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I want a code of conduct that explicitly allows debate, disagreement, and normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your words. What matters is that peop

I want a code of conduct that explicitly allows debate, disagreement, and normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your words. What matters is that people are operating in good faith. I would also say that IF you have been accepted as a member of a community then you and your feelings must matter to that community unless and until you are ejected from the community. There needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people, and that system should rest on the judgment of people that the community has selected as trustworthy (until and unless those people are expelled).

vkou 1y ago
> What matters is that people are operating in good faith. Any asshole can claim to be acting in good faith, regardless of what they've done.
- majorchord 1y ago
  You're getting downvoted but I think this is absolutely right... people are simply going to disagree with each others' definition of "good faith."
  - HankStallone 1y ago
    Right. Adam tells Ben to go die in a fire, and Ben says, "Come on, moderators, that's obviously a violation of the CoC." Then Adam says, "No, because I was only responding to Ben's offensive and unwelcoming language when he referred to a 'master' repository. I've compiled a list of Ben's violations, and I demand a review according to section 3, subsection D of the code...." A good moderator will shut that nonsense down immediately, but a good moderator wouldn't need a CoC to do it. All the CoC does is give the troublemaker a tool to start playing rules lawyer, in the hope that the moderator will get tired of it and give in. Some people think the answer is to have a CoC that's too simple for rules lawyering, like a one line "Be excellent to each other." But even that can be twisted, so it would be better as a project motto than as an official CoC.
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      Jerks will be jerks without a CoC, and jerks will try to turn the CoC into a weapon when there is one. Yeah, that figures. Sooner or later it boils down to someone reasonable enforcing some boundaries, with or without a CoC.
pjc50 1y ago
> normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your word This is the Trammel problem: if you want a PvP-enabled project, you discover that people are mostly interested in the part where they hurt others feelings and then go bananas when their own feelings are hurt. > needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people The private member's club is an old institution. But people tend to notice and object when it ends up being white guys only.
- satisfice 1y ago
  I guess you are having a problem reading what I wrote. Maybe you are reading someone else’s message and accidentally replied to mine. I said that a community must be a place where every member’s feelings matter. My feelings matter. Your feelings matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t say things that annoy me (which you just did and I bet you don’t regret it). You can say hurtful things as long as you are acting in good faith— saying what you believe is true and helpful. You might think you are disagreeing with me. Nevertheless, you are demonstrating part of what I’m talking about: social life is unsmoothable without draining it of meaning and impact. Let’s instead develop resilience.
majorchord 1y ago
I would like this too, and it sounds like a good idea in theory... But what I worry about is that it may presume that the staff themselves already operate in (your interpretation of) good faith, and I don't think that is always the case. What is a user's recourse when they disagree with the mods? And what says they will comply with any decision reached from said recourse? You could say "we must allow disagreements", but at some point this becomes a paradox of tolerance and then you risk it devolving into pointless arguments on either side. I think the whole "good faith" part could only be enforced by a universally trusted party, like maybe a robot. But even then, people will disagree about how it operates... so maybe this problem is impossible to solve.
- satisfice 1y ago
  It’s not just theory. It’s how things work in the actual world that you live in. My “theory” is an attempt to harmonize our procedures with the way we all live in the world right now. I am a pluralist (a person who accepts that he must live with people he doesn’t necessarily like) not because I want to be, but because the alternative is constant rage and war. Take any social group, anywhere, ever. Whichever one you choose: there are people who care about each other to some degree, and who hurt each other to some degree, and who have some sort of procedures and heuristics for dealing with that. I suggest heuristics based on accepting the fact that people will behave in ways that irritate each other, even when a community is maximally healthy. Let’s accept that as normal. Then what? Then let’s work on what it means to be a member of the community. Let’s establish a protocol for membership based on a hierarchy of trust, or prestige, if you will. Yes, if the trusted people are actually corrupt then your community is screwed. Go and make a new one. Focus on building personal tolerance and resilience. Distinguish between matters of taste and matters of conscience. To anyone who says this system leads to discrimination: ALL systems lead to discrimination. Yours does, too. Humans are like that. This problem can only be solved from the heart outward.
The_President 1y ago
I got a thread closed on KDE last year in order to protect the “feelings” of the devs, after joining the side against the removal of ksysguard in favor of their inferior System Monitor. If they’re willing to end discussion over a product they screwed up, rhetorically, what else are they doing over there at KDE in bad faith?

vkou 1y ago

> What matters is that people are operating in good faith. Any asshole can claim to be acting in good faith, regardless of what they've done.

majorchord 1y ago
You're getting downvoted but I think this is absolutely right... people are simply going to disagree with each others' definition of "good faith."
- HankStallone 1y ago
  Right. Adam tells Ben to go die in a fire, and Ben says, "Come on, moderators, that's obviously a violation of the CoC." Then Adam says, "No, because I was only responding to Ben's offensive and unwelcoming language when he referred to a 'master' repository. I've compiled a list of Ben's violations, and I demand a review according to section 3, subsection D of the code...." A good moderator will shut that nonsense down immediately, but a good moderator wouldn't need a CoC to do it. All the CoC does is give the troublemaker a tool to start playing rules lawyer, in the hope that the moderator will get tired of it and give in. Some people think the answer is to have a CoC that's too simple for rules lawyering, like a one line "Be excellent to each other." But even that can be twisted, so it would be better as a project motto than as an official CoC.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Jerks will be jerks without a CoC, and jerks will try to turn the CoC into a weapon when there is one. Yeah, that figures. Sooner or later it boils down to someone reasonable enforcing some boundaries, with or without a CoC.

pjc50 1y ago

> normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your word This is the Trammel problem: if you want a PvP-enabled project, you discover that people are mostly interested in the part where they hurt others feelings and then go bananas when their own feelings are hurt. > needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people The private member's club is an old institution. But people tend to notice and object when it ends up being white guys only.

satisfice 1y ago
I guess you are having a problem reading what I wrote. Maybe you are reading someone else’s message and accidentally replied to mine. I said that a community must be a place where every member’s feelings matter. My feelings matter. Your feelings matter. But that doesn’t mean you can’t say things that annoy me (which you just did and I bet you don’t regret it). You can say hurtful things as long as you are acting in good faith— saying what you believe is true and helpful. You might think you are disagreeing with me. Nevertheless, you are demonstrating part of what I’m talking about: social life is unsmoothable without draining it of meaning and impact. Let’s instead develop resilience.

majorchord 1y ago

I would like this too, and it sounds like a good idea in theory... But what I worry about is that it may presume that the staff themselves already operate in (your interpretation of) good faith, and I don't think that is always the case. What is a user's recourse when they disagree with the mods? And what says they will comply with any decision reached from said recourse? You could say "we must allow disagreements", but at some point this becomes a paradox of tolerance and then you risk it devolving into pointless arguments on either side. I think the whole "good faith" part could only be enforced by a universally trusted party, like maybe a robot. But even then, people will disagree about how it operates... so maybe this problem is impossible to solve.

satisfice 1y ago
It’s not just theory. It’s how things work in the actual world that you live in. My “theory” is an attempt to harmonize our procedures with the way we all live in the world right now. I am a pluralist (a person who accepts that he must live with people he doesn’t necessarily like) not because I want to be, but because the alternative is constant rage and war. Take any social group, anywhere, ever. Whichever one you choose: there are people who care about each other to some degree, and who hurt each other to some degree, and who have some sort of procedures and heuristics for dealing with that. I suggest heuristics based on accepting the fact that people will behave in ways that irritate each other, even when a community is maximally healthy. Let’s accept that as normal. Then what? Then let’s work on what it means to be a member of the community. Let’s establish a protocol for membership based on a hierarchy of trust, or prestige, if you will. Yes, if the trusted people are actually corrupt then your community is screwed. Go and make a new one. Focus on building personal tolerance and resilience. Distinguish between matters of taste and matters of conscience. To anyone who says this system leads to discrimination: ALL systems lead to discrimination. Yours does, too. Humans are like that. This problem can only be solved from the heart outward.

The_President 1y ago

I got a thread closed on KDE last year in order to protect the “feelings” of the devs, after joining the side against the removal of ksysguard in favor of their inferior System Monitor. If they’re willing to end discussion over a product they screwed up, rhetorically, what else are they doing over there at KDE in bad faith?