GitHub Puts Open Code of Conduct on Pause | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Puts Open Code of Conduct on Pause

github.com

88 pointss_kilk126 comments

This is probably a parallel, but I still think Apple came up with the best, most self-disciplining code of conduct of all times:

> We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, "I'll know it when I see it". And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.

Yes, they do publish more direct rejection reasons too. But those reasons were enumerated by experience and were repeated over and over -- like religious hate. What I like is they did not start with a committee of people saying, "Let's brainstorm what could go wrong."

To be able to deal with a large fraternity of people, the better approach is to not imagine a nominal case. You have to start openly, then establish a nominal case with experience.

Mark Stehlik once said, "But, you don't make policies around edge cases; you make policies for the nominal case and deal with the edge cases as the exceptions they are." I like this because this enforces a clear intention of being able to deal with edge cases. This is just like Apple's review guidelines. Firstly, they call it guidelines and not code of conduct. That enforces that they are human and flexible.

The problem with having a code of conduct with a large fraternity of people is that you immediately give the community an intent of what you like and what you don't like. That discourages you to find things that you may have liked but now will never get to see. That also gives idiots in a community a chance to police potential talent based on now written code of conduct. That's a grammar-nazi behavior. You may get great English teachers in that community, but I doubt a Hemingway would want anything to do with you.

Also, it has to be unique to each project. Having a blanket open source code of conduct is bad. It follows what you know, and discourages what you don't. So it's essentially an inbreeding system. And if an open source project accepts and celebrates an inbreeding system, then it is just a proprietary company with no money and wget-able code, essentially failing on both ends.

The problem with blank statements such as this is that "the line" is a moving goalpost. I'd (reluctantly) support even completely arbitrary enforcement, as long as it's not retroactive. But if they first accept apps with Confederate flag, and then ban them later, that's IMO a very bad precedent.

The set of things that are acceptable, is always in flux. Such is life. Such is the App Store.

You can choose to think about your content carefully before you put it out in the world, or you can choose not to :)

But culturally, there are many big examples where that's exactly what happenened over time: things that are initially considered "just fine" gradually become abhorrent or indefensible.

  slavery
  women as property
  child labor

and others that really seem to be moving in that direction:

  child discipline / spanking
  circumcision
  homosexuality and gay marriage
  confederate flag (which is exactly your example)

Your comparison resembles a bit the continental and anglo-saxon legal systems.

In the European-continental legal system, based on Roman law, you have a stress on written law and exceptions are dealt based on similarities with it.

In the Anglo-saxon legal system you have decision based on a set of people ( jury ) and on the practice ( precedent ) in the past.

As a conclusion I would say they both work and both of them have Pros & Cons.

But those reasons were enumerated by experience and were repeated over and over -- like religious hate. What I like is they did not start with a committee of people saying, "Let's brainstorm what could go wrong."

The distinction doesn't seem that clear to me. It seems like this committee has gotten together as a response to the well known social issues that have cropped up over and over in specifically the github community and more generally the open source and software development communities.

You bless the Apple rule or guideline around religious hate, but dismiss the entire code of conduct here? Do you have any specific gripes or examples of policies you think are wrong? Could it be that you agree more with the rules Apple has put in place, or at least don't feel as strongly about the rules of the App Store, but maybe feel some distaste for someone trying to "police" this somewhat different arena?

> Could it be that you agree more with the rules Apple has put in place, or at least don't feel as strongly about the rules of the App Store, but maybe feel some distaste for someone trying to "police" this somewhat different arena?

Yes. If Apple put those rules for an open source project, I'd reject them just as violently. There is no need to police in open source, no matter how benevolent it is.

> Do you have any specific gripes or examples of policies you think are wrong?

Yes I think it went far too contextual to be a generic "don't be a jerk" policy. It dictates what emoticons one can use and one cannot. Let me backtrack you to history of smileys. Smileys were invented at CMU because researchers often failed to glean the sentiment of a comment made by a peer reviewer.

So they started making happy and sad faces on peer reviews. Now, we don't know how emoticons would evolve in, say, next 30 years. But it sure as hell is possible that someone in open source community might invent something while coloring outside the lines. If he isn't allowed to, we will miss on the invention.

Moreover, I have a feeling these policies will be policed more by "community coordinators" or similar people who don't code and will ridicule real contributors for using a wrong emoticon in an issue. No real programmer will care about this non-technical piece of junk. Open source is not for that kind of environment.

We don't know what we will stifle by putting such policies. Thinking that we're smart enough to know future is extremely naive.

That's the smartest thing they've done all week. Now it's time to bury it dead. This is a solution looking for a problem (tm).

The only thing this code of conduct does beside state the obvious (behave like adults) is the implied distrust expressed by introducing it in the first place: that without being nannied into proper behaviour, we would all act like vile animals.

Generally I find such nannying deeply offensive.

Why?

Edit: you edited that comment from a single line since I posted this.

To elaborate:

I think that codes of conduct can be very very useful, especially in resolving disputes or setting community standards. I don't think it's driven out of distrust. High profile harassment on GitHub is not good for GitHub, or the open source community as a whole.

So is github trying to become the defacto community leader of all open source software? I was under the impression there are many different teams in there that had different standards. Does open source even need a universal nanny? Isnt the idea of free software completely opposite to this?

It would make sense if github did this in response to persistent issues with the community, but by doing it pre-emptively it seems like they have ambitions to become some kind of worldwide coordinator.

an opt-in code of conduct per project doesn't seem to be universal nannying

Oops i didn't know it was opt-in. Although with github recommending it it will become the defacto code, and it's likely to be mandatory a few years down the road.

It's offensive, to a woman, to talk to her without permission from her male guardian.

It's offensive, to a woman, to ask for some man's permission to talk to her.

Both of these are true. Both of these are false. In order to know what's offensive for any given group, a written summary is extremely helpful. Posit a group of people brought together from around the world from many varied cultures. They have no way to know what is, and is not, acceptable behaviour. Insisting that people just "behave like adults" is no help at all when different societies can have wildly different views of the correct behaviour of adults, and you also get the effect that each of them believes they are behaving like an adult and it's the other people who are wrong. It's a recipe for disaster.

Bottom line is: People will find ways to feel offended.

Add to that: creating a mile long contract for what is and isn't proper conduct is guaranteed to create more problems and disagreement than it aims to resolve.

Yes they will. If you have no written rules, when they get offended, you've got problems. If you have the written rules, when they get offended, you can kick someone out for either breaking the rules or complaining about something that isn't against the rules. So much easier.

I agree. I have yet to encounter a truly bad interaction on Github.

And what if I did? Learning to ignore things that could unreasonably sour your mood is a valuable skill in life anyway. Life itself doesn't really have a code like proposed.

> And what if I did? Learning to ignore things that could unreasonably sour your mood is a valuable skill in life anyway. Life itself doesn't really have a code like proposed.

De-escalated depending on the context of the situation.

Code of Conduct defines problems and could turn anything funny, innocent, etc. into an excuse to ruin someone's life.

9/10 times it's someone who doesn't program (an Adria Richards, Shanley Kane) who will be attacking someone who actually contributes.

-1. Implies lines of code is the only possible contribution one can make.

Do you expect everyone to water down thoughts with a bullet-point list of qualifiers to have a point?

The people causing the social outrage debacles, often can't program. They're complete outsiders who think they can use social ideas and useful idiots as a vehicle for their own benefit.

Many QAers and PM's can or have programmed some, at one point, or else they wouldn't understand the domain of the problem.

Most of the trouble crowd tend to be social marketers and so-called "evangelists" on twitter.

They're not programmers.

These people leading the vanguard of your code of conduct movements - they're not even really tech. They're happy when you invent these new job positions to give them a paycheck.

You seem to be continuing to operate under the assumption that only people who can code, are capable of contributing to a project.

There are so many things that can be done to contribute to a project, that don't involve writing a single line of code. Testing, evangelism, documentation, support, etc, etc.

Why should attempting to improve the culture of a project, be any different?

What do the Shanley Kanes of the world contribute?

The ability to ignore troubling things might be said to be a privilege of the powerful and secure.

Being able to report GitHub issues freely already kind of puts you there.

Have you guys missed the numerous controversial issues that consistently come up around this? I really don't understand the viewpoint that these guys are just coming out with a rule book apropos of nothing except their desire to nanny and police people.

Is it possible that you're a part of the class that, yes, doesn't experience the negative aspects of the community, and thus has no empathy for those that do? Ah, but yes, "that's life, suck it up" - right? Stiff upper lip, don't be a whiner, I didn't need empathy to get where I am, and so on and so forth.

While that may always be good advice to follow, personally I find that attitude an excuse to be callous and lazy. Actually taking the time to understand other people and their issues, truly trying to get outside of your own biases and experiences and put yourself in their shoes, is more impressive to me.

I'm just getting miserable by all the hypersensitive crybabies out there.

What about my feelings? No one's going to care because I'm white and conservative.

When your feelings, your hopes, your opportunities and your freedom, have been trampled on for decades if not centuries if not millennia, you might have a better claim to victimhood.

>Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop. [violates the code of conduct]

I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

Stuff like that doesn't belong on an issue tracker, whether it's invited or not.

Bring back the mailing lists.

> Bring back the mailing lists.

Huh? So you both support the CoC but also want to "bring back" a form of communication which is entirely unmoderated? That's super contradictory.

I should have been more explicit. A GitHub issue is for discussing a problem or idea for a particular repository. Hugs, virtual or otherwise seem to be completely tangential.

Also, a mailing list can be one of the most strictly moderated forms of communication.

In an employment environment, that is clearcut sexual harassment. The OCC is bringing some of that professionalism to open source communities.

Why would it be a joke to ban annoying personally-targeted behaviors that are unrelated to the work product?

I can't think of a case where discussing cuddling someone is appropriate for a Pull Request, mailing list, or IRC chat

hugs plonh

Thanks, that's what I immediately thought.

If you know someone or have formed any kind of relationship with them, that sort of "virtual hug" can be appropriate, but in other contexts it can be a pretty damn creepy way to push buttons.

This is me violating your personal space.

But it's not the only possible way to violate someone's personal space (or be creepy) in an internet discussion. You could say "Last night had this strange dream where you were being eaten by lion" or "I think I'll make a poster with your photo and put it on my bedroom ceiling". The possibilities are endless.

So you can either disallow all personal communication allowing only professional/on-topic stuff (maybe also making everyone use Esperanto so there are no misunderstandings) or you have real humans judging if someone is being a jerk based on their own understanding what "jerk" means.

The later is how the real world was doing it for thousands of years (though this is also changing). When a child goes to school she/he is expected to behave in some normal way - parents are supposed to help create that behavior when upbringing the child. And if at school the child does something bad, they call the parents and then the parents are expected to explain the child why it is bad and make sure that doesn't happen again.

Summoning the parents is (unfortunately) not an option here, but warning and banning people should work.

In Latino cultures, a hug would be completely appropriate. Why is it your culture that gets to decide? I find that attitude in itself offensive, especially considering we're talking about text.

If you get creeped out by even a virtual hug and see more open people as violators, that's your problem, not theirs.

It's an obvious restatement of American christian values. Any physical contact is implicitly sexually charged, and so even a reference to it is objectionable.

Of course if we're going to apply one religiously-inspired value system, then why not Saudi Arabian values?

I second that. Not wearing towel on head sure is offensive! :)

Exactly. I think this is the aspect that's "rubbed me the wrong way" about this CoC thing. I don't come from a culture where workplace physical contact would be seen as acceptable, but I'm not about to claim that that's some sort of human universal without a lot more research.

The sense I get from GitHub's CoC effort is that it's attempting to codify supposedly universal modes of proper human interaction without recognizing that it's sourced in a specific, local culture.

I will plead ignorance here. In Latino cultures, the individual is not allowed to refuse a hug from a stranger? Or it's considered to be extremely rude and insulting to do so?

Please lay it out for me, in as much detail as you're comfortable providing.

In an employment environment, that is clearcut sexual harassment.

Wait, really? I've never posted it myself, but textual descriptions like "[hug]" as a way of expressing gratitude or solidarity are common and mundane in plenty of communities.

Now, sure, cluttering technical discussions with stuff like this isn't preferable. To call it "clearcut sexual harassment" is ludicrous and completely devalues the term in question.

> Wait, really? I've never posted it myself, but textual descriptions like "[hug]" as a way of expressing gratitude or solidarity are common and mundane in plenty of communities.

I'd bet none of the communities you've seen it is a workplace.

No, actual workplace interactions that have all the involved humans in the same physical location don't use textual descriptions.

Instead you get the actual actions. Because people who spend that much time interacting tend to not stay in a Platonic Ideal "strictly professional" relationship, but become acquaintances or even friends. In which case it's that set of rules that apply, rather than the ivory tower set of rules based on said Platonic Ideal.

So your workplace doesn't use email, source control, instant message, group chat, or any other kind of electronic text communication?

But in a way that just emphasizes why "[hug]" would be awkward and borderline inappropriate in a work setting. How often do coworkers physically hug at work?

I'm not saying it would always be wrong to use "[hug]" (or even physically hug somebody at work), but I'd expect it to be far less common than in some other settings.

Nothing wrong with spontaneously hugging at work to relieve stress, assuming that all parties understand the purely Platonic meaning of the act (after all, we're grown-ups).

I also tend to close my (less serious) working emails with stuff like "Love, kisses, [Name]" — and no one ever got offended by that, albeit the majority of my team would probably dislike some random bearded guy actually kissing them.

Awkwardness is in the eye of the beholder. Working with adults (with no serious mental health issues) alleviates the need for a prohibitive, mildly disgusting CoC, like the one discussed in this thread.

I for one read that part of the code of conduct and think of a few grey areas.

I mean, it's not uncommon for people to write 'hugs' or something like that - surely that should be fine (assuming it's not wildly off topic)?

I don't want you to hug me, or otherwise violate my personal space, thank you. I don't know you, it's completely inappropriate. Textual descriptions thereof also make me feel weird and uneasy.

(And if you don't think that the words matter because it's just text in a browser, imagine that next time you make an angry/frustrated post, I reply "aww, boo hoo. ruffles your hair". You'd be fucking pissed. Words have meaning, that's why we use them)

> In an employment environment, that is clearcut sexual harassment.

I'll never understanf this stuff. In fact I don't even understand how hugging and giving people real backrubs is sexual harassment, let alone mentioning it in text!

Yeah I don't get the 'textual' descriptions bit - and physical contact doesn't really apply to an online community. I suppose describing sexual contact is probably unwanted, but that's covered under the sexual harassment section.

rubs thomasfoster06's shoulders aggressively

Tell me to stop. I WON'T.

This is hilarious! Without the CoC, who would have thought about rubbing someone else's body parts on HN.

What gets me is that they don't distinguish between description and simulation.

Your username is not inspiring confidence in your opinion on these matters ;)

Can't wait to hear a legal professional's opinion vis-à-vis simulated back rubbing.

But seriously, I'm hearing about this for the first time. Can anybody explain to me why this particular CoC is more controversial than any other random CoC?

Juts read any or all of the many linked pull requests.

I'm probably going to burn myself here, we'll see. It seems to be written to protect minorities from majorities, as opposed to protecting everyone equally. For example they mention that they will not be handling complaints related to "reverse-isms" such as "reverse-racism" which is actually just racism. And this is coming from a CoC which is designed to be adopted by projects.

Their argument is that "straight white males" can't be subject to racism or sexism simply because of their race and gender. This would obviously generate controversy and is generally a racist and sexist statement, which is likely why they put the project on hold - it could create a lot of negative news coverage for GitHub.

To give a little context, it reads:

> We will not act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’

This was taken from http://geekfeminism.org/about/code-of-conduct/ with one omission:

> The Geek Feminism Anti-Abuse Team will not act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’ (because these things don’t exist)

I'd agree that the reverse-isms do not exist. Sexism is sexism no matter who it affects. But it is not clear to me if the text should be interpreted this way...

So to be clear, if someone was talking about "male tears" or saying that all white people were [X], you believe that this code of conduct would be enforced against those people?

Because I don't. If the CoC was genuinely designed to oppose discriminatory behavior against everyone, why would its authors be clinging so tightly to this bit of language that could be interpreted as greenlighting certain types of discrimination? It's unnecessary, so why not remove it?

I feel like an open code of conduct is unnecessary.

Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice. (I have screenshots of discussions that violate this simple fundamental rule). I have flagged 40+ comments (that were accepted and acted upon) on stackoverflow alone of people just being stupid jerks.

The SVN people did a great presentation about how to protect your project from poisonous people [1]. Their story goes is that someone came on the SVN mailing list ranting about how SVN sucks and doesn't have the features he wanted - according to the talk the SVN community was polite and the guy just went away.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM

It shouldn't be necessary, but it is.

We live in an age where if an action is not explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, because if it's not explicitly unacceptable, it's obviously acceptable. In short, if you don't say I can't abuse people, it's ok for me to abuse people.

Oh, and these people will also happily throw around the "First Amendment" as justification, which makes me incredibly sad for the future of our nation.

Solving that behavior though is incredibly difficult.

> We live in an age where if an action is not explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, because if it's not explicitly unacceptable, it's obviously acceptable.

I don't think this is a good argument, because you might as well say

We live in an age where if an action is explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, to protest the very idea that it was made explicitly unacceptable.

The reason they're unnecessary is that codes of conduct aren't legally enforceable and the resulting actions from violating them can be taken by the community regardless of whether they have a code of conduct. I agree with Bo Burnham when he said, "Who needs a thousand metaphors to realize you shouldn't be a dick?" [1] (or, in this case, a thousand prohibited behaviors)

If someone does act in a way that is unacceptable, the community should, politely, explain to them that that sort of behavior isn't allowed and why it's not allowed, since often times people are communicating in a foreign language or are coming from a culture that has different norms. If the behavior persists, you take whatever action you would have taken had you had a code of conduct.

Basically, there's no practical need for legal-level detail in a code of conduct, just use, "don't be a jerk."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxc20saM8DA (audio NSFW)

> Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice.

Or even simpler - don't be an ass/jerk. I guess it's just hard to define...

Is it just me, or does my reading this CoC say that not being nice is okay (and accepted and required) when dealing with people deemed not nice?

This is what troubles me - I was brought up to be nice and behave well to others. We are more alike than different. To say "we should behave different to others who are different" and "we can behave as bad to others because they are different" is wrong and only leads to conflict and harm.

Of course I could have read it wrong and am reading too much into it!

BE KIND

This section of the "code of conduct" is extremely odd without some context:

> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’

> Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”

> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

> Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial

> Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

I'd put this in the context of:

* normal people are political and can not understand a technological meritocracy

* the percentage of the github community that is black is much smaller than the percentage of the worldwide or even US population that is black

* the github community is a technological meritocracy and the problem of underrepresentation is external

* not understanding this, normal people would like to impose a political solution, and the form this solution takes is grotesque and offensive to people who do understand meritocracy

You may have missed the memo, but according to new wave feminism, the word "meritocracy" represents discrimination because you don't give special treatment to people based on sex, ethnicity etc.

I'm not kidding, and Github had adopted this view as well. [1]

Among many, this CoC is seen as a continuation of this largely feminist agenda. And we don't think it belong here. Open source I'd apolitical, meaning you can avoid political issues entirely in a good and neutral environment.

Why work so hard to make it political? For what gains?

[1] http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

Meritocracy is sexist because it's bullshit. We know it's bullshit from the resumé experiments or the blinded orchestra auditions etc.

So your argument is that because it's hard (impossible?) to achieve a true meritocracy the term and goal itself is "bullshit" and should be dismissed?

Should we apply the same standards to other common things? Equality? Democracy? Justice?

See how that works? Yeah, it doesn't. Your argument is a non-argument.

No, my argument is that people who claim to be operating a meritocracy need to be aware of a bunch of biases or they risk being sexist[1] whilst also dismissing any accusations of sexism.

[1] etc

To me that section reads like the person who wrote it recently had an encounter with a sea lion.

Looking through some of the issues on that repo, the amount of bad faith people have in the very idea of a code of conduct is astonishing. Not to mention the sheer ignorance of issues affecting minorities within the tech community (seriously, Jon Stewart could have had a weeks worth of material).

Sure, the wording of the code of conduct wasn't perfect, but it'd be much nicer if people wanted to see it improved in good faith. There's a lot of ugly things that happen in open source projects, which aren't rosy as some may assume, and the idea that making more people feel welcomed and safe in communities like GitHub can't take precedent over the possibility that a few current contributors will find themselves outside the rules on a regular basis is very worrying.

It seems like a lot of people are just upset because they feel the CoC discriminates against them.

You are harassed and have privileges ? I don't care, being harassed is still not fine whether you have privileges or not.

Seems to sum up what most people are complaining about.

Yeah, I agree that a few sections were worded badly (the thing about reverse-isms isn't really needed, and just raises more questions than it answers). it's just that a lot of people don't seem to have the patience or the good faith to see these sorts of issues fixed.

I agree, the maintainers could have merge one of the many pull request than removed the reverse -ism section, but apparently it was something they couldn't agree on.

Well, it's ok to discriminate against people with Commit Privileges - they can just bypass the whole pull request system anyway.

For the sake of discussion, this is the part that people seem to be taking the most issue with:

Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:

- ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’

- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”

- Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

- Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial

- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

How can people still deny that this isn't clear discrimination against straight white males? The PC police talk about all the "coded racism" that they see all day but they can't tell that this is coded racism?

They should just say what they mean: If you're a straight white man it's okay to treat you like shit.

People who say that are usually people who define "racism" and "sexism" as "discrimination from a position of power" or "systemic/institutional discrimination". For them, just because men or whites are statistically more likely to be powerful, men and whites are powerful and "privileged" in general. Who cares about poor whites and homeless men!

I think that's pure bullshit, but a lot of people apparently feel the opposite.

"They should just say what they mean: If you're a straight white man it's okay to treat you like shit."

Several GitHub employees would agree: https://github.com/todogroup/opencodeofconduct/pull/17

https://twitter.com/rachelmyers/status/629981737121021953

https://twitter.com/agelender/status/629080326736773120 https://twitter.com/agelender/status/573560084837498880

It seems like the loudest voices are brand new accounts with some sort of anti-diversity agenda.

There's what looks like an obviously fake account (lots of 0-star repos with nonsense names) who just started arguing in an issue that privelige doesn't exist and that people are only lazy. That really doesn't help at all, and I'm kinda surprised that it seems as though people are trying to reason with people like that.

It's almost as if they might have magically appeared from 4chan or Reddit in order to troll or something...

I don't know about the "anti-diversity agenda", but I would assume at least some of new accounts are from people who don't want to get their "real" account involved in a big political issue.

Just being against the code of conduct doesn't make somebody a terrible person, but there are other people who would spin it that way.

Unfortunately, in much of tech opposing the "diversity" advocates under your own name is a great way to get fired, or get a Twitter mob after you (which will then get you fired.) A lot of people understandably don't want to risk that.

I agree with criticisms of the very idea of a code of conduct. Why is it astonishing? Documents like this enable the worst amateur Internet lawyering.

If your parents, teachers, and local cops did not teach you how to conduct yourself, there's absolutely no way a text file will. On the other hand, it will be used to justify all kinds of unnecessary non-technical debates.

I think many people who criticize the idea feel that it's been heavily pre-politicized to push for a particular version of "social justice" meme-complex. And if you discount that driving force and that motivation, it isn't clear that a CoC is either needed or useful.

If you try to think about it in a clean-slate way, sort of; forget "oppression", "microagressions against minorities" and all the other politicized jargon that the current version is peppered with, and ask yourself (answers are my opinions, obviously)...

Q. Is there a problem with some open source communities being too hostile, unwelcoming, potentially harassing to many people? A. Yes. Some communities are clearly much more "nice" than others. Some are clearly much more welcoming of newbies, etc.

Q. How does this "bad behavior" manifest itself, in actual open source communities? A. Mostly by how much rudeness and brusqueness some regulars of the community feel they can treat others with. If you hang around on forums, issues, IRC channels etc. enough you can get a clear feel of the "niceness meter". Sometimes there's also explicit misogyny, but that's relatively rare. Other explicit forms of hostility (e.g. racism, transmisogynism) are even rarer to nonexistent. It's simply that if the overall level of niceness is low, then people behave like assholes. Asshole-like behavior is easy to interpret as racism etc.

Q. Is this a huge problem? Should we invest effort in trying to make communities more nice? A. I don't know, seems like a personal call. I personally like the nice and welcoming communities much more, and don't really see the point of being rude and hostile (I think it's counterproductive and not only wrong).

Q. Is a code of conduct a way to achieve that? A. Doubt it. Seems like the norm set by the leaders of the community, together with a few clear examples of "we will not tolerate this kind of behavior", is how it's successfully done. Is there a project which went "not nice -> adopted CoC -> became clearly nicer"? I haven't seen any.

The difference between setting some community norms and having a code of conduct seems to be writing it down. And, in writing things down, there's one reference for the rules/guidelines and everyone knows what they are. Is much prefer GitHub to set some rules rather than have year's worth of what would essentially become case law. Plus, community norms aren't exactly working either, so..

Overall, with a bit of editing (perhaps the code of conduct should be rewritten to avoid as many politicised words as possible), I'm not sure where the difference is between a well written code of conduct and a 'be nice' community norm.

I didn't know about this code of conduct until just now when I saw this article, so I don't know for sure why people are so against it.

Part of the problem may be that there have a been a few high profile cases (posted to HN, etc.) where a bunch of people unrelated to a project (not committers, not forkers, not users) have come in and started big commotions over committer behavior outside of the project (i.e. on their personal twitter account having nothing to do with the project), or have demanded changes like "he" be replaced with "they" or "he/she" in the documentation. Basically, a bunch of political stuff that doesn't have perceived technical value for the project.

It could be that a GitHub endorsed "code of conduct" would give those people more ammunition against projects, and I think that worries people. Most GitHub users aren't big OSS projects, they're just using it to host their hobby projects, they're not out to make political statements.

What about people who disagree and are not willing to follow the CoC? Is it preferable to turn some brilliant (but very ill-tempered; so many of them exist) mind away from a project because they are not our favourite? In the end, is it the software that matters or the 'community'?

I've avoided software because of the community before. Usually there is some other equivalent software with a better community.

I was referring to the CoC , not the community.

Unfortunately, the well was poisoned from the beginning. Don't forget that this entire CoC fiasco started because someone barged into an open-source project demanding that a major contributor be ostracized because he said something on Twitter she didn't like. Anyone who sees that happen, and then sees that suddenly the same people who were demanding contributors be chucked out over Twitter arguments two weeks ago are now writing codes of conduct that are getting imposed everywhere, is not going to be inclined to read them in good faith.

GitHub ? Looks like TODO group are more companies than just GitHub [1].

[1] http://todogroup.org/members/

Yeah, I was just gonna ask - what does this have to do with GitHub beyond being hosted there?

But now I guess my question shifts to - what does it mean to be a "member" of this group? Is using any of the services provided by member companies binding me to that CoC somehow?

EDIT: Ah, looks like there's answers in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027561

This is a gem: "Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes"

Github really has jumped the shark.

Not yet. They will when they'll impose that silly CoC on all hosted projects.

It is terribly worded and quite off-putting. It also has a lot of stuff in it which could be summed up as "be a decent person". Saved space could be used to express specific ideas about desired behavior. Some comments:

Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation

Both too general and too specific. If the goal is to say offensive comments are not permitted then leave it at: "offensive comments". If comments regarding things on the list should be avoided say it. I mean, what about "comments about sexual orientation, mental illnesses etc. of other project members are not permitted". Why is political affiliation on the list I don't really know either. Political affiliation or religion might be completely off-topic for open source projects but putting them in the same list as race/age/body size/physical appearance/gender etc. makes very little sense. Just don't talk about politics or religion if they are unrelated to the project. Don't talk about diet ideas either when we are at that.

Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment

"Don't make personal attacks and avoid personal remarks in general".

Deliberate misgendering

Already covered in "comments about gender/sexual orientation/mental ilnesses/etc. of other members".

Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop

It really doesn't seem to be necessary and makes the whole thing sound not very serious.

Threats of violence, both physical and psychological Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm Deliberate intimidation

Yeah but make it shorter: "Threats of violence, intimidation or encouraging them".

Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect others from intentional abuse

Actual problem and specific behavior hidden among 20 or so points which could be shortened to 3. More points like that please.

Publication of non-harassing private communication

Another good point: specific behavior which isn't universally understood as undesired and should be specifically included in CoC.

‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’

Reverse sexism is sexism. Remove all "reverse" non-sense. The whole text reads like mumbling on Tumblr.

Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts

Yeah, refusal to explain or debate recent fruit diet should be included as well.

Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

All this is covered in point about sexism and discrimination. Cissexist or cisgender aren't actual words in a dictionary and should be avoided in an international CoC.

If someone has been harmed or offended, it is our responsibility to listen carefully and respectfully, and do our best to right the wrong.

This is nonsense. Someone being harmed is a serious issue. Someone being offended - not so much. Mixing the two takes away from serious issues and dilute them in ocean of meaningless words without any specific behaviors attached to them.

Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and technical ability.

Blablablabla, 3rd time in the same text. Just remove the whole section. It doesn't contribute anything.

If you experience or witness unacceptable behavior—or have any other concerns—please report it by contacting us via abuse@todogroup.org. All reports will be handled with discretion. In your report please include:

"If you experience unacceptable behavior or have any questions, contact us at abuse@todogroup.org. All reports will be handled with discretion." The rest of the paragraph is pointless.

Overall it's a terribly written text which is thin on specifics and repeats itself several times. Maybe ask an actual technical writer to put things together. Make it shorter as well.

The reason so many people are against “Code of Conducts” is because they are not used as a baseline for professional behavior (against which there would also be arguments in Open Source), but as a political cudgel to score points and enact things like: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...

But look at some instances for people who have tried to win political arguments by invoking CoC or are lobbying to instate them on Open Source projects.

Here is a case, someone from Italy was openly against reassignment surgery for kids on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/61156951531550720...

Uh-oh my wrong-think senses are tingling, he had a different opinion on a social issue on his private Twitter account. How could this possibly be handled? Ignore him, discuss this issue with him or agree to disagree? No, clearly he must be somehow punished for this. Luckily he is apparently contributor to an Open Source project called Opal, so let’s bring it up there and insist: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

This is fortunately brought up by someone who has already developed their own “Code of Conduct” that would require that it be followed on “public spaces” (like Twitter, Facebook or forums) and if not be removed from the project: http://contributor-covenant.org/ http://where.coraline.codes/coraline_ehmke.pdf

“By adopting this Code of Conduct, project maintainers commit themselves to fairly and consistently applying these principles to every aspect of managing this project. Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct may be permanently removed from the project team.

This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community.”

It’s basically a shakedown game for ideological control of a space and seems to work this way:

1) Someone gets offended by something someone in the Open Source community said (usually on Twitter or at an official event), they demand they be removed or otherwise punished for the offending thing.

2) They flood GitHub or similar with demands to remove said individual and/or at least adopt a “Code of Conduct” to prevent such “despicable” behavior like disagreeing in the future, which includes all Social media and official events

3) Once project creators have been socially shamed as some sort of bigots for not wanting to do anything against this sufficiently and the activists got a foot in the door they push a self-formulated “Code of Conduct” on the project like above

4) Then they demand it be upheld and anyone that says anything they deem offensive be removed from the project, if it happens another time they can point to said “Code of Conduct” and ask the project creators to abide. A “safe space” has been created. After this they don’t particularly give a shit if great software engineers get pushed out for disagreeing or the project even fails beyond this point, because said people don’t want to abide by their ideology.

Meritocracy is also generally a trigger-word for these people, they absolutely hate it. Just bring it up in conversation and they reveal themselves and their intentions rather quickly: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug

https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of...

Another recent issue was GitHub removing a WebM Converter repo because it used the word “retards”, you can see the same individual involved in the first Twitter conflict pop up throughout the comments yelling at other people to leave: https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baa...

For those confused, here is the actual code of conduct [1]

[1] http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/

> to protect people who are typically the target of harassment in open source

So if you are subjected to an unusual type of harassment, you're on your own?

I guess the idea is, to prevent (or at least discourage) the usual types of harassment up-front, and deal with the more unusual, rare forms on-the-fly as they appear.

Yet, there is specific point about "reverse-sexism" and "reverse -ism" not being considered a problem. The concerns are valid, the text is written with an agenda in mind and the agenda makes people weary.

It is very tempting to question the motives of who believes a 0% solution is better than 55% first step.

Those are the motives of somebody who believes that no policing at all is better than half-ass policing.

We already have organizations that deal with illegal activities. We pay them for it and we give them a monopoly on violence, so why not use them instead of trying to replicate what they do, partially and poorly?

I fail to see how this has anything to do with GitHub, except using GitHub as a hosting platform. Can somebody please change the title?

GitHub is driving and adopting it: https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-condu...

Github recently adopted this Code of Conduct for all of their own-brand projects, and they were encouraging other open source projects to adopt it as well: https://github.com/blog/2039-adopting-the-open-code-of-condu...

But the question is, are they also supporting/adopting this change/suspension? That's not clear from the linked post.

At least the GitHub's Atom and Electron projects are evaluating alternatives. See: https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/8206#issuecomment-128858...

Looks like it's a group GitHub is a member of: http://todogroup.org/members/

GitHub is part of the "todogroup".

I group "Code of Conduct" with Political Correctness.

For anyone interested in a good read on the subject, check out End of Discussion: How the Left's Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) by Mary Ham and Guy Benson.

It's an excellent read, and shouldn't be too much of a sting to the social outrage panderers out there.

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