Full Metal Rüby

Warning

This talk references music and includes badly written fanfic. Also positivity.

Encouragement

Fast forward: 1998

Let’s go metal

• Got involved in a music community
• Metal to Rock
• Showed some sense for cooperation

Let’s go metal

• Got involved in a music community
• Metal to rock
• Showed some sense for cooperation
• Moderated porn pictures in profiles before I was legal to view them

2003: Ruby

• Started learning Ruby
• Joined a german bulleting board
• Showed some sense for cooperation
• Got a Mod-Bit

Today!

• github.com/skade
• twitter.com/argorak
• Chair of the Ruby Berlin e.V.
• Chair of eurucamp and JRubyConf.eu
• Host of 2(?) users groups
• Still got that Mod-Bit…
• Never migrated the board to Ruby

There is no Ruby community

The Ruby community is broken!

Which?

There is no Ruby community

Let’s fix the Ruby community!

Which?

The Ruby community

• very opinion-driven and personal
• clashes are often
• values curiosity
• definitely imperfect
• MINSWAN (Matz is nice so we are nice)

International

• Many Rubyists don’t speak english
• MRI is a multilingual project
• There is a translation service for the core ML!
• There is a huge translation team for the website!
• That causes problems, but is also a great achievement!

Very pragmatic and quick

• Willing to replace old stuff
• Willing to get behind things
  • Technology
  • Social things (Rails Girls)

Online communities

• “close” is not necessarily physical distance
• discussions and movements can be more ongoing
• physical meetings are still very important and act as roots

Open-source communities

• work-centered
• sometimes makes community-effort take the back seat
• commercial interest gives both momentum and friction

Moderation

Communities live through moderation.

Moderation

Wikitionary:

An instance of moderating: bringing something away from extremes, especially in a beneficial way

The process of moderating a discussion

Moderation

Wikitionary (german, translated)

Shape, steer a discussion

Unmoderated spaces are worth nothing

• They deteriorate quickly
• Literally unguided
• Are open to disturbances
• Attract uncooperative people

I don’t want to be in a space where a simple question can lead to an attack!

Moderated vs. open

There is no versus.

Moderated spaces are often more open than unmoderated.

Organizers/Moderators

• Forum/chat moderators
• Mailing list moderators
• Event organizers (meetups, conferences)
• Bugtracker work/Release planning

Anyone who wants to mold and change the community.

Thor

• Moderators often wield the ban-hammer
• Can decide things on their own
• Can generally not easily be held accountable
• Are perfectly within their rights when expelling people

It’s their show.

Important traits

• Good at discourse
  • discussions about music are good training
• Seriousness
• Empathy
• Ethics

Being able to get hold of a good Barista is completely optional.

Backchannels

Backchannels are the most important tool.

• to deal with personal things
• criticism without accusations
• to organize concerted action and behaviours

Thats why you rarely see organization happening in the open.

Backchannels

Backchannels are subject to moderation as much as everything else.

• No insults
• No shaming other people
• Keep your inside consistent to your outside
• Venting is allowed and important
  • Keep a transient channel for that

Backchannel fanfic

Given a pull request named:

Use neutral language throughout the project

Mails

From: maintainer1To: maintainer2 Hey, do we really need this?I don't really see the point of all this.

Mails

From: maintainer2To: maintainer1 Yes, I support that and some peopleobviously care deeply. I also think itimproves our docs.

Mails

From: maintainer1To: maintainer2 I still don't see the point, but I alsodon't see the need for a deep discussion.Do you merge or shall I?

Convincement

One convinced person is often enough, as many are indifferent.

And they merged happily ever after

Time

Impactful action takes time. Expect days after any event for people to get everything together.

Example: Ruby Berlin Community Statement was 4 days of work.

Twitter

Good for:

• Outreach
• Announcements
• The odd question

Twitter

Bad for:

• discourse
• almost anything else of interest for organizers
• being used as an engine for change

Global Change (without Twitter)

1. have an agenda
2. have a looooong breath
3. convince others

Global Change

1. start locally
2. introduce and validate your ideas there
3. control your message
4. spread to other subcommunities

No-gos

• Don’t pressure people into opinions or statements
• Don’t attack unconvincable people
  • You can shun them, if you want to

Problematic Characters

• Trolls, Professional Cynics, Devils Advocates
• Help Vampires
• People incapable of respecting personal space
• Everyone scaring off beginners

Problematic Characters

Everyone should be welcome, but:

• be called out for misbehaving
• shown the door for repeat offences

Do we need to be bad?

• An technical wonderchild should not be allowed to insult others
• New committers should never be chided for incompetence
• People should not be attacked for their inability to speak a language
• Abusive natures should be asked to leave communication to others

Complain politely everywhere you see such behaviour.

Wait, thought police?

There are thin lines between:

• A pointed comment and dismissal of other peoples hard work
• A joke and an insult

Be careful about the recipient!

Have expectations!

Expect organizers to:

• communicate clearly
• bring communities forward
• stay up to speed with current movements
• hold your moral values

Sad truth

I’ve seen all of this happening:

• anonymous and open attacks
• threats and exposures
• discrimination because of disabilities
• mobbing with impersonations

Programming communities are no different.

We need to moderate the 1%

Ryan Davis - Why we need to moderate the 1%

Diversity

Is that really a topic? - me, 5 years ago

Yes, and its much more fun like that. - me, today

Diversity

Diversity is much more than bringing woman (back) into the industry.

Diversity is about allowing anyone to participate who shares our basic interests and morals.

Diversity is a mindset, not a list of boxes to tick.

Individuals

Everyone has very particular and personal reasons for not participating. Not all can be cared for, but many.

Don’t dismiss

Good organizers can support others even if they cannot relate to their problems.

Codification

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could write that down for everyone to see?

They are working!

Without a Code of Conduct, I wouldn’t have come to Ruby Sauna. I feared that the organizers weren’t aware of the inherent problems of the format, the CoC cleared that up.

Accessibility

eurucamp accessibility statement

Conferences caring about accessiblity and promoting that are rare today. Even small efforts matter.

Mentorship

eurucamp mentorship programme

Community response was very good and we have a 1:1 match of speakers to mentors.

It’s a lot of work

• Appreciate those that do it
• Accept failures
• Build networks to ease it

3. More inter-community relationships

We don’t need to do all that work alone.

A final quote

I’m always uncomfortable at a lot of conferences because I don’t party, and I’m always left to feel like that’s bad, especially as a speaker.

And I personally feel bad b/c I feel like I’m being anti-social (esp if I’m a speaker), but I don’t like being around stupidly drunk people.

mrgn

We’ve got this new thing coming up…

• http://mrgn.in/berlin
• @MrgnBerlin
• For everyone, of every technology
• From 8:30-10:00 in the morning, next Thursday!