100% agree, perhaps instead of only tracking usernames it can also track external Github URLs (to portfolios, linkedin, twitter, and the like), email addresses, etc etc, just to make it a little harder to evade the sanction while also taking credit for their work off of Github.
But what? Something like an "H" for "hacker" would be considered a positive by far too many people who wouldn't realize at first that it's using the other, wrong, definition.
It was the other guy that "escalated it" there. "pin a symbol on their avatars, to make them easy to identify" is a reference to the star of David that Jews were made to wear in Germany, so they could be "easy to identify".
Its a reference to the scarlet letter and making bad actors of marriage easy to identify. Here we are identifying bad actors in the field of business, analogous to a marriage.
I never read the book/story, nor do I know anything about it. Star of David and the stuff around Jews in Germany I do. You can't blame people for not knowing some "more" obscure reference that you know.
I find it funny that the same person who made an obvious comparison between an online shame list and the physical marking of Jews in Nazi Germany is now
(a) claiming I'm assaulting their character
(b) "defending" themselves by claiming it's a super obscure reference in which a woman is marked instead of Jews.
Seems you're assuming bad intentions, also after the other person, 0des, gave an explanation.
To me, it wasn't an obvious comparison. There're lots of icons and symbols on people's avatars, in online forums and GitHub etc already, not that special? Eg admin or moderator icons.
(I think a saboteur icon is a bad idea but for other reasons)
Even if I believed his explanation, which I don't, it's an explanation referencing a story in which women are physically marked for what the in-universe society believes is bad behavior. To claim that is what I was arguing for is still unacceptable.
I'm also allowed to assume bad intentions based on his replies in other comment threads here, which you're free to look at and come to your own conclusions.
The Star of David and Scarlet Letter (or letter "A" for adulterer) were both symbols people were made to wear, so they could be identified as "undesirable". The Star of David is probably far more well known world-wide because of how much more recently it was used (some people still alive today were forced to wear it) and the atrocities that followed. Either way, in history it's never been a good thing when people are shaming and identifying people publicly by "marking" them.
> I'm defending an assault of my character
I hope "Maybe we could pin a symbol on their avatars, to make them easy to identify" was missing a "/s". Unfortunately, from the other comments in the thread and your follow up: "Here we are identifying bad actors in the field of business, analogous to a marriage.", it seems like proposals like this are unfortunately real.
And it's unclear how comparing your proposal to a Scarlet Letter would be a good thing. The Scarlet Letter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter) is a cautionary tale of public shaming:
> The major theme of The Scarlet Letter is shaming and social stigmatizing
Plus, the analogy doesn't even make sense.
1) business is nothing like marriage
2) this isn't even a business situation since you have no fiduciary relationship with the author (you got something, but paid nothing), and you have no contractual relationship with the author, other than you unilaterally agreeing to be bound by the "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND" terms of the MIT license
3) adulterers (or "bad actors" in a marriage) are rarely punished in modern society, and are no longer "marked" in any country I know of
This idea of creating a symbol and process to "publicly identify bad actors" is more in alignment with 17th century Puritans and 20th century dictators, not any modern social structure I know of.
The better thing to do is: if they broke a law or a Terms of Service, or a Code of Conduct, then warn, suspend or ban them from the platform and/or repository where the offense took place. If they didn't break any rules, then let them be and use your GitHub stars, free speech, forks, etc. to promote alternatives.
It's not actually naive to disagree with you, and at the time of this writing, several other people have disagreed with you as well, including two people giving alternative and less extreme interpretations which also fit the casual usage of the phrase. Several other people have pushed back on what they suggest is you inserting nazis into the conversation.
It's pretty aggressive to tell someone they're being naive because they don't agree with you and are trying to defend someone, in my opinion. Nominally, saying someone is being naive suggests that you can show that something is not just wrong but shouldn't have been believed by anyone sensible. Since you appear to be interpreting the words of a stranger, I doubt that this is the case.
Usually, in my experience, going to the most extreme possible interpretation without direct support isn't actually justified.
If several different people have disagreed with you, perhaps that's a point at which you might reconsider, instead of criticizing everyone as being unable to see what you see. One possibility is that you might be overreacting.
But to be clear, to me, the wording that they used seems to specifically indicate the novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathanial Hawthorne. This is a culturally significant phrasing with frequent repetition, which is non-offensive, and unlike a mention of the Nazis, actually makes sense in context. In the rest of the text, they are talking about shaming, not wholesale slaughter of human life.
If I wanted to discuss someone wearing a mark of social shame as a pariah, it's quite likely that I would phrase it the same way, and I'm quite startled to realize that anyone might interpret such a comment in this radically other way. It's pretty common to talk about wearing a mark of shame, and you are the first person I've ever seen in my life suggest that that should be associated with the genocidal extermination of people by their religion.
I think that you might be well advised to look at what other people are saying here. Two people have told you that they feel that other interpretations are appropriate besides me, and another two have expressed concern for what they suggest is the inappropriate addition of a genocide to what was being discussed. I'm inclined to agree with them.
It's hard, because earlier in the discussion when you were saying "zero tolerance policy," I was super on your side. I thought that you were one of the few people here discussing solid common sense.
But also, ... I dunno, man, this just seems like an unjustified public shaming, to me.
In my private experience - and this has no attached data, and I could be wrong - but in my private experience, when someone is actually making a comparison like that, they're doing it for one of three reasons:
1. Shock value
2. Demonization
3. It's actually legitimately relevant in context
In all three of those cases, I would expect the person to come out and directly say what they meant, instead of making a vague metaphoric reference. Metaphor defeats shock value; metaphor does not make people look evil; metaphor doesn't have impact when you're trying to make someone face history.
Call me naive if you want, but I just don't think that person said what you claim, and I'm not alone in that.
If someone didn't say "nazi," and there's a reasonable common way to interpret what they said which makes sense in context, when "nazi" doesn't, probably ... probably they didn't mean nazi, friend. Horses and zebra, and all that stuff.
Just because multiple people claim the same thing doesn't make them right.
I did consider what they've said, and I'm starting to love the "It's the Scarlet Letter, something everyone has read, obviously" argument, a story in which women are physically marked instead of Jews.
Also, yes, it's naive to ignore the implications of what people say and read everything strictly based on what's on the page. If that's aggressive to say, then... sorry?
Besides, you're saying "just target them," but you don't actually have the ability. Nothing you can do will get those lists taken down, even if you're on them.
