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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#961

Post by wrsh07 »

skohan wrote: post #882
wrsh07 wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand how you might think that code repos are different from other social media sites. However, they aren't. They require moderation because people are rude even when not anonymous. Here's a quote from the vscode repo moderators: > We deleted a handful of comments which we deemed too offensive to leave as-is (foul language, racist remarks, etc.). We also deleted a few issues that were overwhelmingly offens…

I'm not saying that open source communities are not in need of moderation. Of course they are, like any online community. Basically every open online forum is vulnerable to vulgar, hateful and abusive content being posted. The point this sub-thread is referring to, is that CoC's are there as: > a way to assure newcomers that your project wasn't going to allow racist trolling on the mailing list This is what seems a b…

Of course you don't need a CoC to enforce anything! You can moderate aggressively without one.

What it does is sets expectations. It sets expectations for everyone involved in any interactions. In general, this should give you confidence that there will be some moderation or recourse if you experience rude behavior. That may allow some people who have been burned by ruder communities to be willing to give yours a try.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#962

Post by jawarner »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #959
jawarner wrote: post #953

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See, you said "enforcement of the CoC". I said "improper enforcement of the CoC". As an example, "improper enforcement of the law" might suggest that something was enforced which wasn't the law. Is there a reason you're set on this interpretation of my words? In this, and the Scotsman case, you seem to have chosen an interpretation fits your argument. I'm not sure this is a good way to carry on a conversation, thou…

> As an example, "improper enforcement of the law" might suggest that something was enforced which wasn't the law. No, you can't keep making up new meanings for words. "Enforcement of the law" means that law was being enforced. When you add "improper" in the front of it, it means that law was being enforced improperly. For example, when a police officer harasses a person on the pretext of enforcing the law, that woul…

> For example, when a police officer harasses a person on the pretext of enforcing the law, that would be improper law enforcement.

To be clear, in this example, the officer is enforcing a law that doesn’t exist.

> Otherwise, I'm not going to entertain "hidden meanings" for the words that they already spoke, I'm going to assume that they meant what they said.

Be honest with yourself.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#963

Post by pvaldes »

tptacek wrote: post #344
offbyone wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apropos of nothing related, I want to know: What, exactly, were you confident yet wrong about in regards to bay leaves?

Someone asked on Twitter what, if any, flavor bay leaves had. I repeated advice I'd heard: supermarket bay leaves are bad, so just add a lot of them. Then I acted on another piece of advice: if you want to know what bay leaves taste like, steep them in water and taste the water. I did. Bay leaves are disgusting. Nobody should add more of them to anything.

Using more than one entire bay leaf is often too much. Is a strong spice. Is poisonous in big amounts but half a leaf here and there adds a nice flavor.

On the other hand, I had seen americans before to mistake bay leaves and cherry laurel. Specially when trying to harvest leaves in gardens. Don't do that. They look similar but cherry laurel contains cyanide.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#964

Post by himinlomax »

vorpalhex wrote: post #797
wrsh07 wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in your cynicism you've totally lost all meaning and purpose of the code of conduct It's not a piece of legalese with which you can bludgeon people to get your way (I mean it can be, but that is not and should not be the point) When an organization has a code of conduct, it makes clear how I can complain about actions or events that occur under their jurisdiction. This is important because if you have high fr…

I think many of the people who write CoCs are oblivious to the fact that people lie, or may just be unreliable witnesses. Nor are the creators of a CoC trained or able to run an adjucation process. If you punish anyone who has a report filed against them without evaluating those reports or requesting any proof, then you will quickly be left with a small pool of very manipulative people looking to game the system.

> I think many of the people who write CoCs are oblivious to the fact that people lie,

I posit that those who write CoCs are _precisely_ the type of people who lie. The average person DOES NOT lie as a matter of course. Small lies, bigger lies occasionally when embarassed. People who write CoCs want to control others. People who want to control others are narcissists/social dominants. Narcissists lie ALL THE TIME.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#965

Post by ajsnigrutin »

klmadfejno wrote: post #666
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. You have your usual bucket of nutcases, who get offended by everything, and everything is sexist (airconditioning), racist (milk) or *-phobic. But then you have cases, where a mere accusation of anything even without proof) can destroy peoples lives, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case You also have (somewhat) mainstream media spreading such fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

My point is that its neither simple, nor one sided, nor well defined. In addition to all of the things you're pointing out, there's also people genuinely trying to change things for the better with good reasoning. > Now, we have two options... either we become sensitive to everytihing, and destroy normal human relations and comedy (although, we've gone most of the way there, because of so many protected groups and ac…

So, should we make rape jokes (as is the main point of 40 days and 40 night movies)? Or are they ok, only when their targeted against men?

I support all jokes, if they're funny (if not, nobody is going to watch that comedian, and the market will regulate itself). You say that we should shame the jokes you personally don't like out of the mainstream, but leave the ones you don't mind. "you slav you lose" is a joke.... slavs are also always shown as stereotypical people in tracksuits, drunk and killing people... mostly eachother... and yes, i know it's a stereotype, but as a slav, it's not far from truth (we're looking at caricatures here), and videos on youtube joking out of that are well.. funny (to me personally, and the like/dislike ratio shows that others find them funny too). Should we shame those jokes? Should we shame people laughing at those jokes? Should we shame slavs laughing at funny stereotipical representatives of our own people? Now replace slavs with some other group of people, and you get called a bunch of "-ist"s, "anti-"s, etc.

So, we either kill comedy for all ( https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/70390/a_politically... ), or we let people joke out of everything and not be sensitive about it (this is the option i prefer... especially since we live in a time, where just showing a picture of a religious figure can get you beheaded in france).

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#966

Post by wrsh07 »

skohan wrote: post #948
wrsh07 wrote: post #941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is essentially this: if you're a white male, you may essentially never experience or see racism / sexism in tech. If you are a woman or black or ... you will very likely experience sexism or racism. You will probably also see more, because you are used to identifying it. If you say "a third [1] of the people in this group experience a bad thing" I would say that's pretty wide-spread. The OP was sp…

I'm just speaking for myself, but in terms of the open-source projects I have been a part of, communication either happens over a mailing list, or a discourse forum. A lot of the time you only know the people you're interacting with as a screen name, so you don't even know their race or gender. And 100% of the content of the discussion is either purely technical in nature (e.g. how do I use this API feature, what JSO…

That fact that it's hard for you to imagine just means your imagination isn't very good

It happens. People leave tech communities because of it. I don't know what else to tell you. I've provided citations to this effect in a bunch of other comments.

It's important to note, though, that people can do or say racist or sexist things without targeting it at someone. That would still impact someone's decision to stay in the community, even if the person who said it didn't mean to offend them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#967

Post by quanticle »

roenxi wrote: post #454
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... If there are multiple organisers of a conference then it makes sense for them to talk amongst themselves, decide what they disagree on, and document it. Say I believe no swearing and no pink shirts and my co-organiser thinks no swearing and no blue shirts. It makes sense for us to sit down before the conference and document our official stance on those issues. Then when I…

Say I believe no swearing and no pink shirts and my co-organiser thinks no swearing and no blue shirts. It makes sense for us to sit down before the conference and document our official stance on those issues. Then when I see someone wearing a pink (or blue) shirt I know how to respond without starting a fight on the day with my co-organiser.

The problem is that you'll never be able to write things down in a sufficient level of detail in a CoC to avoid this situation. Sure, your CoC details what to do when someone wears a pink shirt or a blue shirt. But what happens when someone comes in wearing a purple shirt, and you co-organizer kicks them out because "that shade of purple is too close to blue"?

I agree that conference and event organizers and moderators ought to sit down together and figure out how they resolve disputes among themselves. I disagree that a Code of Conduct is helpful in facilitating that.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#968

Post by anonymousiam »

lukev wrote: post #30
anonymousiam wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democratic processes have been proven to be exploitable. A good example is Microsoft's stacking of the ISO OOXML committee: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-accused-of-stacking-... So are we stuck between a choice of democracy, dictatorship, or a politburo? Maybe the organizers of events like this should stick to organizing the event and not trying to regulate the behavior of presenters and attendees.

Choosing which talks have the tone and content you want for your conference is an integral part of organizing an event. I'm not sure what you're actually advocating here.

Free speech.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#969

Post by boublepop »

newacct583 wrote: post #785
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.

Why is this comment, and not the culture war nonsense, not at the top of the page? Having watched Howard's talk, clearly he's right and the conference was wrong. This was respectful and appropriate, period. Someone clearly had an axe to grind about a separate topic. That said, some of the comments here are just off the wall paranoia, and really distasteful. I mean, look: while it was enforced badly it's certainly not…

I agree that his talk was not in any way offensive. But I have to add that no matter if you think they where right or wrong about their judgement, it seems plainly true that they where horribly wrong in how they carried out the process.

Even in cases where someone was violating their CoC, they should have lived up to their own states process and held themselves to a much much higher standard.

Yes, trying to weed out “assholes” is a good objective, but that doesn’t mean you can go about it any which way without yourself being a monumental asshole. CoC’s very point is to be consistent and open about your process. If you throw out the outlines process the second someone sends a report and only use it for its waist ace so you can say “you violated CoC” without any mention to which parts, then it’s not worth 2 cents.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#970

Post by klmadfejno »

free_rms wrote: post #758
klmadfejno wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is complicated and messy. Social change is uncomfortable. And yet for all the complaining of any given generation, they'd probably disagree with the ethics of three generations prior.

The thing is, you're not exactly ending segregation here. What I see is an ever-shifting goalpost of harmless aphorisms that are newly considered 'offensive' by a bunch of upper-class people. What does that do for George Floyd's family, exactly? Did it prevent Jacob Blake from being shot in the back a few months later? If you want to embrace critical theory, you should include the critical theorists in the analysis -…

There's a good chance, I would think, that the black lives matter movement and changing social dialogue improves race relations in the future.
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