Hacker News Reader

Comment by imsofuture | Hacker News Reader

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.

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).

>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.

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.

Earnestly, I don't think there is anyone that doesn't know how to be nice. There might be people that aren't nice or don't want to be nice but let's not confuse that with actual ignorance.

Because people can reasonably disagree about what "being nice" means.

Except some people aren't nice, and people don't even agree on a common definition of nice. What then?

Some of us have the capacity to be nice, but choose to be an asshole because it's funnier.

Some are born assholes, some achieve great assholeness, and some have assholes thrust upon them.

(with apologies to Billy Shakespeare)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com