They address some non-obvious behaviors that tend to stunt conversation. It'd be nice to see some of those guidelines bleed over into the HN community.
I like the rule "no feigning surprise". "No well-actually's" and "No back-seat driving" to me seem designed to help the linear flow of IRL interaction. But in a threaded discussion forum like HN, the important main thread can still go on unimpeded despite "no well-actually" side-notes.
The "no-subtleisms" rule is designed to hinder the spread of information about the differences of different groups. "It's so easy my grandmother could do it" is supposedly bad because it reminds us that there is a group, old people, who are not like us. Focusing on differences can create a hostile us-vs-them climate. But it can also remind us that there is a world outside of SV. That there are other people with other abilities and skills, with other problems that need solving. In this particular case it can remind us that if we want to target old people with a product, to make sure it is easy to use.
Do you also make sure a product targeted towards women is especially easy to use? Saying "But older people really ARE less competent and I'm just trying to help them" is still ageist.
If you want to specify that something is usable by people with, say, "age related disabilities", great! But don't use "being a grandmother" as a synonym for that.
The first three rules are fine, but the fourth ("No subtle -isms") strikes me as rather hypocritical given the Recurse Center's policy of offering financial support only to favored minorities. They write [1]
We want the Recurse Center to be a space with as little bigotry as possible in it.
and yet their financial aid policies are explicitly discriminatory [2]:
The Recurse Center is free for everyone, and we offer need-based living expense grants for women and people from racial and ethnic groups traditionally underrepresented in programming.
In other words, poor white and Asian men can attend, but they don't qualify for any extra support. This is an "ism", but there's nothing subtle about it.
What does your opinion about Recurse's financial aid program have to do with whether their community guidelines are good? Either the isms rule is good or it isn't; its validity does not depend on you agreeing with the rest of their actions.
Their behavior (in having a racist and sexist policy) serves to subtly redefine their community guidelines. This type of hypocrisy leads to redefining of rules the same way the Seven Commandments in Animal Farm evolved.
This post[0] from the Advocate has a great line that is relevant here. The current dialogue around diversity "...propagates something harmful: the idea that gender is simply the lack of maleness, race a lack of whiteness, sexuality a lack of gayness."
When someone establishes rules and does not adhere to those rules, they end up redefining the words in those rules until they no longer carry the literal meaning they once did.
The policy reads:
Our last social rule bans subtle racism, sexism, homophobia,
transphobia, and other kinds of bias.
... but now means:
Our last social rule bans subtle racism (except against white
people), sexism (except against cisgender men), homophobia,
transphobia, and other kinds of bias (except any bias against
white cisgender men).
The experience of that individual from the Advocate demonstrates that terms like diversity, racism, sexism and bias are being warped and redefined by society to allow for exceptions that don't include white, straight, cisgender men (and Asian men in the context of engineering).
Language evolves, and the actions of people can shape how it evolves.
Looks like I was wrong in my other post[0] in this thread about people using downvotes to moderate posts they merely disagree with. Apparently those interested in intersectionality, refuse to consider the possibility that discrimination against white cisgender males and asian cisgender men is a thing.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not anti-diversity. I'm actually a huge proponent of diversity. I just believe that hypocrisy and reserve discrimination is the wrong way to get there. And I believe that there are many more dimensions in which someone can contribute to the diversity of a group besides gender, race and sexual identity. Cognitive and cultural diversity for example are examples of two other vectors in which someone can contribute to diversity. What happened to MLK's dream of focusing on content of character instead of color of a person's skin? At the end of the day characteristics of like gender, race and identity are merely a few of the many factors that contribute to the sum total of experiences that makes someone who they are and who they will be become. The are just superficial proxies for the type of diversity we should be seeking out and celebrating and that's diversity of content of character.
What kind of message are we sending our kids when things like this can happen:
Last year, his school offered a robotics class for girls
only. When my son asked why he couldn't join, it was
explained to him that girls need special help to become
interested in technology, and that if there are boys
around, the girls will be too scared to try.
My son came home very confused. You see, he grew up with a
mom who coded while she breastfed and brought him to his
first LUG meeting at age seven weeks. The first time he
saw a home-built robot, it was shown to him by a local
hackerspace member, a woman who happens to administer one
of the country's biggest supercomputers. Why was his
school acting like girls were dumb?
Thanks so much, modern-day "feminism", for putting very
unfeminist ideas in my son's head. [2]
Their guidelines are hypocritical, i.e., bad. To spell it out explicitly: the -isms rule is probably fine as far as it goes, but if HN is going to be inspired by the Recurse Center's policies, it should go a step further and officially discourage the Recurse Center's brand of pious discrimination as well.
How could this sentiment possibly have anything to do with Hacker News? Much to my disappointment, Hacker News doesn't offer financial aid to commenters.
Assuming that you actually want to understand my position, I'll expand my answer one more time. You don't need to agree with me to see that my view has nothing to do with the literal-minded (and admittedly amusing) observation that "Hacker News doesn't offer financial aid to commenters."
The Recurse Center's guideline against "subtle -isms" takes place in the context of offering financial aid only to favored groups. This suggests that "subtle -isms" against less-favored groups might be policed less vigorously. For example, many ordinary white men might reasonably consider the term "underrepresented" itself to be a "subtle -ism", but I doubt complaints to this effect would fall on sympathetic ears.
This issue applies to Hacker News because being inspired by the Recurse Center's policies risks importing the expectation that "avoid subtle -isms" mainly applies to speech against their favored groups. If Hacker News is to adopt Recurse Center–style community guidelines but wants to avoid such bias, it should be explicit in disclaiming any notion of "protected classes", instead insisting that the guidelines be applied equally to all groups.
They address some non-obvious behaviors that tend to stunt conversation. It'd be nice to see some of those guidelines bleed over into the HN community.