Include anti-discrimination language in job posting guidelines

Perhaps we should include 'gender' and 'age' in that list as well.

+1 from me. My initial thought on seeing that long list was "that must be a lot of false positives," but I clicked though several of them and they're actually worse than I expected. Not just "guy" but a lot of references to applicants as "he" as well. :(

Should we also adopt a policy for doing something about posts that ignore the new text? Maybe unpublish the post and notify the poster that they need to change the language before it will be re-published?

I suggest "Without notice" so that we don't consume site moderator time with what could be a large number of notices.

^^ As the Drupal Jobs group organizer, thank you.

Now for the religious part of the issue...

World Vision, a Christian organization, posted http://groups.drupal.org/node/281158 - would that be allowed under the new guidelines? Or any other religious group?

Hmm, good question. I'd be inclined to leave that one alone, but I don't know how we'd formalize a standard for that. I'm generally in favor of making it the responsibility of group and site admins to act in the interests of the wider community as they/we understand them, with the understanding that we can all be removed if we do an especially poor job of that. That's, of course, easy for me to say, as it currently means trusting my own judgement.

+1 "without notice"

On the Christian organization's posting, I think the new guidelines would apply as it could be reworded to say things like "This position also requires you to carry out our organization's mission..." In this case, once an applicant gets to an interview stage and the organization brings that up, it is the applicants' right and responsibility to see that they are not personally being discriminated against.

They did do the right thing in linking to their website to apply so that an applicant can see for themselves what the "organization's mission" is.

I think your guideline is good, +1 from me.

But I wonder if typing 'guy' is almost subconscious? If the usage of 'seeking a guy' doesn't slack off, might need to include examples of what NOT to do.

The other thing not all of those those postings contain offensive usage of 'guy', e.g. "I'm a guy who has..." but I haven't check what percentage actually do

@lisarex:

If the usage of 'seeking a guy' doesn't slack off, might need to include examples of what NOT to do.

Interestingly in Webchick's presentation about creating contributors she talks about the importance of positivity in guidelines like the DCOC. A big part of my goal with this is so that
1. it will reduce the incidents in the first place
2. it will give a very easy thing to point to when someone does ignore the guidelines so that time isn't wasted on how best to contact the person and...what is the right thing to do...is contacting even right...etc.

edited to give context

I realize this issue is about job posting guidelines, but if we're also talking about the DCOC then does abusive language / bullying also cover this, as well? Donna Benjamin raised this a few months ago:

   http://groups.drupal.org/dcoc#comment-842833

If there is a separate issue for that discussion, please let me know.

As someone who inadvertently (and carelessly, I might add) posted a job posting who used the word guy and probably caused this post to be made (and certainly not meaning to be discriminatory), I just want to post this definition :
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guy

"informal. persons of either sex; people"

I'm all for making things as inclusive as possible, and I surely support any anti-discrimination language, but personally I think removing job postings without warning because a moderator takes things more literally than they are meant might be a bit extreme. I could find something to take offense out of most postings on this site, if I wanted to completely take it out of context.

@mzytaruk , I personally don't think a post should be removed for using the word "guy" in such a context. I wouldn't.

The point of this is we don't want employers advertising a job who are looking JUST for guys - i.e. Men Only May Apply. It's that kind of discrimination that we're against.

@silverwing, I would agree completely agree with that! Unfortunately that definitely wasn't the sort of 'discrimination' that was in the post that I think started this (since my post was at the top of the list, I have to assume it was me, though I changed it to be more inclusive now after having this brought to my attention), so I am not so sure that this sort of thing won't end up being the target of this policy. After all, how often do you see a post that actively discriminates in the way you describe? Chances are, if someone is going to discriminate based on sex, they aren't going to put it in their post ( it's illegal...), they are just going to ignore your application.

Anyways, I'm all for mentioning that the language in a post isn't the best, but removing without warning does seem a bit reactionary unless it's some obvious garbage, like explicitly saying MEN ONLY.

If we want to quote the dictionary, the actual reference for a guy is:

1. Informal. a man or boy; fellow: He's a nice guy.
2. Usually, guys. Informal. persons of either sex; people: Could one of you guys help me with this?

These posts do not say "guys", but rather "guy".

Yes, context is everything. If your post says "He's a great guy to work for" that's one thing.

If it says "I need someone who can produce highly professional results and preferably is a nice guy" or "if you're a front-end guy with some programming experience" that's another. Both the last two would seem discriminatory against anything but "a man or boy".

greggles, I'm not clear on how your comments relate to the proposed language. Are you suggesting a change to make it more positive? Or was that a +1?

mzytarulk, I hope we can trust group and site admins to reasonably interpret language. If we can't, we should probably replace them/us. But if someone feels strongly that we shouldn't unpublished posts that seem discriminatory to group or site admins, I'm okay with just adding the guidelines for now.

@sreynen - edited my comment to give it context.

I came to the same conclusion re: phrasing it positively. So the example (if needed) could be "For example, use 'person' rather than 'guy."

Often, seemingly offensive texts are created simply due to poor command of English. Someone might use 'he' without any deeper thought, just because his native tongue is "strongly typed" (every noun has gender) and the noun for 'developer' is masculine.

Also, "singular they" doesn't seem to be commonly accepted standard even nowadays, yet the language most non-native speakers learn in schools is at least thirty years behind current practice. (For example, I was taught that 'to fancy' is merely a synonym for 'to imagine' which is now dated usage.)

Therefore, I'd rather prefer to see minor offenses edited away instead of unpublishing - or you'll be creating a policy under which only native speakers are allowed to post job ads.

However, this is beyond doubt a really bad case.

I unpublished that post and sent the author this note:

I have unpublished your job post "Drupal Developer | hideaz technologies" because the post violates the Drupal Code of Conduct. Specifically, it includes language that discriminates based on gender. You are welcome to post an updated version of this ad, but please make sure all future ads on groups.drupal.org do not include language that discriminates based on a person's race, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, age, marital status, familial status, religion or other factors.

I know people disagreed with my suggestion that this be the course of action in the abstract. If people disagree in this specific case, I'm very interested in hearing feedback.

Well, it didn't quite work as they're back with two more copies of the same post.

Two most likely explanations - either they're into fighting mode, or they missed your note and think server squirrels ate the post. (I'd be willing to give the benefit of the doubt even in this case.)

IMHO, this provides a case for editing over unpublishing even for strong offenses as probability of repeat offense would be lower under both scenarios. (One is usually less likely to get into fighting mode over a single line than over the whole post.)

I blocked the account and sent this message:

I contacted you previously about unpublishing your job ads, and you re-published the same disallowed ad without replying to my email. I have blocked your groups.drupal.org account, as a temporary measure preventing further posts with discriminatory language. Please reply if you would like to discuss how you can have your account reactivated and stay within the Drupal Code of Conduct.

My concern about editing posts is the likelihood of people misreading the post as the words of the original author. In my experience in other contexts, editing other people's content leads to confusion by both readers and authors. It also doesn't seem like it would be as much of a learning opportunity for people who don't yet understand the Drupal Code of Conduct.

All of that said, I continue to look forward to other's perspectives on this, and expect we'll see more of that after DrupalCon Portland.

Often, seemingly offensive texts are created simply due to poor command of English. Someone might use 'he' without any deeper thought, just because his native tongue is "strongly typed" (every noun has gender) and the noun for 'developer' is masculine.

Also, "singular they" doesn't seem to be commonly accepted standard even nowadays, yet the language most non-native speakers learn in schools is at least thirty years behind current practice.

+1 to Drave Robber on this. My native language is like that, and I caught myself couple of times on typing 'he' where I didn't really mean man specifically and definitely didn't want to offend anyone. I'd prefer if we gave people possibility to correct themselves before unpublishing anything, e.g. by sending a note saying it'll be unpublished in X days.

I'm fine with warnings on ambiguous language cases, but given the experience with http://groups.drupal.org/node/299608 I think there's also a case for immediate action on unambiguous language. For those who can't access unpublished posts, that node was a "Drupal Developer" job that included this:

Qualification :
1) Any basic degree
2) good in English Both Written and verbal
3) offer is not for females

In cases like this, where the discrimination is unambiguous, I think immediate removal and email explaining the removal is important to make it very clear to both the author and potential readers that this is not acceptable content for groups.drupal.org.

Updating proposal per comment #3.

Groups.drupal.org no longer accepts new job postings.