I feel like I have heard nothing but bad things about Codes of Conduct. Are there any good stories about them? Am I just seeing the bad stuff and not the good for some reason?
I Violated a Code of Conduct
421–430 of 971 posts
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#422Earlier 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.
It isn't sensible to rebut an abstract that nobody claimed. He could claim that notebooks are wonderful, but that would be less intellectually useful because it puts the onus on the listener to find and compare alternative opinions. He is, as speakers really should be encouraged to do, providing an easy reference to strong competing ideas and also providing a specific case of why he thinks they are wrong.
It is a horrible mistake to bring people in and give them attributes they don't have (eg, "Joe Schmoe is an idiot who is wrong about X" is objectionable). It is good practice to reference where mistaken claims are being made (as in this case "Joe Schmoe said X and that is wrong" is helpful to the listeners).
I am very doubtful that Joel Grus' identity is so tied to his jupyter-scepticism that this talk represents a personal attack. It is completely routine debate and possibly quite fun for all involved.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Then it seems to me that you're not the sort of person who should be on such a phone call, unless you can get this habit under control.
> unless you can get this habit under control.
The OP is not alone in that, I also chuckle/grin when under huge stress (it sometimes also happened when I heard about the very bad health condition of people really close to me), and saying that "one should get this habit under control" is like saying to depressed people just to smile so that they won't be depressed anymore (and it's also like calling depression just a "habit", but I digress).
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a good piece called the Tyranny of Structurelessness about radical feminist movements That's from 1970: "The basic problems didn't appear until individual rap groups exhausted the virtues of consciousness-raising and decided they wanted to do something more specific. At this point they usually foundered because most groups were unwilling to change their structure when they changed their tasks." That's not jus…
> Black Lives Matter is hitting this now. This is the agenda of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation LLC, the organization you link, isn't the central organization of the movement, and certainly isn't the central policy organization of the movement. That's the Movement For Black Lives (M4BL). Here's their platform page: https://m4bl.org/policy-platforms/
Ah. That's much better.[1]
[1] https://breatheact.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/The-BREATH...
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 used to obsess about things like this and then someone pointed out to me, "You'll never, ever get it right. You will word something some way, attempting to be gentle, and they will still be offended. You will NEVER win. So the only thing you can do is be sinc…
Well put!
Another thing that I am not a fan of is when people ask to always mention that it's only one's opinion.
Well duh, unless obviously supported by verifiable evidence, it is only my opinion. In my opinion!
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#426"NumFOCUS" apparently has spare manpower to appoint or maybe even employs a "Code of Conduct Enforcement Team" and have "committee meetings" and calls to deal with extremely important situations such as someone making people uncomfortable ? What the actual fuck? Out of all the actual problems in the world, including in free software where you can use your time productively and contribute code, this is what they chose…
And that is a good reason for contributors stop contributing. All that extra manpower may do something useful then
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#427When and why did software engineering become the playground of aggressive, oppressive SJW and emotionally brittle snowflakes? Are other fields (of engineering) also as infested with all this nonsense?
Here we have people throwing a fit over... nothing and then we have a speaker that calls himself „shattered“ after those ridiculous accusations? We need more Linus Torvalds.
To make one thing clear: The speaker is the victim in this interaction. Being unhappy about the accusation is understandable, feeling "shattered" makes me worried for them.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#428We'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…
Frankly. Most people on HN and the tech community have asked for this, it's been years in the making. Slowly, anyone watching has seen this coming and it's not the end. There's a reason we (the tech community) used to be and generally do lean libertarian. It's because we had to think ahead as we program, develop, we used to be innovators. We had to accepted people like Richard Stallman or Steve Jobs for that matter,…
So the drivebys are here again, no idea what issue they took with your post, I thought it was beautiful.
Just wanted to be positive in a thread where there seems to be lots of negative.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#429We'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
It is the worst form of failure of a justice system. But in case of COC I would need to compare the previous situation, which was more peaceful and tolerant with fewer casualties.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
I encourage anyone who believes social media has divided our society like never before to read a small amount of history of the Vietnam war era. Here's a taste: in 1970, the national guard murdered four unarmed students at Kent State. A poll showed 58% of Americans blamed the students, who were widely smeared. Maybe the real rot of social media is how it erases in peoples' minds the idea that anything could have happ…
I would also encourage reading about the press before the 20th century. Every random pamphleteer or newspaper churned up all kinds of despicable rumors or partisan rhetoric as bad or worse than Twitter. The idea of “objective press” is pretty new...
I wonder how the perception of who the writer is influences the people who read the 'message'.
When "the press" publishes something, you know it's "the media", since you're reading it in the paper.
On Twitter, the message presents itself as coming from "regular people, like you and me".
What I mean is that maybe people may have some kind of skepticism when reading a paper, such as I they know that this paper has rather this kind of views whereas that other paper will have that other kind. And also, this was written by some journalist and approved by the paper's editor, so it could very well be a fringe opinion since only few people were implicated. We don't know that this opinion is shared by many people. Contrast this with Twitter, where it appears that "a lot of different people" seem to be holding this or that opinion. People who aren't overtly belonging to the same group or organization. Which means the opinion isn't just some random group making things up, there must actually be something to it.
I'm not saying this works every time and "despicable rumors or partisan rhetoric" in the press never worked. I'm sure they did. But I think it worked on fewer people, and in order for those rumors to take hold in society they would have to spread through the people, not through newspapers, which must have been slower at the time.
Or the newspapers would have to be very convincing in order to influence many people directly, just writing a 140 character blurb wouldn't have done it.