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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#851

Post by hsod »

jfengel wrote: post #824
barumi wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the piece itself seems pretty balanced and thoughtful The piece is not balanced of thoughtful. The piece is crafted to present the case in a way that's immune or resilient to typical and expectable attacks. It underlined the core failings of the concept behind a CoC, and it provides a concrete example of how people use CoCs as an oppression tool that's leveraged to manipulate and condition groups to follow the…

Exactly what punishment was given here? I've read the piece several times, and couldn't figure it out. The most negative thing that was done to him was that they found him to have violated the Code. If there was a punishment, he seems to have found it less doleful than the finding itself and the process by which it came about. That's understandable, but to me it also seems to illustrate the reason we're having this.…

From what i can tell there was no punishment, he opted out of the process before the "next steps" phase. Or in other words, the process itself was the punishment-- being called in front of a tribunal and scolded by strangers.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#852

Post by baobabKoodaa »

jawarner wrote: post #783
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, beca…

pindab0ter's idea, as I read it, is that no, CoCs are not inherently weapons to exclude people for no reason. They typically language about what constitutes bigotry. In the OP, yes, the CoC was weaponized, but it doesn't reflect a necessary fault in CoCs in general. Edit: I'm not sure what is even meant by "weaponize." Is the implication that somebody at the conference had vendetta against OP? It's clear that CoCs gi…

> pindab0ter's idea, as I read it, is that no, CoCs are not inherently weapons to exclude people for no reason. They typically language about what constitutes bigotry. In the OP, yes, the CoC was weaponized, but it doesn't reflect a necessary fault in CoCs in general.

I don't think pindab0ter would agree with this interpretation. @pindab0ter, if you are still following the thread, can you clarify this with a yes/no answer: do you count the OP article as an example of CoC weaponization?

> I'm not sure what is even meant by "weaponize." Is the implication that somebody at the conference had vendetta against OP?

Yes.

> It's clear that CoCs give people more power, which is a weapon, in a sense. Would reporting someone for CoC violation for sexual misconduct at a conference be an example of weaponization?

Well, if you dislike someone's political views, and then you hatch a plan to make up fraudulent sexual misconduct allegations with the hope of "canceling" someone, I would describe that as "weaponizing" the CoC. But if the allegations are genuine and without ulterior motives, then I would not use that terminology.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#853

Post by Volundr »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #841
Volundr wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded no due-process is in fact guilty and deserving of punishment. Mine is the unique case of an opaque and capricious CoC process being applied unjustly.' This isn't close to what he's saying. He's saying that despite the fact that the CoC enforcement got it wrong in his case, they are still valuable. You know like laws are still valuable des…

Good point. My expected reaction isn't "laws/CoC should be discarded" but "CoCs and their enforcement process is seriously flawed and needs revising." Here there seem to be two issues: 1. Too-vague rules & 2. Unfair enforcement. If we punished people for murder by forming a posse and summarily executing them, the reaction should be "yes murder should be forbidden but this enforcement process is seriously unfair and n…

I'd agree with all of this, with the caveat that at lot of what your saying is both called out in the article and in a lot of advice around writing a code of conduct (example: https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-...), so it's not even clear to me that this is a problem with the majority of the CoC organizations/enforcement.

Even here where part of the problem in the vague requirement ("be kind"), the biggest problem is they didn't follow their own processes of having an actual dialog. It's a bit like if you walked into a US court and the Judge immediately says "I talked to the victim and your clearly guilty", it's not the process that's the problem, it's that the process wasn't followed. Maybe like the court system there should be an appeals process (not sure what that might look like).

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#854

Post by ALittleLight »

pron wrote: post #492
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…

Have you read all the laws in your country? Are you aware that there are probably thousands of examples where they've been arbitrarily enforced and put innocent people in prison (or even executed them)? Many of them are just a matter of common sense and yet there's an entire apparatus around them. Does that mean they're silly and useless? I've never organised a conference, but people who have told me that there's a l…

Many laws are silly and useless. Many laws are ambiguous. Sometimes you read a law and think you know what it means but it turns out it applies where you don't expect and doesn't apply where you do expect.

The law is complicated and expensive and painful. You need lawyers and judges and juries. People are, as you observe, severely hurt by the law.

These are reasons why we don't need some pseudo sub-law drafted quickly by amateurs. The real law still applies and the fake law is arbitrarily enforced.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#855

Post by wrsh07 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #799
wrsh07 wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've never seen racist trolling on GitHub, maybe it's because you're not looking rather than that it doesn't happen The laziest of Google searches quickly found people being racist on GitHub (... to a GitHub employee! With their own, non anonymous accounts!): https://www.tinykat.cafe/on-all-that-fuckery (This incident also made it to hn iirc, but maybe you didn't read it that day)

I don't think anyone was suggesting that it literally has never happened, so much as that it's very, very rare. Moreover, that kind of behavior would get you banned irrespective of any CoC, so the question remains: what does a CoC add here?

> I have never seen it happen in my 10 years in open source

Seems like a very generous reading of what the person I'm specifically responding to said

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#856

Post by spacekitcat »

btilly wrote: post #836
spacekitcat wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a concrete example of this “political correctness” you are opposed to?

First, I would like to recommend http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html as background for what I object to about political correctness. Political correctness pushes the idea that the whole world should be trying to create a safe space for those who have had any kind of past challenge. There is a time and place for safe spaces. However the act of encouraging people to figure out what problems they can complain about, then…

In my country, "Political Correctness" is a dog whistle used by Daily Mail readers. It doesn't mean anything. I don't shape my thinking by what some talking head thinks.

Why do you think I asked for a concrete example? I notice that you didn't provide one either.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#857

Post by nonfamous »

belorn wrote: post #847
bccdee wrote: 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…

Explicit rules that create and escalate conflict is worse than implicit rules that assumes good faith and gives benefit of the doubt. Not all explicit rules are good and not all implicit ones are bad, and it depend a great lot of how enforcement is made. Good formalized set of rules and rule enforcement focus on conflict resolution and deescalation, assumes good faith and give benefit of the doubt. Most legal system…

> From the article I don't see any attempt of conflict resolution between Joel Grus and Jeremy Howard.

FTA: “I think Joel is great, and I know for a fact that he doesn’t mind being called “wrong” (since the call I checked with him).”

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#858

Post by jawarner »

goatinaboat wrote: post #848
jawarner wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The word “unsafe” doesn’t mean anything any more An alternate possibility is that you don't understand what people mean when they say they feel unsafe. Do you feel you have invested effort into empathizing with these concerns, or would you say your are more dismissive?

An alternate possibility is that you don't understand what people mean when they say they feel unsafe. That is a possibility, but it’s unreasonable to expect that a person can redefine a common word in their own mind and expect everyone else to telepathically know what they “mean”. Especially in a primarily text based medium.

> it’s unreasonable to expect that a person can redefine a common word in their own mind

I mean, the word is used a lot. You even referenced it being commonly used. Have you tried to understand it?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#859

Post by sokoloff »

tosh wrote: post #3

If you haven't yet: I think both talks are very worth watching: I don't like notebooks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jiPeIFXb6U ) by Joel Grus I like notebooks ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q6sLbz37gk ) by Jeremy Howard notebooks are a very interesting medium and they have both shortcomings as well as things they are great at and neither were totally obvious to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q6sLbz37gk&feature=youtu.be... is the specific section that seems to have been judged as "unkind".

To me, that seems like a massive over-reaction or massively uncharitable interpretation of the talk focused on a single point of disagreement, which was done quite respectfully from what I watched.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#860

Post by specialist »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #727
bccdee wrote: 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…

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 wh…

Just now occurs to me: Adjudication could be escalated to arbitration or mediator.

Governance is the evergreen crisis. Was part of an org that had a constitutional crisis over conduct not covered by existing bylaws. HUGE drama. HUGE effort to resolve. Basically a mock trial.

Other orgs need more accessible, more lightweight ways to resolve their own slap fights.

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