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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

This is the exact opposite: It's rules for how to work on code without bringing personal crap into it. Do you want a date? Do you think there is something wrong with trans people? Do you have thoughts on race relations? Nobody cares, check that baggage at the door.

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As far as I can see, the real problem here is that some forms of baggage are still allowed (an inevitable problem with any finite list of rules), meaning that you will end up with baggage imbalances and endless debate over which baggages are permissable self-expression and which ones are unacceptable.

It is not a finite list of rules. It is an explanation of the values (eg, respecting diversity) and a list of examples of things that are obviously prohibited. It is explicitly "not an exhaustive list of things that you should not do", and although it does list some _examples_ of things that are prohibited - it provides examples that are "not limited to" the ones provided.

This clearly reduces the ambiguity in the community. And even if some ambiguity does remain - which, as you point out, is inevitable - having examples of obviously impermissible behavior and a framework for conflict resolution is requisite for a community.

> It's rules for how to work on code without bringing personal crap into it.

The previous CoC did fine at this.

This new CoC almost ensures that what it's attempting to curb will inevitably happen, because of it's existence.

"Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion."

This doesn't preclude thoughts on race-relations—if that was the goal, it would've simply said so.

We know what this means.

OK then, what does it mean?

But do people actually do that? I have not seen anything like that in technical internet communities.

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