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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#301

Post by [deleted] »

mk81 wrote: post #214
robbyoconnor wrote: post #101

I support codes of conduct but this is EXACTLY the thing that opponents point to when they oppose them. I expected this post to be a rant against codes of conduct and instead it wound up leaving me wondering if NumFOCUS and JupyterCon was in the wrong here...this guy offered criticism and that is NOT a fucking violation of ANY CoC -- if you can't handle criticism, don't make public statements. The hilarious is that J…

>> I support the thoughtful enforcement of Code of Conducts to address blah blah blah, but ... >I support codes of conduct but ... CoCs are crap and you both know it

[deleted]

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#302

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

Without a CoC, this exact situation could have happened, but it just would be "your talk was removed for making people uncomfortable." The CoC just adds a layer of indirection, and in this case a rather non-sensical one, since "making people uncomfortable" isn't a CoC violation under the NumFOCUS CoC.

I don't know where I stand on CoCs in general, but saying "See this is why CoCs are bad" is like saying "See this is why we shouldn't punish someone for murder" when someone gets thrown in jail for murder and all parties agree that that the person did not kill anyone (though one side claims that what they did was still "murder").

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#303

Post by labster »

junon wrote: post #225
xwdv wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my karma here on HN used to be at least double of what it is now. But at some point there was a change in people’s moods, and now it has been slowly eroding over time. I suspect someday it will be zero, or worse. My writing style and sharp criticisms of damn near everything hasn’t changed much, except perhaps knowing I’m going to be downvoted makes my wording more bitter. I suspect it is the HN crowd whi…

I'm in the very same boat.

The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments. Most of us have heard all of the simple one-liner thoughts before, we want something that might be insightful and novel. And politics-adjacent threads like these are not the place to earn karma, because lots of people will always disagree. But it’s an excellent place to lose karma.

A lot of us go to places like HN, Ars, TechCrunch because they’re something of a refuge from intractable boring political dilemmas. Solving technical problems, old war stories, discussing software and language features, sharing historical curiosities: those sorts of things earn karma.

That’s not to say politics is unwelcome here, but these threads make it so much easier to accidentally offend another. I’m highly involved in a US political party, but I rarely bring it up here because it’s unproductive. That said, go vote!

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#304

Post by googthrowaway42 »

tptacek wrote: post #277
googthrowaway42 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that speaking out against CoCs under your real name in a professional context can be quite difficult. The people who tend to create, promote, and defend CoCs tend to engage in incredibly Kafkaesque and pathological behavior as a matter of course. As far as HN goes, I use the term "intelligent" quite loosely but one of the hallmarks of intelligence is pattern recognition.

Maybe it's not what's being said but how it's being said. And, the irony of your bit about intelligence is that you're critiquing an instance of pattern recognition. ;)

> Maybe it's not what's being said but how it's being said.

This is the kind of rhetoric I'm referring to when I say Kafkaesque. These people derive power from being victims so if they are given this benefit of the doubt you are granting them where the onus is on some person to walk on eggshells lest that person upset the perpetually upset these perpetual victims will of course announce they are upset and victimized no matter what is said, thus fending off any attack.

Kafka would be proud.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#305

Post by ben0x539 »

meowface wrote: post #275
ben0x539 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the owners will add a notice to a page documenting the sanction and rationale I mean, that's basically a CoC-by-example. I don't really disagree with that modulo some surmountable reservations about giving too much attention to either bad actors or victims. Where I think this falls short is that, when spinning up a new project, you'd start with a blank page, so people _don't_ have the opportunity to determine w…

>Where I think this falls short is that, when spinning up a new project, you'd start with a blank page, so people _don't_ have the opportunity to determine whether they disagree with your moderation style until enough bad things have actually happened. Why not carry over your learnings from previous projects? If every single project on GitHub right now removed its CoC, how much would really change over the next month…

There's local consensus but it absolutely does differ between projects. I don't know what people feel particularly strongly about, or have particularly bad experiences with. I don't know how people want problems to be reported/addressed. I don't know whether to expect the community leaders' support when there are problems, or whether it'll be blamed on me for having the wrong values. All of these distract from trying to get technical work done. Writing things down is useful.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#306

Post by langitbiru »

"I know that I’ve made many enemies this year with my advocacy of universal masking, and have had to deal with constant harassment and even death threats as a result."

This is embarrassing. I can empathize with the arguments against lockdown because it can affect economy. But masking? The barrier of entry is so low. It's not hard to wear a mask. The cost is so low.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#307

Post by tptacek »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #304
tptacek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's not what's being said but how it's being said. And, the irony of your bit about intelligence is that you're critiquing an instance of pattern recognition. ;)

> Maybe it's not what's being said but how it's being said. This is the kind of rhetoric I'm referring to when I say Kafkaesque. These people derive power from being victims so if they are given this benefit of the doubt you are granting them where the onus is on some person to walk on eggshells lest that person upset the perpetually upset these perpetual victims will of course announce they are upset and victimized…

You know it's possible for us to just disagree about things, right?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#308

Post by lmm »

Barrin92 wrote: post #285
lmm wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I actually think it's the opposite: codes and committees make the structurelessness worse. The code creates the illusion that the rules are impartial and their application is a detail. The (usually secret) committee diffuses responsibility so that no-one's actually accountable for their decisions. It gives the veneer of process and objectivity when actually there's nothing of the sort.

Formalising the process - who makes the decisions, on what grounds, with what oversight - is important. Formalising the code without a good process is putting the cart before the horse.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#309

Post by [deleted] »

junon wrote: post #225
xwdv wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my karma here on HN used to be at least double of what it is now. But at some point there was a change in people’s moods, and now it has been slowly eroding over time. I suspect someday it will be zero, or worse. My writing style and sharp criticisms of damn near everything hasn’t changed much, except perhaps knowing I’m going to be downvoted makes my wording more bitter. I suspect it is the HN crowd whi…

I'm in the very same boat.

[deleted]

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#310

Post by cavisne »

This is a canonical example of cognitive dissonance.

The author has a classic Australian style of speaking, and he knows this is American PC nonsense.

Yet he agrees/promotes all these new woke rituals. It’s can’t possible be me they are after!

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