I Violated a Code of Conduct • Hacker News Board

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#251

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

barumi wrote: post #244

tptacek wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is a take. It feels like it must be exhausting to have that take, and I certainly don't share it, but I acknowledge that it is one.

It is not a take. It's an objective description of what a CoC is and how it is designed to be used. There is no way around it. At all. I'm surprised you feel the need to turn a blind eye to this fact. Let's put it differently: without it's oppressive and persecutory function, what's the point of a CoC? To make it even simpler to you, what do you expect if someone in a community is deemed in direct violation of a CoC?

Hm, and me I thought most of them were just a way to assure newcomers that your project wasn't going to allow racist trolling on the mailing list.

My take is that the problem with this code of conduct was that it was dumb. I want to recommend to you the degree to which it is easy and relaxing to just acknowledge that and move on, maybe with a note or two about what not to do in any code of conduct you write. It seems --- I could be wrong, I started today confidently wrong about bay leaves --- like the alternative is an exhausting vigilance about conspiracies to control and persecute. Even if you're right, nobody is going to believe you, so what's the point in letting your pulse quicken?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#252

Post by moron4hire » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

barumi wrote: post #234

moron4hire wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be that way. I admit that many of them are just that sort of thing. But they can be tools to communicate to good-faith actors that they will be welcome and safe. I think part of the problem is that most CoCs are copy-paste jobs. They're put in place as a matter of fashion. What they really need to be is a statement on the commitments of the leadership. And they are meaningless if the leadership is…

> They don't have to be that way. They really have, because that's the sole reason they exist. It's like arguing that a oppressive totalitarian regime doesn't have to oppress their citizens. > (...) they can be tools to communicate to good-faith actors that they will be welcome and safe. CoCs aren't welcoming letters. CoCs are designed with the express purpose of letting you know that you will be punished if you do o…

> Either that's already implied,

A very large group of people have stated many times that that is not the case. They do not feel safe. It's continued assertions that bludgeoning people is the sole reason CoCs exist that make those people feel like they are being completely ignored.

> or means nothing if you don't plan to act on it

That is literally what I said. "And they are meaningless if the leadership is not trained on those commitments."

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#253

Post by genericone » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

free_rms wrote: post #240

dralley wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the war ended and people moved on The Vietnam-era "culture war" did not, however. It continued for quite some time. Just like the Civil Rights era and McCarthyism beore it, both of which came with their share of lynch mobs, and sometimes literal rather than metaphorical ones. >That in my view is what’s new and worse about it and it’s only likely to get more integrated with us. Absolutely we should work to reduce th…

The underlying witch-hunt mentality has obviously existed since before the term witch-hunt. The new part is that social media arguably accelerates it. One wacko trying to burn the witches in a village full of level heads couldn't accomplish anything. Now they can band together nationally.

The Red Guards accomplished the national banding together thing, with the approval of the establishment, going from village to village, city to city, they burned and hanged witches, and destroyed problematic symbols too.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#254

Post by the_only_law » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

jimkleiber wrote: post #74

zdragnar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely, it isn't a leap to imagine that someone who was bullied a lot as a child would have a difficult time constructively receiving criticism? I believe most people are not great at constructively giving it, so it doesn't seem like that should be a stretch at all.

I agree and I'd add that most of us aren't good at giving constructive feedback either, so it can be a double-edged sword (if I used that idiom correctly).

Not that this is a case of this, but in tech communities I see too many examples of "criticism" where in the critic doesn't want to actually provide anything useful to the person and instead uses the opportunity to show themselves and/or the other people involved how smart they are.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#255

Post by ben0x539 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #200

ben0x539 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hilarious is that Joel Grus didn't care It's probably not the case here, but imo it's a feature of CoCs that they protect people who can't publicly object themselves for whatever reason. Like, for an extreme example, if I know I'm gonna get harassed if I make noise about someone's genuinely harmful behavior, then it's good that I can publicly be like "oh no it's fine don't worry" and there's still a process to…

Most modern legal systems give people the right to confront their accusers for good reason: Giving people the power to accuse others without any possibility of consequences will ultimately be abused. I understand the desire to protect specifically vulnerable accusers in unique situations, but we should be catering to those situations on a case-by-case basis. In this case, isolating the accusers from the accused didn’…

We don't know anything about the accusers, do we? I don't think it's fair to assume they had malicious intentions.

Specifically, I don't think we can assume that the people who were uncomfortable with the talk were like "this speaker should be banned from the conference". Maybe the initial message was closer to "hey, this seems a bit harsh and distracts from the actual content, maybe the speaker wouldn't mind toning it down for the next talk".

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#256

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

aestetix wrote: post #250

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…

Perhaps you should ask Violet Blue what she thinks of Valerie Aurora's "excellent" training: http://www.securitybsides.com/w/page/35868077/BSidesSanFranc...

I based my judgement of that deck on reading the deck, and I really don't care what Violet Blue thinks about anything at all.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#257

Post by ben0x539 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #110

strken wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your talk is in response to another talk by someone else, and you're taking slides and content from their talk and reacting to them, it's important that your audience know what the initial talk was. They have to have the context of the debate, including who is on each side, to fully investigate both sides and reach their own conclusions.

Well, maybe don't do that then. You could address the ideas from that talk instead of the talk specifically, and have a slide, like, "My talk is a response to this other talk by this person and I encourage you to check it out".

Like I'm not saying that I think you _should have to_ do this, but you could do it without compromising the thing you say is important.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#258

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #242

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. This is what intelligent people do. They recognize patterns and extrapolate. At this point the vast majority of people have experienced variations of what this guy has gone through. In my own experience I have seen the exact same pattern of behavior in a slack community set up for my town. > This is one of those posts wh…

Consult the search bar below to disabuse yourself of the notion that "intelligent people" have had any trouble discussing their qualms about codes of conduct until now.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#259

Post by free_rms » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

genericone wrote: post #253

free_rms wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying witch-hunt mentality has obviously existed since before the term witch-hunt. The new part is that social media arguably accelerates it. One wacko trying to burn the witches in a village full of level heads couldn't accomplish anything. Now they can band together nationally.

The Red Guards accomplished the national banding together thing, with the approval of the establishment, going from village to village, city to city, they burned and hanged witches, and destroyed problematic symbols too.

They were actually incredibly fractured and fought each other a lot, actual fights with weapons and casualties. But still, you're right, they only got off the ground initially due to a national infrastructure encouraging them.

Social Media is more of an accidental paper-clip-optimizer national encouragement.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#260

Post by lmm » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:00 AM UTC

whack wrote: post #211

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…

Some relevant statements from the author on this topic: > Code of Conducts can be a useful tool, when thoughtfully created and thoughtfully enforced, to address sexism, racism, and harassment, all of which have been problems at tech conferences. Given the diversity issues in the tech industry, it is important that we continue the work of making conferences more inclusive, particularly to those from marginalized backg…

> You wouldn't advocate scrapping the entire criminal justice system, just because one innocent person was convicted. A little more nuance is useful here as well.

I've seen positive outcomes from the criminal justice system. I have literally never seen a CoC lead to a better dispute-handling process than the absence of a CoC.

> Every community has its set of guidelines, either explicit of implicit, intended to foster the community's purpose. If I go to my neighbor's party and behave like a jerk, and insult the other guests, there's a very good chance that I won't be invited back.

Sure - but it will be clear who's responsible for that decision. Most likely someone will tell you to your face what you did wrong and give you a chance to defend yourself.

> In this case, I have no idea why the committee came down hard on the author. I saw the relevant portions of his talk, and didn't hear anything rude or objectionable. I think the committee got it wrong in this instance, but that doesn't mean everyone in future should be allowed to be a jerk, and not face any consequences.

You don't need a CoC to exclude jerks. You need a moderator (not a committee; a clearly accountable individual, who will bear ultimate responsibility even for those parts of the job that they delegate) who will apply good judgement in a visible way. Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.

Based on what I've seen of them in action a CoC is not only useless, it should be a red flag that the organisers have not thought seriously about their dispute resolution process.