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I Violated a Code of Conduct

fast.ai

561–570 of 971 posts

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#561
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a take. It's an objective description of what a CoC is and how it is designed to be used. There is no way around it. At all. I'm surprised you feel the need to turn a blind eye to this fact. Let's put it differently: without it's oppressive and persecutory function, what's the point of a CoC? To make it even simpler to you, what do you expect if someone in a community is deemed in direct violation of a CoC?

Like any other system of laws, a code of conduct necessarily restricts the boundaries of what one individual is allowed to do in order to ensure there is a safe space for others. When used correctly, instead of inhibiting the free exchange of ideas, a CoC helps keep participants in an open and receptive mindset instead of a closed and defensive one. Acknowledging that people come from different backgrounds or belief…

You inadvertently proved a point here on misuse of code of conducts.

Declaring that “X is stupid and anyone who believes it is an idiot” without any discriminatory intent is definitely in bad taste, but should _absolutely not_ be grounds for a CoC violation or any kind of punishment, other than "your talks are obnoxious and we're not going to be inviting you or accepting your papers anymore".

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#562
post #368

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…

> Like, it sounds like you very much do not want "those people" in your community.

I absolutely do not want "those people" in any community I might be part of. They are the ones that forced RMS and Linus out of their roles. And RMS and Linus can be eccentric and unpleasant, but they have made my life much more easier through their contributions in a real and concrete way.

"Those people" are worse than the people they prey on. They are dementors, ghouls that suck life, intelligence and innovation out of every space in which they crawl.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#564
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like criticism. I was bullied a lot as a kid. I don't like the idea of conflating "bullying" and "criticism". They're very different things. Even harsh criticism isn't really the same thing as bullying in my mind (Although it can be a part of bullying).

Surely, it isn't a leap to imagine that someone who was bullied a lot as a child would have a difficult time constructively receiving criticism? I believe most people are not great at constructively giving it, so it doesn't seem like that should be a stretch at all.

If you can't handle criticism don't give a talk.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#565
post #220
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…

> A community member said something, some people didn't approved based on their personal tastes, and thus they proceeded to leverage their CoC to persecute and punish that individual to keep the community in line.

Not sure if it's too soon to joke about this, but I find it funny that "I like Jupyter notebooks" was such a controversial opinion at JupyterCon.

(Yeah I know it was actually the mask advocacy and not the talk itself.)

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#566
CoC proponents are removing the ability to have a decent discourse without walking on egg shells. Adults should be able to take criticism and also be given an opportunity to respond to those criticism even openly.

This is especially true if the criticism is of an idea or an opinion and not of a person.

Pretending as though everyone is so fragile and delicate is going to make it worse for everyone.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#567
We are in a time of moral upheaval, when the old mores are no longer acceptable, but as a society, we haven't yet worked out new ones. The search is inevitably clumsy at times, and mistakes will get made.

That said -- outlawing mere expressions of disagreement would be a very serious mistake. Nor is it workable to require that we never make anyone uncomfortable. That would go too far towards shutting down the open expression of ideas.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#568

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.

It's a funny take. Have you tried oregano|paprika|basil|salt|pepper flavored tea? You'll end up not seasoning your food at all :)

Bay leaves work their magic in stews, especially beans. Not much else. (I absolute hate licorice btw).

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#569
I'm reading a lot of comments here saying that CoCs are categorically bad. Which absolutely isn't what Jeremy is saying in this post, in fact he says just the opposite.

CoCs help prevent and deal with incidents of racism, sexism, homophobia, threats of violence, etc. Those aren't things I, and presumably you, don't want at conferences.

This was an example of CoC being poorly implemented in several ways; that does not mean that CoCs are inherently bad, anymore than corruption in some country's election should be taken to mean that democracy is bad.

There will never be a perfect CoC or CoC process, but there are definitely better and worse ones, and better and worse usages. Personally I'd rather go, or have colleagues go, to conferences which have one; if this conference didn't have a CoC then the critiques Jeremy offered couldn't have been as specific and pointed.

I've seen events and organizations ruled entirely by the organizer's arbitrary fiat and trust me, some of those have been horrible, much worse than they might have been had they had an organized standardized Code of Conduct.

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