Re: [boost] [OFF] Inclusive language (Was: [review][beast] Review of Beast starts today : July 1 - July 10)

Subject: Re: [boost] [OFF] Inclusive language (Was: [review][beast] Review of Beast starts today : July 1 - July 10)
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-08 17:55:55

On 7/8/17 10:26 AM, Vinícius dos Santos Oliveira via Boost wrote:
> 2017-07-01 21:54 GMT+02:00 Vinnie Falco via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>:
> 
>> Such language is non-inclusive and diminishes the stature of the list
>> (in my opinion).
> 
> 
> So what? What's the problem of non inclusive languages?
> 
> This is just automatic reaction. Rust language community is full of this
> shit and is unbearable.
> 
> “but-but-but the feelings... oppression”. Grow up.

Boost from the beginning has had a "discussion policy" 
http://www.boost.org/community/policy.html which, in combination with 
most people using more or less real names has worked pretty well in 
opinion.  Boost has been spared most trolling as compared to many other 
sites.  The basic thrust is to keep focus on the arguments rather than 
persons.  In one (laughable) case I was told that I only held the 
position I did because I didn't know anything about test driven 
development. In other cases, arguments have been made that someone's 
position was wrong because he didn't know enough, had a Teutonic derived 
mentality, wasn't aware of "modern C++ or CMake" or whatever.  Of course 
these are beside any point and diminish the discussion.  On the good 
side, this has happens infrequently (with a few notable exceptions) and 
it's been very helpful to boost.

Of course this is not to say that we haven't have some really idiotic 
discussions.  This is inevitable because

a) some people are idiots
b) some smart people have idiotic ideas

But we prevent that because we can't agree which ideas are idiotic.  So 
in practice we just ride out, move on and try to forget about it.

To my mind it's worked pretty well.  It's amazing that with C++ 
undergoing seismic evolution, Boost is at least as relevant as it used 
to be, if not more so.

Robert Ramey