
No Code of Conduct - sethammons
http://nocodeofconduct.com/
======
rfrey
Nearly every point in this list assumes the issues people are addressing with
code of conducts boil down to over-sensitive, reductivist prima-donnas. It is
essential an extended denial that there is ever a real problem.

That might be, but the article doesn't even try to make that argument. Instead
it makes a caricature of people who think there _is_ sometimes a problem, and
furthermore think that making expectations explicit rather than implicit is a
good and helpful step.

The article is lazy, cynical, and reflects shallow thinking.

~~~
coldtea
> _Nearly every point in this list assumes the issues people are addressing
> with code of conducts boil down to over-sensitive, reductivist prima-
> donnas._

Yes. That's why I think they've nailed it. This is, much more often that not,
the case.

People have been capable of coexisting in social situations without an
explicit CoC for millenia. And they have been doing just that on the internet
since its inception. Heck, they're doing it in most non-US Western countries
without many issues...

~~~
ceejayoz
> People have been capable of coexisting in social situations without an
> explicit CoC for millenia.

People have been excluding minorities and disadvantaged groups for those same
millennia. Your argument is almost verbatim that of antivaxxers who argue
"people were fine before vaccines!" while ignoring all the evidence that
people _weren 't_.

~~~
spotman
Can you point to where this is happening more than the after mentioned over-
sensitive, reductivist prima-donnas issues? ( I mean in the context of our
industry )

Dongle Gate / Pronoun Gate / Opal Gate... whats next?

Let me guess: I'm an asshole for asking for proof.

Sigh.

~~~
geofft
Do you believe that our industry employs black people (a demographic, which,
at least in the US, have been fairly clearly historically discriminated
against, until the passage of _legal codes_ of conduct) at a rate commensurate
with their relative skill and interest compared to non-black people?

[http://insights.dice.com/2014/11/11/african-american-it-
pros...](http://insights.dice.com/2014/11/11/african-american-it-pros-on-
diversity-in-tech/)

[http://money.cnn.com/interactive/technology/tech-
diversity-d...](http://money.cnn.com/interactive/technology/tech-diversity-
data/)

[http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf](http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf)

~~~
SamReidHughes
You'd think a look at employment rates of science and engineering graduates,
as seen in your third link, would help, but because of affirmative action that
data's kind of spoiled.

~~~
geofft
OK, sure, but in the absence of affirmative action, are black high schoolers
going into science and engineering programs at rates commensurate with their
aptitude and interest compared with non-black high schoolers?

Obviously we're a bit off-topic from codes of conduct at the moment. But the
specific claim I was responding to was that minorities and disadvantaged
groups are not being excluded from CS today in the same way as they have been
marginalized from society for millennia. You can draw a fairly straightforward
line of causality from imperialism and slavery and Reconstruction and Jim Crow
to, e.g., why fewer black kids in elementary school learned programming in the
'90s via their parents' UNIX account from the local university and reading
their parents' textbooks (which is how I originally got into CS as a child,
and I've heard similar stories from several of my peers).

~~~
ralfd
Why then are overproportional so many Asians in IT? They are most often
similarly coming from an immigrant background and had no "parents with a UNIX
account".

------
yummyfajitas
Also related is this thread from yesterday, where 'meh' stood up to an angry
mob and refused to kick out a core committer for his unrelated political
views.

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

It's great to see some pushback against the modern McCarthyism that's
currently becoming fashionable.

~~~
bsaul
Damn, this github issue is such a tragedy... If you like politics, please
engage in politic groups or parties. But everything is NOT about politics.
Only the worst fascist regimes think so as they try to mold every parts of
society to their own beliefs.

I guess it's the downside of the geek culture being fashionable and not an
underground culture anymore. People that love talking more than coding start
polluting discussion group to get some sort of recognition for something
different than plain hard work...

EDIT : i read it again. Do people advocating for the firing of the contributor
who posted on twitter realize what the long term consequence is, provided
people choose a technology based on politics ? You'll have "gay friendly"
technology, and "conservative" technology. You'll have "christian" technology
and "muslim" technology (because, hey, saying Jesus is the son of god on
twitter hurts muslim's feelings). You'll have "meat lovers" programming
languages. And "pro guns" Operating Systems.

Is that the technological world you want to live in ?? Don't you think
computer science and interoperability is difficult enough so that we don't
bring in those kind of considerations ?

------
wvenable
I "run" an forum that is an offshoot of a very popular professional software
development blog. The original forum was closed by the blog author and my site
replaced it. This forum has rules but they're pretty minor (no doxxing, etc)
and users cannot be filtered away, only posts can be removed.

Having run this forum for over a decade, I have a lot of insight into running
an anonymous free form nearly censorship free place on the Internet.

1\. There are many mentally disturbed people on the Internet. So point #1 of
the article, "We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions." is
already off the mark. And even perfectly normal people tend to be worse human
beings online (The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory). And these are people,
like you and me, who earn their living making software.

2\. "We accept everyones contributions." Yes, but bytes being free creates a
situation where some contributions will overshadow other everyone else's
contributions. 1 person can literally post 10,000x more than anyone else. And
they will, see point #1. This creates an unbalanced situation that is very
hard to resolve.

In my opinion, if you want to be inclusive it's pretty damn hard without any
rules, moderation, censorship, limited access, etc.

~~~
13thLetter
This is all definitely true. What happens, though, when the "mentally
disturbed people" \-- or even just some completely sane people who happen to
have a political/cultural agenda foremost in their minds, rather than the good
of the project or organization -- work their way into control of the rules,
moderation, censorship, and limited access?

This is not just possible but highly likely, given that moderation is an
unpleasant and time-consuming job and anyone who volunteers is quite likely to
get it. And once the power to deploy these rules is in the hands of the people
who were supposed to be restrained by these rules, things tend to get very
dark, very quickly.

~~~
wvenable
Everyone always thinks moderators are evil. They have "the power" and you do
not. It's basic human nature. The reality, of course, is that it's a thankless
but necessary job that can't please everyone. Most give up after being
constantly harassed and accused of having an agenda. Moderation decisions are
imperfect because there are plenty of competing interests and there is often
no obvious right answer.

Conspiracy theories abound these days and it's mostly ridiculous.

~~~
13thLetter
No, I don't think moderators are evil; that's absurd. Moderators are people.
Some are good and some are bad. But the nature of the job of a volunteer
moderator is that it's going to be hard to get anyone to do it who isn't, as
you say, going to give up and quit because of all the crap they have to put up
with in exchange for no pay. Who's going to be left? The egotists, the
fanatics, and the folks who see it as a useful tool to "change the world."

It's hard to picture a solution. Perhaps if moderation was an actual job; that
would at least weed out some of the folks who are unstable or are just in it
for internet points.

------
marklavey
(creates throwaway account to avoid shitstorm)

I run an event with a CoC. However I do see the other side of the argument:

\- the common CoCs from
[http://confcodeofconduct.com/](http://confcodeofconduct.com/) are vague:
they're defined by what is 'offensive' \- choosing to be offended is very much
a personal matter and it can be hard to guess what will offend others.
'Dongle' jokes? I've seen female speakers make a 40 min presentation on
regular expressions filled with rude words, that, if they weren't female,
would have caused a shitstorm.

\- CoCs being inconsistently enforced - a major hard-left conf organiser
regularly retweets a well known online troll who constantly says things that
violate their code of conduct, but since the trolls target a particular race
and gender it's considered 'edgy' or 'ironic'.

\- The CoCs mix things people consider innate (gender, sexuality) with ideas
(spirituality) and what many medical professional would consider lifestyles
choices (obesity). These are not worthy of the same degrees of protection. I
don't think fat people should feel bad, but I don't think saying someone is
fat is the same thing as saying they'll go to hell because they're gay.

\- CoCs conflict with each other: spiritual views conflict with each other (I
think God isn't real, someone else thinks that it is and disbelievers will go
to hell, spiritual views conflict with sexuality (Christianity and gay
marriage). Either party could feel offended. OK fine, lets not discuss
religion or sexuality. Kind of feels sad to limit discussion.

------
grayclhn
There have got to be more constructive ways of making the same point. Throwing
up specious strawman arguments as a mock "FAQ" kind of undermines point 1: "We
are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions."

Edit: it's going to bother me all weekend if I don't add that I find the
viewpoint expressed in this link, i.e. "people who are concerned about
reaching out to members of non-majority groups and making them feel welcome in
a technical community are idiots worthy of ridicule," to be absolutely
appalling. It's very different than the view that people should be judged
purely on their technical contribution.

------
pdabbadabba
No coincidence that this was written, apparently, by a youngish white male.
This sounds like an effort to impose a code of conduct that only restricts the
sort of conduct that frequently bothers him (being accused of having violated
social norms that he does not find important--probably because they do not
benefit him), while consciously deciding not to address the challenges that
face other people online.

He's free to run a community in that way, but I won't be joining it.

~~~
acbart
I was amused that he defended himself by pointing out that he helps design
software for a gay community. Okay, but does that really make you a minority
in any way? Regardless of whether privilege is an issue in this discussion,
the logic doesn't really flow here.

~~~
slipjack
Yeah, it's almost like intersectionality is a thing.

~~~
acbart
Intersectionality would come into play if he was arguing that he was a member
of multiple minority groups. Here he was arguing that he was a contributor
(not necessarily a member!) of a single group, distinct from the previously
discussed ones. It's entirely possible he's a member of multiple groups, my
point was just that his argument didn't reference that and it was therefore
illogical.

~~~
slipjack
Yup. It's annoying to hear that I should stop whining because the internet is
fine, when he almost doesn't experience oppression in the same way.

~~~
acbart
I'm... actually not clear on what you're saying. Are you being sarcastic or
serious? I can't read your tone and I could imagine realistic scenarios where
you're saying one thing or the other.

~~~
slipjack
My bad - I was being sarcastic about the first comment, not sarcastic about
the second (and agreeing with you).

To more fully explain what I meant by my first response, I was frustrated by
his lack of awareness of the ways intersectionality impacts how different
people interact with each other online. Codes of Conduct become increasingly
important as one recognizes that intersectionalities of oppression can create
extremely toxic situations for some minority groups and not others, depending
on the context of the group. So, basically what you were saying in your second
comment.

~~~
acbart
You sound pretty knowledgable about intersectionality. Do you have any
material on it? I'm only familiar with it from one blog post, so I wouldn't
mind learning some more. It sounds like there are more nuances to it than I
first understood.

~~~
slipjack
Thanks! Honestly, I would start with the wikipedia article about it
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality)).
It's a nice intro and has a lot of great links.

------
ecopoesis
"We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions."

How I wish this was true, but it's not. That's why we have code of conducts:
because creepers don't realize that it's not okay to hit on every women they
see, because bros don't realize gay isn't a synonym for bad, because
gamergaters don't realize women can video games and so on. The sad truth is,
there is a portion of our society that does not act in a mature and adult way,
and they hurt others as a result.

As someone who plays life on easy mode[1] like I imagine most commenters here,
it's hard to remember that most people play life on hard mode. Code of
conducts are aimed at making hard mode a little better: hopefully by reminding
people where the boundaries are, and for correcting problems when those
boundaries are crossed. Are codes of conduct a perfect solution? No. But the
response to lack of perfection shouldn't be to give up: it should be to try
harder. Centuries of civilization has show us that ignoring problems don't
make things better. We have to fight the good fight and force the world to be
a better place.

[1] [http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-
th...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-
difficulty-setting-there-is/)

~~~
Nadya
_> because gamergaters don't realize women can video games and so on_

I'm going to try and not be vindictive, but I assume you think #NotYourShield
is nothing but sockpuppet accounts and doesn't have _any_ support from GG
supporters and that Liz, a prominent _female_ supporter of GG who was doxxed
and threatened by anti-GGers, was not supported by GG? I spent 2-3 months
browsing the tag and found it to be a far more diverse group of people than
the _primarily white, upper-middle class, SanFran_ group of SJW people who
oppose the Twitter movement.

 _> because bros don't realize gay isn't a synonym for bad_

Linguistics says you're wrong. You can dislike that the word has multiple
meanings and that one refers to a demographic of people, but I know of
_nobody_ who makes the connection between the two definitions. Hell - most of
my homosexual friends of mine have absolutely no issue with the usage of the
word in the contexts people tend to use it negatively in, and I've asked them.
Only the extremely PC-types give a shit.

 _> because creepers don't realize that it's not okay to hit on every women
they see_

I like how a flirtatious/promiscuous woman is a "slut" and the chosen term for
a flirtatious/promiscuous man is "creeper". It makes _defending the "creeper"_
put one in some sort of negative moral standing. Which is a way to pull
emotional/political biases into the argument.

Humans enjoy sex. Society tends to shame people with multiple partners. Single
people, therefore, tend to flirt with other single people. Maybe one of them
wants to join them for sex. The more you flirt with other single people - the
more likely you are to receive a positive response from one of them.
Therefore, if your goal is sex, you flirt with as many single people as
possible.

Congratulations - you've just discovered human motives backed by human nature.
Do you share these vindications against sluts? Or does it only apply to
creepers?

Lastly - members of these same minority groups are sick of people _like you_
being offended _on their behalf_ [0] [1] [2]. This isn't an uncommon sentiment
either. Being offended on their behalf is treating them as less than you. As
if they cannot make up their own minds to be offended or not. As if they are
too weak to speak up and need you to do it for them. Sometimes they just don't
care [3].

[0] [http://dlmagazine.org/2013/10/dear-white-people-stop-
apologi...](http://dlmagazine.org/2013/10/dear-white-people-stop-apologizing-
offending/)

[1] [http://groupthink.kinja.com/getting-offended-on-behalf-
of-a-...](http://groupthink.kinja.com/getting-offended-on-behalf-of-a-
minority-group-723414719)

[2] [http://blog.holytroll.net/2012/04/dont-be-offended-for-
me/](http://blog.holytroll.net/2012/04/dont-be-offended-for-me/)

[3] [http://funnyasduck.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/funny-
pict...](http://funnyasduck.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/funny-pictures-ill-
be-offended-on-your-behalf-racisim-comic.jpg)

------
geofft
> If you feel this way simply because we do not have a code of conduct, it is
> hard for anyone to relate to you.

Huh, really? _Anyone_? Not even me? Wow! I didn't know I was unable to relate
to people.

The entire premise here seems to be based on the assumption that if the world
_ought_ to work a certain way, it necessarily does, and if certain things
don't seem like they _should_ be problems, they aren't. That's a popular
hacker culture anti-pattern, and applied to technical decisions, it's what
brought us things like C and Linux. (I'll note that C and Linux are on the
"good list".)

~~~
dkuntz2
Except the Linux Kernel technically does have a code of conduct, it's just
called the Code of Conflict, and while it basically states they'll deal with
problems on a case-by-case basis, it does explicitly give people a way to air
their grievances and attempt to have problems addressed.

Additionally, while C itself doesn't have a specific code of conduct, the
International Standards Organization (which C belongs to and is governed by)
has a code of conduct and code of ethics.

------
dkuntz2
What exactly is bad about a code of conduct? Yes, they can get overly complex,
and aren't always perfect, but 99% of the time, a formalized code of conduct
is just a way of saying don't be a dick, and if you're a dick, here's how
we're going to deal with it.

~~~
13thLetter
In the Opal situation, the fear was that the code of conduct would be used as
a weapon against people expressing unrelated political opinions outside of the
context of the project itself.

This is not an unreasonable fear, given that the people who are demanding the
CoC explicitly said they wanted to do this.

------
slipjack
> Whatever do you, do not make a scene, as that will burden the entire
> community with your issue... Remember, this is not the time or place to
> start these kind of discussions.

Cool. I'll make sure not to make a big issue out of being sexually harassed
online... online.

------
seattle_thrwawy
Looking forward to a day that I don't have to hide behind a throwaway to
enthusiastically agree.

~~~
judah
No throwaway, and I enthusiastically agree.

The recent instances of people demanding resignation of a technical person
from an open source project because somebody dislikes his personal views is a
form of coercion to uniformity, political thought-policing.

In line with this theme, the NCoC site says:

Q: How can I contribute to your project or community when I see someone said
something on a different site or community which directly makes me feel awful?

A: We are not in the business of policing people’s personal lives. Hopefully
they also don’t give a shit about that when they are here. Part of not
discriminating people, is not discriminating people. This is not world court.
Sometimes people have different views. Just because they express this
elsewhere, doesn’t mean we give a shit.

~~~
seattle_thrwawy
Yeah. I saw have seen some talented people get fired over the years, including
at my current company.

I have heard all sorts of offensive comments throughout the years from all
sorts of sexualities and nationalities. The only people who ever get fired for
them are white (or white-passing) males.

------
vezzy-fnord
Most projects already have formal or informal rules set in place for
discussion, project management, issue tracking.

A code of conduct would be redundant as such. More often than not, it seems to
mostly be a veiled appeasement. The Linux kernel's "Code of Conflict" is a
blatant and hilarious example of this.

------
mbrock
"We are all adults."

I've yet to see any evidence of this.

~~~
sarciszewski
Let's troll them for being ageist!

------
istvan__
Long time needed project, recent developments on Github where people try to
turn a version management system for code hosting and working into a political
platform have to be stopped. #politicsfree

~~~
geofft
I thought GitHub was about social coding.

~~~
istvan__
Social has very little to do with political agenda and misrepresenting people
that I was referring to. Example:
[https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)

What the guy said:

[https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/61156951531550720...](https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/611569515315507200)

It is very sad that this is happening.

Question to you what has social to do with political extremists?

------
sarciszewski

        1. We are all adults.  Capable of having adult discussions.
        2. We accept everyones contributions, we don’t care if you’re liberal or
           conservative, black or white, straight or gay, or anything
           else! in fact, we won’t bring it up, or ask.  We simply don’t give a shit.
        3. nothing else fucking matters!
    

This reminds me a lot of the WTFPL...

    
    
                    DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
                                Version 2, December 2004 
        
             Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net> 
        
             Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified 
             copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long 
             as the name is changed. 
    
                        DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE 
               TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 
        
              0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

~~~
imsofuture
Also, the Crowley license:
[http://copyfree.org/content/standard/licenses/ctl/license.tx...](http://copyfree.org/content/standard/licenses/ctl/license.txt)

------
imsofuture
I'm not sure why there's ever been a need for a code of conduct beyond the
golden rule. Just, like, be nice and stuff.

~~~
maxerickson
There are a lot of people that really don't have any idea how to be nice and
stuff.

One thing codes of conduct do is clarify what other people are expecting
(hopefully they clarify the shared expectations of the group).

~~~
coldtea
> _There are a lot of people that really don 't have any idea how to be nice
> and stuff._

The CoC won't help those people in the first place.

~~~
maxerickson
I believe it would simplify conversations about negative behavior. Point to
the CoC and say that it is an agreement to avoid acting in certain ways,
please don't act in those ways.

I don't think it is a cure all or anything, but it at least provides an
opportunity to avoid counter productive arguments, and at worst is still
incrementally less arbitrary than banning/shunning difficult people outside of
a CoC.

------
serve_yay
I sometimes find codes of conduct a little "grandstandy" if you will, but I
prefer that state of affairs to this. This just feels like re-entrenchment.

------
Boxbot

      1. We are all adults.  Capable of having adult discussions.
    

When your first point is so blatantly, demonstrably _wrong_ why on earth
should anyone bother giving any further consideration to your argument?

------
ad_hominem
I agree with the spirit of this, but "we are all adults" is a bit overly-
specific. There are people that are not yet adults that contribute to open
source too. Maybe "we are all rational?"

~~~
nostrebored
There are people who are not rational that contribute to open source as well.
Contributing to their delusions is overly-harmful!

You're never going to find a blanket affirming, feel-good statement that's
actually true.

------
nateberkopec
Not having a CoC is like not having an employee handbook.

In theory, we're all nice people, and nice people don't need laws or handbooks
to tell them what to do or who to behave.

But we're not all nice people. And when bad things happen, you need to have
something written down that you can point to and say: "Hey, you violated this
thing you said you agreed to." CoCs are not preventative measures (they don't
proactively reduce bad behavior), they're more helpful for throwing out
community members when they do something bad.

~~~
rtz12
> Not having a CoC is like not having an employee handbook.

I have never heard of that a so called "employee handbook" and the company I
work for is still a pretty civil place. I wonder how we manage that?

------
cosrnos
The main problem I have with arguments like this is that it's made for the
ideal world.

Yes, people should act like adults in OSS. Yes, people shouldn't be judged for
who they are. Yes, we shouldn't have to say these things.

But in reality, people don't act like adults in OSS, people are still judged
for things that should be completely irrelevant. We need to spell these things
out because apparently there are still people in the world who need to be told
that they should treat others the way they want to be treated.

------
rando3826
> 1\. We are all adults.

Stopped there. We aren't. I've been amazed at finding that code came from a 15
year old.

------
jellicle
So, someone got booted out of the ubuntu forums for being a dick and then
instead of growing up, decided to make a tumblr blog.

Is that a correct reading of the situation here?

~~~
tree_of_item
No, here's what happened: [http://nocodeofconduct.com/post/121966770584/on-
opalgate](http://nocodeofconduct.com/post/121966770584/on-opalgate)

------
xophe
..reminds me of [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

------
davesque
I don't really have a stake here but I just have to point out that this is
very ironic. For one thing, the author claims it's a good idea to keep things
private and not make a scene. However, they went ahead and created a website
with a big white-list and black-list for projects that they either do or do
not like. How is that not making a scene?

