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Comment by curtisblaine | Hacker News Reader

So he dared to be in favour of anti-CoC article in one of his Twitter posts and thus unleashed the SJW brigade? What an heinous crime.

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Would you please not post unsubstantive inflammatory comments, especially on divisive topics, to HN? That's flamebait and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly, regardless of the views they favor/disfavor.

I think that's an uncharitable reading. It's one thing to be anti-CoC. It's another thing to be anti-CoC when you're on a committee whose job is to maintain and enforce the CoC. There's nothing dishonorable about saying "I don't think I agree with the goals of the job that I am doing, so I will let someone else do it," but he didn't do that.

It's sort of like going to work for customs while being a strong believer in open and unrestricted borders, apologizing to people about the existence of customs and waving them through, and then complaining about "the alt-right brigade" when people ask if you're actually the right person for the job.

Yeah, the original list of grievances seemed pretty straightforward and damning. It's not unlike the current US administration, with a climate denier heading the Energy dept, a school privatization advocate heading the Education department, etc.

It looks like the responsibilities of the TSC involve much more than enforcing a code of conduct. If you want a simile for this situation, I'd say it's more like a police officer sharing an article that's in favor of marijuana legalization, and being upset when his coworkers attack him over it.

> I'd say it's more like a police officer sharing an article that's in favor of marijuana legalization, and being upset when his coworkers attack him over it.

... but sharing such an article would not be wrong ...

Is the disconnect really this large between ideologies?

Hm, I interpreted 'cosmiccartel as saying that sharing such an article would be fine, and therefore that a more appropriate analogy would lead to the opposite of my conclusion. (And I upvoted that reply because I felt it contributed to the conversation usefully and was a meaningful rebuttal.)

That said, I still think there are scenarios where sharing such an article would be, although not wrong in a moral sense, certainly something that would displease your coworkers and harm your group's effectiveness: imagine that a large number of your coworkers thought that marijuana was a serious problem in their society and had made it one of your team's priorities to eliminate marijuana from the community. If your coworkers don't believe that you'll have their back, or if they worry that you'll undermine them if they leave a prisoner with you or something, it's entirely reasonable for them to be unhappy at you, whether or not they're "right". And it's entirely predictable that a more fruitful way to achieve your goal would be to leave the department and argue your case through political means, instead of remaining.

That analogy is somewhat wrong. A simple reading makes it boil down to a simple question. If you disagree with how a system implements its goals, do you change that system from within or from without? Noting that sometimes, 'improving from within' vs 'sabotage' is a matter of perspective.

You can disagree with rules and still enforce them. In cases where judgement calls need to be made, you then use your own judgement. This is only unreasonable when the rules are perfect, or judgement calls are made when the rules are clear.

Wait, he's a member of the Technical Steering Committee, which is a group "of key Collaborators who have demonstrated both technical expertise critical to the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the project and a long term commitment to driving the project and community forward"[1], not "a committee whose job is to maintain and enforce the CoC", as you put it.

It's not inconceivable that an member of such a group could be thinking that "the best way of driving the project and community forward" is not having a CoC at all, or having one different than the current one (like the Linux one, for example).

[1](https://nodejs.org/en/foundation/tsc/)

The committee has lots of jobs, yes. One of them is the maintaining and enforcing the Code of Conduct:

https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

I think it's totally fine for a member of the group to disagree privately with the decided goals of the group, whether this is "CoCs are good" or "this promises spec is good" or whatever, and recuse themselves from that goal and contribute productively to other goals. But that's different from actively undermining the group's decision, which is (I think) what is happening here.

Which is a clause written on the CoC itself. The CoC must be respected because the CoC says so. Anyone who has doubts about the CoC, must be expelled from the TSC, because it's written on the CoC. This ensures that the CoC can't be touched ever.

A good example of catch-22. They shouldn't have approved it in the first place.

> The CoC must be respected because the CoC says so.

That's... how laws and rules work...

Actually, no. You can follow the laws but still publicly critize them in most democratic countries.

> They shouldn't have approved it in the first place.

I agree with this argument - if the TSC does not intend to uphold the CoC, they should either not have approved it or should have made someone else the contact point (and given them meaningful enforcement power).

> Anyone who has doubts about the CoC, must be expelled from the TSC, because it's written on the CoC. This ensures that the CoC can't be touched ever.

I don't agree with this, and I don't understand how you conclude this. An easy way to change it is for the TSC to vote "We no longer want to have a CoC." Done. Nothing in the CoC says that it's a CoC violation to want to get rid of the CoC. (Of course, you have to express your desire to get rid of it without trolling, harassment, doxing, etc., but that doesn't really seem hard: you say "I think we should stop having a CoC.")

> Nothing in the CoC says that it's a CoC violation to want to get rid of the CoC

Wait, they just tried to expel a guy because he was subtly criticizing the CoC on twitter.

1. If I'm understanding correctly (and maybe I'm not!), the criticism of the CoC was not seen as a CoC violation, it was seen as incompatible with the duty of enforcing the CoC. (That is, the situation would have been very different from if a project member not on the TSC were criticizing the CoC.) There were, I think, other actions from the same person that were claimed to be CoC violations, and I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether those claims are accurate. But I don't think the act of criticizing the CoC was ever even claimed to be one.

2. Even if it were, that would still only be a claim about this particular guy's approach to criticizing the CoC.

3. Even if it were a claim about all criticisms of the CoC, the vote failed. As far as I can tell, the scenario in reality is exactly the scenario you wish: someone on the TSC criticized the CoC, the TSC votes that this is totally fine.

(If you are now additionally arguing that TSC members should be barred from resigning from the TSC and then critiquing the decision on their private blog once no longer affiliated from the TSC, well, that does not seem like the pro-free-speech position.)

From the archived details it looks like the issue was less posting anti-CoC material (though that was part of it) than putting personal public advocacy outside of project processes ahead of engagement with project processes and representing the project more generally.

That's certainly something that a member of the community is generally free to do, but it's, in pretty much any organization regardless of domain or left-right position on the ideological spectrum, something that is viewed as inconsistent with membership in leadership committees except where that membership is an entitlement through, e.g., equity ownership.

EDIT: but it's also worth noting that the sanction votes in both proposed sanctions were 60/40 against sanctions, and the final outcome was to work to clarify expectations. (And clarifying expectations seems sensible since it is clear that there were sharp divisions within the community in the expectations here.)

I disagree and find your argument convenient.

It's like saying that once you're elected to congress, you must vote along party lines no matter your personal convictions because "reasons".

We see how well that's working out for America, don't we?

Yes, and what some call daring, others call scary. One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group shows distaste for CoCs, one can see how that might mean the group's CoC may be threatened. Without CoCs, many people in the Node community wouldn't feel as safe.

You may still feel just as safe, and that's great for you. But it's not very hard to understand why people aren't happy. Even if you vehemently despise CoCs, you should still be able to see how a mass exodus, for whatever reason, could be bad for a project's future.

> Without CoCs, many people in the Node community wouldn't feel as safe.

I strongly disagree with this language. I support CoCs because I feel explicitly spelling out consequences for harassment allows for the unambiguous rejection of toxic behavior which creates a welcoming environment for new or otherwise anxious contributors... but nothing about CoC affects an individual's personal safety and using that type of hyperbolic language damages the cause more than it helps.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that CoCs magically shield and help people. I simply meant that having a CoC and then removing it or ignoring it will make people feel like there aren't any "consequences for harassment" as you put it. When a CoC is removed or ignored, it makes people feel like there isn't any "unambiguous rejection of toxic behavior", so people don't feel like they're in a "welcoming environment for new or otherwise anxious contributors"

Your wording is definitely better than mine, but I hope that doesn't detract from my point

I got pedantic over the "safety" language but we're definitely in agreement.

What's so special about the Node community then?

I've been doing open source work for 15+ years and I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC. Nor did it ever come up as an issue. I did see aggressive list moderation be abused to distort the technical path of a project though.

You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim. If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC then it seems like they went badly wrong somewhere. Somehow other projects thrive without one.

"mass exodus" = exaggerated figure to create the impression of a crisis in an otherwise healthy community, in order to increase the drama.

Visit Twitter and look at Node's "thought leaders" and you'll see those words weren't just made up for fun and drama

The culture has changed, and many projects have codes of conducts now.

Could you cite evidence of aggressive list moderation being abused to distort the technical path of a project? Is the project in question the Node.js project, or another?

It wasn't node.js, I have never contributed to node.js

The project is fairly well known to have serious issues with censorship of community forums and moderation. I don't wish to name it here because this is my anonymous account.

And yes, there are a lot of OS software projects that prospered without a CoC. Linux - coincidentally one of the most famous, successful and long-lived open source projects - is one of them.

(And yes, now they have a CoC, which is not what the perennially-offended camp would like it to be: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-linux-camp-conflict-...).

> I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC [...] I did see aggressive list moderation be abused

Right, no CoC, just random moderators who abused their power. I don't see how that's a good thing. I think having a CoC can limit the explicit powers given to moderators so that moderators can only moderate very bad behavior like X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C. Of course, this depends on moderators being held to the CoC (i.e. if a moderator doesn't follow the CoC, you make it clear that's not OK so they aren't "abusive" again), and it depends on X, Y, and Z being very carefully deliberated.

> You talk about a "mass exodus". I find myself skeptical of this claim

Visit Twitter and look at Node's "thought leaders". I'll update this post with some links to tweets in a couple minutes.

> If the NodeJS contributors are so dependent on a CoC then it seems like they went badly wrong somewhere. Somehow other projects thrive without one.

Right, many projects of Node's size thrive without any CoC, they just have moderators following whatever rules the mods deem fit, or they just allow toxicity. If you want to remove toxicity while holding mods accountable, some sort of CoC is the way to go.

You don't need a CoC to deal with 'poisonous people' as the old talk by the Subversion guys named them. You just need a maintainer with common sense who treats list bans as a last resort, but is willing to use them if things get out of hand. If the maintainer can't be trusted to do such things properly, they probably can't be trusted to exercise common sense in other areas too, but in practice I've not seen that be an issue. Normally trolls go away if ignored.

Also as far as I can tell CoCs are invariably so vague that they just trigger more fighting. Now there's a formal excuse to do it, you see.

Again, you're arguing in favor of trusting mods (or just one sole maintainer). I'm arguing that mods will abuse power unless their power is restricted, which is why I think CoCs are good.

One could argue that all you need is a single maintainer, like North Korea has, and I get it, that does sound simpler. But I prefer it when there are more rules to prevent dictators - I think those rules can limit the powers of the overrulers and simultaneously put a wrench in harassment.

Well yes, lots of projects do run on the so-called "benign dictator" model. As do nearly all companies.

Moderators abusing their power is absolutely possible. However it seems to me, anecdotally, that putting in place a CoC is a good sign that such abuse is about to get far more common.

The problem is that a CoC cannot really be any more precise than my vague 'use common sense' strategy is. A CoC will basically say "be nice to people, don't be a dick" in more flowery language, but ultimately - as incidents like this one show - there will still be moderators who decide whether any given incident is in violation. So a CoC doesn't really help with moderator abuse: if they want to be abusive, they're going to do it.

Of course, you can get really in depth and create judgement panels, voting mechanisms, appeals processes etc for a CoC violation. But we already have that, it's law.

I mean, Node.js has made this particular choice that they're going to believe in CoCs; other projects can of course choose not to: but they chose to and that's what the Node.js technical community is publicly about. That is their choice, and it might not be your choice.

It does have an effect on the social culture that's touched by that CoC, and you might like or dislike that effect. You might also have been totally distanced from this so as someone who is an outsider who has met a bunch of these people, let me say that in my personal interactions with these folks, Node.js has been more friendly to LGBT folks, issues of accessibility for the hearing and sight impaired, people with mental health issues like depression, people of color, women, and nonbinary folks, than just about any other community I have ever met. Meanwhile they have never come across as any of those alt-right buzzwords -- as "social justice warriors" or "man-hating" or "white-shaming" or anything; I have never felt unwelcome personally as a white American man.

Someone on the TSC has been anti-(what-the-community-is-about), and is actively apologizing for CoC enforcement and saying mean things which is discouraging others from participating in Node.js, and the technical community had a vote to censor him. They voted not to, and now someone for whom those community values are important has quit the TSC because they didn't support this decision.

I feel like everybody's rushing to see everyone else's choices as invalid but these are all valid private decisions. That community is allowed to decide that it likes this culture that its CoCs create, Rod is allowed to decide that he does not like it, the TSC is allowed to vote that Rod's dislike is not enough to kick him off the committee, and Myles is allowed to decide that this TSC support of this guy who doesn't like this culture is enough for him to no longer want to be part of the TSC.

>> I don't recall any of the projects I worked on having a CoC

you can thank GitHub for this. GitHub is a big Advocate for aggressive anti-free speech codes of Conduct

More and more Projects are being pushed to Adopt them, and many are.

>One thing many people loved about Node was its openness to everyone. But when a leader of a group [demonstrates a different opinion], one can see how [they deserve to be kicked out].

Ok.

Have you read the article that was linked to? While I may not agree with the author's solution "use the ADA to eliminate campus speech codes that discriminate against neurominorities", I think he raises a very fair point about speech codes and how they can impact with poor social and people skills.

The solution in my mind is not to eliminate CoCs but to start a discussion about how to improve them to mitigate this impact. This appears to be what the original tweet was doing "If you've never considered the potential downsides of codes of conduct, here's a good place to start"

Apparently this is not a conversation it is ok to have if you are on a committee that is responsible for managing and enforcing the CoC? It seems to me like these are exactly the people who should be having this conversation.

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