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Comment by cabraca | Hacker News Reader

you have to assume good intentions. otherwise it will end in a mexican standoff, everyone with weapons drawn and waiting for someone to fire first.

but to get to your point: on a merit based system every reason to decline a contribution should be based on the contribution, not on the contributer. everyone should be able to validate those reasons. if you got a sexist and he declines your contribution with a sexist reason that should lead to consequences for him. thats what your quoted line entails. the high ranking member violated it because he took your sex/gender into account when considiering your contribution. did he decline with racist remarks? he violated it again because he took your race into account. for me that would be a far better system because it does not put the control in the hands of the few maintainers, it puts the control in the hands of the whole community.

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What are "sexist remarks"? Is allowing men to be rude because that's the social stereotype of productive men, and telling equally rude women that they're shrill and need to tone it down and be less emotional, a sexist remark? It only overtly references the individual contributor, not their gender.

why allow someone to be rude? we are professionals, we should not be rude to another.

> Is [...] telling [...] women that they're shrill and need to tone it down and be less emotional, a sexist remark?

if it targets all women i would say yes. if its in a discussion and alice IS too emotional and shrill i would say no (but its badly phrased).

everyone should be able to take a step back from a discussion and reflect. am i too emotional? did i maybe take a wrong turn? dont take everything personal. sometimes text does sound angry and agressive, but wasn't meant to be. people are not good at communication. allow some room for misinterpretation.

So there is a gray area. Are you permitted under the code of merit to ask in good faith, "Is Bob acting like this towards all women?" It seems like if the answer is "No, just Alice," you are the one who brought up unrelated demographic topics and accusations of bias and have violated the Code—which means the code serves to have a chilling effect on good-faith discussions about whether the Code is being violated by established, "senior" contributors.

thats where "you have to assume good intentions" comes in. if you ask that in good faith, to get a clear picture of bob and resolve misinterpretations, no harm is done. i dont care where you ask that, but you can do that. the CoM does not prevent discussing those topics (e.g. to resolve misunderstandings). it just states that they are irrelevant for "your value or that of your contribution".

So at the point where you have a good-faith question about whether someone is violating the Code and harming the project, you must assume good intentions? Do you expect a sexist Bob to say out loud, in a project space, "Yup, I'm judging contributions on things other than technical merit" (especially when Bob can just tweet "Broads can't code lol" and it's defined as a thing you can't pay attention to in the project)?

Why not just replace the code with "No one can possibly behave poorly for the project, just believe everyone" and be done with it? Seems equally effective.

What consequences does the maintainers violation of the "Code of Merit" have? It explicitly does not take such things in consideration for standing in the project.

thats up to the project, depending on the severity of the violation.

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