Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

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If that were the end of it, I would be completely on board with the concept. Most people are pretty good at determining when someone is just plain being a dick. (Which leads to "with that in mind, why the document?")

Unfortunately, that never is the end of it. Again, certain people are oversensitive and respond to completely civil and good faith requests/criticisms/etc with over the top behavior/accusations (see this thread for example). It's part of HN's CoC to avoid saying things that you wouldn't say face-to-face to another person.. on divisive topics like this, it usually doesn't work (again, see this thread) unless someone with the admin bit steps in to remind people to behave themselves and occasionally hand out a vacation or two.

The problem is that you've taken something that is inherently subjective to each and every person and tried to codify it. People do exist that hate being told "no", that hate all forms of disagreement and treat those who regularly do so as enemies to be destroyed. Given a vague legal method to retaliate, how do you think someone with such an unreasonable mindset will behave?

Also, it's possible to be a complete and utter asshole without ever being uncivil. I've been witness to enough Wikipedia politics over the last 5 years or so to make that declaration.

But anyways, you've just begged the question. It's not a given that the absence of CoC's results in "shouting matches", or for that matter, that their presence prevents them. In my own anecdotal-as-hell experience, they don't chase away anything but the most brash of assholes, it just results in a thin veneer of pseudo-civility over the same old crappy behavior and mindsets.

It's a lot easier to eject loud and visible assholes than the stealth ones! In other words, I think it's better to have "Don't be an asshole" as an implicitly understood element of any social group, with implicitly understood punishments for breaking that norm, rather than codifying it in such a way that it gives people ideas as to how it can best be twisted and abused.

(And should it come up: Yes, I find being accused of "sea lioning", whatever the hell that means, to be highly offensive and over the top.)

Their presence seems to work quite well for many projects. More importantly, it sends a public signal that the project leadership will not stand for certain kinds of behavior.

(It requires people with the admin bit actually stepping in of course. Just posting a CoC will certainly change nothing, if it's not backed.)

For the "I hate no" people - there's a reason that CoC's call out what exactly offensive/harassing behavior is.

Rules like "Don't be an asshole" work somewhat OK for small, informal groups. As project size increases, you need to get a bit more formal. As evidenced by e.g. LKML, it seems there's wide disagreement what is OK, and what constitutes abuse.

A CoC clearly spells out where that line is. It allows people to know what is acceptable, and avoid the community if that is not how they like things.

It's a common feature of large groups - the bigger you get, the more you need to spell out explicit rules. As size grows, the number of implicitly understood and agreed upon things diminishes.

E.g. you don't really need a penal code when dealing with your immediate family, but it's necessary for society as a whole to function.

As a side bar, I honestly believe that a lot of objections to CoCs stem from the fact that people are either not aware of the group size growth, or are actively grieving for the time when their group was small enough they didn't need one.

There's nothing wrong with the basic idea of a code of conduct, in and of itself. There are a lot of things wrong with the current crop:

1. They tend to be heavily politicized, pushing one group's societal views on the entire community.

2. Many attempt to police people's behavior on their own time outside the community.

3. They remain remarkably silent about certain kinds of uncivil behavior, such as public shaming campaigns or importing of outside political disagreements. Often the codes are written with input from people who frequently indulge in this behavior.

4. People with objections are often steamrollered and accused of various social sins for not going along, or a code is simply imposed on the community and all discussion is ignored or closed.

If you want these codes to be established without the angry opposition usually seen, you need to address these points.

> As a side bar, I honestly believe that a lot of objections to CoCs stem from the fact that people are either not aware of the group size growth, or are actively grieving for the time when their group was small enough they didn't need one.

I find the problem is usually that these sorts of documents are invented by a minority that does not have the support of the majority, or they are sold poorly to the group as a whole. This is why culture changes from major group-wide issues stick and become permanent much easier in any group size. If I am member of a group and I arrive from one day and there just suddenly is a new CoC where there wasn't before I am extremely put off by it, because the CoC rarely describes the group as a whole but a particular mindset about the group by a minority.

If you are going to do a culture change properly you need to sell it to the group of both the power players of the group (the people who are looked up to informally) as well as the formal people 'in charge.' When I see it fails and when it has the most kickback is when they don't bother to try and seek out the power players of the group, because then the subgroups of the whole talk amongst themselves and can't see the reasoning and the people that are leaders in those subgroups aren't on board to bring reasoning into the discussion.

If there is a mailing list that tries to enforce a CoC on a related IRC channel and the IRC channel isn't on board with the plan- you've got a completely unnecessary clash from people not seeking out to understand the community as a whole. This also happens just as much from people trying to make an organization Agile or some other methodology. If you don't do right to understand the group, move at a deliberate pace so the group as a whole can move with you, it just is not going to work.

This is something I have dealt with many of times as both being an informal leader and the actual leader, and my direct feeling on CoC's is that if they exist they have to be deliberately vague to a point so that a discussion must occur. If they are too specific they become weapons for people until the people that are only moderately invested abandon the group along with the people that clearly don't fit the new policy depart. Sometimes this is filled out with new blood but just as often what made the community good from those that were passionate and invested in a group (# of creators to # of consumers) is completely lost. More often than not new members to the group can't contribute in that fashion for some time until they learn how they want to contribute.

If you CoC or some other policy by aggressive moderation at the beginning you set culture for the entire group, if you tack it on later you will leave some % behind but it is often not obvious to people how large that % is unless you do it in a managed fashion.

For the "I hate no" people - there's a reason that CoC's call out what exactly offensive/harassing behavior is.

We were just talking about the fact that it's impossible to objectively define bad behavior. Sure, you can give examples of things that are disallowed but..

Let me switch tracks for a sec. It's funny this topic comes up right now; I just had to go through a yearly online ethics training thing at my current employer. The point that the slides all hammered in is that offense is something taken, not given, and if someone is offended by your speech, then it is completely on the speaker.

The CoC in this case implies that if someone is offended by what you're saying, you are automatically in the wrong regardless of your intent or actions.

I see a parallel with FOSS project CoC's here in that they don't "clearly spell out where that line is", anymore than the text states that the line exists in someone else's mind.

Have a look at Mozilla's CoC [1] for an example of what I'm talking about. It looks quite reasonable and in all of its forms boils down to the usual social rule of "don't be a jerk".

But still, the same problems exist. It contains a lot of platitudes and abstract language. What exactly do things like "empower others" mean, and if I shoot down someone's bad idea, am I going counter to the rule? What happens with the unreasonable person who takes "be respectful" and "Try to understand different perspectives" to mean "disagreement is disrespect" and "my perspective is correct and this should be self evident"?

In other words, if people are not adult enough to conduct themselves without a document telling them how to do this, why are they suddenly adult enough to accept that document in the completely positive spirit it was intended?

But okay, enough of the rules abuse argument. Mozilla is downright huge by tech community standards, but do you think the document referenced has actually resulted in the defusing of a single argument or negative situation? I tend to lead towards "no", because by the time you're in a position where you're close to violating one of those principles, someone on the same level as you quoting the rules at you isn't likely to be taken well. (The "anger is coming!" effect[2]). Without someone to enforce those standards, they may as well not exist - and if we take into account that the words of community guidelines are likely not the foremost in most people's minds anyways, it takes someone with power dropping by (kind of like dang does around here occasionally in the really divisive threads) to remind people to behave themselves and to surface that guideline thought.

If it takes someone dropping by to remind people to behave themselves anyways, what exactly has the code of conduct accomplished?

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/part...

[2]: http://www.dhamma.org/en-US/about/art

The Mozilla CoC seems to be oddly "oh, you'll figure it out". Not only am I fairly certain that doesn't work too well - see your "adult enough" argument - there's also no way for Mozilla to know if it has any effect.

I'm looking more at something like the LLVM CoC[1], which specifies how exactly disagreement should be escalated, and how it'll be handled.

To me, that's a major point of a CoC - if you have a disagreement what proper behavior is, it's incredibly difficult to handle at the peer level. You need an escalation path. As you say, and as I alluded to above - you need someone to enforce those standards.

What does a CoC achieve? It sets a tone for the community, spells out what is considered unacceptable, how you can ask for help with unacceptable behavior, and what the consequences of unacceptable behavior are. Or at least the kind of CoC I refer to.

I completely agree that a generic feel-good document does nothing.

[1] http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2015-October/091218...

I completely agree that a generic feel-good document does nothing.

It shuts the people up who demand a CoC. (Not disagreeing with anything you said).

If I get it correctly, the LLVM one (comparing to the Mozilla one) spells out more explicit examples of things that are not allowed, and provides a simpler/more clear resolution process.

Interestingly the LLVM CoC points out both of these as things that are required to make it effective in practice.

Most people are pretty good at determining when someone is just plain being a dick.

Within their own narrow experience and culture, perhaps. As soon as you start having to work with people from significantly different backgrounds, it's a whole different story.

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