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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#691

Post by throwaway0a5e »

blub wrote: post #416
ALittleLight wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebuilt? Why? Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference. The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's…

They're useless for their stated purpose, but they're quite useful for their real purpose: as a punishment tool used by social justice sadists which are parasitizing projects conferences and organizations.

Doesn't even have to be social justice sadists. They're ripe for arbitrary enforcement and likewise can be used by people with power to direct the enforcement people against anyone they don't like. Depending how cynical you want to be that's arguably the point of them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#692

Post by luckylion »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #618
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #44

There are two categories of rules: ones that are designed to be followed, and ones that are designed to bludgeon people with. Much like how a lot of knife law enforcement is mostly about having a convenient excuse for the police to harass minorities for being at the wrong place and the wrong time, a lot of Code of Conducts seem to me to be mostly about having a convenient excuse to punish and exclude people for havin…

> I'm just glad that this example of the phenomenon was over technical disagreement rather than politics, that makes it much more illustrative. And how exactly are you drawing that conclusion? You think that people at JupyterCon were genuinely outraged over a presenter expressing his opinion that he likes Jupyter notebooks? I would imagine that liking Jupyter would be an acceptable opinion at a Jupyter convention. Je…

> I think the most reasonable explanation for this attack is that people who disagreed with Jeremy's political opinions (mask use good) found a smokescreen to attack him with (liking notebooks, not being kind).

Is mask-use unpopular with the SJW crowd though? Because CoCs in general and "that was not kind" + the process they chose sounds very much like the SJW crowd, and I'm not aware that they are anti-mask.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#693

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Playing into the hands of your bullies isn't the solution, just walk away.

A conference organizer needs you more than you need them, with you they have a conference, without you they have an empty hall with some bad food and they don't even have the foresight to realize that themselves seen as they found your suffering funny.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#694

Post by tomohawk »

ALittleLight wrote: post #325
newscracker wrote: post #184

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to. I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives th…

Rebuilt? Why? Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference. The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's…

As far as I can tell, CoCs exist merely to provide a pretext for actions that a committee would take anyway. "See, we're justified in doing this because we have a CoC! We're not arbitrary at all!"

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#695

Post by bccdee »

ALittleLight wrote: post #325
newscracker wrote: post #184

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to. I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives th…

Rebuilt? Why? Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference. The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's…

"Why should rules exist? We should just operate on intuitive feelings of what is or isn't acceptable all the time."

Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse. In fact, you can easily read this post as a pro-COC argument.

After all, the author is able to make a really strong case that he didn't really infringe on any part of the COC, and that the COC was poorly constructed to begin with. With no COC, he'd have to just be saying "I think Numfocus exercised bad judgement," which is a much harder argument to make since it's so subjective.

We're professionals. Rules shouldn't be implicit in professional environments. Explicit rules are easier to use, and they make it easier to hold the authorities accountable for misusing them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#696

Post by goatinaboat »

jlebar wrote: post #368
chmod775 wrote: post #95

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 do not want people who make no material contribution but merely sow strife and discord. Somehow we have allowed ourselves to be colonised by them and cowed into submission.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#697

Post by gwbas1c »

barumi wrote: post #249
gwbas1c wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, CoCs are meant to clearly state that bigotry is unacceptable. If you don't understand why it's necessary at times to clearly state what bigotry is, and why it's unacceptable, than you need to learn a bit more about diversity topics. They (CoC)s shouldn't be used to play power games. It's totally appropriate to call out situations where a CoC is used incorrectly.

> No, CoCs are meant to clearly state that bigotry is unacceptable. Oh really? This discussion is about someone that was persecuted and punished for violating a CoC. Do you see any bigotry involved in this story?

> They (CoC)s shouldn't be used to play power games. It's totally appropriate to call out situations where a CoC is used incorrectly.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#698

Post by mcny »

Aeolun wrote: post #646
doubleunplussed wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may not support them, but in the current culture you have to pretend to otherwise people might think you're a sexist or a racist. I don't support them, but I pretend to.

Huh, TIL I’m a sexist and/or racist.

> Huh, TIL I’m a sexist and/or racist.

I think the meta is we have to understand we are all *-ist at some level. This is the world we were born and raised in and it is incredibly silly for me to suggest that I am somehow above my nurture.

Of course, I will deny everything if you find my real name and attach it to this post because we can't really say this out loud but just between us I think the key is to understand that we all have inherent biases and actively try to fight ones that we consider not helpful.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#699

Post by jeltz »

skohan wrote: post #406
tptacek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> racist trolling on the mailing list Is this a widespread problem in software-related communities? I'm genuinely asking, because if it is maybe I am just not aware of it, but for example in the open-source projects I have been involved with the conversations tend to be extremely focused on the subject matter, and I'm not even aware of the race or gender of the people I'm conversing with.

I don't think so. I have never seen it happen in my 10 years in open source.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#700

Post by strombofulous »

op00to wrote: post #540
jojobas wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is not to bet your life on dozens of conference committees that can cancel you out of your job.

The solution is to get the opinion of the community and colleagues (if you’re employed) prior to giving a talk so you don’t act in a way that could be seen poorly.

This article is an example of the many situations where that would not have helped
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