Diversity¶
See also CPython community and Core developers who stopped contributing to Python.
“You can’t solve people problems with software.” – Baldur Bjarnason (September 2015)
“Don’t solve problems with software that should be solved with talking.” – Tanya Reilly (Feb. 2018)
“When women speak out about diversity and the community, they get penalized and branded as non-technical. Some women chose not to speak out because of this. We will not be silenced.” – Mariatta Wijaya (April 2018)
“Increasing the core’s diversity is a very important goal to ensure the future health of Python.” – Guido van Rossum (May 2018)
First issue: become aware of diversity issues¶
Usually, people involved since a long time in a project and who are in the short priviledged group (ex: “core reviewers” or “core developers”), are not aware of diversity issue. If there is no issue, who should anyone care of diversity?
Why incidents are not reported or only reported privately: https://discuss.python.org/t/discussion-about-recent-coc-events/5778/15
Unconscious Bias can be a first hint.
Python Code of Conduct Bans¶
March 2023: Steven D’Aprano was suspended for 3 months. Since he didn’t contact the Steering Council, he remains suspended until the SC hears back from him.
August 2021: A ban from Core Developer spaces. (For the whole SC, Thomas Wouters): Marco Sulla was banned for 1 year. Marco was given a previous 3 month suspension on discuss.python.org.
Suspension: Marco Sulla (Ethan Furman)
March 2021: [python-dev] Steering Council reply regarding conduct. Steven D’Aprano is warned because of an email he sent about renaming the Git “master” branch to “main”.
October 2020: [python-committers] Re: Resignation from Stefan Krah (Thomas Wouters, on behalf of the Steering Council)
July 2020: [python-committers] Notification of a three-month ban from Python core development (Python Steering Council)
September 2018: Jacco van Dorp is banned from python-ideas.
September 2018: Koos Zevenhoven is banned from python-ideas for 2 months. The ban happend in the [python-ideas] Retire or reword the “Beautiful is better than ugly” Zen clause thread (related to the master/slave change).
March 2017: [python-committers] I have blocked Wes Turner from the Python org on GitHub
November 2013: [python-committers] Anatoly has been warned about his behaviour potentially leading to his loss of tracker privileges (Brett Cannon)
November 2013: [python-committers] Anatoly Techtonik’s contribution (again) (Antoine Pitrou)
November 2013: [python-dev] PEP process entry point and ill fated initiatives (Anatoly Techtonik)
November 2012: [python-committers] Anatoly Techtonik’s contribution. Public discussion to decide if he should be banned or not.
Python Code of Conduct Incidents¶
August 2020: Python avoids whitelist/blacklist terms: bpo-41521. Python devguide: List terms which should be avoided.
June 27, 2020: PEP 8 and the Strunk & White Standard English
July 3, 2020, Joannah Nanjekye (core dev) unsubscribed from python-dev because of the python-dev “negativity”. Christian Heimes considered doing the same.
June 30, 2020: [python-dev] Recent PEP-8 change (108 messages).
June 30, 2020: [python-dev] Please refrain from posting on the PEP 8 threads for 24 hours (Brett Cannon)
June 29, 2020: [python-dev][python-ideas] Lists placed into Emergency Moderation status (Ernest W. Durbin III).
June 28, 2020: [python-dev] Re: [Python-ideas] Re: Amend PEP-8 to require clear, understandable comments instead of Strunk & White Standard English comments (50 comments)
June 27, 2020: Guido van Rossum merged Keara Berlin’s PR which removes a reference to Strunk & White Standard English: commit PEP 8: Change requirement to adhere to Standard English.
June 26, 2020: [python-ideas] Amend PEP-8 to require clear, understandable comments instead of Strunk & White Standard English comments (Keara Berlin) (27 emails)
July 2018: Assignment expression flame (PEP 572): more than 650 emails for a single PEP.
July 12, 2018: [python-committers] Transfer of power (Guido van Rossum)
July 11, 2018: [Python-Dev] Accepting PEP 572, Assignment Expressions (Guido van Rossum)
June 20, 2018: [LWN] PEP 572 and decision-making in Python (Jake Edge): summary of a discussion leaded by Guido van Rossum during the Python Language Summit (May 2020).
May 2018: [python-committers] A different way to focus discussions (Guido van Rossum)
September 2018: Python avoids master/slave terms: bpo-34605.
This change opened [python-ideas] Retire or reword the “Beautiful is better than ugly” Zen clause thread.
Two persons were banned from python-ideas because of messages they wrote in this thread.
January 2017: “How to respond to trolling” thread
February 2017: Things that won’t change in Python (Jake Edge, LWN)
January 10, 2017: [python-ideas] How to respond to trolling (Guido van Rossum).
January 9, 2017: Python Reviewed (Simon Lovell)
Discuss Diversity¶
Communities¶
Mailing Lists¶
Python had a diversity mailing list.
Code and emotions¶
Kate Gregory’s keynote at C++ on Sea: Keynote: Oh The Humanity!, photos on Twitter
Positive Action¶
Wikipedia: Positive Action.
Mentor people of underrepresented groups
Code of Conduct (CoC)¶
Codes of Conduct:
Python Community Code of Conduct
Apply to python-ideas, python-dev and python-committers mailing lists
Apply to the bug tracker
Articles:
The Code Of Conduct (December, 2012) by Jesse Noller:
RESOLVED, that the PSF will only sponsor conferences that have or agree to create and publish a Code of Conduct/Anti Harassment guide for their conference. A basic template to work from has been generated by the Ada Initiative at Conference anti-harassment/Policy.
Leaving LLVM because of the CoC¶
Diversity and Discrimination in Open Source by Rafael Avila de Espindola
[llvm-dev] I am leaving llvm (May 2, 2018) by Rafael Avila
[llvm-dev] re: I am leaving llvm (May 4, 2018) by Renato Golin
Lobsters: aphyr’s comment
NodeJS¶
Why I’m leaving the Node.js project (August, 2017) by Bryan Hughes.
Issues with speaker diversity in tech conference¶
Mariatta Wijaya (April 20, 2018):
Trying not to do any community engagement this month, but this is such high priority, and I can’t stay silent. I’m so utterly heartbroken and disappointed to find out that there is a PyCon someplace 2018, and that it has 22 all male speaker lineup.
Twitter: snipeyhead’s thread (April 22, 2018)
Twitter: mariatta’s thread (April 22, 2018)
Postmorten on the lineup at PyCon Ukraine this year by Volodymyr Hotsyk (Apr 22, 2018)
Geek Feminism Wiki: PyCon [US] 2013 forking and dongles incident.
Python¶
Diversity Statement:
The Python Software Foundation and the global Python community welcome and encourage participation by everyone. Our community is based on mutual respect, tolerance, and encouragement, and we are working to help each other live up to these principles. We want our community to be more diverse: whoever you are, and whatever your background, we welcome you.
Mentoring and diversity for Python (June, 2018)
For example, don’t say “hey guys!” or “fellas” but “hey everyone!”, forks or “y’all”: see heyguys.cc.
Comment template:
In the future please use gender-neutral words such as “folks” and “y’all” instead of “guys”. Thanks.
Nmap 4.50 Release Notes (December 2007): Political correctness
To cultivate a professional image, we long ago capitalized all references to God in error message text and also reworded all instances of “fucked up” to “borked”. We have now also changed this warning message: “TCP/IP fingerprinting (for OS scan) requires root privileges. Sorry, dude.” A woman reported that it was “highly offensive and sexist”, that “times have changed and many women now use your software”, and “a sexist remark like the one above should have no place in software.”
Being a Woman on the Internet¶
Stories unrelated to Python, or not directly related to the Internet. Its more to have an idea of the general idea of harassement on the Internet.
What It’s Like to Be A Woman On the Internet (January 2018) by Chloe Condon
I Was The Victim Of A Deepfake Porn Plot Intended To Silence Me (November 2018) by Rana Ayyub
Links¶
Wikipedia: Imposter syndrome
Wikipedia: Underrepresented group
Unconscious Bias:
Wikipedia: implicit bias or implicit stereotype
Wikipedia: Unconscious bias training
Companies are on the hook if their hiring algorithms are biased. “After an audit of the algorithm, the resume screening company found that the algorithm found two factors to be most indicative of job performance: their name was Jared, and whether they played high school lacrosse. Girouard’s client did not use the tool.” and “It’s a really great representation of part of the problem with these systems, that your results are only as good as your training data, (…)”
The Zero Theory (first edition) by Haïkel Guémar (May, 2015)
Diversity and inclusion: Stop talking and do your homework by Emma Irwin (Sep 2017)