
The problem with the Code of Conduct - kragniz
https://shiromarieke.github.io/coc.html
======
anon6357814
I feel excluded by CoCs. Not because they prohibit behavior which I otherwise
relish to engage in on a daily basis, more because of fear of coming under
some behavioral rule enforcing institution within a community because some
behavior could be interpreted as violating the rules when seen under a bad
light.

This is mostly a gut reaction, a feeling that CoCs serve more to tighten the
overton window and fear that I might find myself on the wrong side of sharp
demarcation which should be more of a soft gradient. It's like a wanted
poster, being declared a thought criminal.

Of course many things in a CoC are individually sensible rules, but as a
larger set they feel like a demand for a flawless human who is always
genuinely nice, polite and only makes perfectly inoffensive jokes and never
raises their voice while arguing things etc. I'm quite aware that I am not
that perfect human, I have issues with empathy and following what was
considered group consensus (it has cost me friends and a job before). Those
CoCs just feel a bit like a "only people with A-grade social skills welcome
here" sign to me.

~~~
phyzome
I sometimes get this anxiety too. And then I remember that if I were black, or
a woman, or etc. etc. etc. I'd maybe have a similar anxiety as a baseline:

« a demand for a flawless human who is always genuinely nice, polite and only
makes perfectly inoffensive jokes and never raises their voice while arguing
things »

Yeah, that sounds similar to the frustrations I've heard from women and people
of color, being held to a higher standard than their white or male colleagues.

I'm societally allowed to be rude, even threatening! And I'm rarely called on
it. But that's _not actually a good thing_.

So I think it's totally fair to have a CoC that says "be nice to people" and
has some teeth and makes white men a little nervous. "A little nervous" is
kind of a baseline for a lot of people. Think of it as educational.

~~~
anon6357814
That sounds like a low equilibrium point.

~~~
phyzome
It doesn't have to be permanent. I think that once white men have more of a
taste of this nervousness, maybe we can fix some stuff that's deeply broken in
our society. But I think it's necessary as a first step.

------
art187
Disclaimer, I help run an organization that requires CoC's on all events.

I like this article but it doesn't go into the positives of a CoC. There are
many problems but if you don't weigh them against the positive
characteristics, you don't see the full picture.

My organization NumFOCUS, asks all conferences and projects working with us to
adopt some CoC. Why do we do this? First it has been shown in our community to
help encourage minority groups to participate. Second it outlines a real
procedure if something does go wrong. Finally, it sets the expectation of
professionalism early.

Our numbers on diversity have skyrocketed as we enforces CoCs. It's not just a
bandaid, it's an invitation to people of all types that we, the organizers,
will protect your right to be at our event. I don't think event organizers are
in any position to think they can solve all the problems in tech but at least
they can create an inviting space.

Without a CoC, the procedure on how to handle a harasser is very grey. What
legal grounds does a person have to tell someone to leave an event? If it is
any grounds then why for some and not others? Who makes these decisions? I've
seen conferences not deal with up front and have to resort to the local law
enforcement to intervene.

Which brings me to my last point, set expectations up front. It's like the big
silver punch bowl at the new years party. We expect you to be an adult and
treat everyone else like an adult. A CoC clearly lays out that your event is
intended to be professional.

I don't think it is the end of all discussions, in fact only the beginning.
Our staff put together more things to consider,
[https://github.com/numfocus/DISCOVER-
Cookbook](https://github.com/numfocus/DISCOVER-Cookbook), but a CoC is the
simplist.

~~~
chapill
>Disclaimer, I help run an organization that requires CoC's on all events.

>I like this article but it doesn't go into the positives of a CoC. There are
many problems but if you don't weigh them against the positive
characteristics, you don't see the full picture.

The author mentions this,

"People are trying to force organizations like CCC, or events I am involved
with, at a smaller scale (I cannot talk for other events I don't know anything
about), to adopt a CoC because they feel like it works for them, and therefore
everyone should adopt a CoC regardless of the own culture of each community."

It seems you're doing exactly this and you've ignored large parts of the
reasoning in the author's post.

~~~
cookiecaper
Lots of these feel-good initiatives are actually dictated by very real
concerns around legal liability. For example, many corporate diversity
programs exist because they're trying to protect the company from the
unfavorable EEOC decisions that are required before an employee can file a
lawsuit alleging discrimination.

When people do things to prevent liability, they can't _say_ they're doing
them to prevent liability, or the liability effectively recurs. If such
middling statments exist, it's much more likely that judges and juries would
consider the action insincere, if not intentionally deceptive and evasive, and
disregard it entirely, thus undoing the effect of the program/statement/rule
in the first place and potentially inviting additional punishment for the
supposed deception.

So why is it a good idea for venues to force events to have Codes of Conduct?
Because if the venue gets caught up in a Donglegate-esque scandal, they can
point to something and say, "We did everything we reasonably could to prevent
such an outcome, we told our customers that they needed to warn attendees
against such behavior, we acted according to the documented procedure, and we
need to get dropped from the suit and/or not have bad press anymore".

Whereas, if they don't have such a policy, especially if other venues _do_ ,
there's more ambiguity and it's much harder to make a decisive argument.

This is also a large reason why PR matters so much. Try all you want to find
an unbiased jury or a judge totally unmoved by public opinion, couch it in
pomp and circumstance until the cows come home, but like it or not,
reputations and assumptions matter. You're much more likely to get a positive
outcome with a positive reputation v. a neutral or negative one, and PR events
frequently become legal props: "Of course we're non-discriminatory, see
$LOCAL_NEWS for the story about how we're working so hard to recruit diverse
talent!"

~~~
neuland
Just curious, why does stating that a particular training or policy is purely
for liability purposes make it not valid?

~~~
cookiecaper
It doesn't necessarily wholesale invalidate it, and it depends on the context.
The danger is that if the claim is, for example, "they are making a hostile
environment for $MINORITY", if statements exist that say "We are just doing
this to avoid liability", those could easily be interpreted as indicators of
insincerity and that the bias exists. Whereas, if they at least appear to be
True Believers, it is harder to call that into question.

It also hurts from the PR angle, for basically the same reasons. News outlets
don't want to be seen as tools of the machine spreading corporate FUD and
saving BigCo from liability. They want to see themselves as noble soldiers on
"the right side of history", and they want the public to see them that way
too.

It's therefore much easier to get coverage, which will be useful for
establishing your non-bias, if you don't tell everyone "we wouldn't be running
this program and enforcing these 'everyone play nice now' codes if we didn't
feel there was a meaningful legal risk involved in not doing so".

------
DoreenMichele
_Don 't Hit On The Students!

But also (and this is my main issue with such points) CoC are a reaction to
things that went bad, and an attempt to fix these issues._

I briefly talked for a time with a guy who knew I had life threatening
respiratory problems and he tried to talk me into meeting him in person, while
swearing my health and welfare were his highest priority and intentionally
leaving out the fact that he was a smoker and a toker. When it finally came
out in conversation, I had a cow and he pulled this nonsense about "If it is
that important, you should have asked."

Um, no.

I was so upset by the whole thing, I briefly considered putting something in
my profile on the forum where we met specifying "No smokers, no tokers." Then
decided this is about as useful as putting up a dating profile that says "No
rapists, no pedophiles."

He knew it was not acceptable. This is why he hid the information. Any BS
justification for his behavior after the fact is just part of the headfuckery.

And, unfortunately, a lot of CoCs seem to be along those lines of explicitly
forbidding behaviors that we already understand are bad, as if that will
somehow stop people who already know what they are doing is not socially
acceptable.

The areas where people are oblivious due to entrenched prejudice of some sort
will not be fixed by spelling it out in some detailed list.

We are catering to the lowest common denominator by spelling out what is and
is not acceptable. This isn't a means to foster a civil environment.

~~~
delinka
I’ve never seen Codes of Conduct as attempting to prevent (no more than any
other lists of prohibited activity actually prevent such activities), but more
to be an automatic defense for the organizers when they have to kick someone
out for misbehaving.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Every restaurant I have ever been to seems to have a sign saying "We reserve
the right to refuse service." They also sometimes say "No shirt, no shoes, no
service." That's about it.

Somehow, they don't seem to typically have big problems with people behaving
badly while having lunch or whatever.

~~~
tonypace
With restaurants, you pay afterwards. With conferences, there is a lot of up
front money. The situations are different.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Hotels will just keep the entire amount if you try to cancel at the last
second after making a reservation.

There are plenty of situations where you just forfeit the cost. Too bad, so
sad.

------
hprotagonist
My problem, for good or ill, with codes of conduct, is that they are written
in the language of HR--which is to say, the defensive language of ass-covering
--and thus I cannot trust them.

Sounds like this author feels similarly.

~~~
dmurray
Agreed. The author has some sympathy for organisations which decide "we need
to have a CoC to get X grant from body Y". And if that's the reason to have a
CoC, of course it should be written in the appropriate HRy, ass-covering
language, because that's what Y expects and is paying you for.

Of course no organisation of fewer than say a hundred thousand people can
actually abide by all the provisions of a HR-worthy CoC. The problem is then
with the organisations that instead of saying "we have this ass-covering CoC
to keep the grant, but here are the actual things we will do to enforce
acceptable behaviour" escape with "we've done our bit to prevent unacceptable
behaviour -- look, you can read our code of conduct".

------
kardashev
One thing that's worrying about CoCs is that many of them seem political in
nature and are used as excuses to abuse other members of the community who
don't conform to certain opinions. Bryan Lunduke has chronicled a few examples
of this occurring and causing destruction of otherwise healthy communities.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s087Ca9JnYw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s087Ca9JnYw)

------
phyzome
This was a better post than I was expecting. It's written from the heart, and
from a non-dismissive standpoint. Worth reading the whole thing.

I really liked the example about accessibility. It's a great
point—organizations should be honest with themselves about what they can
actually offer.

I disagreed with some other parts, in particular the part about how a lot of
orgs aren't actually prepared to handle harassment complaints professionally.
While that's definitely something to work on, I think that's something that's
going to be true for many orgs regardless of whether they have a CoC. _Not_
welcoming people to come forward with complaints is... probably worse, right?
Or am I missing something?

~~~
nitwit005
If someone feels they aren't capable of handling harassment issues, they're
probably correct. Handing off the job to someone incapable does seem like an
issue.

In general, telling an organization they need a process for something doesn't
work out unless they genuinely buy into the idea. It tends to result in a
bunch of process documents getting written, but no practical changes to how
things are run.

~~~
phyzome
Yeah, I think my big take-away from this document is: If you're going to have
a CoC, you'd better be able to stand by what you say in it. Don't just copy-
paste from someone else's and thereby unthinkingly overpromise.

------
tylermenezes
It seems like the point of the article is not sufficient to make a community
feel welcoming and safe. Which is a great point: lots of shitty communities
have a Code of Conduct that's ignored.

That doesn't mean a Code of Conduct is not a necessary step.

Teaching people to be good members of your community, and being proactive in
removing bad members, isn't possible until you define what that means.

~~~
matte_black
There can’t be effective learning if there aren’t clear and public post
mortems on instances where the Code of Conduct was violated or wrongly invoked
and what the correct action should have been. No one really does this. I was
at a conference once where someone was arrested and taken away in handcuffs.
To this day I have no clue what he could have done to realistically end up in
that situation besides physical assault.

~~~
TillE
If somebody was arrested, it's obviously because they were believed to have
committed a crime. There are many crimes available.

Codes of conduct are generally about behavior that isn't criminal, because
once you've crossed that line the appropriate response should be obvious.

------
kasbah
I am faced with feeling pressured to add a CoC for one of my own projects in
order to apply for funding. I am unsure what to put up. It seems like a
massive task to me.

I quite like the CoC of the EMF camp as it seems to the point, un-ambigious
and written in language I understand. I may try and adapt it for online
interaction. What do others think?

[https://www.emfcamp.org/code-of-conduct](https://www.emfcamp.org/code-of-
conduct)

~~~
shiado
Whatever you choose just make sure that the enforcement is consistent. That
seems to be the key. People know when rules exist for the purpose of selective
targeting. See this for what happens when CoCs are applied inconsistently
[https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_v...](https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6whs2e/multiple_coc_violations_by_nodejs_board_member/)

~~~
shados
That's the biggest issue. I was following a certain community recently that
had a fairly elaborate code of conduct with very precise language and somehow
always managed to manipulate said language so that one of their members could
virtually get away with murder, while other people would get
moderated/banned/whatever for the slightest mistake.

As long as its impartial (to the extent humans can be impartial...), there's
no real problem.

------
legostormtroopr
I find it telling that she felt it necessary to include the disclaimer "I am a
queer woman". When discussing issues around Codes of Conduct I see all too
often people leaning on personal attributes that give them social permission
to critique them.

~~~
ekianjo
It has become necessary because we regularly discard people's opinions based
on identity politics these days. It's sad.

------
Veedrac
> I believe that this person honestly cares about feminism and CoC, but that
> they are unable to be aware of how their own actions are going to far and
> come over as threatening. They do respect every aspect of a CoC, but refuse
> to be qualified with those "vague terms" as it is possible to interpret them
> in so many ways and are, of course, impossible to prove.

> How is a CoC helping me here, when CoC offer so many gray zones to play
> with, when the line between insecurity and harassment is so thin that it is
> almost impossible to distinguish one from another?

This is exactly the sort of thing a CoC _should_ help with. Without explicit
policy, you have no explicitly stated means of defense. With a CoC, you
_should_ be able to simply tell the people in charge of upholding it that this
person's actions come across as threatening and harrassing.

I am not saying this will work everywhere. A CoC also only enables you to know
what defenses you have, it does not create them. But I feel at least the
spirit is in the right place, and I know of at least one community where IMO
it works very well.

------
AstralStorm
Well, we have rules but we don't have a silly prescriptive law in our
hackerspace. The rules are all made by experience not guesswork and
intentions.

Sample rules that were retired:

* any member may ask anyone else to desist and go away or shut up and you have to comply (hasn't been invoked yet to any real extent - people tend to comply)

* any member may ask a non-member to leave (likewise) - criminal stuff is covered already

* we have a list of persona non grata - preferably do not let them in or keep them under constant supervision - list gets outdated, these people tend to not show up, new members have no idea

* do not take excessive phone calls in open space - just asking is good enough

Rules that we kept:

* is not a hotel or sleeping space - do not abuse the coach - crashing is fine, doing that many times in a row is not

* is not a pub - take excessive drinking elsewhere, likewise drug use or dealing

* members can be banned by a vote in a specific matter - it has happened

* keep the place clean (esp. put things back in their designated places, take out the trash and keep fridge clean of old mold)

* how meetings and rule changes are made (consensus on an actual face to face meeting announced at least 48h ahead; must be at least one person from steering committee which is also chosen by consensus on a big meet by majority)

Note there is nothing about harassment since there is no need to. The general
rules are fine. There is also clear definition of who is responsible for
upholding the rules.

If we had a CoC like one of those "inclusive" ones we'd have to ban half to
two thirds of the members. They are fond of religious and sometimes lewd
jokes. Or are sometimes abrasive or crude.

Abuse (incl. verbal, stalking) is not tolerated regardless since it is a _bad
plan_ and if it recurs it will get you banned - it has in the past. We do not
write it in rules as it is dealt with on case by case basis. Mostly as it
requires a vote and vote requires a discussion and presenting the points
clearly. And anything illegal and disruptive will get the police called on
you. Obviously.

------
smileysteve
COCs are virtue signaling at best (as mentioned in checklist items) and a
catch ~~all~~ most for immature behavior at worst.

Really, it would help if we could trust adults to be adults, or at least 16
year olds, but this speaks to bigger industry and societal problems. Recently,
I heard conference attendees bragging of how they messed up a presentation by
trying to connect to the bluetooth device being demonstrated. And I've been
lucky to have never worked at a place where changing the background to
pornography or setting an inappropriate facebook status was a thing.

The truth is that the tech industry (among others) still has people who are
less mature than the people at lan parties I went to when I was 14-16.

~~~
ncallaway
Nearly every form of communication is a form of signaling your values in one
way or another ("virtue signaling").

Your post is _filled_ with things that signal your virtues.

Why is virtue signaling bad? How is it not just a standard part of humans
communicating with each other?

~~~
Vendan
Virtue signaling has become a perjorative term: "In recent years, the term has
become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to
criticize what they regard as empty, or superficial support of certain
political views, and also used within groups to criticize their own members
for valuing outward appearance over substantive action. ... Examples of
behavior described as virtue signalling include changing Facebook profile
pictures to support a cause, participation in the Ice Bucket Challenge,
offering thoughts and prayers after a tragedy, celebrity speeches during award
shows, politicians pandering to constituents on ideological issues."

~~~
ncallaway
I guess a code of conduct is literally virtue signaling _with the express
purpose of signaling the virtues the community will tolerate_.

It's like looking at a profit and loss sheet, and perjoritivity calling it a
"economic document".

That's literally just what it is doing, and it's stated purpose for existing.

~~~
Vendan
if the profit and loss sheet was pulled from some other company, and doesn't
accurately represent the company? I'd call that lying, and there'd probably be
people going to jail. That's why this is being negatively referred to as
virtue signaling:

"That line that made you feel like you'd get something out of the event was
nothing else than an useless talking point copied of some checklist that made
the organizers of the event feel like they are doing the right thing."

------
sn
This seems like more of an argument against bad CoCs and against CoCs for all
organizations, rather than a CoC always being bad for every organization.

There's also a difference between specifying a CoC and enforcing a CoC. Maybe
there needs to be a different name for expectations that aren't going to be
enforced, either because they're too imprecise or the people running things
are incapable of doing so.

------
edanm
I don't know. I helped organize a conference where we were required to use a
code of conduct by the parent organization (to be fair, we'd probably have put
a code of conduct up either way).

From my point of view, as someone who is likely not going to be subject to bad
behavior, I felt like a lot of it was standard HR boilerplate feel-good stuff.
Not that there's anything wrong with that - it's good to signal quite clearly
the behavior you think is right and wrong.

But I think that in some cases it helped more than that. It really _does_ give
you specific benefits:

1\. It gives you something to aspire to. Yes, our CoC included accessibility
issues. No, we weren't amazing at dealing with them, since it was our first
time and it's not an easy topic to take care of. But the CoC certainly helps
make it a priority, if only because people may (rightly!) call you out on
failings. Most people will be understanding with you even if you don't get
everything right, as long as you're trying.

2\. I think specifying specific contacts (male and female) in case of certain
abuse situations is a good thing. Of _course_ whoever is the contact is not
necessarily trained in dealing with trauma - but that's usually not the
situation we're talking about. If someone is raped or physically asaulted,
it's a matter for the police. We're talking about much lighter but still
problematic cases, where hopefully the victim wants something done, but
doesn't need a trauma specialist or anything.

The idea of the CoC isn't to be _instead of_ law enforcement, it's to be
another layer on top of that providing specific rules about what is and isn't
considered professional behavior in this kind of conference. No more, no less.

------
rectang
The world is separating into bastions: with CoC and without CoC.

I'm much happier in one of those than the other.

------
ksec
A Silly question, is CoC a thing in Commonwealth / EU countries? Or is it
mostly an US thing?

------
matte_black
It’s important to remember a conference is not a space, it’s the _people_ in
that space.

In a conference there are no safe spaces, only safe people. What we need are
social structures to help keep safe people around other safe people, if that’s
where they want to be.

We need an effective way of calibrating a person’s safety profile. An
individual for instance may be perfectly safe for a minority, but unsafe for
all but the most hardened women.

