16 ms·

GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

111 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

omoikane 3y ago
Is there a standard code of conduct template? Because the GCC one looks very much like the LLVM one, and I wonder if they came from the same source. https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html
jcarrano 3y ago
It looks pretty much fine, except for the part that says: > In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them. which sort of negates all the other good aspects. If a CoC is a contract or agreement, it should provide guarantees for both sides, i.e. that inappropriate behavior will be punished but also make it exactly clear which things are inappropriate. There are absolutely no reasons to extend the CoC to spaces outside the project other than to give the enforcers more opportunities to arbitrarily target people.
not_your_vase 3y ago
Has there been any project which had its community change its conduct after adopting a CoC? Or any projects which had a profound impact due a CoC? I see that having CoC is getting standard with OSS projects, old and new alike. But have no idea if it actually does anything.
- kramerger 3y ago
  From the comments section: "If you have a CoC, then you have formal rules around moderation with the option to appeal" Basically, when someone does something stupid (and let's be realistic, it will happen) then there are clear rules and processes to follow.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I agree. Establishing processes and telling people what they are is good practice. Just telling people not to do bad/unwelcome/etc. things by itself probably doesn't do much other than maybe remind someone at the margins to think twice before telling that joke.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    And that's fine, pretty much every online community has some of those. It seems a lot of people have a problem with the wording, or the implication that their behaviour may be bad and get them removed.
- CJefferson 3y ago
  I’m not sure how you would measure such a thing. I am certainly aware of projects which have banned people for CoC violations. These usually aren’t loudly publicized, so I’m not going to do so here. Would those projects have banned those people anyway? No way to know.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  Fair warning, I do not like codes of conduct. They're an authoritarian power play justified by fear. Codes of conduct are more about changing who is in the community than about changing the conduct of existing community members. Periodically someone runs afoul of the ruling elite who pass judgement upon them behind closed doors, usually leading to excommunication. The atmosphere of knowing what you say will be reported upwards and optionally stripped of context and rephrased to your detriment promotes an environment of inclusivity and safety. I'm not totally clear what "inclusivity" means at this point. It seems to be "excluding unpopular people and ideas", which should be termed "exclusivity". I've been known to say openly critical things about parts of our industry in public - basically because a lot of software dev is done really badly - and that sort of general negativity has no place relative to enthusiastically praising whatever nonsense is going on at the time. E.g. you go to a talk on concurrency. You know it's nonsense, the code on the slides was wrong and the speaker has totally misunderstood the domain. So you talk with fellow attendees about how it was really interesting and excellent. One guy says "the first example deadlocks", and that makes someone feel uncomfortable, properly fixed by kicking him out of the conference. This is very inclusive and good for industry. Then you all go off to write code that doesn't work. edit: can't believe I forgot the best part. If there's someone in the community you don't like - maybe their work makes you feel inferior, or they're a competitor in some sense, the burden of proof for triggering evisceration by committee is usually negligible. Tell some people they made you feel uncomfortable, let some of them talk you into reporting it and put them down as witnesses, bang - problem solved. Very convenient. Most of the developed world has really clear ideas about the scary things - sexual assault, harassment and so forth, dealt with by a judicial system. So the honourable goals of the CoC systems could be achieved by following norms of society with the existing structures in place. That seems better to me.
  - atq2119 3y ago
    > the burden of proof for triggering evisceration by committee is usually negligible I think this line of thought deserves some exploration. If the burden of proof truly was negligible, CoCs would probably be weaponized more often. My impression is more that the burden of proof is reduced selectively, in favor of people who are good at a certain type of politics / playing social games. So CoCs can be perceived as a shift of power away from technical merit and towards social skills. No wonder there's a backlash from a lot of technical folks. It's also objectively questionable whether such a shift of power is useful for projects. (Humans are always gonna politic, even if it's only nerds, but the normative shift of whether politicking is officially condoned or even valued is what matters) I don't think it's a surprise that we're seeing CoCs in this age of commercialized open source. In the 90s and 00s, open source projects could only survive by technical merit. Nowadays, corporate sponsorship is a very important factor in project viability, and with corporations comes the bigger focus on politics.
- lionkor 3y ago
  I've lead the moderation team for BeamMP (beammp.com, 150k+ User Discord) for a few months, and been part of it for much longer, and the two most positive changes I've seen are: - Regular meetings to keep everyone on-track (as nobody is being paid, its a passion project, etc) - Setting up clear rules and moderation guidelines, together. The team sat together and came up with a list of do's and don't's, best practices and principles to be used when moderating. Such simple ideas as "maximizing interaction" while keeping within the rules and Discord ToS, had a noticable impact. This was also useful to review moderation action that had been taken, and evaluate moderators, and possibly rollback moderation actions that were not in line with the code of conduct. TL;DR: Formalizing rules that have existed informally only makes it easier to review moderation actions, to moderate, and to add new people to the team. It also clarifies to the community how moderation is done.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    Do you just moderate stuff that happens on the discord, or do you ban people if they do some "wrong" stuff outside of discord? Because the CoC draft allows excluding people for doing "wrong" stuff even outside of GCC (-trackers, -mailing lists, etc.). There's a difference for baning people in places where they should behave professionally, and banning people for stuff they do outside of those places.
    - lionkor 3y ago
      Outside, too - its a multiplayer game, so official servers are moderated also.
      - redeeman 3y ago
        what about things they do on twitter? or if they walk with unpalatable(to some) slogans down the times square?
        lionkor 3y ago
        We don't have rules for that
- Kye 3y ago
  A Code of Conduct is like a contract. It formalizes norms and expectations so everyone is bound by the agreement on what to do when things go wrong. If you need one to set that culture, something's already wrong, and a contract/CoC won't help you.
  - Steltek 3y ago
    However if you wait for things to go wrong, determining what your code of conduct _should have been_ will be done in the heat of the moment, which is a far more dangerous place to be.
- rurban 3y ago
  Most projects when adopting a CoC started their political infighting over alleged allegations exponentially, whilst the technical decision making troubled to the point of full stagnation. conferences became cesspits. project leaders went from knowledgable dictators to well-liked community leaders, who had no idea what they were doing, and into which direction to go forward. the yes-sayers.
- hnbad 3y ago
  CoCs like all codes of law, exist to have something to point to when it is decided that you did something wrong. They also exist as a signal, both to attract people who agree with it and to deter those who oppose it. Ideally a community should not need this. But most so-called communities are not communities. Membership and participation can be fleeting so there will be a constant influx and loss of members and participants, all of whom hold different values and some of whom the original founders would have never invited in the first place. So the risk is that a project built by people sharing a common set of values may be recuperated by people diametrically opposed to those values. Defining those values helps with that. For the primary demographic of HN, usually "don't be a dick" suffices for this. The problem is that lists of values don't provide an enforcement mechanism. This means you likely end up with one of two situations after a preexisting project adopts a CoC: either nothing changes because the code of conduct is not enforced (or only inconsistently), or nothing changes because everybody already involved in the project agrees with it and those e.g. throwing slurs at existing members or otherwise harrassing them would have been kicked out anyway. The problem is when projects that don't have a strong ideological/emotional investment in codifying a set of shared values (or lack a consistently shared set of values altogether) treat a CoC like a DEI program and just bolt it onto their project to tick a box and stop people from complaining. This misleads those who treat CoCs seriously into joining while also weakening the signalling effect of CoCs for other projects. In my experience this is the case for most OSS projects and in the worst cases it leads to overeager admins enforcing the letter of the law because there really was no spirit of the law to begin with, going through the authoritarian motions of enforcement without any ulterior purpose - and of course these projects will still selectively spare particularly influential individuals regardless of their misdeeds.
tjpnz 3y ago
Not necessarily a bad thing provided the individuals charged with enforcing it have a stake in the project, as opposed to just being moderators. In my own experience that's where the trouble often begins.
gettodachoppa 3y ago
[flagged]
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  > Perhaps now the GCC project can step out of obscurity into the big leagues. This has to be parody or trolling, right?
  - usui 3y ago
    Obviously
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
      This is year of our lord 2023. It is veritably impossible to tell one from the other.
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    It's sarcasm, yes
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Considering that GCC is basically a super obscure project with near-zero users and no previous history, it sounds pretty accurate to me. I mean, the project could disappear overnight and no one would notice.
    - gorjusborg 3y ago
      Ah, so trolls travel in packs!
      - Verdex 3y ago
        And that's when the attack comes-- not from the front, but from the side, from the other two trolls you didn't even know were there.
  - 3y ago
pixel3234 3y ago
[flagged]
commitpizza 3y ago
I can't wait until the silent majority stops being silent and throws out CoC and their people from projects. It is seriously a toxic thing that creates debates over stuff where there is no need for it to be a debate to begin with.
- mbStavola 3y ago
  How do you know the silent majority aren't in favor of CoCs?
  - LexiMax 3y ago
    They don’t. I have been away from hacker news for about 2 to 3 years and quite frankly I am shocked that this place is still having this same tired argument whereas outside it seems to be an accepted fact of life that having rules surrounding the conduct of project participants is in fact a good thing.
    - krona 3y ago
      > it seems to be an accepted fact of life Isn't that the problem? Accept it. Don't ask questions, or else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
      - LexiMax 3y ago
        > Isn't that the problem? The problem is that the specific phrase "Code of Conduct" has been dragged into a culture war. And if the problem is the parlance, the solution is to just call it something different, like "Conduct Policy", "Rules", or something similar. It might seem trite, but in my experience using a different name seems to shut off the part of some folks brain who automatically assume said rules will be enforced in bad faith.
        hajile 3y ago
        Your assertion here that a code of conduct could get dragged into a culture war directly contradicts your previous assertion that there is no war outside of HN. Rules getting enforced in bad faith as people coalesce power in their sphere is a story as old as human history. Why would you argue that we have an exception in this case?
Akronymus 3y ago
Overall it seems like a pretty decent CoC. Altough, I am REALLY not a fan of this line: "In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." I fear that that stipulation will be used to try and kick out people for holding "bad" opinions outside of the project. Like what was tried with Elia Schito.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- asylteltine 3y ago
  [flagged]
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  Enforcement of this code of conduct would seem to inherently put the enforcers in violation of the Code. The Code states, "Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable." Yet, targeting specific individuals with exclusion seems to be the main method of enforcement. As you indicated, the linked-to page recommends exclusion be used: "In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." The GCC Code of Conduct Response Guide (https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct-response.html https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct-response.html) also advocates for the use of exclusion: "In ongoing situations, any member may at their discretion employ any of the tools available to the committee, including bans and blocks." And: "An imposed vacation (e.g. asking someone to "take a week off" from a mailing list or IRC)." And: "A permanent or temporary ban from some or all project spaces (mailing lists, IRC, etc.)." The "vacation" one seems particularly insidious to me, as it tries to portray externally-forced exclusion as something that a person voluntarily imposed on himself. Like so many other open source project codes of conduct, this one also seems to be inherently self-contradictory and hypocritical.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    > The Code states, "Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable." > > Yet, targeting specific individuals with exclusion seems to be the main method of enforcement. That's not the gotcha you think it is; enforcers get higher privileges to enforce. Cops have the authority to carry a gun and kill people; the army has the authority to carry and use guns that civilians don't. "Take some time off" is a more friendly alternative to "you are unwanted / banned"; the former is trying to help them, the latter is excluding them.
speeder 3y ago
I see a lot of people here forgetting a real case of CoC abuse. There was this famous Drupal dev that wrote a transcript of a fetish wedding on his fetish social media profile. An enemy of his on Drupal quoted that transcript and used it as examples the Dev should be punished. Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished, an ex girlfriend of his was harassed by "helpful" people.
- classified 3y ago
  Humans are resourceful and able to abuse or weaponize anything and everything. That alone doesn't make it a bad idea.
- mc32 3y ago
  The problem is these CoCs ceasing being guidance and become all-consuming forces unto themselves who become the reason for existence rather than the organization being the reason for existence. The whole things throws things upside down but it's due to how easy it is to manipulate politically as opposed to being productive and contributing to the organization --why do the hard work to get an apartment when you can rat out your neighbor for listening to the VoA?
- practice9 3y ago
  > Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished, an ex girlfriend of his was harassed by "helpful" people Oh wow. I was undecided about the helpfulness of CoC as sometimes people in the project can become hostile, unstable or passive-aggressive. But this case is very bad. Seems like CoC opens up ways for character assassination, effectively becoming "rules for the harassment of the outgroup".
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    > CoC opens up ways for character assassination Has it ever been used in any other way?
adingus 3y ago
This will surely be the first time a CoC changes any community for the better. /s Nobody cares about a CoC and people will do what they will regardless of what the CoC says.
- favorited 3y ago
  > Nobody cares about a CoC Totally, that's why no one is whining about it in this thread.
gizmo686 3y ago
This CoC is fine as far as it goes (unlike a certain copypasta CoC that was being spread years ago). However, the real gold is in the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines [0] that is linked to at the bottom, which has existed for years (published 2018, updated 2022). I wish they would have just merge the two documents instead of incorporating by reference. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html
- logicprog 3y ago
  The GNU one seems really great tbh. Like, actually useful advice about communication and conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, instead of barebones rules.
theepauk 3y ago
The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's hierarchy, and to this day nobody has apologized for this behavior, but the behavior was silently dropped.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I wait for the day soon to come when AIs will "actively" participate in. And we have to find a term that encompasses both humans and AIs. And anyone not using the currently correct one will have their lives destroyed. Or if someone finds recording from using previously correct one and does the same.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  [dead]
- bragr 3y ago
  I'm from a part of the US where "guys" is used as a gender neutral collective noun. My mom and grandma would call out "guys, dinner is ready!" to the whole family to call us to the table for example. So it's definitely whiplash inducing for the same group of people preaching inclusion and tolerance, and how we need to accept regional and racial dialects in the workplace, to then turn around and implement slackbots that nag and shame me for my regional speech patterns.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    I'll buy this when I hear a straight man talk about the guys he's dated. A thing that I have still never once observed.
    - nkuttler 3y ago
      Here's a shocking concept: language has context.
IshKebab 3y ago
> This isn't an exhaustive list of things that you can or can't do. Rather, take it in the spirit in which it's intended - a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us, the project, and the broader communities in which we participate. Very good. > If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct, we ask that you report it by emailing conduct@gcc.gnu.org. What happened to "a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us"?
LtWorf 3y ago
Possibly a big mistake to make this post, but I've written my own code of conduct template, which I use on my projects (mostly since snyk, github and similar scanners rank you down if you don't have it). https://github.com/ltworf/international_code_of_conduct/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/ltworf/international_code_of_conduct/blob...
- asylteltine 3y ago
  [dead]
- Benanov 3y ago
  Applause for "people who solely make code of conduct complaints are not contributors"
- johnklos 3y ago
  That's both ambitious and a little daring. One place where I disagree is in the "skill discrimination" section. If you look up the definition of the word "discrimination", you'd see that it probably means something different (in common use) than what you intend. I'd be fine with agreeing that volunteers are not obligated to put energy in to low quality / low energy contributions, but saying explanations aren't required is unhelpful. "It's low quality code" is plenty of explanation. What you've written suggests that contributions can be rejected because of previous instances of low quality / low effort, without explanation, and that does nothing to further a project. A technical, if short, explanation is always a good idea.
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    I've had people who send a pull request that has 1 commit, changes 2000 lines and fails all the tests and expect me to merge it and spend the time myself to fix that mess. I've tried to explain kindly why I reject and what to change… but results were poor. The code of conduct doesn't forbid to try, it just doesn't punish giving up.
    - asylteltine 3y ago
yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
I've come around to the idea that codes of conduct are generally sensible. In business we write contracts to explicitly state expectations, and it seems fair enough that socially we could be explicit about our values. That said, it is true that there are malicious actors who weaponise codes of conduct. I wonder if there's an equivalent to vexatious litigation in the CoC space. Perhaps there ought to be some means to punish CoC abuse, and to ensure that the accuser has some skin in the game. Although, perhaps that has more serious ramifications also. I'm not sure. Seems like a hard problem.
- revelio 3y ago
  No CoC is as clear as law is generally expected to be.
anthk 3y ago
The best CoC it's human rights. Everything else it's just a matter of civism.
lopkeny12ko 3y ago
I must be missing something very obvious here. Why does my C compiler need a code of conduct?
- xdavidliu 3y ago
  It's not the compiler itself, but the group of people working on the compiler. Those are different things.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Your C compiler is the result of a committee of hundreds, if not thousands of people; every line of code used is the result of collaboration, with the actual line of code being an implementation detail. You can't have a product like this without its community, and you can't have a community without rules.
  - ozr 3y ago
    So prior to today, GCC didn't exist?
    - klodolph 3y ago
      Prior to today, the rules were unwritten, which means that any enforcement was somewhat arbitrary.
      - kbelder 3y ago
        Now, the arbitrariness has been codified, and moderators can be selective with the force of law.
        klodolph 3y ago
        Do you have specific complaints about this CoC?
b8 3y ago
This is surprising since Stallman has said strict CoCs are repressive.
- ubermonkey 3y ago
  It's entirely on brand for rms to be opposed to CoCs.
  - DaSHacka 3y ago
    Not too surprising, considering he was essentially pushed out of his own projects by the same very people obsessed with instituting them.
    - ubermonkey 3y ago
      Yes, being held accountable for poor behavior is clearly a problem for him.
bjourne 3y ago
Sigh.
shrubble 3y ago
So the GCC project has existed for 30+ years without it... why does it need one now?
- sigzero 3y ago
  Why indeed.
throw7 3y ago
The issue is you only have relational statements in the "Code of Conduct", but that can have a very real consequence of a ban hammer come down on you from the "Code of Conduct Committee" for reasons that are not relational at all.
malwrar 3y ago
I honestly really prefer an abrasive community. I think one thing we lost with the adoption of CoCs was the ability of the community to naturally filter out low-quality or abusive (do my homework or project for me) participants, and encourage dedication by requiring new users to earn actual real respect before being given it. It felt rewarding and… real to me to participate in these sorts of spaces, and is one of the reasons I used to love online communities. CoC communities have always felt like tofu in comparison, but tbh I think my life improved by not spending so much time on the computer anyways.
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  projects usually start off like this, but often a dedicated userbase moves in and requires broader language control. the wild west stagnates from stability.
  - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
    https://youtu.be/8zWz92f_HGs https://youtu.be/8zWz92f_HGs TnT
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  Im not sure I buy the benefits of your scenario. Abrasive behavior has side effects, so it excludes both good contributors and abusives like your definition. The alternative is more or less silent treatment, abusives dont get engagement with their “contribution” because no one has time to waste on it. This also discourages them, and it doesnt scare off helpful but emotionally sensitive contributors. This isnt to say you dont prefer the abrasive community! I just doubt the efficacy of that approach to getting shit done.
  - hajile 3y ago
    All the CoC drama is at least as abrasive and much more insidious in its community divisions.
basementcat 3y ago
The following link points to the actual gcc code of conduct. https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-June/241826.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-June/241826.html
davidjfelix 3y ago
There's an awful lot of straw man accusations going on in this thread from people who seem to feel threatened by some invisible person who is going to persecute them for something they believe or say or are as a person. Even just an ounce of empathy and you'd realize that's possible without a CoC too and the goal of establishing these boundaries is to protect the people who feel that same way daily because of who they are. If you feel more attacked than protected, it might be time to look inwards instead of accusing outwards.
- klodolph 3y ago
  Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look at the overall impact of CoCs (and seatbelts). CoCs help moderators make consistent decisions. When decisions are more consistent, people can worry less about whether they are breaking the rules and focus more on getting work done.
  - yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
    > I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. I don't think this is unreasonable. As another commenter has alluded to, one of the more typical implementation details of this meme is to forbid the common greeting "hey guys" and to instead insist people use "hey folks". Anyone can understand that the word "folks" is superficially more inclusive than "guys", but I don't think performing that switcheroo actually helps anyone[^1]. There are many examples of don't-say-this-word-but-instead-say-this-other-one in this space, so I don't think the 1984-newspeak future characterisation is unfair. --- [^1]: Ok, I can imagine someone feeling othered in some scenario, but I don't think blanket language bans are a good solution. Empathy and thoughtfulness would be better than pearl clutching and minutiae keeping.
    - 3y ago
dom96 3y ago
Like with many things, the devil is in the details. Many people seem to have had some bad experience with a moderator and are blaming it on a CoC. Whether a CoC exists or not, it's down to the moderators to be fair and professional. So don't blame the CoC, when you should instead be blaming individuals.
- dijit 3y ago
  The issue is vague rules; because vague rules are enforced selectively.
enriquto 3y ago
One of the landmarks of civilization is that people who utterly hate each other can still work together for a common good. This, my dad taught me as a kid and I cherish it as a core principle. I like civilization, after all. Being hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive is not a big deal if we can still work along. These stupid "codes of conduct" make civilization impossible. Worse, they force the language to be boringly insipid.
- dom96 3y ago
  How can people work together when one person insults the other? It's not sustainable, especially in a volunteer-based project (which most open source projects are).
- Timon3 3y ago
  It seems to me there are two basic types of people - those that think: > Being hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive is not a big deal if we can still work along. and those that think: > I can't work along somebody who is hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive. I'm not sure either group is completely right, but it seems that being nicer would solve this whole problem...
  - enriquto 3y ago
    > it seems that being nicer would solve this whole problem I agree 100%. Being nice is the best and solves nearly everything. Problem is, COCs give undue power to some non-nice people via "enforcement committees" and whatnot.
  - HarryHirsch 3y ago
    It seems that mediation would be a good thing. Yet we never hear about that, even in "progressive" workplaces that are all about Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & all the other keywords. It's remarkable - your supervisor behaves in an increasingly unhinged manner towards you, and you go look for informal conflict resolution and none is to be had. Yes, there is a code of conduct, there is the diversitylady, but no way of putting a conflict to bed, just the CoC committee that we are asked to trust. Pfui!
throwaway22032 3y ago
The most relaxed, jovial, and ultimately productive environments I've been in have been ones in which people have a healthy sense of humour. If the basics like "don't be a racist dickhead" need to be codified to someone then they won't last long in most spaces anyway. People generally call that kind of thing out fairly quickly and distance themselves. Unless we're on 4chan.
testacct22 3y ago
What I don't get, sorry for my own reductive attitude, is that if you volunteer for one of these projects you're working for free. If you don't like terms of project, just don't work for free? Kind of like reddit moderator situation atm
- tredre3 3y ago
  Most people who contribute to gcc aren't doing it for free, they work on behalf of large corporations. But more importantly, most people who complain about the CoC are not contributors.
bigbillheck 3y ago
I started poking around the gcc mailing list wondering why they're doing it now, and it looks like they've got at least a couple active jerks.

111 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

Is there a standard code of conduct template? Because the GCC one looks very much like the LLVM one, and I wonder if they came from the same source. https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html https://llvm.org/docs/CodeOfConduct.html

jcarrano 3y ago

It looks pretty much fine, except for the part that says: > In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them. which sort of negates all the other good aspects. If a CoC is a contract or agreement, it should provide guarantees for both sides, i.e. that inappropriate behavior will be punished but also make it exactly clear which things are inappropriate. There are absolutely no reasons to extend the CoC to spaces outside the project other than to give the enforcers more opportunities to arbitrarily target people.

not_your_vase 3y ago

Has there been any project which had its community change its conduct after adopting a CoC? Or any projects which had a profound impact due a CoC? I see that having CoC is getting standard with OSS projects, old and new alike. But have no idea if it actually does anything.

kramerger 3y ago
From the comments section: "If you have a CoC, then you have formal rules around moderation with the option to appeal" Basically, when someone does something stupid (and let's be realistic, it will happen) then there are clear rules and processes to follow.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I agree. Establishing processes and telling people what they are is good practice. Just telling people not to do bad/unwelcome/etc. things by itself probably doesn't do much other than maybe remind someone at the margins to think twice before telling that joke.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  And that's fine, pretty much every online community has some of those. It seems a lot of people have a problem with the wording, or the implication that their behaviour may be bad and get them removed.
CJefferson 3y ago
I’m not sure how you would measure such a thing. I am certainly aware of projects which have banned people for CoC violations. These usually aren’t loudly publicized, so I’m not going to do so here. Would those projects have banned those people anyway? No way to know.
JonChesterfield 3y ago
Fair warning, I do not like codes of conduct. They're an authoritarian power play justified by fear. Codes of conduct are more about changing who is in the community than about changing the conduct of existing community members. Periodically someone runs afoul of the ruling elite who pass judgement upon them behind closed doors, usually leading to excommunication. The atmosphere of knowing what you say will be reported upwards and optionally stripped of context and rephrased to your detriment promotes an environment of inclusivity and safety. I'm not totally clear what "inclusivity" means at this point. It seems to be "excluding unpopular people and ideas", which should be termed "exclusivity". I've been known to say openly critical things about parts of our industry in public - basically because a lot of software dev is done really badly - and that sort of general negativity has no place relative to enthusiastically praising whatever nonsense is going on at the time. E.g. you go to a talk on concurrency. You know it's nonsense, the code on the slides was wrong and the speaker has totally misunderstood the domain. So you talk with fellow attendees about how it was really interesting and excellent. One guy says "the first example deadlocks", and that makes someone feel uncomfortable, properly fixed by kicking him out of the conference. This is very inclusive and good for industry. Then you all go off to write code that doesn't work. edit: can't believe I forgot the best part. If there's someone in the community you don't like - maybe their work makes you feel inferior, or they're a competitor in some sense, the burden of proof for triggering evisceration by committee is usually negligible. Tell some people they made you feel uncomfortable, let some of them talk you into reporting it and put them down as witnesses, bang - problem solved. Very convenient. Most of the developed world has really clear ideas about the scary things - sexual assault, harassment and so forth, dealt with by a judicial system. So the honourable goals of the CoC systems could be achieved by following norms of society with the existing structures in place. That seems better to me.
- atq2119 3y ago
  > the burden of proof for triggering evisceration by committee is usually negligible I think this line of thought deserves some exploration. If the burden of proof truly was negligible, CoCs would probably be weaponized more often. My impression is more that the burden of proof is reduced selectively, in favor of people who are good at a certain type of politics / playing social games. So CoCs can be perceived as a shift of power away from technical merit and towards social skills. No wonder there's a backlash from a lot of technical folks. It's also objectively questionable whether such a shift of power is useful for projects. (Humans are always gonna politic, even if it's only nerds, but the normative shift of whether politicking is officially condoned or even valued is what matters) I don't think it's a surprise that we're seeing CoCs in this age of commercialized open source. In the 90s and 00s, open source projects could only survive by technical merit. Nowadays, corporate sponsorship is a very important factor in project viability, and with corporations comes the bigger focus on politics.
lionkor 3y ago
I've lead the moderation team for BeamMP (beammp.com, 150k+ User Discord) for a few months, and been part of it for much longer, and the two most positive changes I've seen are: - Regular meetings to keep everyone on-track (as nobody is being paid, its a passion project, etc) - Setting up clear rules and moderation guidelines, together. The team sat together and came up with a list of do's and don't's, best practices and principles to be used when moderating. Such simple ideas as "maximizing interaction" while keeping within the rules and Discord ToS, had a noticable impact. This was also useful to review moderation action that had been taken, and evaluate moderators, and possibly rollback moderation actions that were not in line with the code of conduct. TL;DR: Formalizing rules that have existed informally only makes it easier to review moderation actions, to moderate, and to add new people to the team. It also clarifies to the community how moderation is done.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  Do you just moderate stuff that happens on the discord, or do you ban people if they do some "wrong" stuff outside of discord? Because the CoC draft allows excluding people for doing "wrong" stuff even outside of GCC (-trackers, -mailing lists, etc.). There's a difference for baning people in places where they should behave professionally, and banning people for stuff they do outside of those places.
  - lionkor 3y ago
    Outside, too - its a multiplayer game, so official servers are moderated also.
    - redeeman 3y ago
      what about things they do on twitter? or if they walk with unpalatable(to some) slogans down the times square?
      - lionkor 3y ago
        We don't have rules for that
Kye 3y ago
A Code of Conduct is like a contract. It formalizes norms and expectations so everyone is bound by the agreement on what to do when things go wrong. If you need one to set that culture, something's already wrong, and a contract/CoC won't help you.
- Steltek 3y ago
  However if you wait for things to go wrong, determining what your code of conduct _should have been_ will be done in the heat of the moment, which is a far more dangerous place to be.
rurban 3y ago
Most projects when adopting a CoC started their political infighting over alleged allegations exponentially, whilst the technical decision making troubled to the point of full stagnation. conferences became cesspits. project leaders went from knowledgable dictators to well-liked community leaders, who had no idea what they were doing, and into which direction to go forward. the yes-sayers.
hnbad 3y ago
CoCs like all codes of law, exist to have something to point to when it is decided that you did something wrong. They also exist as a signal, both to attract people who agree with it and to deter those who oppose it. Ideally a community should not need this. But most so-called communities are not communities. Membership and participation can be fleeting so there will be a constant influx and loss of members and participants, all of whom hold different values and some of whom the original founders would have never invited in the first place. So the risk is that a project built by people sharing a common set of values may be recuperated by people diametrically opposed to those values. Defining those values helps with that. For the primary demographic of HN, usually "don't be a dick" suffices for this. The problem is that lists of values don't provide an enforcement mechanism. This means you likely end up with one of two situations after a preexisting project adopts a CoC: either nothing changes because the code of conduct is not enforced (or only inconsistently), or nothing changes because everybody already involved in the project agrees with it and those e.g. throwing slurs at existing members or otherwise harrassing them would have been kicked out anyway. The problem is when projects that don't have a strong ideological/emotional investment in codifying a set of shared values (or lack a consistently shared set of values altogether) treat a CoC like a DEI program and just bolt it onto their project to tick a box and stop people from complaining. This misleads those who treat CoCs seriously into joining while also weakening the signalling effect of CoCs for other projects. In my experience this is the case for most OSS projects and in the worst cases it leads to overeager admins enforcing the letter of the law because there really was no spirit of the law to begin with, going through the authoritarian motions of enforcement without any ulterior purpose - and of course these projects will still selectively spare particularly influential individuals regardless of their misdeeds.

tjpnz 3y ago

Not necessarily a bad thing provided the individuals charged with enforcing it have a stake in the project, as opposed to just being moderators. In my own experience that's where the trouble often begins.

gettodachoppa 3y ago

[flagged]

gorjusborg 3y ago
> Perhaps now the GCC project can step out of obscurity into the big leagues. This has to be parody or trolling, right?
- usui 3y ago
  Obviously
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    This is year of our lord 2023. It is veritably impossible to tell one from the other.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  It's sarcasm, yes
- capableweb 3y ago
  Considering that GCC is basically a super obscure project with near-zero users and no previous history, it sounds pretty accurate to me. I mean, the project could disappear overnight and no one would notice.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    Ah, so trolls travel in packs!
    - Verdex 3y ago
      And that's when the attack comes-- not from the front, but from the side, from the other two trolls you didn't even know were there.
- 3y ago

pixel3234 3y ago

[flagged]

commitpizza 3y ago

I can't wait until the silent majority stops being silent and throws out CoC and their people from projects. It is seriously a toxic thing that creates debates over stuff where there is no need for it to be a debate to begin with.

mbStavola 3y ago
How do you know the silent majority aren't in favor of CoCs?
- LexiMax 3y ago
  They don’t. I have been away from hacker news for about 2 to 3 years and quite frankly I am shocked that this place is still having this same tired argument whereas outside it seems to be an accepted fact of life that having rules surrounding the conduct of project participants is in fact a good thing.
  - krona 3y ago
    > it seems to be an accepted fact of life Isn't that the problem? Accept it. Don't ask questions, or else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance
    - LexiMax 3y ago
      > Isn't that the problem? The problem is that the specific phrase "Code of Conduct" has been dragged into a culture war. And if the problem is the parlance, the solution is to just call it something different, like "Conduct Policy", "Rules", or something similar. It might seem trite, but in my experience using a different name seems to shut off the part of some folks brain who automatically assume said rules will be enforced in bad faith.
      - hajile 3y ago
        Your assertion here that a code of conduct could get dragged into a culture war directly contradicts your previous assertion that there is no war outside of HN. Rules getting enforced in bad faith as people coalesce power in their sphere is a story as old as human history. Why would you argue that we have an exception in this case?

Akronymus 3y ago

Overall it seems like a pretty decent CoC. Altough, I am REALLY not a fan of this line: "In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." I fear that that stipulation will be used to try and kick out people for holding "bad" opinions outside of the project. Like what was tried with Elia Schito.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asylteltine 3y ago
[flagged]
VancouverMan 3y ago
Enforcement of this code of conduct would seem to inherently put the enforcers in violation of the Code. The Code states, "Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable." Yet, targeting specific individuals with exclusion seems to be the main method of enforcement. As you indicated, the linked-to page recommends exclusion be used: "In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." The GCC Code of Conduct Response Guide (https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct-response.html https://gcc.gnu.org/conduct-response.html) also advocates for the use of exclusion: "In ongoing situations, any member may at their discretion employ any of the tools available to the committee, including bans and blocks." And: "An imposed vacation (e.g. asking someone to "take a week off" from a mailing list or IRC)." And: "A permanent or temporary ban from some or all project spaces (mailing lists, IRC, etc.)." The "vacation" one seems particularly insidious to me, as it tries to portray externally-forced exclusion as something that a person voluntarily imposed on himself. Like so many other open source project codes of conduct, this one also seems to be inherently self-contradictory and hypocritical.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  > The Code states, "Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren't acceptable." > > Yet, targeting specific individuals with exclusion seems to be the main method of enforcement. That's not the gotcha you think it is; enforcers get higher privileges to enforce. Cops have the authority to carry a gun and kill people; the army has the authority to carry and use guns that civilians don't. "Take some time off" is a more friendly alternative to "you are unwanted / banned"; the former is trying to help them, the latter is excluding them.

speeder 3y ago

I see a lot of people here forgetting a real case of CoC abuse. There was this famous Drupal dev that wrote a transcript of a fetish wedding on his fetish social media profile. An enemy of his on Drupal quoted that transcript and used it as examples the Dev should be punished. Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished, an ex girlfriend of his was harassed by "helpful" people.

classified 3y ago
Humans are resourceful and able to abuse or weaponize anything and everything. That alone doesn't make it a bad idea.
mc32 3y ago
The problem is these CoCs ceasing being guidance and become all-consuming forces unto themselves who become the reason for existence rather than the organization being the reason for existence. The whole things throws things upside down but it's due to how easy it is to manipulate politically as opposed to being productive and contributing to the organization --why do the hard work to get an apartment when you can rat out your neighbor for listening to the VoA?
practice9 3y ago
> Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished, an ex girlfriend of his was harassed by "helpful" people Oh wow. I was undecided about the helpfulness of CoC as sometimes people in the project can become hostile, unstable or passive-aggressive. But this case is very bad. Seems like CoC opens up ways for character assassination, effectively becoming "rules for the harassment of the outgroup".
- commandlinefan 3y ago
  > CoC opens up ways for character assassination Has it ever been used in any other way?

adingus 3y ago

This will surely be the first time a CoC changes any community for the better. /s Nobody cares about a CoC and people will do what they will regardless of what the CoC says.

favorited 3y ago
> Nobody cares about a CoC Totally, that's why no one is whining about it in this thread.

gizmo686 3y ago

This CoC is fine as far as it goes (unlike a certain copypasta CoC that was being spread years ago). However, the real gold is in the GNU Kind Communications Guidelines [0] that is linked to at the bottom, which has existed for years (published 2018, updated 2022). I wish they would have just merge the two documents instead of incorporating by reference. [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.en.html

logicprog 3y ago
The GNU one seems really great tbh. Like, actually useful advice about communication and conflict resolution and emotional intelligence, instead of barebones rules.

theepauk 3y ago

The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's hierarchy, and to this day nobody has apologized for this behavior, but the behavior was silently dropped.

Ekaros 3y ago
I wait for the day soon to come when AIs will "actively" participate in. And we have to find a term that encompasses both humans and AIs. And anyone not using the currently correct one will have their lives destroyed. Or if someone finds recording from using previously correct one and does the same.
asylteltine 3y ago
[dead]
bragr 3y ago
I'm from a part of the US where "guys" is used as a gender neutral collective noun. My mom and grandma would call out "guys, dinner is ready!" to the whole family to call us to the table for example. So it's definitely whiplash inducing for the same group of people preaching inclusion and tolerance, and how we need to accept regional and racial dialects in the workplace, to then turn around and implement slackbots that nag and shame me for my regional speech patterns.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  I'll buy this when I hear a straight man talk about the guys he's dated. A thing that I have still never once observed.
  - nkuttler 3y ago
    Here's a shocking concept: language has context.

IshKebab 3y ago

> This isn't an exhaustive list of things that you can or can't do. Rather, take it in the spirit in which it's intended - a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us, the project, and the broader communities in which we participate. Very good. > If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct, we ask that you report it by emailing conduct@gcc.gnu.org. What happened to "a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us"?

LtWorf 3y ago

Possibly a big mistake to make this post, but I've written my own code of conduct template, which I use on my projects (mostly since snyk, github and similar scanners rank you down if you don't have it). https://github.com/ltworf/international_code_of_conduct/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md https://github.com/ltworf/international_code_of_conduct/blob...

asylteltine 3y ago
[dead]
Benanov 3y ago
Applause for "people who solely make code of conduct complaints are not contributors"
johnklos 3y ago
That's both ambitious and a little daring. One place where I disagree is in the "skill discrimination" section. If you look up the definition of the word "discrimination", you'd see that it probably means something different (in common use) than what you intend. I'd be fine with agreeing that volunteers are not obligated to put energy in to low quality / low energy contributions, but saying explanations aren't required is unhelpful. "It's low quality code" is plenty of explanation. What you've written suggests that contributions can be rejected because of previous instances of low quality / low effort, without explanation, and that does nothing to further a project. A technical, if short, explanation is always a good idea.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  I've had people who send a pull request that has 1 commit, changes 2000 lines and fails all the tests and expect me to merge it and spend the time myself to fix that mess. I've tried to explain kindly why I reject and what to change… but results were poor. The code of conduct doesn't forbid to try, it just doesn't punish giving up.
  - asylteltine 3y ago

yakshaving_jgt 3y ago

I've come around to the idea that codes of conduct are generally sensible. In business we write contracts to explicitly state expectations, and it seems fair enough that socially we could be explicit about our values. That said, it is true that there are malicious actors who weaponise codes of conduct. I wonder if there's an equivalent to vexatious litigation in the CoC space. Perhaps there ought to be some means to punish CoC abuse, and to ensure that the accuser has some skin in the game. Although, perhaps that has more serious ramifications also. I'm not sure. Seems like a hard problem.

revelio 3y ago
No CoC is as clear as law is generally expected to be.

anthk 3y ago

The best CoC it's human rights. Everything else it's just a matter of civism.

lopkeny12ko 3y ago

I must be missing something very obvious here. Why does my C compiler need a code of conduct?

xdavidliu 3y ago
It's not the compiler itself, but the group of people working on the compiler. Those are different things.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Your C compiler is the result of a committee of hundreds, if not thousands of people; every line of code used is the result of collaboration, with the actual line of code being an implementation detail. You can't have a product like this without its community, and you can't have a community without rules.
- ozr 3y ago
  So prior to today, GCC didn't exist?
  - klodolph 3y ago
    Prior to today, the rules were unwritten, which means that any enforcement was somewhat arbitrary.
    - kbelder 3y ago
      Now, the arbitrariness has been codified, and moderators can be selective with the force of law.
      - klodolph 3y ago
        Do you have specific complaints about this CoC?

b8 3y ago

This is surprising since Stallman has said strict CoCs are repressive.

ubermonkey 3y ago
It's entirely on brand for rms to be opposed to CoCs.
- DaSHacka 3y ago
  Not too surprising, considering he was essentially pushed out of his own projects by the same very people obsessed with instituting them.
  - ubermonkey 3y ago
    Yes, being held accountable for poor behavior is clearly a problem for him.

bjourne 3y ago

Sigh.

shrubble 3y ago

So the GCC project has existed for 30+ years without it... why does it need one now?

sigzero 3y ago
Why indeed.

throw7 3y ago

The issue is you only have relational statements in the "Code of Conduct", but that can have a very real consequence of a ban hammer come down on you from the "Code of Conduct Committee" for reasons that are not relational at all.

malwrar 3y ago

I honestly really prefer an abrasive community. I think one thing we lost with the adoption of CoCs was the ability of the community to naturally filter out low-quality or abusive (do my homework or project for me) participants, and encourage dedication by requiring new users to earn actual real respect before being given it. It felt rewarding and… real to me to participate in these sorts of spaces, and is one of the reasons I used to love online communities. CoC communities have always felt like tofu in comparison, but tbh I think my life improved by not spending so much time on the computer anyways.

stainablesteel 3y ago
projects usually start off like this, but often a dedicated userbase moves in and requires broader language control. the wild west stagnates from stability.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  https://youtu.be/8zWz92f_HGs https://youtu.be/8zWz92f_HGs TnT
droopyEyelids 3y ago
Im not sure I buy the benefits of your scenario. Abrasive behavior has side effects, so it excludes both good contributors and abusives like your definition. The alternative is more or less silent treatment, abusives dont get engagement with their “contribution” because no one has time to waste on it. This also discourages them, and it doesnt scare off helpful but emotionally sensitive contributors. This isnt to say you dont prefer the abrasive community! I just doubt the efficacy of that approach to getting shit done.
- hajile 3y ago
  All the CoC drama is at least as abrasive and much more insidious in its community divisions.

basementcat 3y ago

The following link points to the actual gcc code of conduct. https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-June/241826.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2023-June/241826.html

davidjfelix 3y ago

There's an awful lot of straw man accusations going on in this thread from people who seem to feel threatened by some invisible person who is going to persecute them for something they believe or say or are as a person. Even just an ounce of empathy and you'd realize that's possible without a CoC too and the goal of establishing these boundaries is to protect the people who feel that same way daily because of who they are. If you feel more attacked than protected, it might be time to look inwards instead of accusing outwards.

klodolph 3y ago
Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look at the overall impact of CoCs (and seatbelts). CoCs help moderators make consistent decisions. When decisions are more consistent, people can worry less about whether they are breaking the rules and focus more on getting work done.
- yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
  > I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future. I don't think this is unreasonable. As another commenter has alluded to, one of the more typical implementation details of this meme is to forbid the common greeting "hey guys" and to instead insist people use "hey folks". Anyone can understand that the word "folks" is superficially more inclusive than "guys", but I don't think performing that switcheroo actually helps anyone[^1]. There are many examples of don't-say-this-word-but-instead-say-this-other-one in this space, so I don't think the 1984-newspeak future characterisation is unfair. --- [^1]: Ok, I can imagine someone feeling othered in some scenario, but I don't think blanket language bans are a good solution. Empathy and thoughtfulness would be better than pearl clutching and minutiae keeping.
  - 3y ago

dom96 3y ago

Like with many things, the devil is in the details. Many people seem to have had some bad experience with a moderator and are blaming it on a CoC. Whether a CoC exists or not, it's down to the moderators to be fair and professional. So don't blame the CoC, when you should instead be blaming individuals.

dijit 3y ago
The issue is vague rules; because vague rules are enforced selectively.

enriquto 3y ago

One of the landmarks of civilization is that people who utterly hate each other can still work together for a common good. This, my dad taught me as a kid and I cherish it as a core principle. I like civilization, after all. Being hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive is not a big deal if we can still work along. These stupid "codes of conduct" make civilization impossible. Worse, they force the language to be boringly insipid.

dom96 3y ago
How can people work together when one person insults the other? It's not sustainable, especially in a volunteer-based project (which most open source projects are).
Timon3 3y ago
It seems to me there are two basic types of people - those that think: > Being hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive is not a big deal if we can still work along. and those that think: > I can't work along somebody who is hateful, insulting, or otherwise offensive. I'm not sure either group is completely right, but it seems that being nicer would solve this whole problem...
- enriquto 3y ago
  > it seems that being nicer would solve this whole problem I agree 100%. Being nice is the best and solves nearly everything. Problem is, COCs give undue power to some non-nice people via "enforcement committees" and whatnot.
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  It seems that mediation would be a good thing. Yet we never hear about that, even in "progressive" workplaces that are all about Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & all the other keywords. It's remarkable - your supervisor behaves in an increasingly unhinged manner towards you, and you go look for informal conflict resolution and none is to be had. Yes, there is a code of conduct, there is the diversitylady, but no way of putting a conflict to bed, just the CoC committee that we are asked to trust. Pfui!

throwaway22032 3y ago

The most relaxed, jovial, and ultimately productive environments I've been in have been ones in which people have a healthy sense of humour. If the basics like "don't be a racist dickhead" need to be codified to someone then they won't last long in most spaces anyway. People generally call that kind of thing out fairly quickly and distance themselves. Unless we're on 4chan.

testacct22 3y ago

What I don't get, sorry for my own reductive attitude, is that if you volunteer for one of these projects you're working for free. If you don't like terms of project, just don't work for free? Kind of like reddit moderator situation atm

tredre3 3y ago
Most people who contribute to gcc aren't doing it for free, they work on behalf of large corporations. But more importantly, most people who complain about the CoC are not contributors.

bigbillheck 3y ago

I started poking around the gcc mailing list wondering why they're doing it now, and it looks like they've got at least a couple active jerks.