4 ms·

I'm not sure how these things follow together, can you elaborate? (1) I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were wrong about what they were saying

by Sacho 10y ago

I'm not sure how these things follow together, can you elaborate? (1) I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were wrong about what they were saying, and I certainly wasn't going to convince the people being harassed that they should stick around in a community that was being hostile. (2) Most people were either unaware of the threat, or else not directly affected and stayed quiet. (3) The CoC was something of a final arbiter to put a stop to the harassment, and I had tried diligently to do so before putting on my admin hat or pulling out the CoC. (4) I've seen many other situations where similar things have played out. Without CoCs people would have either been banned from the project, or others would have left, being able to put a stop to something has helped. Considering (1), the CoC wouldn't have convinced the harassers to stop either, yet considering (4), you got a different outcome than people being banned from the project. How did having a CoC accomplish this? I can see how (2) would be affected by a CoC since it gives you an easy way to communicate to people a possible threat. However, there are negative effects to that as well - e.g. politically-inclined people gaming a CoC by passive-aggressively getting under the skin of their opponents until they have an emotional outburst, then using the CoC to remove them from the project.

rebeccaskinner 10y ago
The story (with some details abstracted away) is: a couple of the members of the community were in a non-technical slack channel that is part of the larger technical community. A couple of non-LGBT people started arguing about some stuff related to the LGBT community in a way that they clearly did not see as offensive, but that was very hurtful to some other people who were participating in the community. My initial reaction was, without my admin hat on, to just step in and explain why the conversation was a problem. Since the people didn't believe that they were being hurtful (or rather, thought that they were technically correct and therefore didn't care if they were being hurtful) that didn't work. I could have banned them at that point, but I would rather avoid that if possible. Since there was a COC that I could point to, I didn't have to keep trying to convince them that what they were saying was hurtful, and I didn't have to ban them. I was able to just say "hey, look, I get that you disagree but this is in violation of the COC, you need to cut it out". And they did, we've not had any more flare-ups of that topic. I know that if the people hadn't stopped their discussion then some other people would have left the community (because they told me as much after the fact), and based on the lack of success I had in shutting down the conversation before pointing to the COC I am very doubtful that I'd have been successful without a temporary ban. To directly address your questions (1) and (2) are unrelated events happening in parallel. I pointed out (2) to illustrate that the general community was not of any help in mitigating the conflict. (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. (4) was generalizing the situation to other scenarios I've observed where someone who might be going over a line can be brought back by simply pointing out they are in violation of the COC, without any express threat of a specific action. As far as having someone goad someone else into violating the COC, I'm just not buying that being a legitimate problem. If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a COC. Even if that's not the case, you shouldn't resort to general attacks that are going to make bystanders in the community uncomfortable.
- Sacho 10y ago
  > (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. I'm not sure how different the implicit threat of enforcing the CoC by banning people is from the explicit threat of enforcing civility by banning people. I guess the problem here stems from where respect for your authority lies. It sounds like the harassers in this situation had more respect for the authority of the CoC, possibly enacted by a community decision, rather than your own personal judgement. That seems like a positive for a large community where most members do not have a strong connection with the administrative staff. > If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a CoC The whole point of passive-aggressive attacks are that they do not violate the CoC on their face.
  - shadowmint 10y ago
    If all you have is today's moderator's personal feelings about what kind of comments are passive-aggressive and what sort deserve a ban, how is that any better than codifying it as a standard? You don't need a massive rule book, but surely having some basic rules is better than having none? If you don't have rules, then what, it's just personal judgement on how I feel today about what you said today that rubs me the wrong way and I hand out a ban? Come on, it's daft. Communities need to feel like there is a strong consistent moderator presence in them; if you're all over the place doing whatever, the community will fall apart into arguments and spam; there are countless examples of it. The difference is when the community is small (ie. many software projects) its probably perfectly easy for one single moderator (eg. the project owner) to be consistent and thoughtful in how they handle the community. ...but that model doesn't scale.
    - strawmart 10y ago
      Color it with "code of conduct" terminology all you want: it still boils down to "how I feel today" for interpretation and execution. CoCs that include punitive measures are going to far.

by Sacho 10y ago

rebeccaskinner 10y ago

The story (with some details abstracted away) is: a couple of the members of the community were in a non-technical slack channel that is part of the larger technical community. A couple of non-LGBT people started arguing about some stuff related to the LGBT community in a way that they clearly did not see as offensive, but that was very hurtful to some other people who were participating in the community. My initial reaction was, without my admin hat on, to just step in and explain why the conversation was a problem. Since the people didn't believe that they were being hurtful (or rather, thought that they were technically correct and therefore didn't care if they were being hurtful) that didn't work. I could have banned them at that point, but I would rather avoid that if possible. Since there was a COC that I could point to, I didn't have to keep trying to convince them that what they were saying was hurtful, and I didn't have to ban them. I was able to just say "hey, look, I get that you disagree but this is in violation of the COC, you need to cut it out". And they did, we've not had any more flare-ups of that topic. I know that if the people hadn't stopped their discussion then some other people would have left the community (because they told me as much after the fact), and based on the lack of success I had in shutting down the conversation before pointing to the COC I am very doubtful that I'd have been successful without a temporary ban. To directly address your questions (1) and (2) are unrelated events happening in parallel. I pointed out (2) to illustrate that the general community was not of any help in mitigating the conflict. (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. (4) was generalizing the situation to other scenarios I've observed where someone who might be going over a line can be brought back by simply pointing out they are in violation of the COC, without any express threat of a specific action. As far as having someone goad someone else into violating the COC, I'm just not buying that being a legitimate problem. If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a COC. Even if that's not the case, you shouldn't resort to general attacks that are going to make bystanders in the community uncomfortable.

Sacho 10y ago
> (3) followed from (1) because it gave me a line in the sand that I could point to, without having to result to any sort of explicit threat. I'm not sure how different the implicit threat of enforcing the CoC by banning people is from the explicit threat of enforcing civility by banning people. I guess the problem here stems from where respect for your authority lies. It sounds like the harassers in this situation had more respect for the authority of the CoC, possibly enacted by a community decision, rather than your own personal judgement. That seems like a positive for a large community where most members do not have a strong connection with the administrative staff. > If someone is being passive aggressive or outright hostile then that in and of itself is likely to be violating the standards of a CoC The whole point of passive-aggressive attacks are that they do not violate the CoC on their face.
- shadowmint 10y ago
  If all you have is today's moderator's personal feelings about what kind of comments are passive-aggressive and what sort deserve a ban, how is that any better than codifying it as a standard? You don't need a massive rule book, but surely having some basic rules is better than having none? If you don't have rules, then what, it's just personal judgement on how I feel today about what you said today that rubs me the wrong way and I hand out a ban? Come on, it's daft. Communities need to feel like there is a strong consistent moderator presence in them; if you're all over the place doing whatever, the community will fall apart into arguments and spam; there are countless examples of it. The difference is when the community is small (ie. many software projects) its probably perfectly easy for one single moderator (eg. the project owner) to be consistent and thoughtful in how they handle the community. ...but that model doesn't scale.
  - strawmart 10y ago
    Color it with "code of conduct" terminology all you want: it still boils down to "how I feel today" for interpretation and execution. CoCs that include punitive measures are going to far.