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The problem is it still needs to be up to project leaders to make a determination of whether or not the behavior violates those codes of conduct. And they might

The problem is it still needs to be up to project leaders to make a determination of whether or not the behavior violates those codes of conduct. And they might not be particularly well equipped for that. What's considered "harassment" for example? Does 1 off comment count or does it need to be systemic? What if it was a heat of the moment situation and an apology was made afterwards? Does expressing an opinion less than the generally accepted one about a rape case for example count as misogyny? What about mental health comments not in line with generally accepted opinions, but which might still hold some validity? How about defending political opinions based on your religion? There are too many questions that I know many people would respond very differently to.

HerraBRE 10y ago
There are indeed many questions. But a lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. The answers are out there... I think if we take a step back and don't try to invent all the wheels ourselves, we'll find that almost all of these questions have established answers from the world of business and human resources. We do have to get past the first step though, which is agreeing that these are problems we care to solve. The wider community is still divided on that, as illustrated by this thread and the comments on the OP.
- problems 10y ago
  I don't think "the answers are out there" so cut and dry. There's many political and social opinions that there isn't a clear resolution on. So unless we have a very good way to solve this concretely and provably I think it's best to not get involved in trying.
  - inopinatus 10y ago
    No, that is a reason to keep trying and iteratively improving. Just because a problem is hard, doesn't mean we should all give up on it.
    - problems 10y ago
      That's all well and good for most things, but something that commonly involves shunning people from your communities I don't think so. You need a higher standard - one which we don't have. Even HR people can be fired and are somewhat liable for their decisions. When it comes to oversight, there's just too little here.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  There are indeed many questions. But a lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. The answers are out there... Yet conspicuously absent in your post is a link to where those answers are. I suspect that because as soon as you link to one you've actually drawn a line in the ground. Instead of codes of conduct which sort of fuzzily describe that one exists "out there." And once you start talking about where lines are really drawn, it becomes easy see how little agreement there actually is. Even among people that are more-or-less on the same page regarding which problems "we" care to solve.
  - makomk 10y ago
    Indeed. Fredrik deBoer wrote a good post about this kind of vague certainty as a more general aspect of a certain kind of politics: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/12/06/condescending-certain-and-incoherent/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/12/06/condescending-certain-an...
  - HerraBRE 10y ago
    I didn't give examples, because it's not my field and because I wasn't interested in the inevitable quibbling about minor details. But I do know people that do that sort of work, and I also know that when I went looking for a code of conduct for my own project, I found lots of pre-existing material to work with. You guys are making this out to be a lot harder and more complicated than it actually is.
    - problems 10y ago
      All of the pre-existing ones suffer from this exact problem though in my experience. They leave too much, often almost everything to be decided by the project leaders. Often times this amounts to "don't be racist" and similar proclamations - these don't offer guidance as to what's deemed racist. Some people would say opposing affirmative action is racist - is that the standard the project goes by? Based just on those codes of conduct, who knows? Heck, some people would say the president of the united states is racist, but over 47% of the voters wanted him. If you think that full 47% of the population is terrible and racist, on sheer population grounds you probably just rejected a lot of good people. This is why I find codes to conduct to be extremely low value, they provide nothing beyond say "don't be an asshole" and a fear of reprisal for political reasons.

HerraBRE 10y ago

There are indeed many questions. But a lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. The answers are out there... I think if we take a step back and don't try to invent all the wheels ourselves, we'll find that almost all of these questions have established answers from the world of business and human resources. We do have to get past the first step though, which is agreeing that these are problems we care to solve. The wider community is still divided on that, as illustrated by this thread and the comments on the OP.

problems 10y ago
I don't think "the answers are out there" so cut and dry. There's many political and social opinions that there isn't a clear resolution on. So unless we have a very good way to solve this concretely and provably I think it's best to not get involved in trying.
- inopinatus 10y ago
  No, that is a reason to keep trying and iteratively improving. Just because a problem is hard, doesn't mean we should all give up on it.
  - problems 10y ago
    That's all well and good for most things, but something that commonly involves shunning people from your communities I don't think so. You need a higher standard - one which we don't have. Even HR people can be fired and are somewhat liable for their decisions. When it comes to oversight, there's just too little here.
forgottenpass 10y ago
There are indeed many questions. But a lot of people have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. The answers are out there... Yet conspicuously absent in your post is a link to where those answers are. I suspect that because as soon as you link to one you've actually drawn a line in the ground. Instead of codes of conduct which sort of fuzzily describe that one exists "out there." And once you start talking about where lines are really drawn, it becomes easy see how little agreement there actually is. Even among people that are more-or-less on the same page regarding which problems "we" care to solve.
- makomk 10y ago
  Indeed. Fredrik deBoer wrote a good post about this kind of vague certainty as a more general aspect of a certain kind of politics: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/12/06/condescending-certain-and-incoherent/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2016/12/06/condescending-certain-an...
- HerraBRE 10y ago
  I didn't give examples, because it's not my field and because I wasn't interested in the inevitable quibbling about minor details. But I do know people that do that sort of work, and I also know that when I went looking for a code of conduct for my own project, I found lots of pre-existing material to work with. You guys are making this out to be a lot harder and more complicated than it actually is.
  - problems 10y ago
    All of the pre-existing ones suffer from this exact problem though in my experience. They leave too much, often almost everything to be decided by the project leaders. Often times this amounts to "don't be racist" and similar proclamations - these don't offer guidance as to what's deemed racist. Some people would say opposing affirmative action is racist - is that the standard the project goes by? Based just on those codes of conduct, who knows? Heck, some people would say the president of the united states is racist, but over 47% of the voters wanted him. If you think that full 47% of the population is terrible and racist, on sheer population grounds you probably just rejected a lot of good people. This is why I find codes to conduct to be extremely low value, they provide nothing beyond say "don't be an asshole" and a fear of reprisal for political reasons.