Alright, so why not start a separate thread for that more-topical discussion, which has a “back-link” to the original thread? Discourse allows that, too - I’ve used it a few times already…
Btw I’ll add I’ve worked for finance-related companies in the past and made job postings and not gotten blowback (on the haskell reddit at least). Or if I did get blowback, it wasn’t particularly memorable or painful. It was actually a bit of a moral question for me if I was comfortable taking such jobs, and to what extent I thought working in the industry was bad as opposed to just plain useless, and I would have no problem talking to others about the issues I had to resolve for myself to make such a decision, and encouraging them to think through the same issues, or their own issues, to make a choice they were comfortable with.
I’ll tell another story too – I was halfway though an interview process with a company some pals of my worked for, doing certain sorts of background checks – and right there in the middle of the interview, with a friend of mine in fact, the details of what exactly the software would be used for, and to what purpose, in service of what policies hit me in its entirety. I apologized and stopped the interview, and explained what I had just realized, and that I would not be comfortable in that job, not matter how nice the tech was, and what good pals I was with some of the folks that worked there. They were very kind and understanding about this. However, if would have saved us all a lot of time if there was a discussion thread where people had made these sorts of arguments beforehand, so I didn’t get so far before realizing it.
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So which one would have been more informative:
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a solitary “drive-by” post with just a bunch of links,
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or a separate thread containing (and dedicated to) a discussion of the matter of concern?
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But viewers of that separate thread can also:
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look at who started (or restarted) that thread,
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and then search for other similar threads also started by the same individual.
That way, just maybe those viewers can better appreciate the context in which such threads appear.
…the simplest way to keep the politics surrounding the advertiser separate from questions regarding the actual job (pay, rostered hours, casual/part-time/fulltime, permanent/contracted, etc) is for the politics to be on a separate, dedicated thread, possibly with a link back to the original job-posting thread - I believe it’s called “a separation of concerns”…
FWIW I think the “new thread” vs “links in thread” is a bit of a false dichotomy
Ultimately we don’t want to constantly have the same discussion; so I don’t see the value in starting a new thread when it seems completely on-topic to me to discuss the context of the job in the place where the job is posted.
Equally, if some previous discussion seems relevant, it seems okay to link that.
As @sclv said, this is a discussion forum after all, I don’t see why we should shy away from using it as such.
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Agreed, but yet again, here we all are!
…and a troll “drive-by poster” can always restart an existing thread if that will serve the intended purpose.
Absolutely, and with a separate thread (new or existing) for each concern.
Perhaps, there is another way out 
Perhaps, Anduril could stop posting here. Perhaps, they could change the work they do. Perhaps, they could engage thoughtfully with the critical content and talk about the good they do. Perhaps, they can simply deal with the repercussions of their actions, like all the rest of us.
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And all of that can be discussed on separate thread/s for those concerns. Anyone looking at the job advertisement can then follow the relevant links, looking like e.g:
…if they have any further concerns.
Is it now a general platform to discuss what is moral and what is not though? If we follow your suggestion, we’ll descend into discussing every ethical topic in the world. I’m fairly tired of endless and repetitive discussions under every crypto-related job posting, and I don’t think I’m learning anything new from them.
Btw I’ll add I’ve worked for finance-related companies in the past and made job postings and not gotten blowback (on the haskell reddit at least).
I did and got unconstructive negative feedback; I took the post down because of it. I decided not to advertise my positions until there is a change in moderation policies. If the community prefers to deal with third-party recruiters, so be it.
I would like to urge the moderators to facilitate discussions under job postings. Sharing personal work experience with a company is very welcome indeed. Asking questions about the job is helpful and clarifying. But general remarks “I hate crypto / military / finance / astrology / meat / oil” are not constructive and lead to nothing but flame and flood.
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As well we should!
Haskell exists in the broader community; and we need to engage with it in order to continue to survive.
What is the concern with engaging “morally” (through personal stories, experiences, and feelings) shared kindly and respectfully, with relevance to the context of the job (or thread more generally)?
To me I feel we must do this; otherwise we are just simply ignoring and extremely large and important aspect of our work - namely, it’s impact!
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If this Discourse (as opposed to one about philosophy) is now such a forum…there’s always the good ol’ Wheel of Morality to provide guidance.
But is “drive-by posting” being respectful or just being a slackavist "bone-lazy" ?
Haskell exists in the broader community; and we need to engage with it in order to continue to survive.
Completely disagree. I want a forum for discussing Haskell. How people choose to use Haskell in their own lives, personally and professionally, and what ends they put it to in pursuit of their own values is completely up to them. It might be interesting to tangentially touch on that on this forum now and again, but I’m not interested in participating in a forum that’s about anything more than Haskell per se.
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I see where you are coming from.
Let me note two things:
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I’m not suggesting every discussion must include a moral and subjective comment about the experience of using Haskell in the broad world. I’m saying that when it comes up, we should necessarily embrace it, because it is an important part of our work as programmers.
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In certain circles, it’s considered a “privilege” to be able to have this kind of blindness to impacts and only focus on technicalities; to use an example from my own interest - you can occasionally see people feel like they don’t need to discuss the climate in their work; this is because the climate crisis doesn’t affect their lives in appreciable ways. But there are many other people whose wellbeing simply depends on it; they do not have the privilege of avoiding such discussions in their everyday lives. Hence, when I personally feel like I come up against something where I’m compelled to think “I’d prefer not to discuss that” I like to think “what lead me to have that option? does everyone have the same option as me? if not, does discussing it benefit the people with less options?” in which case, I might reconsider and engage in the discussion after all, in a respectful and kind manner.
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The list of endless and repetitive discussions on various topics i’m tired of could fill a book. (as a start: monads, teaching monads, what monads should be named, applicatives, the functor applicative monad hierarchy, why isn’t ide support what someone personally wants, why function composition is in one order and not the other, is there too much math in haskell, too little math, does math matter, grade my json tutorial, help me understand foldr, help me understand fold, why isn’t everything strict, what are effects, just to name a few off the top of my head).
But I recognize that maybe I’ve read threads on this topic for 20 years, but not everyone has, and every now and then someone has a great new idea, or at least a fresh take, or I learn how people think of these things today as opposed to last year when we had the discussion, or i get an idea for a new feature or PR that can help make things better which I wouldn’t have had in the past, etc. So I don’t read those threads all the time, but I understand why people read them and post in them, and also when I do choose to read them, that’s because I’m open to be surprised and learn new things even on old topics.
This is a discussion forum, not stackoverflow on a deletionist policy. Its not a repository of all knowledge but a place where we can keep talking about topics, even if sometimes they’re the same old ones – the things we keep talking about are the things that somehow aren’t resolved yet. Maybe they aren’t all resolvable either, but closing our eyes to them is guaranteed to make the community worse and just end up causing these discussions to be less useful and more vitriolic in other venues.
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I have always found the comments on the job postings useful. When the companies that get the most flak can easily afford full page ads in the newspaper I don’t think it matters what a few members of the community have to say about them. At least on reddit, you can simply collapse the comment thread and down vote if you are not interested in viewing the conversation on it.
Since this is a discussion platform, I don’t see why we can’t post criticisms. If some company is afraid of the criticism they are going to draw, they surely can afford to post on one of the job posting websites.
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So isn’t it nice to have a forum where all those concerns can (to an extent) be discussed separately?
Who said anything about “blind/blissful ignorance” ?
You can discuss such matters here (again, to an extent) and having them discussed on a separate thread, rather than being an sub-thread embedded in another thread, must surely be more conducive to more useful discussions - a separate thread is easier to search for, as @ambrose noted earlier.
You can: just start a new thread about it (because you probably won’t be the only one to have an opinion about it), or restart an existing thread if one already exists.
The difference is simple:
- This is a Haskell forum.
- There are plenty of people with experience in the field.
So even if I may be not terribly excited about another monad tutorial, I recognise that I get what I subscribed for and also there is a good chance that I might be pleasantly surprised by an unexpected insight from an expert.
Neither condition holds if someone here decides to share their uninvited opinion on crypto / military / climate:
- I did not subscribe to learn more about crypto.
- Participants are not experts in the field.
Refering to @silky’s point, it’s not about turning a blind eye to problems outside of Haskell bubble. But I’m an adult, thank you very much, I can make my informed opinion on topics. There are plenty of articles and books and specialised boards, if I wish to educate myself.
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We have discussed the issue internally, and have decided on the following policy. We will also find a more prominent place to display our moderation policy soon.
Moderation policy for job postings
When taking decisions on how to moderate discussions about job postings on the forum, we try to act on principles which take the following positions of the community into account:
- Companies which offer Haskell jobs should have the possibility to announce their job offers in the “Jobs” subcategory, and they should be able to have a focused discussion on information which is relevant for prospective applicants.
- Companies which use Haskell and are involved in fields which are controversial should not be exempt from being criticized, and the Haskell discourse should be a place where a constructive discussion about the ethical implications of our activities is possible.
As moderators, it is important that we have clear guidelines which allow us to satisfy all of these community expectations, and which also allow us to take simple and efficient moderating decisions which are understandable and transparent, and follow guidelines which are clear to all. We therefore decided upon the following principles for job postings and discussions related to those job postings:
- We are currently not restricting the set of companies which can post job offerings.
- In the thread which is directly part of the job posting, only posts are considered on-topic which are directly relevant for prospective applicants, and the thread should not turn into a general discussion related to the company.
- However, prospective applicants are certainly interested in the fact that the company is controversial. If a discussion comes up, then we will split the discussion and create a separate thread “Controversy surrounding company” to which we will move all related comments. We will leave a link to that thread in the original job posting, so that users can find the discussion easily. All the rules regarding respectful communication still apply to those threads.
The Haskell Discourse moderation team
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Thanks David.
I think it’s be great to have a place to post and maintain guidance like this, and to signpost the guidance fairly clearly. One possible place is the “About” page About - Haskell Community, but it’s not very clearly signposted.
As part of that same guidance, would the moderators also consider explicitly subscribing to the HF Guidelines for Respectful Communication? I would welcome that. It’s kind of implicit in the forum we have, but making it explicit is (in my view) really helpful.
Thanks for moderating. It’s a super-important role.
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Thank you for detailing a policy @DavidB. Surely, moderation is a thankless job, but as long as there are rules for posting that follow along with what we’d expect from the guidelines for respectful communication, I’m on board with it.
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