What GitHub did to kill its trolls

GitHub caught some flak for their policies just over a year ago:

GitHub threatens to shut down a repository for using the word 'retard'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

I have no problems with the steps that have been taken to combat abuse (in particular I like the mention of a configurable inbox filter), but I find a lot of things wrong with the Contributor Covenant.

In particular:

> Use welcoming and inclusive language

Why does language have to welcoming and inclusive? Can't it merely meet a minimum standard of mutual respect?

> Focusing on what is best for the community

Shouldn't it be what's best for the project? I understand that's nitpicking but the focus is wrong.

> Showing empathy towards other community members

Why are people required to show empathy? Is this a group therapy session? When would it make sense for personal issues to become involved in an open source project?

Furthermore, project maintainers have the "right and responsibility" to enforce the often vague guidelines regarding negative conduct ("personal or political attack"?) and can receive "temporary or permanent repercussions" (very vague) for failing to follow the Covenant in "good faith". It just seems like despite a lot of good intentions it leaves too much room for interpretation and gives people grounds to bully others out of involvement with the project if it is taken at face value.

(I don't mean to rehash the previously linked discussion)

> Shut I man's mouth, and they'll only try harder to speak. Ignore them and they'll have to focus on why people aren't paying attention.

This article is titled "trolls" but is about gender-based harassment. If what you said was true, why did they need to hire an outside firm to deal with it? I much prefer a hands-off approach, but the tech community hasn't had the best record of self-policing and being inclusive. And proactive methods, like ones mentioned in the article, have proven to address these issues. (admittedly, I think P.C. has gone a bit far at time and alienated and stifled the community)

GitHub is a private company. If "free-market dynamics" tries to turn GitHub into a political discussion platform, that might not be the kind of service GitHub wants to provide. I think it's also fair for you to criticize that you feel this is overreaching since you're a participant in their community. Even if market dynamics shoo bad apples away you still have a dead repo with unwelcoming content hosted indefinitely. Every repo on GitHub is associated with their brand.

Creating a repo is easy, naming things is hard, and individuals often create things with blasphemous or offensive names just for fun. While I don't want to be stifling, I have seen people talk about concern for new or interesting tools having blasphemous names that would cause trouble if they tried to use at their company.

Personally, I don't care, but I'm glad they care about how they're perceived and don't want to see poor or negligent stewardship (like happened to sourceforge and google code).

I don't consider inclusivity necessary for respect. To me, respect is politeness, not assuming or attributing ill will to others without evidence, and the willingness to communicate effectively and honestly. As for your second point, I do have a problem with putting the community before the project. If a fantastic open source project has a one man/woman dictatorship I don't care. The quality and ease of use is all that matters to me. I really only subscribe to one rule apart from that, which is don't be an asshole. I understand why some projects would want the community focus that the CC provides, I was merely articulating my issues with it.

> So far, the company said, it’s been successful. Blocks and reports of incidents have gone up, indicating that GitHub users are actually using the site’s new tools. And when incidents do occur, the time it takes to respond to user reports has gone down.

While faster response times are definitely good, higher rates of blocked users and abuse reports seem like dubious metrics for success.