I Violated a Code of Conduct • Hacker News Board

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#501

Post by pron » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #381

defen wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don't want to associate with you or me for reasons we don't find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relat…

> Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else

They very well might. When you exercise your judgment in any way, you are liable for damages. Due process might protect you from that.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#502

Post by jhanschoo » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:43 AM UTC

lloydatkinson wrote: post #487

All "Code of Conducts" are toxic rules designed to provide SJWs (social justice warriors) with the means to "cancel" people for wrong think and/or allow them to bully people. How truly awful for this individual that this has happened, all they said was that someone's opinion is wrong and that makes them "unkind"? Absurdity. As another comment says, it's all about virtue signalling and having "power" over other people…

It's interesting that you have this takeaway when one of the reasons the author gives for making such a post is to reaffirm the value of a CoC.

Would you elaborate on why you think a CoC and corresponding enforcement in the way the author describes is either undesirable or impossible?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#503

Post by LeonB » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #344

offbyone wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apropos of nothing related, I want to know: What, exactly, were you confident yet wrong about in regards to bay leaves?

Someone asked on Twitter what, if any, flavor bay leaves had. I repeated advice I'd heard: supermarket bay leaves are bad, so just add a lot of them. Then I acted on another piece of advice: if you want to know what bay leaves taste like, steep them in water and taste the water. I did. Bay leaves are disgusting. Nobody should add more of them to anything.

Ha. I saw the saw the start of that conversation on Twitter. I didn’t know you went ahead and ran an experiment. Hilarious. Good work. They definitely add bitter/dark tones.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#504

Post by howlgarnish » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

trymas wrote: post #469

Youtube's algorithm, like it does all the time these days, suggested to watch a random 5 year old video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNbWGaaxWM (more relevant parts to the article begin from ~5:00, but it's worth watching everything) I know Slavoj is a polarizing figure, but somehow that video nailed it for me, and IMHO it fits the article. From my point of view I find it extremely ridiculous that this "cancelli…

"Offense by proxy" is the way it works these days. If anybody is offended by anything you say or do, you are by definition guilty of causing offense, regardless of whether your remark was intended as offensive or even directed at that person.

Actual case from a Silicon Valley company: person X admiringly notes that a transgender fashion model (shown in a picture in a news article, not employed at the company or otherwise involved in any way) passes so well that she looks like a "real woman". Person Y, who is not transgender, takes this to imply that transgender women are not "real women" and reports the remark to HR, and X is very nearly fired as a result.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#505

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #215

bamboozled wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point all of it calmed down, the war ended and people moved on. With social media, there are no signs of stopping, it’s an endless stream of addictive outrage and one sided opinion. That in my view is what’s new and worse about it and it’s only likely to get more integrated with us. Imagine when you have a brain implant like Elon and Co are working on ? You won’t even have the luxury to put your phone in your…

> the war ended and people moved on The Vietnam-era "culture war" did not, however. It continued for quite some time. Just like the Civil Rights era and McCarthyism beore it, both of which came with their share of lynch mobs, and sometimes literal rather than metaphorical ones. >That in my view is what’s new and worse about it and it’s only likely to get more integrated with us. Absolutely we should work to reduce th…

> > [bamboozled] the war ended and people moved on

> [dralley] The Vietnam-era "culture war" did not, however. It continued for quite some time.

Evidence (anecdotal) in support: Jane Fonda is STILL referred to as “Hanoi Jane”; I think I've seen it used even more recently than, e.g, [1]. This is from 1972, i.e. almost fifty years ago. OK, half that time the Internet has been available, and half of that in turn, “social media”. But for the first ~twenty-five years of that, they weren't.

[1]: https://time.com/5116479/jane-fonda-hanoi-jane-nickname/

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#506

Post by pron » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

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…

You realise conference organisers can do the very same thing without a code of conduct, right? That a code of conduct can be used as an "oppression tool" doesn't mean that its absence doesn't lead to even more "oppression". If you want to compare the relative merit of two things, like having a code or not, you need to consider both sides rather than just point out the perceived downsides of one.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#507

Post by lloydatkinson » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:50 AM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #502

lloydatkinson wrote: post #487

All "Code of Conducts" are toxic rules designed to provide SJWs (social justice warriors) with the means to "cancel" people for wrong think and/or allow them to bully people. How truly awful for this individual that this has happened, all they said was that someone's opinion is wrong and that makes them "unkind"? Absurdity. As another comment says, it's all about virtue signalling and having "power" over other people…

It's interesting that you have this takeaway when one of the reasons the author gives for making such a post is to reaffirm the value of a CoC. Would you elaborate on why you think a CoC and corresponding enforcement in the way the author describes is either undesirable or impossible?

Simply put, "cancelling" (which is already a dumb concept) someone and refusing to allow them to speak at a conference simply because they said someone else's opinion was wrong is absurd. Add on top taking a week to let them know why.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#508

Post by Proven » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:53 AM UTC

Busybodies wanted a strict code of conduct and they got their code of conduct.

Now look what it's being used for.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#509

Post by spacekitcat » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:55 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #183

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 codes of conduct but this is EXACTLY the thing that opponents point to when they oppose them. Why don't you come to to the dark side and oppose codes of conduct then? I consider the purported goals of codes of conduct to be laudable. But this kind of thing becomes inevitable when SJWs aka political correctness police get power through trying to enforce codes of conduct. It isn't that sometimes proponents of…

Can you provide a concrete example of this “political correctness” you are opposed to?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#510

Post by luckylion » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 9:56 AM UTC

elric wrote: post #444

brigandish wrote: post #347

I've never seen a CoC used to help protect a community, only to protect certain already powerful members within a community and give them a tool with which to beat others. Lately I've been actively avoiding giving my time to open source projects that have CoC's like the Contributor Covenant[1], mainly because - if my experience is anything to go by - they are a strong signal that the kind of people I wish to avoid wi…

I've been wondering about this. Obviously there's a demand for CoCs coming from somewhere, or there wouldn't be a supply of them. What is driving this demand? Is this demand driven by good intentions? By a genuine desire to improve diversity? To attract those who might otherwise feel less safe? Is this demand driven by a "fear of being left out" because big names in tech are setting an example? Is this demand entirel…

My impression is that it's a mix of bad faith and misunderstanding by those pushing it (a lot are bad faith and know they just want a tool to give themselves power, but others believe that it's a good idea and are ignorant of the former, very forgiving when they see examples of their usage, "this is an individual mistake, it's not systemic in coc" etc), and a general attitude of "what's the harm in saying we expect everyone to be kind" on the side of maintainers agreeing to adopt them.