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Alright, so here's my thread on this whole NumPy thing and the Open Source Software world. And why it's important to care and be critical about NumPy's response here. Buckle up.
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First let me say, OSS, and in particular NumPy, are extremely valuable to the work that I and many other people do. And I do wish to be able to continue using it, but recent discourse on this platform will make it very difficult to do so in good conscience.
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For those not following this, the basics are NumPy was called out for putting out a paper with 26 authors, all of whom were men. One young woman was particularly vocal about it & received harassment from NumPy "fans" & was ultimately blocked by the NumPy org for being critical.3/
I do believe the criticism by this person, and others, about the lack of women authorship is fair. For a team that touts creating welcoming and inclusive environments and has efforts to bring in women, there sure are a lot of questions for why their paper lacked women authors. 4/
Were women who contributed excluded from authorship on the NumPy paper? In the ~15 yrs this code has been under development, has there really been NO women who contributed to NumPy in a significant manner to warrant authorship? Is the team really not inclusive? 5/
After pointing this out & being harassed in the name of NumPy, the team had a real opportunity to exhibit zero tolerance and shut down this harassment. But they didn't do that. Instead, they watched it happen and then several days later made basically a statement of dismissal. 6/
Here is the statement from the NumPy team. 7/ https://twitter.com/numpy_team/status/1308917600596963330
Just because you claim that to be working toward diversity and inclusion, doesn't mean you're doing it well. Part of being an ally and creating these spaces is listening to the criticism, even if it is not reported through official channels (eg, as a code of conduct violation).8/
What the NumPy statement did was (1) rattle off their history of diversity efforts, (2) claim they have women (naming by name), and then (3) basically stating the paper was a reflection of times of the OSS community. 9/
How I interpreted this was: (1) we're giving ourselves a pat on the back; (2) let us tokenize the few women we have contributing; and (3) we couldn't care about diversity and inclusion until we had money to do so. 10/
And did it bother anyone else to see that the majority of the few women NumPy DOES have are not a part of the development team, not on the steering committee, but in the web/doc/survey team? Why are there none at the core of development and decision making? 11/
What the NumPy statement should have done was address the harassment being doled out on their behalf. It didn't do that. The NumPy team is complicit in creating an unwelcoming community. 12/
And then furthermore the NumPy team BLOCKED the person who was receiving this harassment! How does this contribute to creating a welcoming environment?! It doesn't. This is dismissal of the problem. 13/
NumPy needs to STEP UP here. Instead they are only retweeting comments that make them look good instead of addressing the issues brought forth in the criticism. This is not how allyship works. This will not lead toward inclusion. 14/
And let me be clear, I do believe there are people who have had welcoming experiences. But the demographics of the steering committee, dev team, and authorship indicate there is a lot more to do. That needs to be accepted. 15/
If NumPy really wants to address DEI and make a difference, they need to start from the top and take a look at their steering committee/board. And they need to stop tokenizing the few women they do have. And they need to listen to the criticism. 16/16
And as a NEW development, the team just SHARED the harassment/smear thread against this person. This is behavior and response from the @numpy_team is absolutely unacceptable. You clearly are not listening to what people are saying. You need to make some BIG apologies & fix this.
The @numpy_team needs to understand how irresponsible their tweet was. It gave platform to abuse & has now brought on additional harassment. It would be in your best interest to stop tweeting, read these tweets, learn from your mistakes, and seriously apologize for the harm done.
