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GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

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Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#121

Post by RetpolineDrama »

theepauk wrote: post #79

The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's…

I personally never contribute to an OSS that has a CoC, and if I find my organization is using OSS that has a CoC I actively work to remove it and ban my employees from contributing to it.

CoC's are poison, and if your project has a "Code of Conduct committee" it is dead to me.

I fully admit this hasn't been possible for everything, but I'm making great progress

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#122

Post by [deleted] »

Akronymus wrote: post #32

Overall it seems like a pretty decent CoC. Altough, I am REALLY not a fan of this line: "In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." I fear that that stipulation will be used to try and kick out people for holding "bad" opinions outside of the project. Like what was tried with Elia Schito.

[deleted]

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#123

Post by Cthulhu_ »

duped wrote: post #105
theepauk wrote: post #79

The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's…

Having a CoC is what gives moderators of a community the ability to drop the ban hammer and give a decent reason (in other words, establish some rules and keep out people who routinely break them). Enforcement is rarely public, for the same reason you don't fire someone in front of the entire office.

I mean CoC violations can also result in people losing their jobs; it's better to handle things in private. That also removes any cool factor from someone who's blatantly being a troll, the "us vs them" mentality that's easy to pick up.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#124

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

LexiMax wrote: post #37
mbStavola wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know the silent majority aren't in favor of CoCs?

They don’t. I have been away from hacker news for about 2 to 3 years and quite frankly I am shocked that this place is still having this same tired argument whereas outside it seems to be an accepted fact of life that having rules surrounding the conduct of project participants is in fact a good thing.

I don't know anything about your social circles, but my experience suggests that people learned to mostly ignore it until it happens to touch them. Until that point they just indicate their real thoughts in private groups. The argument repeats itself here, because the forum is pseudo-anonymous and lends itself to a 'private group' image despite not really being one.

Is it though?

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#125

Post by wl »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #106
bragr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a part of the US where "guys" is used as a gender neutral collective noun. My mom and grandma would call out "guys, dinner is ready!" to the whole family to call us to the table for example. So it's definitely whiplash inducing for the same group of people preaching inclusion and tolerance, and how we need to accept regional and racial dialects in the workplace, to then turn around and implement slackbots th…

I'll buy this when I hear a straight man talk about the guys he's dated. A thing that I have still never once observed.

"Guys" tends to be neuter in the second person and masculine in the third person.

In any case, I think your example works better with a bisexual speaker. A straight guy would probably use more specific gendered language rather than a neuter construction. A bisexual person using "guys" to refer to the men and women (s)he has dated would be an example of a third person neuter usage—which I also think would be quite rare.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#126

Post by Cthulhu_ »

LexiMax wrote: post #91
commandlinefan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CoC opens up ways for character assassination Has it ever been used in any other way?

Are you asking if a set of rules used to outline acceptable conduct in project participation has ever been enforced in good faith? Because they have, and I guarantee you that you've been aware of such enforcement actions in the past.

I think it's a good case of visibility; nobody hears about the justified enforcement of a code of conduct, but the odd cases (like the Drupal dev, or Donglegate, or what have you) get tons of media attention and are used as references as to why codes of conduct are a bad thing.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#127

Post by RetpolineDrama »

phpisthebest wrote: post #72
speeder wrote: post #35

I see a lot of people here forgetting a real case of CoC abuse. There was this famous Drupal dev that wrote a transcript of a fetish wedding on his fetish social media profile. An enemy of his on Drupal quoted that transcript and used it as examples the Dev should be punished. Drupal, like GCC proposed rules, allow punishment of someone for something they did outside the community, and not only the guy was punished,…

In most instances it is not the rules that are the problem, it is the people enforcing the rules that is the problem Power Corrupts, and any time you give a group of humans power over another group of humans they will abuse that power. EVERY TIME. No human can resist, and it an immutable law of psychology. Power Corrupts and will be abused. CoC's formalize this power, and result of which is inevitable

>In most instances it is not the rules that are the problem, it is the people enforcing the rules that is the problem

The problem is ultimately that the average person is ok with operating under such a rule regime. Systems like these were _made_ to be abused.

It's simple: If your project displays a CoC it won't get contributions. We'll fork it and remove the CoC where possible. If it's not possible we'll write our own.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#129

Post by Cthulhu_ »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #113
phpisthebest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most instances it is not the rules that are the problem, it is the people enforcing the rules that is the problem Power Corrupts, and any time you give a group of humans power over another group of humans they will abuse that power. EVERY TIME. No human can resist, and it an immutable law of psychology. Power Corrupts and will be abused. CoC's formalize this power, and result of which is inevitable

> In most instances it is not the rules that are the problem, it is the people enforcing the rules that is the problem You need two things for this kind of problem to occur: 1. people who abuse power 2. rules that allow this abuse (in this case the CoC) You cannot change humans, but you can lobby to prevent 2 from happening (in this case lobby against a CoC to become adopted).

I disagree; you need rules to give guidelines to the moderators and participants both. The alternative is that there are no rules, or moderators get to decide themselves what is and isn't allowed, on a whim and inconsistenly, causing infighting and confusion.

Call it something else than a code of conduct if it helps, but I don't believe you can not have a guideline of sorts.

Re: GCC Adopts a Code of Conduct

#130

Post by LanceH »

woodruffw wrote: post #111
theepauk wrote: post #79

The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others. The greeting they used was "hey guys", and instead of recognizing that language is fluid and different to different people they tried to impose their linguistic views on others. The people who encouraged this behavior were people on the Code of Conduct committee and at the top of the project's…

Can you provide more details? I’ve been working on open source projects for about a decade now, including years of professional work, and I have never seen or heard someone chastised for using “guys” informally. This includes in communities with established, formal codes of conduct. It strikes me as something that most people wouldn’t even notice , unless the speaker was intentionally using it in a way that implies g…

A CoC might be just fine. GCC's looks nice -- basically "act professionally".

But, there are people out there who jump at the opportunity to take offense on someone else's behalf.

The female analog to "guys" seems to be "gals", but nobody uses that anymore, preferring "girls". The word "girls" is a word of automatic offense taking to some, even if everyone involved in the conversation is cool with it.

I've seen the "girls" one play out with someone stating that the women get a pass self-referencing and the guy who actually goes to lunch with them can't say it.

These same people who want to take offense are sometimes drawn to these CoC's -- either to implement or enforce them.

Then add in the desire to drop life changing punishments to such mild things. Say the wrong thing and get fired. See Python and the stupid dongle joke. That didn't need a video, that needed a brief reprimand of, "grow up" and it could have been done. Instead it got an interrogation and people fired -- and more CoC's for everything.

Holy crap, if some of these people had seen the 70's.

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