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

701–710 of 971 posts

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#701

Post by baobabKoodaa »

nl wrote: post #607
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…

> (Yeah I know it was actually the mask advocacy and not the talk itself.) Is that what actually caused the complaints?

> Is that what actually caused the complaints?

Given that the complainers were anonymous (thanks to the CoC process), we'll never know. But it seems like a reasonable guess.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#702

Post by dragonwriter »

waterhouse wrote: post #491
dragonwriter wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first rule of social dancing is that you want to welcome new dancers. The second rule (which, really, overlaps a lot with the first rule) of social dancing is that you don’t, ever, offer unsolicited coaching in the context of social dance. And part of that is because almost no one is in the mental place in that context to take it well.

I don't have much experience, but two different dancing groups I attended started each night with an hour-long "lesson" with a teacher, after which the rest of the night was free dancing (well, one group charged an admission fee, but I mean no one was giving directions). Looking at a couple of other groups' websites, it seems like this is common. I suppose you could use "whether someone attended the 'lesson' period"…

I do have a fair amount of experience (several years of social dancing, ballroom performance, competitive ballroom formation team, and ballroom teacher training), and, sure, the “lesson before social dance” pattern is common, but you'd be much better to take “did they specifically ask me for feedback or coaching” as a sign of whether they will take coaching well. (Unless you are identified as an instructor for the lesson — in which case they've asked by attending — the same rule applies in the lesson, too.)

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#703

Post by jimbokun »

tptacek wrote: post #102
jimbokun wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, communities asking their members to be vulnerable, in practice often results in criticizing individuals or entire groups who are not represented in the community, with no attempt to understand their viewpoints.

Say more? I gave an example of what I meant: Show HN posts. Is that a phenomenon you perceive on Show HN posts? I don't think it makes sense to ban criticism everywhere, or even most places.

No, Hacker News encourages disagreement and well reasoned criticism.

I mean to say, communities that seek to institute blanket no-criticism policies, in practice tend to end up criticizing those outside of the community and allow any beliefs or statements of people inside the community to go unchallenged and unexamined.

In other words, it just leads to more tribalism and in-group vs. out-group bias.

I don't have any hard data to back this up, just my subjective perception (criticize away!).

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#704

Post by pmjones »

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…

> I'm actually shocked that Jeremy supported and still supports codes of conduct. He seems like a smart guy and they're obviously a bad idea.

He's exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome. Being smart, in this case, just makes him very good at rationalizing it to himself.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#705

Post by baobabKoodaa »

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.

> why it's so controversial?

I recommend watching Stephen Colbert's or Trevor Noah's talk show skits to gain an idea of why a pro-mask position is controversial in the states.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#706

Post by baobabKoodaa »

luckylion wrote: post #692
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You have a point. I might be wrong about this.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#707

Post by joijoiwejrr »

kazagistar wrote: post #609
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…

You can't go to the police for someone making racist or sensitive insults. The problem isn't the CoC concept, because there exists a domain of actions that strictly speaking are legal but warrent expulsion from a professional community. The problem here is gross overreach and power without democratic control.

> You can't go to the police for someone making racist or sensitive insults.

You can in the UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23128956

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#708

Post by gwbas1c »

tomp wrote: post #435
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.

Most CoCs state that discrimination based on religion is not acceptable, but don't mention political belief. Both are opinions, and I honestly don't see why one would be bigotry, but not the other. Hence the only thing I conclude is that CoCs are actually about politics, but framed in a very nice way, pretending to be based on empathy and inclusion, making them very hard to object to.

There's a fine line.

In the US, we've usually had reasonable parties in power, so it really didn't matter what your politics were.

Now... Not so much; and it goes both ways, too. There are loonies on both sides of the aisle.

I've always seen CoCs as needed for situations where a conference has a transgender person and a "poorly socialized conservative." Or a Christian proudly wearing a cross and a "poorly socialized liberal." Situations are even simpler; it could be a conference with a female speaker and a man who still believes in strict gender roles.

Unfortunately, the above situations come down to "political belief."

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#709

Post by 0xdky »

Does fixing a bug introduced by a different author and pointing out the mistake as part of commit message considered a CoC violation?

I find this absurd and just a way to get at someone. Anything you say can be bent and twisted by a group of lawyers and the CoC committee here seems to be filled with such folks.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#710

Post by ghaff »

robbyoconnor wrote: post #293
btilly wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

This is almost certainly not the sort of thing that a different CoC would have made any different absent an absurd IMO rule such as "Do not criticize individuals, projects, companies, etc."

Rather, this is a case of where do you draw the line when something/anything makes someone uncomfortable enough to complain. Do you apply a reasonable person standard and perhaps tell that person "We hear you but we can't agree and we're not going to do anything about it. Sorry."? Or do you say "We understand that we can't tell you how to feel so we accept your complaint and will take action."(And then do so.)?

In practice, for many situations, especially community events tend towards the latter.

Post reply on HN