Rod Vagg's statement on the request to be removed from the Node.js CTC

> Sounds like you'd already made up your mind about Rod, and weren't keen to hear the other side.

I actually only read his side, although I stopped after a couple screen fulls as I recognized from experience that what I was reading was not a productive response to the situation at hand, but a defensive one.

I didn't know who Mr. Vagg was or his role in Node before reading his post, and without looking at posts/tweets from the people who opposed him, or having a clear grasp of the controversy, I still appreciated that he put the time toward a lengthy rebuttal. Writing a lot of words, for any reason, is a decent time investment. And it takes significantly more time to make it reasonably accommodating and (at least from my non-informed viewpoint) not obviously antagonistic. Whatever the merit of the arguments/complaints, I can at least appreciate that this is something important to him.

Since the primary complaints against him involve details that he does not specify (and may not be easily findable after a lot of digging), I was interested in the 3rd listed complaint, which was about how he allegedly conducted himself on Twitter:

> Most recently Rod tweeted in support of an inflammatory anti-Code-of-Conduct article. As a perceived leader in the project, it can be difficult for outsiders to separate Rod’s opinions from that of the project. Knowing the space he is participating in and the values of our community, Rod should have predicted the kind of response this tweet received. https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841*

Point 1 of his rebuttal:

> The post I linked to was absolutely not an anti-Code-of-Conduct article. It was an article written by an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of New Mexico, discussing free speech in general and suggesting a case against speech codes in American university campuses. In sharing this, I hoped to encourage meaningful discussion regarding the possible shortcomings of some standard Code of Conduct language. My intent was not to suggest that the Node.js project should not have a Code of Conduct in place.*

Point 4:

> To re-state for further clarity, I have not made a case against Codes of Conduct in general, but rather, would like to see ongoing discussion about how such social guidelines could be improved upon, as they clearly have impact on open source project health.

Here's his Tweet and its reply chain: https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841

I don't think the tweet rises to the level of demanding his removal. I don't know Vagg or his Twitter account so I don't know what his rhetorical style is (and I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt that Twitter is part-performance). But I didn't find his rebuttal to be convincing. It's not just that he tweeted out an article that may have annoyed/offended people. It's the way his tweet replies are what you'd expect from someone who just doesn't like CoC's, but is too politically savvy to say it, e.g.

"And folks who think there's a possibility that CoCs may not be achieving their stated aims? No room for discussion on that?"

"I accept that, but there are surely valid concerns about their current implementation that could lead to improved solutions"

"If we're talking evidence, I'd love to see some solid data on the use of CoCs, it doesn't exist, we just have to have faith."

"But I have witnessed the negatives, again and again, the most tragic are against those who don't naturally fit in"

Even accepting that Twitter is just not ideal for substantive debate, it's hard to not feel he's being less than upfront. He wants an open discussion about CoC's. But every tweet has the tone of "But maybe CoCs can be bad? Why isn't there data? etc etc". For the sake of argument, I'll happily assume his premise -- that CoCs may be inherently flawed and lead to the injustice they purport to fight -- but why doesn't he describe an actual example? Calling for "open discussion" and then just retorting with points so vague that no one can honestly discuss them is one of the most annoying things to see. e.g. "But there are surely valid concerns about their current implementation that could lead to improved solutions" If you think this surely must be the case, why don't you kick off the discussion with just one of those things you've considered?

Back to his posted rebuttal on Github. I'm glad that he pointed out his record for supporting Node.js's CoC and using CoC in his own projects. But when he says:

- "I have never made a case against the Node.js Code of Conduct."

- But on Twitter, he implies that people aren't skeptical enough of CoC's and that he has "witnessed the negatives, again and again".

Is his lack of criticism of Node.js CoC ("I have never made a case") because Node does it right? Or is it because he doesn't think it's worth it for him (in his position) to critique Node.js CoC (which is an understandable position). His rebuttal, when looking at the source material, doesn't feel direct enough to me. How can he claim that "the post I linked to was absolutely not an anti-Code-of-Conduct article" when the article starts off with:

"In this article, I’ll explore the science of neurodiversity, and how campus speech codes and restrictive speech norms impose impossible expectations on the social sensitivity, cultural awareness, verbal precision, and self-control of many neurodivergent people."

Concludes with:

"Campus speech codes discriminate against neurominorities."

Followed by:

"In a future article, I’ll outline a legal strategy to use the ADA to eliminate campus speech codes that discriminate against neurominorities."*

Reading the entire post a couple times over, if the professor believes that there are code of conducts that are not inherently discriminatory, he doesn't cite any evidence of their existence, or make an attempt to outline what an acceptable CoC looks like.

----

Putting aside all the other complaints leveled at Vagg -- not because I think they're unimportant, but because there's not enough info for outsiders to have an informed opinion -- I sincerely hope that Vagg and Node.js's governance can come to an amicable and transparent resolution at least on whether Node.js CoC is as good as it can be -- which seems reasonable if Vagg's public record of supporting it comes from his personal principles.

I do believe that CoC's are both well-intentioned and worth fighting for. And I also agree that they are and will always be a hard problem, because they attempt to address and mitigate hard problems. I don't know what the resolution to Node.js's conflict is, but the last thing we need is yet another fucking blowup in which the entire debate gets reduced to the lazy polemic of "Objective programmers yelled at by SJW soft scientists"

This is, as I see it, an unfortunate side effect of vastly under valuing intent and over valuing individual interpretations and how they make people feel. There needs to be a balance, and when there's not you end up with problems. If that's what happened in this case, it might have resulted in fault being a much more nebulous concept to those people.

It's possible he said some things which ended up hurting people's feelings. It's entirely possibly he had no intention his actions be interpreted as they were. In that case, if you over value intent, he did nothing wrong, and some people were being too sensitive. If you over value interpretation, he should have known better, and it's his responsibility to be on top of how his actions would be interpreted.

Neither extreme is even remotely workable for all situations. The only thing that works in practice is that people accept that their wording sometimes needs changing based on common perceptions of it, and also that people may not have interpreted something as intended and intention matters as well. The only way to do this in practice is to actually communicate intent and interpretation when there's a problem so corrections can be made if they apply, and to both parties being open to accepting those corrections. This is obviously impossible if there is no communication.

You, I like you. Best view on the matter so far. Thanks.

> I believe others were attempting to do the same with the Firefox JS engine (SpiderMonkey? I can't remember what it's called)

You don't mean Rhino? That was years ago when node was just gaining traction.