You may think they are "worthless" but clearly some people think they they have value.

Which one do you think is more poisonous? Making a fuss over the maintainer wanting to impose one or just accepting that someone else sees value in something you don't and agreeing to the CoC.

They are not worthless. They are a form of social signalling showing who's trendy, who thought of it first, a form of personal aggrandizement. The fundamental outlook behind them is the idea the general public is inherently inferior, savage, and without rules it would be a world eternally red in tooth and claw, and only I am a superior enough leader, better than all the rest of you, to set the moral and ethical standards of our culture, now everyone get in line behind my moral authority, and appreciate my public declaration of my own superiority. They're obnoxious, unnecessary, and counterproductive, but not worthless.