See the Atheism+ debacle a few years ago. The entire thing was CoC abuse writ large. "Its Atheism PLUS morality, sensitivity, acceptance, diversity, etc." Th

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.