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 put in a markdown file is not enforceable.
And we didn’t even talk about how it is being misused. People would point to these documents to silence and shut out people they don’t like and at the same time tolerate poor behavior that are clearly in violation of code of conduct by people they do like or whose politics or opinions they share.
It is all just a charade to help you pretend that you are impartial.
throwaway9917 6 hours ago [-]
My experience with a CoC at a meetup was that one day a bunch of people piled on the mailing list for the meetup demanding that the meetup adopt a CoC. The majority of these people were people that either only infrequently showed up, or hadn't ever shown up to the meetup. The CoC they demanded had a bunch of social justice language. When questioned on the mailing list as to the events that had precipitated the demand, one person said they had attended a meeting and had "felt uncomfortable." However, the organizer of the meetup actually took attendance, and it turned out that the complainer had not attended that day. The whole thing seemed like a ploy to turn the meetup from people who all used the same programming language into some sort of social activism group. This was at the height of #MeToo, and it appeared that this was being weaponized to take over successful technical groups through sympathy for women.
Avshalom 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1 hours ago [-]
weird-eye-issue 14 hours ago [-]
> And we didn’t even talk about how it is being misused. People would point to these documents to silence and shut out people they don’t like and at the same time tolerate poor behavior that are clearly in violation of code of conduct by people they do like or whose politics or opinions they share.
Has it occurred to you that's actually exactly why they exist? :)
mzhaase 13 hours ago [-]
I have seen multiple CoC being installed with completely good intentions so no.
weird-eye-issue 13 hours ago [-]
Have you ever heard the saying about good intentions? And just because you perceive something that way doesn't mean that's the reality
blueflow 14 hours ago [-]
I mean. Whenever a code of conduct was installed in a project i was passionate about, i could look up the contributor on twitter/fediverse and see that they are a zealot about their cause. Deflecting and uncompromising, very unagreeable. They would be the last persons to know how to make a community comfy.
raxxorraxor 9 hours ago [-]
It just wasn't a very wholesome crowd. I don't have to like everyone, but I expect everyone to not try to ban people just because they have the unfavorable opinion du jours. Maybe write that in a COC, but it should be a premise to begin with.
On a completely unrelated note, you very, very rarely find real fascists in open source software projects.
And for even less favorable characters it seemed that it was just powerplay by some actors that wouldn't convince their own mother that they are the most untoxic of them all.
ranger_danger 10 hours ago [-]
Not surprised at the downvotes but this also matches my experience exactly.
These people (who push for CoCs so heavily) in my experience tend to hypocritically attack and censor opinions they don’t like, while not understanding why people won’t "accept them for who they are".
They are desperate to be the center of attention and love to play the victim.
It’s like the bullied becomes the bully sort of thing. They spend more time arguing over weaponized CoCs and ideological SJW politics instead of writing code. It doesn’t help that many of them self-admittedly suffer from mental health problems.
HankStallone 9 hours ago [-]
Right. I've seen a CoC used as a power-grab by people who had barely made any contributions to a project, when the people in charge were too easy-going or naive to shut down dishonest use of it, so they tended to side with the squeaky wheel. Once the bad actors got people they didn't like removed or driven away from the project, they just got worse, saying things like "go kill yourself" without consequence, because they were now in control and could interpret the code however they liked or just ignore it.
You can't write a CoC that will prevent bad behavior from bad actors in charge, so it's worthless at best and a weapon for the unscrupulous at worst. What matters is who enforces standards of behavior, and if those people are decent and honest, no written code is necessary.
duxup 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah I'd like to see some examples of "these code of conducts did good thing" before I buy into these things.
atoav 2 hours ago [-]
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 person is going to define it for you.
And beyond a certain size formalizing that makes sense. Not as a tool for punishment or to point to, but so everybody can be on the same page and you know if someone acts out of line they do so despite better knowledge.
If a code of conducts contains stuff you are within the bounds of anyways, why would you care it is there?
squigz 14 hours ago [-]
Having something you can point to and say "This is why you're being removed" often removes some headaches. Some people will claim it's unjustified, moderator abuse, etc, if you don't. At least with some rules, there's less wiggle room. Of course, some people are going to respond poorly even with some rules, but it's also not just about the offenders - other community members being able to see there's some logic and reason to removals is good.
hnfong 6 hours ago [-]
It's never about the rules, it's always about the perceived authority of the moderator or the decision maker.
This is very much so for small communities who don't have the infrastructure to litigate issues in a legalistic manner... but, even in areas like public law, the rules don't really matter, it's the perceived authority and impartiality of the courts that keep a legal system up and running. (think of any controversial Supreme Court decision -- do people really care what the law actually says and whether the legal reasoning is sound... or do they just speculate about the political leanings of the judges?)
Since most people writing up CoCs aren't good lawyers or experts in drafting (and finding loopholes in) rules... having a smaller "attack surface" actually makes a lot of sense.
That said, if the community is large or important enough that it already retains some legal advisors, then maybe yeah, make the rules more specific or something.
HelloNurse 13 hours ago [-]
Assuming a majority of nice people, explicit rules can be exploited by a few assholes against their "enemies", while trusted human moderators only need to be kept in check with elections.
serial_dev 13 hours ago [-]
> often removes some headaches (...) with some rules, there's less wiggle room
... I understand that's the theory, but in practice, I've never seen it working that way.
I don't see how having the CoC affects any of this. If someone is behaving poorly, first of all, a CoC will not deter them. If someone behaves so poorly that you decide you need to remove them, the community (the small portion of people who give a f) should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say (without pointing to a document you put in your repo when you were bored), that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision".
Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
crashabr 13 hours ago [-]
People have different level of tolerance to negative behavior. That includes both your team and your community. Having a clear rules allows you to
1) point both involved and uninvolved people to the code of conduct when you end up taking action.
2) avoid disparity of enforcement within your team
3) funnel disagreements (from both teammates or community members) by focusing them on the rule, rather than on a general debate on how should the community should be managed.
If people commit a lot of energy to a community/project then for many "I didn't like this behavior, end of discussion" won't cut it.
lelanthran 7 hours ago [-]
> If people commit a lot of energy to a community/project then for many "I didn't like this behavior, end of discussion" won't cut it.
Of course it does. If the community/project leaders are not aligned with your ideology, it's better to find one with alignment than to attempt to corner them with a written set of rules.
ang_cire 13 hours ago [-]
> If someone is behaving poorly, first of all, a CoC will not deter them
I think you mean, "if someone is behaving poorly, the coc did not deter them".
The people who it did deter aren't behaving poorly.
serial_dev 13 hours ago [-]
I'm just having a hard time imagining someone who wants to be racist sexist xenophobe jerk to other people, but they saw you drafted a CoC last year in the root of your repository, so they won't... Or they were racist sexist xenophobe jerks, then you point out that "our community has a CoC", and they will stop.
None of these things happen in real life.
OkayPhysicist 11 minutes ago [-]
Written rules aren't for the offenders, they're for the conflict-adverse community members who get uncomfortable when someone needs to be thrown out for community health reasons. They don't really have strong opinions supporting the person's behavior, but they're uncomfortable with the idea of people getting exiled from the community, so come slithering out to protest when an asshole is exiled for being an asshole. Since their primary reason for speaking up in the first place is discomfort with conflict, a quick "they broke the rules" tends defuse further argument.
thunderfork 4 hours ago [-]
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squigz 8 hours ago [-]
In my experience, it absolutely does help. But everyone has their own experiences.
> should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's not a matter of the action being transparent, it's the motivations. Sometimes, it's not clear to community members why the action was taken, if there's no CoC or rules. "They're being an asshole" is a lot more subjective than "They were breaking the rules"
> It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say, without pointing to a document you just put in your repo, that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision". Just my 2c.
Sure, this might work for a small community or group, but the fiasco with Nix seems to suggest this isn't the case at a certain size. Some people apparently want accountability and transparency from their moderators.
> Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
Great! That's fine! Not every community needs such things. Some do.
danaris 11 hours ago [-]
> If someone is behaving poorly, first of all, a CoC will not deter them.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true.
You're treating humanity as if it's divided into two distinct sections: Those Who Behave Well, and Those Who Behave Poorly.
In reality, different humans have different ranges of ways they prefer to act, and most are quite amenable to reasonable, clearly-stated codes of conduct for interaction in a particular space.
There is a small subset of people who are either deliberately antisocial for the sake of it (trolls/griefers/etc), and another subset that are genuinely just assholes who will, if given the leeway to do so, cause endless problems in a community.
But there are many, many more who would cause friction with others in such a community without a code of conduct not because they actively want to, but because their unstated assumptions about how people should interact clash with the unstated assumptions of other people there. Having the code of conduct lets everyone coming in in good faith align their expectations and avoid these unnecessary conflicts. They're like a Session 0 in a TTRPG in that sense.
ranger_danger 10 hours ago [-]
> But there are many, many more who would cause friction with others in such a community without a code of conduct
Hard disagree... I've never seen one have this effect. IMO you don't need a CoC to suddenly understand what should already be common sense i.e. don't be a dick. Either they were already going to act that way, or they weren't.
danaris 9 hours ago [-]
> I've never seen one have this effect.
How do you think you would see it?
Under normal circumstances, what it would look like from the outside is just...someone not causing friction, because there is a code of conduct. Or someone causing friction, because there isn't one.
The former looks identical to someone who would never have caused trouble in the first place, and the latter looks, if not identical, at least very similar to someone who would have caused trouble, no matter what.
rpdillon 3 hours ago [-]
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.
ranger_danger 4 hours ago [-]
The way I see it, the people who would cause friction anyway won't be stopped by a CoC.
And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Another commenter (cannot find their name now but I saved the text) said exactly what my experience has been:
> A written code of conduct can legitimize petty disputes based on interpretations of the text, even if the issue itself is something easily addressable like using the word “master” in a programming context. It can become a tool for manipulation (pushing someone out for “CoC violation” vs simply correcting the wording).
danaris 2 hours ago [-]
> The way I see it, the people who would cause friction anyway won't be stopped by a CoC.
> And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Both correct. By definition, in fact.
CoCs are for the people in the middle of those. Who do, in fact, exist.
curtisblaine 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
chrislo 14 hours ago [-]
What evidence do you have for that? I was involved in adopting a code of conduct for a local tech meetup and we did that because a couple of incidents that weren't handled very well left other people feeling unsafe and unwelcome. Having some guidelines in place reassured folks that we took those concerns seriously and gave us a framework to deal with unwanted behaviour.
belorn 10 hours ago [-]
From my experience, writing rules directly after incidents and as a reaction to incidents do not produce good results. New members of the community 5-10 years later will have no understanding of what the rules are trying to do or why they exist, and when a new incident occur the rules get rewritten again and again. The only effect is the optics as in sending a message that "we take those concern serious", but without substance, and again from experience, those people who was leaning to leave will still leave regardless.
What has worked in communities I have been active in is to have continuously conversations, in combination with a no-blame culture that provide social safety for people to bring up issues and also room for people to improve without feeling personally attacked (which is the opposite of social safety).
arpinum 13 hours ago [-]
Anti-meritocracy was in in some CoCs, arguing in its favour was a reason for exclusion from an event / project. Even if the argument happened somewhere else on the internet and not in the project.
vkou 13 hours ago [-]
Whenever I see someone dying on the hill of fighting for 'meritocracy', in the words of another poster in this subthread, I have found them to be:
> ...a zealot about their cause. Deflecting and uncompromising, very unagreeable. They would be the last persons to know how to make a community comfy.
... And typically with a giant chip on their shoulder. The real world's a little bit more complicated than the spherical cows that the near-religious faith in it requires.
raxxorraxor 9 hours ago [-]
It highly depends on what you understand that word to mean. At first it was just meant to to pronounce fairness. Nothing more to it. It was used in a context to explicitly disregard who people are and focus on what they do.
And of course it wasn't meant as an instruction manual for how to run a society. It was quite explicitly a message that you are not judged by who you are. That is it, there is no ideology, there is no grand idea. That is media garbage that filled your head with a phantom.
And honestly, that did a much better job than most COC I read.
I'm not sure how your comment is relevant. No one is fighting for meritocracy here. Only providing the requested information about a case where CoC pushed a specific political view and excluded others.
StopDisinfo910 14 hours ago [-]
CoC always appeared to me as a US issue which could pretty much be safely ignored by anyone living in the rest of the world. I generally dislike how they tend to be written as objective rules while actually being imperialist but most of them can safely be boiled down to act like a normal professional person.
The implied subtext of "avoid topic the US finds morally objectionable and when in doubt act like an American would" is what I dislike from a theorical point of view but the truth is, it doesn't really matter on a day to day basis.
So yes, CoC seems mostly harmless but also mostly useless. I tend to agree with the article point that if this is the case, keeping them short seems optimal.
ranger_danger 10 hours ago [-]
The problem I have seen with them is that they get weaponized. Someone can point to a specific rule in the CoC that has very subjective language in it, and claim that you are violating the rules, when really they're just doing that to silence opinions they don't like.
This is further proven when any attempts to discuss said rule/policy are immediately shut down with even more staunch black-and-white opinions and zero empathy... even if you wait until later to discuss it in a different setting.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
> could pretty much be safely ignored by anyone living in the rest of the world.
While it would be nice if all the ignorant assholes in the world lived in America... this is not the case :)
noelwelsh 13 hours ago [-]
Good article. This sentence from the conclusion nails it:
> What is needed now is not the unthinking adoption of a one-size-fits-all template, but a “right-sized” approach tailored to the scale, culture, and goals of each individual project.
I feel a lot of the heavy CoCs are a product of low-trust cultures, particularly the US, which attempt to replace interpersonal relationships with legalese. This is honestly not necessary in most projects, which are generally high-trust environments.
tharne 3 hours ago [-]
I really like heavy codes of conduct. They're the Open Source project equivalent of those brightly colored frogs in the tropics. They're kind enough to signal their own toxicity so others know to keep their distance.
trwcock 14 hours ago [-]
Is programming lame enough yet that we can get away from everything being done by hr and get back to doing cool things with weird people?
thrance 13 hours ago [-]
Define "weird people".
k33n 14 hours ago [-]
Hopefully! And it takes every kind of weird to make it fun. You don't have to like or hang with everyone in a community. But sometimes the people you don't understand personally wind up being the ones you will respect the most from a skill/talent perspective. A strong foundation of mutual respect built up over time is how you create real tolerance and even change minds.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
The irony of deriding CoCs while reminiscing about doing things with "weird people"
"Weird people" being discriminated against and harassed is why CoCs exist.
swiftcoder 13 hours ago [-]
It really depends whether "weird people" means people with unusual hobbies/sexualities/clothes/hair/etc, or "weird people" means the ones who want to keep all the first category of people out...
pessimizer 2 hours ago [-]
Not for people with boundaries. I've done work I was absolutely delighted with in both process and product with people whose views I detest. If you can't grow up enough to do that, you can't have a civilization.
If I have to like you in order for us not to fight, I warn you that we're going to have to fight.
codeduck 14 hours ago [-]
CoC are like club rules. Useless - except for when you want to make an example of someone.
lelanthran 11 hours ago [-]
> CoC are like club rules. Useless - except for when you want to make an example of someone.
That, and also for selective enforcement.
3form 14 hours ago [-]
I'm not very involved in the topic, so my POV might be very wrong - but most effective enforcement, from my overall life experience, is having someone act as a "bad guy" and sharply deal consequences to the people that behave like assholes.
I feel that having a detailed COC, while a very good sentiment in theory, in practice must bring about people who will try their best to skirt around the edge of COC and make trouble for the maintainers - who I expect want to stay "nice", but they're forced to act harshly in the end anyway.
astanm 14 hours ago [-]
This, from the Ruby CoC, is key:
> Participants are expected to be tolerant of opposing views.
If you can't tolerate that others will have different perspectives to you then it means you're likely to be a very difficult and inflexible person to work with.
swiftcoder 13 hours ago [-]
Something, something, paradox of tolerance.
Diverse views on software development? Great. Diverse views on whether various groups deserve human rights? Not great.
astanm 10 hours ago [-]
The latter would be off-topic for a programming language discussion forum, certainly. But working with others that happen to hold differing views on that topic? Not a problem.
It would be unreasonable to expect everyone to have the same perspective on political issues.
notarget137 9 hours ago [-]
It baffles me how much political every aspect of life has become.
We can't just talk about things and hold genuine discussion. It always boils down to "us vs. them" standpoint.
swiftcoder 9 hours ago [-]
I think we are likely to disagree on whether "group X is not entitled to human rights" is a legitimate political view
astanm 7 hours ago [-]
As long as these views aren't thrashed out in the collaborative spaces to which the CoC applies, it doesn't really matter.
(As a personal preference, I'd rather not know the political views, legitimate or otherwise, of people I work with. It's not relevant.)
swiftcoder 3 hours ago [-]
If said people kept their opinions to themselves, the issue would never arise in the first place. Pretty much the whole problem in semi-public spaces like this is that folks with strong reactionary beliefs don’t tend to leave them at the door
notarget137 10 hours ago [-]
It's almost like theese two should not collide in any context from either side...
swiftcoder 8 hours ago [-]
It's not been my experience that racists/sexists/homophobes/antisemites/etc can keep it strictly professional with members of the group they hate
pjc50 13 hours ago [-]
This is one of those things that falls apart on the actual content. If you have a trans contributor and someone who comes in with trans-eliminationist rhetoric, you can't then turn round and say the trans person is being "inflexible" for refusing to work with them.
skissane 40 minutes ago [-]
Likely more than 50% of the world's population agrees with viewpoints that some would label "trans-eliminationist rhetoric". So if you are saying anyone who ever expresses such viewpoints–even in forums completely unrelated to the project–is barred from contributing to it, you are potentially excluding more than half of contemporary humanity.
OkayPhysicist 7 minutes ago [-]
A community doesn't exist for "the majority of the world". It exists for its community. If a community doesn't want bigots (as they shouldn't), they absolutely should exclude them.
thunderfork 25 minutes ago [-]
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astanm 10 hours ago [-]
That would be covered under the next part of the Ruby CoC:
> Participants must ensure that their language and actions are free from personal attacks and disparaging remarks.
And anyway, rhetoric which advocates for killing groups of people would be very off-topic for a programming language discussion forum. Unlikely it would come up in conversation except for deliberate trolling.
ryandrake 7 hours ago [-]
Holy moly, what kind of open source projects are y'all working on? I don't even understand how these topics could come up in a Pull Request. Are people writing and reviewing code in these projects?
HelloNurse 13 hours ago [-]
The correct answer is reacting harshly to "trans-eliminationist rhetoric" from a weird extremist, with an ultimatum or immediate expulsion, before the trans contributor complains.
astanm 10 hours ago [-]
If someone is posting along the lines of "send them all to the death camps" etc. on the mailing lists or discussion boards, for any group, that would be covered under the other items in the Ruby CoC, where participants are expected not to harass or disparage.
Also it would be very off-topic for a programming language forum.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
Someone will say that that person shouldn't be bringing any sort of politics into it, so they should be removed, no CoCs needed for that.
Then someone will point out that they might have this stuff on their Github profile, or website. They're free to do so, of course. But it would be wrong to remove them for that, right? But then any trans contributor that sees this crap is what, forced to work with them anyway?
ishouldbework 13 hours ago [-]
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PlunderBunny 13 hours ago [-]
I feel like this is similar to civil and criminal laws: When codes of conduct are very detailed, lawyers will argue fine points on the wording. When they are simple and general, people can't be 'rules lawyers', but you need to have authority to enforce decisions, and respect for that authority.
duxup 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder what folks think when they're flagging stories like this.
w4rh4wk5 14 hours ago [-]
Maybe a bit of an unpopular opinion here, but I still think the benevolent dictator is the way to go for open-source projects. If you are unhappy with how things are handled, fork it and do better.
However, there's probably a cutoff point for core infrastructure where we should move away from having a single person in charge.
lelanthran 12 hours ago [-]
> Maybe a bit of an unpopular opinion here, but I still think the benevolent dictator is the way to go for open-source projects. If you are unhappy with how things are handled, fork it and do better.
If I start a project that attracts contributors[1], I don't see anything wrong with rejecting someone's CoC "contribution" with "I am the code of conduct. We don't need another one."
==================
[1] I try not to do that, btw.
ranger_danger 10 hours ago [-]
> If you are unhappy with how things are handled, fork it and do better.
Yes, but often the projects where this happens are just big enough to where one person cannot realistically maintain their own fork to the same level that users will expect if they are looking to jump ship.
What I've seen happen more often than not, is even if the person does attempt a fork, they either get constantly attacked by existing users, or stop working on it within a year, or both.
TylerLives 13 hours ago [-]
Posts like this always remind me of Vaclav Havel's "The Power of the Powerless". You are completely misunderstanding the original purpose behind the CoC. Here's the relevant part:
"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology."
relaxing 11 hours ago [-]
Havel was writing about life under Soviet occupation. The open source project CoC does not come from a party official who demands you post it in your shop window (public repo.)
It comes from people who believe shitty behavior hurts projects and needs to stop.
bn-l 3 hours ago [-]
My theory is that this is designed to kill open source.
A_D_E_P_T 14 hours ago [-]
> DHH condemned detailed and strict CoC like the Contributor Covenant as a “trojan horse” that should be purged from projects. ESR went even further, asserting that CoC are nothing more than a “tool for troublemakers” and that the best course of action is to delete them entirely from projects.
At this point, in 2025, does anybody seriously doubt that they're a "tool for troublemakers"? A lot of people who would otherwise contribute see a hyper-particular CoC, written by an HR type or an aspiring lawyer, and walk away. Others don't bother to read the CoC and may later be dragged through coals over something exceedingly minor, despite their contributions.
In open-source, the best policy is to avoid CoCs and avoid those who write and promote them.
HelloNurse 12 hours ago [-]
Personally, I assume one or more problematic activists behind any prominent project CoC.
Some might be well-intentioned but unreasonable and hard to discuss with, some might be dangerously fanatic and a constant threat, some might be power-hungry manipulators giving themselves leverage, all are a liability for the project.
Normal people shouldn't need anything more than normal morality and acceptable manners to be good project contributors.
florkbork 13 hours ago [-]
Let's restate your points a bit, but using the words "ethics" rather than CoC.
Is publishing an ethical standpoint a "trouble making"? Depends, doesn't it? What if you examine the most common top ethical viewpoints you are aware of. For me, it's loud groups like say, PETA, Extinction Rebellion, etc who are fairly populist.
Are they making trouble? Sure. But for whom? Would you personally do what these people are doing? Probably no. Would you personally do what the people they are "making trouble" for are doing? (In my example, Animal harm, empowering climate change?)
I am going to suggest that you would probably say "no, I don't want to harm things/people/etc; as I would probably feel bad for doing it and being personally responsible".
If thought through like this - even if your examples of ethics are not what I chose - can you see the value in a strong, clear ethical position, even if it's to warn people?
Can you see that it might challenge authority (trouble making), but that is not a bad thing a lot of the time?
A_D_E_P_T 11 hours ago [-]
> Let's restate your points a bit, but using the words "ethics" rather than CoC. Is publishing an ethical standpoint a "trouble making"?
Most software projects are ethically neutral and don't need a "standpoint." In tech, those "ethical standpoints" are often tacked-on by people who want to use them as a tool to exercise social control over other contributors, including project founders and visionaries. (There tends to be, in any given Western organization over n people in size, a clique that's really into this.)
I have no idea how CoCs are used in PETA, but obviously groups that have ethics as their core focus -- which includes religions and social welfare groups -- have long lists of proscriptions, policies, etc. I don't think that any of it necessarily applies to open-source software, though. It's apples to oranges.
> If thought through like this - even if your examples of ethics are not what I chose - can you see the value in a strong, clear ethical position, even if it's to warn people?
Well, that's precisely my point: The CoC itself is the warning. It's usually bad news in itself -- an exposed surface that's weaponizable against contributors who give to the project in good faith.
yakshaving_jgt 7 hours ago [-]
I think you should understand quite how bad your examples are. I understand the examples you gave are given in the best of intentions, but this reads as pure blissful ignorance.
PETA literally funded a terrorist convicted of arson.
> A page from the 1995 annual tax return (form 990) of People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), showing a $45,200 payment for
the ``support committee'' of Rodney Coronado, a felon. Mr. Coronado was
convicted of arson in federal court for the 1992 firebombing of a
Michigan State University research lab.
---
> Would you personally do what the people they are "making trouble" for are doing?
Would I eat meat? Yes.
Would I keep animals as pets? Yes.
Do I think it's ethical for humans to use animals for service, e.g., guide dogs for the blind? Yes.
Do I think it's ethical to use animal models in medical research? Yes.
Not trying to defend anyone, just looking for objective evidence.
yakshaving_jgt 2 hours ago [-]
> Not trying to defend anyone, just looking for objective evidence.
Fair.
## guide dogs
> [PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk] regards the use of Seeing Eye dogs as an abdication of human responsibility and, … is wholly opposed to their use. She has had at least one dog taken from its owner.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The utter insanity of PETA is actually very well documented, so if you have an evening, grab a bottle of wine and go down that ~rabbit~ hole.
swiftcoder 13 hours ago [-]
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
throwaway2046 12 hours ago [-]
You can address the contents of the article and the views expressed by the author directly without resorting to ad hominem.
swiftcoder 12 hours ago [-]
I don't see how that is ad hominem - those are the expressed views of DHH and ESR, as they have repeatedly placed in writing, of their own free will.
They are also explicitly the type of views that CoCs are designed to protect contributors from, hence why DHH and ESR would be opposed to CoCs in general.
warp 13 hours ago [-]
If having a CoC keeps folks like DHH and ESR out of a particular project, then I think the CoC is serving a valuable purpose.
curtisblaine 14 hours ago [-]
CoCs are one of the reasons why I choose to not contribute. I don't enjoy the risk of someone with an axe to grind to drag me into some absurd GitHub comments drama and feel justified by some generic wording on the CoC.
silisili 3 hours ago [-]
Same, but for slightly different reasons. I was a big open source contributor of a few well known projects, but the CoC stuff just kinda soured me on it all.
Not because I enjoy reading or writing hate speech or anything, but these were places that didn't tend to have any obvious problems with troublemakers, so it felt self congratulatory. And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of bikeshedding the discussions around it became, mostly from people who'd never even contributed to the project.
It suddenly made me realize there were probably more productive and less frustrating ways to spend my time.
Mashimo 14 hours ago [-]
But could they not do the same without a CoC?
lelanthran 12 hours ago [-]
> But could they not do the same without a CoC?
Sure, but someone who went to the trouble to get their view enforced in writing is probably already a zealot I don't want to deal with.
Depends a lot on the group size, too - a few hundred contributors probably needs some rules written down. A few dozen? Not so much.
cybrox 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, that's the point of why CoCs are essentially useless.
Humans should be able to interact politely in any setting and if they don't, the issue needs to be settled with good old human interaction anyways.
rpdillon 3 hours ago [-]
This is how I feel. I treat the presence of a code of conduct as a sign that, particularly for small projects, the folks running the project don't have experience leading others. Always comes down to the relationship, the individuals involved, and the way things are communicated.
ricardobeat 14 hours ago [-]
They could, but then it’s their word vs yours, not you vs sacred Code-of-Conduct.
rurban 4 hours ago [-]
They are even harmful. Very harmful
squigz 14 hours ago [-]
It seems some people need to re-read the title and article and consider the words "heavy", "bureaucratic" and the like
No, CoCs - or rules in general - are not inherently bad. HN has some, which the moderators and the community enforce well, and it's generally one of the best platforms on the Internet for intelligent discussion.
Yes, heavy CoCs can be weaponized and abused, if there is little or no trust between the community and its leaders. But with or without a CoC, such a community will always be prone to such abuse. You think moderators need to establish a CoC to push their politics on people if they want? How does that even make sense? Why not just... do that, without a CoC?
ricardobeat 13 hours ago [-]
A written code of conduct can legitimize petty disputes based on interpretations of the text, even if the issue itself is something easily addressable like using the word “master” in a programming context. It can become a tool for manipulation (pushing someone out for “CoC violation” vs simply correcting the wording).
squigz 13 hours ago [-]
I don't see how that is an issue with CoCs. Those people would still try this with or without a CoC - whether the moderators/maintainer acquiesce is the real issue, and, again, is separate from having a CoC.
majorchord 10 hours ago [-]
> Those people would still try this with or without a CoC
Perhaps, but I think it may make the moderator more likely to side with the abuser if they are able to point to a specific part of the CoC that is allegedly being violated, even if that requires colorful interpretation.
yakshaving_jgt 14 hours ago [-]
> You think moderators need to establish a CoC to push their politics on people if they want? How does that even make sense? Why not just... do that, without a CoC?
I don't think this is what generally happens, or what people are wary of. I think group participants [sometimes] coerce moderators into establishing a CoC in order to have a tool to reach for in service of silencing voices they regard as "problematic".
HankStallone 9 hours ago [-]
Often the moderator is the project lead (or one of them), who may not be suited to adjudicating personal disputes and probably has better things to do. That can result in siding with the louder faction in the hopes that giving them what they want will satisfy them and let everyone get back to work. Or worse, turning the job of moderation over to them because they seem to want it, and then the petty tyranny is off to the races.
I think that happens less now that people are aware of the danger; but a decade or so ago it was a real problem because no one saw it coming.
squigz 13 hours ago [-]
> silencing voices they regard as "problematic".
I'm going to push past this extraordinarily bad faith framing. I'm going to assume you're referring to people who are made to feel uncomfortable or are harassed by other members of the community.
So if that community doesn't have a CoC, and those members talk to the moderators, and the moderators take action... is that coercion too? Is that the moderators or those members pushing their political views on the community? Should the moderators just not do anything?
yakshaving_jgt 13 hours ago [-]
> I'm going to assume you're referring to people who are made to feel uncomfortable or are harassed by other members of the community.
It has been my experience that there are both members of groups typically regarded as marginalised who have been harrassed, and also members of groups typically regarded as marginalised who harass others. There are surely more variations of this too.
My most recent experience of this was a member of a group typically regarded as marginalised harassing one of my colleagues — who is also a member of a group typically regarded as marginalised, but perhaps less so if you subscribe to the legitimacy of intersectionality — at a software development conference with an established CoC.
The incident was reported, and the repercussions for the harasser amounted to exactly nil.
> So if that community doesn't have a CoC, and those members talk to the moderators, and the moderators take action... is that coercion too?
No.
> Is that the moderators or those members pushing their political views on the community?
That really depends on the circumstance.
> Should the moderators just not do anything?
Moderators should take action on CoC violations as proportionately, fairly, and impartially as they can.
> I'm going to push past this extraordinarily bad faith framing.
It is extraordinarily tiring and depressing that anything proffered that contradicts the orthodoxy of the culture that most readily endorses the establishment of CoCs is immediately dismissed as an argument in "bad faith".
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
It's likewise tiring and depressing that you framed everybody who wants CoCs the way you did.
> No.
Then I'm not sure why it would be coercion for them to talk to the moderators about writing down the rules.
yakshaving_jgt 8 hours ago [-]
It's strange — I wrote "sometimes", and you wrote "everybody".
If I had meant "everybody", I would not have written "sometimes".
13 hours ago [-]
lowsong 14 hours ago [-]
A big part of a CoC that this article, as most discussions on the topic, miss is that they provide a signal to new contributors from marginalized groups, who may have faced abuse or violence in other spaces, that this community will be safe for them to contribute to and - as many anti-CoC folk like to say - get on with the tech.
Not having a CoC doesn't mean a project is going to be unsafe to work in. But it means when another community member refuses to work with you, or belittles your work constantly, there is nothing to be done. For many, why take the risk. This means that projects are starving themselves of contributors because they don't create an environment that is safe.
Ruby's "CoC" is actually a fantastic example of why you need to spell it out too. "Participants are expected to be tolerant of opposing views." is often weaponized by abusers who like to paint basic requests like "please use my chosen name" as "not being tolerant".
kelnos 40 minutes ago [-]
> But it means when another community member refuses to work with you, or belittles your work constantly, there is nothing to be done.
No it doesn't. It just means that there isn't a formal process. The aggrieved party can always contact the project leaders/maintainers, and lodge a complaint.
Sure, the leaders may not do anything with your complaint, but a CoC doesn't guarantee that they will either (even if it does give you a warm fuzzy feeling up-front that they might).
I find it incredibly infantilizing this idea that people can't be good to each other, or people can't feel safe, without some sort of document that lays out behavior expectations. It's so so simple: don't be a dick to people. If someone is being a dick to you, find someone with authority and send them the evidence. If they handle it to your satisfaction, great. If not, stay away from that project, because it's run by people who at worst don't care about you, or at best are inept at handling this sort of thing (and in either case, a CoC is not going to make it better).
For leaders/maintainers, grow a spine. If someone is behaving badly (regardless of whether or not someone complains), talk to them and give them a chance to improve. If their behavior gets better, great. If not, eject them from the community. If they or others aren't happy with your reaction, that's their problem, not yours.
throwaway2046 13 hours ago [-]
> marginalized groups, who may have faced abuse or violence in other spaces
Can you cite examples of users facing abuse or violence while contributing to a tech project? And how exactly does a CoC guarantee the safety you mentioned?
> when another community member refuses to work with you
Members are free to choose who to work with regardless of whether a CoC exists or not.
> belittles your work constantly
Your work may not be up to the project's standards and anyone pointing that out may hurt your feelings, and that's fine. You can't expect project maintainers to coddle each contributor when there's work to be done. Most CoCs are at odds with that because they value contributors' feelings over clear communication that helps a project advance.
> there is nothing to be done
You could communicate your grievances to the project maintainers directly, but you're not guaranteed a reply even with a CoC. In fact I'd argue that with a CoC it's easier for maintainers to dismiss criticism by labeling it as "non welcoming" or "non inclusive" or any other loose emotionally-driven term.
k33n 9 hours ago [-]
Just say your name and people will call you by that name. Politely request pronoun use if you must, but don't expect everyone to remember or even care -- especially if you're using anything but she/her or he/him.
If we accept either side's definition of who the "real abusers" are, then politics will continue to hobble projects. If you are starved of people to discuss your political views with, it's the wrong thing to do to vomit those out in a programming thread. Go make some real friends if you're looking to do that. Not everyone will see the world the way you do.
mytailorisrich 13 hours ago [-]
> to new contributors from marginalized groups,
For software projects that are overwhelmingly conducted online the very concept of "marginalized group" is close to irrelevant and meaningless [1].
I think what happens is that some people want to be very, very vocal about whatever "group" they belong to and want to feel offended and oppressed. In recent years, arguments and campaigns against specific technical terms ('master', 'blacklist', even 'legacy code' spring to mind) are examples of this, IMHO.
Do you believe that online harassment is completely made up and never happened to anyone ever? Because it sounds like you do.
ishouldbework 13 hours ago [-]
[dead]
lowsong 13 hours ago [-]
> For software projects that are overwhelmingly conducted online the very concept of "marginalized group" is close to irrelevant
I wish this were true, but it simply isn't. If a group is full of white cis heterosexual guys and someone turns up with a random screen name and says nothing about themselves, everyone assumes they are also a white cis hetero guy even if they're not. The implication is "you have to conform, and if you don't then you don't belong".
The reality is that for many people, their mere public existence is seen as a political statement. Often times asking for the most simple of accommodations or changes is seen as "being vocal" or starting an argument.
I'll give you a hypothetical. Let's say a group of developers is all-male, and a leader starts off every meeting with "hey guys". Then, a developer who is a woman joins the project. They ask that leader "When you say it like that it implicitly excludes me, It would mean a lot to me if you said 'everyone' instead." I think that's a pretty reasonable request, it asks very little of the leader (to change one word), has no impact for everyone else, and means a lot to some. But to many, many people that would be viewed as "suppressing speech" or "weaponizing oppression".
majorchord 10 hours ago [-]
> everyone assumes they are also a white cis hetero guy even if they're not
Hard disagree. And how is this even relevant?
> The implication is "you have to conform, and if you don't then you don't belong".
Conform to what, being nice? That was already the case. A group is very unlikely to change their ways regardless, especially just because you barge in and say you are marginalized and start getting offended at things.
For one, "hey guys" is often said by people of every possible group known to humankind, but also if you really wanted to, you can ask them to use a different term without saying you are part of some marginalized (or any) group at all.
The fact that they belong to some group is still (IMO) meaningless in this context, the reality is that they want to play politics and try to get people to change how things operate... you don't need to be part of any group to do that. IMO that's just being difficult.
Maybe you believe it is necessary to identify yourself online as belonging to some group, perhaps in order to force a change, but again I think this is just trying to play politics where it's often not welcome.
If online discourse can exist without people even knowing this much about a person, then I think it's far less likely that they will be targeted for belonging to a group that people are not even aware they belong to.
I'm not saying people need to hide, but I think it's just easier if people can assume "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog"... if nothing else simply because some people suck, and it's easier to get along in a purely technical project if we don't know that much about you personally.
lowsong 3 hours ago [-]
I think that you've made my point really quite well. I gave perhaps the most basic possible example of accommodation, adjusting a single word with no impact on other project members and you were still able to argue about it.
> Maybe you believe it is necessary to identify yourself online as belonging to some group, perhaps in order to force a change, but again I think this is just trying to play politics where it's often not welcome.
People just want to be themselves. If the very act of appearing to be from a different group is "playing politics" then what you actually mean is "you cannot be different".
This behavior is exactly why a CoC is needed.
majorchord 2 hours ago [-]
I think "playing politics" means trying to get people to change something, or how a group of people is managed. Not all projects want other people telling them what to do or what they should or shouldn't do, and I think that's perfectly ok.
If "people being themselves" means making SJW politics their entire identity and spraying it across the internet, then I'd say it's likely they're not going to be welcome in many places, CoC or not.
I think you could argue having any rule that someone happens to disagree with is telling them "you cannot be different"... people have to draw the line somewhere, or there wouldn't be rules. Who are we to say what's right or wrong in someone else's project?
And I think your argument still dismisses the weaponization that many people are seeing... maybe you call it their identity being someone who wants to change things... but that doesn't mean they should always get what they want.
Ragnarork 13 hours ago [-]
Well a big reason this is missed is people discussing it are not part of these groups and mainly saw this as an annoyance.
I can agree that heavy & strict CoCs can be daunting and probably overkill for small open source projects. And they're far from flawless, as shown by the Rust mods resignation incidents. But to say they're useless and anti-meritocratic is to forget (and/or silence) these people that wanted to contribute in an environment where they wouldn't feel threatened (incidentally, sometimes despite being skillful contributors, so much so for the supposed meritocracy of the CoC-less projects).
I'm not sure strict CoCs are the answers to these real problems, but this feels like dismissing these problems altogether.
squigz 14 hours ago [-]
A relevant blog post posted recently among the Nix drama
The only code of conduct that was ever required was the license.md file.
satisfice 14 hours ago [-]
I want a code of conduct that explicitly allows debate, disagreement, and normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your words.
What matters is that people are operating in good faith.
I would also say that IF you have been accepted as a member of a community then you and your feelings must matter to that community unless and until you are ejected from the community. There needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people, and that system should rest on the judgment of people that the community has selected as trustworthy (until and unless those people are expelled).
pjc50 13 hours ago [-]
> normalizes hurting other people’s feelings with your word
This is the Trammel problem: if you want a PvP-enabled project, you discover that people are mostly interested in the part where they hurt others feelings and then go bananas when their own feelings are hurt.
> needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people
The private member's club is an old institution. But people tend to notice and object when it ends up being white guys only.
majorchord 10 hours ago [-]
I would like this too, and it sounds like a good idea in theory...
But what I worry about is that it may presume that the staff themselves already operate in (your interpretation of) good faith, and I don't think that is always the case.
What is a user's recourse when they disagree with the mods? And what says they will comply with any decision reached from said recourse?
You could say "we must allow disagreements", but at some point this becomes a paradox of tolerance and then you risk it devolving into pointless arguments on either side.
I think the whole "good faith" part could only be enforced by a universally trusted party, like maybe a robot. But even then, people will disagree about how it operates... so maybe this problem is impossible to solve.
vkou 13 hours ago [-]
> What matters is that people are operating in good faith.
Any asshole can claim to be acting in good faith, regardless of what they've done.
majorchord 9 hours ago [-]
You're getting downvoted but I think this is absolutely right... people are simply going to disagree with each others' definition of "good faith."
HankStallone 8 hours ago [-]
Right. Adam tells Ben to go die in a fire, and Ben says, "Come on, moderators, that's obviously a violation of the CoC." Then Adam says, "No, because I was only responding to Ben's offensive and unwelcoming language when he referred to a 'master' repository. I've compiled a list of Ben's violations, and I demand a review according to section 3, subsection D of the code...."
A good moderator will shut that nonsense down immediately, but a good moderator wouldn't need a CoC to do it. All the CoC does is give the troublemaker a tool to start playing rules lawyer, in the hope that the moderator will get tired of it and give in.
Some people think the answer is to have a CoC that's too simple for rules lawyering, like a one line "Be excellent to each other." But even that can be twisted, so it would be better as a project motto than as an official CoC.
AnimalMuppet 8 hours ago [-]
Jerks will be jerks without a CoC, and jerks will try to turn the CoC into a weapon when there is one. Yeah, that figures.
Sooner or later it boils down to someone reasonable enforcing some boundaries, with or without a CoC.
burnt-resistor 14 hours ago [-]
CoCs are like having faith in some prerequisite magical spell is first necessary to control and compel people to behave in a proscribed manner when, in reality, they are more like EULAs and Cider House Rules that (almost) no one reads. Paperwork cannot transform people. Perhaps their limited marginal value is existing to show that community is defended and there is a clear and thoughtful process to arbitrate and resolve conflict rather than falling into either extremes of absentee inaction or heavy-handed, summary, expedient, arbitrary expulsion.
WesolyKubeczek 14 hours ago [-]
> Perhaps their limited marginal value is existing to show there is a clear and thoughtful process to arbitrate and resolve conflict
and I have a slightly used bridge to sell.
daft_pink 13 hours ago [-]
Just fire people who suck. It’s really not that difficult.
thrance 13 hours ago [-]
> DHH condemned detailed and strict CoC like the Contributor Covenant as a “trojan horse” that should be purged from projects.
Of course he would, he has made several transphobic remarks in the past. Normal people shouldn't take issue with the mere existence of a markdown document that basically says "don't be a dick to people because of who they are". Ostracizing people from projects because you are prejudiced against them, now that hinders open-source. How many potential contributors were scared away by such remarks?
u_sama 11 hours ago [-]
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 agree on today will be pushed to more extremes (some you might disagree with) you will not be comfortable with and eventually you will be alienated from them completely. But when that happens, you will have no recourse and will eventually be purged (like those before you, being called the trendy workd of the moment, fascist or woke) too because you accepted the opening of the door to such behaviours, your only solution will be silence.
As for examples of that happening, NixOS comes to mind, the Rust debacle too.
Also another issue you might not see, you are ironically also enforcing a dominant idea (your american culture) onto the rest of the world thus creating a hierarchy where your ideas are right and the other cultural operating systems are wrong.
majorchord 9 hours ago [-]
> 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 of politics.
Either you force your own politics on people, or you open yourself up to accepting changes from other people... which is still politics.
thrance 3 hours ago [-]
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 views.
wastle 57 minutes ago [-]
The actual divisive issue is whether people who say they are the opposite sex to what they really are should be granted access to spaces that are designated for the sole use of the opposite sex.
This gets relabelled by activists for the trans ideological cause with phrases like "the right to participate in society" and even "the right to exist", but these are so far from what is actually being demanded that it's essentially just misinformation and false appeal to emotion.
thrance 37 minutes ago [-]
Spaces such as online open-source communities? This is nonsensical, listen to yourself. Your anti-human bias shows and it's actually disturbing. What spaces are you even talking about and why do you think people that look, act, talk and think exactly like their members should be barred from them?
> trans ideological cause
Got it, demanding human rights apply to trans people is now an "ideological stance". The American Overton window is so far right, it's crazy people can hold such views and think they're being reasonable.
wastle 23 minutes ago [-]
No, typically this issue is focused around spaces like female-only refuges and safe spaces, locker rooms and changing rooms, prisons, sports competitions, and so on. The divisive point being whether males who say they are female should be refused or granted access.
That you have chosen to characterise this with wording like "anti-human bias" and "demanding human rights apply" further illustrates my point.
... devolves into a massive outcry because a bunch of folks not behaving in good faith didn't like "we don't support fascism or bigotry".
It reached the level of
* Vile sock puppet attacks on a trans individual, who merely kept saying "Fascism, no thanks in this community"
* "Denounce the Marxists!" As a rallying cry becomes a talking point
If you reflect on the behaviours seen there and ask why is this so heated for proposing consequences for bad behaviour; you may come to the realisation that the advocates of bad behaviour... don't want to be accountable.
This post is translated, perhaps some of the nuance is lost. But it hand waves away dhh's behaviour as "controversial figures in the community"
If that's genuinely what is believed, I'd like a replacement on this Overton window, thanks! It has been fractured.
The article does not consider the consequences or implications of malicious acts, and the harm on others adequately.
A clear CoC or similar outlines expected norms, and does not have to be copypasta/is infact better if it is derived from a consensus. It's a statement of what the people with power will hold themselves to, and if that turns out to be a lie - a performative document that is not actually used - newcomers can view the behaviour they observe against that standard; and leave or demand justice if they are wronged.
By not publishing an ethical or moral standard you abide by, even if it's a text file with "get bent" in it; you invite people to interact with you with expectations. If you are part of the 1-4% of the population who are sociopaths, you are advocating to hurt people without consequence. If they are part of the 1-4% you are permitting behaviour without recourse.
Could you imagine a post advocating for "don't fix security holes because 92-98% of people don't know about exploiting them?"
Would that be acceptable?
Why would you not state a policy?
yakshaving_jgt 12 hours ago [-]
> If you reflect on the behaviours seen there and ask why is this so heated for proposing consequences for bad behaviour; you may come to the realisation that the advocates of bad behaviour... don't want to be accountable.
It seems the problem is that what amounts to "bad behaviour" is poorly defined, and that the detractors of "bad behaviour" can also be guilty of bad behaviour.
buyucu 14 hours ago [-]
Codes of Conduct are pushed by corporate types you want open source projects to act and behave more corporate fashion. I've never seen them make things better.
Rendered at 22:32:53 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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 put in a markdown file is not enforceable.
And we didn’t even talk about how it is being misused. People would point to these documents to silence and shut out people they don’t like and at the same time tolerate poor behavior that are clearly in violation of code of conduct by people they do like or whose politics or opinions they share.
It is all just a charade to help you pretend that you are impartial.
Has it occurred to you that's actually exactly why they exist? :)
On a completely unrelated note, you very, very rarely find real fascists in open source software projects.
And for even less favorable characters it seemed that it was just powerplay by some actors that wouldn't convince their own mother that they are the most untoxic of them all.
These people (who push for CoCs so heavily) in my experience tend to hypocritically attack and censor opinions they don’t like, while not understanding why people won’t "accept them for who they are".
They are desperate to be the center of attention and love to play the victim.
It’s like the bullied becomes the bully sort of thing. They spend more time arguing over weaponized CoCs and ideological SJW politics instead of writing code. It doesn’t help that many of them self-admittedly suffer from mental health problems.
You can't write a CoC that will prevent bad behavior from bad actors in charge, so it's worthless at best and a weapon for the unscrupulous at worst. What matters is who enforces standards of behavior, and if those people are decent and honest, no written code is necessary.
And beyond a certain size formalizing that makes sense. Not as a tool for punishment or to point to, but so everybody can be on the same page and you know if someone acts out of line they do so despite better knowledge.
If a code of conducts contains stuff you are within the bounds of anyways, why would you care it is there?
This is very much so for small communities who don't have the infrastructure to litigate issues in a legalistic manner... but, even in areas like public law, the rules don't really matter, it's the perceived authority and impartiality of the courts that keep a legal system up and running. (think of any controversial Supreme Court decision -- do people really care what the law actually says and whether the legal reasoning is sound... or do they just speculate about the political leanings of the judges?)
Since most people writing up CoCs aren't good lawyers or experts in drafting (and finding loopholes in) rules... having a smaller "attack surface" actually makes a lot of sense.
That said, if the community is large or important enough that it already retains some legal advisors, then maybe yeah, make the rules more specific or something.
... I understand that's the theory, but in practice, I've never seen it working that way.
I don't see how having the CoC affects any of this. If someone is behaving poorly, first of all, a CoC will not deter them. If someone behaves so poorly that you decide you need to remove them, the community (the small portion of people who give a f) should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say (without pointing to a document you put in your repo when you were bored), that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision".
Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
1) point both involved and uninvolved people to the code of conduct when you end up taking action.
2) avoid disparity of enforcement within your team
3) funnel disagreements (from both teammates or community members) by focusing them on the rule, rather than on a general debate on how should the community should be managed.
If people commit a lot of energy to a community/project then for many "I didn't like this behavior, end of discussion" won't cut it.
Of course it does. If the community/project leaders are not aligned with your ideology, it's better to find one with alignment than to attempt to corner them with a written set of rules.
I think you mean, "if someone is behaving poorly, the coc did not deter them".
The people who it did deter aren't behaving poorly.
None of these things happen in real life.
> should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's not a matter of the action being transparent, it's the motivations. Sometimes, it's not clear to community members why the action was taken, if there's no CoC or rules. "They're being an asshole" is a lot more subjective than "They were breaking the rules"
> It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say, without pointing to a document you just put in your repo, that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision". Just my 2c.
Sure, this might work for a small community or group, but the fiasco with Nix seems to suggest this isn't the case at a certain size. Some people apparently want accountability and transparency from their moderators.
> Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
Great! That's fine! Not every community needs such things. Some do.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true.
You're treating humanity as if it's divided into two distinct sections: Those Who Behave Well, and Those Who Behave Poorly.
In reality, different humans have different ranges of ways they prefer to act, and most are quite amenable to reasonable, clearly-stated codes of conduct for interaction in a particular space.
There is a small subset of people who are either deliberately antisocial for the sake of it (trolls/griefers/etc), and another subset that are genuinely just assholes who will, if given the leeway to do so, cause endless problems in a community.
But there are many, many more who would cause friction with others in such a community without a code of conduct not because they actively want to, but because their unstated assumptions about how people should interact clash with the unstated assumptions of other people there. Having the code of conduct lets everyone coming in in good faith align their expectations and avoid these unnecessary conflicts. They're like a Session 0 in a TTRPG in that sense.
Hard disagree... I've never seen one have this effect. IMO you don't need a CoC to suddenly understand what should already be common sense i.e. don't be a dick. Either they were already going to act that way, or they weren't.
How do you think you would see it?
Under normal circumstances, what it would look like from the outside is just...someone not causing friction, because there is a code of conduct. Or someone causing friction, because there isn't one.
The former looks identical to someone who would never have caused trouble in the first place, and the latter looks, if not identical, at least very similar to someone who would have caused trouble, no matter what.
And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Another commenter (cannot find their name now but I saved the text) said exactly what my experience has been:
> A written code of conduct can legitimize petty disputes based on interpretations of the text, even if the issue itself is something easily addressable like using the word “master” in a programming context. It can become a tool for manipulation (pushing someone out for “CoC violation” vs simply correcting the wording).
> And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Both correct. By definition, in fact.
CoCs are for the people in the middle of those. Who do, in fact, exist.
What has worked in communities I have been active in is to have continuously conversations, in combination with a no-blame culture that provide social safety for people to bring up issues and also room for people to improve without feeling personally attacked (which is the opposite of social safety).
> ...a zealot about their cause. Deflecting and uncompromising, very unagreeable. They would be the last persons to know how to make a community comfy.
... And typically with a giant chip on their shoulder. The real world's a little bit more complicated than the spherical cows that the near-religious faith in it requires.
And of course it wasn't meant as an instruction manual for how to run a society. It was quite explicitly a message that you are not judged by who you are. That is it, there is no ideology, there is no grand idea. That is media garbage that filled your head with a phantom.
And honestly, that did a much better job than most COC I read.
The implied subtext of "avoid topic the US finds morally objectionable and when in doubt act like an American would" is what I dislike from a theorical point of view but the truth is, it doesn't really matter on a day to day basis.
So yes, CoC seems mostly harmless but also mostly useless. I tend to agree with the article point that if this is the case, keeping them short seems optimal.
This is further proven when any attempts to discuss said rule/policy are immediately shut down with even more staunch black-and-white opinions and zero empathy... even if you wait until later to discuss it in a different setting.
While it would be nice if all the ignorant assholes in the world lived in America... this is not the case :)
> What is needed now is not the unthinking adoption of a one-size-fits-all template, but a “right-sized” approach tailored to the scale, culture, and goals of each individual project.
I feel a lot of the heavy CoCs are a product of low-trust cultures, particularly the US, which attempt to replace interpersonal relationships with legalese. This is honestly not necessary in most projects, which are generally high-trust environments.
"Weird people" being discriminated against and harassed is why CoCs exist.
If I have to like you in order for us not to fight, I warn you that we're going to have to fight.
That, and also for selective enforcement.
I feel that having a detailed COC, while a very good sentiment in theory, in practice must bring about people who will try their best to skirt around the edge of COC and make trouble for the maintainers - who I expect want to stay "nice", but they're forced to act harshly in the end anyway.
> Participants are expected to be tolerant of opposing views.
If you can't tolerate that others will have different perspectives to you then it means you're likely to be a very difficult and inflexible person to work with.
Diverse views on software development? Great. Diverse views on whether various groups deserve human rights? Not great.
It would be unreasonable to expect everyone to have the same perspective on political issues.
(As a personal preference, I'd rather not know the political views, legitimate or otherwise, of people I work with. It's not relevant.)
> Participants must ensure that their language and actions are free from personal attacks and disparaging remarks.
And anyway, rhetoric which advocates for killing groups of people would be very off-topic for a programming language discussion forum. Unlikely it would come up in conversation except for deliberate trolling.
Also it would be very off-topic for a programming language forum.
Then someone will point out that they might have this stuff on their Github profile, or website. They're free to do so, of course. But it would be wrong to remove them for that, right? But then any trans contributor that sees this crap is what, forced to work with them anyway?
However, there's probably a cutoff point for core infrastructure where we should move away from having a single person in charge.
If I start a project that attracts contributors[1], I don't see anything wrong with rejecting someone's CoC "contribution" with "I am the code of conduct. We don't need another one."
==================
[1] I try not to do that, btw.
Yes, but often the projects where this happens are just big enough to where one person cannot realistically maintain their own fork to the same level that users will expect if they are looking to jump ship.
What I've seen happen more often than not, is even if the person does attempt a fork, they either get constantly attacked by existing users, or stop working on it within a year, or both.
"The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?
I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil life "in harmony with society," as they say.
Obviously the greengrocer is indifferent to the semantic content of the slogan on exhibit; he does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: "I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace." This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer's superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan's real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer's existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with the workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology."
It comes from people who believe shitty behavior hurts projects and needs to stop.
At this point, in 2025, does anybody seriously doubt that they're a "tool for troublemakers"? A lot of people who would otherwise contribute see a hyper-particular CoC, written by an HR type or an aspiring lawyer, and walk away. Others don't bother to read the CoC and may later be dragged through coals over something exceedingly minor, despite their contributions.
In open-source, the best policy is to avoid CoCs and avoid those who write and promote them.
Normal people shouldn't need anything more than normal morality and acceptable manners to be good project contributors.
Is publishing an ethical standpoint a "trouble making"? Depends, doesn't it? What if you examine the most common top ethical viewpoints you are aware of. For me, it's loud groups like say, PETA, Extinction Rebellion, etc who are fairly populist.
Are they making trouble? Sure. But for whom? Would you personally do what these people are doing? Probably no. Would you personally do what the people they are "making trouble" for are doing? (In my example, Animal harm, empowering climate change?) I am going to suggest that you would probably say "no, I don't want to harm things/people/etc; as I would probably feel bad for doing it and being personally responsible".
If thought through like this - even if your examples of ethics are not what I chose - can you see the value in a strong, clear ethical position, even if it's to warn people? Can you see that it might challenge authority (trouble making), but that is not a bad thing a lot of the time?
Most software projects are ethically neutral and don't need a "standpoint." In tech, those "ethical standpoints" are often tacked-on by people who want to use them as a tool to exercise social control over other contributors, including project founders and visionaries. (There tends to be, in any given Western organization over n people in size, a clique that's really into this.)
I have no idea how CoCs are used in PETA, but obviously groups that have ethics as their core focus -- which includes religions and social welfare groups -- have long lists of proscriptions, policies, etc. I don't think that any of it necessarily applies to open-source software, though. It's apples to oranges.
> If thought through like this - even if your examples of ethics are not what I chose - can you see the value in a strong, clear ethical position, even if it's to warn people?
Well, that's precisely my point: The CoC itself is the warning. It's usually bad news in itself -- an exposed surface that's weaponizable against contributors who give to the project in good faith.
PETA literally funded a terrorist convicted of arson.
> A page from the 1995 annual tax return (form 990) of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), showing a $45,200 payment for the ``support committee'' of Rodney Coronado, a felon. Mr. Coronado was convicted of arson in federal court for the 1992 firebombing of a Michigan State University research lab.
---
> Would you personally do what the people they are "making trouble" for are doing?
Would I eat meat? Yes.
Would I keep animals as pets? Yes.
Do I think it's ethical for humans to use animals for service, e.g., guide dogs for the blind? Yes.
Do I think it's ethical to use animal models in medical research? Yes.
All of these things, PETA are against.
Further:
- https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/animal-righ...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Coronado
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107hhrg77615/html/C...
> animals as pets
This seems to say they are perfectly fine with pets: https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/
> guide dogs
Seems to imply they are not against service animals in general: https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/monkeys-arent-pets-...
Not trying to defend anyone, just looking for objective evidence.
Fair.
## guide dogs
> [PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk] regards the use of Seeing Eye dogs as an abdication of human responsibility and, … is wholly opposed to their use. She has had at least one dog taken from its owner.
- https://archive.is/6IIo1
## medical testing
> Medical research is immoral even it it's essential
> Even If Animal Research Resulted In A Cure For AIDS, We’d Be Against It
- https://consumerfreedom.com/press-releases/153-even-if-anima...
## animals as pets
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ingrid_Newkirk
- https://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/quotes-from-the-...
## Bonus fun story
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/17/peta-sorry-f...
---
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The utter insanity of PETA is actually very well documented, so if you have an evening, grab a bottle of wine and go down that ~rabbit~ hole.
They are also explicitly the type of views that CoCs are designed to protect contributors from, hence why DHH and ESR would be opposed to CoCs in general.
Not because I enjoy reading or writing hate speech or anything, but these were places that didn't tend to have any obvious problems with troublemakers, so it felt self congratulatory. And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of bikeshedding the discussions around it became, mostly from people who'd never even contributed to the project.
It suddenly made me realize there were probably more productive and less frustrating ways to spend my time.
Sure, but someone who went to the trouble to get their view enforced in writing is probably already a zealot I don't want to deal with.
Depends a lot on the group size, too - a few hundred contributors probably needs some rules written down. A few dozen? Not so much.
Humans should be able to interact politely in any setting and if they don't, the issue needs to be settled with good old human interaction anyways.
No, CoCs - or rules in general - are not inherently bad. HN has some, which the moderators and the community enforce well, and it's generally one of the best platforms on the Internet for intelligent discussion.
Yes, heavy CoCs can be weaponized and abused, if there is little or no trust between the community and its leaders. But with or without a CoC, such a community will always be prone to such abuse. You think moderators need to establish a CoC to push their politics on people if they want? How does that even make sense? Why not just... do that, without a CoC?
Perhaps, but I think it may make the moderator more likely to side with the abuser if they are able to point to a specific part of the CoC that is allegedly being violated, even if that requires colorful interpretation.
I don't think this is what generally happens, or what people are wary of. I think group participants [sometimes] coerce moderators into establishing a CoC in order to have a tool to reach for in service of silencing voices they regard as "problematic".
I think that happens less now that people are aware of the danger; but a decade or so ago it was a real problem because no one saw it coming.
I'm going to push past this extraordinarily bad faith framing. I'm going to assume you're referring to people who are made to feel uncomfortable or are harassed by other members of the community.
So if that community doesn't have a CoC, and those members talk to the moderators, and the moderators take action... is that coercion too? Is that the moderators or those members pushing their political views on the community? Should the moderators just not do anything?
It has been my experience that there are both members of groups typically regarded as marginalised who have been harrassed, and also members of groups typically regarded as marginalised who harass others. There are surely more variations of this too.
My most recent experience of this was a member of a group typically regarded as marginalised harassing one of my colleagues — who is also a member of a group typically regarded as marginalised, but perhaps less so if you subscribe to the legitimacy of intersectionality — at a software development conference with an established CoC.
The incident was reported, and the repercussions for the harasser amounted to exactly nil.
> So if that community doesn't have a CoC, and those members talk to the moderators, and the moderators take action... is that coercion too?
No.
> Is that the moderators or those members pushing their political views on the community?
That really depends on the circumstance.
> Should the moderators just not do anything?
Moderators should take action on CoC violations as proportionately, fairly, and impartially as they can.
> I'm going to push past this extraordinarily bad faith framing.
It is extraordinarily tiring and depressing that anything proffered that contradicts the orthodoxy of the culture that most readily endorses the establishment of CoCs is immediately dismissed as an argument in "bad faith".
> No.
Then I'm not sure why it would be coercion for them to talk to the moderators about writing down the rules.
If I had meant "everybody", I would not have written "sometimes".
Not having a CoC doesn't mean a project is going to be unsafe to work in. But it means when another community member refuses to work with you, or belittles your work constantly, there is nothing to be done. For many, why take the risk. This means that projects are starving themselves of contributors because they don't create an environment that is safe.
Ruby's "CoC" is actually a fantastic example of why you need to spell it out too. "Participants are expected to be tolerant of opposing views." is often weaponized by abusers who like to paint basic requests like "please use my chosen name" as "not being tolerant".
No it doesn't. It just means that there isn't a formal process. The aggrieved party can always contact the project leaders/maintainers, and lodge a complaint.
Sure, the leaders may not do anything with your complaint, but a CoC doesn't guarantee that they will either (even if it does give you a warm fuzzy feeling up-front that they might).
I find it incredibly infantilizing this idea that people can't be good to each other, or people can't feel safe, without some sort of document that lays out behavior expectations. It's so so simple: don't be a dick to people. If someone is being a dick to you, find someone with authority and send them the evidence. If they handle it to your satisfaction, great. If not, stay away from that project, because it's run by people who at worst don't care about you, or at best are inept at handling this sort of thing (and in either case, a CoC is not going to make it better).
For leaders/maintainers, grow a spine. If someone is behaving badly (regardless of whether or not someone complains), talk to them and give them a chance to improve. If their behavior gets better, great. If not, eject them from the community. If they or others aren't happy with your reaction, that's their problem, not yours.
Can you cite examples of users facing abuse or violence while contributing to a tech project? And how exactly does a CoC guarantee the safety you mentioned?
> when another community member refuses to work with you
Members are free to choose who to work with regardless of whether a CoC exists or not.
> belittles your work constantly
Your work may not be up to the project's standards and anyone pointing that out may hurt your feelings, and that's fine. You can't expect project maintainers to coddle each contributor when there's work to be done. Most CoCs are at odds with that because they value contributors' feelings over clear communication that helps a project advance.
> there is nothing to be done
You could communicate your grievances to the project maintainers directly, but you're not guaranteed a reply even with a CoC. In fact I'd argue that with a CoC it's easier for maintainers to dismiss criticism by labeling it as "non welcoming" or "non inclusive" or any other loose emotionally-driven term.
If we accept either side's definition of who the "real abusers" are, then politics will continue to hobble projects. If you are starved of people to discuss your political views with, it's the wrong thing to do to vomit those out in a programming thread. Go make some real friends if you're looking to do that. Not everyone will see the world the way you do.
For software projects that are overwhelmingly conducted online the very concept of "marginalized group" is close to irrelevant and meaningless [1].
I think what happens is that some people want to be very, very vocal about whatever "group" they belong to and want to feel offended and oppressed. In recent years, arguments and campaigns against specific technical terms ('master', 'blacklist', even 'legacy code' spring to mind) are examples of this, IMHO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
I wish this were true, but it simply isn't. If a group is full of white cis heterosexual guys and someone turns up with a random screen name and says nothing about themselves, everyone assumes they are also a white cis hetero guy even if they're not. The implication is "you have to conform, and if you don't then you don't belong".
The reality is that for many people, their mere public existence is seen as a political statement. Often times asking for the most simple of accommodations or changes is seen as "being vocal" or starting an argument.
I'll give you a hypothetical. Let's say a group of developers is all-male, and a leader starts off every meeting with "hey guys". Then, a developer who is a woman joins the project. They ask that leader "When you say it like that it implicitly excludes me, It would mean a lot to me if you said 'everyone' instead." I think that's a pretty reasonable request, it asks very little of the leader (to change one word), has no impact for everyone else, and means a lot to some. But to many, many people that would be viewed as "suppressing speech" or "weaponizing oppression".
Hard disagree. And how is this even relevant?
> The implication is "you have to conform, and if you don't then you don't belong".
Conform to what, being nice? That was already the case. A group is very unlikely to change their ways regardless, especially just because you barge in and say you are marginalized and start getting offended at things.
For one, "hey guys" is often said by people of every possible group known to humankind, but also if you really wanted to, you can ask them to use a different term without saying you are part of some marginalized (or any) group at all.
The fact that they belong to some group is still (IMO) meaningless in this context, the reality is that they want to play politics and try to get people to change how things operate... you don't need to be part of any group to do that. IMO that's just being difficult.
Maybe you believe it is necessary to identify yourself online as belonging to some group, perhaps in order to force a change, but again I think this is just trying to play politics where it's often not welcome.
If online discourse can exist without people even knowing this much about a person, then I think it's far less likely that they will be targeted for belonging to a group that people are not even aware they belong to.
I'm not saying people need to hide, but I think it's just easier if people can assume "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog"... if nothing else simply because some people suck, and it's easier to get along in a purely technical project if we don't know that much about you personally.
> Maybe you believe it is necessary to identify yourself online as belonging to some group, perhaps in order to force a change, but again I think this is just trying to play politics where it's often not welcome.
People just want to be themselves. If the very act of appearing to be from a different group is "playing politics" then what you actually mean is "you cannot be different".
This behavior is exactly why a CoC is needed.
If "people being themselves" means making SJW politics their entire identity and spraying it across the internet, then I'd say it's likely they're not going to be welcome in many places, CoC or not.
I think you could argue having any rule that someone happens to disagree with is telling them "you cannot be different"... people have to draw the line somewhere, or there wouldn't be rules. Who are we to say what's right or wrong in someone else's project?
And I think your argument still dismisses the weaponization that many people are seeing... maybe you call it their identity being someone who wants to change things... but that doesn't mean they should always get what they want.
I can agree that heavy & strict CoCs can be daunting and probably overkill for small open source projects. And they're far from flawless, as shown by the Rust mods resignation incidents. But to say they're useless and anti-meritocratic is to forget (and/or silence) these people that wanted to contribute in an environment where they wouldn't feel threatened (incidentally, sometimes despite being skillful contributors, so much so for the supposed meritocracy of the CoC-less projects).
I'm not sure strict CoCs are the answers to these real problems, but this feels like dismissing these problems altogether.
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/07/22/on-a-technicality/
What matters is that people are operating in good faith.
I would also say that IF you have been accepted as a member of a community then you and your feelings must matter to that community unless and until you are ejected from the community. There needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people, and that system should rest on the judgment of people that the community has selected as trustworthy (until and unless those people are expelled).
This is the Trammel problem: if you want a PvP-enabled project, you discover that people are mostly interested in the part where they hurt others feelings and then go bananas when their own feelings are hurt.
> needs to be a system for accepting and expelling people
The private member's club is an old institution. But people tend to notice and object when it ends up being white guys only.
But what I worry about is that it may presume that the staff themselves already operate in (your interpretation of) good faith, and I don't think that is always the case.
What is a user's recourse when they disagree with the mods? And what says they will comply with any decision reached from said recourse?
You could say "we must allow disagreements", but at some point this becomes a paradox of tolerance and then you risk it devolving into pointless arguments on either side.
I think the whole "good faith" part could only be enforced by a universally trusted party, like maybe a robot. But even then, people will disagree about how it operates... so maybe this problem is impossible to solve.
Any asshole can claim to be acting in good faith, regardless of what they've done.
A good moderator will shut that nonsense down immediately, but a good moderator wouldn't need a CoC to do it. All the CoC does is give the troublemaker a tool to start playing rules lawyer, in the hope that the moderator will get tired of it and give in.
Some people think the answer is to have a CoC that's too simple for rules lawyering, like a one line "Be excellent to each other." But even that can be twisted, so it would be better as a project motto than as an official CoC.
Sooner or later it boils down to someone reasonable enforcing some boundaries, with or without a CoC.
and I have a slightly used bridge to sell.
Of course he would, he has made several transphobic remarks in the past. Normal people shouldn't take issue with the mere existence of a markdown document that basically says "don't be a dick to people because of who they are". Ostracizing people from projects because you are prejudiced against them, now that hinders open-source. How many potential contributors were scared away by such remarks?
As for examples of that happening, NixOS comes to mind, the Rust debacle too.
Also another issue you might not see, you are ironically also enforcing a dominant idea (your american culture) onto the rest of the world thus creating a hierarchy where your ideas are right and the other cultural operating systems are wrong.
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 of politics.
Either you force your own politics on people, or you open yourself up to accepting changes from other people... which is still politics.
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 views.
This gets relabelled by activists for the trans ideological cause with phrases like "the right to participate in society" and even "the right to exist", but these are so far from what is actually being demanded that it's essentially just misinformation and false appeal to emotion.
> trans ideological cause
Got it, demanding human rights apply to trans people is now an "ideological stance". The American Overton window is so far right, it's crazy people can hold such views and think they're being reasonable.
That you have chosen to characterise this with wording like "anti-human bias" and "demanding human rights apply" further illustrates my point.
Watch how an open discussion here: https://github.com/nixos/rfcs/pull/98
... devolves into a massive outcry because a bunch of folks not behaving in good faith didn't like "we don't support fascism or bigotry".
It reached the level of
* Vile sock puppet attacks on a trans individual, who merely kept saying "Fascism, no thanks in this community" * "Denounce the Marxists!" As a rallying cry becomes a talking point
If you reflect on the behaviours seen there and ask why is this so heated for proposing consequences for bad behaviour; you may come to the realisation that the advocates of bad behaviour... don't want to be accountable.
This post is translated, perhaps some of the nuance is lost. But it hand waves away dhh's behaviour as "controversial figures in the community"
If that's genuinely what is believed, I'd like a replacement on this Overton window, thanks! It has been fractured.
The article does not consider the consequences or implications of malicious acts, and the harm on others adequately.
A clear CoC or similar outlines expected norms, and does not have to be copypasta/is infact better if it is derived from a consensus. It's a statement of what the people with power will hold themselves to, and if that turns out to be a lie - a performative document that is not actually used - newcomers can view the behaviour they observe against that standard; and leave or demand justice if they are wronged.
By not publishing an ethical or moral standard you abide by, even if it's a text file with "get bent" in it; you invite people to interact with you with expectations. If you are part of the 1-4% of the population who are sociopaths, you are advocating to hurt people without consequence. If they are part of the 1-4% you are permitting behaviour without recourse.
Could you imagine a post advocating for "don't fix security holes because 92-98% of people don't know about exploiting them?" Would that be acceptable?
Why would you not state a policy?
It seems the problem is that what amounts to "bad behaviour" is poorly defined, and that the detractors of "bad behaviour" can also be guilty of bad behaviour.