> Laws already cover all that.
No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.
No they don't. There is no law that requires you to be civil. Quite the opposite, the US has very strong free speech laws.
If your country doesn't have them, you have a serious problem.
EDIT: what's with the downvotes? Laws are supposed to guarantee a civil behavior so that we can have organized societies. If your laws don't cover that, fix them.
In some places there are also classes of hate speech that are prohibited by law. That's still much narrower than a general rule of civility. It's also a bad idea in my opinion, even though I'm a big ole SJW.
See my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667732
A lot of software projects have contributors from all over the world. It is just impractical to rely on the law to enforce civility.
Yes. In Greece I can sue you over that. If that's worth my time or not is a different issue, but if I can somehow prove it, you're in trouble and I can ask for restitution for the psychological effect it had on me. I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
So really, I have no clue why you think that redundant things like CoC have any practical use.
EDIT: instead of downvotes just explain where I'm wrong. Too many feelings here, very few logical arguments.
You can express your opinion on people in public office as much as you want. We weren't talking about Presidents and dictators though right?
So maybe we should get back to the topic of how CoCs have no merit or practical use?
If, on the other hand, it's on twitter, you use the block button, and other private matters.
And we can't really get back to to the subject, because your whole idea was "codes of conduct are bad, but legally prosecuting people for the same thing would be great!"
No it wasn't. No reason to invent stuff that I supposedly said. You can re-read all my answers in this thread if you want.
CoC's try to cover from sexual harassment(which is covered by law) to general douchebaggery(which is subjective).
In the first case it is obviously redundant and in the 2nd it is impossible, hence we end up doing what we would do anyway, which is to shun the individual. If there are obvious cases were something should be covered by law, just fix the laws(which is what I say in the link you pasted). It's all been discussed in this thread, so it's shame that you have me repeat them here :(
I don't feel you have the intention for an honest conversation, as you don't seem to respond to anything I provided as arguments.
Please feel free to ignore me, as I won't be able to keep checking up on this thread.
Cheers
Already covered what you said here :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667840
Interesting. Does it happen often in practice?
> I bet it's the same for all civilized countries.
The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
> CoCs have nothing to do with the rest of the things you're saying. They are not enforceable by law, they won't get you any kind of conviction. Best case scenario, you shun the person that didn't adhere by it. Which guess what? You can do that anyways, without any CoC in place.
The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
Wether you agree with those goals or not, it is the right of a community to decide which culture they like. And different communities will attract different kinds of people. Quite a few people choose not to contribute to the Linux kernel because of the abrasive leadership style of Linus. You might choose to not contribute to the Golang project.
You argued that you don't need a CoC because the laws already cover the same ground. If your goal is to foster a certain culture, it is simply not feasible to use the law to enforce it.
Hacker News has guidelines which are not dissimilar to a CoC, but less formalised: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Are they useless too in your opinion?
Not really, but it does happen occasionally in work places, because if it happens often enough it is basically the equivalent of bullying(called mobbing at work).
> The US doesn't have such laws. Whether you consider the US civilised, is another matter. :) Do you want to exclude contributors from uncivilised countries?
It's because I consider US a civilized(and a very litigious) country that I'm sincerely surprised that its laws don't cover such things.
> The goal of a CoC is to have a set of rules that the community agrees upon and to foster a certain culture. E.g. no personal attacks, constructive criticism only, be civil in your interaction with others on the project. The consequences of violating the CoC can be to ban the violator from the project.
So basically what I described as "shunned" from the community.
But previously you said:
> Which jurisdiction? How will you find out about my identity? How will you enforce any potential judgment if I'm in Somalia? How much time and money will it cost you to a) get a conviction, and b) try to enforce it?
So we agree that CoCs can't serve as substitutes for laws?
The HN guidelines are a perfect example because the first half has practical use which is how to submit an article and the 2nd half which is indeed useless.
Let's be honest here. What you're looking for is a magic wand that say "if you could please don't be an asshole, that'd be grand thanks" and people would be happily ever after. Right?
Well there's no solution for that and CoCs can only serve as to infuriate people who aren't assholes.
Just shun them as you would do with or without a CoC.
Laws shouldn't be used for that anyway. They're far too inflexible. Always remember that historically, what was thought to be civilised usually turns out to be pretty barbaric in hindsight. Laws to enforce such behaviour just slow down progress, so limiting persons via laws should be done with extreme caution and after thorough consideration only.
In practice, communities already enforce certain behaviours (through various methods e.g. peer pressure, shaming and many others). I think in general this is necessary for coexistence, cooperation, and cohesion. But codifying them is probably the least flexible and doesn't allow for any nuance. Besides, any set of rules will have either loopholes or vagueness. Better not to write them down, who knows how people will interpret them.