Do you really want more inclusive communities?
At any open source conference these days, you’ll likely hear some talk about being more inclusive. I know what the goal is, and it’s a good one: To make sure people feel welcome in your community, regardless of their race, sex or whether they prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream.
That is a worthy and important goal. But I still cringe whenever I hear someone talking about making communities more inclusive. There’s already a big problem in open source of maintainers thinking that their project is appropriate for ‘everyone.’ All developers!!! I often wonder if all the inclusivity talk doesn’t make this problem worse.
Because while you do not want to exclude people because of their race, sex or ice cream preferences, you do want to exclude people from your community. And you want to make it easy for people to self-select in or out. Here’s the reasons you’d want someone to not become part of your community:
They don’t share your vision for the project, and are trying to push it in a direction you do not want to go.
They don’t agree with your core opinions. This can be value statements (if you value users’ privacy and have a community member who is constantly pushing you to do things you feel violate user privacy, you want that person excluded, right?), but it can also be technical decisions. Someone who disagrees with core technical decisions is welcome to fork your project and do what they want with it, but you don’t want to spend time arguing with them.
People whose use case would simply be better served by another project or technology. You want those people to use the thing that’s best for them, which means not your project.
I was recently reading The Art of Gathering, which is about creating amazing in-person events… and was glad to see that the author devoted a whole section to excluding people, and how doing so does everyone a favor, including those who are excluded when it’s just not appropriate for them. The same applies to communities around open source projects — they are strongest when bad-fit people aren’t a part of them.
PS I’m not talking about jerks or toxic people, that’s a whole other discussion. Someone can be a lovely individual and still not be a good fit for your project or your community.