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>Additionally, I think that the existence of an SoC or likewise document is a sign towards outsiders that your community can’t behave itself maturely. They need

>Additionally, I think that the existence of an SoC or likewise document is a sign towards outsiders that your community can’t behave itself maturely. They need special rules laid out to them, after all. Like most rules, they are codified because issues have arisen in the past, and keep on arising. I don’t think the Perl community is too immature to behave itself. I trust in the good faith of people, and to me it feels like a SoC does the exact opposite. Good faith doesn't scale. Any community of sufficient size absolutely requires explicit rules (and plenty of smaller communities need them to, because being small doesn't make you immune to assholes or to excusing their assholishness due to other qualities). Bruce Schneier goes into this in excruciating novel-length depth with sources and case studies: https://www.schneier.com/books/liars-and-outliers/ https://www.schneier.com/books/liars-and-outliers/

arp242 4y ago
I don't think you necessarily need a set of explicitly written down rules – and certainly not an explicit "here is how we will punish you" set of rules – to prevent a build-up of assholery. And in my observation, I'm also somewhat skeptical such a documents really prevent this build-up in the first place. At the end of the day, it's just ink on a piece of paper, or bytes in a text file. I certainly don't need a CoC on my repos to tell people to knock it off if they start behaving like an ass (which, thankfully, rarely happens). I have not read Schneier's book (yet), but it mostly seems to be about about trust at the scale of society. It seems to me there's some space between "trust that you and I as friends have" vs. "trust at society scale". Many programming conferences are actually not all that large. Now, you could reasonable agree or disagree with that, and go on at length with good arguments either way. I dislike how this discussion is being done though, and I feel that was the main complaint from the author. Surely "harassed for weeks to the point where they decide to stop organizing the conference" should be against the spirit of any decent SoC. Being an asshole to get rid of assholes doesn't strike me as a very good way to go about things anyway; this type of behaviour tends to be quite corrosive.
benj111 4y ago
Does it not? Are you not being an arsehole because this group is under a certain size? At what point will you let the arseholeyness flow? Arseholes are arseholes regardless of size of group. The dynamic that changes as groups get bigger is that individuals feel less personally responsible for holding the arseholes to account. Of course this assumes that there is an absolute measure of arseholiness, which there isn't, so people have to work together to enforce social norms. That doesn't require a written document.

arp242 4y ago

I don't think you necessarily need a set of explicitly written down rules – and certainly not an explicit "here is how we will punish you" set of rules – to prevent a build-up of assholery. And in my observation, I'm also somewhat skeptical such a documents really prevent this build-up in the first place. At the end of the day, it's just ink on a piece of paper, or bytes in a text file. I certainly don't need a CoC on my repos to tell people to knock it off if they start behaving like an ass (which, thankfully, rarely happens). I have not read Schneier's book (yet), but it mostly seems to be about about trust at the scale of society. It seems to me there's some space between "trust that you and I as friends have" vs. "trust at society scale". Many programming conferences are actually not all that large. Now, you could reasonable agree or disagree with that, and go on at length with good arguments either way. I dislike how this discussion is being done though, and I feel that was the main complaint from the author. Surely "harassed for weeks to the point where they decide to stop organizing the conference" should be against the spirit of any decent SoC. Being an asshole to get rid of assholes doesn't strike me as a very good way to go about things anyway; this type of behaviour tends to be quite corrosive.

benj111 4y ago

Does it not? Are you not being an arsehole because this group is under a certain size? At what point will you let the arseholeyness flow? Arseholes are arseholes regardless of size of group. The dynamic that changes as groups get bigger is that individuals feel less personally responsible for holding the arseholes to account. Of course this assumes that there is an absolute measure of arseholiness, which there isn't, so people have to work together to enforce social norms. That doesn't require a written document.