> As a side bar, I honestly believe that a lot of objections to CoCs stem from the fact that people are either not aware of the group size growth, or are active

> As a side bar, I honestly believe that a lot of objections to CoCs stem from the fact that people are either not aware of the group size growth, or are actively grieving for the time when their group was small enough they didn't need one. I find the problem is usually that these sorts of documents are invented by a minority that does not have the support of the majority, or they are sold poorly to the group as a whole. This is why culture changes from major group-wide issues stick and become permanent much easier in any group size. If I am member of a group and I arrive from one day and there just suddenly is a new CoC where there wasn't before I am extremely put off by it, because the CoC rarely describes the group as a whole but a particular mindset about the group by a minority. If you are going to do a culture change properly you need to sell it to the group of both the power players of the group (the people who are looked up to informally) as well as the formal people 'in charge.' When I see it fails and when it has the most kickback is when they don't bother to try and seek out the power players of the group, because then the subgroups of the whole talk amongst themselves and can't see the reasoning and the people that are leaders in those subgroups aren't on board to bring reasoning into the discussion. If there is a mailing list that tries to enforce a CoC on a related IRC channel and the IRC channel isn't on board with the plan- you've got a completely unnecessary clash from people not seeking out to understand the community as a whole. This also happens just as much from people trying to make an organization Agile or some other methodology. If you don't do right to understand the group, move at a deliberate pace so the group as a whole can move with you, it just is not going to work. This is something I have dealt with many of times as both being an informal leader and the actual leader, and my direct feeling on CoC's is that if they exist they have to be deliberately vague to a point so that a discussion must occur. If they are too specific they become weapons for people until the people that are only moderately invested abandon the group along with the people that clearly don't fit the new policy depart. Sometimes this is filled out with new blood but just as often what made the community good from those that were passionate and invested in a group (# of creators to # of consumers) is completely lost. More often than not new members to the group can't contribute in that fashion for some time until they learn how they want to contribute. If you CoC or some other policy by aggressive moderation at the beginning you set culture for the entire group, if you tack it on later you will leave some % behind but it is often not obvious to people how large that % is unless you do it in a managed fashion.