4 ms·

It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into

It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into two halves, organization members and outsiders, draw a fence around the organization membership and assume control over who is allowed to cross that fence and how. To be clear: I don't think any organization should ever have that sort of power. If it was just "banned from the ML" or whatever, I'd still be put off by the way the rest is phrased, but I'd be like "alright, that's fair enough, it's their ML." It is not their Twitter, and it is not, to be frank, "their community". You can own architecture, you can't own people. What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? From looking at this and reading the FFmpeg mail thread, I'm currently leaning towards "Avoid talking about people." Just, try to avoid talking about people, period. If a technical forum comment contains no discussion of code, at least in theory, it's probably harmful to the project. As far as I can see, this also in the same stroke removes all potential for harassment.

deredede 4y ago
I had the same initial reaction as you but actually think that in such situations asking people not to interact with the members of the organization is appropriate. Sometimes people do need to be put in timeout, and I read this as a formal way of requesting the problematic user stays away from the community for a bit. Private interactions with members of the community, as well as interactions in other contexts (eg working on a different project), I would assume to be fine. They don't want the problematic member to be harassing other members through unofficial channels, and the only consequence would be not being re-integrated in the community.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have be obeyed, reveals an uncomfortable sentiment of social ownership.
  - danielheath 4y ago
    I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      I am fine with any judgment Mozilla make on infrastructure that they run and that belongs directly to the project, such as mailing lists, official chatrooms, etc. It's the addition of "unofficial" social platforms that irks me; it seems totalitarizing. Interaction of contributors outside the project ecosystem is none of their business. I prefer for society to be sliced "horizontally", rather than "vertically". I am not aware of good terms for that. I want the arrangement to be that people can spend some of their time contributing to some group effort, with no impact on other efforts; rather than that people belong to groups, totally: "I contribute to Thunderbird" vs. "I am a Thunderbird developer." The resigning of Brendan Eich violated that same rule as well. You work for Mozilla, then you go home and Mozilla drops out of your life. You are not a Mozilla employee unless you're on the clock. Only, what happened was that it turns out you can't be a Mozilla employee and a certain kind of Republican in the same person; the vertical isolation was violated. I think this is because people saw Brendan as "he is a Mozilla employee" rather than "he works at Mozilla." I am against that way of looking at people. I think it is important for the functioning of society that people can horizontally intermix rather than segregate. A core part of the horizontal arrangement of society is that when you leave the boundary of a project, you leave its mores behind you; you are allowed to codeswitch as you context switch. Any rule that penalizes you for behavior elsewhere that violates the local rules directly threatens this.
      - danielheath 4y ago
        I think I understand you, and I think I broadly agree, but in this case the restriction was specifically on contacting other thunderbird members; that seems like it's clearly still a vertical slice to me.
CJefferson 4y ago
I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of ** and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR 1234. In terms of "this sort of power", you are of course welcome to ignore them asking you to not tweet at them -- just don't expect to be allowed back into the community. It seams reasonable to me to say while you are in "time out" to not keep pestering the council, or Thunderbird community in general, during those 3 months.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  It seems deeply unreasonable, infantilizing and arrogant to me. Different preferences, maybe. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from a religion. > I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of * and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR 1234. I think that's specifically the sort of feedback I want to embrace. Everybody writes awful code, it's normal. Not calling it awful doesn't make it better, and the goal of the project is good code over happy contributors - happy contributors only matter insofar as they lead to good code, and I think contributors who are made unhappy by people calling their code bad, probably don't write good code as a rule. (How do you get better if you shield yourself from negative feedback?)
  - CJefferson 4y ago
    To me, there is a huge difference between "negative feedback" -- I don't think any project is saying you can't reply something like "This PR should not be merged, because there are significant problems. For example, line Q causes a memory leak, and lines A-B are so complicated I can't figure out if there is a buffer overflow or not". If you have examples where this kind of factual complaints are causing people to get banned, let me know. As a concrete example, I consider myself a reasonable coder -- I've contributed to a bunch of projects, including gcc. I've stopped contributing to projects (including gcc) because I got feedback which wasn't helpful, but was either hostile or at minimum extremely unhelpful. Did they want rid of me? Maybe so, but they certainly kept all the code I'd submitted, much of it to the current day.
ensignavenger 4y ago
"No talking about people" is a bit too much in some cases though. For example, depending on how it is applied, it might forbid introducing new contributors or project leaders, because such posts are about 'people' and not code. Or, perhaps worse, if a major contributor fall on illness or other hard time, it would forbid the community from using official channels to rally to their support, because they can't talk about people, only code. I like the spirit behind it, but maybe it could be improved. Maybe "avoid" is a really important keyword, meaning it isn't banned, but generally should be avoided. Perhaps that could be better stated?
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Why should the community use official channels to rally for support? I am involved in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu there was recently an incident that happened where a notable BJJ figure was shot by another BJJ practitioner after an altercation in a bar. Several people felt that the gym of the shooter should provide a statement. I asked them why? What does it do to have an organization "make a statement". I feel the same way in this instance, why should a FOSS project in an official capacity rally around maintainers, why can't the people who are part of the project do it individually? In fact the more I think about it the more I like this idea, if an organization can be used to help an individual (or to hurt an individual which is the necessary corollary to that) there will be those that seek to use the organization for personal ends, whereas if the organization is solely focused on it's mission and only that, there will be fewer people seeking to weaponize the organization for their own ends, and the organization will be better of. For example if Mozilla focused on their freaking web browser I would be happy to donate to them but those at the helm felt that Mozilla need to go outside of their mission to support other causes that I may not be in alignment with, and so I don't donate. This constant need for everyone to foist responsibility onto organizations needs to end, organizations exist for the purpose the organization exists for, if you want an organization that makes the world a better place in a specific way you think it should be better go and start a non-profit to do it, stop trying to co-opt other avenues to do so. At the end of the day if someone feels that organization X should do something about Y, all they are doing is trying to shirk their personal responsibility while still feeling morally superior.
jasonlotito 4y ago
> It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. Unless the members agreed to give them that authority. Let me ask you this: are you a member of that community, or merely an outsider imposing your opinions on others that did not consent? If the former, that's fine. If not, why do you feel it's fair to do to others what you think is wrong for them to do?
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  Well, it doesn't say anything of the sort in the CPG, that I can see: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part... If this is truly happening with informed consent, I'll say that it's morally acceptable to me - but still creepy, to a similar degree as, say, Scientology. In that case my question becomes, "what possessed you to give them that sort of power?"
thrown_22 4y ago
>What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? The one that doesn't exist.

deredede 4y ago

I had the same initial reaction as you but actually think that in such situations asking people not to interact with the members of the organization is appropriate. Sometimes people do need to be put in timeout, and I read this as a formal way of requesting the problematic user stays away from the community for a bit. Private interactions with members of the community, as well as interactions in other contexts (eg working on a different project), I would assume to be fine. They don't want the problematic member to be harassing other members through unofficial channels, and the only consequence would be not being re-integrated in the community.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have be obeyed, reveals an uncomfortable sentiment of social ownership.
- danielheath 4y ago
  I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    I am fine with any judgment Mozilla make on infrastructure that they run and that belongs directly to the project, such as mailing lists, official chatrooms, etc. It's the addition of "unofficial" social platforms that irks me; it seems totalitarizing. Interaction of contributors outside the project ecosystem is none of their business. I prefer for society to be sliced "horizontally", rather than "vertically". I am not aware of good terms for that. I want the arrangement to be that people can spend some of their time contributing to some group effort, with no impact on other efforts; rather than that people belong to groups, totally: "I contribute to Thunderbird" vs. "I am a Thunderbird developer." The resigning of Brendan Eich violated that same rule as well. You work for Mozilla, then you go home and Mozilla drops out of your life. You are not a Mozilla employee unless you're on the clock. Only, what happened was that it turns out you can't be a Mozilla employee and a certain kind of Republican in the same person; the vertical isolation was violated. I think this is because people saw Brendan as "he is a Mozilla employee" rather than "he works at Mozilla." I am against that way of looking at people. I think it is important for the functioning of society that people can horizontally intermix rather than segregate. A core part of the horizontal arrangement of society is that when you leave the boundary of a project, you leave its mores behind you; you are allowed to codeswitch as you context switch. Any rule that penalizes you for behavior elsewhere that violates the local rules directly threatens this.
    - danielheath 4y ago
      I think I understand you, and I think I broadly agree, but in this case the restriction was specifically on contacting other thunderbird members; that seems like it's clearly still a vertical slice to me.

CJefferson 4y ago

I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of ** and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR 1234. In terms of "this sort of power", you are of course welcome to ignore them asking you to not tweet at them -- just don't expect to be allowed back into the community. It seams reasonable to me to say while you are in "time out" to not keep pestering the council, or Thunderbird community in general, during those 3 months.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
It seems deeply unreasonable, infantilizing and arrogant to me. Different preferences, maybe. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from a religion. > I've seen plenty of harassment which in principle insults code. It easy to say things like "Part X of the code base is a piece of * and should be deleted", or "Recent PR 1234 is awful" -- no-one's name is mentioned, but everyone knows who is in charge of X, or who wrote PR 1234. I think that's specifically the sort of feedback I want to embrace. Everybody writes awful code, it's normal. Not calling it awful doesn't make it better, and the goal of the project is good code over happy contributors - happy contributors only matter insofar as they lead to good code, and I think contributors who are made unhappy by people calling their code bad, probably don't write good code as a rule. (How do you get better if you shield yourself from negative feedback?)
- CJefferson 4y ago
  To me, there is a huge difference between "negative feedback" -- I don't think any project is saying you can't reply something like "This PR should not be merged, because there are significant problems. For example, line Q causes a memory leak, and lines A-B are so complicated I can't figure out if there is a buffer overflow or not". If you have examples where this kind of factual complaints are causing people to get banned, let me know. As a concrete example, I consider myself a reasonable coder -- I've contributed to a bunch of projects, including gcc. I've stopped contributing to projects (including gcc) because I got feedback which wasn't helpful, but was either hostile or at minimum extremely unhelpful. Did they want rid of me? Maybe so, but they certainly kept all the code I'd submitted, much of it to the current day.

ensignavenger 4y ago

"No talking about people" is a bit too much in some cases though. For example, depending on how it is applied, it might forbid introducing new contributors or project leaders, because such posts are about 'people' and not code. Or, perhaps worse, if a major contributor fall on illness or other hard time, it would forbid the community from using official channels to rally to their support, because they can't talk about people, only code. I like the spirit behind it, but maybe it could be improved. Maybe "avoid" is a really important keyword, meaning it isn't banned, but generally should be avoided. Perhaps that could be better stated?

buscoquadnary 4y ago
Why should the community use official channels to rally for support? I am involved in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu there was recently an incident that happened where a notable BJJ figure was shot by another BJJ practitioner after an altercation in a bar. Several people felt that the gym of the shooter should provide a statement. I asked them why? What does it do to have an organization "make a statement". I feel the same way in this instance, why should a FOSS project in an official capacity rally around maintainers, why can't the people who are part of the project do it individually? In fact the more I think about it the more I like this idea, if an organization can be used to help an individual (or to hurt an individual which is the necessary corollary to that) there will be those that seek to use the organization for personal ends, whereas if the organization is solely focused on it's mission and only that, there will be fewer people seeking to weaponize the organization for their own ends, and the organization will be better of. For example if Mozilla focused on their freaking web browser I would be happy to donate to them but those at the helm felt that Mozilla need to go outside of their mission to support other causes that I may not be in alignment with, and so I don't donate. This constant need for everyone to foist responsibility onto organizations needs to end, organizations exist for the purpose the organization exists for, if you want an organization that makes the world a better place in a specific way you think it should be better go and start a non-profit to do it, stop trying to co-opt other avenues to do so. At the end of the day if someone feels that organization X should do something about Y, all they are doing is trying to shirk their personal responsibility while still feeling morally superior.

jasonlotito 4y ago

> It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. Unless the members agreed to give them that authority. Let me ask you this: are you a member of that community, or merely an outsider imposing your opinions on others that did not consent? If the former, that's fine. If not, why do you feel it's fair to do to others what you think is wrong for them to do?

FeepingCreature 4y ago
Well, it doesn't say anything of the sort in the CPG, that I can see: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part... If this is truly happening with informed consent, I'll say that it's morally acceptable to me - but still creepy, to a similar degree as, say, Scientology. In that case my question becomes, "what possessed you to give them that sort of power?"

thrown_22 4y ago

>What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? The one that doesn't exist.