
No Code Of Conduct (2018) - nudpiedo
https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC
======
Etheryte
The easiest solution is in the name — simply don't have a code of conduct. As
the owner of a number of open source project, nothing baffles me more than the
argument that civil discussion can't happen without an official document
outlining the terms and conditions of participating. You don't need one when
you you interact with people offline, why would this be any different? Surely,
there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what you're
like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk away
when that's the case.

~~~
watwut
The linked article is an actual fully fledged code of conduct along with
promiss to lock and ban those who dont follow it.

> Surely, there are people out there who won't appreciate you, no matter what
> you're like or where you're from, but you're always very free to simply walk
> away when that's the case.

One problem with this as strategy is that it makes moderate, constructive or
polite people to leave first. It also makes me easy to use passive aggression
or hidden-not-so-hidden bullying to make people leave when I disagree with
them.

~~~
grayhatter
At which point does it becomes the repo owners job to help you assert your own
personal space?

Why can't you ignore the douchebag?

~~~
sneak
Some communities like to grow and attract more people. Many people don’t like
to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring communications from
douchebags, which is reasonable.

Widening the range of participatory reach requires specific effort to further
optimize for welcomingness.

~~~
u801e
> Many people don’t like to have to spend time avoiding, deleting, or ignoring
> communications from douchebags

Could the platform the community uses make it easier to hide posts and
discussion threads that people don't want to see? That would minimize the time
spent trying to deal with it.

~~~
sneak
It's called the ban button, most platforms have one. Despite the lack of
formal rules and myriad edge cases, _for the general case only_ , there is
broad consensus (in society, not necessarily within small groups) on what
constitutes "threads that most people don't want to see [or be subjected to]".

A really good example would be Linus calling people fucking stupid, or
screaming at them to shut the fuck up.

(Note: I know there are people reading this who want to read 100% of what
Linus has to say regardless of how mean he is in saying it. That is not a
refutation of my claim above, as it does not negate the fact that the vast
majority of people in society never want to be spoken to in this manner by
anyone, for any reason, least of all for making a small judgement error in
software that isn't even "prerelease" yet.)

~~~
u801e
> It's called the ban button, most platforms have one.

Do they? I can flag a post here on HN, or I can report one on reddit or
facebook, but that still requires a moderator or forum administrator to handle
the issue. In my newsclient, the effect is immediate and only affects my own
view of the forum.

------
jonathanpierre
I don't think this was an attempt in good faith to participate in the
discussion about the utility or futility of codes of conducts. This seems to
be, depending on your inclination to give the authors the benefit of the
doubt, either a joke in bad taste or simply a troll.

The straw-man "Frequently Asked Question" about the project name sounding like
cock makes me lean to the latter option. In any case, this isn't really worth
discussing much, as it's primary use seems to be to poison that discussion
right from the beginning.

------
QUFB
I like to keep it simple:

[https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_C...](https://github.com/wtfismyip/wtfismyip/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)

~~~
ImJasonH
Or else what? "Asshole" according to whom? How are disagreements about
assholery resolved?

This (and the original NCoC) is naive wishful thinking that won't survive
first contact with an actual community issue.

~~~
newswasboring
Isn't the answer to all those questions whatever the owners of the repo want?
I mean, its still a privately owned repository and communities.

~~~
ImJasonH
If we're talking about small personal OSS projects, then yeah sure it doesn't
really matter, because they're won't be a community to speak of.

Once you have a few other maintainers and contributors, there will inevitably
be disagreements, and you have to have a realistic framework for resolving
them respectfully and equitably.

------
grayhatter
I'm more of the opinion that NCoC is better than CoC. All that matters is
code. If you bother the admin you get banned, if you bother a user, you get
ignored. Is this really a problem so pervasive that I'm just blind to?

I can cite examples of a CoC being abused, where the alternative is impossible
to prove, right? Look our CoC is holding back the flood gates of douche.

I'm not saying there's no discrimination, humans heuristics are deeply flawed,
I'm only arguing that this problem was solved with block/ban/ignore.

Yes/no?

------
jmull
“NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct. There’s a decent fraction of people who
just can’t stop being assholes, but you can somewhat hold them at bay
(imperfectly) with a list of rules.

~~~
wyager
> “NCoC” is how we got codes of conduct.

No, we got codes of conduct because "post-meritocracy" activists (not
invective, actually what they call themselves:
[https://postmeritocracy.org](https://postmeritocracy.org) ) had enough
political leverage in the software industry to force these overtly political
documents on various projects.

------
Chris2048
I'm no fan of CoCs, but I already know the arguments used by (many of) their
proponents, and that this FAQ does not fully address them.

This feels too dismissive, with an hand-wavey "let's be adults"; Clearly, the
problem is people either don't act like adults, or the idea of how an adult
should act differs.

Furthermore,

"or possibly, you are wrong?" will be called "victim-blaming", "gas-lighting"
or "lamp-shading",

"Email that person, and try to work it out" will put the onus of resolution on
the victim, etc.

For these culture wars we need to directly address the two viewpoints; This
naively assumes best intentions, the traditional CoC crowd falsely assumes the
worst. We need to discuss distinctions of behaviour - separate the "micro-
aggression" from the outright crime and make it very clear they are to be
treated entirely differently, that "scorched earth" policies rarely work, but
neither do "lets all get along" policies.

<tangent> TBH, I see a similarity to arguments over programming methodologies;
trying to promote a handful of catch-all methods when the best solution is one
tailored to the situation </tangent>

edit: Ok, so someone flagged the article. seriously? Can we all review what
flagging is _supposed_ to be for: To flag abusive or inappropriate material,
not a special super-downvote option.

------
netsharc
Wow, after reading the title I liked the idea of keeping it sane without
needing written rules (rules which IMO sometimes go too far), but reading
further down that document seems whoever wrote this is motivated by "butthurt"
about "mobs" (presumably the so-termed "SJW mobs").

In any case, I expect there will be flame wars, and meta-flame-wars in here
soon.

------
sneak
> _It is not this community 's place to care about individual feelings. We
> leave that to the individuals. The internet is a big place, you should
> prepare yourself to deal with it._

Leaders who don’t take their responsibility for leadership seriously are very
bad leaders, as we have had demonstrated for us quite recently.

I hope that groups replace their leaders who think this way.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
What good is a leader if they allow the workers to be run off in favor of
layabouts?

~~~
sneak
I think that the dichotomy you propose is a false one. There are many options
besides “let noncontributing SJWs flameshame everyone away” and “be
inconsiderate jerks who don’t care at all about the effects our communications
have on others”.

A “reasonable person” test can be applied to judge these things. It’s not very
popular because it isn’t a strict, objectively-applied code, which is what
hackers generally prefer, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a good and
workable solution.

As hackerdom gets more mainstream and the mean moves closer to neurotypical,
these sorts of non-objective “if they are being mean, kick them out” ideas are
gaining popularity without meanness having to be strictly, objectively
defined.

These people are trying to make a political statement with this CoC; they are
solving a problem that doesn’t exist (or is solved by simply not having one
without proclaiming loudly how not-having-one you are). It strikes me as
YAGNI.

Unless you like being an asshole, just don’t have a public, defined CoC (just
an unwritten informal “no assholes”) and quietly kick out any assholes who
show up.

------
blueboo
I mean, it’s only human to want the benefit of a huge audience without the
implications of having a diverse one.

My toddler also wants pancakes for every meal. As adults we grow past such a
narrow and self-serving view.

Most of us, anyway.

------
empath75
So what do you do if someone on your project doesn’t behave like an adult?
Just make it up as you go along? How do you decide how to do that in a fair
way?

~~~
nudpiedo
According to the article:

> Q: As a community manager or leader, what happens when the mob arrives, or
> when someone starts to engage in discussion that could lead to more endless
> discussion? > Lock, and ban your way to freedom.

------
watwut
So, we are "We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions."

Our problem is "debating how members should behave in their communities, only
to be found to never be fully resolved to anyone's liking".

And the problem is solved by "lock, and ban your way to freedom".

~~~
nudpiedo
I thought it first suggests sending an email, speaking and dialoguing with
education. The ban thing is against the mob or the endless discussions etc.

------
JoachimS
"We accept anyone's contributions."

Probably not a true statement. Accept them based on its own merits is probably
more in line with how most projects work.

I recall some project on Github that really did accept all contributions. Very
funny. For a short time.

~~~
microcolonel
I think the "anyone" here is speaking to the _non-merit_ measures of a
contribution. Anecdotally, I mostly see GitLab/GitHub usernames, not email
addresses with names in them (or in the field). I think that prejudices of the
sort CoCs ostensibly seek to abate are largely impractical to hold, unless you
go and track down the person tied to the patch every time you get one.

I think probably a lot of this is people trying to claim that because the
outcomes are unequal, the procedure is unequal; when the simpler answer is
that some subsets of people just tend to be composed of those who choose not
to contribute to open source software projects or gain the professional
competence often required to do so. Free people are not spherical cows, they
have their own sets of incentives, even ones you don't understand as a career
hawk businesslady or an ordinary schlub grinding at the keyboard.

------
maxehmookau
Oh good. This again.

The very first line is the problem here: 'We are all adults. Capable of having
adult discussions.'

We're not. Some people are less capable of behaving themselves in online
communities than others. Also, the definition of "behaving" is subjective.

~~~
hottycat3
Well if they do not conduct themselves in a manner befitting of an adult and
professional then just sanction them eg. warnings, kicks, bans,....

No need for a CoC.

~~~
Klathmon
If one person thinks something is fine and someone else thinks it isn't you
get disagreements and arguments based on misunderstandings and assumptions.

IMO outlining what is "professional" and what isn't in a CoC solves that
issue.

~~~
zozbot234
> you get disagreements and arguments

You get those anyway. Also empirically speaking, having a CoC to try and spell
out "professional" behavior seems to make things worse. It's not a solution at
all.

------
comex
(2015)

------
Shinobi881
Ummm...

1\. This is a CoC

2\. Read #1

3\. "We are all adults..." Then why are we having this discussion?

4\. I'll continue to try an format text because I'm crazy

------
smacktoward
_> Email that person, and try to work it out. Email the owners of the
community, and alert them. Whatever you do, do not make a scene, as that will
burden the entire community with your issue._

Wow. I mean, I was expecting “we don’t care that you’re being abused” to be
the subtext here, but they just came out and _said_ it.

~~~
empath75
Basically any project that uses this as it’s CoC of any size will quickly be
overrun by bullies.

~~~
ecmascript
People who cares very deeply about CoCs are usually bullies.

~~~
yawboakye
I have seen this as well. It's as if they're trying to determine the
boundaries of (un)acceptable behavior, and once clearly define begin to put
the community to the test and a never ending CoC revision sessions in order to
bring in (never remove) new behaviors considered harmful. That and also
keeping the CoC committee members relevant.

------
tckr
2015!

------
christiansakai
What is this? Why this is a thing?

~~~
dudbud
In the last 5-7 years we have seen a cultural phenomenon where somehow people
have become unbearably sensitive to confrontation on the internet. The extent
to which these people are able to disrupt social media, workplaces, and even
software projects is staggering.

