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I Violated a Code of Conduct

fast.ai

721–730 of 971 posts

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#721
post #695

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…

"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 construc…

> If someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.

I think they're right on point with this. Law is incredibly complex and you're likely to end up with a very shitty sub-implementation of the law when building a code of conduct, be it in itself or the application & litigation procedure.

"Be nice to each other & follow the local official regulations" should probably be a valid c&c.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most modern legal systems give people the right to confront their accusers for good reason: Giving people the power to accuse others without any possibility of consequences will ultimately be abused. I understand the desire to protect specifically vulnerable accusers in unique situations, but we should be catering to those situations on a case-by-case basis. In this case, isolating the accusers from the accused didn’…

We don't know anything about the accusers, do we? I don't think it's fair to assume they had malicious intentions. Specifically, I don't think we can assume that the people who were uncomfortable with the talk were like "this speaker should be banned from the conference". Maybe the initial message was closer to "hey, this seems a bit harsh and distracts from the actual content, maybe the speaker wouldn't mind toning…

> We don't know anything about the accusers, do we?

That’s the problem. The system is broken because it’s designed to give the accusers every benefit of the doubt, while giving the accused no recourse.

The accused is at the mercy of anonymous complaints. The accusers have zero accountability or downsides.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We seem to disagree whether a significant number of people in the BLM movement pay any attention to the BLM Global Network Foundation.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#724
post #695

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…

"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 construc…

> Why NOT formalize rules to some extent?

Besides the reams of examples of CoC's being abused and arbitrarily enforced like the one in the attached article you mean? I've never even heard of a CoC being applied in any way except a petty, bureaucratic way.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#725
post #695

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…

"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 construc…

>Why NOT formalize rules to some extent?

Because, at least in the case of CoCs in open source, the sorts of people most vocally pushing to implement and enforce them are almost invariably of the sort most likely to use them as political weapons and enforce them lopsidedly.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#726

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…

Fwiw, I know someone who wasn't able to get a police report for assault but was able to ban someone from an event.

If you're interested in making spaces more welcoming and existing legal structures aren't doing the job, codes of conduct are extremely valuable.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#727
post #695

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…

"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 construc…

Formalizing rules is fine. But then be clear about the expectations. Either those rules exist to create a fair, safe, productive space for everyone - at which point, as 'wruza[0] and 'defen[1] wrote, you should go all in and set up institutional support that ensures the rules are fairly applied and there's appeals process to correct mistakes - or, they exist only to codify the capriciousness of the rule setter, at which point it should be said explicitly. Either is fine, but it's important they never get confused.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24928833

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24927974

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#728
post #695

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…

"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 construc…

> Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse.

In every arena I've operated this is always the case. Military, Big Company and on the streets. Not saying it's right, but it's extremely common (in my experience)

> Rules shouldn't be implicit in professional environments.

Totally agree. But again, everywhere I've been there are at least 2 sets of rules.

Maybe I am jaded by conforming to the 'It is what it is' mentality. In practice though, that has been my experience.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#729
post #435

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.

CoCs are about politics to the extent that politics affects one's ability to be empathetic. If you believe that genetics cause women to perform worse in technical roles, that will be reflected in your social behavior.

To use an extreme example for the sake of discussion, would you similarly feel that excluding a skinhead with Swastika face tattoos from a scientific conference constitutes an unacceptable example of political oppression? If not, is it because they cause minoritized people to feel unsafe and unwelcome? Where do you believe the line should be drawn?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there are negative sub conscious biases around race? Do you think racism has the same consequences for all races, for example, someone who is a member of a minority group vs someone who is not for a particular region?

Second question: No. I think I know where the original idea came from. Racism against the majority group is relatively benign compared to that against a minority. It is unlikely that racism can phase them to a relevant degree. But that stops to be the case when you have companies and media personalities starting to discriminate on the basis of skin color. Furthermore I think the most racist people are those that have…

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