The more specific a CoC is, the more loopholes there are that people will exploit. We just expect "professional behavior", and for those who want to argue about what that means, we refer them to Emily Post's books.
With respect Walter, a CoC that works for one mid-sized community will not necessarily work for a very large community like Go's :(
At this point there is also widespread disagreement on what constitutes "professional behavior". It sounds like in this case your CoC is actually written by Emily Post.
I don't believe it won't work on a larger scale. If the leadership sets the tone, the community will naturally begin to adopt it and will help out with guiding others into it.
For an example, take Caltech's honor system. It involves several thousand people, and it objectively cannot work. But it does, and it does because the Caltech community likes it and takes a dim view of anyone who would disrupt it.
I liked Caltech's honor system very much, and have tried to model my own life on it. D's community attitudes very much reflect that tone I've tried to set.
BTW, see my other recent thread about honor. I am saddened by the pushback I get for it.
The D community is indeed fortunate in the quality of people attracted to it. My experience with Caltech's honor system is that if you expect people to behave honorably, they tend to fulfill those expectations. And they like it, and that tends to attract others who like that arrangement.
BTW, one of the reasons I hang out on HN and not other forums is because the members here tend to be decent. dang deserves a lot of credit for maintaining this atmosphere.
I've read some of the D archives, and fortunately the D community is way less trigger happy than some of the newer communities that are run North Korean style.
CoC proponents and committees talk with angel tongues about their good intentions. In practice, it comes down to roughly 3-5 people who play the "deciders". Here's a well known result of power abuse:
Most cancellations are plain abuses of power, with no fair hearing (or no hearing at all!) of both sides.
Characteristically, these power grabs occur when languages are done and people (representing their corporations) fight for the pieces. And they fight dirty.
This is a good change. It doesn’t allow people to hide behind the shield of “good intentions” while refusing to change their behavior. Refusing to change your behavior after learning of its negative impacts on others is negligent best.
“Any sufficiently advanced negligence is indistinguishable from malice.”
> This is a good change. It doesn’t allow people to hide behind the shield of “good intentions” while refusing to change their behavior.
I just had a negative emotional response to your perspective on this subject. It made me slightly upset that someone would think that this is a good change.
Should you change your perspective now that you've `learn[ed] of its negative impact on others`, or should I get over it and recognize that other people can have different opinions and I shouldn't let that affect me?
>This is a good change. It doesn’t allow people to hide behind the shield of “good intentions” while refusing to change their behavior. Refusing to change your behavior after learning of its negative impacts on others is negligent best.
Is woefully flawed logic. Expecting someone to change their behavior when someone else says they're offended is awful. The assumption is that the person speaking is always in the wrong and the complainant is always being genuine.
The slippery slope fallacy is exactly that: a fallacy.
There’s an obvious distinction between “I disagree with the merits of your PR therefore I’m going to claim that I’m offended” and “please do not misgender me.” The former is a strawman argument.
Everything needs nuance and discretion. The world is complicated. But throwing our hands up in the air and saying “this could hypothetically be abused” is not a reason to remain paralyzed in the face of hostility within a community.
>The slippery slope fallacy is exactly that: a fallacy.
The slippery slope fallacy is only a fallacy when there is no prior evidence of said thing happening in the past.
People who parrot "slippery slope is a fallacy", like in this case, are merely participating in the fallacy of cherry-picking. They're ignoring when slippery slope is not a fallacy and acting like any slippery-slope argument is fallacious when it isn't.
To whom, exactly? This is where things begin to fall apart because something "obvious" to you is such due to a number of factors -- the culture and society you grew up in being only part of the equation -- while not at all obvious to many others. You're attempting to draw a hard, objective line in something very subjective. This is why this problem isn't easy to solve and why it is very easy for otherwise good-intentioned folks to be chastised.
>Everything needs nuance and discretion. The world is complicated.
I agree.
>But throwing our hands up in the air and saying “this could hypothetically be abused” is not a reason to remain paralyzed in the face of hostility within a community.
You just built a straw-man argument, completely blowing away the previous statement. Not every slight will be composed of some obvious insult to transgendered folks. There have been and will continue to be perceived slights where no such thing was intended. On top of all that there have been and will continue to be people who feign offense and will attempt to have someone they disagree with tared, feathered, and removed.
How do you intend to deal with the latter of these scenarios; when someone innocent is accused? You can avoid many such events by considering the nuance and acting with discretion. What you said so far does none of that.
If GGP was being genuine and was really insulted by GGGPs suggested (which from the tone of the post, they probably weren’t) then there is every reason to talk to GGGP and ask them to change their behavior, if they fail to do so, you might start to think they are acting in malice towards GGP. If the insult is obvious then the case is pretty clear cut, however if it not we can believe at least believe GGP when they claim they were hurt. They might have a reason to be hurt that we don’t know about.
Even worse: it is easy to be genuine and wrong. The world is full of people who are genuine and wrong.
The position of magistrate is time-honored and cross-cultural for a reason. It’s not good enough to just make up rules and assume they solve the problem.
> Should you change your perspective now that you've `learn[ed] of its negative impact on others`, or should I get over it and recognize that other people can have different opinions and I shouldn't let that affect me?
The former. Microaggression is harmful not because any one instance of it hurts, but the share quantity of it is devastating. When a person experiences microaggression it might be really hard for you to empathize since the same exact behavior directed at you is not hurtful at all. Example, as a cis male with a slightly feminine look I have been mis-gendered a couple of times, it was not a big deal and I’m able to get over it fairly quickly. However for trans people this might happen so often that it overwhelms them.
When someone says to you that your behavior was harmful to them you cannot possibly know exactly how that feels, and the best thing you can do is believe them, apologize, and change your behavior.
One thing I dislike about our new moral arbiters is their view that intent doesn’t matter. They will use anything (e.g. a microaggression, a usually inadvertent tiny slight) to justify cancelling someone. Tolerance for them also only has only one meaning: tolerate us.
Intent does matter but it’s only half the picture. The impact is the other half. If you don’t intend to run over someone with your car, but you do, you still get in trouble (assuming their intent want to get run over). You need to be more careful because your actions (even unintentional ones) impact others.
From the post, they say that they have a conversation with anyone that’s the subject of a complaint at which point if you express some interest and concern about the impact you’re having on the community, your intentions will probably be respected more than if you just want to focus 100% on your intent, impact be damned.
But this case is interesting. Because when you run someone over, you can physically observe the damage done to them. But when you communicate in a manner that upsets someone, it’s impossible to objectively observe the impact. And worse: it is strongly personal.
And that is where a truly ridiculous but also entirely reasonable question comes in: how much of someone being impacted by speech online is really kind of their responsibility? It can’t be zero because zero would be completely incompatible with free society; protected speech can necessarily cause discomfort or pain, and realistically with increasingly many perspectives you’re bound to find someone hurt by something. It probably shouldn’t be 100% either, because there’s no amount of thick skin that can’t ever be broken. Somewhere down the middle is a spot where people have to conduct themselves reasonably, but there is some expectation for personal resilience in the face of adversity in communication.
I suspect that a whole lot of conflict regarding CoC’s, moderation, etc. comes from people who believe more or less responsibility belongs with the person who is impacted by given speech. And it is not culturally universal, either. People may scoff at the concept but if your vernacular differs in a way that is upsetting to someone due purely to cultural differences, there may never be a position to stand in that is truly “inclusive to all.”
Effective inclusivity in a community without some degree of compromise by its members is probably impossible, and I worry the group dynamics of modern communities does not mesh terribly well with this concept, on an internet where everything is constantly decontextualized.
Another thing that often gets missed with online speech is that, if you're Millenial or older, you went from an Internet where the stakes were virtually zero and almost everyone was anonymous, to the Internet today, where the stakes (real or perceived) are higher than ever.
Socializing and doing business over the Internet used to be a punchline or a fictional conceit in the 1990-2005 era, but now many things that previously only mattered in meatspace are only realized online. Personally, I haven't really gotten my head around the social implications of this change.
The "you didn't mean to hit someone with your car" thing is certainly a fun way to look at it, but what about people only get tapped by the bumper and then act like they flipped through the air 500 times before slamming their head into the concrete? And before anybody pretends like these people don't exist, let's think about the football(soccer) players that act like their leg is broken when someone sneezes near them. And if ppl will be that petty and insincere in a professional sporting event, it's fair to say that ppl will do it on the internet.
A better analogy is if you don't intend to run over someone with your car and they jump out in front of you, then you are not at fault, nor were you doing anything wrong.
Results do matter more than intentions, but sometimes results are out of your control or even disconnected from your actions. You may say something perfectly reasonable and yet someone takes unreasonable offense. Who is to define what is reasonable to say and what is reasonable to take offense to? In the past decades, the political left has taken us too far in the direction of giving a small minority tyrannical censorship power to silence by taking offense at whatever they dislike, and then cancelling the person who said it.
Every generation thinks the next generation’s rules are tyrannical. Speech and culture is messy and it’s not black and white. To say it’s all been bad is ignoring a lot of violent speech that is no longer acceptable and the benefit that has brought to the the same small minority groups you’re referencing, from being less subjected to verbal attacks.
If this is what you honestly think they're referring to then I feel like that says a LOT more about you then it does about them. They were very clear that they aren't talking about situations like this one you've just described.
Are you being disingenuous or do you honestly need someone to explain what they meant? They're talking about crybullies who will disingenuously misinterpret what someone says and take offense to it. Very much like you've just done.
Were you alive in the 80s? I literally heard this complaint multiple times from multiple people. The point is is that calling someone a “f_____ f__” would be considered a “micro aggression” by some in the 80s that only the “radical left” would get upset about.
The point is that if you’ve lived long enough you’ve seen people complain about culture changing enough times to know that it’s always changing and always uncomfortable for those that don’t like it.*
I'm pretty sure name calling with malicious intent has always been considered a macroaggression.
Even today, using that terminology in jest may be completely acceptable and benign with no malicious intent at all, depending on the social circle it's being used in. Cultural norms do not translate to universal cultural axioms.
Things go too far in one direction, and the speech restrictions in the former Eastern Bloc were considered unacceptable for more than 20 years after its collapse.
Now some people are trying to reestablish the same control mechanisms.
P.S.: No one is asking to permit the slur you cited to make a point, it isn't a great example.
> if you don't intend to run over someone with your car and they jump out in front of you, then you are not at fault, nor were you doing anything wrong.
Not if you are in a pedestrian crossing (especially unsignalized one).
> They will use anything (e.g. a microaggression, a usually inadvertent tiny slight) to justify cancelling someone.
Are there any examples of this happening in a prominent open source project? The debate over COCs is a few years old at this point, so if this type of abuse were a common problem I'd imagine there'd be some major examples right now. (I freely admit there may indeed be some, and I'm just not aware.)
I don’t know all the drama in this case and don’t particularly care to know but the punishment seems excessive and arbitrary, and surprised quite a few people. They should drop this sort of heavy handed moderation - communities are governed by consent, not by fiat.
This coc seems excessively wordy to me, and subject to arbitrary interpretation and enforcement, and thus a waste of time for all involved, I don’t plan to read it or abide by it, but instead to use common sense. IMO community rules are enforced by example and gentle encouragement, not by encoding a long set of dos and don’ts.
There's always two sides to every story, though. I don't know anything about what's going on (and I don't write Go), but there's a mention in the Twitter replies about further discussion on Reddit:
which looks an entirely reasonable reason to formally ask someone to knock it off and take some time to chill. From the document, it seems that he has a policy of ignoring Slack moderators, took the fight to Twitter when his Slack account was temporarily deactivated, and has a pattern of such behavior.
If that document is to be believed, the punishment was not excessive and arbitrary. He got a temporary Slack ban, which was appropriate and measured, and then chose to continue escalating.
> @peterbourgon Many of us here have respect for u from a technical standpoint and learned from your talks/code. However it’s wrong to troll people on slack (because “this is internet”) and call them names on twitter for no apparent reason. I hope you can stand back and understand the mistake.
For what it's worth, I actually think it's a good sign that the CoC is equally enforced against a drafter of the CoC - the alternative is that there's a group of people who are sufficiently in the in-crowd that their behavior is the definition of what's acceptable and they get to do what they want. It's absolutely possible to abuse the power of CoCs, but this seems like the exact opposite.
The linked Google doc is not reasonable, it sounds reasonable because it is a one-sided depiction of the situation that is a) wordy b) completely omits the other side and c) is written in a style that resonates with CoC enforcers.
IOW, the most ruthless and stylistically talented person wins.
Here is the conversation that triggered the tribunal:
This channel is IRC or Slack. On IRC it is completely normal to log in under a different name. A new generation of "developers" is making up completely arbitrary rules to gain power and suppress productive persons.
> For what it's worth, I actually think it's a good sign that the CoC is equally enforced against a drafter of the CoC
Agreed. The real issue I have with the way this was handled was it took the person who originally submitted the formal complaint to publish that formal complain for there to be any transparency into the process. Further, they updated the CoC hours after this event with language to cover what appears to be the reason he was banned. That's not very good optics. I don't know about you, but I don't like the idea of a committee being able to arbitrarily change and enforce rules post hoc.
I agree with you that that first bit is a problem. Though I don't know how to balance that with the desire for privacy / the desire to avoid publishing what amounts to a personal attack on the person, which can follow them into other communities, which is a penalty significantly beyond banning from a single community. In the case where the person was working in good faith but just had a spell of poor judgment, it seems ethical to allow them the "right to be forgotten," which implies not putting information anywhere that a search engine can index. And in the case where they're actually working in bad faith, they probably are going to be more than happy to make legal threats against everyone involved, which is a chilling effect on the submitter and the moderators. Even if they're correct and confident in everything they say, proving it in court is an unpleasant process.
Maybe a compromise is to say that complaints are private provided the person on the receiving end also agrees to keep the details private, and if they start to litigate it in public, it's permissible to publish the complaint. I'm not sure that helps you with the bad-faith participant, though, but in this case it seems like it's a good-faith contributor who just exercised a whole lot of bad judgment (and perhaps the implicit encouragement to not have this saga Googleable by future employers would have been good for everyone involved).
The other option is to have a strong community norm of contributing with pseudonyms, as e.g. Wikipedia does, and then your "right to be forgotten" is your right to pick a new pseudonym, and the whole moderation process can happen in public. But for something like Go, it's a norm to contribute with your real name as known to employers.
To your second point, the way I read it is not that they made an ex-post-facto change to the code of conduct for this incident, it's that this was already in the works (especially given his comment that he was involved in writing the CoC). If I'm misinterpreting that, then yes, I agree that it's a problem. I'm of the opinion that communities also need to state who can change the code of conduct and what process they'll use, and changing it in a way that surprises the community is bad.
(That said, as long as you specify it up front, I'm totally okay with the BDFL model for that, and I think it's the right model in most cases. A CoC is only as good or bad as the people who enforce it; its value is in setting expectations clearly.)
ESR didn't get cancelled for microaggressions. It was because he has a long history of being utterly vile towards black people and women, amongst other very much not "just a microaggression" behaviors.
Plus the arbiters tend to be the least moderate, and most forthright in their views.
It’s considered ridiculous when a small town dweller attempts to force their morality on the world, but apparently perfectly fine when it comes from the Californian chattering classes.
Having talked with enough hyper progressives on the subject, the answer I've gotten and am eternally frustrated with is that progressive-social-justice-california-politics are objectively right and small-town-rural-conservative-politics are objectively wrong, therefore it's completely fine for a ruling class to force the former down our throats because they are ultimately Correct.
I only dislike it when its asymmetric. Our policy says intent doesn't matter for you, but the policy itself is vague and only works if you trust the implementers intent.
I don't see anything obvious in this policy that would cause such an issue.
>If you tolerate intolerance (regardless of intent)
So should people tolerate people who don't tolerate the intolerant? And should other people tolerate them?
I feel like Mr. Garrison's take on it sums it up really well. Tolerating someone doesn't mean you like them or support their views. It just means you have to live with them. And you kind of do, or you have to be willing to remove them from society by any means necessary. And at that point, you're kind of worse than the intolerant people so long as they aren't actively trying to remove people from society by any means necessary.
I guess it all depends on how you define intolerant. When I hear the word I take it as "refuses to tolerate and will not allow coexistence". If that's the case, and that form of intolerance is what cannot be tolerated, then it's a full-circle mind fuck that makes no sense unless you put yourself on a pedestal where you're brand of intolerance is the only intolerance that must be tolerated.
And yeah, I don't think that kind of intolerance should be tolerated, however I don't think it's as common as people make it seem, and I feel like people conflate too many things with the genocidal form of intolerance than they do with someone who might think something is morally wrong but doesn't actually do anything about it. For instance, I know some religious people think being gay is morally wrong but they don't care what people do or if they can get married. I think they're morally wrong for having those beliefs but so long as they don't violate the rights of gay ppl I don't see why it matters. I mean, I can judge them as much as they can judge me.
I agree, that is exactly what I think people always misunderstand about tolerance: You cannot tolerate something you agree with. That is called agreeing, not tolerance, by definition.
Tolerance is the wise behavior you should have, reserved for things you don't agree with, or even detest.
Popper (the source of the "paradox of tolerance") was very close to a free speech maximalist. His footnote containing this often cited paragraph was a small limited acknowledgment that in some extreme circumstances we as a society must place limits on intolerance.
Oh, that's not true. I lived in a town, briefly fortunately, where the folks did, in fact, know they were intolerant when they ran off black families that dared to move in through various harassment tactics (horribly, mostly directed at the children since the adults had thicker skin). They just didn't care.
You should read Michael Knowles' Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds. Political radicals have explicitly defined tolerance to mean "don't tolerate dissenting views". I don't have the exact quote on hand at the moment or I would share it, but they were very explicit about their censorship goals.
The book also discusses how there has never been unbridled free speech. There has always been a standard of speech that allows some things said and disallows other things said. What's changed over time is the standards themselves, and many would argue they have changed for the far worse in recent years.
I agree that cancelling someone over an accidental transgression is a vengeful overreaction. Separately, let me ask you this: If I step on your foot, does it hurt less if I didn't mean to?
If you say you meant to, I will exclude you from my dancing events to protect the other dancers' feet. If you say you didn't mean to, you know, my foot still hurts but you're still welcome to my dancing events because it probably won't happen again.
My foot hurting actually has no bearing on whether or not you're welcome.
Conversely, if you say it's an accident but somehow you have a conspicuously high foot-stomping incidence among many dance partners, I probably will exclude you because I will stop believing the foot-stomping is accidental (or you're just very unfortunately clumsy, terribly sorry, but I still have to protect the other dancers' feet).
> My foot hurting actually has no bearing on whether or not you're welcome.
Of course - that was my point about cancelling being an overreaction to accidental transgressions. I think the thing that gets missed is that an accidental transgression still causes harm, and harm warrants the making of amends. "You break it, you buy it" applies whether or not you meant to knock that lamp over. If I step on your foot I apologize. Etc.
Generally, yes, of course. Though once we leave the realm of hypothetical foot-stomping for politics, things can get more complicated.
For example, we might look at the John Cena incident where he "acknowledged Taiwan as a country", which somehow led to him later making an apology video (in Chinese?) for this "offense" against mainland China.
So sometimes accusations of "harm" are merely manipulation. It can take discernment to judge when amends are actually warranted.
Freedom of speech is important but I think some underestimate how destructive hostile speech can be towards collaboration and constructive conversation.
With a little effort it’s possible to use non-violent communication (NVC) to express yourself fully without blaming or criticizing others.
And sure it’s also a worthy goal to not take things personally, but collaboration just works better IMO when we’re as kind and respectful as possible.
Wow, you're right. I looked the term up out of curiosity and I would be legit offended if somebody talked to me like that, to the point where I'd absolutely leave over it. I wonder how it's handled when this is somebody's preferred way to communicate but others absolutely hate it.
Person B wants to have a difficult conversation with Person A and wants to use NVC to keep the passion low and understanding high.
Person B says how they feel using NVC.
Person A says “hey, just spit it out, talk to me like a normal person”
Person B “spits it out”
Person A gets angry and “gives it right back” to person B.
Both parties fight until 1 walks away.
In other words, if Person A is calm, NVC won’t trigger them. Person A usually wants Person B to drop NVC because they’re more comfortable fighting than they are finding a peaceful common understanding.
It’s premise is to express what’s going on with you internally without pointing the finger of blame or criticism. You don’t have to use it everyday all the time, but it’s helpful when things get heated to take a step back and own your experience without assumptions about what the other person is doing or feeling.
Basically: I’m feeling ______. And I’m needing ______.
So, here’s an example violent response: You obviously don’t understand NVC and you probably have serious issues in your own communication style if you find NVC insulting.
And an example NVC response: I’m confused why you’d feel insulted by NVC. What about it feels demeaning to you?
The violent response makes assumptions and lays the ground work for a confrontation. NVC makes no assumptions and lays the ground work for dialogue.
Is the NVC response really the more insulting of the two in your point of view?
>I’m confused why you’d feel insulted by NVC. What about it feels demeaning to you?
The reason myself, and maybe others, find this style of communication insulting is because it can come off as very condescending. It's clear that whomever is saying that disagrees with me, and I'd rather just have a real conversation about the disagreement itself rather than performatively centring the discussion around how it makes us "feel".
You can pick and choose when to use NVC. I wouldn’t use it for a disagreement about what restaurant to go to. I would use it for a disagreement about money, sex, politics, etc.
The more emotionally charged and existential the disagreement the more useful I’ve found NVC in avoiding those “real” conversations that turn into fights.
Not saying it’s the only way. Some people are totally able to speak plainly with a sharp edge and then reconcile after.
It's incredibly easy for discussions to turn heated and non-productive when egos start feeling bruised. And then it's even harder to back down because it feels like pride is on the line.
I really do think it's smarter to "just" speak informally and try not to be rude. Apologize if you upset anyone and be sincere when you do it. Don't ask questions for the sheer sake of fitting some HR/radical-candor script.
I've had the opposite experience, and thus worked to make my team a safe place for folks where they don't feel the need to hide from snarkers (who often are trying to put themselves above others by pulling everyone else down).
As a senior engineer / team lead, I really have no patience for bad behavior.
Directness is the opposite of snark. If you think something is a bad idea, propose an alternative. Or work with the person. Anyone can throw out snark, it takes a "really skilled" person to do something productive instead.
> Is lack of subtle/direct snarkiness a good thing?
It's quite possible to call out and dismantle bad ideas, without making it reflect poorly on the originator of the idea.
A snarky tone can have an underlying implication that the idea was so bad, the idea originator is not even worthy of a respectful reply.
Maybe this is warranted in some cases (e.g. a bullshitter bullshitting), but in the case of coworkers/contributors with good intent, this is just unnecessary abrasiveness.
Companies hire you because you're opinionated, and they retain you because you're obedient. You can mix and match the two to reach whatever desired effect you want, but them's the rules.
I'm interested if projects with CoCs ever blow off complainants for being unreasonable. I know for a fact some project maintainers can be rude and verbally abusive, but I also know complainants can be unreasonable bullies with a chip on their shoulder as well.
> The paradox of tolerance is that the one group of people we can’t welcome are those who make others feel unwelcome.
I really hope Google takes a strong stance and bans Muslim from all projects due to their views on homosexuality. While a minority of Muslims might not personally have an issue with homosexuality I don't think it's fair to ask people to tolerate members of such an intolerant religion.
There are so many things wrong with your comment, I don't even know where to begin. I can trivially extend your argument to:
> I really hope Google takes a strong stance and bans _humans_ from all projects due to their _bigotry_. While a minority of _humans_ might not personally display any _bigotry_ I don't think it's fair to tolerate members of such an intolerant group.
>There are so many things wrong with your comment, I don't even know where to begin. We can trivially extend your argument to:
>I really hope Google takes a strong stance and bans humans from all projects due to their bigotry. While a minority of humans might not personally display any bigotry I don't think it's fair to ask people to tolerate members of such an intolerant group.
I suspect that was the reason for their comment in the first place. More of a demonstration. Your reaction, however, is a great example of just how much nuance is lost in the medium and how easily it can be for someone to be labeled offensive when in-fact the intention behind the statement was anything but.
I mean, that's basically what happened to Brendan Eich. And now Mozilla is headed towards irrelevence, Firefox is in sharp decline, and Amazon is in danger of taking over Rust.
Call it the paradox of the paradox of intolerance -- intolerance can be laundered in under the umbrella of not tolerating intolerance.
That's a good idea since humans are indeed awful: if something truly morally bankrupt happens you can always trace it back to one of them. Ceterum censeo, delenda est homo.
This works out quite well for us.