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> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more

> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture” (a concept I vehemently disagree with, since what is referred to as “cancellation” is often just “facing consequences”) haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded no due-process is in fact guilty and deserving of punishment. Mine is the unique case of an opaque and capricious CoC process being applied unjustly.' I find it funny that this fellow personally experienced the injustice of being caught up in an unfair CoC enforcement process run by some petty tyrants†, but refuses to believe that this may happen to other people, that his case may not be a wild aberration but a predictable norm, given the system and culture. I wonder what it would it take for Jeremy to say "Maybe this process has fundamental problems. Maybe a lot of the other people who have been burned by this have also been treated unfairly." If someone can keep the faith even when they personally experience the injustice of a system like this, I don't what would change their mind. † according to his account. As jpeloquin notes ITT, little is known to us third parties about the facts of the case.

googthrowaway42 6y ago
He still isn't ready to believe that this whole movement that accompanies CoCs is pushed for malicious purposes by twisted power hungry people. That would require a massive loss of innocence and a reckoning about the nature of the world that only comes, reluctantly, from repeated exposure to and reflection on the same problem. I have seen many people in similar situations that just completely roll over in a prey response and just bow down to these people. So at least the author has that spark of dignity where he's willing to stand up for himself.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  How is thinking people are malicious a precondition? This is a community in and around programming; if anyone can accept that well-intentioned systems can explode in our faces spectacularly, it should be us.
Volundr 6y ago
> haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded no due-process is in fact guilty and deserving of punishment. Mine is the unique case of an opaque and capricious CoC process being applied unjustly.' This isn't close to what he's saying. He's saying that despite the fact that the CoC enforcement got it wrong in his case, they are still valuable. You know like laws are still valuable despite the fact that innocent people are sometimes convicted. In both cases the solution is to improve the process, not throw out the concept.
- lesstenseflow 6y ago
  Good point. My expected reaction isn't "laws/CoC should be discarded" but "CoCs and their enforcement process is seriously flawed and needs revising." Here there seem to be two issues: 1. Too-vague rules & 2. Unfair enforcement. If we punished people for murder by forming a posse and summarily executing them, the reaction should be "yes murder should be forbidden but this enforcement process is seriously unfair and needs to be overhauled." If we punish people for "being unkind" the reaction should be "this rule is unfair because it's not clear how one can go about following it and it is likely to be enforced highly subjectively which is likely to lead to enforcement based on personal bias, favoritism etc.." What I think the author might see if he examined the situation with an open mind is that "be kind" (a rule he doesn't like) and "don't be sexist" (a rule he likes) both suffer from the issue of being vague and susceptible to extremely subjective interpretation. Reasonable people can (and do!) disagree about what is "kind," what is "sexist," or what is "racist," but these rules ignore this fact and take an "I'll know it when I see it" approach to kindness, sexism, racism etc. that is subject to the problems of arbitrariness, bias, and favoritism in all cases. I'm "haha"ing at the fact that the author refuses to consider this aspect of the problem: that it goes beyond just his case (other people think he's bad) to the cases of people that he thinks are bad.
  - Volundr 6y ago
    I'd agree with all of this, with the caveat that at lot of what your saying is both called out in the article and in a lot of advice around writing a code of conduct (example: https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/ https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-...), so it's not even clear to me that this is a problem with the majority of the CoC organizations/enforcement. Even here where part of the problem in the vague requirement ("be kind"), the biggest problem is they didn't follow their own processes of having an actual dialog. It's a bit like if you walked into a US court and the Judge immediately says "I talked to the victim and your clearly guilty", it's not the process that's the problem, it's that the process wasn't followed. Maybe like the court system there should be an appeals process (not sure what that might look like).
monksy 6y ago
It's mental gymnastics. I'm not convinced that CoCs are valuable. Even without the explicit language, you can still kick out people who behave badly. (IMO) The CoCs are just there to try to make a political statement about which groups of people they support and to justify groupthink. Anyways, to those people that believe there are a few minor slippages in what the CoC was intended for. I have been banned from a public slack group for a CoC: It was from the Confluent slack group after they ran a contest/game for their Kafka Summit conference. They did the virtual points system which could be traded for branded swag. I earned the points needed. They informed people that the swag was limited first come first serve, and they said they'd announce the store. Well at least half of the people didn't get the email notifying about the store, half did and made their orders. There was no formal communication from Confluent, other than "we're working on it." 2 days went by, people were asking on #kafka-summit, we were given bad suggestions (by Confluent) about how to auth into the store. Then I got a letter from the store that "sorry you didn't participate and you're not eligible." No notice about this from Confluent, so I ended up posting "I just got this letter WTF, @conferenceorgs". That prompted them being more concerned about "me swearing at their staff". Also I mentioned "I figure I'm going to already get banned so I'll say it: This makes Confluent look sh_tty" ... a few minutes later CoC banned by Tim Berglund [the head of dev adv at confluent].
- Volundr 6y ago
  I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here. You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's hard to be surprised or outraged you didn't get a second warning.
  - monksy 6y ago
    The language was never directed at their staff. It was directed towards the communication I got from them, and how I believe it makes the org look themselves(note). The tagging was to alert them that it was going on. Attacking individuals is completely unwarranted. -- For the sake of conversion: What counts as harassment- is the org an individual? Does exclaiming frustration for a situation and getting the attention of someone count as an attack on the individuals notified? -- Note: I believe that if an org can't communicate what's going on and why you may be seeing erroneous emails from a third party, what is going on with their virtual currency that is traded for real world value. Why should I trust that org with $30k a year for a dev server?

googthrowaway42 6y ago

He still isn't ready to believe that this whole movement that accompanies CoCs is pushed for malicious purposes by twisted power hungry people. That would require a massive loss of innocence and a reckoning about the nature of the world that only comes, reluctantly, from repeated exposure to and reflection on the same problem. I have seen many people in similar situations that just completely roll over in a prey response and just bow down to these people. So at least the author has that spark of dignity where he's willing to stand up for himself.

finnthehuman 6y ago
How is thinking people are malicious a precondition? This is a community in and around programming; if anyone can accept that well-intentioned systems can explode in our faces spectacularly, it should be us.

Volundr 6y ago

> haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded no due-process is in fact guilty and deserving of punishment. Mine is the unique case of an opaque and capricious CoC process being applied unjustly.' This isn't close to what he's saying. He's saying that despite the fact that the CoC enforcement got it wrong in his case, they are still valuable. You know like laws are still valuable despite the fact that innocent people are sometimes convicted. In both cases the solution is to improve the process, not throw out the concept.

lesstenseflow 6y ago
Good point. My expected reaction isn't "laws/CoC should be discarded" but "CoCs and their enforcement process is seriously flawed and needs revising." Here there seem to be two issues: 1. Too-vague rules & 2. Unfair enforcement. If we punished people for murder by forming a posse and summarily executing them, the reaction should be "yes murder should be forbidden but this enforcement process is seriously unfair and needs to be overhauled." If we punish people for "being unkind" the reaction should be "this rule is unfair because it's not clear how one can go about following it and it is likely to be enforced highly subjectively which is likely to lead to enforcement based on personal bias, favoritism etc.." What I think the author might see if he examined the situation with an open mind is that "be kind" (a rule he doesn't like) and "don't be sexist" (a rule he likes) both suffer from the issue of being vague and susceptible to extremely subjective interpretation. Reasonable people can (and do!) disagree about what is "kind," what is "sexist," or what is "racist," but these rules ignore this fact and take an "I'll know it when I see it" approach to kindness, sexism, racism etc. that is subject to the problems of arbitrariness, bias, and favoritism in all cases. I'm "haha"ing at the fact that the author refuses to consider this aspect of the problem: that it goes beyond just his case (other people think he's bad) to the cases of people that he thinks are bad.
- Volundr 6y ago
  I'd agree with all of this, with the caveat that at lot of what your saying is both called out in the article and in a lot of advice around writing a code of conduct (example: https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/ https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-...), so it's not even clear to me that this is a problem with the majority of the CoC organizations/enforcement. Even here where part of the problem in the vague requirement ("be kind"), the biggest problem is they didn't follow their own processes of having an actual dialog. It's a bit like if you walked into a US court and the Judge immediately says "I talked to the victim and your clearly guilty", it's not the process that's the problem, it's that the process wasn't followed. Maybe like the court system there should be an appeals process (not sure what that might look like).

monksy 6y ago

It's mental gymnastics. I'm not convinced that CoCs are valuable. Even without the explicit language, you can still kick out people who behave badly. (IMO) The CoCs are just there to try to make a political statement about which groups of people they support and to justify groupthink. Anyways, to those people that believe there are a few minor slippages in what the CoC was intended for. I have been banned from a public slack group for a CoC: It was from the Confluent slack group after they ran a contest/game for their Kafka Summit conference. They did the virtual points system which could be traded for branded swag. I earned the points needed. They informed people that the swag was limited first come first serve, and they said they'd announce the store. Well at least half of the people didn't get the email notifying about the store, half did and made their orders. There was no formal communication from Confluent, other than "we're working on it." 2 days went by, people were asking on #kafka-summit, we were given bad suggestions (by Confluent) about how to auth into the store. Then I got a letter from the store that "sorry you didn't participate and you're not eligible." No notice about this from Confluent, so I ended up posting "I just got this letter WTF, @conferenceorgs". That prompted them being more concerned about "me swearing at their staff". Also I mentioned "I figure I'm going to already get banned so I'll say it: This makes Confluent look sh_tty" ... a few minutes later CoC banned by Tim Berglund [the head of dev adv at confluent].

Volundr 6y ago
I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here. You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's hard to be surprised or outraged you didn't get a second warning.
- monksy 6y ago
  The language was never directed at their staff. It was directed towards the communication I got from them, and how I believe it makes the org look themselves(note). The tagging was to alert them that it was going on. Attacking individuals is completely unwarranted. -- For the sake of conversion: What counts as harassment- is the org an individual? Does exclaiming frustration for a situation and getting the attention of someone count as an attack on the individuals notified? -- Note: I believe that if an org can't communicate what's going on and why you may be seeing erroneous emails from a third party, what is going on with their virtual currency that is traded for real world value. Why should I trust that org with $30k a year for a dev server?