> Perhaps a suggestion to "keep it calm" wouldn't be the best. English isn't my first language and my verbal expression isn't always the greatest. But referring

> Perhaps a suggestion to "keep it calm" wouldn't be the best. English isn't my first language and my verbal expression isn't always the greatest. But referring to a code of conduct does also carry the implication that someone isn't minding that code, and I don't see how that would necessarily be better. Yes, a suggestion to "keep it calm" is definitely bad. It would be nice if there were an easy way for people who are not good at English to respond to comments without having to figure out the right way to respond. You could create a "standardized response", and have a committee of people with different backgrounds review the content of that response to ensure that it clear and conveys the right messages. That "standardized response" is the code of conduct. A code of conduct is a beautiful thing. You do not need to be a skilled English speaker to send someone a link to the code of conduct. The > [...] but I can equally well see how people might see a reference to a CoC as strong-armed. It sounds like these people may be prejudiced against the code of conduct, or prejudiced against codes of conduct in general. I think if you have such people in your community, that the right thing to do is to expose them to the code of conduct so they get used to it and realize that the code of conduct is not such a bad thing or a scary thing. If you try and shield people in the community from the code of conduct out of fear that they might react poorly to it, then I think you're doing a disservice to the community. Have you personally read the Python code of conduct? Or are you just imagining what is written in the code of conduct? > Human communication isn't always quite that simple, though. People get impressions from the way things are expressed. Yes... which is why for important messages, we have teams of people that review the messages over and over again to make sure that those messages are expressed properly and they are easy to understand. Messages like the code of conduct. You cannot expect the same level of clarity from a two-line comment in a GitHub issue. This is why referring to the code of conduct is such a good idea--it is much clearer and easier to understand, because it has been reviewed so thoroughly.