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Never been a big fan of the "Code of Conduct" wars that seem to be going on. On the surface, yeah, it seems great. Everyone be nice and get along. But for some

Never been a big fan of the "Code of Conduct" wars that seem to be going on. On the surface, yeah, it seems great. Everyone be nice and get along. But for some odd reason, the enforcement always tends to favor one side. Case in point, the pointless NodeJS TSC drama [1] from yesteryear. I don't like JS to begin with, but that makes me want to avoid the project like the plague. The problem with letting thin skinned people decide what you can and can't say, is they have a very long (and often contradictory) list. Suddenly, you find yourself in the middle of a kangaroo court facing charges of high treason, guilty until proven innocent. The sentence? Public crucifixion. Stallman made the right call. https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_violations_by_nodejs_board_member/ https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...

geofft 8y ago
One, there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason, even as an analogy. Had Stallman not replied on the list to insist on his own personal veto over glibc changes, the project would have moved on, nobody would have asked about whether that veto makes sense, and if he showed up on some technical thing two months later people would have absolutely listened to him with extra weight. And even so, nobody is questioning him as a person, nor attempting to care about what he says or police his project participation based on his views - multiple people in favor of the removal have quite clearly said that he can say what he likes on stallman.org and nobody cares. They're just questioning his veto. Two, what is the "one side" being favored here? It's not aligned on political axes - Stallman is a left-leaning person making fun of a right-wing policy, which is the opposite of many accusations I hear about codes of conduct. If it is aligned in favor of the consensus of the active maintainers of a project and against individuals, no matter how important, that seems like a very good thing that projects should be aligned on. Three, I don't know what "thin-skinned" means here. I'd call the project maintainers who are holding to a consensus decision in the face of threats by their own project leader thick-skinned, and the man who can't admit that his irrelevant, unfunny joke from 25 years ago is irrelevant and unfunny thin-skinned.
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  > there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason Yes, you're correct. In this instance, there was no crucifixion, because the CoC/inclusivity crowd didn't have enough political capital. See the NodeJS TSC drama I referenced. That's the "one side" being favored. That's the end result of pandering to people who take offense at the drop of the hat. This is simply Stallman refusing to concede to the notion that everything must be unoffensive.
  - geofft 8y ago
    OK, the "one side" is the side that believes that open source projects should be offensive?
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    And being overruled by the people actually maintaining the project. In other words, you have the people actually writing the code saying something doesn't belong, and someone who isn't really involved in the project saying "no, we must keep this offensive thing". It's literally an outsider trying to force the actual maintainers to do something they disgaree with. But you appear to support the outsider.
    - geofft 8y ago
      That's also what happened with the Node.js stuff - it was outsiders trying to engineer a situation where the board's own rules would require them to push Ashley off the board. The "SJWs" would have no power if we were not the people actually doing the work; if nothing else, in a year or two's time, we'd stop producing anything and users would jump ship. But it's the people who scream about "SJWs" who are generally outsiders who think that their use of a project entitles them to overrule the project's own maintainers.
Jerry2 8y ago
Something more recent... CoC caused one of the top 5 LLVM developers to leave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 Unfortunately, this got censored heavily on HN. Also, Rust-lang has CoC "cops": https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html (scroll down to "moderation team"). >Responsibility: helping uphold the code of conduct That's pretty crazy!
- bjt2n3904 8y ago
  I mean, I understand that. HN usually weights controversial things down to focus on the tech aspects. It keeps the place fun to browse. This is something I'm particularly interested in, so it's a little frustrating that it lasted all of 20 minutes on the front page. Ah well.
  - hermitdev 8y ago
    IMO, when a controversial issue such as a certain CoC change causes a top 5 contributor to such a large project such as LLVM to say "fuck it, I'm out," that is entirely relevant, and should be upvoted, not flagged to oblivion. You may not agree with the contributor's decision to leave, but it's worthwhile to try and understand why they came to that decision and to reflect on whether the change is the right thing to do or not. By down-voting or flagging into oblivion, dissent is being quieted, freedom of speech and thought is lost, and diversity of thought and inclusiveness in the community is actively being destroyed. We don't all have to agree, but when one group can actively suppress the participation of another, you've effectively killed free speech/thought.
    - flukus 8y ago
      The people that flag that sort of thing don't actually want diversity and inclusiveness, these are newspeak terms that mean the opposite. If they actually wanted diversity then they would have to recognize that the majority of the world (and the diversity in it) has some very non-PC beliefs and their policies are excluding those people.
ubernostrum 8y ago
I don't get this. And by "this" I mean probably your entire worldview, but also whatever led you to make that comment. Here's how I see this situation: People who actively maintain a project, and have done so with success for many years, notice something in the documentation that they think is outdated and perhaps a bit tasteless, hold a reasonable discussion about it like adults, and make a decision. Someone who's at best an inactive emeritus contributor sees this and gets so worked up about it that he decides to risk severely alienating the actual technical contributors in order to override their decision in favor of his personal politics, and when asked to participate in the project's usual decision-making process pulls a Louis XIV ("le projet, c'est moi!") and invokes absolute authority while expressing an unwillingness to listen to any contrary opinions or arguments, resorting to clichéd insults about "trigger warnings" and such. If you really feel you must argue that one of the parties involved here has "thin skin" (and I don't understand that, either) I do not see how you can, with any rational basis, come to the conclusion that it's the first group. I also do not see how there's anything admirable in the second person's response or actions.

geofft 8y ago

One, there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason, even as an analogy. Had Stallman not replied on the list to insist on his own personal veto over glibc changes, the project would have moved on, nobody would have asked about whether that veto makes sense, and if he showed up on some technical thing two months later people would have absolutely listened to him with extra weight. And even so, nobody is questioning him as a person, nor attempting to care about what he says or police his project participation based on his views - multiple people in favor of the removal have quite clearly said that he can say what he likes on stallman.org and nobody cares. They're just questioning his veto. Two, what is the "one side" being favored here? It's not aligned on political axes - Stallman is a left-leaning person making fun of a right-wing policy, which is the opposite of many accusations I hear about codes of conduct. If it is aligned in favor of the consensus of the active maintainers of a project and against individuals, no matter how important, that seems like a very good thing that projects should be aligned on. Three, I don't know what "thin-skinned" means here. I'd call the project maintainers who are holding to a consensus decision in the face of threats by their own project leader thick-skinned, and the man who can't admit that his irrelevant, unfunny joke from 25 years ago is irrelevant and unfunny thin-skinned.

bjt2n3904 8y ago
> there was no public crucifixion here, no court, no treason Yes, you're correct. In this instance, there was no crucifixion, because the CoC/inclusivity crowd didn't have enough political capital. See the NodeJS TSC drama I referenced. That's the "one side" being favored. That's the end result of pandering to people who take offense at the drop of the hat. This is simply Stallman refusing to concede to the notion that everything must be unoffensive.
- geofft 8y ago
  OK, the "one side" is the side that believes that open source projects should be offensive?
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  And being overruled by the people actually maintaining the project. In other words, you have the people actually writing the code saying something doesn't belong, and someone who isn't really involved in the project saying "no, we must keep this offensive thing". It's literally an outsider trying to force the actual maintainers to do something they disgaree with. But you appear to support the outsider.
  - geofft 8y ago
    That's also what happened with the Node.js stuff - it was outsiders trying to engineer a situation where the board's own rules would require them to push Ashley off the board. The "SJWs" would have no power if we were not the people actually doing the work; if nothing else, in a year or two's time, we'd stop producing anything and users would jump ship. But it's the people who scream about "SJWs" who are generally outsiders who think that their use of a project entitles them to overrule the project's own maintainers.

Jerry2 8y ago

Something more recent... CoC caused one of the top 5 LLVM developers to leave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16980841 Unfortunately, this got censored heavily on HN. Also, Rust-lang has CoC "cops": https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/team.html (scroll down to "moderation team"). >Responsibility: helping uphold the code of conduct That's pretty crazy!

bjt2n3904 8y ago
I mean, I understand that. HN usually weights controversial things down to focus on the tech aspects. It keeps the place fun to browse. This is something I'm particularly interested in, so it's a little frustrating that it lasted all of 20 minutes on the front page. Ah well.
- hermitdev 8y ago
  IMO, when a controversial issue such as a certain CoC change causes a top 5 contributor to such a large project such as LLVM to say "fuck it, I'm out," that is entirely relevant, and should be upvoted, not flagged to oblivion. You may not agree with the contributor's decision to leave, but it's worthwhile to try and understand why they came to that decision and to reflect on whether the change is the right thing to do or not. By down-voting or flagging into oblivion, dissent is being quieted, freedom of speech and thought is lost, and diversity of thought and inclusiveness in the community is actively being destroyed. We don't all have to agree, but when one group can actively suppress the participation of another, you've effectively killed free speech/thought.
  - flukus 8y ago
    The people that flag that sort of thing don't actually want diversity and inclusiveness, these are newspeak terms that mean the opposite. If they actually wanted diversity then they would have to recognize that the majority of the world (and the diversity in it) has some very non-PC beliefs and their policies are excluding those people.

ubernostrum 8y ago

I don't get this. And by "this" I mean probably your entire worldview, but also whatever led you to make that comment. Here's how I see this situation: People who actively maintain a project, and have done so with success for many years, notice something in the documentation that they think is outdated and perhaps a bit tasteless, hold a reasonable discussion about it like adults, and make a decision. Someone who's at best an inactive emeritus contributor sees this and gets so worked up about it that he decides to risk severely alienating the actual technical contributors in order to override their decision in favor of his personal politics, and when asked to participate in the project's usual decision-making process pulls a Louis XIV ("le projet, c'est moi!") and invokes absolute authority while expressing an unwillingness to listen to any contrary opinions or arguments, resorting to clichéd insults about "trigger warnings" and such. If you really feel you must argue that one of the parties involved here has "thin skin" (and I don't understand that, either) I do not see how you can, with any rational basis, come to the conclusion that it's the first group. I also do not see how there's anything admirable in the second person's response or actions.