I Violated a Code of Conduct

As another non-American I feel similarly which supports the hypothesis that CoCs are primary political instruments.

I didn't see it in the article. I was guessing at what echelon meant by referring to social media in their comment.

>Are you actually saying, without irony, that it's bullshit and baseless that Linus Torvalds, one of the most famously abusive OSS maintainers in history, had made people's lives worse by way of these actions?

Yes, at least on any scale that matters. He might have (temporarily) upset some people, but that doesn't even come close to what I'd consider "made lives worse".

> one of the most famously abusive OSS maintainers in history

Nice ad hominem by the way. Also bullshit. He was outspoken to the point of being considered rude sometimes, and he was what I would consider abusive in his language on some occasions (like the infamous "abortion" rant; if you never had a bad day and said something regretful, feel free to cast the first stone).

You however make it sounds that he raped a lot of people. Or murdered his wife (hello Hans). Or at least was like this all the time (which he was not, he was mostly polite and professional if maybe a little to direct for some cultural backgrounds).

Get a grip. Some feelings were hurt, some egos got nicked, he crossed the line verbally on a few occasions, got criticized for it, learned from that it seems, some people - which, again, is perfectly fine - decided not to work with him. Linux lost some contributors maybe. In order words: life.

If you expect utter perfection from everybody always, you'll be in for a big surprise.

>Suppose it was a huge deal to other people. I mean, it's not a hypothetical, I've provided citations.

You provided some one-sided hearsay, from mostly anonymous stories, nothing that even amounts to harassment either, let alone sexual harassment. That's the evidential standard of a kangaroo court and the kind of "crime" dictators use to silence their most outspoken dissidents, not due process (which you seem really fond of by mentioning it all the time).

Regardless, that RMS made some people uneasy - while a bit problematic and surely something he could and should have improved - does by far not warrant the way people punch down on him, destroyed his reputation and negated his entire life's work, called him names, fabricated false allegations such as that he was defending Epstein. Where is your empathy for his humanity and plight? Or is that reserved to people who are slightly irked out and/or offended to see he had a mattress in his office (which he used to sleep on, because he was essentially living in his office, btw)?

>Are the feelings of other people illegitimate when they disagree with you?

Their feeling are legitimate - which by the way does not mean they always have legitimate cause to feel that way, nor does it mean they never have a legitimate cause - but matter a lot less than facts or actions.

We do have different criteria for sufficient evidence for different consequences.

It makes sense to require something like 'beyond all doubt' to put someone behind bars for a few years.

It may make sense to have even stricter criteria (e.g. unanimous votes) to execute someone.

It makes sense to have lower criteria (e.g. 'preponderance of evidence') to impose a civil liability that takes all their money but does not put them in jail - there are cases of crime accusations where the level of evidence is so that were acquitted in the criminal court as the evidence was not sufficient for that, but the same evidence resulted in them being found responsible in civil court.

So it does also make sense to have a different (lower) standard of evidence and process to resolve CoC disputes, without bringing in all the heavyweight legal machinery designed for the high-stakes evaluation of whether someone's guilty of a felony. If the worst penalty that can be imposed is "our organization will consider you a baddy and won't deal with you ever again", then the accused does not need as much protection as if their life or liberty was at stake.

However, there still has to be some standard of evidence and at least some reasonable due process - in this particular case it seems that the bar has been set too low and this might need to be changed.

HN guideline is a set policies and conflict resolution document. The purpose of those are to define the community focus and get people back to cooperation if members start to falls into argument and conflict.

An CoC on the other hand is exclusively about removal of members to achieve additional goals set by the CoC. It identify who is an "other" and gives power to a small group to opaquely remove the individual without constraints or liability. It also usually supersede any existing rules, goals and processes already existing in the community.

The distinction is thus in purpose, methods and results. If we imagine that we replaced the articles CoC with the HN guideline, we can read this: "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument". The Code of Conduct Enforcement Team could have talked to both Jeremy Howard and Joel Grus and steered the discussing on the factually arguments in favor or against the use of a Jupyter Notebook. They could have reminded both speakers to assume good faith, respond to the strongest plausible interpretation, and avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. It could remind them to focus on the purpose of the community, such as having a curious conversations with thoughtful and substantive comments.

Instead they exercised the power granted by the CoC.