4 ms·

The code of conduct is not for you guys. It's for that one future bad apple who will bring down everything you've worked hard to build.

• echelon 8y ago
  We're all adults here. Why do we need to put gloves on and treat everyone like they're high school students? If someone acts up, kick them out. That's simple, and it doesn't treat people like pre-offenders. Why are there rules for meeting in public? This isn't dangerous machinery; we're not warning people against behavior that causes loss of life or limb. It feels incredibly unwelcoming.
  • watwut 8y ago
    > If someone acts up, kick them out. That means implicit unstated arbitrary code of conduct where participants are expected to guess it. If you are in position to enforce arbitrary rules on whim, that is fine. If however there is expectation on fairness and kicked person has option to complain about you, the it is better written.
    • dymk 8y ago
      It depends on the size and formality of the event, but part of being an adult is understanding that there's an implicit code of conduct (our social rules), and observing those by being on this planet for more than 20 years or so. Having to explain to be respectful to an adult is just pandering unless they've already shown themselves to be a disrespectful person.
    • echelon 8y ago
      > participants are expected to guess it Guess? We should know the difference between right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome. We don't have to be told not to murder or steal. If there is a line that gets crossed, it can be dealt with, or even turned into a teaching moment so long as it wasn't too egregious. > kicked person has option to complain about you I'm not going to get upset if someone complains about me kicking them out. No big deal. Maybe that's it? The actual point where I disagree. I expect people to be adults _and_ to have thick skin. This is why code of conducts feel like coddling to me. Maybe I'm in a place of privilege and there are people that get repeatedly harassed. I get that, and I sympathize. But damn does it feel like being called a "bad boy" when there's a set of additional rules that feel like platitudes. It's kind of like the feeling you get when being followed by a cop even though you've made no traffic violations.
      • pavel_lishin 8y ago
        > I'm not going to get upset if someone complains about me kicking them out. No big deal. I'm glad you're a reasonable person, but I've been part of a group where people did get upset about being kicked out. They tried to argue about it. They tried to rules-lawyer their way out, they tried all sorts of emotional appeals. > Maybe I'm in a place of privilege It kind of sounds like it.
        • grawprog 8y ago
          >They tried to rules-lawyer their way out Well if there's no rules, there's nothing to rules lawyer about is there? You just kick rude buddy out and they can sit and complain outside. I mean if I kicked someone out of my place and they started arguing with me, I would physically remove them my house. There would be no arguing. Someone disrespects my house, my friends and me by not leaving when asked, they are no longer welcome there. There's no appealing to emotion, no anything. They leave.
          • pjc50 8y ago
            Sure; but what if it's not your house? Then you've got duelling claims over who should be in, resolved by appeals to emotion.
          • pavel_lishin 8y ago
            > Well if there's no rules, there's nothing to rules lawyer about is there? You just kick rude buddy out and they can sit and complain outside. I don't think I was clear; their chief complaint that technically they didn't break any rules, and that there was no warning, and that they didn't know, etc. If you have a concrete rule to point to - especially one that's loose enough to cover most issues - then you can kick them out much more easily, especially because your co-organizers won't be stuck waffling.
      • detaro 8y ago
        To quote you: "If there is a line that gets crossed, it can be dealt with, or even turned into a teaching moment so long as it wasn't too egregious." A code of conduct in many ways is a commitment by the organizer that that's what will happen, even if it'd be more convenient to ignore a problem and avoid confrontation, or if they'd be tempted to treat some people differently. A commitment they can be held to by attendees. In the same way, for the organizer, it provides something to follow when making a decision, and to point to to justify their decisions when challenged. Something that amounts to "I'll kick people out if they break those rules" is easier to accept than "I'll kick people out when I want to" (even if the latter is often the organizers right from a legal POV too). If everyone "know[s] the difference between right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome", a Code of Conduct is redundant (which also means one existing shouldn't cause no problems, and when it does the ideas about whats right or wrong typically weren't as common as expected). But experience shows that this doesn't reliably survives contact with reality, and it's easy for issues to never get brought up or silenced because "surely we all are adults and nobody would really do something bad", where again the commitment part of a code of conduct comes into play. It's always just a tool: It doesn't magically make problems go away, and I'm certainly not saying all code of conducts are perfect, fit the same for all groups or are always applied well. Re "set of additional rules that are platitudes": So you don't have a problem with an organizer saying "If you misbehave I'll kick you out", but making it more explicit what counts as "misbehave" is a problem?
    • dwild 8y ago
      > kicked person has option to complain about you This is important to you? That will happens code of conduct or not... better be prepared to live with that. > the it is better written. What if it's not written? Your solution is to only allow what's written? That's going to be quite a conundrum and awful to live with. There's reasons why the laws are that large and the court system is required. A small gathering isn't meant to become a simulation of a government you know? If anything bad happens, discuss it together, decide the course of action based on that and act on it. It could be to kick out someone, or it could means for you to go because that's not the kind of interaction that you want to live in a small gathering.
  • afarrell 8y ago
    > If someone acts up, kick them out How does a group decide what “acting up” is? Who is actually making the decision to kick them out? When you have a group this is either large or long-standing, these questions eventually come up. I’ve been in a 5-hour-long meeting that was the 2nd of 3 attempts to eject a mid-30s non-student from a University student computing club. I fail to see how this sort of stuff is easy.
    • true_religion 8y ago
      If you don’t have a charter, then the leadership is a default dictatorship that can do what it wants. If you do, then have a meeting amongst the leaders to see how to reconcile actions with the charter. Most problems occur when the dictator just wants to step aside and let the general population decide an issue, but there’s no real mechanism for doing so.
    • NotAnEconomist 8y ago
      > I’ve been in a 5-hour-long meeting that was the 2nd of 3 attempts to eject a mid-30s non-student from a University student computing club. I fail to see how this sort of stuff is easy. Generally speaking, this is caused by too much policy, not too little policy -- and adding an official code of conduct (which a university likely already had!) isn't going to solve that.
      • drchickensalad 8y ago
        This type of long argument happens in 10 person discords who have literally no policy. I don't think they're necessarily related.
    • dwild 8y ago
      > University student computing club How many people? The first comment of that thread was talking about a 3-4 peoples groups. I personally agree that for large group you NEED formalities. It's not even a question of if it's better with or without, the group will just not survive without formalities. What acting up? Did you felt right about how someone acted? That's acting up. Is it enough to kick someone out? That would be mostly about if he keep doing it or not... and how everyone else feel about it. Maybe it just means that this group isn't meant for you either.
  • pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > We're all adults here. With all due respect, that sounds like something someone would say if they haven't spent a lot of time running events where all sorts of strangers show up. Think of the Birthday Paradox. How many people does it take before there's a 50% chance of someone sharing a birthday? It's surprisingly low. How many people does it take before there's a 50% chance of someone being an unreasonable asshole? Significantly less.
    • kd5bjo 8y ago
      The birthday paradox would only apply here if assholishness is a property of pairs of people (like sharing a birthday) instead of individual people (like having a particular birthday). While that may be true, it doesn’t match my experience and certainly isn’t obvious.
      • pjc50 8y ago
        One of the core observations of modern understanding of abusive behaviour is that it is a pairwise property; the world is full of domestic abusers who are charming to everyone except their spouse when nobody's looking. Similarly with "missing stairs" and "whisper networks"; there have been plenty of workspaces where Alice knows that no female staff should be left alone with Bob, and manages to communicate this obliquely to Carol shortly after she joins. This usually co-exists with none of the male staff of the office admitting to being aware of what's going on.
        • deleted 8y ago
          [deleted]
    • corodra 8y ago
      No, when anyone says “we are all adults here”, that’s a person who often socializes with people on a regular basis and doesn’t binge watch videos and shows all day, everyday. That’s why a lot of people are getting fired up about in here. People who don’t actually put themselves out there and communicate with others face to face, are saying rules are required to interact with others. Thus, the real asshole is the rules lawyer who barges around saying everyone must do certain things to cater to their sensitivities.
• losteric 8y ago
  How will code of conducts stop that from happening?
  • afarrell 8y ago
    By making it much more clear: 1) To attendees that, “yes, that thing which you thought was inappropriate was in fact wrong. You should feel empowered to speak up about it.” 2) To organizers that “yes, we’ve already agreed this thing someone has done is wrong. Its worth doing something about it, even if that requires having an uncomfortable conversation which we’d rather just kick down the road.” 3) To other attendees that “yes, there was a thought process behind this and your place in this group of friends isn’t balanced on a knife’s-edge.” 4) To abusive people, “You probably want to move along” ...ideally. Alternatively, it tells them, “here is a mechanism you can exploit to separate your victim from their support network.” Note that you cannot just slap up a code of conduct and assume that will solve/prevent all problems. That works as well as just adding “agile” to some PM’s job title. You have to have people who care about doing a good job at community management and are willing to endure the discomfort of difficult conversations.
    • luckylion 8y ago
      > By making it much more clear How? Unless you want to write out long, complicated laws, you'll rely on words like "kind", "friendly", "aggressive" etc that are anything but clear and rely on interpretation. You'll still need the group to agree on what those terms mean and kick out people that don't agree with that interpretation (and the individual circumstances) - which you could've had without a formal set of rules in the first place.
      • afarrell 8y ago
        The moderate reasonable interpretation of what you are saying is a solid criticism: misinterpretation is still possible and we don’t have the time to all go to law school and explain what “mens rea” means to each other. But some level of explicit communication still scales better than silence and implicit expectations.
• thinkingemote 8y ago
  That's one possible aim but the main reason is it's for people who wouldn't feel comfortable joining without one. It's insurance for new joiners not protection for existing members
• cf498 8y ago
  Or for the future bad apples that come in and try to exploit the CoC to bully someone out who was there from the start. People interested in introducing CoC in small friction less groups are rather often extremely toxic.
• dunkelheit 8y ago
  The fear is that it will enable a different kind of bad apples, all while not necessary being effective at preventing the first kind.