This is a very good move, and I'm glad that the Code of Conduct was updated to be more sane. As a consequence, I'm now more willing to contribute bug reports/pull requests to the Go project.
They want to be facilitators instead of decision-makers because of their bad experiences when they made final calls. You can't be a facilitator if one side is missing from the conversation. I see nothing controversial.
I've always found this whole idea of a Code of Conduct pretty broken. It seems to be a document written by some kind of abstract, shared moral authority which apparently has the power to decide what's good or bad.
You could possibly argue, that it represents a shared mindset of a group of people working on a common project. The thing is, it has become a base for witch hunting, public shaming and other conflicts because some people have taken the code of conduct as their bible and felt it was their duty to go on a crusade against the infidels.
Also, from a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. In Europe, when you go to a restaurant or a bar, the one common sign you'll find is the smoking forbidden one. That's it. People will politely ask if it's OK to bring a dog, or just know that going without a T-shirt is a no-go. In the US, you need half an hour just to read through all of the information before even entering the place. And people would still challenge the rules that are not explicitly stated there.
As an anecdote, I once went to a conference in a European country where immigration is close to 0, thus people are pretty much caucasian. So there was this American speaker (obviously caucasian) talking about diversity in software and would kind of try to shame the event organisers and the audience because there was no black person in the room. It was one of the most absurd situations in my life.
To me, a Code of Conduct does not belong to the realm of software. Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics. You can clearly tell that the Go team has decided to go the way of "yeah, we are kind of obliged to have a CoC, but don't want to be dicking around with the topic". Good for them.
Sure. The person who started promoting the concept of code of conducts, "Coraline Ada", has been hunting down people who violate their view of what's "right". For example pressuring third party projects to remove maintainers because they are "publicly calling trans people out" on twitter.
Because the Opal project is ran by sensible maintainers. The point of this link is to showcase the kind of people that want CoCs to be a thing. If you read the comments on that issue you will see that the PC warriors are trying to pressure the project into adopting a CoC which would make the behavior that upset them unacceptable.
To be clear, the behavior that upset them was a contributor tweeting things on twitter under his private name. They wanted this person to be removed from the open source projects they were working on because of that.
The people who are pushing CoCs want to be able to punish people for perceived injustices. These injustices can be tweeting on twitter, and if the PC warriors get their way the punishment is to be ostracized from all open source projects.
If you read the link, you'll see that one of the people conducting the witch-hunt created an issue calling for a CoC. It's a good example of the mentality and its link to CoCs.:
"strand referenced this issue on Jun 18, 2015
Closed
Create a Code of Conduct #942"
That's insane. I can't believe that conversation exists on that place. It is not the place for it. Personally, I believe to each their own, but I also believe in not harassing people when they don't agree with me.
The mentality of "that person said something I disagree with [on other media] and they should be banned here [on a random project that I don't have anything to do with] or else..." is incredible toxic.
If you don't agree with "assholes" writing code or using code that was written by an "asshole", you'll have a hard time using anything open source at all.
Yup! And your project can be removed/banned from GitHub if you do something she disagrees with now. I forget which project it was that was lashed out at recently, but it's all rather insane.
That is, it looks like GitHub will ignore it's own code of conduct in order to punish "bad" people.
This is a common theme among proponents of codes of conduct.
See also Twitter's ban on many people, including Milo Yiannopoulos. He was banned for "violating the rules". But I've looked, and no one anywhere can point out which exact tweet violated which particular rule. Even more extreme, no one can point out where he said any of things he's accused of saying.
So... Twitter blocked him for "abuse", when there is zero evidence of such abuse.
I'll say this:
The more extreme the code of conduct, the more likely it will be broken by the people enforcing it.
Neither Github nor Twitter have a code of conduct; they have a Terms of Service document. TOS, unlike CoCs, are written by lawyers because the goal is a full-featured CYA. And they generally contain the legalesed disclaimer "we're free to get rid of you whenever we feel like, for whatever reason we feel like". I'm sure twitter also has some extra community rules somewhere.
CoCs are worrisome because they tend to emulate that behaviour, and I certainly do not condone overreaching TOS, but you can't equate those two situations. It's the behaviour of people vs. the behaviour of companies.
Except in the case of Twitter, the claim was that they banned Milo for engaging in certain kinds of behavior. Such claims are false.
When you have such a legalese disclaimer as above, you don't need to lie about why you're banning someone. You just say "Under the Twitter ToS, we've banned Milo."
The fact that they chose to lie about the justification for the ban shows not only that the ban was politically motivated (and not based on reality), but that they are so incompetent that they can't even spin it in their favor.
Their bias is leaking. They don't really care about their own ToS. They don't care about following the rules they put in. They do care about banning anyone who they don't like.
I find such behavior unethical, and morally repugnant.
The "Code of Conduct" discussion is about a larger social issue. CoCs in open source projects are just one facet.
As others have posted here, some people pushing "codes of conduct in open source" end up violating those codes themselves, and abusing their authority. These people do this not only in open source forums, but in other places, too.
The underlying topic then, cannot be about the CoC. In reality, the topic being discussed is who gets to control the conversation. Along with that, who gets to decide what topics are acceptable. Not just which topics are OK for a list / forum, but which topics are "good think", and which ones are "bad think".
The question for someone running an open source project, then, is will your project be taken over by people who are pushing a particular ideological agenda, and who are using your project to do so?
My answer is "No.". Perhaps "over my dead body" is more accurate.
Yep, that person being hired on at Github was the last straw for me. I cancelled my (paid) subscription and moved all my private repos to Gitlab. Any future open source libraries I may publish will be on Gitlab as well.
Reading this thread is making my blood boil. But I have never understood what these people are trying to prevent. Are they concerned about someone's technical contribution to a project being rejected because of their personal views? I have never seen that happen (and I don't believe it has ever happened).
Yet, the person who created this issue has been hunting down people whose opinions they don't agree with and trying to exclude them from participating in a technical community. The scariest part: this person works for GitHub.
See the Atheism+ debacle a few years ago. The entire thing was CoC abuse writ large.
"Its Atheism PLUS morality, sensitivity, acceptance, diversity, etc."
Things which are all well and good, but that turned out to not be the point. The point seemed to be that creation and enforcement of CoC rules was more important than anything else.
People argued endlessly about which rules should be created, what the rules meant, and how to enforce the rules. Which in practice, meant witch hunting, and a totalitatian enforcement of vaguely-defined values.
i.e. nasty, toxic, behavior.
This negative behavior was pointed out to one of the main proponents. To prove the nay-sayers wrong, he created a sock puppet account which asked a simple question "Hey guys, what's this thing about?"
Cue hysterics and shaming of the newbie.
He publicly came out and said the account was his, and that this behavior was bad.
Cue hysterics and shaming of him.
He was banned (both accounts) from the forum. A thread was set up specifically for people to discuss how they were betrayed / hurt / abused by his behavior.
Another major proponent who talked endlessly about the need to be inclusive towards women and not sexually harass them... has now been accused of repeated sexual harassment. And his public statements pretty much say "yeah... that actually happened, but it was all a misunderstanding"
And what are the results of this new movement? Well, a few years later, it's dead. The forums are dead. The proponents are fighting each other. One was drummed out, and then publicly admitted that the people she was against were nicer to her than her ex-allies.
When the "bad" people are more moral than the "good" people, I think you have your labels reversed.
I've advocated for this before. Codes of conduct should be simple. Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban."
Anything else devolves into a morality play. Where the proponents argue about which moral standards are correct, and which ones are evil and wrong.
In short, people who obsess about enforcing codes of conduct are toxic. They don't get anything done. They largely have never gotten anything done.
> Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban."
Let me tell a story about off-topic postings in a forum that I was active at.
There was a member who often posted (let's say) controversial, but very reasoned answers in this forum. They were often against the official consensus of the forum, which lead to strong reactions and controversies (I can even imagine that he loved this controversies); but as I said: his arguments were very well reasoned. So there were some moderator(s?) who rather would have liked to ban him from the forum (but they couldn't easily, since there were people who rightfully said that though his postings are controversial, they come from a completely different side of view, so they have value for the community).
So the moderators gave him a warning (I think there were two warnings were before ban) because of some off-topic posts (there were some terms hidden in the forum rules, which really nobody read). This lead to an outcry in the forum since there were other (less controversial) forum members who also accidentally wrote off-topic posts, so people sensed an agenda.
One of the moderators (a very recognised one) did the (IMHO) only correct thing that one can do in this emotionally charged situation as a moderator: She gave an official warning to herself in the "warnings thread", for the reason that she accidentally wrote some off-topic posts, too.
Basically a CoC was quietly created and applied retroactively to so that Typelevel (a major Scala consultancy) could try and kick Tony Morris (founder of Scalaz) off his own project.
From what I understand, having a colorful community of weirdos made the open source project they based their company on seem unattractive to big corporate customers.
I'd have to agree with you that the reaction seems absurd. He was unprofessional, sure, meriting a temporary kicking from IRC or something, but IMHO he who has never been a know-it-all (unheard-of on HN, ofc) or lost his temper over something silly on the internet should cast the first stone.
Software doesn't, and can't, have human ethics (unless e.g. it's specifically a missile guidance system), but a collaborative software project does need to.
The interface between these two things is subtle. Yes it's obvious that in order for a software project to be collaborative, it has to take on the foibles of humans but I don't think that your simple "No." cuts it.
If I want to contribute to an open source software project I need to share the politics of the people that wrote it. Does that imbue the software with those politics? If it was written by lefties do I have to be a lefty to use it? If it was written by right-wingers do I need to be right-wing to use it?
Case in point. There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted.
The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities. Should I have used that library because it was useful to me, or should I have written my own code because of the 'politics' of the code?
(I didn't use it in the end, because I was uncomfortable having 'dailymail' show in dependencies of code that I had written, but I still think about it)
> Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional.
Unless the word "reductionism" means something else than I think it means, I don't really see the issue. There's no problem with reducing a complex system to its simpler parts in order to understand it - that's basically how all human understanding works. The problem only starts when someone takes a small subset of the simpler parts and hyperfocuses on them, throwing out the rest.
> The practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.
I mean simplifying complicated to the point where they seem appealing and then asserting that there is no complexity.
I think of it as more like quantisation, where information/detail is lost for the sake of simplicity. So after a reduction your mental model/data might not have the required fidelity to make useful conclusions.
>If I want to contribute to an open source software project I need to share the politics of the people that wrote it
I disagree. Software is meant to be meritocratic - all that should matter is the quality of your commits, if you're a contributor. It shouldn't be necessary or even desirable to have an explicit code of conduct to expect civility.
> There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted.
>The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities
Would using the library support division, inequality or victimize minorities?
Would not using the library help minorities or promote unity and equality?
Fritz Haber developed a process[0] for synthesizing ammonia as a means of manufacturing poison gas for use in World War 1 - a process which led directly to the development of the gas chambers used during the Holocaust. However, the Haber process also revolutionized agriculture worldwide, making it possible to grow food in places where it would otherwise have been impossible. Does that mean modern agriculture is imbued with violent German nationalism or anti-Semitism? Of course not.
In the same way, code has no political, social or moral dimension of its own, and the political environment in which it's written need have no relevance at all to how its used, or by whom.
> I disagree. Software is meant to be meritocratic - all that should matter is the quality of your commits, if you're a contributor.
How do you come to the idea that software is meant to be meritocratic? Many people start an OSS software project so that the code implements the founder's vision. So for example I committed some (objectively; in this case "objectively" can objectively be justified [pun intended]) high-quality patches to some OSS project (which project is of no concern here). They were refused because they diverted from the vision that the founder and maintainer of this OSS project has for it.
If that "vision" relates only to the design or structure of the software, then I believe that meritocracy means conforming to the project owner's standards. But if it's about politics or social issues taking precedence over the code, then I would be opposed to it.
There are plenty of angry, uncivil, misogynistic and racist 'thought leaders' in tech who are respected not for their political views (although sometimes, yes) but for the quality and popularity of their projects, so I think the premise of software being meritocratic is fairly well established.
> If that "vision" relates only to the design or structure of the software, then I believe that meritocracy means conforming to the project owner's standards.
At least in this case "meritocracy" does not mean "the opinion (about code structure etc.) that is (necessarily) shared by the majority of the contributors".
Well, yeah, many if not all open source projects are dictatorships by necessity - not everyone's opinion can matter when only one or a few people are actually able to accept pull requests. Even the ones that accept the will of the majority are doing so by an arbitrary fiat.
But if the majority of contributors disagree with the owner about fundamental design issues, that's what forks are for.
Software is just ones and zeroes. The only thing it's "meant" to do is execute on a computer.
If you mean "collaborative open source software projects", the idea of "meritocracy" is an explicitly political idea; it's not innate. Open Source is also an explicitly political idea.
Competing political ideas in software development include 'not invented here syndrome' which is based on the tribal affiliation of the contributor.
If I don't share the political principles of open source (e.g. copying closed code in contravention of the license), I'm going to have a hard time contributing to an open source project. If I don't share the political ideas of a commercial closed-source project (e.g. copying open code in contravention of the license) then I'm going to have a hard time contributing to a closed commercial project.
And I wasn't making an assertion about using libraries published by the Daily Mail so much as posing a question. I can't fully quantify the effect of any action I make, everything is interrelated. I'm perfectly happy to admit that it was a matter of personal pride that I didn't want to be associated with the Daily Mail in any way because I don't like what they stand for. Identity politics. I'm only human. I wouldn't (I hope) force anyone else not to use the Daily Mail library. And I wouldn't try to force someone out of a software project because they had different politics.
Maybe that broadens out to the original topic: the reason some people don't seem to like CoCs (and I'm undecided) is because they can be used to enforce tribalism. We've seen examples of people being attacked in software projects because they have contrary political views to some other people. One of the arguments here seems to be whether or not that is driven by tribal instinct, and whether CoCs provide a vector for that.
I'm glad you didn't; I think picturing and calling three judges 'enemies of the people' was one of many steps in a long descent from news to reactionary propoganda; and as such should be shunned by all civilized people everywhere.
(Or possibly just fascist propaganda, since conservatives usually believe in the rule of law.)
The Daily Mail is simply a somewhat (but not very) right wing paper, which attracts a lot of bile because it's successful. I routinely read far more extreme, nasty and divisive stuff in the Guardian these days.
The headline in question is because the judges had made an illogical judgement that wasn't supported by law or common sense, which had only one possible outcome; potentially delaying or blocking the implementation of a referendum result. Seeing them as enemies of democracy i.e. the people, is thus an entirely rational viewpoint even if you might not agree with it. Just like it'd be rational to call judges that if they decided that their personal interpretation of the law was that the last general election was void and they were now personally in charge. Being a judge does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you like.
I think you're doing a very broad generalisation with respect to that Europe/America difference. Myself, whenever I go to a café or something here in Europe there are dozens of stickers with the rules on the front. I hardly take half an hour to read them, since they're there mostly for legal purposes. I am strongly inclined to believe that in most places in America things run similar to this. And anyways I hardly think it's such a world shattering problem to have signs with the legal rules of a public space, that you think it's symptomatic of a deeper problem or something.
Also, your last paragraph is a bit silly. The Code of Conduct is not regulating computer code, it's regulating human interactions between human collaborators is a project, so I really don't see your point there.
I understand what he's saying about the America/Europe difference; he's not wrong. Despite its patriotic pride in free speech, I have to watch what I say far more carefully in american contexts than in european ones. I see the difference whenever I travel to the US and I especially see the difference online, at US peak time vs. US down time on reddit or even HN.
I suspect that if this had been posted ~4-5 hours from now, the story would have been flagged and the GP's comment would be grey.
CoCs are not about software. They are about communities. They serve a very good purpose and have helped numerous online communities keep the environment civil and friendly.
How do you explain the reasons in the article? It appears that they have a good working mechanism for conflict resolution and a CoC gets in the way of that.
You seem to have renamed forum rules to CoCs here.
I think there's a difference since one just means moderators, and CoCs are like establishing a volunteer HR department over your volunteer employees. It changes the atmosphere, and they don't even get you a 401k.
I didn't know the Golang community had a Code of Conduct (since I'm not active in it), but upon reading about it I tried to imagine why you would want one.
And then I remembered the PHP community in the late 90s / early 00s. Perhaps the most unpleasant, hostile, childish, petty community I've come across.
I can see why one would want a CoC. No, it isn't ideal.
that's why i saw the value in them too. I don't think it changed very much since then either. See the mailing list thread about introducing one for PHP. It's not pretty.
The potential problem with CoCs is that they empower and attract some with rule- and justice-obsessed personalities, and who like to moralize. This may not seem like a big problem now, but was still a step in the wrong direction. The alternative to rule-obsessed moralizing is calm conflict resolution, which this updates moves towards.
They updated:
> If you conduct yourself in a way that is explicitly forbidden by the CoC, you will be warned and asked to stop.
To:
> If a reported conflict cannot be resolved amicably, the CoC Working Group may make a recommendation to the relevant forum moderators.
That isn't much, but it still shifts from a "victim-aggressor" model ("relationship triangle") to a conflict-resolution model, which is important for everyone to feel respected. Anonymous reporting too was an unhealthy community dynamic, and getting rid of it is a step in the right direction.
CoCs fall into the category of language policing, and though it's nice to have a nice community, it can lead to tone shifts and self-censorship. If someone sees people going in all directions and being ineffective, they might not speak up for fear of being seen as "bossy" or "insistant".
That problem can be minimized if CoCs explicitly and fully shift from conflict-minimization (toxic) to conflict-resolution.
The ideal case would be for people to be able to resolve conflicts and draw boundaries on their own, which won't happen until society starts putting more emphasis on mental health and healthy communication, among other things, in schools and elsewhere.
I've always felt that codes of conduct came from HR people who can't program but want to contribute to a project.
> [F]rom a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything.
Years ago, while playing with the family at a lake, I noticed one of our inflatable water toys had different warnings next to different flags. Yes, many were in different languages, but there were at least three English warnings on there. The British and Australian warnings were just "use under competent supervision." The American warning was a couple paragraphs long, and very detailed: "do not use while drunk; do not tow from boat; do not dive into; ..." I was embarrassed as an American.
I recognize that not everyone recommending codes of conduct literally comes from human resources, but it's the simplest way I can understand why somebody would say "what this project needs is a document defining good and bad behavior."
Perhaps it's just a personal hang-up. I believe some style guides are worthwhile, and style guides could be described as documents describing good and bad design or good and bad code.
The policing of language always seemed like much of an American (and in general Anglosphere) phenomenon. Bleeping swears, censor boxes, the "n-word", I think that's unheard of in most of continental Europe. That's not to say it's complete chaos, you're not supposed to swear or hurl slurs on national television, but if a guest on a talk show wants to say he's had a great fucking day, you won't hear the 1000 Hz bleep instead.
I was watching the DVD commentary of The IT Crowd recently (which is really fantastic). Graham Linehan in an episode talked about this at length in an episode where Douglas says "Fuck off". He talked about the decision behind making him swear in what's a family show, where to draw the limits, how to make it have the most impact etc. It was great.
He also mentioned that "then again, probably nobody cares". It is a UK TV show. In the US, it would've had to be bleeped and everybody would have gasped if it hadn't.
I saw a news article a few weeks ago during the Women's March about how Madonna said fuck "not once, but twice!" on CNN. I'm familiar with US TV censorship rules and it still took me a solid minute until I connected the dots and realized what was "so shocking".
Counter-point: someone said "shagged out" once in a British TV show and it was a _huge deal_. And there's a pretty strong limit on how many f-bombs and other swear words you can drop in a show that goes out before a certain time in the evening (known as "the watershed").
I'm very amused reading comments here saying that censoring and being afraid of swears is American thing and not a thing you see in Europe. It's certainly something you see a LOT in the UK.
Also as a European, I disagree with your statement that CoC are pointless. I didn't see the point at first, but I've come to see some advantages.
The purpose of a CoC is to empower the weak. This sounds cheesy, but it is true.
Yes, most of the time a CoC is not needed. Usually the community is friendly, and people help one another.
But what if something bad happens? What if a member of the community is treated poorly? Without a CoC, there's most probably nothing they can do. The welcoming majority might not realise that there's a tiny part of the community that doesn't work so well.
With a CoC, there's usually a clear point of contact; and people know who they talk to when there's trouble.
CoC are not about witch hunts. On the contrary! If someone tries to throw dirt on someone, the CoC could be used just as well to try to deescalate the situation.
It's the point of contact that gives you that, not the code of conduct. In large communities you always want a clear point of contact that your members feel safe reaching out to if they are being harassed or worse. The code of conduct doesn't specifically give you that, especially not in small communities where there is usually a single project leader.
Great anecdote. Another tangential thing that I find is silly is blaming ALL whites for slavery of some black people couple hundred years ago in the US. I'm not aware of a single ethnic slave in Finnish history but I am still somehow responsible for slavery in some other country.
It's unsurprising to read that anonymous reporting essentially failed. When you're in charge of a community and there is a dispute between two members, you have to act as a neutral third party. Anonymous reports force a bias on one side and prevent the person in charge from getting more details about the issue.
I think especially in a technical community, GPG (or easier tools if any) are better suited to preserving privacy in important disputes.
Side semi-related rant: Why are CoCs in FOSS communities often so bureaucratic and lengthy? I get the need for rules and enforcing of rules when you have a large community, but most of them outside of open source usually manage with very few rules, most of them which are always implied. Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil".
I maintain two open source communities of 30 and 80 people, a gaming community of ~300 daily active members and a friends&family guild of ~200 members. I've never had to say anything else than "be nice" and "don't spam". Across all those, I've had to deal with two serious cases of harassment, neither of which would have been solved with a code of conduct. [NB: of course, community rules become a more pressing need the larger and less focused your community is]
In the mean time, I see open source projects of 5-10 max adopting massive codes of conduct that make potential contributors feel like they're reading terms of service. I was part of the founding team of a small OSS group and one of the first things that came up was "we need a code of conduct" (as in, around the same time as "we need a roadmap", when the group had 5 members).
In the well-meaning fight against harassment, I see people copypasting files like they're going to be a magic bullet. If you have a community where rude behaviour and/or harassment can be a concern, it's not a piece of paper that says not to that will help; you need moderators your members feel safe contacting and who know how to handle delicate situations.
If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem.
EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover that, fix them.
Perhaps it's a linguistic confusion? Civility means that I'm polite as I correct your mistake, and laws should not cover civility. What laws cover is harassment and threats.
In some places there are also classes of hate speech that are prohibited by law. That's still much narrower than a general rule of civility. It's also a bad idea in my opinion, even though I'm a big ole SJW.
If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law? Which law? Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?
A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.
> If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law?
Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me. I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
So really, I have no clue why you think that redundant things like CoC have any practical use.
EDIT: instead of downvotes just explain where I'm wrong. Too many feelings here, very few logical arguments.
Aside from the minor detail that I ought not be legally prohibited from expressing my opinion that an idiot is an idiot, the even bigger issue is that this law is destined to protect powerful and corrupt people at the expense of their critics. There is a reason most dictators pass laws against insulting the monarchy. It has no hope of being fairly applied.
You should add another minor detail, which is that I should not be legally prohibited from taking a walk, or walk my dog, without a crazy person following me around calling me an idiot. I would call that harassment/abuse.
You can express your opinion on people in public office as much as you want.
We weren't talking about Presidents and dictators though right?
So maybe we should get back to the topic of how CoCs have no merit or practical use?
Depending on some details, that would quite possibly count as harassment or stalking.
If, on the other hand, it's on twitter, you use the block button, and other private matters.
And we can't really get back to to the subject, because your whole idea was "codes of conduct are bad, but legally prosecuting people for the same thing would be great!"
CoC's try to cover from sexual harassment(which is covered by law) to general douchebaggery(which is subjective).
In the first case it is obviously redundant and in the 2nd it is impossible, hence we end up doing what we would do anyway, which is to shun the individual. If there are obvious cases were something should be covered by law, just fix the laws(which is what I say in the link you pasted). It's all been discussed in this thread, so it's shame that you have me repeat them here :(
I don't feel you have the intention for an honest conversation, as you don't seem to respond to anything I provided as arguments.
Please feel free to ignore me, as I won't be able to keep checking up on this thread.
> Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me.
Interesting. Does it happen often in practice?
> I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
> CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
Wether you agree with those goals or not, it is the right of a community to decide which culture they like. And different communities will attract different kinds of people. Quite a few people choose not to contribute to the Linux kernel because of the abrasive leadership style of Linus. You might choose to not contribute to the Golang project.
You argued that you don't need a CoC because the laws already cover the same ground. If your goal is to foster a certain culture, it is simply not feasible to use the law to enforce it.
Not really, but it does happen occasionally in work places, because if it happens often enough it is basically the equivalent of bullying(called mobbing at work).
> The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
It's because I consider US a civilized(and a very litigious) country that I'm sincerely surprised that its laws don't cover such things.
> The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
So basically what I described as "shunned" from the community.
But previously you said:
> Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?
So we agree that CoCs can't serve as substitutes for laws?
The HN guidelines are a perfect example because the first half has practical use which is how to submit an article and the 2nd half which is indeed useless.
Let's be honest here. What you're looking for is a magic wand that say "if you could please don't be an asshole, that'd be grand thanks" and people would be happily ever after. Right?
Well there's no solution for that and CoCs can only serve as to infuriate people who aren't assholes.
Just shun them as you would do with or without a CoC.
> It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.
Laws shouldn't be used for that anyway. They're far too inflexible. Always remember that historically, what was thought to be civilised usually turns out to be pretty barbaric in hindsight. Laws to enforce such behaviour just slow down progress, so limiting persons via laws should be done with extreme caution and after thorough consideration only.
In practice, communities already enforce certain behaviours (through various methods e.g. peer pressure, shaming and many others). I think in general this is necessary for coexistence, cooperation, and cohesion. But codifying them is probably the least flexible and doesn't allow for any nuance. Besides, any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness. Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them.
I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of Conducts are. I won't touch projects with a CoC, and when a project that I'm actively contributing to introduces a CoC, I stop contributing.
Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and trying to placate such people via a CoC is a lost cause. On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside.
Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably start over again with a fresh github account that didn't have my real name attached to it. But not contributing seems like an easier solution.
Yep. I won't even think about attempting to contribute to projects that have a CoC. Just look at https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 to see what will happen once you somehow upset one of the PC warriors.
I see a whole bunch of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the Opal project lose their shit about something absolutely unrelated to the Opal project on the Opal project issue tracker. They are demanding for action to be taken which hurts the Opal project (removing one of its contributors). This is an absolute waste of time for anyone who is actually affiliated with the Opal project.
But sure, let's call that "standing up to transphobia".
Is that supposed to become the goal of the Opal project, censoring twitter? Because it doesn't have anything to do with their software.
Kicking out a programmer because of his off-list opinions on transsexuality is like kicking out a movie actor because of his off-screen opinions on communism. People who can't agree to disagree are the problem.
I'm in the same boat as you, maybe a little bit less categorical about whether to contribute to projects with CoC. I'm thinking twice before contributing to them, especially for the ones that use it as a showcase, but for sure if once someone start complaining because I made a joke, they won't see me again. For conference I'm even more careful, because of the IRL factor. And when conference use CoC as a showcase, it's a no go. Pycon is on my blacklist for instance.
What I like the most is how they harass people based on a code that said people should not be harassed, because they «do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form».
I'm pretty sure I will never be concerned by this because I'm really respectful, but I like jokes in general, about everything. I'm too afraid to become the target of SJWs that have a code that let them harass people because they are not happy with their opinions.
I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of
Conducts are. I won't touch projects with a CoC, and when
a project that I'm actively contributing to introduces a
CoC, I stop contributing.
These days I try not to contribute to any project that doesn't have a CoC. The project I help maintain does, as do the communities I moderate. If someone can't create a PR without saying things that are racist, misogynist, etc. then frankly I don't want them in my community. If someone is going to be put off by the fact that mightn't be able to say something hateful if they decided they wanted to, then I'd rather not have that person in my community.
Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness
a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and
trying to placating such people via a CoC is a lost cause.
I think that's a very negative way of looking at a CoC. Where you see "people who are obsessed with political correctness", I see "people who are tired of being constantly shit on by the vocal jerks in online communities". It's not placating, it's simply valuing people's right to contribute and participate peacefully over other people's right to be jackasses. Sure, you can do that without a CoC, but the CoC is a good signal to people that the people who are moderating the community are on their side.
On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated
even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people
anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside.
I disagree with the assertion that CoCs don't deter people in a community; I have seen first-hand where having a code of conduct was a way of resolving something that was quickly getting out hand and was likely to have ended up with some great contributors leaving the project because they were being harassed by others. I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were wrong about what they were saying, and I certainly wasn't going to convince the people being harassed that they should stick around in a community that was being hostile. Most people were either unaware of the threat, or else not directly affected and stayed quiet. The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment, and I had tried diligently to do so before putting on my admin hat or pulling out the CoC. I've seen many other situations where similar things have played out. Without CoCs people would have either been banned from the project, or others would have left, being able to put a stop to something has helped.
Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my
Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably
start over again with a fresh github account that didn't
have my real name attached to it. But not contributing
seems like an easier solution.
If you're neither a maintainer or community moderator, nor violating the CoC, then I don't see where the drama would come in. I have my real name attached to my github account, to the meetups I run, and the slack communities I moderate. I deal with CoC violations at times, and certainly my own harassment, but I'm not worried about "drama" effecting my reputation because I stand by my own behaviors and by my belief in the value of not letting people harass others and crate hostile toxic environments.
> If someone can't create a PR without saying things that are racist, misogynist, etc. then frankly I don't want them in my community.
That's confusing two issues: code of conduct, and on-topic communication.
If someone opens a PR which complains about a bug in a different piece of software, you would close it as off topic. If they kept doing so, you would block them as being abusive.
The same should apply to racism, sexism, etc. The issue isn't that they're wrong, it's that they're off topic for a PR.
You don't need a code of conduct that says "racism is bad" in (for example) a javascript library.
For me, making moral and political statements in a software project raises all kinds of red flags.
The problem with this argument is a lot of language communities grow into large communities, and often have lots of discussion areas which are not central to the language topic. E.g. they may have a place to discuss video games, or other languages, or politics. Even if they don't it's not uncommon for people to chat socially during down-time. Unless you're going to outlaw all socialising, the "off-topic" approach doesn't work for large communities.
But off-topic discussions in e.g. Github PRs? I don't think it belongs in the code base. If there were such a code, it could be shown/available wherever the discussion is taken place, e.g. forum, mailing list instead.
The error you're making is in assuming that those are always clearly separate. There are many examples of people who were talking about on-topic technical concepts but used examples or made “jokes” which were not.
Having a clear CoC is simply a shortcut: if, say, a speaker uses a bikini picture in a slide you can simply point to it and say “you broke the CoC” rather than rehashing the nth argument about how much sexualization is acceptable in a technical context. It's like the difference between having a standard license and contributor agreement versus making it up as you go along: more work up front but it avoids problems which become more time-consuming as the number of people involved grows.
I don't see how a code of conduct helps the situation you just described. Most CoCs I know do not have a clear cut rule on this, merely broad statements which you can spend time arguing cover the case or not.
“All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.
Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for DjangoCon. Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference without a refund at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.”
So if someone decided that they wanted to have a bunch of bikini pictures in their slides or to crack jokes about something being ghetto it's starting from a different place. Because the conference organizers thought about this in advance they don't need to worry about making policy on the fly or having different people give different off-the-cuff answers and then be hammered for later changes.
Just as something like a coding style guide doesn't solve every question in software, this doesn't solve every issue related to personal conduct but it sets an overall direction and gives people an idea of what to expect: someone going to a conference with that CoC would know that the expectations are set to “business professional” rather than “hanging with my bros at the bar”. You might think that something is obvious but once any event expands beyond a small homogeneous group of people all bets are off.
(And, yes, it's shortcuts just as all policies, laws, etc. are because it's easier to have a general trend known in advance than to try to reason about it from first principles after the fact.)
The problem is that what is considered as racism, sexism, bad language etc. is very different in different cultures. So for example I know a person of Russian descent who says things that are appropriate in Russia, but considered as sexist in Germany (not to even start talking about the US). Or a person from Croatia whose swearing (in German) was very distinct. But he really insisted that it is very harmless in comparison how he would express things in Croatian (he insisted we really don't want to know details).
> making moral and political statements in a software project
All Free software projects come with a substantial moral and political ethos embedded in the GPL.
Politics and dispute resolution is sadly inevitable when dealing with humans. Large enough projects become a community, and that requires a little bit of steering to ensure it's a happy, effective, inclusive community.
> to ensure it's a happy, effective, inclusive community.
Why do you value happiness and inclusiveness here? I strongly prefer strongly prefer projects/communities that are managed by technical brilliant, cynical jerks over more inclusive ones if this decreases the effectivity.
It's a matter of values and context. I think in general having a happy and inclusive community makes it more effective, and if I have to choose between the two I'll choose the happy and inclusive, if slightly less effective community. After all, who are we writing software for if not for people?
There are of course some projects where the only effective option is one where jerks are allowed to keep others away- in that case I think that it should be seen as a bug in the community and something that someone should try to create a fix for, and not just something everyone is expected to live with.
> I strongly prefer strongly prefer projects/communities that are managed by technical brilliant, cynical jerks over more inclusive ones if this decreases the effectivity.
If it's a strong preference, then the presence or absence of a CoC - and more generally, the existence of CoCs in some online communities - might be a very useful signal to you, I would think.
I'm not sure how these things follow together, can you elaborate?
(1) I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were wrong about what they were saying, and I certainly wasn't going to convince the people being harassed that they should stick around in a community that was being hostile.
(2) Most people were either unaware of the threat, or else not directly affected and stayed quiet.
(3) The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment, and I had tried diligently to do so before putting on my admin hat or pulling out the CoC.
(4) I've seen many other situations where similar things have played out. Without CoCs people would have either been banned from the project, or others would have left, being able to put a stop to something has helped.
Considering (1), the CoC wouldn't have convinced the harassers to stop either, yet considering (4), you got a different outcome than people being banned from the project. How did having a CoC accomplish this? I can see how (2) would be affected by a CoC since it gives you an easy way to communicate to people a possible threat. However, there are negative effects to that as well - e.g. politically-inclined people gaming a CoC by passive-aggressively getting under the skin of their opponents until they have an emotional outburst, then using the CoC to remove them from the project.
The story (with some details abstracted away) is: a couple of the members of the community were in a non-technical slack channel that is part of the larger technical community. A couple of non-LGBT people started arguing about some stuff related to the LGBT community in a way that they clearly did not see as offensive, but that was very hurtful to some other people who were participating in the community.
My initial reaction was, without my admin hat on, to just step in and explain why the conversation was a problem. Since the people didn't believe that they were being hurtful (or rather, thought that they were technically correct and therefore didn't care if they were being hurtful) that didn't work. I could have banned them at that point, but I would rather avoid that if possible.
Since there was a COC that I could point to, I didn't have to keep trying to convince them that what they were saying was hurtful, and I didn't have to ban them. I was able to just say "hey, look, I get that you disagree but this is in violation of the COC, you need to cut it out". And they did, we've not had any more flare-ups of that topic.
I know that if the people hadn't stopped their discussion then some other people would have left the community (because they told me as much after the fact), and based on the lack of success I had in shutting down the conversation before pointing to the COC I am very doubtful that I'd have been successful without a temporary ban.
To directly address your questions
(1) and (2) are unrelated events happening in parallel. I pointed out (2) to illustrate that the general community was not of any help in mitigating the conflict. (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. (4) was generalizing the situation to other scenarios I've observed where someone who might be going over a line can be brought back by simply pointing out they are in violation of the COC, without any express threat of a specific action.
As far as having someone goad someone else into violating the COC, I'm just not buying that being a legitimate problem. If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a COC. Even if that's not the case, you shouldn't resort to general attacks that are going to make bystanders in the community uncomfortable.
> (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat.
I'm not sure how different the implicit threat of enforcing the CoC by banning people is from the explicit threat of enforcing civility by banning people. I guess the problem here stems from where respect for your authority lies. It sounds like the harassers in this situation had more respect for the authority of the CoC, possibly enacted by a community decision, rather than your own personal judgement. That seems like a positive for a large community where most members do not have a strong connection with the administrative staff.
> If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a CoC
The whole point of passive-aggressive attacks are that they do not violate the CoC on their face.
If all you have is today's moderator's personal feelings about what kind of comments are passive-aggressive and what sort deserve a ban, how is that any better than codifying it as a standard?
You don't need a massive rule book, but surely having some basic rules is better than having none?
If you don't have rules, then what, it's just personal judgement on how I feel today about what you said today that rubs me the wrong way and I hand out a ban? Come on, it's daft.
Communities need to feel like there is a strong consistent moderator presence in them; if you're all over the place doing whatever, the community will fall apart into arguments and spam; there are countless examples of it.
The difference is when the community is small (ie. many software projects) its probably perfectly easy for one single moderator (eg. the project owner) to be consistent and thoughtful in how they handle the community.
First of all, I get that CoC come from good intentions. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
> If someone is going to be put off by the fact that mightn't be able to say something hateful if they decided they wanted to, then I'd rather not have that person in my community.
This is the problem right here. It's so polarising! I'm not a hateful person, but you've just painted me as such for advocating a bit of liberty and temperance. With language like that you give me no choice but to take the other position. And so I won't be part of such communities. The world isn't black and white, us vs. them. It's full of persons, real people, and simplifying them like that is a mistake.
> I think that's a very negative way of looking at a CoC.
I've said it somewhere else in this thread, but codifying something is inflexible and doesn't allow for any nuance. Any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness. Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them (see religious texts, which I'd argue were usually written with good intentions). I'm in favour of handling things on a case by case basis. So yes, I have a negative view on rules and especially written rules in general.
> The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment
You're example isn't very convincing. The CoC itself is useless, it needs to be enforced by community members. Such enforcement can and should happen without a CoC, e.g. consensus that someone was acting improperly is sufficient.
BTW, formatting quotes in the way you have completely breaks the reflow on mobile. I bring this up because having the same perspective isn't easy. Nobody has the whole picture and the benefit of the doubt should always be given.
> First of all, I get that CoC come from good intentions. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I think that it's more than simply a case of good intentions, there has been work over the last several years to hone in on what makes a CoC work, and how it affects the community overall (I'll be happy to try to find references at some point, but if you don't want to wait I'm sure you can google for stuff- python and gnome come to mind as starting places).
> This is the problem right here. It's so polarising! I'm not a hateful person, but you've just painted me as such for advocating a bit of liberty and temperance.
There's a whole lot to dig into here. I'm sure you're not a hateful person, but a lot of people who don't believe themselves hateful are still hurtful. Many people are so far removed from the situations that others are in that they have no idea how hurtful their language is. Some of those people get very angry and confrontational when someone tries to explain that they are being hurtful. A few of them actually want to be hurtful.
> With language like that you give me no choice but to take the other position.
Actually you always have a choice. You can remain neutral, you can disagree with the implementation but acknowledge the value of inclusiveness and try to offer better solutions from the inside, or you could accept that people who are being frequently affected by harassment may have had reasons for coming up with codes of conduct. To actively advocate against them is a choice you made, and you can't put it on me for using strong language in favor of my position.
> And so I won't be part of such communities. The world isn't black and white, us vs. them. It's full of persons, real people, and simplifying them like that is a mistake.
I'm not reducing the whole of interpersonal interactions to a binary decision, but I am making a statement that strongly favors protecting people from harassment.
> I've said it somewhere else in this thread, but codifying something is inflexible and doesn't allow for any nuance.
Many codes of conduct are written specifically to allow for a level of nuance, and enforcement is almost always nuanced and based on the specifics of the situation.
> Any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness.
A code of conduct isn't a set of rules, it's a set of values. Specifically, it's a document that outlines how a community values the safety of those who might be harassed over the freedom of speech of the harassers, and lays out community norms and expectations of behavior.
> Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them (see religious texts, which I'd argue were usually written with good intentions).
I disagree with your analogy. A CoC is a living document that was written and is updated by a community that exists in the present, to address our own contemporary set of problems. In a decade or so you could maybe make that argument about old CoCs that are being treated as rulebooks instead of summaries of values, but I don't think it's relevant to the entire concept.
> I'm in favour of handling things on a case by case basis. So yes, I have a negative view on rules and especially written rules in general.
Again, a CoC is going to be about values more than rules. Even when there is a clear violation of the terms of the CoC the enforcement is going to be handled on a case-by-case basis (or at least subject to an enforcement policy that is separate from a CoC).
> You're example isn't very convincing. The CoC itself is useless, it needs to be enforced by community members. Such enforcement can and should happen without a CoC, e.g. consensus that someone was acting improperly is sufficient.
The CoC wasn't useless, it was a reminder that the community values the safety of people over some types of speech. Pointing it out was a reminder that th...
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I sympathize with your position. When people started asking me for a code of conduct, I wrote the above.
The trigger for me to write the above was a situation where someone complained on the list about "bad behavior", and asked for civility. When it was pointed out that the "bad behavior" was a technical answer to a technical question, they responded with cursing and insults. Cue... ban.
Some people read simple technical answers go here and read this file as an emotional response of "go F yourself". They instead want answers to be "inclusive" to the point of smarmy pandering.
My $0.02 is that if you want technical answers to a technical problem, you're welcome on a software forum. Otherwise, if you want online friends, play a MMO game, or call a pay-per-minute service.
I'm well able to be kind and reasonable to people and avoid making offensive jokes, but I am simply not okay with participating in an environment in which I can be ousted for having a different political opinion on another social network.
I have spent over 20 years using the internet. If somebody wants to hurt me socially or economically, they could probably do so with a little detective work. I am only human, and like most people I've probably at some point done or said things which are ignorant, offensive or unsettling.
Everything is a little political but I'm simply not the type of person that wishes to participate in a highly-politicised environment. I will leave that to the activists. I just want to write code and maybe help a few people out.
This doesn't mean I'm against all codes of conduct, but I am against the way some quite noxious ones have been thrust on communities without a full consensus.
But maybe I need to be more specific: I had never seen this in the communities I've taken part in - there's obviously some selection bias there though.
But my point is a CoC isn't required for civil behaviour. It won't guarantee harmonious behaviour either (see the infamous opal thread), and makes censoring easier.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree that a Code of Conduct is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure civil behavior in a group, although I think in some cases it might be a useful tool. Civility is an ideal that will not always exist, in any group. I do think we ought to do what we can to maintain civility.
I can understand why you'd adopt the position you have if you view continued harassing behavior and hostile work environments as abstractions that do not take place in the world.
The idea that the working group had any meaningful power to 'discipline' people who violated the code was dubious already, and the reddit thing just made it more obvious that any kind of enforcement wouldn't really work.
Ultimately, maybe this is the way forward for projects; facilitate a way to bring people together to talk rather than punish people.
For what it's worth, I don't think the code of conduct was a particular success, but I don't think it was a particular failure either.
The go community is far nicer, more welcoming and has proportionally less hostile self important twats in it than it did 3 years ago... but, that's probably just a matter of the community growing to include a lot more people.
the entire premise of a Code of Conduct like this is flawed. this is the infantilization of adults. 6 year olds need a code of conduct and an authority figure present, so they won't fling shit at each other. if we treat adults like 6 year olds then we should expect people to behave the way they are treated.
I find it hard to accept that anything more verbose than "you're an adult; act like it." is needed for a Code of Conduct. it astonishes me that this is the trend in our culture and society. big brother gonna protect you from the mean people. a world without sin. none shall pass.
what we really have is a deficit of communication skills, a deficit of maturity, and most of all a broken view of how social groups do and ought to function. this is the fallout from decades of institutional education. we now have multiple generations of people who have come to take comfort in the institutional structure of elementary school and feel lost without an authority figure to turn to.
Look at usenet posts from circa 1990. We've had a deficit of communications skills and a deficit of maturity for more than the current generation. And this is all within a much less culturally diverse group than those on the internet now.
I don't like CoCs either, but they exist because of a real problem. Let's say we adopt a CoC of "you're an adult; act like it":
What corrective actions are taken against those not acting like an adult, who takes those actions, and who is the arbiter of what qualifies as non-adult behavior?
Very small communities and communities with a single BDFL can resolve this because in the former consensus is easy to come by, and in the latter there is an ultimate point of appeal. All other communities need some way of resolving this, and adopting a CoC is one way of attempting to do so.
I generally find moral authorities repulsive. This is one reason why I rejected religion.
There are examples of people being ejected from projects because of their personal opinions being expressed outside of the project: this is repulsive to me.
There are examples of proponents of CoC talking to one another about how they intend to inject the CoC into a new project so that they can forcefully eject somebody that they don't personally like.
As a baseline I don't like censorship even if it is "hurtful".
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You could possibly argue, that it represents a shared mindset of a group of people working on a common project. The thing is, it has become a base for witch hunting, public shaming and other conflicts because some people have taken the code of conduct as their bible and felt it was their duty to go on a crusade against the infidels.
Also, from a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. In Europe, when you go to a restaurant or a bar, the one common sign you'll find is the smoking forbidden one. That's it. People will politely ask if it's OK to bring a dog, or just know that going without a T-shirt is a no-go. In the US, you need half an hour just to read through all of the information before even entering the place. And people would still challenge the rules that are not explicitly stated there.
As an anecdote, I once went to a conference in a European country where immigration is close to 0, thus people are pretty much caucasian. So there was this American speaker (obviously caucasian) talking about diversity in software and would kind of try to shame the event organisers and the audience because there was no black person in the room. It was one of the most absurd situations in my life.
To me, a Code of Conduct does not belong to the realm of software. Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics. You can clearly tell that the Go team has decided to go the way of "yeah, we are kind of obliged to have a CoC, but don't want to be dicking around with the topic". Good for them.
I feel there's a common feeling about the potential "badness" of a code of conduct, but very few actual examples.
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
There is this other very interesting example where Coraline got called out doing the very things she despises: https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/... This is of course perfectly acceptable.
To be clear, the behavior that upset them was a contributor tweeting things on twitter under his private name. They wanted this person to be removed from the open source projects they were working on because of that.
The people who are pushing CoCs want to be able to punish people for perceived injustices. These injustices can be tweeting on twitter, and if the PC warriors get their way the punishment is to be ostracized from all open source projects.
"strand referenced this issue on Jun 18, 2015 Closed Create a Code of Conduct #942"
Even worse: "Coraline Ada" works for GitHub (also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667829).
The mentality of "that person said something I disagree with [on other media] and they should be banned here [on a random project that I don't have anything to do with] or else..." is incredible toxic.
If you don't agree with "assholes" writing code or using code that was written by an "asshole", you'll have a hard time using anything open source at all.
This is a common theme among proponents of codes of conduct.
See also Twitter's ban on many people, including Milo Yiannopoulos. He was banned for "violating the rules". But I've looked, and no one anywhere can point out which exact tweet violated which particular rule. Even more extreme, no one can point out where he said any of things he's accused of saying.
So... Twitter blocked him for "abuse", when there is zero evidence of such abuse.
I'll say this:
The more extreme the code of conduct, the more likely it will be broken by the people enforcing it.
CoCs are worrisome because they tend to emulate that behaviour, and I certainly do not condone overreaching TOS, but you can't equate those two situations. It's the behaviour of people vs. the behaviour of companies.
When you have such a legalese disclaimer as above, you don't need to lie about why you're banning someone. You just say "Under the Twitter ToS, we've banned Milo."
The fact that they chose to lie about the justification for the ban shows not only that the ban was politically motivated (and not based on reality), but that they are so incompetent that they can't even spin it in their favor.
Their bias is leaking. They don't really care about their own ToS. They don't care about following the rules they put in. They do care about banning anyone who they don't like.
I find such behavior unethical, and morally repugnant.
As others have posted here, some people pushing "codes of conduct in open source" end up violating those codes themselves, and abusing their authority. These people do this not only in open source forums, but in other places, too.
The underlying topic then, cannot be about the CoC. In reality, the topic being discussed is who gets to control the conversation. Along with that, who gets to decide what topics are acceptable. Not just which topics are OK for a list / forum, but which topics are "good think", and which ones are "bad think".
The question for someone running an open source project, then, is will your project be taken over by people who are pushing a particular ideological agenda, and who are using your project to do so?
My answer is "No.". Perhaps "over my dead body" is more accurate.
"We have adopted the Open Code of Conduct for the open source projects that we maintain, including Atom, Electron, Git LFS, and many others."
https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-condu...
I have cancelled all my private repos with GitHub as I just don't like their ethics.
Yet, the person who created this issue has been hunting down people whose opinions they don't agree with and trying to exclude them from participating in a technical community. The scariest part: this person works for GitHub.
"Its Atheism PLUS morality, sensitivity, acceptance, diversity, etc."
Things which are all well and good, but that turned out to not be the point. The point seemed to be that creation and enforcement of CoC rules was more important than anything else.
People argued endlessly about which rules should be created, what the rules meant, and how to enforce the rules. Which in practice, meant witch hunting, and a totalitatian enforcement of vaguely-defined values.
i.e. nasty, toxic, behavior.
This negative behavior was pointed out to one of the main proponents. To prove the nay-sayers wrong, he created a sock puppet account which asked a simple question "Hey guys, what's this thing about?"
Cue hysterics and shaming of the newbie.
He publicly came out and said the account was his, and that this behavior was bad.
Cue hysterics and shaming of him.
He was banned (both accounts) from the forum. A thread was set up specifically for people to discuss how they were betrayed / hurt / abused by his behavior.
Another major proponent who talked endlessly about the need to be inclusive towards women and not sexually harass them... has now been accused of repeated sexual harassment. And his public statements pretty much say "yeah... that actually happened, but it was all a misunderstanding"
And what are the results of this new movement? Well, a few years later, it's dead. The forums are dead. The proponents are fighting each other. One was drummed out, and then publicly admitted that the people she was against were nicer to her than her ex-allies.
When the "bad" people are more moral than the "good" people, I think you have your labels reversed.
I've advocated for this before. Codes of conduct should be simple. Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban."
Anything else devolves into a morality play. Where the proponents argue about which moral standards are correct, and which ones are evil and wrong.
In short, people who obsess about enforcing codes of conduct are toxic. They don't get anything done. They largely have never gotten anything done.
Let me tell a story about off-topic postings in a forum that I was active at.
There was a member who often posted (let's say) controversial, but very reasoned answers in this forum. They were often against the official consensus of the forum, which lead to strong reactions and controversies (I can even imagine that he loved this controversies); but as I said: his arguments were very well reasoned. So there were some moderator(s?) who rather would have liked to ban him from the forum (but they couldn't easily, since there were people who rightfully said that though his postings are controversial, they come from a completely different side of view, so they have value for the community).
So the moderators gave him a warning (I think there were two warnings were before ban) because of some off-topic posts (there were some terms hidden in the forum rules, which really nobody read). This lead to an outcry in the forum since there were other (less controversial) forum members who also accidentally wrote off-topic posts, so people sensed an agenda.
One of the moderators (a very recognised one) did the (IMHO) only correct thing that one can do in this emotionally charged situation as a moderator: She gave an official warning to herself in the "warnings thread", for the reason that she accidentally wrote some off-topic posts, too.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scalaz/9X_putSGoCY
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/scalaz/code$20of$...
https://twitter.com/shajra/status/544712807220908032
Basically a CoC was quietly created and applied retroactively to so that Typelevel (a major Scala consultancy) could try and kick Tony Morris (founder of Scalaz) off his own project.
From what I understand, having a colorful community of weirdos made the open source project they based their company on seem unattractive to big corporate customers.
I'd have to agree with you that the reaction seems absurd. He was unprofessional, sure, meriting a temporary kicking from IRC or something, but IMHO he who has never been a know-it-all (unheard-of on HN, ofc) or lost his temper over something silly on the internet should cast the first stone.
The interface between these two things is subtle. Yes it's obvious that in order for a software project to be collaborative, it has to take on the foibles of humans but I don't think that your simple "No." cuts it.
If I want to contribute to an open source software project I need to share the politics of the people that wrote it. Does that imbue the software with those politics? If it was written by lefties do I have to be a lefty to use it? If it was written by right-wingers do I need to be right-wing to use it?
Case in point. There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted.
The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities. Should I have used that library because it was useful to me, or should I have written my own code because of the 'politics' of the code?
(I didn't use it in the end, because I was uncomfortable having 'dailymail' show in dependencies of code that I had written, but I still think about it)
We'd definitely be better off without the Daily Mail, but if they actually contributed some good somewhere it's a disservice to ignore it imho.
Unless the word "reductionism" means something else than I think it means, I don't really see the issue. There's no problem with reducing a complex system to its simpler parts in order to understand it - that's basically how all human understanding works. The problem only starts when someone takes a small subset of the simpler parts and hyperfocuses on them, throwing out the rest.
> The practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.
I mean simplifying complicated to the point where they seem appealing and then asserting that there is no complexity.
[0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reductionism
I disagree. Software is meant to be meritocratic - all that should matter is the quality of your commits, if you're a contributor. It shouldn't be necessary or even desirable to have an explicit code of conduct to expect civility.
> There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted. >The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities
Would using the library support division, inequality or victimize minorities?
Would not using the library help minorities or promote unity and equality?
Fritz Haber developed a process[0] for synthesizing ammonia as a means of manufacturing poison gas for use in World War 1 - a process which led directly to the development of the gas chambers used during the Holocaust. However, the Haber process also revolutionized agriculture worldwide, making it possible to grow food in places where it would otherwise have been impossible. Does that mean modern agriculture is imbued with violent German nationalism or anti-Semitism? Of course not.
In the same way, code has no political, social or moral dimension of its own, and the political environment in which it's written need have no relevance at all to how its used, or by whom.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process
How do you come to the idea that software is meant to be meritocratic? Many people start an OSS software project so that the code implements the founder's vision. So for example I committed some (objectively; in this case "objectively" can objectively be justified [pun intended]) high-quality patches to some OSS project (which project is of no concern here). They were refused because they diverted from the vision that the founder and maintainer of this OSS project has for it.
There are plenty of angry, uncivil, misogynistic and racist 'thought leaders' in tech who are respected not for their political views (although sometimes, yes) but for the quality and popularity of their projects, so I think the premise of software being meritocratic is fairly well established.
At least in this case "meritocracy" does not mean "the opinion (about code structure etc.) that is (necessarily) shared by the majority of the contributors".
But if the majority of contributors disagree with the owner about fundamental design issues, that's what forks are for.
If you mean "collaborative open source software projects", the idea of "meritocracy" is an explicitly political idea; it's not innate. Open Source is also an explicitly political idea.
Competing political ideas in software development include 'not invented here syndrome' which is based on the tribal affiliation of the contributor.
If I don't share the political principles of open source (e.g. copying closed code in contravention of the license), I'm going to have a hard time contributing to an open source project. If I don't share the political ideas of a commercial closed-source project (e.g. copying open code in contravention of the license) then I'm going to have a hard time contributing to a closed commercial project.
And I wasn't making an assertion about using libraries published by the Daily Mail so much as posing a question. I can't fully quantify the effect of any action I make, everything is interrelated. I'm perfectly happy to admit that it was a matter of personal pride that I didn't want to be associated with the Daily Mail in any way because I don't like what they stand for. Identity politics. I'm only human. I wouldn't (I hope) force anyone else not to use the Daily Mail library. And I wouldn't try to force someone out of a software project because they had different politics.
Maybe that broadens out to the original topic: the reason some people don't seem to like CoCs (and I'm undecided) is because they can be used to enforce tribalism. We've seen examples of people being attacked in software projects because they have contrary political views to some other people. One of the arguments here seems to be whether or not that is driven by tribal instinct, and whether CoCs provide a vector for that.
(Or possibly just fascist propaganda, since conservatives usually believe in the rule of law.)
The headline in question is because the judges had made an illogical judgement that wasn't supported by law or common sense, which had only one possible outcome; potentially delaying or blocking the implementation of a referendum result. Seeing them as enemies of democracy i.e. the people, is thus an entirely rational viewpoint even if you might not agree with it. Just like it'd be rational to call judges that if they decided that their personal interpretation of the law was that the last general election was void and they were now personally in charge. Being a judge does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you like.
Also, your last paragraph is a bit silly. The Code of Conduct is not regulating computer code, it's regulating human interactions between human collaborators is a project, so I really don't see your point there.
I suspect that if this had been posted ~4-5 hours from now, the story would have been flagged and the GP's comment would be grey.
That's a grand claim, and grand claims requires grand proof.
Do you have any to deliver?
I think there's a difference since one just means moderators, and CoCs are like establishing a volunteer HR department over your volunteer employees. It changes the atmosphere, and they don't even get you a 401k.
And then I remembered the PHP community in the late 90s / early 00s. Perhaps the most unpleasant, hostile, childish, petty community I've come across.
I can see why one would want a CoC. No, it isn't ideal.
They updated:
> If you conduct yourself in a way that is explicitly forbidden by the CoC, you will be warned and asked to stop.
To:
> If a reported conflict cannot be resolved amicably, the CoC Working Group may make a recommendation to the relevant forum moderators.
That isn't much, but it still shifts from a "victim-aggressor" model ("relationship triangle") to a conflict-resolution model, which is important for everyone to feel respected. Anonymous reporting too was an unhealthy community dynamic, and getting rid of it is a step in the right direction.
CoCs fall into the category of language policing, and though it's nice to have a nice community, it can lead to tone shifts and self-censorship. If someone sees people going in all directions and being ineffective, they might not speak up for fear of being seen as "bossy" or "insistant".
That problem can be minimized if CoCs explicitly and fully shift from conflict-minimization (toxic) to conflict-resolution.
The ideal case would be for people to be able to resolve conflicts and draw boundaries on their own, which won't happen until society starts putting more emphasis on mental health and healthy communication, among other things, in schools and elsewhere.
> [F]rom a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything.
Years ago, while playing with the family at a lake, I noticed one of our inflatable water toys had different warnings next to different flags. Yes, many were in different languages, but there were at least three English warnings on there. The British and Australian warnings were just "use under competent supervision." The American warning was a couple paragraphs long, and very detailed: "do not use while drunk; do not tow from boat; do not dive into; ..." I was embarrassed as an American.
Perhaps it's just a personal hang-up. I believe some style guides are worthwhile, and style guides could be described as documents describing good and bad design or good and bad code.
He also mentioned that "then again, probably nobody cares". It is a UK TV show. In the US, it would've had to be bleeped and everybody would have gasped if it hadn't.
I saw a news article a few weeks ago during the Women's March about how Madonna said fuck "not once, but twice!" on CNN. I'm familiar with US TV censorship rules and it still took me a solid minute until I connected the dots and realized what was "so shocking".
It's pretty f*ing ridiculous.
I'm very amused reading comments here saying that censoring and being afraid of swears is American thing and not a thing you see in Europe. It's certainly something you see a LOT in the UK.
The purpose of a CoC is to empower the weak. This sounds cheesy, but it is true.
Yes, most of the time a CoC is not needed. Usually the community is friendly, and people help one another.
But what if something bad happens? What if a member of the community is treated poorly? Without a CoC, there's most probably nothing they can do. The welcoming majority might not realise that there's a tiny part of the community that doesn't work so well.
With a CoC, there's usually a clear point of contact; and people know who they talk to when there's trouble.
CoC are not about witch hunts. On the contrary! If someone tries to throw dirt on someone, the CoC could be used just as well to try to deescalate the situation.
I think especially in a technical community, GPG (or easier tools if any) are better suited to preserving privacy in important disputes.
Side semi-related rant: Why are CoCs in FOSS communities often so bureaucratic and lengthy? I get the need for rules and enforcing of rules when you have a large community, but most of them outside of open source usually manage with very few rules, most of them which are always implied. Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil".
I maintain two open source communities of 30 and 80 people, a gaming community of ~300 daily active members and a friends&family guild of ~200 members. I've never had to say anything else than "be nice" and "don't spam". Across all those, I've had to deal with two serious cases of harassment, neither of which would have been solved with a code of conduct. [NB: of course, community rules become a more pressing need the larger and less focused your community is]
In the mean time, I see open source projects of 5-10 max adopting massive codes of conduct that make potential contributors feel like they're reading terms of service. I was part of the founding team of a small OSS group and one of the first things that came up was "we need a code of conduct" (as in, around the same time as "we need a roadmap", when the group had 5 members).
In the well-meaning fight against harassment, I see people copypasting files like they're going to be a magic bullet. If you have a community where rude behaviour and/or harassment can be a concern, it's not a piece of paper that says not to that will help; you need moderators your members feel safe contacting and who know how to handle delicate situations.
I think a lot of documents could just be replaced with a copy of Wheaton's Law.
CoCs are absurd. Laws already cover all that. If they don't, fix them.
US PC crap is what it is.
No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.
If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem.
EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover that, fix them.
In some places there are also classes of hate speech that are prohibited by law. That's still much narrower than a general rule of civility. It's also a bad idea in my opinion, even though I'm a big ole SJW.
See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732
A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.
Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me. I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
So really, I have no clue why you think that redundant things like CoC have any practical use.
EDIT: instead of downvotes just explain where I'm wrong. Too many feelings here, very few logical arguments.
You can express your opinion on people in public office as much as you want. We weren't talking about Presidents and dictators though right?
So maybe we should get back to the topic of how CoCs have no merit or practical use?
If, on the other hand, it's on twitter, you use the block button, and other private matters.
And we can't really get back to to the subject, because your whole idea was "codes of conduct are bad, but legally prosecuting people for the same thing would be great!"
No it wasn't. No reason to invent stuff that I supposedly said. You can re-read all my answers in this thread if you want.
CoC's try to cover from sexual harassment(which is covered by law) to general douchebaggery(which is subjective).
In the first case it is obviously redundant and in the 2nd it is impossible, hence we end up doing what we would do anyway, which is to shun the individual. If there are obvious cases were something should be covered by law, just fix the laws(which is what I say in the link you pasted). It's all been discussed in this thread, so it's shame that you have me repeat them here :(
I don't feel you have the intention for an honest conversation, as you don't seem to respond to anything I provided as arguments.
Please feel free to ignore me, as I won't be able to keep checking up on this thread.
Cheers
Already covered what you said here :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667840
Interesting. Does it happen often in practice?
> I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
> CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
Wether you agree with those goals or not, it is the right of a community to decide which culture they like. And different communities will attract different kinds of people. Quite a few people choose not to contribute to the Linux kernel because of the abrasive leadership style of Linus. You might choose to not contribute to the Golang project.
You argued that you don't need a CoC because the laws already cover the same ground. If your goal is to foster a certain culture, it is simply not feasible to use the law to enforce it.
Hacker News has guidelines which are not dissimilar to a CoC, but less formalised: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Are they useless too in your opinion?
Not really, but it does happen occasionally in work places, because if it happens often enough it is basically the equivalent of bullying(called mobbing at work).
> The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
It's because I consider US a civilized(and a very litigious) country that I'm sincerely surprised that its laws don't cover such things.
> The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
So basically what I described as "shunned" from the community.
But previously you said:
> Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?
So we agree that CoCs can't serve as substitutes for laws?
The HN guidelines are a perfect example because the first half has practical use which is how to submit an article and the 2nd half which is indeed useless.
Let's be honest here. What you're looking for is a magic wand that say "if you could please don't be an asshole, that'd be grand thanks" and people would be happily ever after. Right?
Well there's no solution for that and CoCs can only serve as to infuriate people who aren't assholes.
Just shun them as you would do with or without a CoC.
Laws shouldn't be used for that anyway. They're far too inflexible. Always remember that historically, what was thought to be civilised usually turns out to be pretty barbaric in hindsight. Laws to enforce such behaviour just slow down progress, so limiting persons via laws should be done with extreme caution and after thorough consideration only.
In practice, communities already enforce certain behaviours (through various methods e.g. peer pressure, shaming and many others). I think in general this is necessary for coexistence, cooperation, and cohesion. But codifying them is probably the least flexible and doesn't allow for any nuance. Besides, any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness. Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them.
Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and trying to placate such people via a CoC is a lost cause. On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside.
Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably start over again with a fresh github account that didn't have my real name attached to it. But not contributing seems like an easier solution.
But sure, let's call that "standing up to transphobia".
CoC violations are called "cock violations" for a reason.
Kicking out a programmer because of his off-list opinions on transsexuality is like kicking out a movie actor because of his off-screen opinions on communism. People who can't agree to disagree are the problem.
What I like the most is how they harass people based on a code that said people should not be harassed, because they «do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form».
I'm pretty sure I will never be concerned by this because I'm really respectful, but I like jokes in general, about everything. I'm too afraid to become the target of SJWs that have a code that let them harass people because they are not happy with their opinions.
That's confusing two issues: code of conduct, and on-topic communication.
If someone opens a PR which complains about a bug in a different piece of software, you would close it as off topic. If they kept doing so, you would block them as being abusive.
The same should apply to racism, sexism, etc. The issue isn't that they're wrong, it's that they're off topic for a PR.
You don't need a code of conduct that says "racism is bad" in (for example) a javascript library.
For me, making moral and political statements in a software project raises all kinds of red flags.
Having a clear CoC is simply a shortcut: if, say, a speaker uses a bikini picture in a slide you can simply point to it and say “you broke the CoC” rather than rehashing the nth argument about how much sexualization is acceptable in a technical context. It's like the difference between having a standard license and contributor agreement versus making it up as you go along: more work up front but it avoids problems which become more time-consuming as the number of people involved grows.
This stuff is all shortcuts, to be honest.
https://2016.djangocon.us/coc/
“All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.
Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for DjangoCon. Attendees violating these rules may be asked to leave the conference without a refund at the sole discretion of the conference organizers.”
So if someone decided that they wanted to have a bunch of bikini pictures in their slides or to crack jokes about something being ghetto it's starting from a different place. Because the conference organizers thought about this in advance they don't need to worry about making policy on the fly or having different people give different off-the-cuff answers and then be hammered for later changes.
Just as something like a coding style guide doesn't solve every question in software, this doesn't solve every issue related to personal conduct but it sets an overall direction and gives people an idea of what to expect: someone going to a conference with that CoC would know that the expectations are set to “business professional” rather than “hanging with my bros at the bar”. You might think that something is obvious but once any event expands beyond a small homogeneous group of people all bets are off.
(And, yes, it's shortcuts just as all policies, laws, etc. are because it's easier to have a general trend known in advance than to try to reason about it from first principles after the fact.)
The problem is that what is considered as racism, sexism, bad language etc. is very different in different cultures. So for example I know a person of Russian descent who says things that are appropriate in Russia, but considered as sexist in Germany (not to even start talking about the US). Or a person from Croatia whose swearing (in German) was very distinct. But he really insisted that it is very harmless in comparison how he would express things in Croatian (he insisted we really don't want to know details).
All Free software projects come with a substantial moral and political ethos embedded in the GPL.
Politics and dispute resolution is sadly inevitable when dealing with humans. Large enough projects become a community, and that requires a little bit of steering to ensure it's a happy, effective, inclusive community.
Why do you value happiness and inclusiveness here? I strongly prefer strongly prefer projects/communities that are managed by technical brilliant, cynical jerks over more inclusive ones if this decreases the effectivity.
There are of course some projects where the only effective option is one where jerks are allowed to keep others away- in that case I think that it should be seen as a bug in the community and something that someone should try to create a fix for, and not just something everyone is expected to live with.
If it's a strong preference, then the presence or absence of a CoC - and more generally, the existence of CoCs in some online communities - might be a very useful signal to you, I would think.
Bit of a stretch since there are other licences and business models that work with free software.
(1) I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were wrong about what they were saying, and I certainly wasn't going to convince the people being harassed that they should stick around in a community that was being hostile.
(2) Most people were either unaware of the threat, or else not directly affected and stayed quiet.
(3) The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment, and I had tried diligently to do so before putting on my admin hat or pulling out the CoC.
(4) I've seen many other situations where similar things have played out. Without CoCs people would have either been banned from the project, or others would have left, being able to put a stop to something has helped.
Considering (1), the CoC wouldn't have convinced the harassers to stop either, yet considering (4), you got a different outcome than people being banned from the project. How did having a CoC accomplish this? I can see how (2) would be affected by a CoC since it gives you an easy way to communicate to people a possible threat. However, there are negative effects to that as well - e.g. politically-inclined people gaming a CoC by passive-aggressively getting under the skin of their opponents until they have an emotional outburst, then using the CoC to remove them from the project.
My initial reaction was, without my admin hat on, to just step in and explain why the conversation was a problem. Since the people didn't believe that they were being hurtful (or rather, thought that they were technically correct and therefore didn't care if they were being hurtful) that didn't work. I could have banned them at that point, but I would rather avoid that if possible.
Since there was a COC that I could point to, I didn't have to keep trying to convince them that what they were saying was hurtful, and I didn't have to ban them. I was able to just say "hey, look, I get that you disagree but this is in violation of the COC, you need to cut it out". And they did, we've not had any more flare-ups of that topic.
I know that if the people hadn't stopped their discussion then some other people would have left the community (because they told me as much after the fact), and based on the lack of success I had in shutting down the conversation before pointing to the COC I am very doubtful that I'd have been successful without a temporary ban.
To directly address your questions
(1) and (2) are unrelated events happening in parallel. I pointed out (2) to illustrate that the general community was not of any help in mitigating the conflict. (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. (4) was generalizing the situation to other scenarios I've observed where someone who might be going over a line can be brought back by simply pointing out they are in violation of the COC, without any express threat of a specific action.
As far as having someone goad someone else into violating the COC, I'm just not buying that being a legitimate problem. If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a COC. Even if that's not the case, you shouldn't resort to general attacks that are going to make bystanders in the community uncomfortable.
I'm not sure how different the implicit threat of enforcing the CoC by banning people is from the explicit threat of enforcing civility by banning people. I guess the problem here stems from where respect for your authority lies. It sounds like the harassers in this situation had more respect for the authority of the CoC, possibly enacted by a community decision, rather than your own personal judgement. That seems like a positive for a large community where most members do not have a strong connection with the administrative staff.
> If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a CoC
The whole point of passive-aggressive attacks are that they do not violate the CoC on their face.
You don't need a massive rule book, but surely having some basic rules is better than having none?
If you don't have rules, then what, it's just personal judgement on how I feel today about what you said today that rubs me the wrong way and I hand out a ban? Come on, it's daft.
Communities need to feel like there is a strong consistent moderator presence in them; if you're all over the place doing whatever, the community will fall apart into arguments and spam; there are countless examples of it.
The difference is when the community is small (ie. many software projects) its probably perfectly easy for one single moderator (eg. the project owner) to be consistent and thoughtful in how they handle the community.
...but that model doesn't scale.
CoCs that include punitive measures are going to far.
> If someone is going to be put off by the fact that mightn't be able to say something hateful if they decided they wanted to, then I'd rather not have that person in my community.
This is the problem right here. It's so polarising! I'm not a hateful person, but you've just painted me as such for advocating a bit of liberty and temperance. With language like that you give me no choice but to take the other position. And so I won't be part of such communities. The world isn't black and white, us vs. them. It's full of persons, real people, and simplifying them like that is a mistake.
> I think that's a very negative way of looking at a CoC.
I've said it somewhere else in this thread, but codifying something is inflexible and doesn't allow for any nuance. Any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness. Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them (see religious texts, which I'd argue were usually written with good intentions). I'm in favour of handling things on a case by case basis. So yes, I have a negative view on rules and especially written rules in general.
> The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment
You're example isn't very convincing. The CoC itself is useless, it needs to be enforced by community members. Such enforcement can and should happen without a CoC, e.g. consensus that someone was acting improperly is sufficient.
BTW, formatting quotes in the way you have completely breaks the reflow on mobile. I bring this up because having the same perspective isn't easy. Nobody has the whole picture and the benefit of the doubt should always be given.
I think that it's more than simply a case of good intentions, there has been work over the last several years to hone in on what makes a CoC work, and how it affects the community overall (I'll be happy to try to find references at some point, but if you don't want to wait I'm sure you can google for stuff- python and gnome come to mind as starting places).
> This is the problem right here. It's so polarising! I'm not a hateful person, but you've just painted me as such for advocating a bit of liberty and temperance.
There's a whole lot to dig into here. I'm sure you're not a hateful person, but a lot of people who don't believe themselves hateful are still hurtful. Many people are so far removed from the situations that others are in that they have no idea how hurtful their language is. Some of those people get very angry and confrontational when someone tries to explain that they are being hurtful. A few of them actually want to be hurtful.
> With language like that you give me no choice but to take the other position.
Actually you always have a choice. You can remain neutral, you can disagree with the implementation but acknowledge the value of inclusiveness and try to offer better solutions from the inside, or you could accept that people who are being frequently affected by harassment may have had reasons for coming up with codes of conduct. To actively advocate against them is a choice you made, and you can't put it on me for using strong language in favor of my position.
> And so I won't be part of such communities. The world isn't black and white, us vs. them. It's full of persons, real people, and simplifying them like that is a mistake.
I'm not reducing the whole of interpersonal interactions to a binary decision, but I am making a statement that strongly favors protecting people from harassment.
> I've said it somewhere else in this thread, but codifying something is inflexible and doesn't allow for any nuance.
Many codes of conduct are written specifically to allow for a level of nuance, and enforcement is almost always nuanced and based on the specifics of the situation.
> Any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness.
A code of conduct isn't a set of rules, it's a set of values. Specifically, it's a document that outlines how a community values the safety of those who might be harassed over the freedom of speech of the harassers, and lays out community norms and expectations of behavior.
> Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them (see religious texts, which I'd argue were usually written with good intentions).
I disagree with your analogy. A CoC is a living document that was written and is updated by a community that exists in the present, to address our own contemporary set of problems. In a decade or so you could maybe make that argument about old CoCs that are being treated as rulebooks instead of summaries of values, but I don't think it's relevant to the entire concept.
> I'm in favour of handling things on a case by case basis. So yes, I have a negative view on rules and especially written rules in general.
Again, a CoC is going to be about values more than rules. Even when there is a clear violation of the terms of the CoC the enforcement is going to be handled on a case-by-case basis (or at least subject to an enforcement policy that is separate from a CoC).
> You're example isn't very convincing. The CoC itself is useless, it needs to be enforced by community members. Such enforcement can and should happen without a CoC, e.g. consensus that someone was acting improperly is sufficient.
The CoC wasn't useless, it was a reminder that the community values the safety of people over some types of speech. Pointing it out was a reminder that th...
Here's mine:
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I sympathize with your position. When people started asking me for a code of conduct, I wrote the above.
The trigger for me to write the above was a situation where someone complained on the list about "bad behavior", and asked for civility. When it was pointed out that the "bad behavior" was a technical answer to a technical question, they responded with cursing and insults. Cue... ban.
Some people read simple technical answers go here and read this file as an emotional response of "go F yourself". They instead want answers to be "inclusive" to the point of smarmy pandering.
My $0.02 is that if you want technical answers to a technical problem, you're welcome on a software forum. Otherwise, if you want online friends, play a MMO game, or call a pay-per-minute service.
I'm well able to be kind and reasonable to people and avoid making offensive jokes, but I am simply not okay with participating in an environment in which I can be ousted for having a different political opinion on another social network.
I have spent over 20 years using the internet. If somebody wants to hurt me socially or economically, they could probably do so with a little detective work. I am only human, and like most people I've probably at some point done or said things which are ignorant, offensive or unsettling.
Everything is a little political but I'm simply not the type of person that wishes to participate in a highly-politicised environment. I will leave that to the activists. I just want to write code and maybe help a few people out.
This doesn't mean I'm against all codes of conduct, but I am against the way some quite noxious ones have been thrust on communities without a full consensus.
You don't get out much.
But maybe I need to be more specific: I had never seen this in the communities I've taken part in - there's obviously some selection bias there though.
But my point is a CoC isn't required for civil behaviour. It won't guarantee harmonious behaviour either (see the infamous opal thread), and makes censoring easier.
I can understand why you'd adopt the position you have if you view continued harassing behavior and hostile work environments as abstractions that do not take place in the world.
It is what it is.
The idea that the working group had any meaningful power to 'discipline' people who violated the code was dubious already, and the reddit thing just made it more obvious that any kind of enforcement wouldn't really work.
Ultimately, maybe this is the way forward for projects; facilitate a way to bring people together to talk rather than punish people.
For what it's worth, I don't think the code of conduct was a particular success, but I don't think it was a particular failure either.
The go community is far nicer, more welcoming and has proportionally less hostile self important twats in it than it did 3 years ago... but, that's probably just a matter of the community growing to include a lot more people.
This is probably the right change for go.
It's not an excuse to start being a douche.
I find it hard to accept that anything more verbose than "you're an adult; act like it." is needed for a Code of Conduct. it astonishes me that this is the trend in our culture and society. big brother gonna protect you from the mean people. a world without sin. none shall pass.
what we really have is a deficit of communication skills, a deficit of maturity, and most of all a broken view of how social groups do and ought to function. this is the fallout from decades of institutional education. we now have multiple generations of people who have come to take comfort in the institutional structure of elementary school and feel lost without an authority figure to turn to.
what the fuck has happened to us?
I don't like CoCs either, but they exist because of a real problem. Let's say we adopt a CoC of "you're an adult; act like it":
What corrective actions are taken against those not acting like an adult, who takes those actions, and who is the arbiter of what qualifies as non-adult behavior?
Very small communities and communities with a single BDFL can resolve this because in the former consensus is easy to come by, and in the latter there is an ultimate point of appeal. All other communities need some way of resolving this, and adopting a CoC is one way of attempting to do so.
There are examples of people being ejected from projects because of their personal opinions being expressed outside of the project: this is repulsive to me.
There are examples of proponents of CoC talking to one another about how they intend to inject the CoC into a new project so that they can forcefully eject somebody that they don't personally like.
As a baseline I don't like censorship even if it is "hurtful".