121–130 of 288 posts
Running a fair, competent and accountable court is really hard, and to think otherwise is hubris at best, and unbridled ideology at worst.
Edit: apologies for the multiple edits. It sometimes takes me a few tries to precisely express my thoughts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need a CoC to get rid of someone who harasses others what you have is a deeper problem
I think you're saying that people who harass should be able to be removed absent a code of conduct. I agree. However, harassment isn't always the overt act you may be picturing, it can be more subtle. Code of Conducts give a single canonical state for what's considered acceptable, but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation. In addition to that, they inform people (e…
This is what they're supposed to do. In reality, this is impossible because so many of the rules in a CoC are subjective, and therefore are enforced based on the opinions of the people enforcing the CoC.
> but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation.
This just gives the enforcers a sense of moral authority to impose their opinions, nothing more. I don't see that as a benefit of what is inevitably an incomplete document, and frequently poorly thought out as well.
This is a good response as far as the actual process goes, but it doesn't really do anything to address the claims that "There were two totally different Codes of Conduct with different requirements linked in different places" and "I was held to a different, undocumented and uncommunicated standard"
I'm going to get downvoted for this, but: I'm against code of conducts because they're worse than the problems they try to solve. edit: In my opinion, code of conducts become a distraction and a cause for worry to anyone contributing to these projects because someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intende…
Before this discovery, I would have guessed that "someone inevitably gets their feelings hurt and points to some well-intentioned rule in the CoC to get the 'offender' shamed/removed even if no harm was intended" was a much larger percentage of the cases than it is. I also would have thought that anything that makes a lot of people uncomfortable that they might accidentally cross the line is worse than the current harm.
Now that I've much more personal experience with what it means to be a person who is an actual target of harassment, I realize that these edge cases make up a tiny proportion of the harassment that happens. And when you bring the hammer down on people who are unequivocally harassers, it is important that you do so in a way that's fair and not subject to recharacterization as unjust later, when no one who was there is a part of the conversation.
A great many good people being uncomfortable is unfortunate, but I also think it's a sign of the kind of cognitive dissonance that I experienced before playing with my wife. I had never experienced anything other than the usual toxicity, so I naively assumed that it couldn't be that prevalent. The fact that a CoC feels like overkill is, perhaps, evidence for the proposition that the problem with harassment is much more real than it might feel to those of us who are not targets of harassment.
And the kind of people who will harass someone so shamelessly are exactly the kind of people who will boldly lie about not being given a reason for their discipline, or who will loudly complain about the rules not being explicit, even though it's incredibly obvious to everyone present that their behavior was beyond the pale.
The edge cases are edge cases, and unfortunate, but I don't believe most cases are edge cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can observe whether sshd is running a privileged process because you have all of the information available to make that judgement. You can't observe whether a random person is privileged because it's relative and related to your opinion and biases.
True, but then it's at most a false claim. It's still not an attack. If I say ping is privileged and you say you're on a distro with unprivileged ping, I haven't in any way denounced ping.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean this as an attack, but I'm guessing you haven't been harassed/given unwanted attention at a conference. It's easy to see codes of conduct as draconian or unnecessary if you can't empathize with the people they're designed to protect. I'm not saying the CoC system is perfect or that there aren't false positives, but your statement here is _dramatically_ privileged.
This kind of argument often comes up. Two implicit premises should be questioned: 1) Liberal values are associated with privilege. 2) Because of this association we should embrace authoritarianism. Is authoritarianism any less privileged? It assumes that the authorities are on your side and protecting your interests... that seems right down the middle of privilege. A low privilege person would probably benefit from l…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need a CoC to get rid of someone who harasses others what you have is a deeper problem
I think you're saying that people who harass should be able to be removed absent a code of conduct. I agree. However, harassment isn't always the overt act you may be picturing, it can be more subtle. Code of Conducts give a single canonical state for what's considered acceptable, but more importantly, give organizers something tangible to point to when there is a violation. In addition to that, they inform people (e…
Except... they don't.
They say things like (quoting from the NumFOCUS CoC):
> We will not accept harassment or other exclusionary behaviors, such as:
> ...
> Other unethical or unprofessional conduct
That leaves things wide open -- whatever the committee decides is "unprofessional" is hereby banned. How am I supposed to guess their mind?
1. Who are "these" people? 2. Is this org of any significant importance? 3. Why should I care. Or, am I being to mean and should someone here complain about my topics? Meanwhile, is numfocus really on the map. Until yesterday, I never heard about them before.
the world is much bigger than your sphere of awareness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet you participate here on HN, and there is effectively a CoC: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One of the irritating things about these CoC discussions is that the codes, really, are acting in a metonymic fashion. Codes of behaviour are, of course, common place all throughout the world. When people complain about Codes of Conduct in software, they’re broadly complaining about a particular movement that’s pushed codes of particular conduct, enforced with particular mechanisms (and they would often argue biases)…
The programming world historically has been the domain of white men, and these CoCs are often a response to the fact that things have changed.
Any talk about "CoCs are bad" or "CoCs are just for people to arbitrarily impose their morality" are wrong. We need guidelines, and we need to be prepared to refine those guidelines and how they are enforced on a continual basis.
That dismissive talk brings this quote to mind: "When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality seems like oppression."
1. Who are "these" people? 2. Is this org of any significant importance? 3. Why should I care. Or, am I being to mean and should someone here complain about my topics? Meanwhile, is numfocus really on the map. Until yesterday, I never heard about them before.