The letter was signed by the The NumFOCUS Code of Conduct Enforcement Committee. The members of that committee are listed on their code of conduct site. Seems pretty transparent to me.
They caused a lot of grief to a particular person. It is only appropriate to sign their apology with their own names rather than a "committee", don't you think?
That was the committee at the time of writing. If anyone refers to this in, say, a year, they will have no idea who was responsible. As an analogy, transaction histories, if done in a DB, are not normalized because you wouldn't want the price and total sale of a past transaction to change when you later change the price of the items that were in that transaction. Sometimes, it's actually good to duplicate code/data/effort, especially if it helps to make something clear.
Sounds like The Code of Conduct Enforcement Team themselves need a code of conduct to operate against.
I recommend immediately establishing a Code of Conduct Enforcement Team Code of Conduct. And since any CoC is meaningless when not enforced, there needs to be a Code of Conduct Enforcement Team Code of Conduct Enforcement Team.
The board should make those 4 people (3 staffers and the president) step down. If not, they should abandon any pretext about supporting a code of conduct while they use it to bully others.
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but: I'm against code of conducts because they're worse than the problems they try to solve.
edit:
In my opinion, code of conducts become a distraction and a cause for worry to anyone contributing to these projects because someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended.
Yes, a Code of Conduct is a good way to say no to harrasment, racism and stuff that's generally frowned upon.
But, as this case proves, they devolve too easily into thought police level crap, where the "Code" becomes vague and filled with useless buzzwords, that could be construed to fit any situation someone disagrees with.
And with the current cancel culture, there is a real, verifiable threat to people's livelihood when they are judged by Twitter Court for breaking a CoC.
- There is no clear delineation of what constitutes a violation.
- There is no right to confront those making an allegation.
- There are no negative consequences for making a false allegation.
- All of which leads to a system whereby people are subjected to ostracism and official censure for violating unwritten rules, all without proof. A person can find their life ruined merely by saying the wrong thing or in the wrong tone, all while being told that the system is just and fair and seeking to protect the vulnerable. It is dishonest, it is gaslighting, and it is frankly Soviet.
I am a criminal defense attorney with experience in personnel law. I know first hand how important the presumption of innocence is, and I know first hand how disastrous these personnel management "policies" can be.
There are people who are openly hostile to all of these ancient principles.
It's not just people who are too green to know better. I've seen a user with a 2007 vintage account and >30k karma extol the virtue of smear campaigns.
A lot of them don't seem to have a "warning" phase either. In a lot of cases I'm guessing the harasser isn't really aware that someone is feeling harassed.
Plus, in many cases they don't get applied equally anyway, the project leader is going to get handled a lot differently than a random contributor. AKA one gets sent to etiquette school, the other gets banned from the conference and mailing list.
It is the same problem as with censorship/fact checkers etc ... who do you trust to determine what is truth/fake news/coc violation and why do you trust them.
In abstract the CoC are fine if are written and enforced by impartial angels with well developed common sense.
The people that usually push for them are for politics and power.
I don't mean this as an attack, but I'm guessing you haven't been harassed/given unwanted attention at a conference.
It's easy to see codes of conduct as draconian or unnecessary if you can't empathize with the people they're designed to protect. I'm not saying the CoC system is perfect or that there aren't false positives, but your statement here is _dramatically_ privileged.
The worst thing is when nobody is actually offended or hurt, and someone says your behavior could be considered offensive or insulting or whatever and takes action based on that. That's just someone wanting to exert their power for the wrong reasons.
That reminds me of that event when a person with screen name "Christian", of all things, filed an issue at VS Code around the, ah, New Year festivities, demanding to remove the Santa hat from the status bar because it's offensive. And the VS Code team promptly reacted, by agreeing, changing it for a snowflake (I still have no idea if it was ironic, or not, and whether they've noticed it later) and pushing out an emergency hot fix.
That did piss off quite a number of people, who filed much more hard-pressing (in their opinion) issues (like, some useful editor functionality being broken) and received precisely zero feedback.
You don't get to be the arbiter of who is "actually offended." I agree that there are people who take any amount of power and want to expert it for the wrong reasons, but that isn't an indictment against CoCs, it's an indictment of bad behavior.
>> You don't get to be the arbiter of who is "actually offended.
That is exactly my point. Some committee member doesn't get to say "that may be offensive to someone" either. They need to wait until someone actually reports being offended.
As this whole debacles shows codifying doesn't remove arbitrary standards. Human social interactions are far too complex to codify in a concise way without massive edge cases. So all too often it just gives people a tool with which to better force their own arbitrary standards onto others.
As this blog post [1] lays out, this seems like a case where the CoC was poorly authored exactly for this reason. But this isn't a reason to not have a CoC, it just means this particular one was not done well.
There is no way to author a set of rules such that it can't be abused by someone with the power to enforce it. That's why the law has judges, juries, courts of appeal, standards of evidence, disclosure rules, corpus delicti, habeas corpus, and so on.
The problem is not the CoC, but the lack of accountability, oversight, and transparency in enforcement.
I totally agree, but people don't generally claim we should get rid of the law for these reasons. I am responding to the claim that we should get rid of CoCs, which I disagree with. I am not arguing that CoCs are perfect, or that we don't need checks. In this case, it seems that the CoC was pretty poorly written, and the team didn't even follow their own procedure. I think we should fix those problems rather than throw the whole thing out.
Agreed, but I don't see it happening. There's very little chance of any conference organizer setting up some sort of quasi-legal institutions around CoCs.
It is happening before our eyes! The organizers have admitted they made mistakes and are working on improvements. I agree a full-on court system would be ridiculous, but what that means is that the CoC needs to better thought out to reduce ambiguity.
Those are all valuable tools to have in a system where the law can deprive a person of property, liberty, and life.
It's not necessarily the case that you have to spend nearly as much on a code of conduct system where the ultimate worst-case scenario is that an innocent person is denied a platform or has the reputation tarnished in a reversible way.
The task of making rules like that is never ending. This concept reminds me of when the head of GM rewrote their dress code. It went from several pages down to two words: "dress appropriately". What that means actually depends on context - who are you meeting with and what kind of work is going on. She realized that manager who needed a manual to figure that out had bigger problems.
I went to Cambridge University, UK from a working class background. Unwritten dress codes were one of the many things used to "other" anyone from the wrong background. These things aren't obvious.
Software developers, who are intimately familiar with the idea that software needs constant attention and maintenance, seem to often balk at the idea that communities also need constant attention and maintenance. The idea that a code of conduct is "never ending" does not seem like a bad thing to me.
As an example, the mozilla community participation guidelines (currently at version 3.1) are quite short and readable and many sections are essentially your "dress appropriately" example (i.e. "Be Respectful"), with quick a paragraph to clarify the idea.
>> The idea that a code of conduct is "never ending" does not seem like a bad thing to me.
So another area where that type of thing can happen is in union negotiations. Unions in the US started out fighting for basic decent treatment - reasonable hours and pay, safer working conditions, etc... Some years ago I was in a manufacturing plant and the break (lunch) room had a big television in it. Turns out the union had demanded the TV in their most recent contract. Someone I was speaking to berated the union "those idiots demand a TV, don't they have real concerns?" I realized the problem is that the adversarial nature had grown so bad - probably on both sides - that nothing could be had without a negotiation and putting it in writing. That goes for work from the union: "that's not my job" or worse - "you're getting written up for doing something that's someone else's job" to the management "no we're not giving you anything we don't have to by contract". Once you start writing things down and trying to nit-pick it can lead to a terrible place where nothing is easy for anyone.
I think you're saying that people who harass should be able to be removed absent a code of conduct. I agree. However, harassment isn't always the overt act you may be picturing, it can be more subtle. Code of Conducts give a single canonical state for what's considered acceptable, but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation. In addition to that, they inform people (even the harassed, who may not have considered what's happening to them harassment!) of what I'd acceptable.
As a white, male engineer, I haven't ever found a need for codes of conduct because I've had the privilege of never having been harassed. This isn't the case for all groups, so it's best to have one.
> Code of Conducts give a single canonical state for what's considered acceptable
This is what they're supposed to do. In reality, this is impossible because so many of the rules in a CoC are subjective, and therefore are enforced based on the opinions of the people enforcing the CoC.
> but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation.
This just gives the enforcers a sense of moral authority to impose their opinions, nothing more. I don't see that as a benefit of what is inevitably an incomplete document, and frequently poorly thought out as well.
They're meant as a reminder for people who actually read them, but otherwise they're meant as a list for enforcement. They're something to point to as "you knew the rules - that's why we're removing that person". That's why in this case the affected person complained about the CoC using very ambiguous rules that were up for personal interpretation.
This is certainly true, but how else would you propose solving the deeper problem?
One option is to designate someone or some group as arbiters / benevolent dictators, and have the rule of "If so-and-so decides you're making the place worse, you're not welcome." It's certainly effective. But it exacerbates Jeremy Howard's complaint - which is not so much about CoCs per se as about the group of people who enforced them and the way in which they did so. I don't think getting rid of CoCs will really solve that problem.
One option is to have a closed or invitation-only group - but that's at odds with the goals of many communities. (And it doesn't reliably solve the problem, it just makes it less likely you'd run into it.)
I too dislike code of conduct type of stuff, but more along the reasoning you mentioned. I dislike that they are even needed in the first place. The fact that you have to be told to not belittle, harass, abuse, etc another user/participant/person is just difficult to understand.
It shouldn't be that hard to to follow the "Don't be an asshole" rule, unfortunately for the rest of us, 0.001% can't figure out how to get along with other humans.
I think CoCs just become a new tool for a different subset of assholes to abuse. Yes it does suck for those who have a legitimate issue. I've yet to see how CoCs solve that problem in practice.
As I see it, a CoC gives good leadership a way to punish people who are assholes without causing too much of a backlash. Without it people would argue about fair process, not knowing it was wrong, cultural differences, etc, etc. It's hard to enforce a don't be an asshole rule when you mostly have soft power at your disposal. Of course, it also gives bad leadership a tool with which to punish people without causing too much backlash.
Do you think it’s possible to empathize with people who are harassed, or experience harassment, and oppose codes of conduct? Assume that empathy includes caring about protecting people.
To me it sounds like: "I empathize and care, but I don't think CoCs are the best way to solve the problem because they i) don't solve the problem and ii) bring about harmful unintended consequences".
I think it is, but what alternative is there? CoCs were created for a reason, so simply getting rid of them feels like it would lead us back to where we started.
People don't want empathy. They want solutions that fix the existing and long-standing problems. Lacking a better solution, CoCs are here to stay. So if you really oppose CoCs, the burden of creating a better solution is on you.
If you’re referring to me personally, I agree with you. The groups I personally organized have arrived at that better resolution, as we of course did see our responsibility there. However, we have not arrived at a solution that can be quickly communicated to other groups, which is the strength of CoCs as they can be copied and adopted without much thought (not saying that pejoratively.)
Strongly disagree that empathy is unwanted, though; perhaps you are laboring under a narrow definition. Empathy cannot coexist with inaction.
I agree that some conduct guidelines are justified, but should be minimal. The feeling against them is due to overreach, where they stray away from codifying generally acceptable behaviour and move into territory that the general population would find incomprehensible, such as not being able to say that someone with the opposite opinion is wrong.
You actually do mean this as an attack - you quite literally accused me of being "_dramatically_ privileged"
Maybe you meant it as an attack and maybe you didn't. If there was a HN CoC, maybe I'm the kind of asshole that would try to accuse you of abuse. See how easy it is to abuse the system?
Er, how is saying that someone is "_dramatically_ privileged" an attack? It's a judgment-neutral observation. When I say that sshd runs a privileged process, I don't mean to say that sshd is morally bad (or whatever), just that it needs to be more careful than less-privileged code and that it can do things more easily than less-privileged code can. It's the same meaning of "privileged" here.
(And yes, you could bring up to the moderators that this is an attack, but you could do that in the absence of any written rules, too, and if the moderators are the sort of people who would agree with that argument, then neither having nor not having written rules would save this forum.)
You can observe whether sshd is running a privileged process because you have all of the information available to make that judgement. You can't observe whether a random person is privileged because it's relative and related to your opinion and biases.
True, but then it's at most a false claim. It's still not an attack. If I say ping is privileged and you say you're on a distro with unprivileged ping, I haven't in any way denounced ping.
That's a false analogy. Saying something incorrect about a computer is different from using an incorrect/biased statement to try to shut a person down.
In your opinion. As the recipient of said 'claim' I took it as an attack. Maybe I'm an overly sensitive person, maybe it's the end of a long week and I'm just feeling cranky, either way it offended me. So in this fictional world I feel that I have been attacked, and the HN CoC frowns upon members hurting other members' feelings. What should be done?
Fair enough - I think that in this fictional world where the CoC frowns on hurting others' feelings, you'd have a valid complaint, and I think that such a CoC would quickly break apart a community (especially an open community, where anyone can show up and then proclaim their feelings have been hurt).
I think the NumFOCUS CoC doesn't say that though (although it's ambiguous because it includes "Be kind" in the normative text, and I'd agree that's a problem), and other CoCs are more interested in the objective (or, at least, more objective) question of whether a personal attack actually happened than the question of whether a participant felt attacked. The Contributor Covenant, for instance, prohibits "Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks," to which 'I'm sorry you felt insulted, but this was not an insult' would be an adequate defense.
It does appear that the relevant sections of the NumFOCUS CoC aren't unique to them, though I can't tell exactly where they came from, and you have convinced me that this is a problem. (Geez, this is license proliferation all over again.) Thank you!
Attached is an implicit "and thus your opinion only perpetuates the issue", due to the inherent problem with phrasing basic rights in terms of "privilege" - the paradigm directs attention towards the people whose rights aren't being infringed as the exceptional cases, and away from the specific people responsible for the infringements.
This kind of argument often comes up. Two implicit premises should be questioned:
1) Liberal values are associated with privilege.
2) Because of this association we should embrace authoritarianism.
Is authoritarianism any less privileged? It assumes that the authorities are on your side and protecting your interests... that seems right down the middle of privilege. A low privilege person would probably benefit from liberal governance/norms that limit the damage hostile authorities can do.
Having rules that are written down and apply to everyone is a liberal value, last I checked. It is far more authoritarian for the standards to be unwritten, because then instead of applying them to everyone, the people in charge can do whatever they want. Throwing out the whole concept of having agreed-upon rules because of one bad outcome seems like a major step backwards to me.
> Having rules that are written down and apply to everyone is a liberal value
A Liberal is anti-arbitrary power. In the context of formal governments and legal systems, that includes having written laws.
I would argue having a vague CoC which is designed to be interpreted and applied arbitrarily by power tripping bureaucrats actually increases arbitrary power.
Through the CoC, the committee here was empowered to persecute any action they didn't like. That's the opposite of Liberalism.
I'm not sure I agree. The CoC was written down, which means we can critique it and change it, and hold them accountable to following it (which they failed to do.) And as you see, they are responding to feedback about their handling of it, although I'd guess we'd agree that their response thus far is pretty inadequate. But I'd be inclined to continue to pressure them to step up.
If you advocate for getting rid of CoCs, IMO, you have to have an answer for how actual harassment should be dealt with. Many people I've spoken to did not feel safe at tech events of the past because of rampant harassment that would be swept under the rug. The tech industry of 2020 is not prepared to return to that world.
It seems like step one of dealing with harassment is to define it, which is the problem CoCs should solve. If you think they are failing, what is your alternative, if it's not to improve them?
I do not think so. I think this post and what happened to Jeremy is the excellent example of how bad this CoCs really are. Presume guilty until proven otherwise? Use intentionally vague terms so that anybody can be put through this process? I mean seriously, this is exactly how witch-hunts worked in the "dark ages". Anyways, I think Jeremy responded very well and he is not going to waste his time on this muppet show anymore. This is what the silent majority has to do to get rid of these CoC people.
I'm not so sure about this. I routinely see comments that start like that with a lot of upvotes. It could be survival bias, but I have a feeling reverse psychology could be coming into play.
> The process has left me shattered, and I won’t be able to accept any speaking requests for the foreseeable future.
In regards to CoCs, sometimes this snowflake mentality seems to go hand in hand, because they are tailored to the most fragile of sensibilities, which is a Bad Thing(tm). I'm not sure how this "shatters" someone or what that even means (not trying to attack here, as it just doesn't make any sense).
- Discriminatory jokes and language
- Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior
These are largely subjective, so why bother caring about what you might have said to set someone off?
So what if you won't take up speaking engagement requests? Duh. As we know that these CoCs are ridiculous and someone might want to seriously consider having nothing to do with organizations that utilize them.
He can post up talks on Youtube if he wants to be heard, especially now.
TL;DR Jeremy did a talk and it turned out strangely so nothing's lost here.
I mean, obviously they’re not worse than the problems they’re trying to solve. Sexual harassment, etc. is worse than someone getting their talk canceled unfairly, distraction, or worry about contributing to a project, full stop.
Whether they’re effective in practice, or if there are more effective methods is another question. But it’s hard to overstate the importance of their intentions.
One of the irritating things about these CoC discussions is that the codes, really, are acting in a metonymic fashion. Codes of behaviour are, of course, common place all throughout the world. When people complain about Codes of Conduct in software, they’re broadly complaining about a particular movement that’s pushed codes of particular conduct, enforced with particular mechanisms (and they would often argue biases). The HN guidelines don’t fall under that umbrella.
HN is a pseudo anonymous message board, thus not as restrictive. But in any activity where people are "collaborating", especially in shared space (like a conference) there are more concerns to be addressed.
The programming world historically has been the domain of white men, and these CoCs are often a response to the fact that things have changed.
Any talk about "CoCs are bad" or "CoCs are just for people to arbitrarily impose their morality" are wrong. We need guidelines, and we need to be prepared to refine those guidelines and how they are enforced on a continual basis.
That dismissive talk brings this quote to mind: "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality seems like oppression."
I don't really disagree with any of that, but it's also exactly what I'm talking about above. Given that you posted both the original reply and this one, I think you're kind of guilty of the old Motte & Bailey [1].
Just for the record: I'm privileged (and generally pretty polite/non-offensive I hope), I've rarely needed to deal with any of the issues addressed by CoCs, and I've also never really dealt with any of the issues others claim are caused by CoCs. I don't personally have a strong opinion on them, and lean towards trusting activists when they say things need to change. I'm just commenting on why discussions about them are so frequently unproductive: there's both misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation, because it's not codes of conduct in general that people - possibly wrong people! - don't like.
That was tl;dr to decipher your accusation. Could you clarify please? I ask not to debate but to understand and correct future communications.
The (intended) gist of my comments is to push back against the tactic of "look a stupid rule or stupid enforcement of rules; this is why we need to get rid of rules."
“Motte”: unobjectionable position no one would disagree with.
“Bailey”: more extreme position; the one you actually believe and that people take issue with. Must not directly logically follow from the motte per se.
Motte & Bailey (informal) fallacy: Jumping between the motte and the bailey for rhetorical effect, as convenient.
In this case, the motte is “codes of conduct are just like the HN guidelines, they’re everywhere and no one objects”. The bailey is the actual CoCs in question, and the culture of pushing projects, conferences, etc. to adopt them, which tends to be rooted in “liberal identity politics” or whatever you want to call it.
When people criticize the latter (the bailey), advocates retreat to the former (the motte) - they’re just normal guidelines like “be nice”, basic manners, who would object to that? - and then when the argument is over continue pushing for the latter.
Many comments yesterday and today said "don't be a jerk" is the only code you need. Many said any written code will inevitably be abused.
Who is pushing what particular enforcement mechanisms? The Contributor Covenant is probably the most popular and most hated code of conduct. It just says community leaders will investigate and take appropriate action. It's very open ended.
> In particular, I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture” (a concept I vehemently disagree with, since what is referred to as “cancellation” is often just “facing consequences”).
Details of how one worships and how one interacts with one's parents are rarely ever relevant in the context of a conference.
What I am saying is that even if all conference attendees agreed that the ten commandments were at the root of their ethical behavior (consider, for example, a conference among sects of Christianity that are focused on those commandments), Even then it would be useful for the conference to have specific statements about whether (for example) sexist language was permitted or not permitted during talks.
"No Sunday conferences, do not kill or pillage from other conference goers. Do not lie or fornicate outside of marriage. And worship the Christian god."
How is that even remotely better? It doesn't address... any... of the behavior that led to this type of CoC.
> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture”
The person at the center of this actually disagrees with you. Having a vague CoC that was then not even really followed by the committee should not damn all CoCs. If you only see the worst most poorly executed examples of something then of course you'd be against them but that's not fair.
I used to have feelings similar to yours, and then I started playing Valorant with my wife. The amount of vitriol she gets simply for being a woman is staggering. I had no idea because I didn't come across women in tactical shooters very often, and I wasn't a jackass to them when I did. But it's something like every other game that someone is ridiculously rude to her because she's a woman. This is in addition to all of the normal toxicity that, e.g. I receive just for being a person playing a game where everyone has mics.
Before this discovery, I would have guessed that "someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended" was a much larger percentage of the cases than it is. I also would have thought that anything that makes a lot of people uncomfortable that they might accidentally cross the line is worse than the current harm.
Now that I've much more personal experience with what it means to be a person who is an actual target of harassment, I realize that these edge cases make up a tiny proportion of the harassment that happens. And when you bring the hammer down on people who are unequivocally harassers, it is important that you do so in a way that's fair and not subject to recharacterization as unjust later, when no one who was there is a part of the conversation.
A great many good people being uncomfortable is unfortunate, but I also think it's a sign of the kind of cognitive dissonance that I experienced before playing with my wife. I had never experienced anything other than the usual toxicity, so I naively assumed that it couldn't be that prevalent. The fact that a CoC feels like overkill is, perhaps, evidence for the proposition that the problem with harassment is much more real than it might feel to those of us who are not targets of harassment.
And the kind of people who will harass someone so shamelessly are exactly the kind of people who will boldly lie about not being given a reason for their discipline, or who will loudly complain about the rules not being explicit, even though it's incredibly obvious to everyone present that their behavior was beyond the pale.
The edge cases are edge cases, and unfortunate, but I don't believe most cases are edge cases.
Valorant has a CoC. And yet, your wife suffered horrible toxicity and harassment in Valorant. This doesn't sound like their CoC was successful in curbing abuse.
Please don't resort to strawman arguments. I didn't say that all CoCs are useless in curbing abuse. I said that Valorant's CoC is useless in curbing abuse. As far as I can tell, Valorant is doing absolutely nothing to enforce their CoC against toxic players.
Apologies, do you have a CoC in mind that you think works?
And I’ve got an email from Riot that they banned someone I’d reported in Valorant, so they don’t do nothing. I don’t think either of us have enough evidence to know whether it’d be better or worse without the CoC.
> And I’ve got an email from Riot that they banned someone I’d reported in Valorant, so they don’t do nothing. I don’t think either of us have enough evidence to know whether it’d be better or worse without the CoC.
To the contrary, it's pretty easy to deduce that the CoC had nothing to do with the ban of the player you reported. Do you genuinely believe that a "CoC enforcement committee" sat down to review demos of the reported player and analyze whether their actions constituted CoC violations? No, that process is reserved for political enemies and occasional power trips. The ban was almost certainly a result of an automated process. For example, in CS:GO, if a player receives significantly more abuse reports than average, they will be muted by default. No human review is involved. I imagine the Valorant ban is something similar, because there is no way Riot could afford to pay actual humans to go through these reports.
CoCs are problematic like much of lived human experience, but they're better than a structureless void that allows people to discriminate without a formal process that makes sure they can be held to account.
I'll try to refine your argument a bit: codes of conduct have tended to become a distraction because of the sudden onslaught of such from a specific, highly politicised group of people who have used the opportunity to try to enforce their way of looking at the world upon others by getting their 'code of conduct' - which reads like a political pamphlet - adopted by a number of high-visibility projects. Having a code of conduct in itself does not need to be distracting as long as that code is politically neutral and above all short and concise. A good example of such a code of conduct is the following:
don't be a jerk
Everybody knows what this means. Nearly everybody will agree on how to behave.
I disagree. This whole situation with Jeremy is because of vague rules just like this. If I tell you that you are "wrong", you might consider me to be "jerk" and we can do this whole song and dance.
What communities are trying to police and prevent is outright sexism, racism, etc. For that, being explicit is better than just offering that someone is "being a jerk".
Nope, being wrong is not being a jerk, this used to be common sense and is what we need to go back to. Feel free to change the wording on the proposed CoC from don't be a jerk to don't be an asshole or something similar, the end result should still be the same: most people will understand what is meant. Some people won't but that can not be helped. The more elaborate the code, the more it will be used for other purposes, Fewer words is also possible but even in the total absence of a code of conduct most communities - 4chan et al excluded - will still have the unspoken assumption to not be a jerk. Having this encoded in a code of conduct at least makes sure those other, politically motivated 'codes' do not get a foothold.
I don't know how you can make this argument when this exact situation is caused by the very thing you are advocating for. “Be welcoming”, “Be considerate”, and “Be friendly” is something most people understand as much as "asshole" and "jerk". And yet here we are -- the counterexample is literally this topic.
But that is the point: we need to get back to a situation where something like don't be a jerk is seen as just that, a simple suggestion not to be a jerk. As long as simple suggestions like this lead to cancellations the public discourse is on the wrong track, the one with the sign 'Warning: weak bridge'. We - as in those of us who are favour true intellectual discourse over partisan/polarised rhetoric - need to take back control over the meaning of words and the fact that words in fact have specific meanings which can not and should not be allowed to be changed on the spot to fit some narrative - viz. Websters dictionary suddenly changing the definition of the term 'preference' [1,2].
You're arguing a meta-point rather than the issue in question. That sexism, racism, and harassment is not uncommon enough and these are real issues that need real solutions.
Arguing about the meaning of words couldn't possibly be less to the point.
Is is very much the point here since it is these words, and the way their meaning has been made malleable to fit the narrative of the day, which enables these practices. As long as this practice is tolerated it will be difficult if not impossible to agree to a basic level of civic discourse. Without such an agreement it is impossible to 'agree to disagree' which has been one of the tenets of liberal democracies since the concept was first implemented.
Just like he who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the dictionary controls the discourse.
Yet you are here, on HN, a forum with a code of conduct (they're called guidelines but the commenting rules constitute a CoC), and this CoC is enforced firmly.
I don't mean this in a snarky "get outta here" way, but: why are you here? Why not any other forum, tech-related or otherwise? Why not 4chan? Whatever the reason is, is the answer not quite likely to be at least in part made possible by the CoC and its strict enforcement?
You treat it like a coincidence that HN guidelines are called "guidelines" instead of "Code of Conduct". I don't think it's a coincidence. I think there's a certain kind of ethos behind behind any "Code of Conduct" process, and that ethos is not present on HN. And I'm really happy about that. I think HN moderation is amazing and it allows for conversations that you couldn't have anywhere else on the web.
> NumFOCUS found I violated their Code of Conduct (CoC) at JupyterCon because my talk was not “kind”, because I said Joel Grus was “wrong” regarding his opinion that Jupyter Notebook is not a good software development environment
FWIW I've got a female friend who was in enlisted the US Navy and she spoke of female naval officers who were addressed as "Sir" rather than "Ma'am" (though most went by "Ma'am").
So I don't know how to feel about anything anymore.
Not OP, but I don't think they were making fun of the legitimate issues. There have been plenty of instances of pronoun-related overreactions in and outside the tech sector - see the recent-ish StackOverflow mess for an example. There are obviously many issues, but there are also many overblown non-issues and I don't see much harm in making fun of those.
Some people make jokes and don't realize the effect they have on the people who have to be the victims of those comments day in and day out. I'm sorry if that's not easy to understand. These are the same people who think women don't belong in tech, or that people who choose pronouns are "snowflakes". It's why we don't have as many women in tech and it really needs to stop.
Don't leave out the best part (the very next sentence)
> Joel (who I greatly respect, and consider an asset to the data science community) was not involved in NumFOCUS’s action, was not told about it, and did not support it.
> According to his account, he was told that he had been convicted.
The apology states that this was a "crucial miscommunication that we take responsibility for"
OTOH, from Jeremy Howard's account it really does sound like the committee doubled down on that miscommunication so often that it seems hard to believe that's all it was.
And my judgement after all available information is that they are straight up lying.
Here is why.
His stated recollection is that they said, “that is what the reporters stated, and what we found” and to his asking why his statement was not requested, “we all watched the video, so we could see for ourselves the violation”.
What they said in his version is very clear. That is not a miscommunication. Calling it a "miscommunication" sounds like nothing more than the best excuse that they came up with for themselves.
Therefore this reduces down to a simple "he said, she said" type of conflict. What I have to judge on is what is publicly known of his character, their incentives, and indications about their character. He has a solid public reputation as an upstanding person. Their incentives are to minimize perception of wrongdoing in their actions. Both the fact that they got into this mess, and their non-apology in attempting to get out of it, suggests that they lack even a shred of integrity.
Therefore it is his word against theirs. He is believable. They are not. And so I conclude that they are lying on this point.
No, not even a little bit. There is a gigantic gulf between an organization with power in the situation making an official finding, and an individual with no power over the situation looking at the facts and forming a conclusion.
Remember, this is just one side. Is there any detailed response from the other side? With something like this the tone and atmosphere has a grave weight on the perception. Like you can say someone is wrong in a nice, professional way, but also in a meany, bullying way.
And it doesn't even need to be seen by the involved people as mean, if they have such a "toxic" type relationship. But a Code of Conduct is also a bit about the perception of others, and how it sells a project.
In his statement there are hints indicating in this direction. He mentions his talk was made as a parody. Parodies by nature are on a thin line between being funny englightment, and being mean bullying. So it can be the case that his see himself as funny, while other might see it as a mean insult.
And he mentions some unwritten rules which were applied to him specifically because his talk was somewhat special because it was an opener(?) or something. Which means he got more attention than your regular talk.
Whenever I see things like this, it always makes me think out of all the problems we have right now in the world do we really need to spend time in trivial things like this?
It was a very effective response from Jeremy. He clearly describes his side of the story and convincingly explains why he thought he did nothing wrong.
What is a little more troubling is that he (A) describes codes of conduct in detail and repeatedly affirms his allegiance to the general idea behind CoCs, including describing "previous sexual assault allegations" as "behaviors" he "strongly agrees" should be stopped. (B) He goes some way towards portraying himself as a victim, describing in graphic detail his lack of "emotional resilience". I wonder if he realized what a thin line he was walking with (A), because he now has a "previous CoC violation allegation" on his permanent record, regardless of his acquittal.
In other words, he very strongly backs the spirit, letter, and zeitgeist of CoCs before describing why he thinks he did not violate them in this specific case. I think these were very wise tactical moves, although they leave a bad taste in my mouth, and I can't help but wonder if this approach affected the outcome. I don't recall seeing an apology ever given, let alone changes instituted, for CoC violation allegations.
The thing that seemed to me oddest about all this is that Jeremy says the committee spoke to two reporters before hearing his side of the story, and before issuing a judgment. It is not totally clear if they were speaking to those two reporters about his case.
I would imagine that an obvious way for CoC committees to minimize their own liability would be to at least avoid talking to reporters before they have issued a judgment. Really, the process should be totally private until a guilty judgment has been made, and if the person is declared innocent, then the whole thing should disappear without ever having been made public.
My gut reaction if I were Jeremy would be to say that "This is absolutely absurd; there is no way that claiming 'X's opinion is wrong' is in itself a CoC violation, and if it somehow is, then the CoC is ridiculous. The fact that such an accusation was even able to be made under the CoC and not immediately dismissed makes CoCs look ridiculous. Why are you wasting everyone's time?"
He goes a very, very different route. I think that different route gave him a better outcome. I think it is worth thinking about why that is. We are not talking about an accusation of sexual harassment or assault here, we are talking about an almost textbook case of how CoC accusations can be overextended to absurdity. Yet he chooses to defend CoCs.
One possible explanation of this is that he is trying to draw a distinction between things that should be "legitimate" CoC violations, and his case. Another possible explanation is that he is trying to say that "Look, I strongly believe that <murder should be illegal>, really strongly. That makes me one of the good guys. Would a good guy commit murder?" The latter take is more cynical, but I think it would be more effective than my gut reaction.
I think you are vastly overestimating the significance behind having a "previous CoC violation allegation on [one's] permanent record". Who's keeping, and enforcing on, permanent records of this sort? Every org is going to call this one for themselves, and the facts are out there.
A CoC is exactly as effective as the leadership that writes & enforces it. Sounds like the Board wasn’t happy with how this was enforced, so they stepped in.
Good on them. That said, maybe, uh, try and train your folks if you want them to enforce things like that.
>A CoC is exactly as effective as the leadership that writes & enforces it.
And the sorts of people who try to implement CoCs and get on enforcement boards are almost invariably the sort of busybodies that see it as a club to beat their enemies with, which is why I'm opposed to them.
An interesting thing to think about is if they would apologize if this wasn't published in a blog and discussed online.
Let's say Jeremy just walked away quietly in disgust and didn't say anything publicly. What would have they done? I would guess that they would have chucked it under "We did a great job enforcing the code of conduct. Problem solved".
This might be going too far, but Type A personalities don't realize they're being shits. This allows them to get things done, as they don't care very much about what other people think; but sometimes it means that they deliver solutions/products without much empathy for the end users and the individual contributors who made it.
I know a lot of Hacker News users don't like it, but fact is that getting to the top of Hacker News is often the most-successful driver for getting something fixed in the tech industry.
This is a good response as far as the actual process goes, but it doesn't really do anything to address the claims that "There were two totally different Codes of Conduct with different requirements linked in different places" and "I was held to a different, undocumented and uncommunicated standard"
There is one person on both, and the apology clearly states he won't be involved:
Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors, minus those involved, to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.
I read the apology without knowing the backstory. It just feels so weasel-worded: they apologise for their process but certainly don’t make any suggestion that was innocent so actually increasing the smear. A proper apology also needs personal, private apologies from the committee members. I can only hope that Jeremy receives a better apology than this for the shit he has been made to chew by them.
They don't believe he was innocent, at best they believe the question is still up for debate and at worst they believe he is guilty but are putting off a public claim until things calm down.
I suspect you're being downvoted because people are misreading your tone, but I agree with the overall sentiment: D&I is often (though not always) coded language for "critical-theory ideology". I'm likewise suspicious of organizations that reify this in a particular board or department, especially when the company culture seems to be very procedural, bureaucratic and/or CYA. When it comes to weeding out *ism, these groups have a tendency to care only about hit-rate with little or no regard for false alarms. In extreme cases, they view any disagreement with their principles and practices as an affront in and of itself -- one that calls for punishment.
Edit: I don't really think the parent comment needed to be flagged ...
(Also now that you know the timestamp trick: there's also a "favorite" link there to mark the link as a favorite. You can find favorited posts and comments in your profile page.)
They say "Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors to take over the work of the committee", yet the 7-person board of directors overlaps with the 4-person code of conduct committee.
That's a pretty important overlap. How many people on a board or in a community are really willing and able to entirely discount the President's views and consider issues independently?
The president (who presumably is also the chairman) was the only "non-staffer" on the committee and thus almost certainly had full responsibility already.
The rest of the board should ask for his resignation.
It's just Andy Terrel who's in both, right? That's not a huge amount of overlap. Enough to potentially cause a problem, but 6 members of the board being different (and a whole lot of public backlash) should probably be enough to resolve this.
The 'overlapping person/people' (Andy Terrel in this case) should recuse themselves. Even then, it is no guarantee of impartial results, given that the committee reports to the board.
> Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors, minus those involved, to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.
Ok, I'm not heavily steeped in this, but at first glance this seems like total bullshit.
Note that the original complaint was both 1) that the code of conduct people were being, well, total assholes, and 2) that the complaints were so obviously ridiculous that the entire exercise seemed like it could only be a power trip for those involved.
The apology addressed neither. They apologized for being unclear about what stage of the investigation they were in. No apology for laughing at Jeremy's distress, no apology for the witch hunt, etc.
The grand remedy? Replace 3/4 of the people on the committee.
Why would you expect people who have shown little empathy up to this point and seem to enjoy their sense of power to suddenly act different when confronted? It's a bureaucratic BS statement from people who revel in bureaucratic BS.
The CoC members should all be expelled from the NumFocus community. They have done far more to make NumFocus a a non-welcoming community than just about any CoC violation.
Another option is to just directly fund developers instead of through organizations. I tried to find the audits on the NumFOCUS website, but I wasn't able to find how much of the donations they are getting gets to the developers themselves. I would imagine, that it could be even under 50%.
At very least the action is something to point to, and maintain reputation. Almost 5 years ago a hostile employer did this to me and since then most of my huge former network built over 15+ years have stopped associating with me and are starting to assume I’m mentally ill and hung up on it, but in truth I simply can’t work anymore due to the reference check process having been compromised and former associates lacking support.
I’m now forced to go through legal channels to clear my name. If I can get an acknowledgement of their mistake then life will get much easier to explain. Too bad about the content, non-apology, but I’d not undetestimate the act alone.
Except their apology doesn't do what you're saying as it doesn't say he was innocent or that he didn't violate the CoC. It simply says they didn't fully follow their process and that if he wants to appeal the board will hear it. As I read it he is still considered guilty unless the board accepts the appeal.
edit: And since he seems too emotionally exhausted by this to deal with it further there will possibly be no appeal filed and thus he will stay guilty by default.
What I’m saying is that the statement “and they apologized” is true and very significant. It’s extremely uncommon to get that much. Picturing a job interview scenario. People are all emotion and that fragment does the job. Not picturing IRC with a bunch of invested people here, in which case yes, your point is logically valid there.
In my experience the people doing the interview are not at all emotional during a job interview. They're coldly cautious if anything. So an apology that isn't a full retraction won't matter since the person is still a potential risk in their eyes.
The apology is so vague and PR-washed that it’s nearly impossible to draw any conclusions.
At this point, they won’t even acknowledge that the initial accusations were unreasonable. In fact, it appears they’ve simply transferred the investigation up a level to the board of directors so it can continue.
A real apology would have acknowledged that they mishandled the situation and taken steps to resolve it as fast as possible. This feels more like an attempt to justify their actions, move the goal posts about what they did wrong, and move the investigation back behind closed doors within NumFOCUS.
Please just publicly acknowledge that this should have been resolved within a day or two by absolving Jeremey of wrongdoing, and without this never ending inquisition that now involves even more and higher-ranking individuals at NumFOCUS.
This is such a simple issue that never should have gone this far.
In the past many societies had a rule where if you falsely accused someone, once it had been found you falsely accused them, you would suffer the same penalties that they would have suffered. Maybe it is time to bring back those rules for CoC complaints.
...which is why they take such glee in exercising arbitrary power...they're otherwise a collection of over-educated nobodies who can't figure out why more degrees doesn't equal more money like mom said it would
i dont think he would take the call, given his response. they weren't fair from the start, dismissive and one sided, and now have a non-apology for PR purposes.
They broke into his house, robbed him blind, burned it down, and are now apologizing for the communication error of not having knocked. Next time they'll work on the communication - the one sided dismissive process and lack of fair treatment, and the ridiculous nature of the issue itself, is not in the apology.
I find it disgraceful how mealy-mouthed their response was, how they conveniently spread the blame out across the committee, don't directly address where the ball was dropped (and by who), don't even address not letting him tell his side of the story, and then trying to excuse their actions with a distracting paragraph about why the video hadn't been posted.
I found Jeremy's post yesterday [0] very measured and clear, this on the other hand was a garbage "apology" that sidestepped any real responsibility or consequences.
The word doxing means different things to different people, but please don't bring anyone's personal details into a thread as ammunition in an argument or to rile up a public posse against them. That's not what HN is for.
I respectfully disagree with the stance you are taking. I did not post their names in an attempt to provide "ammunition in an argument or to rile up a public posse against them", I did it because they refused to sign their names and I saved people the step of having to dig into it themselves. I simply copy-pasted their (public) information, this is not "personal details" these are numbers and emails associated with their organization. Should all of the other comments that link to the same page (with the information I copy-pasted) be removed as well? I'm genuinely confused by this. Is tim@apple.com also considered "personal details" in a thread about an unpopular move by Apple? I'm trying to figure out where the line is here.
This is a little bit like saying that it doesn't count that you piled fuel on a fire because it was just deadwood that you collected from down the road.
There's a difference between information sitting on a website and copying it into a thread that's primed with indignation. The only reason to do the latter is to incite people. Maybe there's even a good reason, but it's overshadowed by the damage that mob dynamics do to the community. This is an area where it's prudent to err on the side of caution.
I’m honestly amazed that they wrote even this small potatoes. So much of the sniping around codes of conduct is so filled with enmity and nobody seems to ever want to back down, even when they seem to have been clearly in the wrong or overreacting.
Personally I have no interest in this whole conference circuit. The knives are out; people who leverage these situations are just nasty, nasty, nasty, and often totally shameless. I don’t need that in my life, and whatever meager recognition would come from giving talks at conferences is unbelievably not worth it. Not even close.
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[ 7938 ms ] story [ 1669 ms ] threadGiven the circumstances, they should do better than an amorphous "we".
https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct#persons-responsible
I recommend immediately establishing a Code of Conduct Enforcement Team Code of Conduct. And since any CoC is meaningless when not enforced, there needs to be a Code of Conduct Enforcement Team Code of Conduct Enforcement Team.
Leah Silen, Executive Director
Andy Terrel, President
Nicole Foster, Executive Operations Administrator
Walker Chabbott, Communications & Marketing Manager
NumFOCUS Board of Directors:
Andy Terrel
Lorena Barba
Jane Herriman
Sylvain Corlay
Katrina Riehl
Stéfan van der Walt
James Powell
I was wondering how much overlap there would be.
edit:
In my opinion, code of conducts become a distraction and a cause for worry to anyone contributing to these projects because someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended.
Yes, a Code of Conduct is a good way to say no to harrasment, racism and stuff that's generally frowned upon.
But, as this case proves, they devolve too easily into thought police level crap, where the "Code" becomes vague and filled with useless buzzwords, that could be construed to fit any situation someone disagrees with.
And with the current cancel culture, there is a real, verifiable threat to people's livelihood when they are judged by Twitter Court for breaking a CoC.
- There is no presumption of innocence.
- There are no formal rights of an accused.
- There is no clear delineation of what constitutes a violation.
- There is no right to confront those making an allegation.
- There are no negative consequences for making a false allegation.
- All of which leads to a system whereby people are subjected to ostracism and official censure for violating unwritten rules, all without proof. A person can find their life ruined merely by saying the wrong thing or in the wrong tone, all while being told that the system is just and fair and seeking to protect the vulnerable. It is dishonest, it is gaslighting, and it is frankly Soviet.
I am a criminal defense attorney with experience in personnel law. I know first hand how important the presumption of innocence is, and I know first hand how disastrous these personnel management "policies" can be.
> All of which leads to a system whereby people are subjected to ostracism and official censure for violating unwritten rules, all without proof
Aka which hunt.
The downvoter crew has already arrived though.
It's not just people who are too green to know better. I've seen a user with a 2007 vintage account and >30k karma extol the virtue of smear campaigns.
Scary times.
Plus, in many cases they don't get applied equally anyway, the project leader is going to get handled a lot differently than a random contributor. AKA one gets sent to etiquette school, the other gets banned from the conference and mailing list.
In abstract the CoC are fine if are written and enforced by impartial angels with well developed common sense.
The people that usually push for them are for politics and power.
It's easy to see codes of conduct as draconian or unnecessary if you can't empathize with the people they're designed to protect. I'm not saying the CoC system is perfect or that there aren't false positives, but your statement here is _dramatically_ privileged.
Is it just arbitrary? Do you just depend on more people enforcing their views out to stop harassment? If so, then why not codify it?
Yes. Just as "kind" is. To the reporters and the officials, "saying somebody is wrong" is unkind, so it's clearly arbitrary.
That did piss off quite a number of people, who filed much more hard-pressing (in their opinion) issues (like, some useful editor functionality being broken) and received precisely zero feedback.
That is exactly my point. Some committee member doesn't get to say "that may be offensive to someone" either. They need to wait until someone actually reports being offended.
[1]: https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/
The problem is not the CoC, but the lack of accountability, oversight, and transparency in enforcement.
It's not necessarily the case that you have to spend nearly as much on a code of conduct system where the ultimate worst-case scenario is that an innocent person is denied a platform or has the reputation tarnished in a reversible way.
As an example, the mozilla community participation guidelines (currently at version 3.1) are quite short and readable and many sections are essentially your "dress appropriately" example (i.e. "Be Respectful"), with quick a paragraph to clarify the idea.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part...
So another area where that type of thing can happen is in union negotiations. Unions in the US started out fighting for basic decent treatment - reasonable hours and pay, safer working conditions, etc... Some years ago I was in a manufacturing plant and the break (lunch) room had a big television in it. Turns out the union had demanded the TV in their most recent contract. Someone I was speaking to berated the union "those idiots demand a TV, don't they have real concerns?" I realized the problem is that the adversarial nature had grown so bad - probably on both sides - that nothing could be had without a negotiation and putting it in writing. That goes for work from the union: "that's not my job" or worse - "you're getting written up for doing something that's someone else's job" to the management "no we're not giving you anything we don't have to by contract". Once you start writing things down and trying to nit-pick it can lead to a terrible place where nothing is easy for anyone.
How many conferences did you run before CoC's became popular?
As a white, male engineer, I haven't ever found a need for codes of conduct because I've had the privilege of never having been harassed. This isn't the case for all groups, so it's best to have one.
This is what they're supposed to do. In reality, this is impossible because so many of the rules in a CoC are subjective, and therefore are enforced based on the opinions of the people enforcing the CoC.
> but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation.
This just gives the enforcers a sense of moral authority to impose their opinions, nothing more. I don't see that as a benefit of what is inevitably an incomplete document, and frequently poorly thought out as well.
Except... they don't.
They say things like (quoting from the NumFOCUS CoC):
> We will not accept harassment or other exclusionary behaviors, such as:
> ...
> Other unethical or unprofessional conduct
That leaves things wide open -- whatever the committee decides is "unprofessional" is hereby banned. How am I supposed to guess their mind?
One option is to designate someone or some group as arbiters / benevolent dictators, and have the rule of "If so-and-so decides you're making the place worse, you're not welcome." It's certainly effective. But it exacerbates Jeremy Howard's complaint - which is not so much about CoCs per se as about the group of people who enforced them and the way in which they did so. I don't think getting rid of CoCs will really solve that problem.
One option is to have a closed or invitation-only group - but that's at odds with the goals of many communities. (And it doesn't reliably solve the problem, it just makes it less likely you'd run into it.)
I think CoCs just become a new tool for a different subset of assholes to abuse. Yes it does suck for those who have a legitimate issue. I've yet to see how CoCs solve that problem in practice.
I'm on the fence on this issue but it's sounds like you're willfully misreading that statement.
Strongly disagree that empathy is unwanted, though; perhaps you are laboring under a narrow definition. Empathy cannot coexist with inaction.
You actually do mean this as an attack - you quite literally accused me of being "_dramatically_ privileged"
Maybe you meant it as an attack and maybe you didn't. If there was a HN CoC, maybe I'm the kind of asshole that would try to accuse you of abuse. See how easy it is to abuse the system?
(And yes, you could bring up to the moderators that this is an attack, but you could do that in the absence of any written rules, too, and if the moderators are the sort of people who would agree with that argument, then neither having nor not having written rules would save this forum.)
In your opinion. As the recipient of said 'claim' I took it as an attack. Maybe I'm an overly sensitive person, maybe it's the end of a long week and I'm just feeling cranky, either way it offended me. So in this fictional world I feel that I have been attacked, and the HN CoC frowns upon members hurting other members' feelings. What should be done?
I think the NumFOCUS CoC doesn't say that though (although it's ambiguous because it includes "Be kind" in the normative text, and I'd agree that's a problem), and other CoCs are more interested in the objective (or, at least, more objective) question of whether a personal attack actually happened than the question of whether a participant felt attacked. The Contributor Covenant, for instance, prohibits "Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks," to which 'I'm sorry you felt insulted, but this was not an insult' would be an adequate defense.
It does appear that the relevant sections of the NumFOCUS CoC aren't unique to them, though I can't tell exactly where they came from, and you have convinced me that this is a problem. (Geez, this is license proliferation all over again.) Thank you!
1) Liberal values are associated with privilege.
2) Because of this association we should embrace authoritarianism.
Is authoritarianism any less privileged? It assumes that the authorities are on your side and protecting your interests... that seems right down the middle of privilege. A low privilege person would probably benefit from liberal governance/norms that limit the damage hostile authorities can do.
A Liberal is anti-arbitrary power. In the context of formal governments and legal systems, that includes having written laws.
I would argue having a vague CoC which is designed to be interpreted and applied arbitrarily by power tripping bureaucrats actually increases arbitrary power.
Through the CoC, the committee here was empowered to persecute any action they didn't like. That's the opposite of Liberalism.
If you advocate for getting rid of CoCs, IMO, you have to have an answer for how actual harassment should be dealt with. Many people I've spoken to did not feel safe at tech events of the past because of rampant harassment that would be swept under the rug. The tech industry of 2020 is not prepared to return to that world.
It seems like step one of dealing with harassment is to define it, which is the problem CoCs should solve. If you think they are failing, what is your alternative, if it's not to improve them?
Here's an idea, limit CoCs to actual harassment, with a warning. It's not harassment, definitionally, unless you persist after being asked to stop.
And it should be actual harassment, targeted at a person, rather than "this person's views or public statements offend me".
I don't like this personal attack and I feel less safe on this board because of it. Will someone go after this poster on my behalf please?
1) a Code of Conduct is necessary to enforce order 2) a Code of Conduct will prevent or discourage disorder
I think that 1) and 2) are both demonstrably false.
...specifically under what is currently the top comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24927123
In regards to CoCs, sometimes this snowflake mentality seems to go hand in hand, because they are tailored to the most fragile of sensibilities, which is a Bad Thing(tm). I'm not sure how this "shatters" someone or what that even means (not trying to attack here, as it just doesn't make any sense).
- Discriminatory jokes and language - Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms - Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior
These are largely subjective, so why bother caring about what you might have said to set someone off?
So what if you won't take up speaking engagement requests? Duh. As we know that these CoCs are ridiculous and someone might want to seriously consider having nothing to do with organizations that utilize them.
He can post up talks on Youtube if he wants to be heard, especially now.
TL;DR Jeremy did a talk and it turned out strangely so nothing's lost here.
Whether they’re effective in practice, or if there are more effective methods is another question. But it’s hard to overstate the importance of their intentions.
The programming world historically has been the domain of white men, and these CoCs are often a response to the fact that things have changed.
Any talk about "CoCs are bad" or "CoCs are just for people to arbitrarily impose their morality" are wrong. We need guidelines, and we need to be prepared to refine those guidelines and how they are enforced on a continual basis.
That dismissive talk brings this quote to mind: "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality seems like oppression."
Just for the record: I'm privileged (and generally pretty polite/non-offensive I hope), I've rarely needed to deal with any of the issues addressed by CoCs, and I've also never really dealt with any of the issues others claim are caused by CoCs. I don't personally have a strong opinion on them, and lean towards trusting activists when they say things need to change. I'm just commenting on why discussions about them are so frequently unproductive: there's both misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation, because it's not codes of conduct in general that people - possibly wrong people! - don't like.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...
The (intended) gist of my comments is to push back against the tactic of "look a stupid rule or stupid enforcement of rules; this is why we need to get rid of rules."
“Motte”: unobjectionable position no one would disagree with.
“Bailey”: more extreme position; the one you actually believe and that people take issue with. Must not directly logically follow from the motte per se.
Motte & Bailey (informal) fallacy: Jumping between the motte and the bailey for rhetorical effect, as convenient.
In this case, the motte is “codes of conduct are just like the HN guidelines, they’re everywhere and no one objects”. The bailey is the actual CoCs in question, and the culture of pushing projects, conferences, etc. to adopt them, which tends to be rooted in “liberal identity politics” or whatever you want to call it.
When people criticize the latter (the bailey), advocates retreat to the former (the motte) - they’re just normal guidelines like “be nice”, basic manners, who would object to that? - and then when the argument is over continue pushing for the latter.
Who is pushing what particular enforcement mechanisms? The Contributor Covenant is probably the most popular and most hated code of conduct. It just says community leaders will investigate and take appropriate action. It's very open ended.
I believe the author was referring to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
What I am saying is that even if all conference attendees agreed that the ten commandments were at the root of their ethical behavior (consider, for example, a conference among sects of Christianity that are focused on those commandments), Even then it would be useful for the conference to have specific statements about whether (for example) sexist language was permitted or not permitted during talks.
How is that even remotely better? It doesn't address... any... of the behavior that led to this type of CoC.
> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture”
The person at the center of this actually disagrees with you. Having a vague CoC that was then not even really followed by the committee should not damn all CoCs. If you only see the worst most poorly executed examples of something then of course you'd be against them but that's not fair.
Before this discovery, I would have guessed that "someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended" was a much larger percentage of the cases than it is. I also would have thought that anything that makes a lot of people uncomfortable that they might accidentally cross the line is worse than the current harm.
Now that I've much more personal experience with what it means to be a person who is an actual target of harassment, I realize that these edge cases make up a tiny proportion of the harassment that happens. And when you bring the hammer down on people who are unequivocally harassers, it is important that you do so in a way that's fair and not subject to recharacterization as unjust later, when no one who was there is a part of the conversation.
A great many good people being uncomfortable is unfortunate, but I also think it's a sign of the kind of cognitive dissonance that I experienced before playing with my wife. I had never experienced anything other than the usual toxicity, so I naively assumed that it couldn't be that prevalent. The fact that a CoC feels like overkill is, perhaps, evidence for the proposition that the problem with harassment is much more real than it might feel to those of us who are not targets of harassment.
And the kind of people who will harass someone so shamelessly are exactly the kind of people who will boldly lie about not being given a reason for their discipline, or who will loudly complain about the rules not being explicit, even though it's incredibly obvious to everyone present that their behavior was beyond the pale.
The edge cases are edge cases, and unfortunate, but I don't believe most cases are edge cases.
And I’ve got an email from Riot that they banned someone I’d reported in Valorant, so they don’t do nothing. I don’t think either of us have enough evidence to know whether it’d be better or worse without the CoC.
To the contrary, it's pretty easy to deduce that the CoC had nothing to do with the ban of the player you reported. Do you genuinely believe that a "CoC enforcement committee" sat down to review demos of the reported player and analyze whether their actions constituted CoC violations? No, that process is reserved for political enemies and occasional power trips. The ban was almost certainly a result of an automated process. For example, in CS:GO, if a player receives significantly more abuse reports than average, they will be muted by default. No human review is involved. I imagine the Valorant ban is something similar, because there is no way Riot could afford to pay actual humans to go through these reports.
CoCs are problematic like much of lived human experience, but they're better than a structureless void that allows people to discriminate without a formal process that makes sure they can be held to account.
don't be a jerk
Everybody knows what this means. Nearly everybody will agree on how to behave.
I disagree. This whole situation with Jeremy is because of vague rules just like this. If I tell you that you are "wrong", you might consider me to be "jerk" and we can do this whole song and dance.
What communities are trying to police and prevent is outright sexism, racism, etc. For that, being explicit is better than just offering that someone is "being a jerk".
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/amy-coney-barrett-preference-defini...
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/merriam-webster-barrett-se...
Arguing about the meaning of words couldn't possibly be less to the point.
Just like he who controls the present controls the past, he who controls the dictionary controls the discourse.
I don't mean this in a snarky "get outta here" way, but: why are you here? Why not any other forum, tech-related or otherwise? Why not 4chan? Whatever the reason is, is the answer not quite likely to be at least in part made possible by the CoC and its strict enforcement?
https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/
Wow.
So I don't know how to feel about anything anymore.
> Joel (who I greatly respect, and consider an asset to the data science community) was not involved in NumFOCUS’s action, was not told about it, and did not support it.
According to him, now, he disagrees with that assertion in their apology. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24946688.
The apology states that this was a "crucial miscommunication that we take responsibility for"
OTOH, from Jeremy Howard's account it really does sound like the committee doubled down on that miscommunication so often that it seems hard to believe that's all it was.
Here is why.
His stated recollection is that they said, “that is what the reporters stated, and what we found” and to his asking why his statement was not requested, “we all watched the video, so we could see for ourselves the violation”.
What they said in his version is very clear. That is not a miscommunication. Calling it a "miscommunication" sounds like nothing more than the best excuse that they came up with for themselves.
Therefore this reduces down to a simple "he said, she said" type of conflict. What I have to judge on is what is publicly known of his character, their incentives, and indications about their character. He has a solid public reputation as an upstanding person. Their incentives are to minimize perception of wrongdoing in their actions. Both the fact that they got into this mess, and their non-apology in attempting to get out of it, suggests that they lack even a shred of integrity.
Therefore it is his word against theirs. He is believable. They are not. And so I conclude that they are lying on this point.
And it doesn't even need to be seen by the involved people as mean, if they have such a "toxic" type relationship. But a Code of Conduct is also a bit about the perception of others, and how it sells a project.
In his statement there are hints indicating in this direction. He mentions his talk was made as a parody. Parodies by nature are on a thin line between being funny englightment, and being mean bullying. So it can be the case that his see himself as funny, while other might see it as a mean insult.
And he mentions some unwritten rules which were applied to him specifically because his talk was somewhat special because it was an opener(?) or something. Which means he got more attention than your regular talk.
What is a little more troubling is that he (A) describes codes of conduct in detail and repeatedly affirms his allegiance to the general idea behind CoCs, including describing "previous sexual assault allegations" as "behaviors" he "strongly agrees" should be stopped. (B) He goes some way towards portraying himself as a victim, describing in graphic detail his lack of "emotional resilience". I wonder if he realized what a thin line he was walking with (A), because he now has a "previous CoC violation allegation" on his permanent record, regardless of his acquittal.
In other words, he very strongly backs the spirit, letter, and zeitgeist of CoCs before describing why he thinks he did not violate them in this specific case. I think these were very wise tactical moves, although they leave a bad taste in my mouth, and I can't help but wonder if this approach affected the outcome. I don't recall seeing an apology ever given, let alone changes instituted, for CoC violation allegations.
I wonder how much this has affected his lifetime earning potential?
Couple that with the "public apology" seems like an open and shut lawsuit that many lawyers would be happy to take on contingency.
The thing that seemed to me oddest about all this is that Jeremy says the committee spoke to two reporters before hearing his side of the story, and before issuing a judgment. It is not totally clear if they were speaking to those two reporters about his case.
I would imagine that an obvious way for CoC committees to minimize their own liability would be to at least avoid talking to reporters before they have issued a judgment. Really, the process should be totally private until a guilty judgment has been made, and if the person is declared innocent, then the whole thing should disappear without ever having been made public.
To use an extreme comparison: I suspect that most of the people who are falsely accused of murder still believe that murder should be illegal.
He goes a very, very different route. I think that different route gave him a better outcome. I think it is worth thinking about why that is. We are not talking about an accusation of sexual harassment or assault here, we are talking about an almost textbook case of how CoC accusations can be overextended to absurdity. Yet he chooses to defend CoCs.
One possible explanation of this is that he is trying to draw a distinction between things that should be "legitimate" CoC violations, and his case. Another possible explanation is that he is trying to say that "Look, I strongly believe that <murder should be illegal>, really strongly. That makes me one of the good guys. Would a good guy commit murder?" The latter take is more cynical, but I think it would be more effective than my gut reaction.
https://blog.jupyter.org/jeremy-howard-8dace7b4a34a
For people like myself needing backstory.
Good on them. That said, maybe, uh, try and train your folks if you want them to enforce things like that.
And the sorts of people who try to implement CoCs and get on enforcement boards are almost invariably the sort of busybodies that see it as a club to beat their enemies with, which is why I'm opposed to them.
Let's say Jeremy just walked away quietly in disgust and didn't say anything publicly. What would have they done? I would guess that they would have chucked it under "We did a great job enforcing the code of conduct. Problem solved".
Another good example of the impact of HN was the Triplebyte profile controversy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837) a few months ago, which 100% would have gone through unchanged if it weren't for HN driving awareness. (followup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23303037)
Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors, minus those involved, to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.
Edit: I don't really think the parent comment needed to be flagged ...
You can vouch:
- click on the timestamp
- click vouch
- IIRC dang will taking vouching privileges if he spots someone abusing it
Please use, and use it with caution :-)
(Also now that you know the timestamp trick: there's also a "favorite" link there to mark the link as a favorite. You can find favorited posts and comments in your profile page.)
Board of Directors: https://numfocus.org/community/people CoC Committee: https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct#persons-responsible
The overlap is one person: Andy Terrel, NumFOCUS President.
The rest of the board should ask for his resignation.
> Because of the missteps of this committee, we have asked the NumFOCUS Board of Directors, minus those involved, to take over the work of the committee as outlined in the appeals process of our enforcement guide.
This was possibly edited later into the article.
Note that the original complaint was both 1) that the code of conduct people were being, well, total assholes, and 2) that the complaints were so obviously ridiculous that the entire exercise seemed like it could only be a power trip for those involved.
The apology addressed neither. They apologized for being unclear about what stage of the investigation they were in. No apology for laughing at Jeremy's distress, no apology for the witch hunt, etc.
The grand remedy? Replace 3/4 of the people on the committee.
Did I miss something here?
I’m now forced to go through legal channels to clear my name. If I can get an acknowledgement of their mistake then life will get much easier to explain. Too bad about the content, non-apology, but I’d not undetestimate the act alone.
edit: And since he seems too emotionally exhausted by this to deal with it further there will possibly be no appeal filed and thus he will stay guilty by default.
At this point, they won’t even acknowledge that the initial accusations were unreasonable. In fact, it appears they’ve simply transferred the investigation up a level to the board of directors so it can continue.
A real apology would have acknowledged that they mishandled the situation and taken steps to resolve it as fast as possible. This feels more like an attempt to justify their actions, move the goal posts about what they did wrong, and move the investigation back behind closed doors within NumFOCUS.
Please just publicly acknowledge that this should have been resolved within a day or two by absolving Jeremey of wrongdoing, and without this never ending inquisition that now involves even more and higher-ranking individuals at NumFOCUS.
This is such a simple issue that never should have gone this far.
https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476407
2. Is this org of any significant importance?
3. Why should I care.
Or, am I being to mean and should someone here complain about my topics?
Meanwhile, is numfocus really on the map. Until yesterday, I never heard about them before.
the world is much bigger than your sphere of awareness.
They broke into his house, robbed him blind, burned it down, and are now apologizing for the communication error of not having knocked. Next time they'll work on the communication - the one sided dismissive process and lack of fair treatment, and the ridiculous nature of the issue itself, is not in the apology.
This is PR.
Leah Silen, Executive Director leah@numfocus.org +1 (512) 831-2870 or +1 (972) 896-3688
Andy Terrel, President andy@numfocus.org
Nicole Foster, Executive Operations Administrator nicole@numfocus.org
Walker Chabbott, Communications & Marketing Manager walker@numfocus.org
I find it disgraceful how mealy-mouthed their response was, how they conveniently spread the blame out across the committee, don't directly address where the ball was dropped (and by who), don't even address not letting him tell his side of the story, and then trying to excuse their actions with a distracting paragraph about why the video hadn't been posted.
I found Jeremy's post yesterday [0] very measured and clear, this on the other hand was a garbage "apology" that sidestepped any real responsibility or consequences.
[0] https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ (HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There's a difference between information sitting on a website and copying it into a thread that's primed with indignation. The only reason to do the latter is to incite people. Maybe there's even a good reason, but it's overshadowed by the damage that mob dynamics do to the community. This is an area where it's prudent to err on the side of caution.
Personally I have no interest in this whole conference circuit. The knives are out; people who leverage these situations are just nasty, nasty, nasty, and often totally shameless. I don’t need that in my life, and whatever meager recognition would come from giving talks at conferences is unbelievably not worth it. Not even close.