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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 a

by 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
        Neither Github nor Twitter have a code of conduct; they have a Terms of Service document. TOS, unlike CoCs, are written by lawyers because the goal is a full-featured CYA. And they generally contain the legalesed disclaimer "we're free to get rid of you whenever we feel like, for whatever reason we feel like". I'm sure twitter also has some extra community rules somewhere. CoCs are worrisome because they tend to emulate that behaviour, and I certainly do not condone overreaching TOS, but you can't equate those two situations. It's the behaviour of people vs. the behaviour of companies.
- adekok 10y ago
  See the Atheism+ debacle a few years ago. The entire thing was CoC abuse writ large. "Its Atheism PLUS morality, sensitivity, acceptance, diversity, etc." Things which are all well and good, but that turned out to not be the point. The point seemed to be that creation and enforcement of CoC rules was more important than anything else. People argued endlessly about which rules should be created, what the rules meant, and how to enforce the rules. Which in practice, meant witch hunting, and a totalitatian enforcement of vaguely-defined values. i.e. nasty, toxic, behavior. This negative behavior was pointed out to one of the main proponents. To prove the nay-sayers wrong, he created a sock puppet account which asked a simple question "Hey guys, what's this thing about?" Cue hysterics and shaming of the newbie. He publicly came out and said the account was his, and that this behavior was bad. Cue hysterics and shaming of him. He was banned (both accounts) from the forum. A thread was set up specifically for people to discuss how they were betrayed / hurt / abused by his behavior. Another major proponent who talked endlessly about the need to be inclusive towards women and not sexually harass them... has now been accused of repeated sexual harassment. And his public statements pretty much say "yeah... that actually happened, but it was all a misunderstanding" And what are the results of this new movement? Well, a few years later, it's dead. The forums are dead. The proponents are fighting each other. One was drummed out, and then publicly admitted that the people she was against were nicer to her than her ex-allies. When the "bad" people are more moral than the "good" people, I think you have your labels reversed. I've advocated for this before. Codes of conduct should be simple. Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban." Anything else devolves into a morality play. Where the proponents argue about which moral standards are correct, and which ones are evil and wrong. In short, people who obsess about enforcing codes of conduct are toxic. They don't get anything done. They largely have never gotten anything done.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban." Let me tell a story about off-topic postings in a forum that I was active at. There was a member who often posted (let's say) controversial, but very reasoned answers in this forum. They were often against the official consensus of the forum, which lead to strong reactions and controversies (I can even imagine that he loved this controversies); but as I said: his arguments were very well reasoned. So there were some moderator(s?) who rather would have liked to ban him from the forum (but they couldn't easily, since there were people who rightfully said that though his postings are controversial, they come from a completely different side of view, so they have value for the community). So the moderators gave him a warning (I think there were two warnings were before ban) because of some off-topic posts (there were some terms hidden in the forum rules, which really nobody read). This lead to an outcry in the forum since there were other (less controversial) forum members who also accidentally wrote off-topic posts, so people sensed an agenda. One of the moderators (a very recognised one) did the (IMHO) only correct thing that one can do in this emotionally charged situation as a moderator: She gave an official warning to herself in the "warnings thread", for the reason that she accidentally wrote some off-topic posts, too.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  In the Scalaz community there was Dibblegate: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scalaz/9X_putSGoCY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scalaz/9X_putSGoCY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/scalaz/code$20of$20conduct|sort:relevance/scalaz/EBP_7sfB2ks/DL7NnrwSPD4J https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/scalaz/code$20of$... https://twitter.com/shajra/status/544712807220908032 https://twitter.com/shajra/status/544712807220908032 Basically a CoC was quietly created and applied retroactively to so that Typelevel (a major Scala consultancy) could try and kick Tony Morris (founder of Scalaz) off his own project. From what I understand, having a colorful community of weirdos made the open source project they based their company on seem unattractive to big corporate customers.
  - smitherfield 10y ago
    Here's the original IRC convo that precipitated it: https://gist.github.com/betehess/77de5b4b35ae11801936 https://gist.github.com/betehess/77de5b4b35ae11801936 I'd have to agree with you that the reaction seems absurd. He was unprofessional, sure, meriting a temporary kicking from IRC or something, but IMHO he who has never been a know-it-all (unheard-of on HN, ofc) or lost his temper over something silly on the internet should cast the first stone.
orcdork 10y ago
Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics No.
- afandian 10y ago
  Software doesn't, and can't, have human ethics (unless e.g. it's specifically a missile guidance system), but a collaborative software project does need to. The interface between these two things is subtle. Yes it's obvious that in order for a software project to be collaborative, it has to take on the foibles of humans but I don't think that your simple "No." cuts it. If I want to contribute to an open source software project I need to share the politics of the people that wrote it. Does that imbue the software with those politics? If it was written by lefties do I have to be a lefty to use it? If it was written by right-wingers do I need to be right-wing to use it? Case in point. There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted. The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities. Should I have used that library because it was useful to me, or should I have written my own code because of the 'politics' of the code? (I didn't use it in the end, because I was uncomfortable having 'dailymail' show in dependencies of code that I had written, but I still think about it)
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, would you be comfortable buying and using a Volkswagen? :) We'd definitely be better off without the Daily Mail, but if they actually contributed some good somewhere it's a disservice to ignore it imho.
    - afandian 10y ago
      Totally agree. It's not a solved question. That my point - things aren't black and white. Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional.
andrepd 10y ago
I think you're doing a very broad generalisation with respect to that Europe/America difference. Myself, whenever I go to a café or something here in Europe there are dozens of stickers with the rules on the front. I hardly take half an hour to read them, since they're there mostly for legal purposes. I am strongly inclined to believe that in most places in America things run similar to this. And anyways I hardly think it's such a world shattering problem to have signs with the legal rules of a public space, that you think it's symptomatic of a deeper problem or something. Also, your last paragraph is a bit silly. The Code of Conduct is not regulating computer code, it's regulating human interactions between human collaborators is a project, so I really don't see your point there.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  I understand what he's saying about the America/Europe difference; he's not wrong. Despite its patriotic pride in free speech, I have to watch what I say far more carefully in american contexts than in european ones. I see the difference whenever I travel to the US and I especially see the difference online, at US peak time vs. US down time on reddit or even HN. I suspect that if this had been posted ~4-5 hours from now, the story would have been flagged and the GP's comment would be grey.
owaislone 10y ago
CoCs are not about software. They are about communities. They serve a very good purpose and have helped numerous online communities keep the environment civil and friendly.
- chippy 10y ago
  How do you explain the reasons in the article? It appears that they have a good working mechanism for conflict resolution and a CoC gets in the way of that.
- josteink 10y ago
  > They (CoCs) serve a very good purpose and have helped numerous online communities keep the environment civil and friendly. That's a grand claim, and grand claims requires grand proof. Do you have any to deliver?
- astrange 10y ago
  You seem to have renamed forum rules to CoCs here. I think there's a difference since one just means moderators, and CoCs are like establishing a volunteer HR department over your volunteer employees. It changes the atmosphere, and they don't even get you a 401k.
bborud 10y ago
I didn't know the Golang community had a Code of Conduct (since I'm not active in it), but upon reading about it I tried to imagine why you would want one. And then I remembered the PHP community in the late 90s / early 00s. Perhaps the most unpleasant, hostile, childish, petty community I've come across. I can see why one would want a CoC. No, it isn't ideal.
- johnny22 10y ago
  that's why i saw the value in them too. I don't think it changed very much since then either. See the mailing list thread about introducing one for PHP. It's not pretty.
- deleted 10y ago
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concinds 10y ago
The potential problem with CoCs is that they empower and attract some with rule- and justice-obsessed personalities, and who like to moralize. This may not seem like a big problem now, but was still a step in the wrong direction. The alternative to rule-obsessed moralizing is calm conflict resolution, which this updates moves towards. They updated: > If you conduct yourself in a way that is explicitly forbidden by the CoC, you will be warned and asked to stop. To: > If a reported conflict cannot be resolved amicably, the CoC Working Group may make a recommendation to the relevant forum moderators. That isn't much, but it still shifts from a "victim-aggressor" model ("relationship triangle") to a conflict-resolution model, which is important for everyone to feel respected. Anonymous reporting too was an unhealthy community dynamic, and getting rid of it is a step in the right direction. CoCs fall into the category of language policing, and though it's nice to have a nice community, it can lead to tone shifts and self-censorship. If someone sees people going in all directions and being ineffective, they might not speak up for fear of being seen as "bossy" or "insistant". That problem can be minimized if CoCs explicitly and fully shift from conflict-minimization (toxic) to conflict-resolution. The ideal case would be for people to be able to resolve conflicts and draw boundaries on their own, which won't happen until society starts putting more emphasis on mental health and healthy communication, among other things, in schools and elsewhere.
maxlybbert 10y ago
I've always felt that codes of conduct came from HR people who can't program but want to contribute to a project. > [F]rom a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. Years ago, while playing with the family at a lake, I noticed one of our inflatable water toys had different warnings next to different flags. Yes, many were in different languages, but there were at least three English warnings on there. The British and Australian warnings were just "use under competent supervision." The American warning was a couple paragraphs long, and very detailed: "do not use while drunk; do not tow from boat; do not dive into; ..." I was embarrassed as an American.
- johnny22 10y ago
  you felt wrong. I write programs, but also add CoCs if there's more than a few folks are contributing.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - maxlybbert 10y ago
    I recognize that not everyone recommending codes of conduct literally comes from human resources, but it's the simplest way I can understand why somebody would say "what this project needs is a document defining good and bad behavior." Perhaps it's just a personal hang-up. I believe some style guides are worthwhile, and style guides could be described as documents describing good and bad design or good and bad code.
kmm 10y ago
The policing of language always seemed like much of an American (and in general Anglosphere) phenomenon. Bleeping swears, censor boxes, the "n-word", I think that's unheard of in most of continental Europe. That's not to say it's complete chaos, you're not supposed to swear or hurl slurs on national television, but if a guest on a talk show wants to say he's had a great fucking day, you won't hear the 1000 Hz bleep instead.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  I was watching the DVD commentary of The IT Crowd recently (which is really fantastic). Graham Linehan in an episode talked about this at length in an episode where Douglas says "Fuck off". He talked about the decision behind making him swear in what's a family show, where to draw the limits, how to make it have the most impact etc. It was great. He also mentioned that "then again, probably nobody cares". It is a UK TV show. In the US, it would've had to be bleeped and everybody would have gasped if it hadn't. I saw a news article a few weeks ago during the Women's March about how Madonna said fuck "not once, but twice!" on CNN. I'm familiar with US TV censorship rules and it still took me a solid minute until I connected the dots and realized what was "so shocking". It's pretty f*ing ridiculous.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZoFreX 10y ago
    Counter-point: someone said "shagged out" once in a British TV show and it was a _huge deal_. And there's a pretty strong limit on how many f-bombs and other swear words you can drop in a show that goes out before a certain time in the evening (known as "the watershed"). I'm very amused reading comments here saying that censoring and being afraid of swears is American thing and not a thing you see in Europe. It's certainly something you see a LOT in the UK.
    - blibble 10y ago
      after the watershed more or less anything is game
jakobegger 10y ago
Also as a European, I disagree with your statement that CoC are pointless. I didn't see the point at first, but I've come to see some advantages. The purpose of a CoC is to empower the weak. This sounds cheesy, but it is true. Yes, most of the time a CoC is not needed. Usually the community is friendly, and people help one another. But what if something bad happens? What if a member of the community is treated poorly? Without a CoC, there's most probably nothing they can do. The welcoming majority might not realise that there's a tiny part of the community that doesn't work so well. With a CoC, there's usually a clear point of contact; and people know who they talk to when there's trouble. CoC are not about witch hunts. On the contrary! If someone tries to throw dirt on someone, the CoC could be used just as well to try to deescalate the situation.
- deleted 10y ago
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- scrollaway 10y ago
  It's the point of contact that gives you that, not the code of conduct. In large communities you always want a clear point of contact that your members feel safe reaching out to if they are being harassed or worse. The code of conduct doesn't specifically give you that, especially not in small communities where there is usually a single project leader.
lolikoisuru 10y ago
Great anecdote. Another tangential thing that I find is silly is blaming ALL whites for slavery of some black people couple hundred years ago in the US. I'm not aware of a single ethnic slave in Finnish history but I am still somehow responsible for slavery in some other country.

by iagooar 10y ago

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
        Neither Github nor Twitter have a code of conduct; they have a Terms of Service document. TOS, unlike CoCs, are written by lawyers because the goal is a full-featured CYA. And they generally contain the legalesed disclaimer "we're free to get rid of you whenever we feel like, for whatever reason we feel like". I'm sure twitter also has some extra community rules somewhere. CoCs are worrisome because they tend to emulate that behaviour, and I certainly do not condone overreaching TOS, but you can't equate those two situations. It's the behaviour of people vs. the behaviour of companies.
adekok 10y ago
See the Atheism+ debacle a few years ago. The entire thing was CoC abuse writ large. "Its Atheism PLUS morality, sensitivity, acceptance, diversity, etc." Things which are all well and good, but that turned out to not be the point. The point seemed to be that creation and enforcement of CoC rules was more important than anything else. People argued endlessly about which rules should be created, what the rules meant, and how to enforce the rules. Which in practice, meant witch hunting, and a totalitatian enforcement of vaguely-defined values. i.e. nasty, toxic, behavior. This negative behavior was pointed out to one of the main proponents. To prove the nay-sayers wrong, he created a sock puppet account which asked a simple question "Hey guys, what's this thing about?" Cue hysterics and shaming of the newbie. He publicly came out and said the account was his, and that this behavior was bad. Cue hysterics and shaming of him. He was banned (both accounts) from the forum. A thread was set up specifically for people to discuss how they were betrayed / hurt / abused by his behavior. Another major proponent who talked endlessly about the need to be inclusive towards women and not sexually harass them... has now been accused of repeated sexual harassment. And his public statements pretty much say "yeah... that actually happened, but it was all a misunderstanding" And what are the results of this new movement? Well, a few years later, it's dead. The forums are dead. The proponents are fighting each other. One was drummed out, and then publicly admitted that the people she was against were nicer to her than her ex-allies. When the "bad" people are more moral than the "good" people, I think you have your labels reversed. I've advocated for this before. Codes of conduct should be simple. Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban." Anything else devolves into a morality play. Where the proponents argue about which moral standards are correct, and which ones are evil and wrong. In short, people who obsess about enforcing codes of conduct are toxic. They don't get anything done. They largely have never gotten anything done.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > Technical forums should have a code of conduct that says "Technical topics are on topic. Others are not. Off-topic conversations will be stopped. Continued off-topic conversations will result in a warning, and a ban." Let me tell a story about off-topic postings in a forum that I was active at. There was a member who often posted (let's say) controversial, but very reasoned answers in this forum. They were often against the official consensus of the forum, which lead to strong reactions and controversies (I can even imagine that he loved this controversies); but as I said: his arguments were very well reasoned. So there were some moderator(s?) who rather would have liked to ban him from the forum (but they couldn't easily, since there were people who rightfully said that though his postings are controversial, they come from a completely different side of view, so they have value for the community). So the moderators gave him a warning (I think there were two warnings were before ban) because of some off-topic posts (there were some terms hidden in the forum rules, which really nobody read). This lead to an outcry in the forum since there were other (less controversial) forum members who also accidentally wrote off-topic posts, so people sensed an agenda. One of the moderators (a very recognised one) did the (IMHO) only correct thing that one can do in this emotionally charged situation as a moderator: She gave an official warning to herself in the "warnings thread", for the reason that she accidentally wrote some off-topic posts, too.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
In the Scalaz community there was Dibblegate: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scalaz/9X_putSGoCY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/scalaz/9X_putSGoCY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/scalaz/code$20of$20conduct|sort:relevance/scalaz/EBP_7sfB2ks/DL7NnrwSPD4J https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/scalaz/code$20of$... https://twitter.com/shajra/status/544712807220908032 https://twitter.com/shajra/status/544712807220908032 Basically a CoC was quietly created and applied retroactively to so that Typelevel (a major Scala consultancy) could try and kick Tony Morris (founder of Scalaz) off his own project. From what I understand, having a colorful community of weirdos made the open source project they based their company on seem unattractive to big corporate customers.
- smitherfield 10y ago
  Here's the original IRC convo that precipitated it: https://gist.github.com/betehess/77de5b4b35ae11801936 https://gist.github.com/betehess/77de5b4b35ae11801936 I'd have to agree with you that the reaction seems absurd. He was unprofessional, sure, meriting a temporary kicking from IRC or something, but IMHO he who has never been a know-it-all (unheard-of on HN, ofc) or lost his temper over something silly on the internet should cast the first stone.

orcdork 10y ago

Software needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous, human ethics No.

afandian 10y ago
Software doesn't, and can't, have human ethics (unless e.g. it's specifically a missile guidance system), but a collaborative software project does need to. The interface between these two things is subtle. Yes it's obvious that in order for a software project to be collaborative, it has to take on the foibles of humans but I don't think that your simple "No." cuts it. If I want to contribute to an open source software project I need to share the politics of the people that wrote it. Does that imbue the software with those politics? If it was written by lefties do I have to be a lefty to use it? If it was written by right-wingers do I need to be right-wing to use it? Case in point. There's a daily printed and online publication in the UK called the Daily Mail. It's a nasty, divisive, dishonest paper and it's done a lot of damage to our country. But they published a software library that I wanted to use. I was genuinely conflicted. The environment under which the library was written supports division, inequality, victimisation of minorities. Should I have used that library because it was useful to me, or should I have written my own code because of the 'politics' of the code? (I didn't use it in the end, because I was uncomfortable having 'dailymail' show in dependencies of code that I had written, but I still think about it)
- scrollaway 10y ago
  At the risk of invoking Godwin's law, would you be comfortable buying and using a Volkswagen? :) We'd definitely be better off without the Daily Mail, but if they actually contributed some good somewhere it's a disservice to ignore it imho.
  - afandian 10y ago
    Totally agree. It's not a solved question. That my point - things aren't black and white. Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional.

andrepd 10y ago

I think you're doing a very broad generalisation with respect to that Europe/America difference. Myself, whenever I go to a café or something here in Europe there are dozens of stickers with the rules on the front. I hardly take half an hour to read them, since they're there mostly for legal purposes. I am strongly inclined to believe that in most places in America things run similar to this. And anyways I hardly think it's such a world shattering problem to have signs with the legal rules of a public space, that you think it's symptomatic of a deeper problem or something. Also, your last paragraph is a bit silly. The Code of Conduct is not regulating computer code, it's regulating human interactions between human collaborators is a project, so I really don't see your point there.

scrollaway 10y ago
I understand what he's saying about the America/Europe difference; he's not wrong. Despite its patriotic pride in free speech, I have to watch what I say far more carefully in american contexts than in european ones. I see the difference whenever I travel to the US and I especially see the difference online, at US peak time vs. US down time on reddit or even HN. I suspect that if this had been posted ~4-5 hours from now, the story would have been flagged and the GP's comment would be grey.

owaislone 10y ago

CoCs are not about software. They are about communities. They serve a very good purpose and have helped numerous online communities keep the environment civil and friendly.

chippy 10y ago
How do you explain the reasons in the article? It appears that they have a good working mechanism for conflict resolution and a CoC gets in the way of that.
josteink 10y ago
> They (CoCs) serve a very good purpose and have helped numerous online communities keep the environment civil and friendly. That's a grand claim, and grand claims requires grand proof. Do you have any to deliver?
astrange 10y ago
You seem to have renamed forum rules to CoCs here. I think there's a difference since one just means moderators, and CoCs are like establishing a volunteer HR department over your volunteer employees. It changes the atmosphere, and they don't even get you a 401k.

bborud 10y ago

I didn't know the Golang community had a Code of Conduct (since I'm not active in it), but upon reading about it I tried to imagine why you would want one. And then I remembered the PHP community in the late 90s / early 00s. Perhaps the most unpleasant, hostile, childish, petty community I've come across. I can see why one would want a CoC. No, it isn't ideal.

johnny22 10y ago
that's why i saw the value in them too. I don't think it changed very much since then either. See the mailing list thread about introducing one for PHP. It's not pretty.
deleted 10y ago
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concinds 10y ago

The potential problem with CoCs is that they empower and attract some with rule- and justice-obsessed personalities, and who like to moralize. This may not seem like a big problem now, but was still a step in the wrong direction. The alternative to rule-obsessed moralizing is calm conflict resolution, which this updates moves towards. They updated: > If you conduct yourself in a way that is explicitly forbidden by the CoC, you will be warned and asked to stop. To: > If a reported conflict cannot be resolved amicably, the CoC Working Group may make a recommendation to the relevant forum moderators. That isn't much, but it still shifts from a "victim-aggressor" model ("relationship triangle") to a conflict-resolution model, which is important for everyone to feel respected. Anonymous reporting too was an unhealthy community dynamic, and getting rid of it is a step in the right direction. CoCs fall into the category of language policing, and though it's nice to have a nice community, it can lead to tone shifts and self-censorship. If someone sees people going in all directions and being ineffective, they might not speak up for fear of being seen as "bossy" or "insistant". That problem can be minimized if CoCs explicitly and fully shift from conflict-minimization (toxic) to conflict-resolution. The ideal case would be for people to be able to resolve conflicts and draw boundaries on their own, which won't happen until society starts putting more emphasis on mental health and healthy communication, among other things, in schools and elsewhere.

maxlybbert 10y ago

I've always felt that codes of conduct came from HR people who can't program but want to contribute to a project. > [F]rom a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do. You need written rules for everything. Years ago, while playing with the family at a lake, I noticed one of our inflatable water toys had different warnings next to different flags. Yes, many were in different languages, but there were at least three English warnings on there. The British and Australian warnings were just "use under competent supervision." The American warning was a couple paragraphs long, and very detailed: "do not use while drunk; do not tow from boat; do not dive into; ..." I was embarrassed as an American.

johnny22 10y ago
you felt wrong. I write programs, but also add CoCs if there's more than a few folks are contributing.
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- maxlybbert 10y ago
  I recognize that not everyone recommending codes of conduct literally comes from human resources, but it's the simplest way I can understand why somebody would say "what this project needs is a document defining good and bad behavior." Perhaps it's just a personal hang-up. I believe some style guides are worthwhile, and style guides could be described as documents describing good and bad design or good and bad code.

kmm 10y ago

The policing of language always seemed like much of an American (and in general Anglosphere) phenomenon. Bleeping swears, censor boxes, the "n-word", I think that's unheard of in most of continental Europe. That's not to say it's complete chaos, you're not supposed to swear or hurl slurs on national television, but if a guest on a talk show wants to say he's had a great fucking day, you won't hear the 1000 Hz bleep instead.

scrollaway 10y ago
I was watching the DVD commentary of The IT Crowd recently (which is really fantastic). Graham Linehan in an episode talked about this at length in an episode where Douglas says "Fuck off". He talked about the decision behind making him swear in what's a family show, where to draw the limits, how to make it have the most impact etc. It was great. He also mentioned that "then again, probably nobody cares". It is a UK TV show. In the US, it would've had to be bleeped and everybody would have gasped if it hadn't. I saw a news article a few weeks ago during the Women's March about how Madonna said fuck "not once, but twice!" on CNN. I'm familiar with US TV censorship rules and it still took me a solid minute until I connected the dots and realized what was "so shocking". It's pretty f*ing ridiculous.
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- ZoFreX 10y ago
  Counter-point: someone said "shagged out" once in a British TV show and it was a _huge deal_. And there's a pretty strong limit on how many f-bombs and other swear words you can drop in a show that goes out before a certain time in the evening (known as "the watershed"). I'm very amused reading comments here saying that censoring and being afraid of swears is American thing and not a thing you see in Europe. It's certainly something you see a LOT in the UK.
  - blibble 10y ago
    after the watershed more or less anything is game

jakobegger 10y ago

Also as a European, I disagree with your statement that CoC are pointless. I didn't see the point at first, but I've come to see some advantages. The purpose of a CoC is to empower the weak. This sounds cheesy, but it is true. Yes, most of the time a CoC is not needed. Usually the community is friendly, and people help one another. But what if something bad happens? What if a member of the community is treated poorly? Without a CoC, there's most probably nothing they can do. The welcoming majority might not realise that there's a tiny part of the community that doesn't work so well. With a CoC, there's usually a clear point of contact; and people know who they talk to when there's trouble. CoC are not about witch hunts. On the contrary! If someone tries to throw dirt on someone, the CoC could be used just as well to try to deescalate the situation.

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scrollaway 10y ago
It's the point of contact that gives you that, not the code of conduct. In large communities you always want a clear point of contact that your members feel safe reaching out to if they are being harassed or worse. The code of conduct doesn't specifically give you that, especially not in small communities where there is usually a single project leader.

lolikoisuru 10y ago

Great anecdote. Another tangential thing that I find is silly is blaming ALL whites for slavery of some black people couple hundred years ago in the US. I'm not aware of a single ethnic slave in Finnish history but I am still somehow responsible for slavery in some other country.