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Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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