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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#761

Post by goatinaboat »

luord wrote: post #485

It's interesting that he is so vehemently in favor of "cancel culture" given two things: The reason many people oppose it is because it often leads to completely innocent people being harassed and/or ostracized (or worse). So, in that way, his situation makes a very fitting example of many of the things wrong with cancel culture and highlights a few of the reasons why detractors oppose this kind of attack. Secondly,…

It's interesting that he is so vehemently in favor of "cancel culture"

A classic example of Stockholm Syndrome.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#762

Post by wrsh07 »

julianmarq wrote: post #495
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…

> [CoC are] a way to assure newcomers that your project wasn't going to allow racist trolling on the mailing list. The implication being that every project without an established code of conduct is awash with racism? Exhausting vigilance about conspiracies indeed .

The implication being that the coc gives clear guidance on what to do if it does happen

Fun straw man though

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#763

Post by clint »

clusterfish wrote: post #292
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…

They absolutely do have power over you, that's exactly the problem. People who get "canceled" don't just get a nastygram that they can throw in the trash. They are typically banned from speaking, fired / put on probation / "contract not renewed", their reputation is both privately and publicly tarnished such that #1 google result for your name will be that you were banned for CoC violation, damaging your career prosp…

The only people who get "canceled" are people who allow it to happen to them.

Every single person who has claimed to have been "canceled" not only brought the entire situation upon themselves, but then immediately turned around and cry foul and try to become the victim in the situation.

Its pretty entertaining and bewildering to see these people –who almost universally bemoan "victim culture"–immediately fallback to those same "tropes" when they do something socially unacceptable.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#764

Post by afandian »

HideousKojima wrote: post #731
afandian wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the strongest argument against zero-tolerance policies (I don't think it applies in this case, but there are plenty). They are fundamentally inhumane. (You find zero tolerance in schools too. It's heartbreaking to see children doing innocuous things and responsible adults completely vacating any kind of responsibility or accountability.) If you get a group of people together, everyone's going to have to put i…

While zero tolerance policies at schools are awful, at least there they serve an arguably useful purpose: avoiding litigation against the school. In a CoC it's just an easy way for the commissars and nomenklatura that wrote/enforce the CoC to harm their enemies

In principle, I believe codes of conduct are self-evidently a good thing, and generally introduced with good intent. It's the zero-tolerance that's harmful.

In the case of both the imaginary school and the imaginary code-of-conduct committee, the task is to square the unsquarable circle of human diversity. That takes nuance, emotional intelligence and flexibility. You can never get that 100% right, and the mistake is thinking you can. That's where flexibility is important. Zero-tolerance is proudly anti-flexibility.

Either you put in the effort to construct a humane environment or you decide that it's OK to throw the out-group under a bus (easier when you can dehumanize them). The latter takes a lot less work.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#765

Post by ghaff »

mcv wrote: post #750
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…

> "The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced." The whole point of CoCs is to avoid this arbitrary enforcement. The problem in this particular case seems to be that they ignored their own CoC and picked on someone who didn't violate their CoC, while the committee did violate the CoC. That situation is indistinguishable from not having a CoC at all. If you've got a CoC, it…

You'll never be able to completely encode everything. Someone takes offense at criticism or a joke that the vast majority would think was completely inoffensive or someone who cursed once, etc. At that point, you have two choices. Tell them "Welp, no." or at least mildly tap the speaker etc. on the wrist. (Or, I suppose, just lie and tell the person you'll take care of it and then don't.)

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#766

Post by wrsh07 »

creato wrote: post #732
wrsh07 wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This might sound bad especially to you or the someone you know, but if the legal system (criminal or civil) was not able to act (presumably due to lack of evidence), then I don't think events or other organizations should act either.

I actually disagree

The whole point is that the legal system is very slow, very hard to report to, and in some cases actively discourages assault / rape claims. CoCs can do better because they don't require as involved of a process

I'm not too worried about someone being banned from an event on hearsay, but I am very concerned about serial harassers

The former, while unfortunate, is not career ending. It just means they can't go back to that event. The latter scars many people and will likely cause some of them to leave tech. Also none of them will ever come back to that event.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#767

Post by ncallaway »

barumi wrote: post #244
tptacek wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is a take. It feels like it must be exhausting to have that take, and I certainly don't share it, but I acknowledge that it is one.

It is not a take. It's an objective description of what a CoC is and how it is designed to be used. There is no way around it. At all. I'm surprised you feel the need to turn a blind eye to this fact. Let's put it differently: without it's oppressive and persecutory function, what's the point of a CoC? To make it even simpler to you, what do you expect if someone in a community is deemed in direct violation of a CoC?

It’s not a objective description. It’s a subjective one. You’re describing the intent of other people, which is really your interpretation of their intent.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#768

Post by jawarner »

tomp wrote: post #738
jawarner wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

> If you believe that genetics cause women to perform worse in technical roles, that will be reflected in your social behavior. Can you expand on this, explain the connection? In particular, why the former (belief) would influence the latter (behavior)? I firmly believe, based on overwhelming evidence, that genetics makes most people perform terribly in technical roles. Fortunately, there are a few bright, above-aver…

> Can you expand on this, explain the connection? In particular, why the former (belief) would influence the latter (behavior)?

It's not universally the case, to be sure. If you voice your belief that women are intellectually inferior, you will likely make them feel excluded. In general, there is a relationship between a person's beliefs and behaviors which I regard as self-evident.

> Edit: answer to your second question: I try to be inclusive, I don't believe in drawing lines, at least not when it comes to belief (only behavior).

People tend to act in accordance with their beliefs. I don't think I track your perspective. Do you really believe that, say, a person with white supremecist beliefs, again, as an extreme example, will generally act welcoming toward minorities? You seem to believe, well, as long as they don't explicitly disrespect someone, it's fine. But social behavior is a lot more subtle. People can tell if you hate them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#769

Post by agarden »

ghaff wrote: post #613
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and finding out your acquaintance votes other party will get him friendly jab, not excommunication I've long argued that the US should have lots of parties, and adopt pluralistic voting, but then I stopped when it seemed to me that countries that already have this system don't have demonstrably better political outcomes. But your comment pushes me back to the other side of the argument now. It occurs to me that if…

The main problem that arises with large multi-party systems is that the ruling party needs to form a coalition to govern and that may require cozying up to some extreme small party and giving them influence outsize of their numbers.

It seems to me that the two-party system in the United States is, practically speaking, the same thing. Within each major party there are smaller caucuses, such as the Freedom Caucus, which are more extreme than the party as a whole and exercise outsized influence because the larger party needs them to maintain its big tent. "Big tent" == coalition.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#770

Post by sk2020 »

bccdee wrote: post #695
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…

"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…

Pretend-legal agreements that are overly broad, capriciously enforced and written by out-of-touch culture “warriors” are a bad joke that should be regarded with contempt. Let the attorneys do their job, and devs, or the pop-dev-blogger entourage, should do theirs.
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