8 ms·

Nanomsg: Stepping Down

84 points by danieljh 11y ago

exolymph 11y ago
I disagree with him regarding the usefulness of CoCs -- spelling out the rules of engagement can be powerful -- but I respect that he put his money where his mouth is, so to speak.
- optimuspaul 11y ago
  I tend to agree with you. I do think that the common sense "don't be a dick" shouldn't need to be explicitly expressed as a rule we all follow. But it should also be common sense not to put your hands near a spinning metal blade, but we have those warnings on lawnmowers. I think where a CoC provides it value is defining the procedures for when the CoC is violated, which it no doubt will be.
  - exolymph 11y ago
    I think Rachel Nabors' article on the topic is excellent: http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/ http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/
  - gedy 11y ago
    > we have those warnings on lawnmowers because of lawsuit-happy culture, not due to lack of common sense. Rachel Nabor's article is interesting, but not sure how a CoC fixes dealing with a boorish weirdo outside the conference.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      Do you imply that maiming should be a common occurrence or that warnings prevent no injuries?
      - gedy 11y ago
        In this context I'm implying CoC do not "prevent" nor the lack thereof causes bad behavior. This BTW seems to get to the crux of what half of his decision was about. If he thinks CoC are worthless, that is not the same thing as believe abuse should be a common occurrence.
- munchbunny 11y ago
  I also disagree with him about CoC's, though for a reason that he doesn't really address. Anybody who has lived for long enough knows at least one person who can be unkind out of obliviousness, not knowing better, or not being aware of social cues. Also, people in disagreements get mad or passionate, and that tends to incite people to cross the line of professional respect. Passion is good, hostility is not. I've had to remind normally kind people that I manage to "not do ____ again" on multiple occasions, with the implicit threat of firing them. My conclusion from my own experiences is that "don't be a dick" is not universally understood, and people will make mistakes, often unintentionally. So I think a CoC is useful as one of many different ways any organization has to remind its members to be kind. It's still up to the administrators to enforce things, but a CoC is a useful reminder especially to incoming members to be aware of their conduct.
aidenn0 11y ago
I disagree with him both about the usefulness and harm of CoCs. There are jackasses, and not having preemptively adopted a CoC, they can leverage the lack of clear rules to divide the community. On the other-hand, once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant, which is what one should really care about.
- gedy 11y ago
  > once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant Maybe projects can adopt CoCs that address that too, and cover both sides of the coin.
SwellJoe 11y ago
I think the value of a CoC is merely to signal to people who have experienced abuse or disrespect in communities before (which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time) that the community is on their side when sexists or racists show up. That has some value. It doesn't really matter to the majority, and it doesn't actually alter how people behave (generally), nor does it really alter a project leaders ability to excise a toxic person. But, it does say, "We will excise toxic people. We will try to make you feel welcome here, even if you have been made to feel unwelcome elsewhere." Even if that's all it does (which I think it probably is), it is enough to make it worth doing in most cases. (Which reminds me that I don't have a code of conduct on any of the open source projects or communities I work on, but I'll make it a project for the first quarter of this year.)
- WizzleKake 11y ago
  which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time This is an odd assumption to make.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    Is it? It may seem that way to a white dude (I'm a white dude, and I suffered from the delusion that tech communities were inclusive for decades), surrounded by white dudes. You're not alone...lots of people think tech is inclusive. I always assumed that our communities were more welcoming than usual, despite the evidence to the contrary in the form of such low historic participation by women and people of color in tech. But, I've been told it is true from enough women and people of color that I believe it to be true. It's been discussed at great lengths by women and people of color on blogs, on mailing lists, on twitter, etc. I'm not sure what it would take to convince you, but I probably don't have the words to do it, so I'm not gonna try. For people who acknowledge that our communities do not have a history of being inclusive, it is probably useful to post a CoC in order to signal that we are aware of that history of sexism and racism and acknowledge our willingness to take responsibility for it when it happens in communities we manage, if even in a small way.
nautical 11y ago
CoCs do layout some rules for engagement but I believe there should be a positivity in the engagement itself. There should not be abuse in any form , either by disrespecting others or pinching others that they are abusing this segment of Coc (which might happen in some cases) . Disrespecting others in any form is not acceptable and hence I think Coc may not be a perfect solution . I can completely see his point .
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- kragniz 11y ago
  I think the stepping down was to allow his message (this post) to be more visible.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
mahouse 11y ago
CoCs are worthless. If a community is not able to detect poisonous behaviour by itself, a .txt file won't help.
- davis 11y ago
  You may think they are "worthless" but clearly some people think they they have value. Which one do you think is more poisonous? Making a fuss over the maintainer wanting to impose one or just accepting that someone else sees value in something you don't and agreeing to the CoC.
  - nijiko 11y ago
    Why should someone have to agree simply because someone else does, and accept it? The other person should have the same approach, accept that others do not see it as a worthwhile and not have it.
- VLM 11y ago
  They are not worthless. They are a form of social signalling showing who's trendy, who thought of it first, a form of personal aggrandizement. The fundamental outlook behind them is the idea the general public is inherently inferior, savage, and without rules it would be a world eternally red in tooth and claw, and only I am a superior enough leader, better than all the rest of you, to set the moral and ethical standards of our culture, now everyone get in line behind my moral authority, and appreciate my public declaration of my own superiority. They're obnoxious, unnecessary, and counterproductive, but not worthless.
teh_klev 11y ago
He gives off mixed signals here: https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11 https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11 Now, me personally, I couldn’t give a crap whether a project has a CoC or not. Frankly, if someone acts irredeemably toxically in this project, I won’t feel like I need to have a CoC to justify taking corrective action — I’ll just take the action So, I’m definitely not going to “require” a CoC; if someone acts like an ass then they can expect me to take some kind of action. But then comes out with: I’m pretty disheartened by the intensely negative response this suggestion has drawn; I'm at a loss as to why he didn't just let the discussion roll for a bit without expressing his "disheartened" feelings and if the outcome from active members is "we don't think this is a good idea" then let it go. He's already stated that thus far the project has no known issues regarding conduct and that anyone being an asshat dickhead would be dealt with anyway. Odd.
rdtsc 11y ago
I don't understand. The people who are -1, what do they care if it is adopted? Is CoC that controversial? Are personal attacks, doxing, trolling and slurs part of their daily routine they will be seriously inconvenienced by inability to use them? --- * The use of sexualized language or imagery * Personal attacks * Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments * Public or private harassment * Publishing other's private information, such as physical or electronic addresses, without explicit permission * Other unethical or unprofessional conduct --- As a maintainer they should have just said "There is a CoC now. Check it out: <link>. Happy new year everyone".
- VLM 11y ago
  Its philosophical. Note how you discuss if the CoC is controversial, not the maintainer wanting to enforce it, or how you phrase it as "there is a CoC" rather than "the maintainer will apply force as necessary". Folks with agency or autonomy will personally act to eliminate harassment, without need for rules, for example. Troll on my turf, I will ban you. Not some set of rules taking action, a human (that being me) will exert authority (that being the mighty banhammer) and that's how it will be. There are no abstract rules or rule lawyering involved. The CoC view is passively sugar coating some abstract set of rules which will enforce itself, kinda. Its very weird because the person applying the CoC is too passive and has too little agency to, say, wield the banhammer and eliminate the threat without need of formal rules and regulations. Yet, has enough agency to force everyone else to work under a CoC, which simultaneously implies the same people that can't autonomously be trusted to exhibit common sense will none the less be forced by the rules to apply the rules they were too timid to apply by themselves without the CoC. Its very weird logic twisting. If you trust individual leaders, the CoC is useless because the have the agency to wield the banhammer with no need for rules. If you don't trust the leaders, the CoC is useless because they won't enforce it. So what is the use of a CoC? Well, for one thing instead of banhammer swinging we can raise awareness and have a debating party about what violates the abstract rules. No one can be kicked out without a long painful debate. Its a rule's lawyer's paradise rather than a developers paradise. CoC's are very passive, someone else will enforce the rules. That paradoxically leads to worse behavior. Pretending you're not in a benign despotism merely confuses and slows down necessary responses by all concerned. Its sort of a generic opposition to all that is Dilbertian, along the lines of not requiring casual IRC / SMS message conversations to be conducted as per "Robert's Rules of Order" Its not that the rules are in themselves bad, its that if you think you need Roberts Rules of Order for IRC something is hopelessly off the tracks and you can only hope you don't show up as a satire in a Dilbert or xkcd cartoon. Maybe a bad bar analogy is the bartender tosses out obnoxious drunks. Installing a set of formal rules that drunkards must be formally recognized by the chair of the meeting before speaking as per Roberts Rules and if you don't then an abstract someone should toss you out implies you're probably in one messed up bar.
SFjulie1 11y ago
Most people demand CoC when they have not talent and want to be respected per status. CoC is a proof of failure in leadership, respect is earned.
nijiko 11y ago
I have attempted to ascertain the need of a CoC for this community by reading through the mailing list and issues... The more that I read through it, the less I see the need for one. It simply appears as a power play from this individual user, as such is identified by this lengthy blog post which signals some red flags. The previous owner says it all himself pretty clearly: > The current attempts to adopt CoC in various FOSS projects are IMO doomed for similar reasons. It has zero effect on abusers (no abuser thinks of himself as an abuser) and the message it sends to decent folks is: "There's an elite in the community that will decide what's good and what's bad and enforce it by censoring your emails/posts/contributions." Which in turn erodes trust within the community and, consequently, its ability to spontaneously deal with abuse.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
protomyth 11y ago
I found Martin Sustrik's comment[1] very informative. It is a bit of history and also states some of the fears of this CoC additions to projects. His idea about "abuse postmortems" seems a lot more workable. 1) https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7 https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7
jgalt212 11y ago
We as a community should be embarrassed that a significant portion of our community believes Codes of Conduct are necessary.
- CharlesW 11y ago
  We should be embarrassed that they're necessary for some groups to feel safe. As we see in this thread, whether CoC "mean something" or "are needed" aren't absolutes — clearly they are to some, and aren't to others. The key for me is that they're not important to people who don't need them to feel safe, and vice-versa.

84 points by danieljh 11y ago

I disagree with him regarding the usefulness of CoCs -- spelling out the rules of engagement can be powerful -- but I respect that he put his money where his mouth is, so to speak.

optimuspaul 11y ago
I tend to agree with you. I do think that the common sense "don't be a dick" shouldn't need to be explicitly expressed as a rule we all follow. But it should also be common sense not to put your hands near a spinning metal blade, but we have those warnings on lawnmowers. I think where a CoC provides it value is defining the procedures for when the CoC is violated, which it no doubt will be.
- exolymph 11y ago
  I think Rachel Nabors' article on the topic is excellent: http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/ http://rachelnabors.com/2015/09/01/code-of-conduct/
- gedy 11y ago
  > we have those warnings on lawnmowers because of lawsuit-happy culture, not due to lack of common sense. Rachel Nabor's article is interesting, but not sure how a CoC fixes dealing with a boorish weirdo outside the conference.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Do you imply that maiming should be a common occurrence or that warnings prevent no injuries?
    - gedy 11y ago
      In this context I'm implying CoC do not "prevent" nor the lack thereof causes bad behavior. This BTW seems to get to the crux of what half of his decision was about. If he thinks CoC are worthless, that is not the same thing as believe abuse should be a common occurrence.
munchbunny 11y ago
I also disagree with him about CoC's, though for a reason that he doesn't really address. Anybody who has lived for long enough knows at least one person who can be unkind out of obliviousness, not knowing better, or not being aware of social cues. Also, people in disagreements get mad or passionate, and that tends to incite people to cross the line of professional respect. Passion is good, hostility is not. I've had to remind normally kind people that I manage to "not do ____ again" on multiple occasions, with the implicit threat of firing them. My conclusion from my own experiences is that "don't be a dick" is not universally understood, and people will make mistakes, often unintentionally. So I think a CoC is useful as one of many different ways any organization has to remind its members to be kind. It's still up to the administrators to enforce things, but a CoC is a useful reminder especially to incoming members to be aware of their conduct.

aidenn0 11y ago

I disagree with him both about the usefulness and harm of CoCs. There are jackasses, and not having preemptively adopted a CoC, they can leverage the lack of clear rules to divide the community. On the other-hand, once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant, which is what one should really care about.

gedy 11y ago
> once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant Maybe projects can adopt CoCs that address that too, and cover both sides of the coin.

SwellJoe 11y ago

I think the value of a CoC is merely to signal to people who have experienced abuse or disrespect in communities before (which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time) that the community is on their side when sexists or racists show up. That has some value. It doesn't really matter to the majority, and it doesn't actually alter how people behave (generally), nor does it really alter a project leaders ability to excise a toxic person. But, it does say, "We will excise toxic people. We will try to make you feel welcome here, even if you have been made to feel unwelcome elsewhere." Even if that's all it does (which I think it probably is), it is enough to make it worth doing in most cases. (Which reminds me that I don't have a code of conduct on any of the open source projects or communities I work on, but I'll make it a project for the first quarter of this year.)

WizzleKake 11y ago
which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time This is an odd assumption to make.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  Is it? It may seem that way to a white dude (I'm a white dude, and I suffered from the delusion that tech communities were inclusive for decades), surrounded by white dudes. You're not alone...lots of people think tech is inclusive. I always assumed that our communities were more welcoming than usual, despite the evidence to the contrary in the form of such low historic participation by women and people of color in tech. But, I've been told it is true from enough women and people of color that I believe it to be true. It's been discussed at great lengths by women and people of color on blogs, on mailing lists, on twitter, etc. I'm not sure what it would take to convince you, but I probably don't have the words to do it, so I'm not gonna try. For people who acknowledge that our communities do not have a history of being inclusive, it is probably useful to post a CoC in order to signal that we are aware of that history of sexism and racism and acknowledge our willingness to take responsibility for it when it happens in communities we manage, if even in a small way.

nautical 11y ago

CoCs do layout some rules for engagement but I believe there should be a positivity in the engagement itself. There should not be abuse in any form , either by disrespecting others or pinching others that they are abusing this segment of Coc (which might happen in some cases) . Disrespecting others in any form is not acceptable and hence I think Coc may not be a perfect solution . I can completely see his point .

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kragniz 11y ago
I think the stepping down was to allow his message (this post) to be more visible.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

mahouse 11y ago

CoCs are worthless. If a community is not able to detect poisonous behaviour by itself, a .txt file won't help.

davis 11y ago
You may think they are "worthless" but clearly some people think they they have value. Which one do you think is more poisonous? Making a fuss over the maintainer wanting to impose one or just accepting that someone else sees value in something you don't and agreeing to the CoC.
- nijiko 11y ago
  Why should someone have to agree simply because someone else does, and accept it? The other person should have the same approach, accept that others do not see it as a worthwhile and not have it.
VLM 11y ago
They are not worthless. They are a form of social signalling showing who's trendy, who thought of it first, a form of personal aggrandizement. The fundamental outlook behind them is the idea the general public is inherently inferior, savage, and without rules it would be a world eternally red in tooth and claw, and only I am a superior enough leader, better than all the rest of you, to set the moral and ethical standards of our culture, now everyone get in line behind my moral authority, and appreciate my public declaration of my own superiority. They're obnoxious, unnecessary, and counterproductive, but not worthless.

teh_klev 11y ago

He gives off mixed signals here: https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11 https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11 Now, me personally, I couldn’t give a crap whether a project has a CoC or not. Frankly, if someone acts irredeemably toxically in this project, I won’t feel like I need to have a CoC to justify taking corrective action — I’ll just take the action So, I’m definitely not going to “require” a CoC; if someone acts like an ass then they can expect me to take some kind of action. But then comes out with: I’m pretty disheartened by the intensely negative response this suggestion has drawn; I'm at a loss as to why he didn't just let the discussion roll for a bit without expressing his "disheartened" feelings and if the outcome from active members is "we don't think this is a good idea" then let it go. He's already stated that thus far the project has no known issues regarding conduct and that anyone being an asshat dickhead would be dealt with anyway. Odd.

rdtsc 11y ago

I don't understand. The people who are -1, what do they care if it is adopted? Is CoC that controversial? Are personal attacks, doxing, trolling and slurs part of their daily routine they will be seriously inconvenienced by inability to use them? --- * The use of sexualized language or imagery * Personal attacks * Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments * Public or private harassment * Publishing other's private information, such as physical or electronic addresses, without explicit permission * Other unethical or unprofessional conduct --- As a maintainer they should have just said "There is a CoC now. Check it out: <link>. Happy new year everyone".

VLM 11y ago
Its philosophical. Note how you discuss if the CoC is controversial, not the maintainer wanting to enforce it, or how you phrase it as "there is a CoC" rather than "the maintainer will apply force as necessary". Folks with agency or autonomy will personally act to eliminate harassment, without need for rules, for example. Troll on my turf, I will ban you. Not some set of rules taking action, a human (that being me) will exert authority (that being the mighty banhammer) and that's how it will be. There are no abstract rules or rule lawyering involved. The CoC view is passively sugar coating some abstract set of rules which will enforce itself, kinda. Its very weird because the person applying the CoC is too passive and has too little agency to, say, wield the banhammer and eliminate the threat without need of formal rules and regulations. Yet, has enough agency to force everyone else to work under a CoC, which simultaneously implies the same people that can't autonomously be trusted to exhibit common sense will none the less be forced by the rules to apply the rules they were too timid to apply by themselves without the CoC. Its very weird logic twisting. If you trust individual leaders, the CoC is useless because the have the agency to wield the banhammer with no need for rules. If you don't trust the leaders, the CoC is useless because they won't enforce it. So what is the use of a CoC? Well, for one thing instead of banhammer swinging we can raise awareness and have a debating party about what violates the abstract rules. No one can be kicked out without a long painful debate. Its a rule's lawyer's paradise rather than a developers paradise. CoC's are very passive, someone else will enforce the rules. That paradoxically leads to worse behavior. Pretending you're not in a benign despotism merely confuses and slows down necessary responses by all concerned. Its sort of a generic opposition to all that is Dilbertian, along the lines of not requiring casual IRC / SMS message conversations to be conducted as per "Robert's Rules of Order" Its not that the rules are in themselves bad, its that if you think you need Roberts Rules of Order for IRC something is hopelessly off the tracks and you can only hope you don't show up as a satire in a Dilbert or xkcd cartoon. Maybe a bad bar analogy is the bartender tosses out obnoxious drunks. Installing a set of formal rules that drunkards must be formally recognized by the chair of the meeting before speaking as per Roberts Rules and if you don't then an abstract someone should toss you out implies you're probably in one messed up bar.

SFjulie1 11y ago

Most people demand CoC when they have not talent and want to be respected per status. CoC is a proof of failure in leadership, respect is earned.

nijiko 11y ago

I have attempted to ascertain the need of a CoC for this community by reading through the mailing list and issues... The more that I read through it, the less I see the need for one. It simply appears as a power play from this individual user, as such is identified by this lengthy blog post which signals some red flags. The previous owner says it all himself pretty clearly: > The current attempts to adopt CoC in various FOSS projects are IMO doomed for similar reasons. It has zero effect on abusers (no abuser thinks of himself as an abuser) and the message it sends to decent folks is: "There's an elite in the community that will decide what's good and what's bad and enforce it by censoring your emails/posts/contributions." Which in turn erodes trust within the community and, consequently, its ability to spontaneously deal with abuse.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

protomyth 11y ago

I found Martin Sustrik's comment[1] very informative. It is a bit of history and also states some of the fears of this CoC additions to projects. His idea about "abuse postmortems" seems a lot more workable. 1) https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7 https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7

jgalt212 11y ago

We as a community should be embarrassed that a significant portion of our community believes Codes of Conduct are necessary.

CharlesW 11y ago
We should be embarrassed that they're necessary for some groups to feel safe. As we see in this thread, whether CoC "mean something" or "are needed" aren't absolutes — clearly they are to some, and aren't to others. The key for me is that they're not important to people who don't need them to feel safe, and vice-versa.