Announcing Diversity in Swift!

Please read the following, which already covered both of your objections/assertions:

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I welcome this initiative very much. One question though:

Given the spaces will be private - it reads weird about the "need to participate". Does it mean that people who don't identify themselves as community members of said groups CAN participate? Not nitpicking, just want the clarification on the terms. :slight_smile:

Your question has an answer at Swift.org - Diversity in Swift

Identity is a personal matter that should never be questioned by others. As a community, we are trusting individuals to only request to join community groups that represent their identity. If you are not represented by any of the current community groups, you are still welcome and encouraged to participate in Diversity in Swift! You can find other ways to contribute to this effort in the Community Participation section.

Please read the whole blog post, as well as linked documents.

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Thanks! I managed to miss this part somehow.

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Given the that all of y’all’s ‘terms’ started at the same time, is the expectation that every two years there will be a new slate of leaders, or will the work group change member by member as some step down and others are added?

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I think all of the work groups within the Swift project take the latter approach out of necessity based on who in our community has the demonstrated interest and capacity to serve on the work group. For example, in the recent Swift on Server update, two members of the work group stepped down while three new members joined. The Diversity in Swift work group is modeled after the other work groups here and we intend to operate in a similar manner.

That said, I would be absolutely thrilled if enough individuals in our community do have the interest and capacity to serve on the work group so that we are able to have an entirely new leadership team in two years time! As others have pointed out in this thread, diversity in our leadership is important, and part of that is giving new folks the opportunity to serve as leaders.

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This sounds great on the surface, but I’d encourage folks who are interested in these groups to create their own independent groups, rather than exist within a largely Apple driven forum.

We’ve seen time and time again that Apple will support a solid cause, but then abandon it any time it becomes inconvenient (see privacy, environment, worker’s rights etc). Remember, those working for Apple are quietly complicit in all these cases. So please don’t rely on anything Apple led groups are offering: create your own community, and retain ownership of it. You don’t need a load of mostly rich, white people “helping” you.

Reach out to individuals, and create decentralised networks. We’ve seen in this very thread, that’s meant to be all about diversity and inclusion, dissenting voices being silenced, so there’s a lesson there about not becoming involved in communities that can silence you when your voice becomes an inconvenience. (This should not be read in any way as support for that one individual who voiced wacky conspiracy theories and appeared to be against diversity in general).

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I'm really excited for this and I'm happy to see the Core Team take these requests seriously and accommodate them.

It can be super intimidating to enter a new space and wonder if you're going to be welcomed. Initiatives like this help alleviate these kinds of concerns and therefore (IMO) fit in perfectly with Swift's unofficial goal of World Domination.

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Part of the goal here is to make this forum more approachable. Many, many folks from underrepresented backgrounds, including myself, have voiced that these forums are intimidating to interact with when you are the only woman, Black developer, etc, in the space. Establishing a safe space where folks can ask questions about Swift where they can visibly see others that look like them directly combats this. We also hope the community groups serve as an approachable gateway into the public forum.

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I wish the Diversity page explained community groups as clearly as you just did. Thank you for writing this.

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No, that's not what this is about at all. We are not trying to isolate anyone from disagreement, and we expect that the vast majority of conversation will continue to happen in the public forums.

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I hope not, John, but I'm afraid I see it inevitably spiraling in that direction.

Suppose there was a hypothetical announcement of a Swift conference that was exclusive to people with a certain immutable characteristic (sex, race, sexuality, disability, mental illness, criminal history, veteran status, age, wealth, or one of the many other ways to categorize people)

  1. It could be announced on the "public" section of the forums, and certainly get push back from people who aren't okay with exclusivity of this kind.
  2. Or, it could be posted to the private section of the forums, with universal appraisal from a like-minded set of people. "Preaching to the choir", so to speak

The temptation would be towards the latter, as a path of least resistance.

There are people who think this kind of exclusivity is useful, positive and trying to making up for inequalities past and present. There's also a large group of people who seem them as prejudicial and discriminatory, and especially frightening when endorsed by a professional organization like a big company or this community. Regardless of where people might stand on these issues, I guarantee you these disagreements won't be happening if they're siloed off in immutable-characteristic-specific private forums.

Edit: naturally, people have the freedom to organize such things in private messages, other forums, etc. I think it's different when such an event gets officially endorsed by an entity like "the Swift Community", whatever that is.

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I completely agree that the weirdo ranting about Greek philosophy needed to be banned, but why is anyone who expresses the slight discomfort being flagged?

The main post says “we are committed to ensuring that everybody feels supported and valued in the Swift community”, but anything expressing skepticism is either flagged or deleted.

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It's okay to express discomfort, and hopefully we can alleviate that. It's worth noting that anybody in the community can flag comments, and they will automatically be hidden (though still visible if you want to see the comment) until a moderator reviews it.

Advertising opportunities such as job openings has never been appropriate for these forums, and that's not changing with the addition of community groups. Like I mentioned previously, community groups are simply a space to ask questions and share advice for folks who otherwise would have not posted at all on this forum:

Nothing is being taken away from the folks who participate in the public forum.

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To be clear, I was talking about hypothetical first party conferences. Are those also inappropriate for these forums?

What exactly is your concern, that somebody announcing a conference for Women in Swift would only announce it in a private community and so it wouldn’t get very good visibility? I think that’s a fairly obvious drawback of announcing something only privately and isn’t a very compelling reason to not have any private spaces at all.

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I don‘t understand how you got the impression that I expressed the discomfort of the existence of these new private places in our forums. I don‘t mind people creating and sharing swift related content on these forums (my only preference is the spoken / written language used for communication), any race, skin color, gender and what not I don‘t care about. You can be part of any group and I will respectfully read and try to understand your opinion even if I might disagree with it. However you put me into a weird spotlight where I am being accused as if I was against something or its value to others. I highly feel offended by this post of yours. To be clear here with you and everyone else. The discomfort I have is the precedence that previously requested corners on the forums for more community accessibility were simply turned down. Why is it not okay to officially welcome other languages or projects (even though officially owned by Apple) on the forums, but okay to create political correct private areas?

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Maybe it was this bit?

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This announcement is changing any prior precedent of not having any deliberate support on these forums for folks who don't feel welcome or included. As John mentioned, the current list of community groups is not in any way exhaustive, and we're actively taking recommendations for future community groups to add. We limited it to two upon this announcement purely due to the capacity of the work group. We are fully open to suggestions on how better to support other folks from different backgrounds. Some of the suggestions we've already gotten are Native American programmers, neurodiverse folks, Arabic or Middle Eastern developers, the LGBTQ+ community, and we welcome any further suggestions.

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Then it’s just oddly wrong interpretation of my wording. I never said I’m against something or that I don’t view its value for others. I also never expected such a strongly worded response from John. Sorry, I don’t want to be part of this conversation anymore. I expressed my precise standpoint loud and clear in my last post’s question.


Dear @hborla thank you for your clarification on that. I do welcome every new Swift community member and decisions into making more Swift related content being accessible through these forums. However I would also like to see a movement / change in regards of Swift related projects, open sourced or not, such as Combine or SwiftUI, etc. The mentioned projects do not only have technical topics which only Apple developers can answer that can be discussed. There is a whole creative aspect to it which cannot really unfold on the apple developer forums either.

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