How to Raise a Social Issue in Github

TL; DR; If you want to raise a social issue in relation to a community-run project such as those found on Github, be cool, be like Tim, and be constructive.

I don’t usually bother with ‘social’ stuff on my blog, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I don’t have a lot of time for Social Justice Warriors. By this I don’t mean the type of person who believes social issues are worth discussing and has an awareness of such, but the type of thin-skinned howler monkeys who seem to wander the internet trolling anyone who breaches the membrane of their social consciousness. Recently I encountered a great of example of the difference between the two as illustrated by the approach of a developer called Tim Riley carefully raising a social issue, and a SJW approach from a developer called Steven Haddox all in the same place. And I felt it was worth writing about it, because the fact is that there is a reasonable way to raise an issue, and there is an assumptive, hysterical and unreasonable way to raise an issue too. The former is constructive, and the other has the potential to do more damage than good in the long run.

By way of a little background, here’s a couple of useful definitions:

• Rack: A popular Ruby framework for building web servers
• Rack: A woman’s breasts (e.g. “She has a huge rack”)

The developers of rack-app, a lightweight ruby web application framework, wanted a logo for their project, and so they asked a designer to come up with something, and he or she came up with this:

Which, predictably, some people found offensive because it “objectifies women”. This is because Ms. Ruby is apparently in “revealing clothing or a sexy pose”. For the record, I would largely disagree with this assertion were it not for the fact that the app in question is called “rack-app” and the word “APP” is written across Ms. Ruby’s rack. In this context it looks like a puerile joke. But there is more to it than that, because a review of both Github issues that address Ms. Ruby (the one raised by Tim Riley and a previous pull request relating to a different version of the logo) suggest that the “rack” connotation was lost on the developer who is from Eastern Europe. Which makes the difference in how Tim raises his issue and Steven raises his all the more important.

So here’s how Steven Haddox raises the issue of the offensive image:

http://www.rack-app.com is displaying an incredibly offensive image featuring the word “app” across a woman’s chest. Can you please fix this? I expect more of Rubyists and more of Heroku and can’t express my disappointment. Surely you could be more creative than to resort to this as a logo of your hard work.

and here’s how Tim Riley raises his issue:

I’m really interested in your work, but I can’t help but think the big illustration of the woman on your README and homepage makes the project less welcoming to a wide range of potential users and contributors. Would you by any chance consider removing these illustrations or replacing them with something else? Thank you for your consideration!

To me, Steven is indulging in hyperbole. There are few adverbs in the English language that can promote a term higher than “incredibly”. I would submit at this stage that Donald Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants are incredibly offensive. A cartoon of a smiling girl wearing a T-Shirt with some writing on it is not incredibly offensive (though some may not like it).

He then moves onto trying to to shame the developer for not meeting his standards, and for reasons I cannot fathom also drags Heroku into the argument who are most likely oblivious to the image and are only an accessory in the sense that the app is hosted on the Heroku platform. Even if Heroku’s executives were aware of the image, aggressively censoring the websites they host would not be in their corporate interest. Indeed their terms of service allows pretty much any content except the kind of thing that just about any reasonable person would find unacceptable.

Tim however approaches the issue respectfully and constructively. He does not make it personal, he lists valid reasons for his concerns, and asks the developer to consider his viewpoint. And funnily enough Tim gets a result - the developer engages with him, absorbs the connotation of the word “rack”, invokes the opinion of his designer, and as of writing this article Ms. Ruby is on her way to be redesigned. The app is currently represented with a picture of a squirrel. Steven gets in on the conversation and eventually becomes a little more constructive, though not before condemning the response of the developers without reading all the responses and then attacking them again later for the use of emojis (I counted them - there’s only three I can see and only one of those has anything to do with an opinion of the image).

If I would make any criticism of Tim it is that he posted his dislike of the logo on Twitter before he opened the issue that lead to its removal. That’s understandable, one often likes to talk about things before taking action, and many developer’s relationships with their code-buddies are mediated by Twitter and other such platforms. However doing so allowed other parties to jump to some fairly high-handed conclusions about the developer before they had time to get the developer's perspective on it, which as it turns out was actually pretty harmless and grounded in ignorance of the informal use of a word he uses formally in a different context. And those opinions are now exhibited for all to see, probably until the end of Twitter.

For the record, I have never encountered Steven Haddox before. His blog has the coolest cover image I have ever seen, and the content suggests that in real life he is probably a very nice person. I’m sure he is sincere in his intentions, but his behaviour in this case was unnecessarily aggressive and could have caused lasting damage to the project.

Conclusion

The fact that you are entering territory that probably isn’t yours and your opinion is a subjective one should be enough to urge some caution and respect, but if that alone isn’t enough consider this: There is a growing body of opinion that suggests that SJWs are providing an awful lot of oxygen to the far right just now, who present SJWs as more than a cultural phenomenon but as an organised conspiracy to take over society. People simply don’t like being told that their unfashionable opinions make them arseholes, and the result has been a growing sense of unease and discomfort that has helped to make Donald Trump popular and Brexit an eventuality. On a more fundamental level, there seems to be a growing acceptance of punishing people for their opinions - something to which I am virulently opposed. Witness the hounding of Tim Hunt, an entirely disproportionate response initiated by a mendacious article about a silly joke, if you need a good example.

If you take offence at an image, and want to have it removed that’s fine, you’re entitled to your opinion, but remember that having an opinion does not give you proprietary rights to engage in bullying or draw arbitrary conclusions about people whom you have never met and really know nothing about.

Written with StackEdit.