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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#11

Post by anonymousiam »

hprotagonist wrote: post #8
lukev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly didn't read the article. The cited violations had nothing to do with "social justice", just with being (allegedly) "negative" and "insulting." It sounds like the whole situation was handled poorly, but clearly it is within the role of a conference organizer to reject overly negative or outright insulting talks. I don't know the details of this case and it sounds like communication with the talk author was…

Hand a committee opaque power with little oversight and no strict rules governing their own conduct. Populate it with probably well intentioned people who more than anything want to do something, anything about things in the world that are actually bad. You will, in general, find out how easy it is to find monsters under the bed and witches in the town next over, and you will do so very quickly. It is an extremely fa…

Yes, I fully agree. It's just another example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#13

Post by tptacek »

echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

This conference isn't a good example, but it is totally reasonable to run an event or a space with a norm of avoiding criticism. That's part of the job of a code of conduct: to establish those norms.

Here, the norms were surprising (a back-and-forth between two presentations is a perennial seat-filler at tech conferences) and poorly communicated. That's a problem. But "banning criticism" isn't necessarily a problem.

We have a shade of that norm here, in Show HN posts. Restricting criticism on generic HN posts would be stifling and unproductive, but in spaces where we ask community members to be vulnerable and where part of the point is to allow the community to be encouraging, it makes total sense.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#14

Post by sieabahlpark »

tptacek wrote: post #7

This is one of those posts where the title is going to trigger a lot of unproductive subthreads, but the piece itself seems pretty balanced and thoughtful (and links to Valerie Aurora's excellent code-of-conduct training deck). The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions. Here, I think the story is pretty much just: people screw up, and if your project has a code of…

> The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions.

So, like reddit?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#15

Post by part1of2 »

echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

I’m reading about critical thinking right now. If we’re not challenging assumptions, then you’re just blindly accepting something that could be wrong. Should I accept what I read in the news as truth, or should I say “this sounds wrong and here’s why”?

You’re right that this is madness. This PC nonsense needs to end. Not everyone can simultaneously be correct

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#16

Post by lukev »

hprotagonist wrote: post #8
lukev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly didn't read the article. The cited violations had nothing to do with "social justice", just with being (allegedly) "negative" and "insulting." It sounds like the whole situation was handled poorly, but clearly it is within the role of a conference organizer to reject overly negative or outright insulting talks. I don't know the details of this case and it sounds like communication with the talk author was…

Hand a committee opaque power with little oversight and no strict rules governing their own conduct. Populate it with probably well intentioned people who more than anything want to do something, anything about things in the world that are actually bad. You will, in general, find out how easy it is to find monsters under the bed and witches in the town next over, and you will do so very quickly. It is an extremely fa…

Ok, but seriously, what's the alternative?

Should literally _everything_ be an fully transparent democratic process (and good luck keeping it fair when bad actors show up en masse)?

Having a CoC is at least an improvement on the previous status quo, which was some group of individuals making arbitrary decisions in secret without any justification for their actions _at all_. CoC's don't give anyone more power than they already had; they just clearly express the principles that the group already in power will (ostensibly) use to make choices.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#17

Post by amznthrwaway »

echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

You’re posting this on a heavily moderated message board.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#18

Post by nullsense »

echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

>We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you.

Basically not much difference functionally than the rest of human history? Seems the latter half of the 20th century lulled some people into a false sense of security.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#19

Post by ahelwer »

echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

I encourage anyone who believes social media has divided our society like never before to read a small amount of history of the Vietnam war era. Here's a taste: in 1970, the national guard murdered four unarmed students at Kent State. A poll showed 58% of Americans blamed the students, who were widely smeared.

Maybe the real rot of social media is how it erases in peoples' minds the idea that anything could have happened without social media. Here's a quote from the end of No Country for Old Men, because why not it's a great book & film:

What you got ain’t nothing new. This country is hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’. Ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#20

Post by readthenotes1 »

anonymousiam wrote: post #11
hprotagonist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand a committee opaque power with little oversight and no strict rules governing their own conduct. Populate it with probably well intentioned people who more than anything want to do something, anything about things in the world that are actually bad. You will, in general, find out how easy it is to find monsters under the bed and witches in the town next over, and you will do so very quickly. It is an extremely fa…

Yes, I fully agree. It's just another example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

"But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit."

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper...

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