10 ms·

Go CoC updated to remove “punitive language and anonymous reporting mechanism”

82 points by bumbledraven 10y ago

grawlinson 10y ago
This is a very good move, and I'm glad that the Code of Conduct was updated to be more sane. As a consequence, I'm now more willing to contribute bug reports/pull requests to the Go project.
- alex_hitchins 10y ago
  What would have prevented you from doing so before?
jwilk 10y ago
https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959afa7ee57a2c3778962 https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959af... ↑ can be read without JS enabled
patates 10y ago
They want to be facilitators instead of decision-makers because of their bad experiences when they made final calls. You can't be a facilitator if one side is missing from the conversation. I see nothing controversial.
iagooar 10y ago
I've always found this whole idea of a Code of Conduct pretty broken. It seems to be a document written by some kind of abstract, shared moral authority which apparently has the power to decide what's good or bad. You could possibly argue, that it represents a shared mindset of a group of people working on a common project. The thing is, it has become a base for witch hunting, public shaming and other conflicts because some people have taken the code of conduct as their bible and felt it was their duty to go on a crusade against the infidels. Also, from a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. In Europe, when you go to a restaurant or a bar, the one common sign you'll find is the smoking forbidden one. That's it. People will politely ask if it's OK to bring a dog, or just know that going without a T-shirt is a no-go. In the US, you need half an hour just to read through all of the information before even entering the place. And people would still challenge the rules that are not explicitly stated there. As an anecdote, I once went to a conference in a European country where immigration is close to 0, thus people are pretty much caucasian. So there was this American speaker (obviously caucasian) talking about diversity in software and would kind of try to shame the event organisers and the audience because there was no black person in the room. It was one of the most absurd situations in my life. To me, a Code of Conduct does not belong to the realm of software. Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics. You can clearly tell that the Go team has decided to go the way of "yeah, we are kind of obliged to have a CoC, but don't want to be dicking around with the topic". Good for them.
- jsmeaton 10y ago
  Can you give any examples of witch hunting based on CoC? Ignoring the famous example of pycon a few years ago is there another? I feel there's a common feeling about the potential "badness" of a code of conduct, but very few actual examples.
  - tokenizerrr 10y ago
    Sure. The person who started promoting the concept of code of conducts, "Coraline Ada", has been hunting down people who violate their view of what's "right". For example pressuring third party projects to remove maintainers because they are "publicly calling trans people out" on twitter. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 There is this other very interesting example where Coraline got called out doing the very things she despises: https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/278 https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/... This is of course perfectly acceptable.
    - SorryImNone 10y ago
      She's "GitHub staff" now. The mentality of "that person said something I disagree with [on other media] and they should be banned here [on a random project that I don't have anything to do with] or else..." is incredible toxic. If you don't agree with "assholes" writing code or using code that was written by an "asshole", you'll have a hard time using anything open source at all.
      - tokenizerrr 10y ago
        Yup! And your project can be removed/banned from GitHub if you do something she disagrees with now. I forget which project it was that was lashed out at recently, but it's all rather insane.
        adekok 10y ago
        That is, it looks like GitHub will ignore it's own code of conduct in order to punish "bad" people. This is a common theme among proponents of codes of conduct. See also Twitter's ban on many people, including Milo Yiannopoulos. He was banned for "violating the rules". But I've looked, and no one anywhere can point out which exact tweet violated which particular rule. Even more extreme, no one can point out where he said any of things he's accused of saying. So... Twitter blocked him for "abuse", when there is zero evidence of such abuse. I'll say this: The more extreme the code of conduct, the more likely it will be broken by the people enforcing it.
scrollaway 10y ago
It's unsurprising to read that anonymous reporting essentially failed. When you're in charge of a community and there is a dispute between two members, you have to act as a neutral third party. Anonymous reports force a bias on one side and prevent the person in charge from getting more details about the issue. I think especially in a technical community, GPG (or easier tools if any) are better suited to preserving privacy in important disputes. Side semi-related rant: Why are CoCs in FOSS communities often so bureaucratic and lengthy? I get the need for rules and enforcing of rules when you have a large community, but most of them outside of open source usually manage with very few rules, most of them which are always implied. Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil". I maintain two open source communities of 30 and 80 people, a gaming community of ~300 daily active members and a friends&family guild of ~200 members. I've never had to say anything else than "be nice" and "don't spam". Across all those, I've had to deal with two serious cases of harassment, neither of which would have been solved with a code of conduct. [NB: of course, community rules become a more pressing need the larger and less focused your community is] In the mean time, I see open source projects of 5-10 max adopting massive codes of conduct that make potential contributors feel like they're reading terms of service. I was part of the founding team of a small OSS group and one of the first things that came up was "we need a code of conduct" (as in, around the same time as "we need a roadmap", when the group had 5 members). In the well-meaning fight against harassment, I see people copypasting files like they're going to be a magic bullet. If you have a community where rude behaviour and/or harassment can be a concern, it's not a piece of paper that says not to that will help; you need moderators your members feel safe contacting and who know how to handle delicate situations.
- Nexxxeh 10y ago
  >Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil". I think a lot of documents could just be replaced with a copy of Wheaton's Law.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rantanplan 10y ago
100% what you said. CoCs are absurd. Laws already cover all that. If they don't, fix them. US PC crap is what it is.
- pg314 10y ago
  > Laws already cover all that. No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.
  - rantanplan 10y ago
    Um yes, there are. If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem. EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover that, fix them.
    - hyperpape 10y ago
      Perhaps it's a linguistic confusion? Civility means that I'm polite as I correct your mistake, and laws should not cover civility. What laws cover is harassment and threats. In some places there are also classes of hate speech that are prohibited by law. That's still much narrower than a general rule of civility. It's also a bad idea in my opinion, even though I'm a big ole SJW.
      - rantanplan 10y ago
        No confusion. See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732
    - pg314 10y ago
      If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law? Which law? Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it? A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.
guitarbill 10y ago
I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of Conducts are. I won't touch projects with a CoC, and when a project that I'm actively contributing to introduces a CoC, I stop contributing. Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and trying to placate such people via a CoC is a lost cause. On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside. Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably start over again with a fresh github account that didn't have my real name attached to it. But not contributing seems like an easier solution.
- tokenizerrr 10y ago
  Yep. I won't even think about attempting to contribute to projects that have a CoC. Just look at https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 to see what will happen once you somehow upset one of the PC warriors.
  - orcdork 10y ago
    You mean a whole bunch of people standing up to transphobia? because that's what i'm seeing.
    - tokenizerrr 10y ago
      I see a whole bunch of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the Opal project lose their shit about something absolutely unrelated to the Opal project on the Opal project issue tracker. They are demanding for action to be taken which hurts the Opal project (removing one of its contributors). This is an absolute waste of time for anyone who is actually affiliated with the Opal project. But sure, let's call that "standing up to transphobia".
      - orcdork 10y ago
        I guess we both see what we want to see.
shadowmint 10y ago
/shrug It is what it is. The idea that the working group had any meaningful power to 'discipline' people who violated the code was dubious already, and the reddit thing just made it more obvious that any kind of enforcement wouldn't really work. Ultimately, maybe this is the way forward for projects; facilitate a way to bring people together to talk rather than punish people. For what it's worth, I don't think the code of conduct was a particular success, but I don't think it was a particular failure either. The go community is far nicer, more welcoming and has proportionally less hostile self important twats in it than it did 3 years ago... but, that's probably just a matter of the community growing to include a lot more people. This is probably the right change for go. It's not an excuse to start being a douche.
metaphorm 10y ago
the entire premise of a Code of Conduct like this is flawed. this is the infantilization of adults. 6 year olds need a code of conduct and an authority figure present, so they won't fling shit at each other. if we treat adults like 6 year olds then we should expect people to behave the way they are treated. I find it hard to accept that anything more verbose than "you're an adult; act like it." is needed for a Code of Conduct. it astonishes me that this is the trend in our culture and society. big brother gonna protect you from the mean people. a world without sin. none shall pass. what we really have is a deficit of communication skills, a deficit of maturity, and most of all a broken view of how social groups do and ought to function. this is the fallout from decades of institutional education. we now have multiple generations of people who have come to take comfort in the institutional structure of elementary school and feel lost without an authority figure to turn to. what the fuck has happened to us?
- aidenn0 10y ago
  Look at usenet posts from circa 1990. We've had a deficit of communications skills and a deficit of maturity for more than the current generation. And this is all within a much less culturally diverse group than those on the internet now. I don't like CoCs either, but they exist because of a real problem. Let's say we adopt a CoC of "you're an adult; act like it": What corrective actions are taken against those not acting like an adult, who takes those actions, and who is the arbiter of what qualifies as non-adult behavior? Very small communities and communities with a single BDFL can resolve this because in the former consensus is easy to come by, and in the latter there is an ultimate point of appeal. All other communities need some way of resolving this, and adopting a CoC is one way of attempting to do so.
strawmart 10y ago
I generally find moral authorities repulsive. This is one reason why I rejected religion. There are examples of people being ejected from projects because of their personal opinions being expressed outside of the project: this is repulsive to me. There are examples of proponents of CoC talking to one another about how they intend to inject the CoC into a new project so that they can forcefully eject somebody that they don't personally like. As a baseline I don't like censorship even if it is "hurtful".

82 points by bumbledraven 10y ago

This is a very good move, and I'm glad that the Code of Conduct was updated to be more sane. As a consequence, I'm now more willing to contribute bug reports/pull requests to the Go project.

alex_hitchins 10y ago
What would have prevented you from doing so before?

jwilk 10y ago

https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959afa7ee57a2c3778962 https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959af... ↑ can be read without JS enabled

patates 10y ago

They want to be facilitators instead of decision-makers because of their bad experiences when they made final calls. You can't be a facilitator if one side is missing from the conversation. I see nothing controversial.

iagooar 10y ago

I've always found this whole idea of a Code of Conduct pretty broken. It seems to be a document written by some kind of abstract, shared moral authority which apparently has the power to decide what's good or bad. You could possibly argue, that it represents a shared mindset of a group of people working on a common project. The thing is, it has become a base for witch hunting, public shaming and other conflicts because some people have taken the code of conduct as their bible and felt it was their duty to go on a crusade against the infidels. Also, from a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. In Europe, when you go to a restaurant or a bar, the one common sign you'll find is the smoking forbidden one. That's it. People will politely ask if it's OK to bring a dog, or just know that going without a T-shirt is a no-go. In the US, you need half an hour just to read through all of the information before even entering the place. And people would still challenge the rules that are not explicitly stated there. As an anecdote, I once went to a conference in a European country where immigration is close to 0, thus people are pretty much caucasian. So there was this American speaker (obviously caucasian) talking about diversity in software and would kind of try to shame the event organisers and the audience because there was no black person in the room. It was one of the most absurd situations in my life. To me, a Code of Conduct does not belong to the realm of software. Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics. You can clearly tell that the Go team has decided to go the way of "yeah, we are kind of obliged to have a CoC, but don't want to be dicking around with the topic". Good for them.

jsmeaton 10y ago
Can you give any examples of witch hunting based on CoC? Ignoring the famous example of pycon a few years ago is there another? I feel there's a common feeling about the potential "badness" of a code of conduct, but very few actual examples.
- tokenizerrr 10y ago
  Sure. The person who started promoting the concept of code of conducts, "Coraline Ada", has been hunting down people who violate their view of what's "right". For example pressuring third party projects to remove maintainers because they are "publicly calling trans people out" on twitter. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 There is this other very interesting example where Coraline got called out doing the very things she despises: https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/278 https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/... This is of course perfectly acceptable.
  - SorryImNone 10y ago
    She's "GitHub staff" now. The mentality of "that person said something I disagree with [on other media] and they should be banned here [on a random project that I don't have anything to do with] or else..." is incredible toxic. If you don't agree with "assholes" writing code or using code that was written by an "asshole", you'll have a hard time using anything open source at all.
    - tokenizerrr 10y ago
      Yup! And your project can be removed/banned from GitHub if you do something she disagrees with now. I forget which project it was that was lashed out at recently, but it's all rather insane.
      - adekok 10y ago
        That is, it looks like GitHub will ignore it's own code of conduct in order to punish "bad" people. This is a common theme among proponents of codes of conduct. See also Twitter's ban on many people, including Milo Yiannopoulos. He was banned for "violating the rules". But I've looked, and no one anywhere can point out which exact tweet violated which particular rule. Even more extreme, no one can point out where he said any of things he's accused of saying. So... Twitter blocked him for "abuse", when there is zero evidence of such abuse. I'll say this: The more extreme the code of conduct, the more likely it will be broken by the people enforcing it.

scrollaway 10y ago

It's unsurprising to read that anonymous reporting essentially failed. When you're in charge of a community and there is a dispute between two members, you have to act as a neutral third party. Anonymous reports force a bias on one side and prevent the person in charge from getting more details about the issue. I think especially in a technical community, GPG (or easier tools if any) are better suited to preserving privacy in important disputes. Side semi-related rant: Why are CoCs in FOSS communities often so bureaucratic and lengthy? I get the need for rules and enforcing of rules when you have a large community, but most of them outside of open source usually manage with very few rules, most of them which are always implied. Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil". I maintain two open source communities of 30 and 80 people, a gaming community of ~300 daily active members and a friends&family guild of ~200 members. I've never had to say anything else than "be nice" and "don't spam". Across all those, I've had to deal with two serious cases of harassment, neither of which would have been solved with a code of conduct. [NB: of course, community rules become a more pressing need the larger and less focused your community is] In the mean time, I see open source projects of 5-10 max adopting massive codes of conduct that make potential contributors feel like they're reading terms of service. I was part of the founding team of a small OSS group and one of the first things that came up was "we need a code of conduct" (as in, around the same time as "we need a roadmap", when the group had 5 members). In the well-meaning fight against harassment, I see people copypasting files like they're going to be a magic bullet. If you have a community where rude behaviour and/or harassment can be a concern, it's not a piece of paper that says not to that will help; you need moderators your members feel safe contacting and who know how to handle delicate situations.

Nexxxeh 10y ago
>Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil". I think a lot of documents could just be replaced with a copy of Wheaton's Law.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

rantanplan 10y ago

100% what you said. CoCs are absurd. Laws already cover all that. If they don't, fix them. US PC crap is what it is.

pg314 10y ago
> Laws already cover all that. No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.
- rantanplan 10y ago
  Um yes, there are. If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem. EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover that, fix them.
  - hyperpape 10y ago
    Perhaps it's a linguistic confusion? Civility means that I'm polite as I correct your mistake, and laws should not cover civility. What laws cover is harassment and threats. In some places there are also classes of hate speech that are prohibited by law. That's still much narrower than a general rule of civility. It's also a bad idea in my opinion, even though I'm a big ole SJW.
    - rantanplan 10y ago
      No confusion. See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732
  - pg314 10y ago
    If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law? Which law? Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it? A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.

guitarbill 10y ago

I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of Conducts are. I won't touch projects with a CoC, and when a project that I'm actively contributing to introduces a CoC, I stop contributing. Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and trying to placate such people via a CoC is a lost cause. On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside. Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably start over again with a fresh github account that didn't have my real name attached to it. But not contributing seems like an easier solution.

tokenizerrr 10y ago
Yep. I won't even think about attempting to contribute to projects that have a CoC. Just look at https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 to see what will happen once you somehow upset one of the PC warriors.
- orcdork 10y ago
  You mean a whole bunch of people standing up to transphobia? because that's what i'm seeing.
  - tokenizerrr 10y ago
    I see a whole bunch of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the Opal project lose their shit about something absolutely unrelated to the Opal project on the Opal project issue tracker. They are demanding for action to be taken which hurts the Opal project (removing one of its contributors). This is an absolute waste of time for anyone who is actually affiliated with the Opal project. But sure, let's call that "standing up to transphobia".
    - orcdork 10y ago
      I guess we both see what we want to see.

shadowmint 10y ago

/shrug It is what it is. The idea that the working group had any meaningful power to 'discipline' people who violated the code was dubious already, and the reddit thing just made it more obvious that any kind of enforcement wouldn't really work. Ultimately, maybe this is the way forward for projects; facilitate a way to bring people together to talk rather than punish people. For what it's worth, I don't think the code of conduct was a particular success, but I don't think it was a particular failure either. The go community is far nicer, more welcoming and has proportionally less hostile self important twats in it than it did 3 years ago... but, that's probably just a matter of the community growing to include a lot more people. This is probably the right change for go. It's not an excuse to start being a douche.

metaphorm 10y ago

the entire premise of a Code of Conduct like this is flawed. this is the infantilization of adults. 6 year olds need a code of conduct and an authority figure present, so they won't fling shit at each other. if we treat adults like 6 year olds then we should expect people to behave the way they are treated. I find it hard to accept that anything more verbose than "you're an adult; act like it." is needed for a Code of Conduct. it astonishes me that this is the trend in our culture and society. big brother gonna protect you from the mean people. a world without sin. none shall pass. what we really have is a deficit of communication skills, a deficit of maturity, and most of all a broken view of how social groups do and ought to function. this is the fallout from decades of institutional education. we now have multiple generations of people who have come to take comfort in the institutional structure of elementary school and feel lost without an authority figure to turn to. what the fuck has happened to us?

aidenn0 10y ago
Look at usenet posts from circa 1990. We've had a deficit of communications skills and a deficit of maturity for more than the current generation. And this is all within a much less culturally diverse group than those on the internet now. I don't like CoCs either, but they exist because of a real problem. Let's say we adopt a CoC of "you're an adult; act like it": What corrective actions are taken against those not acting like an adult, who takes those actions, and who is the arbiter of what qualifies as non-adult behavior? Very small communities and communities with a single BDFL can resolve this because in the former consensus is easy to come by, and in the latter there is an ultimate point of appeal. All other communities need some way of resolving this, and adopting a CoC is one way of attempting to do so.

strawmart 10y ago

I generally find moral authorities repulsive. This is one reason why I rejected religion. There are examples of people being ejected from projects because of their personal opinions being expressed outside of the project: this is repulsive to me. There are examples of proponents of CoC talking to one another about how they intend to inject the CoC into a new project so that they can forcefully eject somebody that they don't personally like. As a baseline I don't like censorship even if it is "hurtful".