Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a concrete example of this “political correctness” you are opposed to?
The OP did.
No, OP really didn’t.
I Violated a Code of Conduct
541–550 of 971 posts
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#542CoCs were doomed to this from the beginning. Any set of strict/influential laws should be supported by a proper set of institutions like courts, lawyers, arbitration, judging practice. When you have rules and just a mob, you get nothing but a mob rule of power-hungry people. Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurator…
Agreed. CoCs don’t take into account that there is a small, vocal, petty minority that will always make life hell for others. These people are mostly ignorable and avoidable, if you simply avoid the sorts of things they enjoy (for instance, don’t join committees, don’t buy a house in a neighborhood with an HOA, etc). Unfortunately, lately, these sorts seem to have wriggled into power, making it harder to avoid their nonsense. I’m not sure if CoCs have contributed to this, or if they’re just a symptom of it, but either way, it’s an undesirable outcome.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's not "every group of people" -- it's organizations that invite the participation of the public, or at least of others they don't know well, as long as they adhere to the mores of the community. More importantly, I take the parent's point to be, not that such an organization "owes" anything to anyone, but simply that anyone formalizing a Code of Conduct and a committee to enforce it would do well to understand why…
> it's organizations that invite the participation of the public,
I feel like this is a very important classification: Inviting someone to an event with Byzantine rules and punishments should be frowned upon.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are legal expectations for how companies can terminate employees, I think it's only fair that professional organizations organizing professional events also be held legally accountable for the impacts they have on individuals. More often than not, these responsibilities emerge after onerous legal discourse, legal judgement, and promise of punishment.
You may think it’s fair, but you don’t have a (in the US at least) constitutional right to be protected from inexperienced application of a code of conduct.
> constitutional right to be protected from inexperienced application of a code of conduct.
I'm not sure what the constitution have to do with it? Inevitably, all it takes is a few court rulings in favor of defendants claiming that CoC enforcements have caused harm.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That's not what happened. The author has chosen to no longer speak because of their experience.
The article supports CoC's and indeed argues against your point in the OP.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
While I agree that a CoC should be no surprise to anyone with common sense, it still makes sense to me to have them: First, there are people without common sense. Sooner or later someone will not adhere to the unwritten rules and ask "Who's going to stop me?". Even if you can eject/ban them, it will be quite a mess, as you now seem to enforce completely intransparent and artificial rules. People will (rightly) ask yo…
> People will (rightly) ask you to state the rules before you enforce them.
Will they? Lots of communities do just fine without spelling them out. If you go over the line, you get a warning by a moderator etc, or, if you've gone way past the line, you get kicked out. You don't need to know where exactly that line is drawn, because reasonable people don't come close to crossing it. And unreasonable people don't care about lines and rules.
If you do spell it out, you invite litigation of rules and endless "but you didn't punish that" and in the end you'll have to say "yeah well, I didn't find that offensive", so it's back to "there's a line, but there's also some rules that are meaningless, because in the end the line I draw on the spot is what matters".
Since those kinds of rules will always be vague, and will never be applied evenly, I doubt they are helpful. Maybe there's a small subset of people that would behave perfectly reasonable only if there's a guide book of rules that they can abide by, but I don't think that group is large enough to offset the problems CoCs bring.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#547Earlier 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.
Good codes of conduct can work to set expectations in certain social settings. While it's not illegal to smell bad, a conference may want you to shower before returning to the conference. A clearly stated code of conduct can enforce the professional standards of that conference in order to make all attendees of that conference feel comfortable. The problem here isn't the existence of the code of conduct, it's the combination of the lack of clarity and the hypocritical lack of following its own standards set from the conference organizers.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions. This is what intelligent people do. They recognize patterns and extrapolate. At this point the vast majority of people have experienced variations of what this guy has gone through. In my own experience I have seen the exact same pattern of behavior in a slack community set up for my town. > This is one of those posts wh…
> This is what intelligent people do. They recognize patterns and extrapolate. Any level of intelligence does this. How well one extrapolates varies, and extrapolation is always eventually wrong.
If we were to let that be a showstopper we would only have scientific hypothesis in place of scientific theories.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#549CoCs were doomed to this from the beginning. Any set of strict/influential laws should be supported by a proper set of institutions like courts, lawyers, arbitration, judging practice. When you have rules and just a mob, you get nothing but a mob rule of power-hungry people. Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurator…
> Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurators is beyond me.
Indeed. It seems like the winning move is not to play, but I guess that applies to all cyber-bullying. Avoid the offending environment (in that case, JupyterCon) and contribute to a place where discourse is appreciated.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#550CoCs were doomed to this from the beginning. Any set of strict/influential laws should be supported by a proper set of institutions like courts, lawyers, arbitration, judging practice. When you have rules and just a mob, you get nothing but a mob rule of power-hungry people. Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurator…
>Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurators is beyond me.
Have you tried doing that? How do you like being hounded out of your job, and probably your profession, by a braying mob?
Edit: I also find it bitterly ironic that the Progressive Bay Area-centric Hacker News is now saying how bad all of this is, after being the complicit champions of it.