Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Violated a Code of Conduct

fast.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 971 posts

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#661

Post by chopin »

wgerard wrote: post #611
chunkyfunky wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On the one hand, I'd love to be able to (for instance) outsource all CoC engagement and enforcement to a specialized body, that could manage a whole investigation / accuser / defense / jury system for a number of different organizations." You know, that's a pretty good idea. And if there were actual laws backing it, then you already have a "working" system. Now I am starting to wonder, should CoCs even try to transc…

> should CoCs even try to transcend the law Yes? Companies do this all the time with codes of conduct and nobody really thinks twice about it. Nobody would think it's bizarre that (hypothetically, I don't know what their actual rules are) Coca-Cola has a rule barring employees from wearing a "Pepsi > Coke" shirt to client meetings. > where we try to legislate for things that are in many cases subjective? We do this a…

>"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing. Good laws (especially criminal laws) should be normative, i.e. it should be deducible for anyone which behavior is punishable. Laws not adhering to this principle are ripe for selective enforcement and have no place in a rule-of-law society.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#662

Post by MauranKilom »

Nextgrid wrote: post #118
pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the years, HN's userbase has made it clear most are unfamiliar with Wikipedia beyond surface level details. Folks on this site would probably be surprised how often this happens in the sausage factory there, too. The big theme in all the most exasperating cases, whether to do with HOAs, CoC enforcement, or even the police seems to involve: 1. wide difference between rules as written and agreed to versus how they…

At least in the cases you mention (HOA or police) there is value in the service they provide and it only becomes a problem when they get overrun by people on a power trip. On the other hand, the whole CoC thing feels like it was created by people on a power trip, and/or as a virtue signalling instrument to appear "inclusive", and/or a convenient character assassination tool that can be selectively enforced. Keep in m…

To some degree, you are correct. But I believe you underestimate the amount of abuse and harassment that certain groups of people face in reality.

> We've been working fine like that, both online and in the real world without any CoC

I'm not sure what you consider "fine". Misogyny has been par for the course for a long time. Not to mention verbal degradation of e.g. ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. We have not suddenly removed these formerly accepted behaviors, even though things have gotten better.

It is possible that there really isn't a problem in communities you engage with, and that consequently their CoCs make little positive impact. But do you really know what kinds of inappropriate remarks e.g. women around you face? It is easy to dismiss anyone who had such negative experiences as a professional victim, but surely the world doesn't just consist of "perfectly reasonable and encompassing people that know better than to offend", "harassers that purposely ignore any community guidelines"?

In short: Yes, CoC creation and enforcement will naturally appeal to certain groups of people that have more personal motives than those of the community. The same is true of HOA, police, unions, workers' councils and so on. But please be careful to dismiss their usefulness due to this.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#664

Post by 43241 »

herbstein wrote: post #625
bananaface wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need a Code of Conduct to prevent people acting like jerks? If someone acts like a jerk tell them to stop, and if they don't, take action. IMO you don't need it enshrined in a dodgy pseudo-contract. That's a recipe for more problems than it solves.

To pencil out even further what my sibling comment mentioned; you want to be able to say "you repeatedly did x and this is explicitly against our Code of Conduct that you said you'd read before your first contribution" instead of "you're being a jerk and as such we will be refusing any contributions from you going forward". The second example is completely arbitrary, and is up to the whims of the core team - whomever…

I find dishing out punitive measures on the basis of the nature of one's conduct always a nebulous, case-based business and as such see it not reasonable to make for a crude guideline - a flowchart, if you will - for the line of action to take for what one deems a transgression against the project's behavioral norms. Codes of Conduct always seem to me a way for one, a profit-driven corporation, for example, to posture its morally virtuous conduct, evident from the eagerness to expressly list out all the kinds of infringements against people of oppressed-against backgrounds coming to the mind of the CoC's writer (the use of neological hip labels makes a telltale dog whistle), instead of simply listing out goals of the nature of, say, inclusion, diversity, and general amiability. The presence of these prohibitive, morally prescriptivist qualities of CoCs is what I find to be the source of discord here.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#665

Post by pseudalopex »

ghaff wrote: post #592
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libel maybe; people can and have gotten fired over CoC violation allegations (warranted or not) and the consequent internet witch hunt; a famous case is "Donglegate". There's a dangerous trend where an accusation alone is enough to have people lose their jobs.

That's was really nothing to do with a CoC violation directly though. It had to do with a social media blowup that embarrassed and inconvenienced companies in a way that made it easier for both companies to just fire the individuals involved. (As will tend to happen unless an individual has a lot of power.)

And PyCon quickly added a policy telling attendees not to publicize incidents until staff can investigate.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#666

Post by klmadfejno »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #270
klmadfejno wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic A good, frustrating point. A large proportion of complaints of cancel culture are coupled with implications of frustration that they feel they can't say unpleasant things that they would have gotten away with previously. Or people complaining about direct efforts to change social norms that they don't agree with, claiming that due to a status quo bias, cha…

It's not that simple. You have your usual bucket of nutcases, who get offended by everything, and everything is sexist (airconditioning), racist (milk) or *-phobic. But then you have cases, where a mere accusation of anything even without proof) can destroy peoples lives, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case You also have (somewhat) mainstream media spreading such fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

My point is that its neither simple, nor one sided, nor well defined.

In addition to all of the things you're pointing out, there's also people genuinely trying to change things for the better with good reasoning.

> Now, we have two options... either we become sensitive to everytihing, and destroy normal human relations and comedy (although, we've gone most of the way there, because of so many protected groups and actions, not allowed to be joked about, the only group you can target your jokes at are white men (with movies like 40 days and 40 nights, where a rape of a man is a comedic high point, and many other examples)), or we can just grow up, not get offended by something someone somewhere said or did (especially if it was a joke), and not "cancel" people because of that.

No, it's really fine for us to say that certain things are not acceptable. It's ok to make fun of something. It's generally not ok to joke that, say, a race is intrinsically inferior to another, or that women are sexual objects, or that white dudes are just there to earn money or whatever antagonism floats your boat. It's shouldn't be illegal to make such jokes, but it should be shamed out of the mainstream.

You being triggered by other people being triggered is the height of irony.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#667

Post by thesimon »

gsujsgwuaja wrote: post #608
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Can someone give me the tl;dr of what the author's "mask advocacy" was and why it's so controversial? He only alludes to it in passing in the piece.

Wearing masks for covid prevention it seems like

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#668

Post by Aeolun »

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…

NCoc is a bit too edgy for my liking.

The actual CoC is fine, but the FAQ breaks things down.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#669

Post by MauranKilom »

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…

Your argument as stated also applies to e.g. unions, police, workers' councils or any other place where individuals are elected to "protect" the group. And it is undeniable that these have overall improved the situations of these groups. The argument is flawed in that it does not consider the upsides of instituting them.

This does not mean that CoCs are unequivocally the best solution. But fully ignoring their benefits due to the potential for abuse is not inherently sound.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#670

Post by klmadfejno »

free_rms wrote: post #267
klmadfejno wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from that, "cancel culture" feels quite a vague topic A good, frustrating point. A large proportion of complaints of cancel culture are coupled with implications of frustration that they feel they can't say unpleasant things that they would have gotten away with previously. Or people complaining about direct efforts to change social norms that they don't agree with, claiming that due to a status quo bias, cha…

Who's in charge of "unpleasant things"? Are these things that a vast majority of the anglosphere, including POC, women, etc, wouldn't take offense to? Maybe people are objecting to a tiny % of critical theorists trying to seize control of acceptable language with no mandate.

Society is complicated and messy. Social change is uncomfortable. And yet for all the complaining of any given generation, they'd probably disagree with the ethics of three generations prior.
Post reply on HN