9 ms·

No Code Of Conduct (2018)

91 points by nudpiedo 7y ago

Shinobi881 7y ago
Ummm... 1. This is a CoC 2. Read #1 3. "We are all adults..." Then why are we having this discussion? 4. I'll continue to try an format text because I'm crazy
Etheryte 7y ago
The easiest solution is in the name — simply don't have a code of conduct. As the owner of a number of open source project, nothing baffles me more than the argument that civil discussion can't happen without an official document outlining the terms and conditions of participating. You don't need one when you you interact with people offline, why would this be any different? Surely, there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what you're like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case.
- watwut 7y ago
  The linked article is an actual fully fledged code of conduct along with promiss to lock and ban those who dont follow it. > Surely, there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what you're like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case. One problem with this as strategy is that it makes moderate, constructive or polite people to leave first. It also makes me easy to use passive aggression or hidden-not-so-hidden bullying to make people leave when I disagree with them.
  - grayhatter 7y ago
    At which point does it becomes the repo owners job to help you assert your own personal space? Why can't you ignore the douchebag?
    - belltaco 7y ago
      Why is HN so heavily moderated? Have you looked at what unmoderated communities devolve into?
      - u801e 7y ago
        Back when I used to read and post to Usenet, my killfile handled almost all of the bad content so that I never saw it. The nice thing was that I was in sole control of that file and no one else had any say in what I did or didn't want to see.
        belltaco 7y ago
        Great, why not stick to Usenet now? Why did it become less popular?
        u801e 7y ago
        My best guess is the fact that most ISPs discontinued their usenet feeds around the time that Andrew Cuomo (back when he was the Attorney General of New York) came to an agreement with a number of ISPs to block access to child porn in certain newsgroups[1]. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-to-curb-usenet-access/ https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-t...
    - sneak 7y ago
      Some communities like to grow and attract more people. Many people don’t like to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring communications from douchebags, which is reasonable. Widening the range of participatory reach requires specific effort to further optimize for welcomingness.
      - u801e 7y ago
        > Many people don’t like to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring communications from douchebags Could the platform the community uses make it easier to hide posts and discussion threads that people don't want to see? That would minimize the time spent trying to deal with it.
  - belorn 7y ago
    Moderate, constructive and polite people can leave also because there is a CoC. Reasonable people don't like when a community is lawyer-ing over rules, when rules get enforced ambiguously or nontransparent. All which are very common with code of conducts. As someone who ran a medium sized community for almost a decade, I saw such reasonable people leave for both a lack of rules (X should be forbidden, I am leaving) and also when we had a fully fledged code of conduct (I am tired of all the drama over X, I am leaving), and ambiguous/transparency issue (I am leaving because of the cabal who try to enforce their own interpretation of the rules). When the first happen followed with the second and third what you are left with was only members who either completely did not care or where inactive. At that point we removed the code of conduct and replaced it with a more common sense guideline of "just treat people with respect, and if you don't you get a friendly warning/reminder" and we slowly regained stability. Code of conduct has an inherently risk of becoming a weapon for those who want to use passive aggression or hidden-not-so-hidden bullying against an out group. The more strict the rules the more you need to have a transparent community process for enforcement, but sadly those tend to be mutually exclusive.
    - watwut 7y ago
      None of that has anything to do with what I said about "you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case" means in practical terms. People use to sound smart and mature and it is easy to use to make people stop talking about problems they see. Whether the complainers are right or wrong, "those who dont like how treats them should leave" as universal strategy is neither mature nor smart. I picked on that, because it is common cheap talking point that I was forced to re-evaluate few months ago (not just because of online issues). The linked article is in fact code of conduct and even specifies what will get you banned.
      - belorn 7y ago
        Based on my own experience I don't disagree with the article statement you quoted above, but I would describe it using other words to be more clear. I would say that community conflicts resolving should prioritize deescalation and dispute resolution over norm enforcement and punitive punishment. This article say things like "Email that person, and try to work it out. Email the owners of the community, and alert them. Whatever you do, do not make a scene, as that will burden the entire community with your issue. If it's truly a problem and you're truly an asset to the community then you will probably get an email back. Sometimes, you have to be the bigger person. Say your piece privately, and don't dwell on it". The community I ran in the past even had a similar statement, but using other words. Instead of saying "do not make a scene" we said "don't create drama". We were frankly tired of peoples personal disputes escalating and dividing the community, and so was the community. Sadly at that point a lot of reasonable people had already left.
- jamiemchale 7y ago
  Except, in a lot of circumstances you do need it offline. Rules of order for Parliaments, town hall meetings, and everything in-between. Constitutions for local groups and clubs. Bye-laws for local areas. Codes of Conducts are a lightweight way of expressing how interactions are goverened and disputes resolved. The idea that adults don't need rules and guides to fix things is disproven by politics and conflict. Good politics is based on rules. Bad conflict happens when there are none.
  - yawboakye 7y ago
    I participate in a lot of communities that have CoCs. Never read any of them. It shouldn't take a document to show respect to other people in the community, save a few heated moments (it's human nature). In my opinion, public participants don't need to check the CoC before calling out behavior A as inappropriate. I'll call out what I consider inappropriate behavior without checking with the CoC, and try to bring the other person to my point of view.
    - jcahill 7y ago
      so you substitute your own private, undocumented, ever-shifting, tone-driven value system for any given discourse context's set of actually codified rules. that's still a CoC. you've just added entitlement.
      - yawboakye 7y ago
        Got it. I didn't know we renamed it from morals to CoC. TIL.
    - jamiemchale 7y ago
      And this is totally fine! CoCs are there for the end-of-the-line decisions where the "being reasonable" options have been exhausted. They are also useful sometimes for setting the tone for meetings / events. The various uses and normal behaviour are not mutually exclusive!
- yotossing 7y ago
  I saw a recent comment on lobsters on how CoCs are an americanised way of solving issues, and it deeply resonated with me. Lot's of other things I see in american companies and even american media started to making more sense to me. https://lobste.rs/s/h7mdza/how_github_blocked_me_all_my_libraries#c_ixvkhr https://lobste.rs/s/h7mdza/how_github_blocked_me_all_my_libr...
- alanfranz 7y ago
  > but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case. I think the whole point is: if somebody has no incentive not to insult or harass you, that kind of behaviour can be used to bypass technical discussion. Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start insulting you, and your answer is just to leave? Yes, sometimes CoCs are too complex and deal with idiotic details. Yes, I don't think that changing "master-slave" into "leader-follower" really has an impact or whatsoever. But some basic rules about what's acceptable and what not are a good thing, IMHO. No two adults share the same vision of the world. Just state the obvious, if needed; is that SO hard?
  - clarry 7y ago
    > Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start insulting you, and your answer is just to leave? Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start a smear campaign against you and invoke CoC to push you out of the community?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > if somebody has no incentive not to insult or harass you, that kind of behaviour can be used to bypass technical discussion. Sensible people can tell when insults or harassment are being used in this way, and ignore the noise. And if an overly 'welcoming' project is being overrun by less-than-sensible people, no CoC is going to save it - it needs a clean fork to start a new community from scratch around it.
- kemonocode 7y ago
  By being all in the nose about other Codes of Conduct and effectively codifying the expected behavior in your community, you're having a Code of Conduct yourself. I do agree that CoCs are little more than a distraction, but you just need one line to state you don't have one for your project- or perhaps even none at all.
maxehmookau 7y ago
Oh good. This again. The very first line is the problem here: 'We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions.' We're not. Some people are less capable of behaving themselves in online communities than others. Also, the definition of "behaving" is subjective.
- wyager 7y ago
  > Some people are less capable of behaving themselves in online communities than others Especially, for example, the kind of people who insist on foisting overbearing codes of conduct on every project. From a practical standpoint, those people seem to cause vastly more trouble than whatever marginal improvements their codes of conduct might nominally capture.
  - maxehmookau 7y ago
    I'll need some evidence to back up that wild conjecture please. What on earth about being nice to each other is overbearing? Which bit of the contributor covenant do you find particularly overbearing?
    - wyager 7y ago
      > I'll need some evidence to back up that wild conjecture please. Oh, let me just pull up all the peer-reviewed studies that people have done comparing the impact of CoCs versus... oh wait, that obviously doesn't exist. Do you have "some evidence" you'd like to share? I'm not really sure what you are looking for here. > What on earth about being nice to each other is overbearing This is such an absurd motte-and-bailey. Are you really trying to sell us on the idea that the 5000+ word "contributor covenant" is nothing more than "be nice to each other"?
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      The idea that the imposition of, for example, the Contributor Covenant, is just about "being nice to eachother" is exactly the sort of thing that precedes long periods of abuse and bullying predicated on it. If you don't pay attention to the erosion of community occurring under such projects, then that's your own ignorance, not the basis of an argument. You can reframe the discussion in terms of "being nice to eachother", and your opposition as "in favour of not being nice to eachother" in turn, but that doesn't mean that's the actual dichotomy.
wildchild 7y ago
Faggots don't like it, they need special treatment.
sneak 7y ago
> It is not this community's place to care about individual feelings. We leave that to the individuals. The internet is a big place, you should prepare yourself to deal with it. Leaders who don’t take their responsibility for leadership seriously are very bad leaders, as we have had demonstrated for us quite recently. I hope that groups replace their leaders who think this way.
- dudbud 7y ago
  > as we have had demonstrated for us quite recently I assume you are referring to Xi Jinping's leadership?
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  What good is a leader if they allow the workers to be run off in favor of layabouts?
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    I don't understand, how will that happen? Any examples?
  - detaro 7y ago
    Is that agreement or disagreement with the parent poster?
  - sneak 7y ago
    I think that the dichotomy you propose is a false one. There are many options besides “let noncontributing SJWs flameshame everyone away” and “be inconsiderate jerks who don’t care at all about the effects our communications have on others”. A “reasonable person” test can be applied to judge these things. It’s not very popular because it isn’t a strict, objectively-applied code, which is what hackers generally prefer, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good and workable solution. As hackerdom gets more mainstream and the mean moves closer to neurotypical, these sorts of non-objective “if they are being mean, kick them out” ideas are gaining popularity without meanness having to be strictly, objectively defined. These people are trying to make a political statement with this CoC; they are solving a problem that doesn’t exist (or is solved by simply not having one without proclaiming loudly how not-having-one you are). It strikes me as YAGNI. Unless you like being an asshole, just don’t have a public, defined CoC (just an unwritten informal “no assholes”) and quietly kick out any assholes who show up.
QUFB 7y ago
I like to keep it simple: https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_C...
- andai 7y ago
  Reminds me of my favorite software license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
  - QUFB 7y ago
    And that's the license I use!
- ImJasonH 7y ago
  Or else what? "Asshole" according to whom? How are disagreements about assholery resolved? This (and the original NCoC) is naive wishful thinking that won't survive first contact with an actual community issue.
  - QUFB 7y ago
    You're probably right, and larger projects need a more formalized framework for CoCs.
  - newswasboring 7y ago
    Isn't the answer to all those questions whatever the owners of the repo want? I mean, its still a privately owned repository and communities.
    - ImJasonH 7y ago
      If we're talking about small personal OSS projects, then yeah sure it doesn't really matter, because they're won't be a community to speak of. Once you have a few other maintainers and contributors, there will inevitably be disagreements, and you have to have a realistic framework for resolving them respectfully and equitably.
watwut 7y ago
So, we are "We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions." Our problem is "debating how members should behave in their communities, only to be found to never be fully resolved to anyone's liking". And the problem is solved by "lock, and ban your way to freedom".
- nudpiedo 7y ago
  I thought it first suggests sending an email, speaking and dialoguing with education. The ban thing is against the mob or the endless discussions etc.
smacktoward 7y ago
> Email that person, and try to work it out. Email the owners of the community, and alert them. Whatever you do, do not make a scene, as that will burden the entire community with your issue. Wow. I mean, I was expecting “we don’t care that you’re being abused” to be the subtext here, but they just came out and said it.
- empath75 7y ago
  Basically any project that uses this as it’s CoC of any size will quickly be overrun by bullies.
  - ecmascript 7y ago
    People who cares very deeply about CoCs are usually bullies.
    - yawboakye 7y ago
      I have seen this as well. It's as if they're trying to determine the boundaries of (un)acceptable behavior, and once clearly define begin to put the community to the test and a never ending CoC revision sessions in order to bring in (never remove) new behaviors considered harmful. That and also keeping the CoC committee members relevant.
  - grayhatter 7y ago
    Citation needed
  - wyager 7y ago
    When has this happened?
- coleifer 7y ago
  I'd suggest that you try those suggestions (direct contact, then escalate privately) before rejecting them.
- Chris2048 7y ago
comex 7y ago
(2015)
jmull 7y ago
“NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct. There’s a decent fraction of people who just can’t stop being assholes, but you can somewhat hold them at bay (imperfectly) with a list of rules.
- Mountain_Skies 7y ago
  Unfortunately it is often those people who end up writing the codes of conduct.
- wyager 7y ago
  > “NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct. No, we got codes of conduct because "post-meritocracy" activists (not invective, actually what they call themselves: https://postmeritocracy.org https://postmeritocracy.org ) had enough political leverage in the software industry to force these overtly political documents on various projects.
empath75 7y ago
So what do you do if someone on your project doesn’t behave like an adult? Just make it up as you go along? How do you decide how to do that in a fair way?
- nudpiedo 7y ago
  According to the article: > Q: As a community manager or leader, what happens when the mob arrives, or when someone starts to engage in discussion that could lead to more endless discussion? > Lock, and ban your way to freedom.
Chris2048 7y ago
I'm no fan of CoCs, but I already know the arguments used by (many of) their proponents, and that this FAQ does not fully address them. This feels too dismissive, with an hand-wavey "let's be adults"; Clearly, the problem is people either don't act like adults, or the idea of how an adult should act differs. Furthermore, "or possibly, you are wrong?" will be called "victim-blaming", "gas-lighting" or "lamp-shading", "Email that person, and try to work it out" will put the onus of resolution on the victim, etc. For these culture wars we need to directly address the two viewpoints; This naively assumes best intentions, the traditional CoC crowd falsely assumes the worst. We need to discuss distinctions of behaviour - separate the "micro-aggression" from the outright crime and make it very clear they are to be treated entirely differently, that "scorched earth" policies rarely work, but neither do "lets all get along" policies. <tangent> TBH, I see a similarity to arguments over programming methodologies; trying to promote a handful of catch-all methods when the best solution is one tailored to the situation </tangent> edit: Ok, so someone flagged the article. seriously? Can we all review what flagging is supposed to be for: To flag abusive or inappropriate material, not a special super-downvote option.
christiansakai 7y ago
What is this? Why this is a thing?
- dudbud 7y ago
  In the last 5-7 years we have seen a cultural phenomenon where somehow people have become unbearably sensitive to confrontation on the internet. The extent to which these people are able to disrupt social media, workplaces, and even software projects is staggering.
netsharc 7y ago
Wow, after reading the title I liked the idea of keeping it sane without needing written rules (rules which IMO sometimes go too far), but reading further down that document seems whoever wrote this is motivated by "butthurt" about "mobs" (presumably the so-termed "SJW mobs"). In any case, I expect there will be flame wars, and meta-flame-wars in here soon.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
blueboo 7y ago
I mean, it’s only human to want the benefit of a huge audience without the implications of having a diverse one. My toddler also wants pancakes for every meal. As adults we grow past such a narrow and self-serving view. Most of us, anyway.
grayhatter 7y ago
I'm more of the opinion that NCoC is better than CoC. All that matters is code. If you bother the admin you get banned, if you bother a user, you get ignored. Is this really a problem so pervasive that I'm just blind to? I can cite examples of a CoC being abused, where the alternative is impossible to prove, right? Look our CoC is holding back the flood gates of douche. I'm not saying there's no discrimination, humans heuristics are deeply flawed, I'm only arguing that this problem was solved with block/ban/ignore. Yes/no?
JoachimS 7y ago
"We accept anyone's contributions." Probably not a true statement. Accept them based on its own merits is probably more in line with how most projects work. I recall some project on Github that really did accept all contributions. Very funny. For a short time.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  I think the "anyone" here is speaking to the non-merit measures of a contribution. Anecdotally, I mostly see GitLab/GitHub usernames, not email addresses with names in them (or in the field). I think that prejudices of the sort CoCs ostensibly seek to abate are largely impractical to hold, unless you go and track down the person tied to the patch every time you get one. I think probably a lot of this is people trying to claim that because the outcomes are unequal, the procedure is unequal; when the simpler answer is that some subsets of people just tend to be composed of those who choose not to contribute to open source software projects or gain the professional competence often required to do so. Free people are not spherical cows, they have their own sets of incentives, even ones you don't understand as a career hawk businesslady or an ordinary schlub grinding at the keyboard.
rgcduudfr577ggy 7y ago
Unfortunately we've very quickly descended to the point where a lot of adults are very infantile. There are adults who think it's appropriate to put their bizarre gender identity or sexuality front and center in a professional setting, and there are adults who think it's appropriate to take the opportunity for childish insults when one of these people rear their ugly heads (if you'll pardon the expression, albeit typically accurate). Such a NCoC is a timely reminder to everyone to grow the hell up. Ask yourself what your grandfather would have done.
jonathanpierre 7y ago
I don't think this was an attempt in good faith to participate in the discussion about the utility or futility of codes of conducts. This seems to be, depending on your inclination to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, either a joke in bad taste or simply a troll. The straw-man "Frequently Asked Question" about the project name sounding like cock makes me lean to the latter option. In any case, this isn't really worth discussing much, as it's primary use seems to be to poison that discussion right from the beginning.
tckr 7y ago
2015!

91 points by nudpiedo 7y ago

Ummm... 1. This is a CoC 2. Read #1 3. "We are all adults..." Then why are we having this discussion? 4. I'll continue to try an format text because I'm crazy

Etheryte 7y ago

The easiest solution is in the name — simply don't have a code of conduct. As the owner of a number of open source project, nothing baffles me more than the argument that civil discussion can't happen without an official document outlining the terms and conditions of participating. You don't need one when you you interact with people offline, why would this be any different? Surely, there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what you're like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case.

watwut 7y ago
The linked article is an actual fully fledged code of conduct along with promiss to lock and ban those who dont follow it. > Surely, there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what you're like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case. One problem with this as strategy is that it makes moderate, constructive or polite people to leave first. It also makes me easy to use passive aggression or hidden-not-so-hidden bullying to make people leave when I disagree with them.
- grayhatter 7y ago
  At which point does it becomes the repo owners job to help you assert your own personal space? Why can't you ignore the douchebag?
  - belltaco 7y ago
    Why is HN so heavily moderated? Have you looked at what unmoderated communities devolve into?
    - u801e 7y ago
      Back when I used to read and post to Usenet, my killfile handled almost all of the bad content so that I never saw it. The nice thing was that I was in sole control of that file and no one else had any say in what I did or didn't want to see.
      - belltaco 7y ago
        Great, why not stick to Usenet now? Why did it become less popular?
        u801e 7y ago
        My best guess is the fact that most ISPs discontinued their usenet feeds around the time that Andrew Cuomo (back when he was the Attorney General of New York) came to an agreement with a number of ISPs to block access to child porn in certain newsgroups[1]. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-to-curb-usenet-access/ https://www.cnet.com/news/n-y-attorney-general-forces-isps-t...
  - sneak 7y ago
    Some communities like to grow and attract more people. Many people don’t like to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring communications from douchebags, which is reasonable. Widening the range of participatory reach requires specific effort to further optimize for welcomingness.
    - u801e 7y ago
      > Many people don’t like to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring communications from douchebags Could the platform the community uses make it easier to hide posts and discussion threads that people don't want to see? That would minimize the time spent trying to deal with it.
- belorn 7y ago
  Moderate, constructive and polite people can leave also because there is a CoC. Reasonable people don't like when a community is lawyer-ing over rules, when rules get enforced ambiguously or nontransparent. All which are very common with code of conducts. As someone who ran a medium sized community for almost a decade, I saw such reasonable people leave for both a lack of rules (X should be forbidden, I am leaving) and also when we had a fully fledged code of conduct (I am tired of all the drama over X, I am leaving), and ambiguous/transparency issue (I am leaving because of the cabal who try to enforce their own interpretation of the rules). When the first happen followed with the second and third what you are left with was only members who either completely did not care or where inactive. At that point we removed the code of conduct and replaced it with a more common sense guideline of "just treat people with respect, and if you don't you get a friendly warning/reminder" and we slowly regained stability. Code of conduct has an inherently risk of becoming a weapon for those who want to use passive aggression or hidden-not-so-hidden bullying against an out group. The more strict the rules the more you need to have a transparent community process for enforcement, but sadly those tend to be mutually exclusive.
  - watwut 7y ago
    None of that has anything to do with what I said about "you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case" means in practical terms. People use to sound smart and mature and it is easy to use to make people stop talking about problems they see. Whether the complainers are right or wrong, "those who dont like how treats them should leave" as universal strategy is neither mature nor smart. I picked on that, because it is common cheap talking point that I was forced to re-evaluate few months ago (not just because of online issues). The linked article is in fact code of conduct and even specifies what will get you banned.
    - belorn 7y ago
      Based on my own experience I don't disagree with the article statement you quoted above, but I would describe it using other words to be more clear. I would say that community conflicts resolving should prioritize deescalation and dispute resolution over norm enforcement and punitive punishment. This article say things like "Email that person, and try to work it out. Email the owners of the community, and alert them. Whatever you do, do not make a scene, as that will burden the entire community with your issue. If it's truly a problem and you're truly an asset to the community then you will probably get an email back. Sometimes, you have to be the bigger person. Say your piece privately, and don't dwell on it". The community I ran in the past even had a similar statement, but using other words. Instead of saying "do not make a scene" we said "don't create drama". We were frankly tired of peoples personal disputes escalating and dividing the community, and so was the community. Sadly at that point a lot of reasonable people had already left.
jamiemchale 7y ago
Except, in a lot of circumstances you do need it offline. Rules of order for Parliaments, town hall meetings, and everything in-between. Constitutions for local groups and clubs. Bye-laws for local areas. Codes of Conducts are a lightweight way of expressing how interactions are goverened and disputes resolved. The idea that adults don't need rules and guides to fix things is disproven by politics and conflict. Good politics is based on rules. Bad conflict happens when there are none.
- yawboakye 7y ago
  I participate in a lot of communities that have CoCs. Never read any of them. It shouldn't take a document to show respect to other people in the community, save a few heated moments (it's human nature). In my opinion, public participants don't need to check the CoC before calling out behavior A as inappropriate. I'll call out what I consider inappropriate behavior without checking with the CoC, and try to bring the other person to my point of view.
  - jcahill 7y ago
    so you substitute your own private, undocumented, ever-shifting, tone-driven value system for any given discourse context's set of actually codified rules. that's still a CoC. you've just added entitlement.
    - yawboakye 7y ago
      Got it. I didn't know we renamed it from morals to CoC. TIL.
  - jamiemchale 7y ago
    And this is totally fine! CoCs are there for the end-of-the-line decisions where the "being reasonable" options have been exhausted. They are also useful sometimes for setting the tone for meetings / events. The various uses and normal behaviour are not mutually exclusive!
yotossing 7y ago
I saw a recent comment on lobsters on how CoCs are an americanised way of solving issues, and it deeply resonated with me. Lot's of other things I see in american companies and even american media started to making more sense to me. https://lobste.rs/s/h7mdza/how_github_blocked_me_all_my_libraries#c_ixvkhr https://lobste.rs/s/h7mdza/how_github_blocked_me_all_my_libr...
alanfranz 7y ago
> but you're always very free to simply walk away when that's the case. I think the whole point is: if somebody has no incentive not to insult or harass you, that kind of behaviour can be used to bypass technical discussion. Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start insulting you, and your answer is just to leave? Yes, sometimes CoCs are too complex and deal with idiotic details. Yes, I don't think that changing "master-slave" into "leader-follower" really has an impact or whatsoever. But some basic rules about what's acceptable and what not are a good thing, IMHO. No two adults share the same vision of the world. Just state the obvious, if needed; is that SO hard?
- clarry 7y ago
  > Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start insulting you, and your answer is just to leave? Would you be happy if, after many years you're involved in a community and you do good work, some people start a smear campaign against you and invoke CoC to push you out of the community?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > if somebody has no incentive not to insult or harass you, that kind of behaviour can be used to bypass technical discussion. Sensible people can tell when insults or harassment are being used in this way, and ignore the noise. And if an overly 'welcoming' project is being overrun by less-than-sensible people, no CoC is going to save it - it needs a clean fork to start a new community from scratch around it.
kemonocode 7y ago
By being all in the nose about other Codes of Conduct and effectively codifying the expected behavior in your community, you're having a Code of Conduct yourself. I do agree that CoCs are little more than a distraction, but you just need one line to state you don't have one for your project- or perhaps even none at all.

maxehmookau 7y ago

Oh good. This again. The very first line is the problem here: 'We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions.' We're not. Some people are less capable of behaving themselves in online communities than others. Also, the definition of "behaving" is subjective.

wyager 7y ago
> Some people are less capable of behaving themselves in online communities than others Especially, for example, the kind of people who insist on foisting overbearing codes of conduct on every project. From a practical standpoint, those people seem to cause vastly more trouble than whatever marginal improvements their codes of conduct might nominally capture.
- maxehmookau 7y ago
  I'll need some evidence to back up that wild conjecture please. What on earth about being nice to each other is overbearing? Which bit of the contributor covenant do you find particularly overbearing?
  - wyager 7y ago
    > I'll need some evidence to back up that wild conjecture please. Oh, let me just pull up all the peer-reviewed studies that people have done comparing the impact of CoCs versus... oh wait, that obviously doesn't exist. Do you have "some evidence" you'd like to share? I'm not really sure what you are looking for here. > What on earth about being nice to each other is overbearing This is such an absurd motte-and-bailey. Are you really trying to sell us on the idea that the 5000+ word "contributor covenant" is nothing more than "be nice to each other"?
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    The idea that the imposition of, for example, the Contributor Covenant, is just about "being nice to eachother" is exactly the sort of thing that precedes long periods of abuse and bullying predicated on it. If you don't pay attention to the erosion of community occurring under such projects, then that's your own ignorance, not the basis of an argument. You can reframe the discussion in terms of "being nice to eachother", and your opposition as "in favour of not being nice to eachother" in turn, but that doesn't mean that's the actual dichotomy.

wildchild 7y ago

Faggots don't like it, they need special treatment.

sneak 7y ago

> It is not this community's place to care about individual feelings. We leave that to the individuals. The internet is a big place, you should prepare yourself to deal with it. Leaders who don’t take their responsibility for leadership seriously are very bad leaders, as we have had demonstrated for us quite recently. I hope that groups replace their leaders who think this way.

dudbud 7y ago
> as we have had demonstrated for us quite recently I assume you are referring to Xi Jinping's leadership?
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
What good is a leader if they allow the workers to be run off in favor of layabouts?
- newswasboring 7y ago
  I don't understand, how will that happen? Any examples?
- detaro 7y ago
  Is that agreement or disagreement with the parent poster?
- sneak 7y ago
  I think that the dichotomy you propose is a false one. There are many options besides “let noncontributing SJWs flameshame everyone away” and “be inconsiderate jerks who don’t care at all about the effects our communications have on others”. A “reasonable person” test can be applied to judge these things. It’s not very popular because it isn’t a strict, objectively-applied code, which is what hackers generally prefer, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good and workable solution. As hackerdom gets more mainstream and the mean moves closer to neurotypical, these sorts of non-objective “if they are being mean, kick them out” ideas are gaining popularity without meanness having to be strictly, objectively defined. These people are trying to make a political statement with this CoC; they are solving a problem that doesn’t exist (or is solved by simply not having one without proclaiming loudly how not-having-one you are). It strikes me as YAGNI. Unless you like being an asshole, just don’t have a public, defined CoC (just an unwritten informal “no assholes”) and quietly kick out any assholes who show up.

QUFB 7y ago

I like to keep it simple: https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_C...

andai 7y ago
Reminds me of my favorite software license: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTFPL
- QUFB 7y ago
  And that's the license I use!
ImJasonH 7y ago
Or else what? "Asshole" according to whom? How are disagreements about assholery resolved? This (and the original NCoC) is naive wishful thinking that won't survive first contact with an actual community issue.
- QUFB 7y ago
  You're probably right, and larger projects need a more formalized framework for CoCs.
- newswasboring 7y ago
  Isn't the answer to all those questions whatever the owners of the repo want? I mean, its still a privately owned repository and communities.
  - ImJasonH 7y ago
    If we're talking about small personal OSS projects, then yeah sure it doesn't really matter, because they're won't be a community to speak of. Once you have a few other maintainers and contributors, there will inevitably be disagreements, and you have to have a realistic framework for resolving them respectfully and equitably.

watwut 7y ago

So, we are "We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions." Our problem is "debating how members should behave in their communities, only to be found to never be fully resolved to anyone's liking". And the problem is solved by "lock, and ban your way to freedom".

nudpiedo 7y ago
I thought it first suggests sending an email, speaking and dialoguing with education. The ban thing is against the mob or the endless discussions etc.

smacktoward 7y ago

> Email that person, and try to work it out. Email the owners of the community, and alert them. Whatever you do, do not make a scene, as that will burden the entire community with your issue. Wow. I mean, I was expecting “we don’t care that you’re being abused” to be the subtext here, but they just came out and said it.

empath75 7y ago
Basically any project that uses this as it’s CoC of any size will quickly be overrun by bullies.
- ecmascript 7y ago
  People who cares very deeply about CoCs are usually bullies.
  - yawboakye 7y ago
    I have seen this as well. It's as if they're trying to determine the boundaries of (un)acceptable behavior, and once clearly define begin to put the community to the test and a never ending CoC revision sessions in order to bring in (never remove) new behaviors considered harmful. That and also keeping the CoC committee members relevant.
- grayhatter 7y ago
  Citation needed
- wyager 7y ago
  When has this happened?
coleifer 7y ago
I'd suggest that you try those suggestions (direct contact, then escalate privately) before rejecting them.
Chris2048 7y ago

comex 7y ago

(2015)

jmull 7y ago

“NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct. There’s a decent fraction of people who just can’t stop being assholes, but you can somewhat hold them at bay (imperfectly) with a list of rules.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Unfortunately it is often those people who end up writing the codes of conduct.
wyager 7y ago
> “NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct. No, we got codes of conduct because "post-meritocracy" activists (not invective, actually what they call themselves: https://postmeritocracy.org https://postmeritocracy.org ) had enough political leverage in the software industry to force these overtly political documents on various projects.

empath75 7y ago

So what do you do if someone on your project doesn’t behave like an adult? Just make it up as you go along? How do you decide how to do that in a fair way?

nudpiedo 7y ago
According to the article: > Q: As a community manager or leader, what happens when the mob arrives, or when someone starts to engage in discussion that could lead to more endless discussion? > Lock, and ban your way to freedom.

Chris2048 7y ago

I'm no fan of CoCs, but I already know the arguments used by (many of) their proponents, and that this FAQ does not fully address them. This feels too dismissive, with an hand-wavey "let's be adults"; Clearly, the problem is people either don't act like adults, or the idea of how an adult should act differs. Furthermore, "or possibly, you are wrong?" will be called "victim-blaming", "gas-lighting" or "lamp-shading", "Email that person, and try to work it out" will put the onus of resolution on the victim, etc. For these culture wars we need to directly address the two viewpoints; This naively assumes best intentions, the traditional CoC crowd falsely assumes the worst. We need to discuss distinctions of behaviour - separate the "micro-aggression" from the outright crime and make it very clear they are to be treated entirely differently, that "scorched earth" policies rarely work, but neither do "lets all get along" policies. <tangent> TBH, I see a similarity to arguments over programming methodologies; trying to promote a handful of catch-all methods when the best solution is one tailored to the situation </tangent> edit: Ok, so someone flagged the article. seriously? Can we all review what flagging is supposed to be for: To flag abusive or inappropriate material, not a special super-downvote option.

christiansakai 7y ago

What is this? Why this is a thing?

dudbud 7y ago
In the last 5-7 years we have seen a cultural phenomenon where somehow people have become unbearably sensitive to confrontation on the internet. The extent to which these people are able to disrupt social media, workplaces, and even software projects is staggering.

netsharc 7y ago

Wow, after reading the title I liked the idea of keeping it sane without needing written rules (rules which IMO sometimes go too far), but reading further down that document seems whoever wrote this is motivated by "butthurt" about "mobs" (presumably the so-termed "SJW mobs"). In any case, I expect there will be flame wars, and meta-flame-wars in here soon.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

blueboo 7y ago

I mean, it’s only human to want the benefit of a huge audience without the implications of having a diverse one. My toddler also wants pancakes for every meal. As adults we grow past such a narrow and self-serving view. Most of us, anyway.

grayhatter 7y ago

I'm more of the opinion that NCoC is better than CoC. All that matters is code. If you bother the admin you get banned, if you bother a user, you get ignored. Is this really a problem so pervasive that I'm just blind to? I can cite examples of a CoC being abused, where the alternative is impossible to prove, right? Look our CoC is holding back the flood gates of douche. I'm not saying there's no discrimination, humans heuristics are deeply flawed, I'm only arguing that this problem was solved with block/ban/ignore. Yes/no?

JoachimS 7y ago

"We accept anyone's contributions." Probably not a true statement. Accept them based on its own merits is probably more in line with how most projects work. I recall some project on Github that really did accept all contributions. Very funny. For a short time.

microcolonel 7y ago
I think the "anyone" here is speaking to the non-merit measures of a contribution. Anecdotally, I mostly see GitLab/GitHub usernames, not email addresses with names in them (or in the field). I think that prejudices of the sort CoCs ostensibly seek to abate are largely impractical to hold, unless you go and track down the person tied to the patch every time you get one. I think probably a lot of this is people trying to claim that because the outcomes are unequal, the procedure is unequal; when the simpler answer is that some subsets of people just tend to be composed of those who choose not to contribute to open source software projects or gain the professional competence often required to do so. Free people are not spherical cows, they have their own sets of incentives, even ones you don't understand as a career hawk businesslady or an ordinary schlub grinding at the keyboard.

rgcduudfr577ggy 7y ago

Unfortunately we've very quickly descended to the point where a lot of adults are very infantile. There are adults who think it's appropriate to put their bizarre gender identity or sexuality front and center in a professional setting, and there are adults who think it's appropriate to take the opportunity for childish insults when one of these people rear their ugly heads (if you'll pardon the expression, albeit typically accurate). Such a NCoC is a timely reminder to everyone to grow the hell up. Ask yourself what your grandfather would have done.

jonathanpierre 7y ago

I don't think this was an attempt in good faith to participate in the discussion about the utility or futility of codes of conducts. This seems to be, depending on your inclination to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, either a joke in bad taste or simply a troll. The straw-man "Frequently Asked Question" about the project name sounding like cock makes me lean to the latter option. In any case, this isn't really worth discussing much, as it's primary use seems to be to poison that discussion right from the beginning.

tckr 7y ago

2015!