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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#711

Post by luckylion »

fdw wrote: post #589
luckylion wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 audien…

> If I'm vulnerable, why should I gamble that your views are similar to mine?

Don't you do that with a CoC as well? Short of writing a long list of things that may and may not be said, you can only give a vague "please be kind to each other", but the concrete judgement what is and isn't kind depends on whether your views align with those in power.

My experience is that vague rules are both a recipe for corruption (where the enforcer's friends are exempt from the rules and the argument is "that wasn't rude, the person deserved to be called a shithead") and the troll's playground, because toxic people that want to cause trouble are great at figuring out the pain points that get to their targets but don't cross any lines.

I believe that enforcement is important, not rules. You can always have a more specific policy for the moderators to guide them and to develop the team's response, but that shouldn't be part of the rules.

It's true that it's not 100% fair that you might get kicked out for breaking a rule you didn't know existed, but to me that's collateral damage I'm more than happy to accept (and I've been on the receiving end of a "you crossed a line" talk).

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#712

Post by jeltz »

gwbas1c wrote: post #708
tomp wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is such an American PoV. Plenty of places in the world have or have had political persecution. It is a very real issue in large parts of the world.

In general CoCs enforce a very American world view, one where I as a non-American do not feel welcome.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#713

Post by everdrive »

pseudalopex wrote: post #685
everdrive wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must admit this is very confusing. Which of those two groups are the good guys? Who does speak for them?

That's like asking who speaks for feminism, Occupy, or the gilets jaunes. They're decentralized.

That's a fine point, but I was just told someone DIDN'T speak for them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#714

Post by luckylion »

pseudalopex wrote: post #619
luckylion wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think I've ever seen a community with more than 1 moderator and 0 written rules. At least not for very long. I used to help moderate a community. Spelling things out only helped us. Fewer incidents. More consistent moderation. Less litigation.

That's true, but it's either vague ("don't be an ass") or it's primarily a thing to have to get the moderators on the same page, not something the community needs, isn't it?

In my opinion, if the rules include value judgements, they're superfluous as rules, because accuser, accused and judge can easily come to vastly different results. If you try to get beyond that and formalize it, you end up with books, and by that time you've transformed your community into a rule-book-writing community.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#715

Post by mantap »

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #411
tptacek wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don't want to associate with you or me for reasons we don't find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relat…

I think the problem arises when people want to have it both ways. If you want to say "we don't like you, please leave", you're probably [1] within your rights to do so, but then you don't also get to claim to have a fair and impartial process. [1] This gets nastier when "you" is something like a corporation, a university, or the well-funded host committee of a generally public event. Legally and ethically, your latit…

Yes the problem is giving the impression of a formal process and all that entails (i.e. fairness). If you want an informal process then the code of conduct should be informal: "Be nice, don't be a jerk".

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#716

Post by gwd »

Footkerchief wrote: post #604
gwd wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurators is beyond me. Because some people actually do act like jerks, and we want to be able to tell those people to either stop acting like jerks or go away. > CoCs were doomed to this from the beginning. Rather, Codes of Conduct are more difficult than you think. The article it…

> Rather, Codes of Conduct are more difficult than you think. That's a bug when trying to apply a coherent standard, but it's a feature when using the document as cover for arbitrary mob action.

> That's a bug when trying to apply a coherent standard, but it's a feature when using the document as cover for arbitrary mob action.

I hate to break it to you, but bad actors will use any available tool they can to gain power and do harm. If there's no Code of Conduct, some bad actor will take advantage of the ambiguity to do things they know make other people uncomfortable, just because they can. If there's an overly broad Code of Conduct, or one which doesn't protect the rights of the "accused" (either in how it's written or how it's enforced), then other bad actors will take advantage of it to exert power.

That's why laws have to be written "defensively", like code exposed to the open internet. You have to try to anticipate exploits by bad actors ahead of time; and fix the ones you didn't spot as they're exploited.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#717

Post by fennecfoxen »

pseudalopex wrote: post #671
fennecfoxen wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important to thing to realize about cancel culture, CoC enforcement, and various efforts like this, is that it's very occasionally about making the world a better place, and very often about people who want power doing everything they can to seize power. Even the "Black Lives Matter" movement is distracted from the goal of making black lives matter with a laundry list of progressive demands like dismantling the "…

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation doesn't speak for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Supposing your thesis to be true, the fact that you have to make that distinction only supports the claim I made. The foundation’s efforts are one key thing that distracts the movement from what I would assume to be the foundational goal of preserving black lives (specifically by seeing that they are no longer exposed to the direct, acute threats that tend to occur when interacting with police.)

It seems then we are not in disagreement over substantive matters, but over minor questions such as phrasing.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#719

Post by tjpnz »

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…

One of the things I find useful is when the project includes a list of active contributors along with their general responsibilities. If the project is relatively small yet includes multiple "full time" moderators I know that it's not a project worth my time. At the extreme end I've come across projects where moderators outnumber active developers.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#720

Post by hobs »

tptacek wrote: post #344
offbyone wrote: post #335

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.

Wrong twice in one day, amazing. Many spices and sauces are not good if you do this, I submit Fish Sauce for your consideration.
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