The Outreachy thread on boost-dev

[Bryce Adelstein Lelbach aka wash]

Four individuals have independently approached me in the past 48 hours upset over either Niall's comments and/or people's willingness to endorse them, and the lack of voices of moderation to reign things in.

This moment calls for leadership. Immediate leadership. Otherwise, things will turn toxic quickly.

This gives the entire community a bad name.

Silence from the Steering Committee is not acceptable. Please help defuse the situation.

[Hartmut Kaiser]

I am hesitant to intervene here, as it would end like the other times when I
did... The 'German HPC Crowd' has a bad reputation already, why make it even
worse ;-)

Regards Hartmut
---------------
http://stellar.cct.lsu.edu
https://github.com/STEllAR-GROUP/hpx


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[Robert Ramey]

Hmmm - opinions can differ. Those who disagree with Niall's comments are
free to offer their own opinions on the list. They should register them
there.

Robert Ramey

[Steven Watanabe]

AMDG

+1

Ending this discussion because it's going off topic
is reasonable. Suppressing it because some people
find it offensive is just ridiculous.

In Christ,
Steven Watanabe

[Zach Laine]

I find the whole thing depressing, but I was trying not to feed the trolls.  Engagement is likely to make this whole thing blow up even more.  If other BSC members disagree, I'm happy to add constructively to the discussion on the list.  What are everyone else's thoughts?

Zach

[Marshall Clow]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2018 at 1:43 AM, Bryce Adelstein Lelbach aka wash <brycel...@gmail.com> wrote:

Four individuals have independently approached me in the past 48 hours upset over either Niall's comments and/or people's willingness to endorse them, and the lack of voices of moderation to reign things in.

This moment calls for leadership. Immediate leadership. Otherwise, things will turn toxic quickly.

Bryce - are you suggesting that Niall should not not allowed do say what he did?

-- Marshall  (not on the steering committee any more)

[Michael Caisse]

I'm interested in Bryce's response to Marshall's question.

If the conversation continues I would be happy to get back on ML topic by encouraging a proposal to the Steering Committee that we can evaluate.

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[Niall Douglas]

On Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 8:42:12 PM UTC+1, Michael Caisse wrote:

I'm interested in Bryce's response to Marshall's question.

If the conversation continues I would be happy to get back on ML topic by encouraging a proposal to the Steering Committee that we can evaluate.

+1

And for the record, received plenty of heated private mail on this as well. It's boost-dev, after all. God forbid we should get passionate and upset about C++ libraries!

Niall

 

[Michael Caisse]

In response to your last ML email, I've asked the ML to move back to topic.

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[brycel...@gmail.com]

Niall is free to express his opinion. I'm just disappointed that no one from leadership thought it was worth replying to.

How do you think Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn from the Software Freedom Conservancy, who have helped sustain Boost for the last decade+, and also happen to run Outreachy, feel about being accused, essentially, of being criminals.

You are free to say whatever you wish. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be respectful to people you work with.

On the actual subject matter: A few years ago I was unsure about these diversity programs. I felt that a pure merit-based approach was best, and that outreach for diversity should be done in other ways.

The primary thing that changed my mind has been the fierceness with which some people oppose these programs and insist we do not have a diversity problem.

I do not think sending a proposal to the Steering Committee is the correct way to evaluate a possible Outreachy program. I think it should be a community decision, which means it should be something discussed by the community and decided by consensus.

Who is an administrator for the boost-dev list? My new email address brycel...@gmail.com is not approved to post on boost-dev. I sent a reply last night which is in the moderation queue.

[Rob Stewart]

Until this email chain, I hadn't seen the Outreachy thread. I must say that I didn't see anything in what Niall wrote that suggested the SFC was engaged in criminal activities. Rather, he suggested that what's acceptable in the US is not acceptable elsewhere and that Boost should definitely steer clear. He used more accusatory and less conciliatory phrasing, to be sure, but I saw nothing outrageous.

What I find is that unless one chooses to interpret the email and posts that one reads in the best possible way, one can find sinister interpretations of most everything one reads. Niall has been guilty of that and is frequently the subject of that issue.

As for the diversity issue, there's nothing about how Boost conducts itself that is discriminatory, that I've ever seen. Societal pressures may well dissuade women, for example, from getting involved with programming, but why is that Boost's problem to solve?

Someone suggested Outreachy, and Niall quickly, and vehemently, disabused the poster of thinking better of the program than he thought right. If others think Niall has it wrong and wishes to defend the program and encourage Boost's participation, they should do so. Instead, it seems others could only complain about how he presented his opinion. The result, it would seem, is to keep Boost out of Outreachy, as Niall intended.

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