6 ms·

Are you aware of any studies that find a CoC to improve or change the behavior in a community? I'm probably overly skeptical, but a CoC to me always seems usel

by toolz 5y ago

Are you aware of any studies that find a CoC to improve or change the behavior in a community? I'm probably overly skeptical, but a CoC to me always seems useless since it's not legally binding in any sense and no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with. I had a sudden urge to read up and see what all evidence exists, so I figured I'd ask you - no worries if nothing comes to mind.

krastanov 5y ago
In many community forums I have seen this dynamics: New member says something rude but factual or just misrepresents what another member had said; Moderator says something along the lines of "please be more polite or restrict bikesheding/flamewars to the appropriate subforum"; The new member starts litigating how come the moderator can demand that if it is not in the "official rules". Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members (they are not trolls necessarily). CoC probably help with many other things, but taking care of this low hanging fruit is already an incredible improvement. It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. They mean very different things to different people, so defining them ends up being useful.
- Arnavion 5y ago
  CoCs have a bad reputation because many of them are written without a clear set of rules, often intentionally so that the authors have leeway to adapt the vague rules for new behaviors they want to ban. This can be considered a good thing (don't need to amend the CoC for what is "obviously" bad behavior that the original didn't account for) or a bad thing ("it's not obviously bad behavior, you just made it up so you can ban me via the CoC because you disagree with me").
  - zxzax 5y ago
    If you think those rules are vague and unclear, it's even worse when there is no code of conduct and the project's entire policy is "we do whatever the moderators feel that day."
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  So, "No."
- toolz 5y ago
  The rules being defined would attempt to be useful, I'm sure. I'm curious if they actually are. So many things are done socially with good intentions that people just assume are working. Society is complicated though. As I understand it, well meaning, reasonable actions don't always have the intended outcomes. Now I'm certainly not claiming a CoC has unintended outcomes, but surely as often as I see them recommended (and at times even demanded), I would hope there exists decent evidence of their usefulness.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    I think like many formalisation, they are a tool that is useful within the right culture, but are useless in the absence of that culture. The Rust Community is an excellent example of a community with an effective and well-enforced CoC that has contributed towards creating a community that is renowned for being welcoming. But I suspect that has at least as much the attitude of early community leaders (Graydon Hoare, Brian Anderson, Huon Wilson, Aaron Turon, etc) on these issues and ongoing excellent moderation of community platforms from a dedicated team of moderators.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. It's not about the _rule_ being non-self-evident, it's about enforcement being uneven. Most humans will tend to perceive lower negativity and rule-breaking behavior in viewpoints they agree with than in viewpoints they don't. A formal statement of rules allows a community to try to do away with this bias. A documented set of rules also allows a community to reflect on their own norms and allows them to make changes to their norms as the viewpoints of the community change.
  - quanticle 5y ago
    >A formal statement of rules allows a community to try to do away with this bias I'm not sure I would state it as trying to do away with bias. Bias is inescapable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that bias is a good thing, insofar as we want communities to be biased towards things that they prioritize and biased away from things that they don't. What a code of conduct does, in the best case, is allow a community to be explicit about its biases, allowing prospective contributors to see up-front exactly what kind of community they're joining. Of course, there are plenty of cases communities implement codes of conduct poorly, usually in response to some crisis.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      > Bias is inescapable Sure > I'd go so far as to say that bias is a good thing, insofar as we want communities to be biased towards things that they prioritize and biased away from things that they don't I'd argue that this depends on the community. For some communities, sure, but for others not necessarily. A discussion/debate club or a book club is probably more interested in plural viewpoints. A game discussion site probably much less so, and a support group probably has a very narrow set of allowed viewpoints. But it depends. > What a code of conduct does, in the best case, is allow a community to be explicit about its biases, allowing prospective contributors to see up-front exactly what kind of community they're joining. Indeed. But also, communities aren't unified or static things. Different members of a community, even founding members (as we can see with TFA), will have different viewpoints on what the community means for them. A formal statement of rules lets everyone agree on an explicit, documented set of common rules that they feel accurately represent their community. When I was younger I ran or helped run many small and medium size organizations and I've never been in one with unanimous opinions, even among very friendly founding members. Creating explicit rules has always been an improvement in pretty much any community I've been in with over 10 members. Leaving rules and procedures undocumented always resulted in games of shadow politics where there were tacit holders of power and tacit power groups and frustrated newcomers.
- quanticle 5y ago
  >Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members Do they? It seems to me that a Code of Conduct just gives these sorts of people an entirely new set of rules to litigate/bikeshed. If the Code of Conduct prohibits personal attacks, for example, the sorts of people who will harangue mods for admonishing them to be nice will, instead, harangue the mods about how their statement wasn't actually a personal attack. >It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk" I don't think the problem is in the rules or lack thereof. I think the problem is there in the (lack of) enforcement. Many internet communities are allergic to anything that smacks of "censorship", and thus find themselves at a loss whenever someone comes along and willfully violates community norms. We should remember that "well kept gardens die by pacifism" [1], and no matter how detailed and elaborate the rules, someone needs to be willing to actually enforce them. A Code of Conduct (or some other formalized set of rules) can help here insofar as it allows the moderator to point to something outside their own thoughts as a justification for why they're taking action against a transgressive community member. However, it's possible to go too far. Wikipedia is a great example of what happens when rules become too elaborate. There are many trolls on Wikipedia who are around simply because they've mastered the arcana of the various rules and procedures Wikipedia has built up in its efforts to create an "objective" standard of community behavior. Whenever they're brought up for discipline, they can point to some previous case where superficially similar behavior was excused. [1]: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-ke...
  - zxzax 5y ago
    >the sorts of people who will harangue mods for admonishing them to be nice will, instead, harangue the mods about how their statement wasn't actually a personal attack. The solution there would be to make clear what constitutes a personal attack. No reason to bikeshed over it.
    - jasonschlatt 5y ago
      You can learn to push situations (using your behaviour) to obfuscate "what's actually a personal attack" greatly. Wrap your attack and words in the political language du jour, play to the biases of the moderator, there's a million ways to do it.
jagger27 5y ago
I wasn’t able to find any papers or studies on your exact question. One[0] short overview paper outlines the roles CoCs play in open source. Perhaps some of the works that cite it[1] could be of use to you. 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/publication/315638638_Code_of_conduct_in_open_source_projects/links/58d7a5bd4585153378af4cf6/Code-of-conduct-in-open-source-projects.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/pu... 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914...
- toolz 5y ago
  I also haven't been able to find anything yet, thanks for the links, I guess the first study at least implies there isn't much (any?) research on the effectiveness yet.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
CoCs are just a form of explicit rule documentation. You can call these Bylaws or a Constitution, but they serve the purpose of making rules clear and clean.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  The problem is they are also most often adopted by highly informal organizations. In this environment CoCs are most often tools to for the project leaders to carry out personal vendettas rather than equal enforcement of the code.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Sure, CoCs aren't panaceas (nothing is when humans organize), they're just tools to help increase transparency and get alignment. Much like a nation's constitution is useless if the de facto ruling structure doesn't actually listen to the rules in its own constitution; we shouldn't abandon codified rule of law because some polities refuse to respect their own codified rules. In this particular case I agree, a CoC would be too-little-too-late. But if there had been a CoC it would be easy grounds for dismissing Felleisen (assuming the allegations are true) with little (but still some, since power abusers die hard) fanfare. Now there will be a whole bunch of witch hunt politics and the community will suffer the more for it.
JoshTriplett 5y ago
> no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with Some communities do have formal "moderation teams" with this responsibility. One major advantage of this is that such a moderation team doesn't have to be reserved for egregious cases; that team can also step in when things get somewhat heated and provide lighter feedback to keep things from escalating. > it's not legally binding It's not intended to be. The goal of a CoC is to state community norms and serve as a point of reference to reduce relitigation of those norms. It's also to help people feel that a community cares about those norms and will actually enforce them. (This stops holding true if a community has a CoC on paper but refuses to enforce it, which unfortunately does happen sometimes. But on balance, it's a useful signal.)

by toolz 5y ago

krastanov 5y ago

In many community forums I have seen this dynamics: New member says something rude but factual or just misrepresents what another member had said; Moderator says something along the lines of "please be more polite or restrict bikesheding/flamewars to the appropriate subforum"; The new member starts litigating how come the moderator can demand that if it is not in the "official rules". Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members (they are not trolls necessarily). CoC probably help with many other things, but taking care of this low hanging fruit is already an incredible improvement. It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. They mean very different things to different people, so defining them ends up being useful.

Arnavion 5y ago
CoCs have a bad reputation because many of them are written without a clear set of rules, often intentionally so that the authors have leeway to adapt the vague rules for new behaviors they want to ban. This can be considered a good thing (don't need to amend the CoC for what is "obviously" bad behavior that the original didn't account for) or a bad thing ("it's not obviously bad behavior, you just made it up so you can ban me via the CoC because you disagree with me").
- zxzax 5y ago
  If you think those rules are vague and unclear, it's even worse when there is no code of conduct and the project's entire policy is "we do whatever the moderators feel that day."
wearywanderer 5y ago
So, "No."
toolz 5y ago
The rules being defined would attempt to be useful, I'm sure. I'm curious if they actually are. So many things are done socially with good intentions that people just assume are working. Society is complicated though. As I understand it, well meaning, reasonable actions don't always have the intended outcomes. Now I'm certainly not claiming a CoC has unintended outcomes, but surely as often as I see them recommended (and at times even demanded), I would hope there exists decent evidence of their usefulness.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nicoburns 5y ago
  I think like many formalisation, they are a tool that is useful within the right culture, but are useless in the absence of that culture. The Rust Community is an excellent example of a community with an effective and well-enforced CoC that has contributed towards creating a community that is renowned for being welcoming. But I suspect that has at least as much the attitude of early community leaders (Graydon Hoare, Brian Anderson, Huon Wilson, Aaron Turon, etc) on these issues and ongoing excellent moderation of community platforms from a dedicated team of moderators.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. It's not about the _rule_ being non-self-evident, it's about enforcement being uneven. Most humans will tend to perceive lower negativity and rule-breaking behavior in viewpoints they agree with than in viewpoints they don't. A formal statement of rules allows a community to try to do away with this bias. A documented set of rules also allows a community to reflect on their own norms and allows them to make changes to their norms as the viewpoints of the community change.
- quanticle 5y ago
  >A formal statement of rules allows a community to try to do away with this bias I'm not sure I would state it as trying to do away with bias. Bias is inescapable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that bias is a good thing, insofar as we want communities to be biased towards things that they prioritize and biased away from things that they don't. What a code of conduct does, in the best case, is allow a community to be explicit about its biases, allowing prospective contributors to see up-front exactly what kind of community they're joining. Of course, there are plenty of cases communities implement codes of conduct poorly, usually in response to some crisis.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > Bias is inescapable Sure > I'd go so far as to say that bias is a good thing, insofar as we want communities to be biased towards things that they prioritize and biased away from things that they don't I'd argue that this depends on the community. For some communities, sure, but for others not necessarily. A discussion/debate club or a book club is probably more interested in plural viewpoints. A game discussion site probably much less so, and a support group probably has a very narrow set of allowed viewpoints. But it depends. > What a code of conduct does, in the best case, is allow a community to be explicit about its biases, allowing prospective contributors to see up-front exactly what kind of community they're joining. Indeed. But also, communities aren't unified or static things. Different members of a community, even founding members (as we can see with TFA), will have different viewpoints on what the community means for them. A formal statement of rules lets everyone agree on an explicit, documented set of common rules that they feel accurately represent their community. When I was younger I ran or helped run many small and medium size organizations and I've never been in one with unanimous opinions, even among very friendly founding members. Creating explicit rules has always been an improvement in pretty much any community I've been in with over 10 members. Leaving rules and procedures undocumented always resulted in games of shadow politics where there were tacit holders of power and tacit power groups and frustrated newcomers.
quanticle 5y ago
>Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members Do they? It seems to me that a Code of Conduct just gives these sorts of people an entirely new set of rules to litigate/bikeshed. If the Code of Conduct prohibits personal attacks, for example, the sorts of people who will harangue mods for admonishing them to be nice will, instead, harangue the mods about how their statement wasn't actually a personal attack. >It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk" I don't think the problem is in the rules or lack thereof. I think the problem is there in the (lack of) enforcement. Many internet communities are allergic to anything that smacks of "censorship", and thus find themselves at a loss whenever someone comes along and willfully violates community norms. We should remember that "well kept gardens die by pacifism" [1], and no matter how detailed and elaborate the rules, someone needs to be willing to actually enforce them. A Code of Conduct (or some other formalized set of rules) can help here insofar as it allows the moderator to point to something outside their own thoughts as a justification for why they're taking action against a transgressive community member. However, it's possible to go too far. Wikipedia is a great example of what happens when rules become too elaborate. There are many trolls on Wikipedia who are around simply because they've mastered the arcana of the various rules and procedures Wikipedia has built up in its efforts to create an "objective" standard of community behavior. Whenever they're brought up for discipline, they can point to some previous case where superficially similar behavior was excused. [1]: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-kept-gardens-die-by-pacifism https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/tscc3e5eujrsEeFN4/well-ke...
- zxzax 5y ago
  >the sorts of people who will harangue mods for admonishing them to be nice will, instead, harangue the mods about how their statement wasn't actually a personal attack. The solution there would be to make clear what constitutes a personal attack. No reason to bikeshed over it.
  - jasonschlatt 5y ago
    You can learn to push situations (using your behaviour) to obfuscate "what's actually a personal attack" greatly. Wrap your attack and words in the political language du jour, play to the biases of the moderator, there's a million ways to do it.

jagger27 5y ago

I wasn’t able to find any papers or studies on your exact question. One[0] short overview paper outlines the roles CoCs play in open source. Perhaps some of the works that cite it[1] could be of use to you. 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/publication/315638638_Code_of_conduct_in_open_source_projects/links/58d7a5bd4585153378af4cf6/Code-of-conduct-in-open-source-projects.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/pu... 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914...

toolz 5y ago
I also haven't been able to find anything yet, thanks for the links, I guess the first study at least implies there isn't much (any?) research on the effectiveness yet.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

CoCs are just a form of explicit rule documentation. You can call these Bylaws or a Constitution, but they serve the purpose of making rules clear and clean.

blacktriangle 5y ago
The problem is they are also most often adopted by highly informal organizations. In this environment CoCs are most often tools to for the project leaders to carry out personal vendettas rather than equal enforcement of the code.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Sure, CoCs aren't panaceas (nothing is when humans organize), they're just tools to help increase transparency and get alignment. Much like a nation's constitution is useless if the de facto ruling structure doesn't actually listen to the rules in its own constitution; we shouldn't abandon codified rule of law because some polities refuse to respect their own codified rules. In this particular case I agree, a CoC would be too-little-too-late. But if there had been a CoC it would be easy grounds for dismissing Felleisen (assuming the allegations are true) with little (but still some, since power abusers die hard) fanfare. Now there will be a whole bunch of witch hunt politics and the community will suffer the more for it.

JoshTriplett 5y ago

> no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with Some communities do have formal "moderation teams" with this responsibility. One major advantage of this is that such a moderation team doesn't have to be reserved for egregious cases; that team can also step in when things get somewhat heated and provide lighter feedback to keep things from escalating. > it's not legally binding It's not intended to be. The goal of a CoC is to state community norms and serve as a point of reference to reduce relitigation of those norms. It's also to help people feel that a community cares about those norms and will actually enforce them. (This stops holding true if a community has a CoC on paper but refuses to enforce it, which unfortunately does happen sometimes. But on balance, it's a useful signal.)