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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#861

Post by Volundr »

username90 wrote: post #849
Volundr wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about every time dang replies "Please don't do this" and links to the HN rules? Or bans repeat offenders? You don't hear about the system working right because it's inherently non-controversial.

Guidelines != CoC. People break the HN guidelines all the time and it is fine, they are there to help make people become better contributors and not to punish people.

I'm genuinely not seeing the distinction here. I can be warned, banned, or suspended for violating the guidelines, I can be warned, banned, or suspended for violating the CoC. Both spell out values (be kind) as well as disallow certain actions (don't call names).

The main difference I see is that the CoC also spells out enforcement actions and processes, while the enforcement process for the guidelines is whatever dang feels like it is. In other words from my perspective the CoC is less arbitrary.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#862

Post by belorn »

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…

If we change the analogy we get a different answer. Everyone agree that murder should be forbidden, but we don't want mob justice to go around lynching suspected murderers.

As a society we have laws. CoC as extrajudicial rules get judged based on their benefit to extend existing laws and append additional law enforcement on top of already existing law enforcement. If the result is bad and the additional rules causes more problem than they solve then they should be discarded.

It does not mean all extrajudicial rules are bad but we need to ask if they are needed, serve a good purpose, measure the outcome, and be ready to discard them when the situation calls for it.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#863

Post by sokoloff »

username90 wrote: post #849
Volundr wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about every time dang replies "Please don't do this" and links to the HN rules? Or bans repeat offenders? You don't hear about the system working right because it's inherently non-controversial.

Guidelines != CoC. People break the HN guidelines all the time and it is fine, they are there to help make people become better contributors and not to punish people.

I think you're commenting primarily on the first, second, third instance of breaking the guidelines. I've certainly read threats of people being banned for repeated violations, read suggestions that accounts have been banned, and I can see accounts that are shadow-banned here.

Whether the guidelines are used to punish people who act a certain way or just as a way to document how to act so as to avoid punishment is a fairly fine distinction IMO and maybe a distinction without a difference.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#865

Post by nonfamous »

gsujsgwuaja wrote: post #608
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A community member said something, some people didn't approved based on their personal tastes, and thus they proceeded to leverage their CoC to persecute and punish that individual to keep the community in line. Not sure if it's too soon to joke about this, but I find it funny that "I like Jupyter notebooks" was such a controversial opinion at JupyterCon. (Yeah I know it was actually the mask advocacy and not the t…

Can someone give me the tl;dr of what the author's "mask advocacy" was and why it's so controversial? He only alludes to it in passing in the piece.

The author was one of the primary drivers of widespread mask adoption for Covid transmission suppression, by popularizing epidemiological and public health evidence.

See: https://masks4all.co/about-us/

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#866

Post by monksy »

username90 wrote: post #830
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…

> Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Because code of conducts makes it easier to harass people. If there are formal rules then all a harasser has to do is to find something out of context and then start harassing the person by starting a CoC breakage investigation. Doing stuff like that without a CoC would get you kicked out.

Not neccessarily. Usually that's a new "exception" to the formal rules. (This happens anyways with more generalized rules.. but that's done under the spirit of the rules and is accepted as such)

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#867

Post by jawarner »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #852
jawarner wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> Yes.

Really? I thought it was more people being overly sensitive, and the enforcement team not using their brains. I think pindab0ter would agree that it was improper enforcement of the CoC. I'm not sure anybody can speak to the intentions of the people that reported it with certainty.

> 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

Is that consistent with the thread? Are you arguing that the majority of CoC reports are outright lies? I thought this thread was about the use of CoC to enforce a code of behavior, and if stringent enforcement counts as misuse.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#868

Post by ImprobableTruth »

Volundr wrote: post #845
monksy wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mental gymnastics. I'm not convinced that CoCs are valuable. Even without the explicit language, you can still kick out people who behave badly. (IMO) The CoCs are just there to try to make a political statement about which groups of people they support and to justify groupthink. Anyways, to those people that believe there are a few minor slippages in what the CoC was intended for. I have been banned from a publ…

I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here. You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's…

... do you think the 'what the hell is going on at [company]" is also swearing at their staff? Because I don't think anybody I know would, to me this seems pretty damn clearly like using technicalities/inaccurate definitions as a weapon.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#869

Post by RangerScience »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #402
RangerScience wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, there's something to the push to change how we go about discourse. As an example - it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I see it as pretty similar to how some people see removal of spanking your kids as being coddling, versus making sure your kids are wearing pads when they're learning to roll…

> it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I used to obsess about things like this and then someone pointed out to me, "You'll never, ever get it right. You will word something some way, attempting to be gentle, and they will still be offended. You will NEVER win. So the only thing you can do is be sinc…

It's true that you can't control the outcome. I do lean towards certain language in general, but more so I try to use each of the many options artistically, based on the circumstances. Who am I talking to? What are we talking about?

You're correct that ultimately, I'm not responsible for how someone takes things that I say when I'm being sincere... but I'm still one of the people that lives with the outcome. Might as well try for positives.

Personally? I do get pretty solid results with these kinds of micro-adjustments. Or, rather, since these are toy examples, what these kinds of micro-adjustments do when they're applied in larger situations. One mechanism for this is that I'm making an internal choice in how I'm thinking and framing something in my own mind, and that "vibe" impacts body language, conversational flow, attentiveness, how I understand and receive what they're saying, etc.

I find that the starkest and simplest is whether I start sentences with "I", "you", or neither. Flat statements have one impact. You don't sound like you've had much experience with these variations and their impacts. Am I putting the conversational pivot in myself, in your self, or between/outside of us? How do you find yourself responding to the various options?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#870

Post by ForHackernews »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #868
Volundr wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here. You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's…

... do you think the 'what the hell is going on at [company]" is also swearing at their staff? Because I don't think anybody I know would, to me this seems pretty damn clearly like using technicalities/inaccurate definitions as a weapon.

... uh yes?

If you say "what the hell?" directly to a representative of that company, then you are literally using profanity at their staff.

Like, we can disagree about whether that's a sensible rule or if we should make allowances for non-abusive colloquial phrases ('wtf', 'what the hell?', etc.) or something, but how can you argue it's not breaking the black-and-white rule as written?

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