sexy-bash-prompt

[gratipay-bot]

https://gratipay.com/sexy-bash-prompt/

(This application will remain open for at least a week.)

[mattbk]

Looks good to me.

[chrisdev]

👍 for me

[chadwhitacre]

Okay! Let's talk about "sexy." Sex is awesome. Sexiness is great. And certainly "Sexy Bash Prompt" is nowhere near as sexualized as, for example, KanColleWidget (#38), but the proposition has been advanced in the past—and I'm not ready to dismiss it—that "sexy" is an inappropriate adjective when applied to technology projects, because it contributes to a sexualized environment that is generally alienating to women. References:

• Remove use of somewhat-charged word TryGhost/Ghost#1018
• Remove the word "sexy" from the UI TryGhost/Ghost#5889
• https://twitter.com/izs/status/465545143966117888
• copywriting localForage/localForage#5

But I also find much to resonate with in "The Price of Success" (a post from the Ghost author that makes reference to TryGhost/Ghost#1018), and with "The Coddling of the American Mind," and "That's Not Funny!", two pieces published recently in The Atlantic about hypersensitivity:

O, Utopia. Why must your sweet governance always turn so quickly from the Edenic to the Stalinist? The college revolutions of the 1960s—the ones that gave rise to the social-justice warriors of today’s campuses—were fueled by free speech. But once you’ve won a culture war, free speech is a nuisance, and “eliminating” language becomes a necessity.

The process begins, as such processes always do, in a committee of “undisclosed members.”

Well, we're at least a committee of disclosed members here.

I wish I had a better-formulated case to make at this point. But I don't, and it's late, and I have to run payday (gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#394). This has already been open a week. Per our howto, brand fit is a negative criterion: sexy-bash-prompt is innocent until proven guilty. If I (or someone else) doesn't make a convincing case within a reasonable amount of time, then the project should be approved by default. How long is a reasonable amount of time?

[chadwhitacre]

cc: @twolfson

[twolfson]

To provide info from my perspective, the initial script wasn't written by me but I wound up formalizing it into a repo:

https://gist.github.com/gf3/306785/a35d28b6bdd0f7c54318cce510738438f04dabaa

That's the "Forked from a gist by gf3." on the README. I was hesitant about keeping the name (for similar reasons as listed above) but I kept it consistent for easier discovery.

I think at this point it might be a large blow to the awareness of the repo since this isn't a copy change but a change to the repository's handle =/

[clone1018]

I dont know if it's helpful in your situation but Github does provide
repository redirects.
https://github.com/blog/1508-repository-redirects-are-here

Edited to be "does" haha

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 6:04 PM Todd Wolfson [email protected]
wrote:

To provide info from my perspective, the initial script wasn't written by
me but I wound up formalizing it into a repo:

https://gist.github.com/gf3/306785/a35d28b6bdd0f7c54318cce510738438f04dabaa

That's the "Forked from a gist by gf3." on the README. I was hesitant
about keeping the name (for similar reasons as listed above) but I kept it
consistent for easier discovery.

I think at this point it might be a large blow to the awareness of the
repo since this isn't a copy change but a change to the repository's handle
=/

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#107 (comment)
.

[mattbk]

I already voted in favor, but for the sake of argument: Nothing in this project is implying anything about sex, or who wants to do sex to anyone else, or what "sexy" means, or anything like that. Crime against terminology? Maybe. Crime against humanity? Not in my opinion.

[techtonik]

"sexy" is an inappropriate adjective when applied to technology projects, because it contributes to a sexualized environment that is generally alienating to women.

What? There are many woman who are not sexy and man who are. It is bad argument.

[chadwhitacre]

I was hesitant about keeping the name (for similar reasons as listed above) but I kept it consistent for easier discovery.

@twolfson In that case, perhaps the way to proceed is to have a discussion over on the sexy-bash-prompt repo about renaming. If the community there is fine with a rename, that answers our question here! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Reticketed as twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt#56. Let's circle back here after we see how that plays out.

[chadwhitacre]

Would Ghost clash with our brand? "Sexy" is not in their name, they used it in UI help text for a logo field.

For that matter, does twolfson (#85) clash? That's the parent company (so to speak) of sexy-bash-prompt.

Where do we draw the line? And more importantly: why?

[chadwhitacre]

@twolfson asks at twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt#56 (comment):

If we were to change sexy-bash-prompt's name, another repo were to come along after us with a similar setup (e.g. sexy-database-repl), and they were strongly opposed to change their name. Would Gratipay still let them in as a team or not?

[chadwhitacre]

Bringing over deleted comments from twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt#56 (recovered from email):

---

@f4w5yhq6z7bo:

Kind of misogynistic and heteronormative for @whit537 to assume that "sexy" refers to a woman in the first place, without asking.

---

@twolfson:

Removed unconstructive comment from someone's throwaway account

---

@f4w5yhq6z7bo:

This is my main account, and I believe calling out hypocrisy to be incredibly constructive.

---

@twolfson:

@whit537 never directly attached the term "sexy" to women. He said that it alters the perceived environment which may alienate women. Both @rpdelaney and myself agreed that this is a possible scenario.

On a tangent, @whit537 didn't mention that "sexy" can alienate non-female persons as well. But the majority of tech is men so we should be focusing on the minorities. As for transgender and non-prescriptive genders, it's a shame we don't directly mention them in this discussion but I believe @whit537 had good intent.

With respect to the main thread, my stance has been "prefer not to change things due to damaging SEO-like reputation". Although as we talk through these issues, I am starting to lean towards a rename.

Since these comments are pulling away from the main thread, I will be deleting them once again.

[chadwhitacre]

I've dredged that up because it actually informs how I'd like to respond here.

Kind of misogynistic and heteronormative for @whit537 to assume that "sexy" refers to a woman in the first place, without asking.

---

On a tangent, @whit537 didn't mention that "sexy" can alienate non-female persons as well. [...] As for transgender and non-prescriptive genders, it's a shame we don't directly mention them in this discussion[.]

Right. If it were gay-sexy-bash-prompt I'd also think it clashed with the Gratipay brand. When I look through our list of established brand values, the ones that I think sexy-bash-prompt violates are actually "sweet idealism" and "unabashed optimism." To me, Gratipay is squeaky clean, innocent almost to the point of naïveté.

For Gratipay, sexy-bash-prompt is not problematic, troubling, concerning, disturbing, alarming, triggering, chilling, unsettling, worrying, threatening, toxic, troublesome, or disconcerting—blech, blech, blech, blech, all blech. It's just a non-sequitur.

[chadwhitacre]

So that's my case: sexy-bash-prompt is not a good brand fit for Gratipay because it's a non-sequitur with our sweet idealism and unabashed optimism. 💃

Anyone have a rebuttal?

[twolfson]

I don't fully follow the argument presented. Non-sequitur means a sentence that doesn't follow the flow of the conversation. @whit537 Are you saying all existing responses that defend sexy-bash-prompt are irrelevant to the initially posed question? (i.e. "Does sexy-bash-prompt align with Gratipay's brand?")

To jump the gun on this, here are some thoughts I have after reading the Gratipay values:

• In the usage of "sweet idealism", I interpret it in a different context. I read the article as stating it's an idealist view to consider open source financially feasible as a full time job.
• In the usage of "unabashed optimism", I interpret in the context of being courageous about visibly doing what they think is right (which is to improve the world).

That being said, I believe the value we are considering with respect to sexy-bash-prompt's acceptance is "kindness". It's possible to offend someone by accepting sexy-bash-prompt as a team and offending someone is the opposite of being kind. Albeit, this is taking the term "kind" to an extreme point of view.

[mattbk]

Is sex necessarily neither "sweetly idealistic" nor "unabashedly optimistic"?

I seem to weigh "open work" much more heavily than "brand fit, " but that may be because I don't see myself has being that involved.

[mattbk]

+1 @twolfson. Good points.

[chadwhitacre]

Zooming out for a moment ... I have recently been introduced to a distinction between care ethics and rule-based deontological ethics. Here is "Care Ethics" in the IEP, and the seminal book on the topic, In a Different Voice. For better or for worse, we are exhibiting a rule-based deontological ethic when we start from Gratipay's values as first principles, and argue from there to conclusions about the fitness of this or that brand with Gratipay's. What would a care-ethical approach to Team review look like?

[chadwhitacre]

I don't fully follow the argument presented. Non-sequitur means a sentence that doesn't follow the flow of the conversation. @whit537 Are you saying all existing responses that defend sexy-bash-prompt are irrelevant to the initially posed question? (i.e. "Does sexy-bash-prompt align with Gratipay's brand?")

I was using the term "non-sequitur" loosely, to mean something that doesn't follow from something else. On the one hand, looking down a list of Teams on Gratipay, sexy-bash-prompt would not fit the pattern. It would stick out. On the other hand, sexy-bash-prompt doesn't follow from Gratipay's values, it's not a workable instantiation of those general principles.

To jump the gun on this, here are some thoughts I have after reading the Gratipay values:

• In the usage of "sweet idealism", I interpret it in a different context. I read the article as stating it's an idealist view to consider open source financially feasible as a full time job.
• In the usage of "unabashed optimism", I interpret in the context of being courageous about visibly doing what they think is right (which is to improve the world).

I agree with your readings of the original contexts for those terms. However, I take it that we can apply the values of "sweet idealism" and "unabashed optimism" in contexts beyond those in which they were originally articulated. We generalized from the particular, in order to inform new particulars.

That being said, I believe the value we are considering with respect to sexy-bash-prompt's acceptance is "kindness".

Fair enough. Kindness was the value in view on #38. Over there we had a case where the presentation of the Team on Gratipay was not sexualized, but the product itself was quite sexualized. The case here is a mildly sexualized presentation on Gratipay, while the product itself is more-or-less _un_sexualized.

I could see invoking kindness here. I think that harmonizes with sweet idealism and unabashed optimism.

It's possible to offend someone by accepting sexy-bash-prompt as a team

Sure, but I would like specifically to distinguish between:

1. People who would be—gasp!—offended by sexy-bash-prompt.
2. People who would find sexy-bash-prompt mildly off-putting.

I want to center the experience of (2), not (1). Giving too much credence to folks in class (1) helped land us in the Gittip crisis (gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#319). Another way to put this: I want to reject sexy-bash-prompt out of love and concern for what I understand to be the great preponderance of people in the middle, rather than fear of extremists. See also this comment on Donglegate. Let's act out of love and care and kindness and concern, and not out of male/cis/identity-political guilt and fear. :-)

and offending someone is the opposite of being kind.

Well ... but see gratipay/inside.gratipay.com#319 (comment) for a discussion of what might be termed, "offending people kindly."

Albeit, this is taking the term "kind" to an extreme point of view.

Being extremely kind isn't the worst goal to have. :-)

That said, I think we are going to find a limit. I want Gratipay to be extremely kind. I don't think sexy-bash-prompt belongs on Gratipay. But, per #107 (comment), what about Ghost? Or twolfson? I'm not inclined to {theoretically,actually} block either of those.

[chadwhitacre]

I should also say that anecdotal evidence I've gathered offline indicates that sexy-bash-prompt is mildly off-putting to ... people whose experience I want to center.

We could almost flip the question and do some descriptive ethics. Given people whose experience we want to center, what do they say? That'd be a virtue-ethical approach, I suppose.

[twolfson]

I'm getting frustrated with this dragging on. After re-reading the 3 links on the team application (including how @whit537 is the "final arbiter") and judging by how @whit537 hasn't budged on his stance. I think it's safe to say that sexy-bash-prompt won't be accepted as a team in its current state. As a result, I'm closing this issue for now.

I should note that as with most EULA, when I initially applied I skimmed over the Terms of Service and assumed that "I agree to have my application publicly reviewed." only meant that it would be posted to GitHub. It wasn't clear that the brand guidelines would need to apply to other repositories (although, I still would have applied). It might be a good idea to post that on the page itself rather than in a link.

I should further state that requiring teams to adhere to Gratipay's brand guidelines seems counter-intuitive. My initial assumption was that the team review was about making sure the team wasn't fraudulent (e.g. a money laundering service). With respect to other open source organizations, I haven't experienced brand of my work being conflated with the supporting platform (e.g. GitHub, npm, PyPI, Bitbucket).

[chadwhitacre]

Fair enough, @twolfson. I've gone ahead and rejected the team on the Gratipay side.

[webmaven]

@twolfson:

I should further state that requiring teams to adhere to Gratipay's brand guidelines seems counter-intuitive. [...] With respect to other open source organizations, I haven't experienced brand of my work being conflated with the supporting platform (e.g. GitHub, npm, PyPI, Bitbucket).

It isn't your fault that Gratipay is being extremely cautious in this area, having been badly burned by association with projects using the platform (and not even using it to a significant extent), but we're now a target for some folks who will seek to make a mountain out of any molehill they can misconstrue (and I might add that there is a high likelihood that the nasty attention would then splash back on you and your project as well, should such a molehill be found). So here we are, and I agree with @whit537 that we have to tread very very carefully here, through no particular fault of your own except choosing a name that may be offputting to some audiences.

I'd still like to resolve this in a way that ended up with the project accepted after a rename, so I am doing some research on how much that rename would actually damage the SERP rankings in twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt#56, hopefully we'll get real data that will help resolve things one way or another.

[twolfson]

Ah, thanks for the information. It makes the decisions and standpoint more clear now =)

[jcrben]

I don't agree with the decision to reject this project. It seems a bit sexophobic.