Code, conflict, and conduct
lwn.net
lwn.net
Except that the list contains rules that are so general as to be completely subjective. The last rule forbids, "Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting."
The problem with such general rules is that you get selective enforcement. Node.js has the same code of conduct, and it has been used to try to evict Rod Vagg from the technical committee[1] for tweeting a link to a Quillette article on freedom of speech[2]. Rod's tweet got him in hot water, but one of his peers had plenty of blatantly sexist tweets and received no reports for CoC violations.[3]
1. https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165
2. https://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-sp...
3. Such as https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776 "Men are fragile, often incompetent babies with no sense of humor, and I like reminding them of their inferiority."
Isn't the key distinction here the word `try`? He was not actually removed. In order to criticize the enforcement of a CoC doesn't that require an example of some actual enforcement?
But here's an example of a code of conduct/ethics being enforced unfairly. Douglas Crockford was removed as keynote speaker from the Nodevember conference.[1] Apparently because some people thought he violated the conference's code of ethics. Summaries of the whole kerfuffle can be found here.[2][3]
1. https://twitter.com/nodevember/status/771520648191483904 2. https://paulstraw.svbtle.com/crockford 3. https://medium.com/the-mission/pr-nightmares-when-political-...
The problem here is giving in to activism by having a CoC in the first place. That’s how it starts. It ends with this twitter mob bullshit policing reasonable free speech and ruining careers over legitimate discussions. Their mentality is that there is no room for nuance or discourse - if you don’t fully embrace their agenda, you will be destroyed. And they get off on this. Just look at CoralineAda’s twitter feed. Same thing that has been happening to Jordan Peterson for years.
Also, Linus taking time off could be bad for everyone. This isn’t a black and white issue. The cost of him being an asshole was that the project may have had fewer contributors than it would have otherwise. But people forget that the cost of not having Linus means we would have never had linux. That is not a net win.
None of this is meant to suggest that it’s just fine to be a dick if you’re a good enough contributor. But we must realize that personality traits are complex and often intertwined, and we don’t get to cherry pick them. Quite simply, when it comes to the human race, this is the best we have. The thing in Linus that makes him a dick is likely related to the thing that sustained his drive to create what he did. If there was a non-asshole Linus also creating Linux from nothing and giving it to the world, sure, go with that guy. But until we have perfect people, we should carefully consider what we are throwing away, and whether the trade is worth it.
I wouldn’t contribute to Linux after seeing how he treats people. But so what. A hundred of me can’t hold a candle to him. I can’t imagine trying to oust him and depriving the world of his product for the benefit of my hurt feelings.
Why, what's wrong with Jordan Peterson? He's rather the celebrity these days, I saw his book in the number 2 position at the bookstore only a few days ago.
Your post doesn't seem to have any substantive in it. Just a vaguely threatening implication that referring to Peterson by way of example will attract some sort of retribution.
He's a socially conservative figure, somewhat popular with the alt-right because social conservatism is a central feature of the alt-right (it may be “alt”, but it is still “right”), though his a commitment to Western liberal (in the classic sense) democracy gets him criticism on the alt-right (which is used to democracy at least in the Western liberal form.) Example of both the praise and criticism (focussed more on the latter) from a site which self-characterizes as being within the “reactionary rationalist” subset of the alt-right: https://greyenlightenment.com/sjws-and-democracy/
Should be: “the alt-right (which is opposed to democracy at least in the Western liberal form.)”
"Intellectual Dark Web" would be a more fitting category if it weren't such a self-parody.
It's I think worth saying that serious people who have almost certainly put more energy into understanding where Peterson is coming from than any of us here, including having interviewed him in person, have come away from the experience attributing some pretty damning beliefs to him. For instance: I don't think you'd easily win the "he's not an outspoken misogynist" argument. Obviously, that by itself doesn't put him in the "alt-right". But, of course, casually and comfortably engaging with people like Stefan Molyneux muddies the waters on the "alt-right" thing, too (again: in some common meanings of the term).
This is a truly bizarre way to launder your own views through unnamed “serious people,” who, apparently, by virtue of having spoken to Peterson in person, are able to understand his use of the English language better than the rest of us who, presumably, can only see those exact same conversations online.
So, I just did, and you are right, it is nauseatingly wholesome. Someone should put a stop to that.
> Same thing that has been happening to Jordan Peterson for years
Despite Saudi Arabia's claims, I can assure you that Canada has not, in fact, imprisoned Mr. Enforced Monogamy.
[0]: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029170073938944000
Ah, but we do have Linux. And it can survive without Linus, if needed. In fact, it must survive. He's 48 now. What do we do in 50 years? Do we assume something else is going to come along that's so awesome that Linux becomes obsolete and gets abandoned? I don't think that's a good assumption. A better assumption is that computers are now stable tech, like internal combustion engines, and that Linux is the best OS we have, and could be around for centuries. Which is an amazing legacy for him, but... it's going to be a legacy, sooner or later.
And what if he has a heart attack tomorrow? I just lost a friend to a heart attack this week. Not much older than Linus, and in great health. It happens. Do we just give up, or does Linux go on without him?
The problem with this mentality is it gives all the power to the offended party. An accusation of offense is all it takes. You can't tell someone how to feel, so if they say they're offended, they're always right. The offending party is always in the wrong, no matter what they actually said. In Vagg's case, they cited an apology as offensive.
Is it ever the case that the offended party should simply grow thicker skin?
1. https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/874642259672801280 '“Meritocracy” is just thinly veiled misogyny and white supremacy propping up fragile cis het white men’s egos.'
2. https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1029952846492565504 '“Reverse racism” is such a weird phrase for “justice”.'
3. https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/823064825366360065 "Why didn’t anyone punch the reporter giving the nazi air time?"
> Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept.
The social version is:
> Try hard not to offend people; and try harder to not be offended.
1. Try anyway. End result - you are overrun by rules-lawyer trolls.
2. Try to enumerate good things instead. End result - people get too stifled and go elsewhere.
3. Be somewhat vague and depend on the community's ongoing evolution of acceptable behavior. End results can vary.
Option 3 is the only one without a guaranteed bad outcome, so it's the one you have to take. In many cases, it's even neared the ideal of kicking out rules lawyers and trolls while encouraging abrasive but well-meaning people to take some time to learn to communicate better.
In fact, that's what Linus is doing. Seems like the policy is already working correctly.
Free speech is about being able to say whatever you want to whoever you want whenever you want in the same way that free markets are about having no regulations. It's a cute idea that fails in the presence of bad actors who have more power than those they choose to attack. Maximizing freedom of speech in a community means designing regulations to curb abuses. And yes, those policies are going to be relative to the community's ever-changing standards. It's much better to acknowledge that than pretend a set of rules can ever be complete.
Also there will be people trying to inject their politics as well.
The old one spends more time telling people not to be sensitive, but okay if your feeling are hurt here's what you do, and maybe something will happen. Oh yeah, and I guess don't be a jerk.
The new code of conduct puts makes it clear to everyone it is their responsibility not to be a bad actor. The responsibility is on YOU to be civil, and if you fail to you will be the one dealing with the consequences.
Yes, people have been complaining about Linus' occasionally unambiguously abusive behavior for a long time, this genuinely seems like Linus had a bad few days, was pulled aside by some subset of the maintainers, and came to the conclusion that he should make some changes to his behavior and to the community of the project he controls.
I didn't see any threats or endless contentious debate derailing the project, so I'm genuinely struggling to understand why people are upset about this. If his previous behavior was acceptable, surely his new behavior will be acceptable as well?
Unfortunately, the very concept of codes of conduct sets off a lot of political anger, mostly among the very people who really, desperately need a code of conduct applied to them.
TL;DR All things in moderation.
And even if it was weaponized, wouldn't that be the fault of the maintainers judging the situation? You saying it's the CoC's fault is like blaming a gun in a murder.
* https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004
* https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165
* https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
And really you can just go to CoralineAda's twitter to see that the CoC was designed as a political tool and an aggressive one at that.
The nodejs example you linked to was a cluster-. I wouldn't blame the CoC for that though, the issue was/is with their organization. What should have been a conversation privately held between maintainers, turned into a public free-for-all; one put together by the maintainers themselves. I can't imagine PAM acting in the same fashion, I'd certainly expect a more professional approach.
Like others have said, what'll really matter is how Linus presents himself publicly when he returns, and how his Lieutenants act publicly as well. I hope it'll lead to a better community, but changes like this can only be made in production, so only time will tell.
Scalaz is my main encounter with codes of conduct.
> And even if it was weaponized, wouldn't that be the fault of the maintainers judging the situation? You saying it's the CoC's fault is like blaming a gun in a murder.
Tools guide the way they're used; some tools tend to lead to bad outcomes and it's best not to use them. I find a CoC as it tends to be applied in practice represents the worst of both worlds: maintainers often feel constrained by the code (particularly when bad actors carefully remain within the code), but it doesn't offer accused people the safeguards that a formal dispute resolution mechanism should. It's a pseudo-formal veneer over what is (again, in practice) fundamentally just the maintainer's human judgement. Far better to either acknowledge that the maintainer is applying a subjective judgement and give them the freedom to do what they think best, or set up a process to improve that judgement. A project that already has a good dispute-resolution mechanism in place might conceivably benefit from introducing a formalized code, but to introduce the code without the process is putting the cart before the horse. Where I've seen codes of conduct introduced it's been, if anything, instead of developing a robust process for making judgement calls about whether to kick out bad actors, and as such ends up not only useless but actively harmful.
So, in the Opal thread, a maintainer disagreed with trans peoples' claimed identity... a common belief of tens of millions of people who support biological view... in a comment on Twitter (not the project itself). Coraline and a crowd of similarly-thinking people stormed into the project demanding the maintainer be removed for the political statement plus adoption of a CoC.
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
These people, who didn't contribute anything to the project, wanted a major contributor removed. Their attacks got more and more aggressive with both Coraline and another associate eventually setting the project rep up to look like he or she supports child rapists. They get down to name calling and talking about "burning bridges" in the end. A defender rightly asks what bridges they're talking about since most FOSS and business developers aren't radical, political activists like them. The whole thread shows how ideological, controlling, and vicious those kind of people are.
So, I fight against these Codes of Conduct on any forum they're presented on since they're designed to be a tool of political subversion by radical, leftist activists. They always mislead people, too, just highlighting the worst stuff that we might all agree should be blocked. Once CoC is in place and they're in control, they begin censoring all the little things we don't agree on which violate their beliefs. Instead of all that crap, I just push for rules where conversations stay on topic, we stay civil just to be nice, no personal attacks, and people are judged on their contributions. Open-minded moderators, too, that don't filter most people based on activist, minority's views.
EDIT: You can actually see this in action right now. malvosenior just linked to specific attempts to enforce political conformity by the author of Contributor Convenent who authored it to do exactly that. The comment is already grey at this moment. Some of the kinds of people it describes are apparently trying to make it go away so you don't see what they do. While we're at it, Slate Star Codex has an excellent article about their misdirections and weaponization of words:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word...
What I don't understand about Opal though, is "meh" obviously doesn't respect gender identity, so why would he adopt a CoC that specifically says his project does?! Coraline just seems to be calling out the hypocrisy of agreeing to one thing and then doing something else.
Read some of this guy's other tweets, he obviously has no idea what he's talking about "I still fail to see how that kind of invasive surgery on kids can b cherished." It's ludicrous, the age old "But think of the children!"
We probably agree more than this comment would lead you to believe. I don't understand why we can't just be nice to each other. Why you can just refrain from going on Twitter and calling an entire group of people (a protected group of people according to your own CoC) delusional. Why can't we all just get along?
Some people are masculine, some are effeminate. There are effeminate men, and masculine women. There are biological males who see themselves as women socially, or physiologically; and the same is true of some biological females.
At the end of the day, it has no impact on you how others express themselves, so who cares? It reminds me of this: http://blog.angry-dad.com/2015/06/psychiatrists-and-hair-dry...
If calling a somebody "she", and allowing her to do with her body what she wants, improves their quality of life significantly, who cares? Who are you to stand in the way of them making their life worth living?
What really surprised me though are the people on HN who normally pride themselves on having informed opinions, talking about this without even reading the wiki page on it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity
I don’t know why you are making a case for calling somebody a he or she in accordance with their preference or suggesting I’m getting in the way of anything. That is not inconsistent with the belief that there are 2 genders, and I did not say I have a problem with respecting anyone’s preference to be called one or the other. I didn’t even say I personally believe that there are 2 genders. I simply said that believing there are 2 genders is not bigotry.
Sometimes, people are just plain wrong.
re trans folks. It's more like cultural appropriation to me than calling gay people mentally ill. The two genders were defined in terms of biology (or tradition or religion), they match people well as models, psychology (i.e. life experiences) got added to them, and many people have these beliefs. And then a vocal minority in gender politics said the terms created by religion, biology, etc should have their meaning changed in the minds of all those people since an even rarer group of people disagrees with what those peoples' words should mean. They also want this done to not offend minority members or include them. Yet, a huge chunk of people that disagree with this change are minority members. So, I think rejection of them trying to redefine these words makes sense. I also call them out on not really caring about or protecting minority members if they'll censor and/or damage millions of them to force their beliefs on them.
From there, trans people and others supporting their position told me about things like brain studies showing they were different and they have existed in various cultures. However, as I suspected, at least one brain study someone gave me said the trans people were different than men or women. As in, their own evidence refuted that they were like that gender. Given origins and evidence, my position rejected that trans people were their claimed gender. To me, trans people are a different type of person: an exception to existing categories needing new terms to note that and their preference. So, I'd say "not a woman, but a trans woman." Given I only have three pronouns, I did redefine the pronouns to include them where. Ex: she equals biological woman or trans woman. If not pronouns, I'd note the difference due to the biological and psychological situation with trans woman often being different than biological women.
I support your get along position. I worked to block CoC's elsewhere with one forum having trans people, including a moderator. The debates got tough (esp for them I'd guess). They went with free speech long as civil disagreement with votes able to drop stuff to bottom, but not censor or ban. Results are almost everyone that disagreed are all still there, occasionally teaching each other things or helping each other out. We made it work. That's like we do it in the South for folks trying to tolerate each other's differences, esp in workplace. If Coraline was right, all that would implode or something. They're wrong: we can be civil to each other without analyzing, policing, and dominating on every thought or action. The baseline can be a lower bar with each person doing their part balancing tolerance of what can offend and respecting others boundaries.
Not necessarily--not pulling the trigger will be argued to be shirking the responsibility to enforce the CoC.
There are ways to abuse CoC to harm people, instead of protect people. That's "weaponization".
That doesn't mean you either always enforce it or never enforce it.
In my view, the situations where CoCs appear to have been weaponized are anything but evenhanded and neutral; they appear more like witch hunt would. I care for civility and respect, but not witch hunts.
Put simply, it is just a txt file, and nothing about it suggests any actual change in how issues are handled, nor does it (or its predessesor) describe the actual process beyond 'contact the technical advisory board with issues'. If Linux is having issues, the problem would have been in how the TAB handles them; and the new CoC offers no changes or insight into that process.
Beyond that, neither version offers any significant insight into what acceptable behavior is. Again, not nessaserilly a problem (let TAB point out problems as they come up), but CoCs like the new Linux one seem to just be about saying they have a CoC.
Linus calling people names seems like a distraction from solving any actual problems.
And I stand by my assesment that the new CoC is a distraction from solving it. (Actually, given the timing, the new CoC might be a signal that he is trying to solve it, in which case I would still put it under the umbrella of distraction)
The behaviour of Linus was a big problem that's been turning off a lot of people from linux and open source communities. Now that's being addressed, and you are complaining for what reason?
Citation needed.
The creator of the CoC does regularly threaten and bully people though (Opal, Matz...). The double standard is one of the issues I have with putting a CoC in place. When the slightest mistake is punished for some people, while others are free to spew vitriol, it seems like we have a real problem.
I'm sad this got adopted into the kernel and is now likely to be pushed elsewhere.
Is the message to take away here, not some alt-agenda anti-CoC message.
Just please, for one moment, consider that this isn’t the end of roman imperialism. Its just a general, welcome, already in progress, change towards more professional conduct.
If someone is acting racist towards others for example, or displaying sexist attitudes, then that will absolutely hurt diversity because the people at the receiving end will not want to stick around.
It appears that Linus' temper problem has been used to slip in "more diverse and stronger" to something apparently unrelated to diversity. This is the sort of thing that gives what should be trivial and uncontroversial (A code of conduct) a terrible reputation for being the first sign of entryism by extremists who try to destroy communities from the inside.
The kernel doesn't need a CoC. All it needs is for Linus to say he's going to chill out a bit and for others to hold him to it. But now he's been convinced/pressured/bullied into adopting this deeply ideological document, it's probably only a matter of time before the kernel community is twisting itself into a pulp.
>But the purpose of such a code is not to threaten anybody; indeed, it is the opposite.
The fact that this is regularly and explicitly clarified indicates the original document is poorly drafted.
For the sake of avoiding the obvious tangents, lets presuppose the best possible interpretation of the original code. Even in that case, no amount of blaming the people that made the clarification necessary (by - for example - saying that they're uncharitably reading the original) makes the code better drafted.
Would you say the same about the US constitution? It was designed to be updated and changed, rather than be written in stone. To you, is that the same as saying that it's "poorly drafted" and they knew it?
To most people, I think they feel that's a sign that they were wise enough to know that they couldn't think of everything, and that the document would have to change over time.
The US Constitution tries not to be vague, and is extremely clear about its aims. Being updatable is not the same as having a generic "... and anything else that we might consider problematic" clause in it. And the Constitution comes with an infrastructure that is constantly trying to clarify what it means when applied, not a perfect infrastructure for sure, but at least judges and the Supremes understand that their issue is to clarify interpretation and not simply make judgements about individuals on an ad-hoc basis.
In other words, nobody argues that the Constitution is dangerous and designed to nail particular groups to the wall, because the document itself is clear proof that such a statement would be false.
The CoC that has caused so much drama in other projects needs this kind of "don't worry it won't be abused" disclaimers, largely because the authors didn't actually try to pin themselves down (they didn't want to). It has deliberately vague clauses and the classic "... and anything else inappropriate" tacked on the end, which renders the document meaningless. In addition it is routinely used to attack certain groups but not others. These problems could have been avoided by better drafting, but one suspects it would then not have met the goals of the drafters.
No, it doesn't. I mean, it tries not to be vague on the points on which a very specific decision was reached, but it equally is deliberately vague on other points.
> Being updatable is not the same as having a generic "... and anything else that we might consider problematic" clause in it.
On the other hand, it does, for instance, have the Elastic Clause.
> In other words, nobody argues that the Constitution is dangerous and designed to nail particular groups to the wall
Yes, they regularly do (with “persons of African descent” as the most frequent group so identified, though “voting citizens of states with a lesser propensity to disenfranchise other residents of the same state” is another sometimes raised), especially for the original text (though even the current text is argued to have only incompletely eradicated that design.)
> because the document itself is clear proof that such a statement would be false.
No, especially in the case of the original text, it's pretty clear proof that the statement is true.
I was only referring to the latest version of the text. I know it was racist in the past. But I am not a constitutional scholar, indeed.
Yes and no.
On the goal of establishing the system and structure of a body of government it sits at the top of, I think it was well drafted.
But something like commas in 2A, "unreasonable searches" in the 4A, or the commerce clause, not so much. (Although, from a historical article I vaguely recall, the issue was that they weren't unable actually able to settle on the core intent of 4A in the first place and compromised between the "reasonable" and "warrants always required" camps.)
>It was designed to be updated and changed, rather than be written in stone. To you, is that the same as saying that it's "poorly drafted" and they knew it?
No. Even if they were able to perfectly capture their intent at the time, the ability to change law when their intent changed would be desirable.
The more interesting criticism along those lines is saying that judicial review is the sign it's poorly drafted. Either they didn't intend on judicial review and flubbed exceptionally hard, or they did intend on judicial review and knew that the document would need regular clarification for the rest of its existence. And from there you could argue that it's the worst written document ever, because they expected the courts to keep revisiting it's meaning.
It would be presumptuous if I said I knew exactly what that was.
I hope we can all give them the space they need to figure it out.