I Violated a Code of Conduct • Hacker News Board

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#371

Post by dannyw » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

jlebar wrote: post #368

chmod775 wrote: post #95

It was clearly a mistake for him to even play along, especially if he was emotionally exhausted already. The best you can do when people are being stupid like this is ignore them. They hold no power over you unless you let them. This whole CoC thing is sadly fraught with virtue signaling psycho-sadists who enjoy playing tribunal. The people who actually cared about fostering inclusive human communities got bullied ou…

> This whole CoC thing is sadly fraught with virtue signaling psycho-sadists who enjoy playing tribunal. > > The people who actually cared about fostering inclusive human communities got bullied out of positions of power long ago, so that aforementioned people could run their own little Stasi It sounds like you include yourself in this group of people who care about building inclusive human communities? Generalizing…

All I can say is I've only seen and heard code of conducts be used for bullying and to exclude people from communities without any wrongdoing. Examples include the various Stack Overflow Monica incidents, the post we've just read, and a meatspace event I've been to.

I think CoCs, while a great ideal, unfortunately tend to attract power-tripping, virtue-signalling bullies who seek to enforce it for the greater bad.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#372

Post by defen » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

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…

I disagree. I think we should generalize more, beyond codes of conduct: If you are building an adjudication process for resolving non-criminal personal conflicts (whether that be a Code of Conduct, an HR department, a Title IX proceeding, a professional organization, or something else), you should take a look at Anglo-derived common law and the safeguards against abuse that have been evolved over the centuries.

That doesn't mean everything needs to go through the courts; it means that if your process allows something that Anglo common law does not allow, you should have a good answer for why that is. Does it allow anonymous accusations? Is the accused allowed to know the charges against them, before a finding of guilt is rendered? Is there a presumption of innocence? Is the accused allowed to have a trusted third party - one who knows the rules of the game - to advocate on their behalf? Who, exactly, is responsible for deciding matters of fact vs matters of "law"? Is there an appeals process to fix possibly incorrect decisions?

Going by the linked document by Valerie Aurora, a good Code of Conduct allows anonymous accusations, the accused does not get to know the charges against them before a finding is rendered, there is no presumption of innocence, the accused does not get a third party advocate, matters of fact are necessarily decided by the same committee that makes the rules, and there is no appeal process.

This doesn't mean that such a committee will always do wrong. But I think it's worth thinking about how people operating in bad faith (either on the committee, or reporters to it) can abuse those features to achieve goals that are not actually aligned with what the Code of Conduct is trying to do. Yes, it's true that people can't be put in jail for these sorts of things, but a poorly-run adjudication process can have significant negative personal and financial effects on people.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#373

Post by LeoNatan25 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

ikiris wrote: post #327

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…

"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.

And it’s 100% accurate with the current political and cultural climate.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#374

Post by sergiotapia » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #174

strken wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in new projects from now on I'll start running echo "Don't be a dickhead, or I'll block you from the repo until you stop." > CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Not needlessly aggressive, gets the point across, short, covers everything someone could do wrong, provides consequences and a pathway to reconciliation.

It doesn't communicate what you consider to be dickhead behavior, so it invites fear, uncertainty and doubt both in whether my behavior is okay, and in what behavior of other participants I can expect to be "protected" from.

Does it really "invite fear and uncertainty" or are you just posturing? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. What's up buddy

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#375

Post by sieabahlpark » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

RangerScience wrote: post #167

agotterer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read the book “The Coddling of The American Mind”. It’s largely about the cancel culture, over protection, and how the voice on college campuses has been changing. How we went from college being a safe place for open debate and discussion to an environment which is becoming less welcoming of differing opinions and perspectives. The authors try to identify the origins of the change and use data and statisti…

IMHO, there's something to the push to change how we go about discourse. As an example - it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I see it as pretty similar to how some people see removal of spanking your kids as being coddling, versus making sure your kids are wearing pads when they're learning to roll…

Kind of proving his point. I guess regional or environmental dialect is somehow offensive and abrasive?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#376

Post by goatinaboat » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #325

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…

The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced

But that was always the point of them. Sure they have some nice words about equality and so on, but the purpose was always to give those who produce nothing themselves power over those that do. Look at the way long standing projects have had CoC’s forced on them by recently-arrived outsiders who have barely contributed a single line of code. Look at who the first targets of the CoC committee are. It’s just bullying.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#377

Post by dannyw » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #358

robbyoconnor wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this isn't a case of a codes of conduct being universally bad, but rather a case of one instance of it being bad. A GOOD code of conduct will be specific and lay out what is acceptable without vagueness.

Most people know what is or isn't acceptable through common sense. A racist or sexual assaulter isn't going to think "Wait, does this violate the code of conduct?" Every conference doesn't need to go to the trouble of working out some flawless unambiguous list of rules and every attendee doesn't need to read them. If someone is causing a problem eject, ban, or call the police. No CoC needed.

And three sentences of "We don't tolerate abuse, discrimination, or harassment of any speaker or participant at XYZCon. If you have a problem, contact a staff member. If you cause a problem, you may be asked to leave, be banned from future events, and/or the police may be called.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#378

Post by lmm » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:56 AM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #330

lmm wrote: post #299

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. 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.

Publishing informal thoughts or a semi-formal moderation policy is effective communication. Publishing a pseudo-legal code sends the message that you will be making legalistic judgements and pronouncements.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#379

Post by hintymad » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:58 AM UTC

agotterer wrote: post #119

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 should read the book “The Coddling of The American Mind”. It’s largely about the cancel culture, over protection, and how the voice on college campuses has been changing. How we went from college being a safe place for open debate and discussion to an environment which is becoming less welcoming of differing opinions and perspectives. The authors try to identify the origins of the change and use data and statisti…

In a word, our education system produced a generation of pussies, who think all truths and justices have to flow from their feelings?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#380

Post by csnover » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 6:59 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…

> And the chuckling in the call when someone has already said they’re not in a proper emotional state is just bullying.

I can’t speak to who this person was or why they did this, but I did just want to mention that there is at least one good faith explanation that isn’t straight up bullying.

When I am in uncomfortable situations, I have a nervous chuckle. If I were in this call, giving this feedback to this person, I probably would have done that at least once. Thanks to some great feedback I once received, I learned that people were interpreting my nervous laughter as me thinking that what they were saying was dumb or wrong, even though this was not the case—I was just feeling anxious. It’s possible that this person really was chuckling at the OP to bully them, but it’s also equally possible that they were just feeling super nervous in an emotionally charged situation and laughed because of that.