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I Violated a Code of Conduct

fast.ai

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#771
post #736

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…

Some conferences ask you to check a box that you've read and agree to the CoC before your speaking/attendance registration can go through. What do you do in those situations / do you just check those anyway or not attend?

Honestly, I do the same thing as with just about any "I agree to these terms and conditions," etc. boxes. I check it and move on like just about everyone else. I assume there's nothing especially egregious or unusual in there.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That doesn't really chance GP's argument. There are a lot of countries where it's not illegal. Should it be? A lot of people would disagree with banning every kind of insensitive behaviour by law. And yet a conference might not want to host that kind of behaviour in their event, and want to make clear what kind of behaviour they find acceptable or unacceptable. Especially for such temporary events, it's useful to have clear lines and guidelines about what's acceptable and what not, especially in a society where some people don't seem to know or care. But that doesn't mean everything should immediately be legislated by law.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#773
post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The problem here, though, is inconsistent enforcement. Assuming this side of the story is correct, he didn't actually violate the CoC at all, and the committee he spoke to did.

The problem here is not the CoC, it's that the organisation doesn't enforce the CoC, violates it, and punishes people who didn't violate it. They might as well not have a CoC in that case.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, it sounds like you very much do not want "those people" in your community. I absolutely do not want "those people" in any community I might be part of. They are the ones that forced RMS and Linus out of their roles. And RMS and Linus can be eccentric and unpleasant, but they have made my life much more easier through their contributions in a real and concrete way. "Those people" are worse than the people they…

Dehumanization and essentialism are dangerous ideas to be considered carefully. Have you considered that those people might be most people if in the right circumstances?

No. There is a special kind of self-ointed person that thinks they have the right thoughts and the right behaviour and are willing to impose that to everybody else because is for the Good. They are the worst people you can meet, because they commit their crimes tirelessly in the name of Good. They were the Pharisee, the Priests that condemned infidels in the Middle Ages, the sans-culotte in the French Revolution, the revolutionary communists in the USSR, and the nazis in Germany... and they are now the SJW. They will cancel, abuse, exile, banish and even kill those who don't agree with their worldview, because for them their worldview is more important that any human being.

Fortunately, most people care more about other human beings that about ideologies, so no, most people won't behave like that in any circumstance.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, finding out where someone lives is not that hard, especially if they have a professional or social life. And you can do significant damage to someone's career without knowing where they live.

CoCs has made life scarier. It wasn't until PyCon that I considered anyone could be for for a joke(?) told to a friend next to you, overheard by someone who was supposed to be a developer advocate! .

overheard by someone who was supposed to be a developer advocate

But not a developer themselves. The industry is overrun with these “tech-adjacent” roles that add only marginal value, if any. Members of this group seem to be the driving force behind CoCs.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#776
There is a serious lack of resilience here and I'm sorry this poor fellow got crushed by his own van; Anyone who's been to a Python conference in the last 5 years can likely attest to the "changes" that have taken place, and perhaps if this fellow had written the article before getting crucified I'd have more sympathy for him.

Extremists generally eat their own to further advance their own extremism and their individual position within the group. I wonder, how many did they come for, before him and how many times did he not speak out?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#777
post #765
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.)

Of course you always need some common sense in the process. But it needs to be sense, and not arbitrary, capricious behaviour. And you're right that's something you can never quite encode in the rules. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have them. Real world laws are also subject to interpretation, with tons of unclear edge cases, but it's still good that they ban murder, theft, and those kind of things.

But yeah, except in extreme cases, I would expect an organisation of such an event to indeed mildly tap the offender on the wrist and maybe help to prevent it in the future. Or tell the complainer that it's not actually a violation of the CoC when it isn't.

Not everything needs to be punished. Just informing people is often enough.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#778
post #368

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…

>Generalizing to whole groups of people who support an amorphous thing, calling them "psycho-sadists", and saying they want to "run their own little Stasi" is...not exactly how I would foster an inclusive human community.

Please be mindful that chmod775 didn't talk about about everybody who is (at least publicly) in support of CoCs. But rather the very vocal minority of people who try to push CoCs everywhere, then viciously start insulting people who express dissent or even just some concerns about such CoCs, and once they get their way start abusing the CoCs to start witch trials and kangaroo courts seeking not to inform people of their (alleged) mistakes and give them opportunity and help correcting their behaviors (if correction is deemed necessary by the larger community), but seek to outright banish people without due process[1].

You saw some of those people act when you were at mozilla I'd think, when it came to Brendan Eich and gerv[2]. I am not talking about people rightfully disagreeing with or criticizing Brendan Eich and gerv, I am talking about people slinging mud and insults only and trying to banish them from public life at all cost.

And as you were mozilla at the time (right?), you probably remember the rift between mostly US and mostly European community parts over the proposed CoC at the time[5], with mostly the Europeans raising a lot of concerns about the CoC proposals and a CoC in general. Which is fine, and there were a lot of constructive discussions[6], except for the people who started accusing everybody who said a CoC (like that) is not necessary and could be actively harmful was a homophobic ass or sexist or whatever, trying to squash any discussion from the get go[7].

It's those latter people you do not want in your community. And a lot of them I'd describe as "psycho-sadists" as well, who become very giddy and outright ecstatic when they succeed in banishing people, instead of expressing dread that such steps had to be taken.

[1] Brendan Eich, Linus or RMS, or google Rod Vagg or Larry Garfield

[2] gerv was[3] another prominent member of the mozilla community from the UK. He also rejected "gay marriage", but from what I remember not the equal rights portion, "just" the terminology, arguing against it by saying it was a defined traditional religious term, and gay partnerships should have equal rights but should not be called "marriage". He was wrong on that one[4]. I remember people calling him every name in the book, and wishing him he'd die from cancer[3].

[3] Sadly he passed away after a long fight with cancer. I know at least one of the people who wished gerv to die from cancer was fully aware of his ongoing long battle with that disease.

[4] Yes, I said "wrong", don't CoC me please.

[5] Early proposals of the mozilla CoC e.g. suggested that to be compliant one has to endorse things like e.g. the right to be homosexual. Which sounds nice at first, until you realize that some of mozilla's community members are from countries that put people in jail for such endorsements.

[6] At least I for one thought I learned a lot about problems I wasn't even aware of both on the pro- and contra-CoC side.

[7] A lot of those not-very-nice people were not even mozillians, but people who just came to mozilla to "participate" in the CoC discussion.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. According to Wikipedia, No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.[1][2] Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or othe…

gwbas1c did not reject the idea that CoCs could be used as a weapon. They rejected that is their only use case. barumi referenced OP article as an example of CoC as a weapon. pindab0ter argues this not a fault in the CoC itself per se, but in how it was enforced.

> pindab0ter argues this not a fault in the CoC itself per se, but in how it was enforced.

That's a rather charitable interpretation.

The context here was weaponization of CoCs, and OP article was referenced as an example of this weaponization. It seems very clear to me that spindab0ter was arguing that this is not an example of weaponizing the CoC.

Your alternative interpretation doesn't really resonate for me, because it sounds like a "no no, guys, there was nothing at fault in the CoC itself" to a subthread where nobody claimed there was anything wrong with the contents of the CoC in the first place.

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