I Violated a Code of Conduct • Hacker News Board

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#321

Post by SllX » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

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…

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the naïve to figure out bureaucracy, agreements and rules are a means of subduing their polity. Good enough for government work, but the operating principle is the same even for private organizations. Put a process in place, sprinkle some pretty words around to get people to agree that this undoubtedly good and just and will not be abused, and the people who are better at politics than you are will leverage that process to unjust means, and your best hope is that you’re not the one in the line of fire.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#322

Post by justin66 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #255

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeesh. Malice would be more respectable.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#323

Post by donw » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #263

donw wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added to my reading list, thanks! I'd wager that the "self esteem" movement, or more accurately, whatever caused it to gain traction in the American psyche, kicked off the downward spiral to where-we-are-now. In a nutshell, several generations of American children were taught, systematically, to ignore social signals that conflicted with their self-image, and were thus deprived of a very critical part of their childh…

The core problem with the self-esteem movement is that they try to promote high self-esteem disconnected from any true achievement or worth . High self-esteem certainly correlates with healthy, successful people (of course healthy successful people have good self esteem!) but trying to artificially inflate peoples' self esteem to create health and success is driving the causation backwards. Self esteem devoid of any…

> Self esteem devoid of any underlying achievement is hollow. In the end you're basically manufacturing narcissists, with a fragile falsely inflated self image covering a chasm of insecurity.

Precisely.

At the same time, I think that social connections divorced from physical reality -- as is on the Internet -- compound this to the nth degree.

I can pretend to be an amazing dancer or boxer or chef on Facebook, but it's a very different thing when I need to demonstrate those skills as part of a community that actually Does That Thing.

To provide an example, I recall a few years back, at a dance social, meeting some kid from the Air Force that was an excellent case-study. He showed up, started dancing with partners, and it was obvious from the first (music) sentence in the first song that he simply did not know how to dance.

At all.

Like, when experienced dancers come from other styles, you can tell that they know how to dance. Maybe not this specific style, but they've got fundamentals. Ballerinas are particularly graceful, Latin dancers have a really specific flavor, ballroom people have really great structure, etc.

This dude was not a dancer.

Now, this is okay! The first rule of social dancing is that you want to welcome new dancers. But he was rude to every person that tried to help him out with picking up the basics, insisting that he was already a great dancer and that he didn't need the help.

Falsely inflated self-image, meet room full of follows that aren't interested in having their feet crushed.

Don't know what happened to him after that, but imagine if his bubble had never faced critique -- and this was from a community that bent over backwards to be nice to newcomers.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#324

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:53 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #313

tptacek wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes of course but in this case you're just wrong. This is a very well documented pattern of behavior at this point. Fortunately you're not my boss or colleague and so you can continue to promulgate these structures that cause a lot of misery and distress and lost productivity and I will continue to avoid being subject to them.

There's no "but". You feeling that I'm "just wrong" is what disagreement is. You don't have to drag Kafka into it. He's got better things to do.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#325

Post by ALittleLight » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:54 AM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #184

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to. I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives th…

Rebuilt? Why?

Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference.

The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.

Likewise, for more mundane stuff, it's all common sense. Don't be obnoxious, rude, make people uncomfortable, etc. If you are doing that, they'll ask you to leave and ban you from future attendance if it's severe. You shouldn't need a CoC to know that and they don't need one to do it.

Consider something that's not covered by their CoC. Maybe I bring my pet skunk with me and they don't have a provision about skunks in their CoC. Are they now powerless? No, they're going to do what's sensible and ask me to not have the skunk, and if I say "Your code of conduct doesn't prohibit skunks" they're going to ask me to leave.

Codes of conduct are silly. They create these dumb regulations and committees for no real reason and create the apparatus for mistakes like these.

I'm actually shocked that Jeremy supported and still supports codes of conduct. He seems like a smart guy and they're obviously a bad idea.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#326

Post by gorgoiler » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:55 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #76

gorgoiler wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your example. I can see why, on the scale of... “Joe is dumb ” .. “Joe is wrong ” .. “Joe is wrong about X ” .. “ Why I think Joe is wrong about X” ...anything but the final one feels unduly confrontational. That’s how I felt, reading your comment.

The 4th implies the 3rd. If I think you're wrong, I'll say you're wrong--with reasons. Adding some additional words like "in my oh so humble opinion I think" doesn't change the fundamental meaning. (And I have absolutely criticized well-known people's opinions on public stages.)

It absolutely changes the meaning. Perhaps, in some cultures or subcultures, showing humility has a weakening effect but I tend to avoid those places nowadays, or at least push back on them.

...I think [and am willing to be proven wrong.]

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#327

Post by ikiris » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #204

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…

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…

"Unfortunately “anti-racism” has been weaponized as a shortcut for silencing anyone who may at one point have said something that could be interpreted as racist or even not anti-racist enough. No thanks. Rather be labeled as a racist and keep my free speech than silenced by some mob authority."

This kind of comment was not surprising to find in your history's first page.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#328

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#329

Post by ilaksh » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:00 AM UTC

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…

Bullying and criticism are two completely different things.

"Bullying" usually refers to actual criminal activities by children. Such as stealing objects, harassing, hitting, beating etc. Which happened to me.

Criticism is something completely different.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#330

Post by ben0x539 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #299

ben0x539 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more fear? If I don't get any hint as to what kind of behavior the individual maintainers consider dickheadish, I have to worry about that with every interaction. If you have a CoC with even very vague and subjective rules, I at least know what kind of stuff you care about and then at worst I can be extra careful around that. (Sure, I can shrug off the judgement, but being blocked from their repo is stil…

> I'd say it's more fear? If I don't get any hint as to what kind of behavior the individual maintainers consider dickheadish, I have to worry about that with every interaction. If you have a CoC with even very vague and subjective rules, I at least know what kind of stuff you care about and then at worst I can be extra careful around that. But knowing what's in the CoC doesn't actually tell you what kind of stuff th…

The maintainer can write(/adopt) a CoC as a tool to make it easy for me to not be a dickhead. The effectiveness of that is gonna vary, communication is hard. Still better than nothing.