Code of Conduct was adopted through dictation where Code of Conflict was adopted through democracy. That, by itself, is a problem. Ordering people to be inclusive is very different from people agreeing to be inclusive.

StrayKATAll you have to do is read the CoC founder, as far goals go. They want a complete paradigm shift. Don't miss the forest for the trees and get distracted by this or that particular issue. The only thing imaginary is from people living in denial of it.

postmeritocracy.org/

From reading that, I have to say it sounds like a well thought-out and sensible approach to correcting for the deficiencies of the current system, and it aligns very well with what I'm familiar with from group psychology and management studies. The principles they present (in particular those founded on the belief that the output of a group can and should exceed the output of its constituent members in quality) don't apply or work in all industries, but programming is definitely one where they do. You might call it a paradigm shift, but if so, the current paradigm is one founded on denying relevant scientific data in how to best organize the workplace. As an example: in groups working closely together, those who spend 20-30% of their total working time discussing non-work topics are more productive than those who don't allow non-work communication. Similarly, for any creative or problem-solving project, increased group heterogeneity has a clear causal link both to increased quality of the solutions found and how quickly they are found. In other words: for peak productivity and peak quality of output, you need heterogeneous groups that interact as human beings (and not mindless "worker bees") - and importantly, don't get into personal conflicts (which codes of conduct exist to avoid).

No doubt there'll be an adjustment period, but I'd be quite surprised if this wasn't a step towards better and higher-quality kernel development in the long term.

This "workplace" isn't even a "place." Most of the communication between contributors is via email. There's little to no physical presence involved. Most of your post is irrelevant to the development of the Linux Kernel.

More broadly: 8% of American programmers work from home and that number is growing. Working remote is second only to vacation days for preferred benefits.

FordGT90ConceptThis "workplace" isn't even a "place." Most of the communication between contributors is via email. There's little to no physical presence involved. Most of your post is irrelevant to the development of the Linux Kernel.

More broadly: 8% of American programmers work from home and that number is growing. Working remote is second only to vacation days for preferred benefits.

A remote workplace is still a workplace, and non-physical spaces are still spaces - people still interact with each other in and through them, perform actions in them, and interact with the spaces themselves. I'd argue that the lack of a common physical space makes for a higher need for formalized codes of conduct, as there's less opportunity for non-work socialization, and as such less opportunity to a) get to know each other, and b) establish common norms of behaviour. We all know it's easier to be an asshole over the internet than in real life - but the impact of the behaviour is not reduced to even close to the same degree! - which is exactly why we need things like this.

Also, the desire for remote work can likely be at least partly attributed to the lack of personal space in corporate environments - the growth in popularity of cubicle farms and open floor plan offices causes intense discomfort (and thus loss of productivity) for people whose work requires deep concentration, leading to people choosing to work from home as the option is barely working at all. This isn't surprising, given that the two key drivers behind adoption of office layouts like this are space-saving (i.e. money-saving) and managerial oversight (i.e. lack of trust in employees), both of which are directly detrimental to the welfare (and thus productivity) of workers. If the office wasn't somewhere where you felt you had zero privacy/were under constant surveillance and was a space actually adapted to your work needs, I'd imagine the desire for remote work would shrink quite a bit. Of course, home offices are by default more private, and given the means and space easy to adapt to your work needs (with no company telling you you can't code from an armchair or whatever), which explains their popularity, but they're also isolated and lonely - which explains why depression, increased social anxiety and loneliness are rampant among remote workers.

You're vastly oversimplifying things.

1) A lot of programmers are already anti-social in the first place ("people with lower extraversion had higher programming scores") so remote work appeals to them. This very much fits Torvalds.

2) Remote work is a mixed bag in terms of health. Extroverts generally aren't going to like it where introverts will.

3) We're still talking Linux Kernel development here. It's not clear that even the Code of Conflict had any meaningful ramifications. By the same metric, the Code of Conduct won't either; however, the language of it and how it was adopted can because maintainers and contributors can move to other projects simply because they disagree with either or both.

R-T-BNods. I'm going to pretend that made sense and say my constitution is ok, but thanks for asking.

Ah! That missing possessive really made the difference...
Now, consider it was the well-being of a developer who caught scrutiny just for being in the spotlight - imagine the attorneys making a career on this kind of smear campaigns - making a target for oneself, do you think you would have enough heads than tails in the long term? This CoC is pure cancer.

mtcn77Ah! That missing possessive really made the difference...
Now, consider it was the well-being of a developer who caught scrutiny just for being in the spotlight - imagine the attorneys making a career on this kind of smear campaigns - making a target for oneself, do you think you would have enough heads than tails in the long term? This CoC is pure cancer.

Didn't happen, did it? And no I'm really not worried because it wasn't offensive before the edit either, and even if it was, plausible explanations (such as typing on a cell phone) do wonders. Nice try.

R-T-BDidn't happen, did it? And no I'm really not worried because it wasn't offensive before the edit either, and even if it was, plausible explanations (such as typing on a cell phone) do wonders. Nice try.

- "Didn't happen?" Thermodynamics 1st, hello? Not everything is plausible, nor contemptible, especially in a civilized society, but who am I telling it to? Who is Ayn Rand?

mtcn77Who is Ayn Rand?

A fiction writer with s sprinkling of political theory.

What the heck do thermodynamics have to do with social interactions? You still have no point there and act like it means something... *shakes head*

I do understand in a way though. I mean I certainly wouldn't want this gibberish you've been spouting to come back and bite me in a job interview either.

R-T-BA fiction writer with s sprinkling of political theory.

What the heck do thermodynamics have to do with social interactions? You still have no point there and act like it means something... *shakes head*

I do understand in a way though. I mean I certainly wouldn't want this gibberish you've been spouting to come back and bite me in a job interview either.

Well, every faculty has energy costs and since any higher scale involves greater disruptive entrophy, reaching the designated end result in a greater plane requires respectively larger energy expenditure 'which is limited'. I'm counting for the biophysics of life, as seen through the thermodynamics of the reactions taking place: misfolded quarternary(compound) proteins are given multiple chances to fold accurately because, while making them is simple, the whole operation takes up a whole cell and it is already pretty expensive to ship the parts from the cell center that wasting them is thermodynamically 'unsustainable'(cells enter recycling when "energy depleted" signals accumulate).
The logistics are what seperates the good design from superseded ones. It is therefore 'zero-sum' in what you can do with the given energy flux, but making an alternative is exponentially more of an exclusive ballpark.
Again, don't worry about the objectivists, they are smart enough to grab popcorn and enjoy the fireworks as the rebellious democrats set the demolition charges. 'Job interview' sort of bureaucratic oxymorons aren't relevant for objectivists, btw. You prove yourself at work, not past or present...
In fact, objectivism does not stray too far from muslimhood - that means 'good personship', fyi. You don't mix in with the misconduct, ever. What is good and bad is definitively set and your self-conscience is, ironically in a democratic sense, the only arbiter.

We have the best thermography physics, we do. Everyone's gonna love it.

R-T-BA fiction writer with s sprinkling of political theory.

More like a traumatized Russian girl, who went to the other extreme and threw out the baby (basic human decency) with the bathwater..

Both sides are nuts.

StrayKATMore like a traumatized Russian girl, who went to the other extreme and threw out the baby (basic human decency) with the bathwater.

Yours is the explanation, mine is the product/result. Either way we're both right.

mtcn77Well, every faculty has energy costs and since any higher scale involves greater disruptive entrophy, reaching the designated end result in a greater plane requires respectively larger energy expenditure 'which is limited'. I'm counting for the biophysics of life, as seen through the thermodynamics of the reactions taking place: misfolded quarternary(compound) proteins are given multiple chances to fold accurately because, while making them is simple, the whole operation takes up a whole cell and it is already pretty expensive to ship the parts from the cell center that wasting them is thermodynamically 'unsustainable'(cells enter recycling when "energy depleted" signals accumulate).

This has nothing to do with social theory. I'll repeat myself: This is like ranking attractiveness of people by how much literal attractive force (gravity/mass/obesity) they have.

Yes, it has nothing to do with your designated explanation of the subject. The democratization of the individual's progress is an oxymoron. You cannot mete out unitary values. You think he would even acknowledge the jealousy surrounding his position? Why should he put it in doubt? He made Linux for what it is, if he chooses not to defend his title - don't surmise this is a forfeiture. It is silent protest.

FordGT90ConceptYou're vastly oversimplifying things.

1) A lot of programmers are already anti-social in the first place ("people with lower extraversion had higher programming scores") so remote work appeals to them. This very much fits Torvalds.

2) Remote work is a mixed bag in terms of health. Extroverts generally aren't going to like it where introverts will.

3) We're still talking Linux Kernel development here. It's not clear that even the Code of Conflict had any meaningful ramifications. By the same metric, the Code of Conduct won't either; however, the language of it and how it was adopted can because maintainers and contributors can move to other projects simply because they disagree with either or both.

Neither 1 or 2 are at all applicable as arguments against implementing an enforceable code of conduct. Again, I'd argue that they're arguments for this, as introverted people usually react better to well-organized surroundings (as this minimizes the chance of complex and risky social interaction), and remote interaction as I said before increases the chance of inappropriate behaviour and thus heightens the need for such rules to be established before the fact.

As for 3, you're now admitting that your argument is essentially "this might cause sulky, immature developers to ragequit"? If so, you're both assuming quite the level of immaturity in these people, all the while discounting their interest in improving Linux. While I'm not familiar with the community, this seems quite unreasonable - these are adults, not teenage gamers. And frankly, if they're that emotionally immature, are they even suited to doing work this important? I'd say not.

Also, it's rather comical that you're accusing me of oversimplifying things when you have grossly oversimplified (content, not language) explanations like the following in this thread.

mtcn77Well, every faculty has energy costs and since any higher scale involves greater disruptive entrophy, reaching the designated end result in a greater plane requires respectively larger energy expenditure 'which is limited'. I'm counting for the biophysics of life, as seen through the thermodynamics of the reactions taking place: misfolded quarternary(compound) proteins are given multiple chances to fold accurately because, while making them is simple, the whole operation takes up a whole cell and it is already pretty expensive to ship the parts from the cell center that wasting them is thermodynamically 'unsustainable'(cells enter recycling when "energy depleted" signals accumulate).
The logistics are what seperates the good design from superseded ones. It is therefore 'zero-sum' in what you can do with the given energy flux, but making an alternative is exponentially more of an exclusive ballpark.
Again, don't worry about the objectivists, they are smart enough to grab popcorn and enjoy the fireworks as the rebellious democrats set the demolition charges. 'Job interview' sort of bureaucratic oxymorons aren't relevant for objectivists, btw. You prove yourself at work, not past or present...
In fact, objectivism does not stray too far from muslimhood - that means 'good personship', fyi. You don't mix in with the misconduct, ever. What is good and bad is definitively set and your self-conscience is, ironically in a democratic sense, the only arbiter.

Again: human decision-making, whether social or logical, is not in any way whatsoever determined by the biological energy cost of cognitive processes. While an argument can be made that people generally prefer simpler solutions to time- and energy-consuming decision-making, oversimplifying this to some biological imperative due to the energy cost is quite absurd. While the energy expenditure of the brain is significant, it's generally not something we feel much of (as opposed to strenuous physical activity), and as such energy conservation is not a relevant or significant factor in decision-making surrounding this. That you're promoting this stance does nothing more than showcase how you're fundamentally unwilling to include and discuss the actually relevant factors in human social behaviour, instead seeking to simplify this down to some sort of "measurable" single-variable problem - which just demonstrates that your logic is deeply and fundamentally flawed on this subject, that you're approaching this in a deeply unscientific way, and that you're willfully ignoring the very significant amount of science documenting, describing and explaining the complexities of the subject matter at hand. The tendency to want to oversimplify complex problems into easily quantifiable or measurable metrics like this is a classic approach of misappropriated positivism, an approach that grossly overstates the role of the natural sciences in understanding how the world works and thus attempting to explain everything through math and physics. Not only is this unscientific, it's factually wrong, and it's willfully ignorant. Please stop.

Also, you need to look up what "zero-sum" means. And why is "job interview" an oxymoron? And yes, we do need to worry about "objectivists", 'cause they are a group of woefully misguided people believing in a fundamentally flawed philosophy, and (despite how much of a paradox this is) often hew towards authoritarianism and violence when opposed.

Lastly: "What is good and bad is definitely set" and "your self-conscience is [...] the only arbiter" are fundamentally contrary statements. One is arguing for the existence of "objective" moral values outside of human judgement, while the other says that human judgement is the ultimate arbiter of morality. You need to pick one of the two.

ValantarNeither 1 or 2 are at all applicable as arguments against implementing an enforceable code of conduct. Again, I'd argue that they're arguments for this, as introverted people usually react better to well-organized surroundings (as this minimizes the chance of complex and risky social interaction), and remote interaction as I said before increases the chance of inappropriate behaviour and thus heightens the need for such rules to be established before the fact.

Except who is going to enforce it? Fundamentally it has to boil down to behavior versus merit. Kicking someone with poor behavior but excellent merit out of the project (like Torvalds) could cause development to grind to a halt. Linux Foundation has never been big on enforcement and it's not something TAB even wants to deal with. The only reason why Linux Foundation could act against Torvalds is because he's their full time employee. For most maintainers, that is not the case (e.g. Sarah Sage was a fulltime employee of Intel, not Linux Foundation). Changing the Code of Conflict essentially started a debate about control structure for the Linux Kernel. What the SJWs want to do is force a square peg into a round hole. Now Linux Foundation is holding both parts and trying to figure out how to make it work without taking a chisel to it.

ValantarAs for 3, you're now admitting that your argument is essentially "this might cause sulky, immature developers to ragequit"? If so, you're both assuming quite the level of immaturity in these people, all the while discounting their interest in improving Linux. While I'm not familiar with the community, this seems quite unreasonable - these are adults, not teenage gamers. And frankly, if they're that emotionally immature, are they even suited to doing work this important? I'd say not.

It was maintainers themselves that raised the point.

Are they suited? Right back to the above point. You fit right in to that post-meritocracy crowd who value social over technical contribution. Do you really think a room full of sociologists and psychologists could make something like the Linux Kernel? Yes, but it would be shit and no one would use it; hence, why the community is pissed. People that never contributed to Linux are trying to superimpose their worldview on to the Linux community.


Think of it this way: if you have an established business with two employees: one has tenure and vast reservoirs systems knowledge but an abrasive attitude and one that's fresh off the boat, is non-binary, is book smart but ends up breaking systems because of lack of understanding them. Within a few months, they buck heads so often that it devolves into a me or them situation. Who is going to get the pink slip? The noob wrecking shit. I don't think I have to spell out where I'm going with this so let me jump to the conclusion: why shouldn't a "Code of Conflict" say "don't 'fix' shit you don't understand." Because it ushers back in the meritocracy--the system that works.

mtcn77Yes, it has nothing to do with your designated explanation of the subject.

No, it's outright illogical in every logical school.

mtcn77He made Linux for what it is, if he chooses not to defend his title - don't surmise this is a forfeiture. It is silent protest.

I don't pretend to know his reasons.

FordGT90ConceptDo you really think a room full of sociologists and psychologists could make something like the Linux Kernel? Yes, but it would be shit and no one would use it;

I'd like you to back that one up with some reasoning. It's not exactly happened before for you to know... mostly because sociologists don't program, in general. Even if we assume them to be management, there aren't many examples. You have no evidence for this claim either way... and it's rather contrived.

FordGT90ConceptExcept who is going to enforce it? Fundamentally it has to boil down to behavior versus merit. Kicking someone with poor behavior but excellent merit out of the project (like Torvalds) could cause development to grind to a halt. Linux Foundation has never been big on enforcement and it's not something TAB even wants to deal with. The only reason why Linux Foundation could act against Torvalds is because he's their full time employee. For most maintainers, that is not the case (e.g. Sarah Sage was a fulltime employee of Intel, not Linux Foundation). Changing the Code of Conflict essentially started a debate about control structure for the Linux Kernel. What the SJWs want to do is force a square peg into a round hole. Now Linux Foundation is holding both parts and trying to figure out how to make it work without taking a chisel to it.


It was maintainers themselves that raised the point.

Are they suited? Right back to the above point. You fit right in to that post-meritocracy crowd who value social over technical contribution. Do you really think a room full of sociologists and psychologists could make something like the Linux Kernel? Yes, but it would be shit and no one would use it; hence, why the community is pissed. People that never contributed to Linux are trying to superimpose their worldview on to the Linux community.


Think of it this way: if you have an established business with two employees: one has tenure and vast reservoirs systems knowledge but an abrasive attitude and one that's fresh off the boat, is non-binary, is book smart but ends up breaking systems because of lack of understanding them. Within a few months, they buck heads so often that it devolves into a me or them situation. Who is going to get the pink slip? The noob wrecking shit. I don't think I have to spell out where I'm going with this so let me jump to the conclusion: why shouldn't a "Code of Conflict" say "don't 'fix' shit you don't understand." Because it ushers back in the meritocracy--the system that works.

It's quite fascinating to read arguments from someone with such a fundamentally naive and unquestioning trust in authority. It's no wonder we don't see eye to eye - it's obvious that your default assumption is that the people in power are always the right and best people to be in power, and the threshold for evidence to prove otherwise seems unreasonably high. Your extremely narrowly selected examples make this authoritarian starting point abundantly clear. Let me present a far more realistic scenario:

A talented and experienced, but (slightly?) temperamental developer has worked on the same project for many years, and has gotten used to a specific way of thinking and approaching development. A new person joins the project, with talent and experience but no knowledge of the specific workings of this working group or the established norms for the project. The new developer makes a suggestion, which gets shot down harshly and unprofessionally by the experienced developer. This might be because the suggestion was bad, or because the suggestion followed a logic or approach that didn't match the norms of the development team (but might thus have lead to better solutions in the long run, as more diverse solutions attempted = better solutions arrived at).

Either way, there are three possible outcomes here.

1. The new developer lets the established one know that the response was inappropriate, and the experienced developer accepts and apologizes. They address this as adults, reach a productive compromise (whether this is the new developer adapting to established approaches, or the experienced developer recognizing the value of a solution outside of their normal mode of operation), and the problem goes away. This is likely to increase both productivity and quality of output.
2. The new developer lets the established one know the response was inappropriate, but the experienced developer rejects this entirely, and refuses to adjust their behaviour on the grounds of seniority and experience (neither of which are relevant to interpersonal behaviour). The new developer is less motivated because of this, feels devalued and looked down on, and either produces lacklustre code, or just quits. This reduces the productivity and quality of output of the group, and the group loses out on potential improvements.
3. The new developer lets the established one know the response was inappropriate, but the experienced developer rejects this entirely, and refuses to adjust their behaviour on the grounds of seniority and experience (neither of which are relevant to interpersonal behaviour). The situation escalates, and the less experienced developer is fired/expelled from the group, as the senior developer has more authority. Again, this reduces the productivity and quality of output of the group, and the group loses out on potential improvements.

This scenario is far more likely, as it's highly unlikely that a "fresh off the boat" programmer is given a significant position in a team at a level even remotely like this (does the TAB include anyone and everyone who says they want to join?). Your example draws up an extreme situation where one person has all the skill, ability, experience, power and status. Why would a situation like this arise at all?

As you can see, there's only one outcome that doesn't actively harm the efforts of the group. Having previously established and enforceable norms and rules of behaviour makes it far more likely that the productive solution is the one reached, as otherwise the decision is likely to default to the person with the most power and authority, even if they were in the wrong. And even if that person were in the right, it's still detrimental to the quality of work and level of productivity for them to unilaterally exert power over other contributors, as this harms group cohesion and undermines cooperation.

Besides this, what you're describing isn't a meritocracy. As such, the term post-meritocracy is kind of silly (given that there never has been one), but it needs to be used as people like you keep harping on it. The meritocracy isn't, and has never been real. Ever. Period. There is no such thing as pure merit outside of abstract thought experiments or oversimplifications irrelevant to real life, and no workplace has ever been free of social interaction and thus complex social dynamics. Judging from their manifesto, the post-meritocracy movement is doing nothing more than recognizing and underscoring this simple, plain fact. If you choose to deny this fact, that's on you. But please stop acting like you're promoting some sort of Platonic ideal of a meritocracy. Real life doesn't work that way, and if you can't see that, that's a failure of your perception of the world, not my arguments.

Also, again: please stop it with the damn straw man arguments. Have I suggested replacing programmers with sociologists and psychologists? Don't be absurd. Seriously, I'm getting tired of these silly attempts at derailing the discussion. (And, not that it matters, but it's not like academics are even remotely less anti-social than programmers.) You're (purposely?) reading my argument fundamentally wrong. My point is this: being a talented programmer does not mean that you're a talented group leader, manager, or strategist. Some, of course, will be one of all of these, but some will of course not be. The ability to write good code is not at all a predictor of the ability to create a good working environment. As such, saying "person X is a talented programmer and is as such the best person to decide on the future long-term developmental goals and strategies" is a misunderstanding of the point of making software. Software has a purpose, and that purpose is not "to be programmed well" - quality programming will make the software better, but it won't make it useful or suited to its purpose. As such, planning, strategy and management requires insight into how the software is likely to be used to at least an equivalent degree as it requires insight into how the program is written.

This alone shows how your idea of a "meritocracy" is incompatible with reality outside of projects where the use case is simple and predefined/known and there is one developer (or very few who already know each other and thus have already established norms of conduct). Linux - or any piece of complex software created by a team - does not fit within this description. It might thus very well be a mediocre coder has the best vision of how to best decide the future direction of development, or that an excellent coder has chronic strategic tunnel vision and can't understand how and why people use the software. The requirements for creating good software is thus not simply "have good coders". You also need good leaders, good plans, good teamwork, and good relations. The latter two require mutually agreed-upon and enforceable rules and norms, otherwise you'll either have unproductive chaos, or waste time solving simple, silly situations, both of which are antithetical to making good software.

R-T-BA fiction writer with s sprinkling of political theory.

StrayKATMore like a traumatized Russian girl, who went to the other extreme and threw out the baby (basic human decency) with the bathwater..

Both sides are nuts.

Quit using gender stereotypes, or people might swat you on your day jobs, amirite guys? Of course, there is zero-risk in showing your bias when displayed towards a deceased non-participant because we are only inclusive within the participating group, anyway? It is hard to bring discussions to some people without hitting some cognitive gap.

ValantarIt's quite fascinating to read arguments from someone with such a fundamentally naive and unquestioning trust in authority. It's no wonder we don't see eye to eye - it's obvious that your default assumption is that the people in power are always the right and best people to be in power, and the threshold for evidence to prove otherwise seems unreasonably high. Your extremely narrowly selected examples make this authoritarian starting point abundantly clear. Let me present a far more realistic scenario:

A talented and experienced, but (slightly?) temperamental developer has worked on the same project for many years, and has gotten used to a specific way of thinking and approaching development. A new person joins the project, with talent and experience but no knowledge of the specific workings of this working group or the established norms for the project. The new developer makes a suggestion, which gets shot down harshly and unprofessionally by the experienced developer. This might be because the suggestion was bad, or because the suggestion followed a logic or approach that didn't match the norms of the development team (but might thus have lead to better solutions in the long run, as more diverse solutions attempted = better solutions arrived at).

Either way, there are three possible outcomes here.

1. The new developer lets the established one know that the response was inappropriate, and the experienced developer accepts and apologizes. They address this as adults, reach a productive compromise (whether this is the new developer adapting to established approaches, or the experienced developer recognizing the value of a solution outside of their normal mode of operation), and the problem goes away. This is likely to increase both productivity and quality of output.
2. The new developer lets the established one know the response was inappropriate, but the experienced developer rejects this entirely, and refuses to adjust their behaviour on the grounds of seniority and experience (neither of which are relevant to interpersonal behaviour). The new developer is less motivated because of this, feels devalued and looked down on, and either produces lacklustre code, or just quits. This reduces the productivity and quality of output of the group, and the group loses out on potential improvements.
3. The new developer lets the established one know the response was inappropriate, but the experienced developer rejects this entirely, and refuses to adjust their behaviour on the grounds of seniority and experience (neither of which are relevant to interpersonal behaviour). The situation escalates, and the less experienced developer is fired/expelled from the group, as the senior developer has more authority. Again, this reduces the productivity and quality of output of the group, and the group loses out on potential improvements.

This scenario is far more likely, as it's highly unlikely that a "fresh off the boat" programmer is given a significant position in a team at a level even remotely like this (does the TAB include anyone and everyone who says they want to join?). Your example draws up an extreme situation where one person has all the skill, ability, experience, power and status. Why would a situation like this arise at all?

As you can see, there's only one outcome that doesn't actively harm the efforts of the group. Having previously established and enforceable norms and rules of behaviour makes it far more likely that the productive solution is the one reached, as otherwise the decision is likely to default to the person with the most power and authority, even if they were in the wrong. And even if that person were in the right, it's still detrimental to the quality of work and level of productivity for them to unilaterally exert power over other contributors, as this harms group cohesion and undermines cooperation.

Besides this, what you're describing isn't a meritocracy. As such, the term post-meritocracy is kind of silly (given that there never has been one), but it needs to be used as people like you keep harping on it. The meritocracy isn't, and has never been real. Ever. Period. There is no such thing as pure merit outside of abstract thought experiments or oversimplifications irrelevant to real life, and no workplace has ever been free of social interaction and thus complex social dynamics. Judging from their manifesto, the post-meritocracy movement is doing nothing more than recognizing and underscoring this simple, plain fact. If you choose to deny this fact, that's on you. But please stop acting like you're promoting some sort of Platonic ideal of a meritocracy. Real life doesn't work that way, and if you can't see that, that's a failure of your perception of the world, not my arguments.

Also, again: please stop it with the damn straw man arguments. Have I suggested replacing programmers with sociologists and psychologists? Don't be absurd. Seriously, I'm getting tired of these silly attempts at derailing the discussion. (And, not that it matters, but it's not like academics are even remotely less anti-social than programmers.) You're (purposely?) reading my argument fundamentally wrong. My point is this: being a talented programmer does not mean that you're a talented group leader, manager, or strategist. Some, of course, will be one of all of these, but some will of course not be. The ability to write good code is not at all a predictor of the ability to create a good working environment. As such, saying "person X is a talented programmer and is as such the best person to decide on the future long-term developmental goals and strategies" is a misunderstanding of the point of making software. Software has a purpose, and that purpose is not "to be programmed well" - quality programming will make the software better, but it won't make it useful or suited to its purpose. As such, planning, strategy and management requires insight into how the software is likely to be used to at least an equivalent degree as it requires insight into how the program is written.

This alone shows how your idea of a "meritocracy" is incompatible with reality outside of projects where the use case is simple and predefined/known and there is one developer (or very few who already know each other and thus have already established norms of conduct). Linux - or any piece of complex software created by a team - does not fit within this description. It might thus very well be a mediocre coder has the best vision of how to best decide the future direction of development, or that an excellent coder has chronic strategic tunnel vision and can't understand how and why people use the software. The requirements for creating good software is thus not simply "have good coders". You also need good leaders, good plans, good teamwork, and good relations. The latter two require mutually agreed-upon and enforceable rules and norms, otherwise you'll either have unproductive chaos, or waste time solving simple, silly situations, both of which are antithetical to making good software.

You don't run a business being an employee. Quit expecting a fair world fantasy.

mtcn77Quit using gender stereotypes, or people might swat you on your day jobs, amirite guys?

What, girls can't be traumatized? Right back at you. We said nothing with a stereotype.

mtcn77It is hard to bring discussions to some people without hitting some cognitive gap.

Apparently?

R-T-BWhat, girls can't be traumatized? Right back at you. We said nothing with a stereotype.



Apparently?

How dare you oppress a minority of the nondominant gender that did so much for literature without reaching the heights reserved for men?
PS: I'm not the one who promotes this view.

mtcn77How dare you oppress a minority of the nondominant gender that did so much for literature without reaching the heights reserved for men?
PS: I'm not the one who promotes this view.

But you are. You are implying women are incapable of being traumatized, and falsely implying that saying a woman was traumatized is sexist.

This just shows how far out of touch with the real world you are frankly.

R-T-BBut you are. You are implying women are incapable of being traumatized, and falsely implying that saying a woman was traumatized is sexist.

This just shows how far out of touch with the real world you are frankly.

The whole argument I made up to this point is in reference to her work. This wasn't about sexism, it was about you being against the work of the individual you are saying you defend. This is reverse-racism; however you are first to break your own rule.
Also, if women aren't traumatized, what is all the fuss about cussing?

Can someone pass the popcorn?

mtcn77Quit using gender stereotypes, or people might swat you on your day jobs, amirite guys? Of course, there is zero-risk in showing your bias when displayed towards a deceased non-participant because we are only inclusive within the participating group, anyway? It is hard to bring discussions to some people without hitting some cognitive gap.


You don't run a business being an employee. Quit expecting a fair world fantasy.

I know you're joking, but it is funny how it could be construed that way. I didn't think of it in a stereotypical manner though - but was more focused on her age in the Soviet Union. Anyone can easily be traumatized, but especially a kid.

edit: I suppose this is still "Ageism" :P