shaming the maintainers will get you banned and the issue closed immediately and irrevocably. The latter would have to be carefully written, though, to not be exploitable.
tl;dr: Observed fact, GitHub disappeared a repo (this I personally know for a fact) and all its forks, the only reason we can surmise is that it described itself as "X for retards". I believe it's this one https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter now described as "WebM for bakas." (Japanglish for idiots or fools).
Per this https://imgur.com/QC51FZz it was indeed for the use of that word.
I'd be more willing to extend some slack to GitHub if they hadn't precipitously turned off their service for these repos, that's worse than this example of their "tolerance", but who knows what it'll be next?
Who knows how this will play out in the long term; their trashing of their meritocracy rug suggests this is not a one off (ADDED: and erics32 reminded me of C+=). Why should I or anyone else concerned about long term stability invest in their particular value adds when they show such capriciousness?
The great point, in relation to this topic of their latest investment, is that companies that depend almost entirely on their "communities" can screw those up and destroy their value.
In the context of, say, aerodynamics, its merely a word of art, e.g. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aerodynamic+braking
It'll be another word, perhaps in a more ambigious context, next time. Which brings up another point: I just don't want to have to worry about what will become this politically incorrect in the future when I'm writing code and documentation.
Then don't say/write bigotted things. Honestly, it's like asking people not to write spelling or grammar mistakes in documentation. It's not that hard.
It's not "these 6 letters in this combination is banned", it's "stop insulting people based on mental illnesses".
This patch retards the rate of retry attempts after three consecutive failures
We live in a world where a guy wants to ban Mel Brooks' The Producers because he doesn't realize it's a satire of Hitler, not an homage. Lots of people don't or won't appreciate context.
re: The Producers, with any topic you'll get one or two extremists of any varity. You should judge it not by "did someone want to stop this", but instead by "did someone(s) in power to stop it, want to stop it". One crank protesting outside a cinema is very different from the CEO of a movie studio deciding not to make the film.
In the context of medication, "retard" is still in use: it describes medication that is released steadily and continuously into the bloodstream.
"idiot" and "imbecile" used to be the terms used by medical professionals to refer to mentally retarded people in the 50s and 60s. Then those terms became insults, so they started using the term "mentally retarded". Now that retard has become an insult, another word will have to be found, (handicapped? slow?) and then it will become an insult, and they'll have to find another word...
The next phase has already begun - "You were one of the special children, weren't you" is a pretty common start to an ass-chewing in the military. They'll have to move on pretty soon.
I think it's pretty much inevitable once the money rolls in that companies like Github and others will start censoring content and generally doing things that upset the community to appease their investors. I can't think of a single company that doesn't do this, and in many cases it has led to a downturn of the company if not outright demise.
Do you think Bitbucket would stand up to a PC Twitter campaign? I think not; only the explicitly ideological want to fight such battles.
This was on the front page recently. 741 comments and only 480 upvotes, so it wouldn't suprise me if it set off the flamewar filter and got pushed off.
I require that general freedom of expression in my tools and do no tolerate vendors who engage in these sorts of damaging stunts. I suspect I'm not alone, and I note GitHub has a further problem of not being all that sticky, e.g. I moved all my repos off it earlier today after we got confirmation of this.