Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

shujisado.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 270 posts

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#191

Post by KingMob »

throwaway2046 wrote: post #67
swiftcoder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the guy who regularly writes about how brown people are invading his country, and the guy who thinks women in tech are all trying to entrap him with rape accusations... don't think CoCs are a good idea? Colour me surprised

You can address the contents of the article and the views expressed by the author directly without resorting to ad hominem.

Life is not a high-school debate club. An _ad hominem_ accusation only really works if the attack is unrelated.

I don't know about ESR, but DHH has acted in ways that make it difficult to believe he is making a good-faith, unbiased argument on CoCs, which means I'm not obligated to reciprocate and treat his argument fairly. (DHH oversaw a list at 37Signals making racist fun of customer names, and overruled his employees who complained, eventually leading to a mass walkout.)

To put it in Bayesian terms, the prior that he's making a bad faith argument is higher than any random person, and should be treated as such.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#192

Post by HelloNurse »

skissane wrote: post #178
sc68cal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you feel the same way if it were eliminationist language, but against Jews, or African-Americans, or Irish-Americans, or Men?

So, if a person is a traditionalist/conservative Orthodox Jew, who holds traditional “non-affirming” views on LGBT issues-do those views count as “eliminationist rhetoric”? If a project decides it won’t welcome people who believe what almost all conservative/traditionalist Orthodox Jews believe (even if they keep those beliefs to themselves in project forums), it is essentially deciding that Jews (of that kind) aren’…

There's a clear difference between respecting people and hate speech; no project should welcome someone who contributes inappropriate insults and off-topic rants.

If that stereotypical Orthodox Jew wants to be a valuable community member, they can keep their hostile opinions to themselves, and nobody will consider them troublemakers.

Obviously they won't feel welcome because they realize that the majority would despise them as bigots if they expressed intolerable opinions, but hopefully it can become a reason to question their ideology.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#193

Post by HelloNurse »

swiftcoder wrote: post #109
notarget137 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like theese two should not collide in any context from either side...

It's not been my experience that racists/sexists/homophobes/antisemites/etc can keep it strictly professional with members of the group they hate

It's the well known correlation between stupid opinions that can do no good and stupid people that cannot control themselves. We should worry about the bad cases when oppressors are in power and able to do significant harm and/or manipulative sociopaths using hate speech as one of many tools.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#194

Post by thrance »

wastle wrote: post #163
kelnos wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not the typical focus of the issue, and repeating that over and over won't make it so.

What do you see it as? In the UK, where I am from, the counter to the trans ideological position tends to be from a feminist-influenced perspective, emphasising women's sex-based rights.

Notice how all these so-called TERFs ally themselves with the most anti-feminist crowd, and finally realize it has absolutely nothing to do with feminism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-critical_feminism#Polit...

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#195

Post by justinclift »

fragmede wrote: post #161
rpdillon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the code of conduct was introduced to solve a problem. So I'd be interested in hearing about an example of a community that had problems with their social fabric, and then introduced a code of conduct, and then could demonstrate that those issues in their social fabric were addressed.

In the history of the world? Yeah. Anytime you have a communal living space, you're going have to set norms on what constitutes shared community stuff. Is the milk in the fridge George's and no one is allowed to touch it, or do we, as a household, want milk communism and it just goes as shared groceries and we go often enough that there's always milk? There's not a right answer, but it's up to the community to decide…

Don't these tend to be discussions between the people involved?

Whether or not anything needs to be written down afterwards seems like it would be a separate thing.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#196

Post by justinclift »

atoav wrote: post #133
serial_dev wrote: post #5

The thing is that codes of conduct do not help honest actors “regulate” and deal with troublemakers. I used to organize meetups and I visited meetups organized by others who had code of conduct, and I just never understood what they were hoping to achieve with that. If someone behaves poorly, you can point at a document all you want, but it doesn’t help you deal that the problematic individual. A document that you pu…

I play in a band. Since we're just 4 people a code of conduct would be ridiculous. What isn't ridiculous however is that a group of people who do some shit together need to be somewhat on the same page what is acceptable and what isn't. You don't need that with just friends, but any project beyond friends needs people to agree on what kind of social space this is meant to be. If you don't talk it out the shittiest pe…

> If a code of conducts contains stuff you are within the bounds of anyways, why would you care it is there?

If it would contain stuff you're within bounds of anyways, then it's entirely unneeded. :)

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#197

Post by u_sama »

thrance wrote: post #131
u_sama wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue with CoC is that they have been used in the past by politically motivated (notably on the left) activists to take control of a project and ensure a political line. You may agree with such a political line like anti-fascism, inclusion and what not. But the issue is that you have opened the door to politics inside what ought to be a technical area, and historically, politics change, the ideas you agre…

I am not American, and I don't think that "trans people have a right to participate in society" is a political take. The real issue is with people thinking that "trans people shouldn't exist" is a valid opinion to hold, and I don't feel particularly bad for them being "silenced". If this view falls in the American left's umbrella, then I'm sorry to say: they're objectively right and fuck the guys who hold anti-human…

You are most certainly Western, or if not part of the educated and Western brought elites of the Global South. But I most certainly assure you that in the other grand civilizations, the idea you expounded is the standard and just as you feel this idea is the objectively right one, in the other societies with other codes and ethics (Confucian, Vedic/Buddhist, Islamic or non Western Christian), the people living in them have as strong attachment to those ideas as you do. For you the 2 most important values are equality and freedom (deeply liberal values) which are not the same elsewhere.

You also have to understand that just as you are imposing your ideas as "objectively right", in the other societies the other side is doing the same. Thus you are making a political take because it is a value judgement on how societies should operate. You might not like it or not but not only is it a value judgement incompatible with most people in the world, but it is also part of a faction inside your own arena (left wing coded Western politics)

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#198

Post by u_sama »

thrance wrote: post #194
wastle wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you see it as? In the UK, where I am from, the counter to the trans ideological position tends to be from a feminist-influenced perspective, emphasising women's sex-based rights.

Notice how all these so-called TERFs ally themselves with the most anti-feminist crowd, and finally realize it has absolutely nothing to do with feminism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-critical_feminism#Polit...

Most historical feminists would be labelled TERFs today, just like the most liberal 19th century politicians would be seen as conservative. TERFS are still feminists. Communists also allied themselves with fascists during the inter-war period yet you can still consider them as separate.

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#199

Post by u_sama »

majorchord wrote: post #94
u_sama wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue with CoC is that they have been used in the past by politically motivated (notably on the left) activists to take control of a project and ensure a political line. You may agree with such a political line like anti-fascism, inclusion and what not. But the issue is that you have opened the door to politics inside what ought to be a technical area, and historically, politics change, the ideas you agre…

> the issue is that you have opened the door to politics inside what ought to be a technical area Unless you're willing and able to enforce a BDFL stance, I don't think there is actually any alternative. As soon as people start disagreeing with any choices you make, and it's not well-understood that "what I say goes", you're going to have people who want to try to change how you run things, and that is the definition…

I actually agree, which is why I have high hopes for Ladybird and such. The best type of government is not a democracy but an benevolent dictatorship (also historically called the philosopher-king). You force the politics of neutrality on people, but doing so leads to people on the extremes attacking you and labelling you with unacceptable names like what is happening with DHH and the Omarchy thing

Re: Heavy codes of conduct are unnecessary for open source projects

#200

Post by integralid »

atoav wrote: post #133
serial_dev wrote: post #5

The thing is that codes of conduct do not help honest actors “regulate” and deal with troublemakers. I used to organize meetups and I visited meetups organized by others who had code of conduct, and I just never understood what they were hoping to achieve with that. If someone behaves poorly, you can point at a document all you want, but it doesn’t help you deal that the problematic individual. A document that you pu…

I play in a band. Since we're just 4 people a code of conduct would be ridiculous. What isn't ridiculous however is that a group of people who do some shit together need to be somewhat on the same page what is acceptable and what isn't. You don't need that with just friends, but any project beyond friends needs people to agree on what kind of social space this is meant to be. If you don't talk it out the shittiest pe…

>If a code of conducts contains stuff you are within the bounds of anyways, why would you care it is there?

Maybe he don't want to exclude people who are outside of the CoC norms, but can still be valuable contributors.

Post reply on HN