Mastodon: censorship in Mastodon

[trebmuh]

While I know what it is to maintain a forum/issue_tracker as doing it myself for a bunch of projects, I feel that I've been censored without any argument other than "not agreeing with a few others". This is not helping a community to grow up in respect of different people = different point of view.

@AirDur: your last message here is from my point of view almost-totally wrong, and you seems to think that my previous one was targeted at only you, but no. Re-read the whole thread with kindness in mind and you'll see my point.

Moreover, expressing yourself with closing the thread just after, is leading to be undemocratic because going this way, I've no way to answer. And moreover the moreover, finishing your message with "have a good day", while you avoiding're you interlocutor (me in this case) to answer, is a sure way to get someone angry. Very pushy way of communicate. This is wrong. Very wrong.

Feel free to censor me again here, arguing that I'm something like "passive-aggressive", which is a very easy way to put a tag on someone and then being fine with you're own mind pushing the responsibility on another person while exercising a censorship yourself, but look at your acts, you're the one censoring here.

Honestly, I'm now really sad to have participated/contributed on my free time to Mastodon while being threated like this. This is very wrong.

[Laurelai]

I can see why they shut the thread. You are wrong.

[Gargron]

Hello! I closed the issue to save your and our time, because neither I nor the maintainers of the French translation are convinced by your argument.

[trebmuh]

How come can they been convinced when/if you close the thread after only 2 hours @Gargron ? How people can then expressed and feel in a safe environment for doing so? Honestly @Gargron , it looks very much more that you disagree with the proposition I was making (which is fine), not more than that, and you decided to act on it with the power you have because you're the main dev. Plus, after 2 or 3 hours more, @AirDur decided to block the whole thread after making feeling that all the problem is on me, which doesn't seems to be a very open-minded way of doing things.

And by the way, I'm one of the long time French translation contributors, so your argument is a bit moody here.

@Laurelai thank you for this so much useful comment! Still the same : "when you disagree with an idea, shoot the idea-speaker", welcome to censorship !

[TixieBorg]

@trebmuh Hey. Stop. We're tired of your shit. Shut up.

[trebmuh]

Thank you @TixieBorg another evidence of openness and constructiveness.

[trebmuh]

Reading at the code of conduct, people here should:

• Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
• Gracefully accepting constructive criticism

...amongst other things that everyone can read. Is this the case? I don't feel so. As an example, is someone (admin, collaborator,... ping @Gargron ) will ask @TixieBorg to stop being aggressive and insulting in respect with the COC?

[ThibG]

@trebmuh first of all, it is not AirDur who locked the thread, but Gargron.

As for closing the issue “after only 2 hours”, this topic has been discussed multiple times already, and you did not bring any new or compelling argument. As stated repeatedly, using gender-neutral language is a deliberate choice from most of the contributors and a significant number of users. The stance of the project on this issue is pretty clear, reopening it again and again won't help anyone. Contributions to improve the translation and make it more readable are obviously welcome, but gender-neutral language is here to stay.

I also feel that, while all the answers in the original issue went against your proposal, they were, unlike what you are implying, mostly polite and definitely not threatening. Please stop escalating this.

Finally, you have not been censored, a discussion that had already occurred, and that wasn't going anywhere has been locked, that is all. And to be honest, I suggest the same should be done about this one.

[trebmuh]

@ThibG : I might have made a mistake thinking it was AirDur, probably because that his answer was followed straight by the closing of the thread avoiding me to answer, which is, at least, unfair. Don't act.

Regarding the topic being discussed (ie: gender-neutral writings), whatever if it has already been discussed or not and if I participated to it or not, constructiveness should be here that: if a topic is coming up again and again, then that is an evidence of the decision not being fine for everyone in the community, and then, as a governance point of view, closing someone (me in this case) talking about this topic is completely wrong and is leading to feel under censorship, which I do feel without a doubt.

Another point of this "gender-neutral" topic is, if there is a decision taken and engraved, I'd have appreciated to have been given with links instead of having been given with a bunch of rhetorical arguments leading me to feel under one sort of political-correctness censorship.

Once again, because this point has not been taken in account from my previous message, the COC reads:

• Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
• Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
  which is definitely not what happen in my case.
  My point of view is different than the one expressed in the few hours of the topic being opened, but instead of accepting it and being respectful, it has been closed done in a very rough way.

The COC says this project pledges to being:

harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
Well, I've just experienced the opposite.

So, as a project governance/leadership/call_that_the_way_you_want, there is definitely something wrong. At the top of this, I understand that _freedom_ includes the right for this project to enforce using neutral-gender writings but then, it clashes with the above-copied part of the COC because it doesn't includes people thinking that this is wrong (to use the neutral-gender writings), so either stick to the COC and don't censor people talking about controversial topics, or write it crystal-clear in the COC that gender-neutral writings is not welcomed, but is the rule to follow for everyone. Because my first proposition was aligned with the COC "welcoming gender-neutral" in a way that this proposition was suggesting to use normal/traditional French as a basis with still allowing gender-neutral as a sub-language. Which isn't unwelcoming at all. I feel I've been correct in proposing that because I assumed people here were following their own COC, which doesn't feel to be the case because it looks from my point of view that it's forbidden to discuss this topic and if you do, you're going under censoring. Proof of that being the closing of the topic in a few hours without leaving people expressing their points of view.
In my humble opinion, this project have to choose between 2 ways:

1. being align with its COC and then, leaving people talk about topic such as this one without being censored or
2. change the COC to align with its political line.

I really hope that people reading at this can understand that this suggestion is being constructive.

I'd add there that when seeing some answers like the following (copied from https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/10025#issuecomment-462837715):

Plus, the fediverse in general is pretty counter-cultural, and "official" French is one of the cultures folks are countering, presumably?

This is not welcoming at all. I'm French and I'm quite fine with the "official French culture", whatever it can means, but if this community, or a part of it, is against this, then it's not welcoming diversity because this is feeling me being a target of some people. Does someone (ie admin) has expressed that this comment was against the COC? No. Instead of that, this comment is filled up (at the time of writings) with 2 "thumb up" and 9 "love". It's hard to feel welcome when people are throwing aggressiveness like that, and the admin doesn't recall them to the COC. Very rough.

Reading at this other comment:

Also, there is lot of officials papers that are written in "inclusive French" now, instead of putting the feminine in parenthesis.

Well, I've never received any official papers written in "inclusive French". Never ever. All the official papers I received are in usual/traditional French (think taxes, social grants,...etc). This is just rhetorical and not based under facts.

@ThibG you wrote yourself that you're fine with gender-neutral and guess what, I'm fine with that. And a few people are the same. OK. But that is not an argument to close down the discussion, whatever if that's you or AirDur, or Gargon who did it. While doing so, it's again a form of censorship.

Going further, while I personally would have been better with having French-classic as a basis and French-gender-neutral as a sub-language (simply because it represents much more the reality of people talking in the street on a everyday basis), the previous topic has been closed without talking about the proposition from @nclm which the possibility to have a French-classic option in the UI. Not leaving people discussing this is also wrong, very wrong. Because it could be a step towards finding a consensus which everyone can cope with.

Finally, coming back to the subject of this very topic, something is very unfortunate and wrong here. I've been the one insulted by @TixieBorg a few message above. The COC is stating that:

insulting/derogatory comments

is a:

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants

but even with that, nothing has been done, and you (@ThibG ), at the time of writing, added a thumb up on @TixieBorg insulting-towards-me comment. This is very wrong because I didn't deserve this in any way, and adding a thumb_up on it are encouraging people to act in a way which is considered an unacceptable behavior by the COC.

@Gargron (and/or people with the privilege to do so) I ask you here to do something here to comply with the COC of this project. Because I didn't insult anyone, just I'm not feeling OK with one thing in this project and I'm willing to talk about it. I don't consider discussing this kind of topics in a project is a wrong approach. @Gargron should I?

[gordonzola]

his answer

her.

Please stop whining. You’re embarrassing yourself.

[trebmuh]

Despite you're fine with what I'm saying or not, I'm not whining.

And the fact that you're answering in a lapidary and pushy way to a long message that I've taken time to write is telling long on the way you want to have a discussion.

Please, stop this and enter a relevant and constructive discussion @gordonzola

[gordonzola]

I didn’t read your message. It doesn’t add anything. You’re whining, you’re talking about censorship, yet you don’t even know the meaning of it, and you’re clearly unable to listen. So, please stop. Fork Mastodon, maybe make your Manstodon, i don’t know, but what you’re doing here is pathetic.

[trebmuh]

Kind of interesting. So you don't read a message, but you already know that it doesn't add anything... Once again, please, stop this and enter an adult discussion. Thank you.