
Go CoC updated to remove “punitive language and anonymous reporting mechanism” - bumbledraven
https://go-review.googlesource.com/37014
======
iagooar
I've always found this whole idea of a Code of Conduct pretty broken. It seems
to be a document written by some kind of abstract, shared moral authority
which apparently has the power to decide what's good or bad.

You could possibly argue, that it represents a shared mindset of a group of
people working on a common project. The thing is, it has become a base for
witch hunting, public shaming and other conflicts because some people have
taken the code of conduct as their bible and felt it was their duty to go on a
crusade against the infidels.

Also, from a European perspective, it looks like such an American thing to do.
You need written rules for everything. In Europe, when you go to a restaurant
or a bar, the one common sign you'll find is the smoking forbidden one. That's
it. People will politely ask if it's OK to bring a dog, or just know that
going without a T-shirt is a no-go. In the US, you need half an hour just to
read through all of the information before even entering the place. And people
would still challenge the rules that are not explicitly stated there.

As an anecdote, I once went to a conference in a European country where
immigration is close to 0, thus people are pretty much caucasian. So there was
this American speaker (obviously caucasian) talking about diversity in
software and would kind of try to shame the event organisers and the audience
because there was no black person in the room. It was one of the most absurd
situations in my life.

To me, a Code of Conduct does not belong to the realm of software. Software
needs to speak computer language, not be concerned with complex, ambiguous,
human ethics. You can clearly tell that the Go team has decided to go the way
of "yeah, we are kind of obliged to have a CoC, but don't want to be dicking
around with the topic". Good for them.

~~~
jsmeaton
Can you give any examples of witch hunting based on CoC? Ignoring the famous
example of pycon a few years ago is there another?

I feel there's a common feeling about the potential "badness" of a code of
conduct, but very few actual examples.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Sure. The person who started promoting the concept of code of conducts,
"Coraline Ada", has been hunting down people who violate their view of what's
"right". For example pressuring third party projects to remove maintainers
because they are "publicly calling trans people out" on twitter.

[https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)

There is this other very interesting example where Coraline got called out
doing the very things she despises:
[https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/...](https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/issues/278)
This is of course perfectly acceptable.

~~~
SorryImNone
She's "GitHub staff" now.

The mentality of "that person said something I disagree with [on other media]
and they should be banned here [on a random project that I don't have anything
to do with] or else..." is incredible toxic.

If you don't agree with "assholes" writing code or using code that was written
by an "asshole", you'll have a hard time using anything open source at all.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Yup! And your project can be removed/banned from GitHub if you do something
she disagrees with now. I forget which project it was that was lashed out at
recently, but it's all rather insane.

~~~
adekok
That is, it looks like GitHub will _ignore it 's own code of conduct_ in order
to punish "bad" people.

This is a common theme among proponents of codes of conduct.

See also Twitter's ban on many people, including Milo Yiannopoulos. He was
banned for "violating the rules". But I've looked, and no one anywhere can
point out which exact tweet violated which particular rule. Even more extreme,
no one can point out where he said any of things he's accused of saying.

So... Twitter blocked him for "abuse", when there is zero evidence of such
abuse.

I'll say this:

 _The more extreme the code of conduct, the more likely it will be broken by
the people enforcing it_.

~~~
scrollaway
Neither Github nor Twitter have a code of conduct; they have a Terms of
Service document. TOS, unlike CoCs, are written by lawyers because the goal is
a full-featured CYA. And they generally contain the legalesed disclaimer
"we're free to get rid of you whenever we feel like, for whatever reason we
feel like". I'm sure twitter also has some extra community rules somewhere.

CoCs are worrisome because they tend to emulate that behaviour, and I
_certainly do not condone overreaching TOS_ , but you can't equate those two
situations. It's the behaviour of people vs. the behaviour of companies.

~~~
falcolas
Github does use a CoC for their projects, actually:

"We have adopted the Open Code of Conduct for the open source projects that we
maintain, including Atom, Electron, Git LFS, and many others."

[https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-
condu...](https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-conduct)

~~~
scrollaway
For their projects, not for the site. Big difference.

------
guitarbill
I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of Conducts are. I won't
touch projects with a CoC, and when a project that I'm actively contributing
to introduces a CoC, I stop contributing.

Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness a leg to stand on
can be damaging to a community, and trying to placate such people via a CoC is
a lost cause. On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated even
without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people anyway. So IMO there is
simply no upside.

Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my Github account for
work. If I was younger, I'd probably start over again with a fresh github
account that didn't have my real name attached to it. But not contributing
seems like an easier solution.

~~~
rebeccaskinner

      I think projects underestimate how off-putting Code of 
      Conducts are. I won't touch projects with a CoC, and when 
      a project that I'm actively contributing to introduces a 
      CoC, I stop contributing.
    

These days I try not to contribute to any project that doesn't have a CoC. The
project I help maintain does, as do the communities I moderate. If someone
can't create a PR without saying things that are racist, misogynist, etc. then
frankly I don't want them in my community. If someone is going to be put off
by the fact that mightn't be able to say something hateful if they decided
they wanted to, then I'd rather not have that person in my community.

    
    
      Giving people who are obsessed with political correctness 
      a leg to stand on can be damaging to a community, and 
      trying to placating such people via a CoC is a lost cause.
    

I think that's a very negative way of looking at a CoC. Where you see "people
who are obsessed with political correctness", I see "people who are tired of
being constantly shit on by the vocal jerks in online communities". It's not
placating, it's simply valuing people's right to contribute and participate
peacefully over other people's right to be jackasses. Sure, you can do that
without a CoC, but the CoC is a good signal to people that the people who are
moderating the community are on their side.

    
    
      On the flip side, I've never seen harassment tolerated 
      even without a CoC. I don't think CoC deter such people 
      anyway. So IMO there is simply no upside.
    

I disagree with the assertion that CoCs don't deter people in a community; I
have seen first-hand where having a code of conduct was a way of resolving
something that was quickly getting out hand and was likely to have ended up
with some great contributors leaving the project because they were being
harassed by others. I wasn't going to convince the harassers that they were
wrong about what they were saying, and I certainly wasn't going to convince
the people being harassed that they should stick around in a community that
was being hostile. Most people were either unaware of the threat, or else not
directly affected and stayed quiet. The CoC was something of a final arbiter
to put a stop to the harassment, and I had tried diligently to do so before
putting on my admin hat or pulling out the CoC. I've seen _many_ other
situations where similar things have played out. Without CoCs people would
have either been banned from the project, or others would have left, being
able to put a stop to something has helped.

    
    
      Besides, any kind of potential drama is a no-go, I use my 
      Github account for work. If I was younger, I'd probably 
      start over again with a fresh github account that didn't 
      have my real name attached to it. But not contributing 
      seems like an easier solution.
    

If you're neither a maintainer or community moderator, nor violating the CoC,
then I don't see where the drama would come in. I have my real name attached
to my github account, to the meetups I run, and the slack communities I
moderate. I deal with CoC violations at times, and certainly my own
harassment, but I'm not worried about "drama" effecting my reputation because
I stand by my own behaviors and by my belief in the value of not letting
people harass others and crate hostile toxic environments.

~~~
adekok
> If someone can't create a PR without saying things that are racist,
> misogynist, etc. then frankly I don't want them in my community.

That's confusing two issues: code of conduct, and on-topic communication.

If someone opens a PR which complains about a bug in a _different piece of
software_ , you would close it as off topic. If they kept doing so, you would
block them as being abusive.

The same should apply to racism, sexism, etc. The issue isn't that they're
wrong, it's that they're _off topic_ for a PR.

You don't need a code of conduct that says "racism is bad" in (for example) a
javascript library.

For me, making _moral_ and _political_ statements in a software project raises
all kinds of red flags.

~~~
acdha
The error you're making is in assuming that those are always clearly separate.
There are many examples of people who were talking about on-topic technical
concepts but used examples or made “jokes” which were not.

Having a clear CoC is simply a shortcut: if, say, a speaker uses a bikini
picture in a slide you can simply point to it and say “you broke the CoC”
rather than rehashing the nth argument about how much sexualization is
acceptable in a technical context. It's like the difference between having a
standard license and contributor agreement versus making it up as you go
along: more work up front but it avoids problems which become more time-
consuming as the number of people involved grows.

~~~
scrollaway
I don't see how a code of conduct helps the situation you just described. Most
CoCs I know do not have a clear cut rule on this, merely broad statements
which you can spend time arguing cover the case or not.

This stuff is all shortcuts, to be honest.

~~~
acdha
Picking a random example:

[https://2016.djangocon.us/coc/](https://2016.djangocon.us/coc/)

“All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including
people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery is not
appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.

Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other attendees. Behave
professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary
jokes are not appropriate for DjangoCon. Attendees violating these rules may
be asked to leave the conference without a refund at the sole discretion of
the conference organizers.”

So if someone decided that they wanted to have a bunch of bikini pictures in
their slides or to crack jokes about something being ghetto it's starting from
a different place. Because the conference organizers thought about this in
advance they don't need to worry about making policy on the fly or having
different people give different off-the-cuff answers and then be hammered for
later changes.

Just as something like a coding style guide doesn't solve every question in
software, this doesn't solve every issue related to personal conduct but it
sets an overall direction and gives people an idea of what to expect: someone
going to a conference with that CoC would know that the expectations are set
to “business professional” rather than “hanging with my bros at the bar”. You
might think that something is obvious but once any event expands beyond a
small homogeneous group of people all bets are off.

(And, yes, it's shortcuts just as all policies, laws, etc. are because it's
easier to have a general trend known in advance than to try to reason about it
from first principles after the fact.)

------
scrollaway
It's unsurprising to read that anonymous reporting essentially failed. When
you're in charge of a community and there is a dispute between two members,
you have to act as a neutral third party. Anonymous reports force a bias on
one side and prevent the person in charge from getting more details about the
issue.

I think especially in a technical community, GPG (or easier tools if any) are
better suited to preserving privacy in important disputes.

Side semi-related rant: Why are CoCs in FOSS communities often so bureaucratic
and lengthy? I get the need for rules and enforcing of rules when you have a
large community, but most of them outside of open source usually manage with
very few rules, most of them which are always implied. Even HN's guidelines
only contain three lines about attitude which all boil down to "be civil".

I maintain two open source communities of 30 and 80 people, a gaming community
of ~300 daily active members and a friends&family guild of ~200 members. I've
never had to say anything else than "be nice" and "don't spam". Across all
those, I've had to deal with two serious cases of harassment, neither of which
would have been solved with a code of conduct. [NB: of course, community rules
become a more pressing need the larger and less focused your community is]

In the mean time, I see open source projects of 5-10 max adopting massive
codes of conduct that make potential contributors feel like they're reading
terms of service. I was part of the founding team of a small OSS group and one
of the _first_ things that came up was "we need a code of conduct" (as in,
around the same time as "we need a roadmap", when the group had 5 members).

In the well-meaning fight against harassment, I see people copypasting files
like they're going to be a magic bullet. If you have a community where rude
behaviour and/or harassment can be a concern, it's not a piece of paper that
says not to that will help; you need moderators your members feel safe
contacting and who know how to handle delicate situations.

~~~
Nexxxeh
>Even HN's guidelines only contain three lines about attitude which all boil
down to "be civil".

I think a lot of documents could just be replaced with a copy of Wheaton's
Law.

------
metaphorm
the entire premise of a Code of Conduct like this is flawed. this is the
infantilization of adults. 6 year olds need a code of conduct and an authority
figure present, so they won't fling shit at each other. if we treat adults
like 6 year olds then we should expect people to behave the way they are
treated.

I find it hard to accept that anything more verbose than "you're an adult; act
like it." is needed for a Code of Conduct. it astonishes me that this is the
trend in our culture and society. big brother gonna protect you from the mean
people. a world without sin. none shall pass.

what we really have is a deficit of communication skills, a deficit of
maturity, and most of all a broken view of how social groups do and ought to
function. this is the fallout from decades of institutional education. we now
have multiple generations of people who have come to take comfort in the
institutional structure of elementary school and feel lost without an
authority figure to turn to.

what the fuck has happened to us?

~~~
aidenn0
Look at usenet posts from circa 1990. We've had a deficit of communications
skills and a deficit of maturity for more than the current generation. And
this is all within a much less culturally diverse group than those on the
internet now.

I don't like CoCs either, but they exist because of a real problem. Let's say
we adopt a CoC of "you're an adult; act like it":

What corrective actions are taken against those not acting like an adult, who
takes those actions, and who is the arbiter of what qualifies as non-adult
behavior?

Very small communities and communities with a single BDFL can resolve this
because in the former consensus is easy to come by, and in the latter there is
an ultimate point of appeal. All other communities need some way of resolving
this, and adopting a CoC is one way of attempting to do so.

------
shadowmint
/shrug

It is what it is.

The idea that the working group had any meaningful power to 'discipline'
people who violated the code was dubious already, and the reddit thing just
made it more obvious that any kind of enforcement wouldn't really work.

Ultimately, maybe this _is_ the way forward for projects; facilitate a way to
bring people together to talk rather than punish people.

For what it's worth, I don't think the code of conduct was a particular
success, but I don't think it was a particular failure either.

The go community is far nicer, more welcoming and has proportionally less
hostile self important twats in it than it did 3 years ago... but, that's
probably just a matter of the community growing to include a lot more people.

This is probably the right change for go.

It's not an excuse to start being a douche.

------
jwilk
[https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959af...](https://github.com/golang/go/commit/025dfb130ae131a8005959afa7ee57a2c3778962)

↑ can be read without JS enabled

------
patates
They want to be facilitators instead of decision-makers because of their bad
experiences when they made final calls. You can't be a facilitator if one side
is missing from the conversation. I see nothing controversial.

------
grawlinson
This is a very good move, and I'm glad that the Code of Conduct was updated to
be more sane. As a consequence, I'm now more willing to contribute bug
reports/pull requests to the Go project.

~~~
alex_hitchins
What would have prevented you from doing so before?

------
rantanplan
100% what you said.

CoCs are absurd. Laws already cover all that. If they don't, fix them.

US PC crap is what it is.

~~~
pg314
> Laws already cover all that.

No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the
opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.

~~~
rantanplan
Um yes, there are.

If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem.

EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil
behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover
that, fix them.

~~~
pg314
If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law? Which law? Which
jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce
any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost
you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?

A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is
just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.

~~~
rantanplan
> If I call you an idiot, is that insult covered by the law?

Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a
different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can
ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me. I bet it's the
same for all civilized countries.

CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are
not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case
scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You
can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.

So really, I have no clue why you think that redundant things like CoC have
any practical use.

EDIT: instead of downvotes just explain where I'm wrong. Too many feelings
here, very few logical arguments.

~~~
pg314
> Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a
> different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can
> ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me.

Interesting. Does it happen often in practice?

> I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.

The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is
another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised
countries?

> CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are
> not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case
> scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what?
> You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.

The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and
to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism
only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The
consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.

Wether you agree with those goals or not, it is the right of a community to
decide which culture they like. And different communities will attract
different kinds of people. Quite a few people choose not to contribute to the
Linux kernel because of the abrasive leadership style of Linus. You might
choose to not contribute to the Golang project.

You argued that you don't need a CoC because the laws already cover the same
ground. If your goal is to foster a certain culture, it is simply not feasible
to use the law to enforce it.

Hacker News has guidelines which are not dissimilar to a CoC, but less
formalised:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Are they useless too in your opinion?

~~~
rantanplan
> Interesting. Does it happen often in practice?

Not really, but it does happen occasionally in work places, because if it
happens often enough it is basically the equivalent of bullying(called mobbing
at work).

> The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is
> another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised
> countries?

It's because I consider US a civilized(and a very litigious) country that I'm
sincerely surprised that its laws don't cover such things.

> The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon
> and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive
> criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The
> consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the
> project.

So basically what I described as "shunned" from the community.

But previously you said:

> Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you
> enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money
> will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?

So we agree that CoCs can't serve as substitutes for laws?

The HN guidelines are a perfect example because the first half has _practical_
use which is how to submit an article and the 2nd half which is indeed
useless.

Let's be honest here. What you're looking for is a magic wand that say "if you
could please don't be an asshole, that'd be grand thanks" and people would be
happily ever after. Right?

Well there's no solution for that and CoCs can only serve as to infuriate
people who aren't assholes.

Just shun them as you would do with or without a CoC.

