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Reasonable Person Principle

cs.cmu.edu

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Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#11

Post by immibis »

brightball wrote: post #9
alphazard wrote: post #4

This is from a time before CoCs. The part about resolving conflicts with as few resources as possible, as close to the source as possible, seems to be a truism about well functioning (social) systems; really: systems in general. While we're talking about governance problems. This stuck out to me as evidence of a misunderstanding. > It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate…

Personally, I question the need for CoCs. It seemed they simply started appearing everywhere one day as if following some sort of trend. People organize together everyday in numerous different professional, community and private settings…with no need for a special set of governing rules for behavior.

The main purpose of a CoC is to point to it when you want to ban someone. It's an accountability sink - instead of saying you want to ban someone, you say you have to ban them because they violated the written rules. The rules, of course, must be written vaguely enough that anyone you might want to ban is violating at least one. It's okay if people you don't want to ban also violate them, because you won't bring it up.

It can also be used as an accountability sink in cases where someone clearly should be banned but you don't have enough courage to say you are banning them because you think they should be. In this case you can also point to the rules. However, if the person who should be banned is sneaky enough, he didn't break any of them. You ban him anyway.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#14

Post by dartharva »

cryptonector wrote: post #5
daft_pink wrote: post #2

I wish more code of conducts were written like this.

No no, we must make endless lists of specific behaviors we want and don't want.

immibis explains why that is better in one of the comment threads above:

> The main purpose of a CoC is to point to it when you want to ban someone. It's an accountability sink - instead of saying you want to ban someone, you say you have to ban them because they violated the written rules.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#15

Post by flappyeagle »

immibis wrote: post #11
brightball wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I question the need for CoCs. It seemed they simply started appearing everywhere one day as if following some sort of trend. People organize together everyday in numerous different professional, community and private settings…with no need for a special set of governing rules for behavior.

The main purpose of a CoC is to point to it when you want to ban someone. It's an accountability sink - instead of saying you want to ban someone, you say you have to ban them because they violated the written rules. The rules, of course, must be written vaguely enough that anyone you might want to ban is violating at least one. It's okay if people you don't want to ban also violate them, because you won't bring it u…

Best use of the term accountability sink I’ve seen out in the wild.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#16

Post by rockskon »

brightball wrote: post #9
alphazard wrote: post #4

This is from a time before CoCs. The part about resolving conflicts with as few resources as possible, as close to the source as possible, seems to be a truism about well functioning (social) systems; really: systems in general. While we're talking about governance problems. This stuck out to me as evidence of a misunderstanding. > It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate…

Personally, I question the need for CoCs. It seemed they simply started appearing everywhere one day as if following some sort of trend. People organize together everyday in numerous different professional, community and private settings…with no need for a special set of governing rules for behavior.

As is the case of most abrupt social changes with no seeming environmental impetus - someone aggressive and powerful found a means of exerting their influence to push their desired social change. And so they did with CoCs.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#17

Post by tbrownaw »

alphazard wrote: post #4

This is from a time before CoCs. The part about resolving conflicts with as few resources as possible, as close to the source as possible, seems to be a truism about well functioning (social) systems; really: systems in general. While we're talking about governance problems. This stuck out to me as evidence of a misunderstanding. > It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate…

> This is just a poor model of how people work; it's important to have a good one if you are designing governance structures.

This is prescriptive, not descriptive. It's not trying to be a model of how people work.

Nothing about this document tries to claim that being reasonable comes naturally.

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#18

Post by cdbyr »

alphazard wrote: post #4

This is from a time before CoCs. The part about resolving conflicts with as few resources as possible, as close to the source as possible, seems to be a truism about well functioning (social) systems; really: systems in general. While we're talking about governance problems. This stuck out to me as evidence of a misunderstanding. > It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate…

You don’t think people ever do the right thing just because it’s the right thing?

Re: Reasonable Person Principle

#19

Post by dataflow »

cdbyr wrote: post #18
alphazard wrote: post #4

This is from a time before CoCs. The part about resolving conflicts with as few resources as possible, as close to the source as possible, seems to be a truism about well functioning (social) systems; really: systems in general. While we're talking about governance problems. This stuck out to me as evidence of a misunderstanding. > It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate…

You don’t think people ever do the right thing just because it’s the right thing?

> ever

That bar is way too low.

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