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

Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–55 of 55 posts

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#51

Post by sph »

mariusor wrote: post #50
sph wrote: post #41

Code of conducts are a waste of time. Trolls won’t read it, well-behaved people don’t need to be told how to behave well. It’s not like there are CoCs out there that grant you specific rights others don’t: there is no CoC that says, for example, it is fine to harass people or be a racist idiot. So they’re all a variation of: Rule 1: don’t be a **** Rule 2: basically rule 1 but with more words Then why do you need a c…

The way I understand the necessity for CoCs is not to tell people how to behave, but to have a clear path to understanding why some people get removed or denied contributing to a project. It's easier to say "your behaviour contravenes our CoC" than "I don't like the way you're behaving".

I guess then it’s a cultural thing about avoiding confrontation, because to me there is nothing wrong to confront someone when they’re being a dick. No need to point at some rules, it’s self-evident and the project maintainers should be able to boot people that cannot behave.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#52

Post by mariusor »

sph wrote: post #51
mariusor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I understand the necessity for CoCs is not to tell people how to behave, but to have a clear path to understanding why some people get removed or denied contributing to a project. It's easier to say "your behaviour contravenes our CoC" than "I don't like the way you're behaving".

I guess then it’s a cultural thing about avoiding confrontation, because to me there is nothing wrong to confront someone when they’re being a dick. No need to point at some rules, it’s self-evident and the project maintainers should be able to boot people that cannot behave.

I didn't mean it in that way, but people think having a codified set of rules makes it look less arbitrary and less of an abuse of privilege when they decide to boot someone.

I'm in your camp to be honest, as a maintainer I feel like I need no other justification than "I don't like you" for refusing someone access to my project.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#53

Post by duskwuff »

hitekker wrote: post #14

I’ve enjoyed https://github.com/WiseLibs/better-sqlite3/blob/master/docs/... as a code of conduct. Simple, well-motivated, well-practiced (I think). Unlike more convoluted CoCs, it’s tightly scoped on work, not fun. Specific labor intended to produce contributions instead of enjoyable social experiences. I feel a lot more OSS should avoid fun. Fun doesn’t seem to scale, especially when it gets in the way of real work…

What concerns me about that CoC is that the last point ("Attention to personal traits...") sounds like it could easily be interpreted to disallow members of minority groups from self-identifying. For an example of how this can play out, see:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/on-discourse-rules-about-poli...

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#54

Post by hexage1814 »

Symbiote wrote: post #19
mytailorisrich wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything can be selectively enforced and open to interpretation. Good questions are: What purpose does a CoC serve? How does it help? In most, if not all cases, they are not very helpful beyond, indeed, politics and drama because they turn into a weapon (on the assumption that this wasn't the aim all along). When a CoC is pushed by a company I think it's probably because companies need company policies for employee…

> What purpose does a CoC serve? How does it help? At work I think it has helped since we now have a clear procedure to follow if there's a problem. Having the Code of Conduct be a public document rather than only an internal one means there are fewer excuses available for not following it — for example someone can't claim they thought it would be OK to ask a developer for sex since we wrote down that that's not OK.…

>someone can't claim they thought it would be OK to ask a developer for sex since we wrote down that that's not OK.

The person who thought this would be okay will not be stopped by a Code of Conduct.

The people who know it's not okay don't need a Code of Conduct.

The whole thing is useless. This is the same retarded shit as people stating their pronouns, trying to engineer every social human relation.

Don't be a jerk with people. If someone looks a certain way, it would be kind to assume they want to be treated in a certain way, etc, etc. You don't need terms of conduct and similar bullshit for that.

Re: Eric S. Raymond to the OSS community on codes of conduct: Refuse to have one

#55

Post by znpy »

unsungNovelty wrote: post #39
znpy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely bogus argument. The core of the issue is that non-technical topics were brought into technical environments, creating heaps of drama, and then the concept of code of conduct was created to try and stir that drama. It’s basically addressing the symptoms rather than curing the disease: if you want to do foss, you have to accept you might be collaborating with somebody whose ideas are completely antithetical…

> Completely bogus argument. The core of the issue is that non-technical topics were brought into technical environments, creating heaps of drama, and then the concept of code of conduct was created to try and stir that drama. Yes. Looks like I didn't clarify my point in the main post. I don't think CoC is helping anyone. It is better to be without it. I was talking about how CoC's was being applied at present and ho…

> then you know why CoC came about

I've been on the Internet when flamewars were common, and CoC weren't a thing yet.

CoC (along with committees) are a very recent thing. They weren't introduced until certain people started exercising moral blackmail onto projects, people and organizations by pushing political topics into technical discussions.

Back in the days of flamewars there were a few rules and pretty much just moderators to enforce them.

Rules were simple, you were usually banned if your messages were either not civil (and here again, the bar was high), if your contributions were comically off-topic or if you spammed the forum/newsgroup/mailing list.

Post reply on HN