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I Violated a Code of Conduct
581–590 of 971 posts
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#582Too much he said, he think, he .... Doing this makes the talk a personal affair, which I don't think talks should be. I think that was where most of the kindness was interpreted.
That said Joel made strong and judgemental opinions on social media , so he should expect nothing less than strong and emotional responses.
In all being a nerd enough to be passionate about some technology is cool, but taking things personally probably calls for a break. It's just never that serious.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, a CoC and a committee to enforce it are now table stakes for an open source project. Part of the reason, I believe, is because companies refuse to commit resources to open source without some assurance that the project will employ best practices to prevent discrimination, harassment, and a hostile work environment, lest the company find itself liable for such. (There's also the "good corporate citizen"…
Agree that these are table stakes, and I speak as someone whose day job is managing a team that works on a fairly large open source project which is bound by the Linux Foundation CoC. And yes you are right, it is all about the money at the end of the day. But here's the thing; if one of my devs made a gaffe at a conference, they'd have the full weight of myself and the company defending them, they definitely would no…
Personally I'm skeptical about them. People who behave badly will behave badly. People who don't generally won't. The drumbeat of CoCs may make some difference at the margins but I'm skeptical. In any case, as you suggest, a refusal to have a CoC is itself a political statement that sends the message that you don't believe in good behavior and is pretty much a non-starter for that reason.
In general, they're well meant. And in my experience issues arise not so much from the conference organizers but some attendee taking offence over something in a way that most would consider hypersensitive. And the organizers feeling they have to take their side even if they personally disagree.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#584Earlier 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?
Hm, and me I thought most of them were just a way to assure newcomers that your project wasn't going to allow racist trolling on the mailing list. My take is that the problem with this code of conduct was that it was dumb. I want to recommend to you the degree to which it is easy and relaxing to just acknowledge that and move on, maybe with a note or two about what not to do in any code of conduct you write. It seems…
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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
"After they told me of the reports and their finding that I had violated the code of conduct, they asked if I had anything to say." There really is only ever one thing to say in a situation like this, and it is "Yes, I refuse to participate any further in this farce; good day!" and then hang up. Personally I would not have been so polite :) CoC committees are breeding grounds for idiots who think you can legislate fo…
It's worse than that, these are deeply authoritarian and self-righteous mediocrities, only tangentially invested in a field where they would be rightfully irrelevant otherwise. What other kind of person would want to be part of such a committee? So in effect we created a lure for psychos and then gave them unchecked power to legislate over everybody else. What could go wrong.
Sounds like an HOA.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a CoC working exactly as it's supposed to work. By design. > There is absolutely no other use for a CoC. This is precisely what they were created for. > There is absolutely no other use for a CoC. This is precisely what they were created for. This is no accident or mistake. I run groups that use a CoC and I assure you that they aren't supposed to work like this, weren't created for this and it is a mistake…
Frankly, and you should be careful of not becoming too cynical about it, I think there are people that want to build their ego with fighting sexism and racism through penalizing others. And if there isn't anything obvious to be found, smaller and smaller infractions are used as an excuse to exclude other people. They want to play cop on the internet.
> And if there isn't anything obvious to be found, smaller and smaller infractions are used as an excuse to exclude other people. They want to play cop on the internet.
This sounds terrible and I guess I'll have to modify our CoC to deal with it when it occurs.
OTOH, we've had frequent cases of sexual harassment (primarily men hitting on women at events) and a CoC has been extremely useful in dealing with those situations.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#587It must be an amazing feeling of power for the CoC committee to know they can judge and cancel someone without any worry of retaliation. The worst that will happen to these people is a debate on CoCs. They don't even have to worry about their careers or future opportunities.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#588CoCs 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…
"After they told me of the reports and their finding that I had violated the code of conduct, they asked if I had anything to say." There really is only ever one thing to say in a situation like this, and it is "Yes, I refuse to participate any further in this farce; good day!" and then hang up. Personally I would not have been so polite :) CoC committees are breeding grounds for idiots who think you can legislate fo…
> "After they told me of the reports and their finding that I had violated the code of conduct, they asked if I had anything to say."
That's essentially a Kafka trap [1].
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
> And unreasonable people don't care about lines and rules.
I agree with this statement. Having or not having a CoC will not change their behavior, nor should it change your response. But the response to your response can differ: If you've been transparent from the start about your rules, there's less room to complain about you enforcing your rules. If you had no CoC beforehand, there will be some parts of the audience asking if that was really fair. And this behavior doesn't even have to be malicious, just that their line is somewhere else, and so they don't understand your arbitrary enforcement. With clear and transparent rules, they may not agree, but it's clear where the line is. We both think (at least, that's what I gather from your comment) that some rule is necessary, but I'm for being open about it and you want to keep them vague. I think it's easier for everybody to be transparent here, because you can decide beforehand if you agree to these rules. If they're too vague, I'm just hoping that, if push comes to shove, we see the world similarly.
And, again, having a CoC also signals that there is a line. Without it, who's to know that there will be behavior that you don't accept and what it looks like. Maybe you're fine with sexist comments, but not with racism. If I'm vulnerable, why should I gamble that your views are similar to mine? I'd rather not visit your conference if you can't make the rules clear.
Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct
#590Well, so much for "Bruh, just don't be a sexist asshole and you'll be find. Why can't you just be a decent human being? How hard can it be?"