4 ms·

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

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.
- Thiez 10y ago
  If 47% of the American voters can't be wrong, why did a similar number of voters choose differently? It's entirely possible to be racist to some degree while still being a good person overall. That doesn't mean racism is okay, or that it should be acceptable. But suggesting that opposing racism equals branding almost half of the American voters as terrible people is a strawman.
  - problems 10y ago
    Well, I've seen a surprising number of people talk that way on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe they're just talking out their asses, but some of them seem to take it seriously, so it's not exactly a strawman. I've seen people suggest that yes, if you voted for Trump, you're racist, sexist, homophobic and any other number of things. My point is, if you use a code of conduct that simply includes dumbed down provisions with no detail, you have no way of knowing what the views of the project leaders are - you might have risk that kind of treatment because you said something positive about Trump on Twitter. I suppose you can argue this is a strawman on the grounds that it doesn't seem to be happening so far with projects which have implemented a code of conduct - but I'm worried it might have a chilling effect on political commentary in FOSS communities, causing more people to comment anonymously and disassociate their political views from their real information. This kind of chilling effect is hard to measure in many other cases already.

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.

Thiez 10y ago
If 47% of the American voters can't be wrong, why did a similar number of voters choose differently? It's entirely possible to be racist to some degree while still being a good person overall. That doesn't mean racism is okay, or that it should be acceptable. But suggesting that opposing racism equals branding almost half of the American voters as terrible people is a strawman.
- problems 10y ago
  Well, I've seen a surprising number of people talk that way on Twitter and Facebook. Maybe they're just talking out their asses, but some of them seem to take it seriously, so it's not exactly a strawman. I've seen people suggest that yes, if you voted for Trump, you're racist, sexist, homophobic and any other number of things. My point is, if you use a code of conduct that simply includes dumbed down provisions with no detail, you have no way of knowing what the views of the project leaders are - you might have risk that kind of treatment because you said something positive about Trump on Twitter. I suppose you can argue this is a strawman on the grounds that it doesn't seem to be happening so far with projects which have implemented a code of conduct - but I'm worried it might have a chilling effect on political commentary in FOSS communities, causing more people to comment anonymously and disassociate their political views from their real information. This kind of chilling effect is hard to measure in many other cases already.