I Violated a Code of Conduct • Hacker News Board

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#841

Post by lesstenseflow » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #834

lesstenseflow wrote: post #813

> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture” (a concept I vehemently disagree with, since what is referred to as “cancellation” is often just “facing consequences”) haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded…

> haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded no due-process is in fact guilty and deserving of punishment. Mine is the unique case of an opaque and capricious CoC process being applied unjustly.' This isn't close to what he's saying. He's saying that despite the fact that the CoC enforcement got it wrong in his case, they are still valuable. You know like laws are still valuable des…

Good point. My expected reaction isn't "laws/CoC should be discarded" but "CoCs and their enforcement process is seriously flawed and needs revising."

Here there seem to be two issues: 1. Too-vague rules & 2. Unfair enforcement.

If we punished people for murder by forming a posse and summarily executing them, the reaction should be "yes murder should be forbidden but this enforcement process is seriously unfair and needs to be overhauled."

If we punish people for "being unkind" the reaction should be "this rule is unfair because it's not clear how one can go about following it and it is likely to be enforced highly subjectively which is likely to lead to enforcement based on personal bias, favoritism etc.."

What I think the author might see if he examined the situation with an open mind is that "be kind" (a rule he doesn't like) and "don't be sexist" (a rule he likes) both suffer from the issue of being vague and susceptible to extremely subjective interpretation. Reasonable people can (and do!) disagree about what is "kind," what is "sexist," or what is "racist," but these rules ignore this fact and take an "I'll know it when I see it" approach to kindness, sexism, racism etc. that is subject to the problems of arbitrariness, bias, and favoritism in all cases. I'm "haha"ing at the fact that the author refuses to consider this aspect of the problem: that it goes beyond just his case (other people think he's bad) to the cases of people that he thinks are bad.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#842

Post by derangedHorse » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #381

defen wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think we should generalize more, beyond codes of conduct: If you are building an adjudication process for resolving non-criminal personal conflicts (whether that be a Code of Conduct, an HR department, a Title IX proceeding, a professional organization, or something else), you should take a look at Anglo-derived common law and the safeguards against abuse that have been evolved over the centuries. That…

Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don't want to associate with you or me for reasons we don't find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relat…

People also have the right to associate, like a person could crash your party if it’s a public place and not against the law. You can also be a dick and find ways to actively ruin other people’s events. What I’m saying is that your comment doesn’t make sense since no one is owed anything, not even the right to disassociate. He’s within his “right” to complain about them dissociating themselves with him and pointing out things he thinks might help someone’s decision when it comes to associating with them

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#843

Post by therealjumbo » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #626

wruza wrote: post #515

CoCs were doomed to this from the beginning. Any set of strict/influential laws should be supported by a proper set of institutions like courts, lawyers, arbitration, judging practice. When you have rules and just a mob, you get nothing but a mob rule of power-hungry people. Why don't contributors openly reject this stupid system (not the rules themselves, which sound fine) and unseat these self-proclaimed procurator…

Much of the conversation here misses the point of CoCs (and org policies in general). I've led 200+ person community orgs and helped put in governance for Fortune 500s, it's all the same - policies are an exercise in leadership, and are exactly as effective as the leadership in place. Rules, policies, laws, Hammurabi's Code - they're all just leadership decisions made in advance. The problem here is that the leadersh…

>Rules, policies, laws, Hammurabi's Code - they're all just leadership decisions made in advance. The problem here is that the leadership clearly doesn't really care. They got a complaint, they "investigated," and they moved on. Classic "governance" - totally ineffective.

I definitely don't have the experience you do, but the regular judicial system (in most countries that aren't kafka-esque throughout history) has adversarial parties that are incentivized to find if the other party is wrong. That's very different from all the corporate, university or open source "governance" systems. Maybe they can't bear that additional cost, but it's a huge difference.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#844

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #162

This is a great example of how codifying good behavior into an all-encompassing Code of Conduct has a lot of unintended consequences. The organization's Code of Conduct was so broad-reaching, thorough, and explicit that it doesn't appear to have left any leeway for common sense. Why did they simply follow the explicit procedures of the CoC rather than stopping to question if what they were doing was the right thing t…

> explicit that it doesn't appear to have left any leeway for common sense. Why did they simply follow the explicit procedures of the CoC rather than stopping to question if what they were doing was the right thing to do?

It's good that they blindly applied their CoC in a case where it's clear-cut that it's bad, since it revealed the problems with the CoC. If they chose not to enforce it in this instance, then when a more political issue inevitably came up down the road, a similar bad result may have happened but without the backlash necessary to fix it.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#845

Post by Volundr » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

monksy wrote: post #839

lesstenseflow wrote: post #813

> I was concerned that if only partial information became available, the anti-CoC crowd might jump on this as an example of problems with codes of conduct more generally, or might point at this as part of “cancel culture” (a concept I vehemently disagree with, since what is referred to as “cancellation” is often just “facing consequences”) haha... 'Everyone else who gets accused of some transgression and is afforded…

It's mental gymnastics. I'm not convinced that CoCs are valuable. Even without the explicit language, you can still kick out people who behave badly. (IMO) The CoCs are just there to try to make a political statement about which groups of people they support and to justify groupthink. Anyways, to those people that believe there are a few minor slippages in what the CoC was intended for. I have been banned from a publ…

I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here.

You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's hard to be surprised or outraged you didn't get a second warning.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#846

Post by ALittleLight » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

wrsh07 wrote: post #766

creato wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound bad especially to you or the someone you know, but if the legal system (criminal or civil) was not able to act (presumably due to lack of evidence), then I don't think events or other organizations should act either.

I actually disagree The whole point is that the legal system is very slow, very hard to report to, and in some cases actively discourages assault / rape claims. CoCs can do better because they don't require as involved of a process I'm not too worried about someone being banned from an event on hearsay, but I am very concerned about serial harassers The former, while unfortunate, is not career ending. It just means t…

I think that's covered by the CoC free case too. If there is or isn't a CoC and you convince the organizer that someone assaulted you, the organizer can and should ban them.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#847

Post by belorn » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #695

ALittleLight wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebuilt? Why? Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference. The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's…

"Why should rules exist? We should just operate on intuitive feelings of what is or isn't acceptable all the time." Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse. In fact, you can easily read this post as a pro-COC argument. After all, the author is able to make a really strong case that he didn't really infringe on any part of the COC, and that the COC was poorly construc…

Explicit rules that create and escalate conflict is worse than implicit rules that assumes good faith and gives benefit of the doubt. Not all explicit rules are good and not all implicit ones are bad, and it depend a great lot of how enforcement is made.

Good formalized set of rules and rule enforcement focus on conflict resolution and deescalation, assumes good faith and give benefit of the doubt. Most legal system does this, but also community rules like Wikipedia.

From the article I don't see any attempt of conflict resolution between Joel Grus and Jeremy Howard. I don't see any process by NumFOCUS towards deescalation and refocusing towards a common goal. The process seem to have been opaque, the accusation hidden, purpose unclear. The authorities (the Code of Conduct committee) not held accountable. As a result it seems that their explicit rules did not serve a purpose of creating a professional environment.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#848

Post by goatinaboat » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

jawarner wrote: post #795

goatinaboat wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very large group of people have stated many times that that is not the case. They do not feel safe But what does that even mean in the context of an open source project? How is anyone actually “unsafe” from someone who may be on another continent and have no idea where they live? The word “unsafe” doesn’t mean anything any more, it’s just used to silence debate. “I feel unsafe so you should merge my PR without doin…

> The word “unsafe” doesn’t mean anything any more An alternate possibility is that you don't understand what people mean when they say they feel unsafe. Do you feel you have invested effort into empathizing with these concerns, or would you say your are more dismissive?

An alternate possibility is that you don't understand what people mean when they say they feel unsafe.

That is a possibility, but it’s unreasonable to expect that a person can redefine a common word in their own mind and expect everyone else to telepathically know what they “mean”. Especially in a primarily text based medium.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#849

Post by username90 » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #819

commandlinefan wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Besides the reams of examples of CoC's being abused and arbitrarily enforced like the one in the attached article you mean? I've never even heard of a CoC being applied in any way except a petty, bureaucratic way.

How about every time dang replies "Please don't do this" and links to the HN rules? Or bans repeat offenders? You don't hear about the system working right because it's inherently non-controversial.

Guidelines != CoC. People break the HN guidelines all the time and it is fine, they are there to help make people become better contributors and not to punish people.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#850

Post by monksy » Thu, Oct 29, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #845

monksy wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mental gymnastics. I'm not convinced that CoCs are valuable. Even without the explicit language, you can still kick out people who behave badly. (IMO) The CoCs are just there to try to make a political statement about which groups of people they support and to justify groupthink. Anyways, to those people that believe there are a few minor slippages in what the CoC was intended for. I have been banned from a publ…

I'd actually agree that banning you was probably a bit much but let's actually look at the chain of events from your own account here. You post "WTF @conferenceorgs". They warn you about swearing at their staff (I probably wouldn't treat it this way, but we do all know what the F stands for). You respond by... swearing at their staff? When you get a warning, then respond to that warning by repeating the offense it's…

The language was never directed at their staff. It was directed towards the communication I got from them, and how I believe it makes the org look themselves(note). The tagging was to alert them that it was going on. Attacking individuals is completely unwarranted.

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For the sake of conversion: What counts as harassment- is the org an individual? Does exclaiming frustration for a situation and getting the attention of someone count as an attack on the individuals notified?

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Note: I believe that if an org can't communicate what's going on and why you may be seeing erroneous emails from a third party, what is going on with their virtual currency that is traded for real world value. Why should I trust that org with $30k a year for a dev server?