Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Violated a Code of Conduct

fast.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 971 posts

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#281

Post by esfandia »

ben0x539 wrote: post #104
tschwimmer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Each conference has their own goals, but I'd think that a general thread that underlies all of them is the exchange of ideas. If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas. I think preventing attendees from criticizing people ("Joe Schmoe is dumb") is perfectly fine, but that's clearly not what happened here.

Leaving aside whether this'd be a good policy for a conference, this argument doesn't really check out for me. You can exchange ideas without making judgements on other ideas. Like, let your ideas speak for themselves, marketplace of ideas etc, or even make comparisons without saying your ideas are _better or worse_ than other ideas. I'm sure you wouldn't run out of useful and engaging conference content even with so…

Research is literally predicated on showing results that are better than the state of the art. Without that judgment on other work there can be no progress in research!

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#282

Post by googthrowaway42 »

tptacek wrote: post #268
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes in some cases there are bad things in this world that are promulgated and promoted under the guise of being good. Learning to recognize those bad things for what they are instead of naively accepting their self-serving sanguine explanations is part of being a developed adult.

You write this as if it's insight, as if maybe it's the first time it's occurred to the reader that "good" things can be bad. We all know that. It's the sentences that come after that thought that have meaning.

I don't think it's particularly insightful. I'm just stating it since it doesn't seem to occur to most adults these days.

Certainly it is interesting to consider the set of circumstances that give victimhood and fragility such power to those who claim it.

That's quite the inversion. It is interesting that the people who focus so much on the analysis of hierarchies to the point where they see them everywhere and assert the unjustness of hierarchy qua hierarchy end up just inverting these hierarchies and using their power to tyrannize other people.

What does that say about the people that allow them to do that?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#284

Post by jancsika »

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…

> Somebody needs to hide Linus.

IIRC Linus had a public mea culpa and took some time off to reflect on his communication style.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#285

Post by Barrin92 »

lmm wrote: post #260
whack wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it should be a red flag that the organisers have not thought seriously about their dispute resolution process.

while that's very evident in this case this is actually what CoCs or written rules in general are for. Of course when you don't have a committee or a CoC however is in charge can still treat people arbitrarily, in fact much more so than when you actually have agreed on conduct and have a process to resolve things.

There's a good piece called the Tyranny of Structurelessness about radical feminist movements, where wanting to ditch all formal rules actually lead to even worse informal treatment, because officially leaders don't even exist, so there's nobody to blame.

You can look at this case also another way, at least there is an actual committee the author can blame and a CoC that he can argue he wasn't treated fairly by.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#286

Post by pdonis »

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…

> Social media

What does this particular incident have to do with social media? This was a presentation at a conference, and the "canceling" was convicting the presenter of a Code of Conduct violation on what look like egregiously inadequate grounds. They didn't block his Twitter feed or spam his Facebook page.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#287

Post by mssundaram »

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…

> This is what intelligent people do. They recognize patterns and extrapolate.

Any level of intelligence does this. How well one extrapolates varies, and extrapolation is always eventually wrong.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#288

Post by esfandia »

eplanit wrote: post #67
tschwimmer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Each conference has their own goals, but I'd think that a general thread that underlies all of them is the exchange of ideas. If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas. I think preventing attendees from criticizing people ("Joe Schmoe is dumb") is perfectly fine, but that's clearly not what happened here.

"If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas." But, the example you give is one that criticizes Joe Schmoe, not X. How about just "X is wrong", and leave Joe out of it so that the discourse is about the rightness or wrongness of X.

Saying "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" doesn't imply "Joe Schmoe is wrong about everything". In fact it helps advancing and encouraging debate when someone can say "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" AND admit "Joe Schmoe is right about Y".

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#289

Post by nl »

barumi wrote: post #220
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…

> but the piece itself seems pretty balanced and thoughtful The piece is not balanced of thoughtful. The piece is crafted to present the case in a way that's immune or resilient to typical and expectable attacks. It underlined the core failings of the concept behind a CoC, and it provides a concrete example of how people use CoCs as an oppression tool that's leveraged to manipulate and condition groups to follow the…

> This is a CoC working exactly as it's supposed to work. By design.

> There is absolutely no other use for a CoC. This is precisely what they were created for.

> There is absolutely no other use for a CoC. This is precisely what they were created for. This is no accident or mistake.

I run groups that use a CoC and I assure you that they aren't supposed to work like this, weren't created for this and it is a mistake if they are.

> There is absolutely no other use for a CoC.

Sure there is. It's a good way to keep racist and sexist trolling and harrassment out of talks.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#290

Post by slostar »

unnouinceput wrote: post #137

To author: Jeremy Howard Please watch Linus talks. If that's not enough for you to grow some thick skin, go watch Bill Burr and ultimately Donald Trump. Stop living your life in fear what others think of you. My wife is blaming me because, finally, after more then a decade and a half she started to care less of what neighbors and/or extended family members think of her. For me personally I care only what 3 people thi…

You could care less about offending your parents and would be fine if they stop interacting with you? Sounds like you never got past the rebellious teen phase. I often don't see eye to eye with my parents (especially when religion takes part in many of their arguments), but there's nothing wrong taking the extra effort to avoid seriously offending the people you care about. Though maybe you had horrible parents and that's your justification for not putting them in the same category as wife and kids.

As for guys like Linus, his straight up brutally, abusively honest take on things has probably been good for the linux kernel, but I wouldn't say it should apply to your day-to-day life (interactions with family, extended-family, neighbors, etc).

Post reply on HN