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Comment by phoe-krk | Hacker News Reader

A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require. To be sure, the appointed maintainer(s) of a GNU package can, if necessary, tell a contributor to go away; but we do not want to need to have recourse to that.

That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other.

Edit: I also love how each paragraph in the guidelines starts with "please". It's such a different approach than the one taken in CoC: "please do this or that for everyone's benefit" rather than "do this and that or you'll be judged by the appropriate judging organ".

We lack this kind of gentleness in the world of raging wars between pro-CoC people and anti-CoC people.

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teaching each other to be awesome to each other

My experience is this lasts about five minutes before someone starts using quibbles about the precise definition of "be awesome to each other" to suggest they should be allowed to be non-awesome to people and suffer no consequences for it. Sooner or later you have to actually set down some more specific guidelines and a mechanism for enforcing them.

https://abstrusegoose.com/302

I think a modern case around the Babylonian language confusion can be built around the fact that before you agreed on a common vocabulary, you may not at all be sure whether your exchange of ideas is actually being successful. A bit like talking about latitude and longitude coordinates, but later you find out the receiver was a flat earther.

See also: RFC 2119

The most terrifying thing about CoCs for me is their seeming ability to extend outside of the project and into the personal lives of the contributors. Expressing the wrong political/religious view on social media could attract a mob to hound you off of an arbitrary project you contribute to. For example, simply stating that you support Trump on Twitter could be sufficient to make people feel unwelcome according to some CoCs and get you kicked out.

“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

― Robert Conquest

The relevance of the quote you've posted might be less obvious than you think it is.

It's relevant because this wave of CoC attacks on open source projects was started by someone who has literally said "I can’t wait for the mass exodus from Linux now that it’s been infiltrated by SJWs."[1], in reference to the kernel adopting their CoC.

This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel.

They wrote the "Contributor Covenant"[2], which is what the kernel (among tons of other projects) adopted.

1: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1041441155874009093 2: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

> This person obviously does not care about the people who contribute to the kernel.

Double-check the source and followup; I think you have misinterpreted the intent of the linked tweet (sarcasm travels poorly over text media, especially one that enforces a curtailed message length).

Your uncharitable interpretation of the tweet you linked cannot be read as accidental.

Yes it can, when you realise the fact that I linked to it, and that anyone who cares enough about the subject can investigate and apparently instantly realise that my face-value interpretation of the tweet was entirely mistaken.

Then it should be obvious that it was an accident. If not, I would not have linked a source that instantly disproves what I said.

You state that you learned of it from someone who "linked to an article that had a screenshot of it". The only way you could have not arrived at the correct interpretation is if you also took at face value misinformation presented to you in the surrounding context. Which in turn suggests you spend time uncritically accepting such misinformation.

You may consider that an accident. I do not.

> anyone who cares enough about the subject can investigate

So you cared enough about it to post a comment framing them as an attacker on Linux, but not enough to verify your interpretation?

That quotation is a joke, state in irony in a thread about how much abuse someone is receiving for even proposing a change to the rules.

It's disingenuous in the extreme to present that as a tweet that honestly reflected a goal, and anyone who takes a second to click "show thread" and looks around will see it's a tweet made in jest.

Actions like this are misinformation. The question I'm left asking is, "Did folknor know this is not what the tweet meant, and just doesn't care? Or did folknor just not bother to check if this reference was meaningful and valid?" Neither shines a positive light on this argument.

You're absolutely correct, I just took the tweet at face value, and did not bother to investigate the tweet, or any followups, at all.

I still haven't, and simply accept your statement that it's a joke, stated in irony.

I do not use twitter, and do not allow javascript. I've never clicked "Show thread" on Twitter. I had to jump through hoops to find the tweet, and to be able to copy+paste the text of it.

I just remembered it from a different thread here on HN where someone linked to an article that had a screenshot of it.

I appreciate your candor. Thank you. If you're unwilling to vet a source due to safety concerns, I completely understand. But please consider next time if it's then safe or responsible to use that source. The cognitive bias and mechanics of memory in humans is such that even if it's discredited, humans can often retain only trace aspects of the discourse which can strengthen later disinformation. We see examples of this in research around the "Mandela Effect" and it profoundly affects how communicators approach establishing truth in the face of fiction.

Your story here is an example of this effect in play in a more dire situation, when someone presents deliberate (as opposed to accidental) misinformation. You were manipulated, and subsequently passed that manipulation forward. Now everyone here will be more likely to believe the misinformed story, even me if I'm not careful.

It's difficult to say that @coralineada started the wave . . ._but_ she certainly was an influencing factor in the most recent malignancy. To @folknor and others of like mind, take heart. People are noticing the trend as well. Just take a look at sqlite's coc (https://sqlite.org/codeofconduct.html). The point here, I believe, is that people are becoming aware of the absurdity of the constraints that are being placed on certain FOSS communities. What @coralineada 'started' is certainly having unintended consequences as it would relate to her.

To be honest, I'm surprised her tweet hasn't been deleted and that she hasn't been ousted by the community as being a SJW troll.

> That is the paragraph that captures the essence of the CoC issues for me. A CoC seems to be used as a weapon for killing those that do not abide by its rules, not as a tool for teaching each other to be awesome to each other.

Can I ask an honest question? Do you really think that men advocating for molestation of women, or open racists, are just... you know... undereducated and waiting for you as a thought-savior to come and explain to them what's objectionable about their thinking? Do you think that Ts'o just needed you to step in and explain how domestic sexual abuse is rape and that he's just being insufficiently awesome[0]?

I'm all for assuming positive intent, but at some point this game becomes patronizing, even infantilizing. It seems bizarre to propose Linux's CoC or GNU's is the place to go educating people that rape apology is bad.

I don't think it's bad that Stallman decided to go this route (even if I disagree with some of the logic he expressed). To be honest, I don't think the GNU org actually has that much sway or control over individual projects, so guidelines for successful contribution are probably an appropriate measure for them.

But Projects can and in my opinion should quantify what constitutes acceptable behavior from their contributors. This is not an unfair or unreasonable thing for a project to do. It's bizarre to me that people here constantly suggest that it's somehow unfair to bar a developer from participating. This is about the most anti-free-speech, anti-individual-autonomy stance one can propose in the world of software. It's a statement that says the production of value (often not for the community, but at the behest of corporate funding) outweighs the individual's rights to free association. It suggests that reprehensible people with reprehensible views can simply use economic value or unique education to force themselves on communities, and those communities should not be able to choose for themselves because the value of these things should be self-evident. It's completely nonsensical.

[0]: http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0037.html

> Do you think that Ts'o just needed you to step in and explain how domestic sexual abuse is rape and that he's just being insufficiently awesome[0]?

So you believe that Ts'o claimed that domestic sexual abuse is not rape? Let's see what he actually wrote:

> Also in the survey, in the rapes that were reported via a randomized telephone survey, in 66.9% of those cases, the perpetrator did not threaten to harm or kill the victim. (Which makes it no less a crime, of course, but people may have images of rape which involves a other physical injuries, by a stranger, in some dark and deserted place. The statistics simply don't bear that out)

OK, so it seems that his own words contradict your assertion. Care to explain?

> OK, so it seems that his own words contradict your assertion. Care to explain?

To quote the conclusion:

>> Please note, I am not diminishing what rape is, and or any particular person's experience. However, I am challenging the use of statistics that may be hyperbolic and misleading, and ultimately may be very counterproductive if it causes people to become afraid when the reality might not be as horrible as the "1 in 4" numbers might at first sound.

"Please note, I am not diminishing what rape is but I'd like to diminish the statistics around rape because when I think of rape I think of 80's movies where a brute forces a woman's legs open and not, you know, casual nonviolent stuff."

Ts'o tells us his aim with this, to try and cast doubt on the the way statistics are reported or used by attempting to draw a line between what he nonsensically separates as "violent" and "non-violent" rape. The idea that Rape is not Harm is a bit like suggesting that it's not really Home Robbery if you're not home while the burglar is there. It's like suggesting that if I take your wallet while you're drunk and passed out, I didn't steal from you because you were asking for it. And that you'd be in the wrong if you tried to call it theft, because there were no knives brandished and basically it wasn't stealing.

Did you read the citation carefully? It seems very obvious to me. Your pullquote doesn't even really invalidate my point. Forgive me, but it looks to me like you'd never actually read this article but you went looking through it for the very first quote that met your exoneration criterion, without regard to how it fit into the whole rhetorical structure.

> Did you read the citation carefully? It seems very obvious to me. Your pullquote doesn't even really invalidate my point. Forgive me, but it looks to me like you'd never actually read this article but you went looking through it for the very first quote that met your exoneration criterion, without regard to how it fit into the whole rhetorical structure.

I've read it numerous times, thank you very much, paying close attention to the rhetorical structure and trying to understand the overall point he was trying to communicate.

Clearly, you and I are inclined to interpret his overall intent differently. It does not help your case to put words in his mouth that are patent contradictions of what he actually said.

> I've read it numerous times, thank you very much, paying close attention to the rhetorical structure and trying to understand the overall point he was trying to communicate.

What do you think it is? Because I felt like his very clear definition of what he was challenging and why made his intent pretty clear. Your argument seems to be, "He doesn't want to redefine rape in all cases, just in THIS case which was pertinent to him at the time."

Unless you think there is a broader conclusion that somehow doesn't invalidate his (admittedly confused) post, please lay it out more clearly.

> Do you think that Ts'o just needed you to step in and explain how domestic sexual abuse is rape and that he's just being insufficiently awesome[0]?

Am I missing the back story here? The poster explicitly says he is not trying to diminish the awfulness of rape, just concerned that some cited statistics are inaccurate about its frequency.

I'm not sure how this topic comes up in a software project, but, is this really an example of rape apology to you? Surely everybody wants to discuss issues honestly, using the best possible data.

"This appears to be the source of the 1 in 6 figure (17.6%). But it's worth going deeper. If you look at percentage of women reporting rape since age 18 (taking out the child abuse and statutory rape cases, which they also treat in detail), it becomes 1 in 10 (9.6%), and of those over 61.9% were at the hands of their intimate partner, as opposed to an acquaintance or stranger. Also in the survey, in the rapes that were reported via a randomized telephone survey, in 66.9% of those cases, the perpetrator did not threaten to harm or kill the victim. (Which makes it no less a crime, of course, but people may have images of rape which involves a other physical injuries, by a stranger, in some dark and deserted place. The statistics simply don't bear that out.)"

This seems to be implying that "child abuse and statutory rape" should not be counted as rape and that rape "at the hands of their intimate partner" or where "the perpetrator did not threaten to harm or kill the victim" are not "real" rape.

In some states, definitely in the past and perhaps even today though I haven't kept abreast of the law, there were different ages deemed legal for a relationship based on the genders involved. To defend the statistic is to, likely unknowingly, defend the discrimination the laws hold in both structure and application. I am not saying one should discount all cases covered under the law, but it does deserve some context given the sometimes sordid history of the laws.

Things Ts'o said: not relevant or unfair. Things that might be problems with the statistics Ts'o didn't touch on? Somehow relevant and fair.

His context and intent were clear. Please stop making retroactive excuses for his rape apologetics.

I only pointed out what defending and using a certain statistic is discriminatory. I made no other arguments, and none directed toward the individual in question or their overall point. Now that you are aware of the discrimination that has historically been encoded into the laws in question, please allow the knowledge to soften the judgement of the behavior of calling that particular statistic into question, specifically when the behavior is saying it is something complex to be discussed and not totally dismissing the entirety of that statistic.

> This seems to be implying that [...] rape [...] where "the perpetrator did not threaten to harm or kill the victim" are not "real" rape.

This feels like a misreading, considering this section (which you quoted):

>> Which makes it no less a crime, of course, but people may have images of rape which involves a other physical injuries, by a stranger, in some dark and deserted place.

It's conversations like this that lead many people to be dubious of CoC. I'm not convinced that rape apology was happening here. "Kind Communications Guidelines" ask that you be charitable interpreting his mail and asks that he listen to your feedback. CoC leads to you trying to have him removed from the project, for an email that you may not have even understood correctly.

> Do you really think that men advocating for molestation of women, or open racists, are just... you know... undereducated and waiting for you as a thought-savior to come and explain to them what's objectionable about their thinking?

People don't advocate for the molestation of women, but they do it. They just don't see it as advocating for the molestation of women. They see it as "boys will be boys." They see it what they are doing as harmless. So to answer your question: yes. Not all, but some. Proof can be found here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/18/opinion/men-m...

This is an excellent quote that really highlights the reality. Making it clear what is right and what is wrong goes a long way toward education.

> Of course, no man or teenager should behave that way, but I don’t think that event stuck out in my mind until recently, when so many women went public with the trauma they had experienced. It hadn’t occurred to me that she may have felt violated or pressured or afraid because of my lack of self-control.

There are many other stories like this, not just in this article.

> but at some point this game becomes patronizing

But it's not, because people don't know better. You might, but realize that others don't, and their behavior will change because of these rules.

Can I be brutally honest for a moment? If by the time you're an adult you don't know that women have body autonomy, your degree of ignorance borders on willful and your opinion of women includes a lesser definition of freedom and autonomy.

The best way to get the word out, as it were, is to remind folks that this is not true via example cases. Expecting the same rhetorical strategy that has enabled men for so long to suddenly start working is absurd.

An we're seeing the "punish the worst offenders publicly" strategy making a huge impact. This is in fact in line with the (often lauded) work of First Wave Feminism, in that creating such a fuss that it cannot be ignored and becomes a focal point of social consideration is essentially what got women the vote. In this effort, I think western third-wave feminism has found a clear path forward. It's also a path we can apply to all people equally, to demonstrate that feminism is (despite its name) not a movement that puts women first, but rather on equal footing. Women can be rapists, and the current #metoo movement has shown it's willing to expose and punish its own. A movement a lot of MRA-leaning folks have been demanding for some time.

Fascinating, a polite citation of statistics and analyses by Mr. Ts'o, one from a government organization and another from a university, is somehow characterized a defense of one of the most heinous acts imaginable?

I also encourage HN readers to examine the link KirinDave provided, as he himself suggests, as well as the documents actually linked to. It rather revelatory how at odds the hyperbole directed at Mr. Ts'o is with what was actually said by him. Is permitting people with biases so extreme to write CoCs what we really want?

> Fascinating, a polite citation of statistics and analyses by Mr. Ts'o, one from a government organization and another from a university, is somehow characterized a defense of one of the most heinous acts imaginable?

Could you point to the specific document Ts'o was citing that suggests statutory rape not be bundled with other rape statistics? His very literal conclusion is that bundling these should be considered misleading.

> Is permitting people with biases so extreme to write CoCs what we really want?

Quite remarkable how you take me to task for hyperbole and then try to raft my personal opinion to the Linux CoC, of which I have absolutely 0 connection. One need not be a particularly astute reader to note what a dishonest tactic this is.

In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads.

Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being immediately tarred as a rape apologist.

I do believe most of the people in favor of CoCs mean well, but the first paragraph of your comment basically reads like an unsubstantiated attempt at character assassination of and by a random person on the internet, and I guess lots of people are (probably unjustifiedly, but whatever) afraid that CoCs will provide cover for engaging in precisely this kind of poisonous behavior.

> In fairness, the context of the Ts'o email seems to be conference organization, and it points out that large fractions of the rape statistics are made out of domestic abuse and drunk undergrads.

Which seems fairly relevant to a technical conference's audience, don't you...

> Neither of those seem particularly relevant for conference organization, so it should be possible to point out those simple facts without being immediately tarred as a rape apologist.

Oh. So you think pointing out that many rapes are crimes of opportunity isn't relevant to tech conferences because... why exactly? It seems like exactly the sort of environment where such opportunities arise.

> but the first paragraph of your comment basically reads like an unsubstantiated attempt at character assassination

Ts'o said these things. He stands by them. He wants to try an draw a line between one type of rape and another to change the way people discuss statistics, specifically to affect how scaled social events are organized. It's amazing to me that folks are passionately defending such a textbook example of at-scale apologism. We would not even imagine suffering this argument if we substituted "rape" for "wallet theft." But Ts'o does level it for rape precisely because he believes it's appropriate to tactically blame victims and subdivide statistics.

I don't know what kind of conferences you attend, but I've never attended one where people got black-out drunk, nor have I attended any with my partner.

On the other hand, I have attended conferences where we were specifically warned by the organizers about pick-pockets and not to go into certain parts of the (rather large, South American) city.

So yeah, if we substitute "rape" for "wallet theft", people are in fact "suffering" through arguments that people throw a fit over when it comes to rape.

(Two caveats, since that kind of thing is necessary with topics that are prone to cause people to go ballistic:

1. I do think there are good reasons for why people throw fits over victim blaming etc. when it comes to rape, but especially since you brought up the comparison, I also think it's good to remember that people are perfectly fine with victim blaming when it comes to wallet theft. There should be a possibility for nuance here.

2. I get what you're trying to say about "crimes of opportunity", but that doesn't mean you can transfer statistics about incident rates of domestic abuse to incidence rates of rape at conferences. After all, both the whole setting and the relationships between participants are totally different. And it should be possible to question the connection without being made a target for the kind of accusation you're making.)

> I don't know what kind of conferences you attend, but I've never attended one where people got black-out drunk, nor have I attended any with my partner.

I've certainly seen numerous examples of this behavior around technical conferences. There are often runs to local bars or other establishments where its socially normal to drink. In fact, that's a common complaint about tech!

> On the other hand, I have attended conferences where we were specifically warned by the organizers about pick-pockets and not to go into certain parts of the (rather large, South American) city.

And did anyone write a long, statistics-citing rant about how unnecessary it is to warn people about this? I suspect the answer is no, and in fact no one did.

> I also think it's good to remember that people are perfectly fine with victim blaming when it comes to wallet theft. There should be a possibility for nuance here.

... What? Did you genuinely just suggest there should be nuance for rape victim blaming by proxy?

> After all, both the whole setting and the relationships between participants are totally different. And it should be possible to question the connection without being made a target for the kind of accusation you're making.)

Except that many people travel to conferences with their colleagues, and that's precisely the kind of crime of opportunity the statistics (when you exclude statutory crimes) warn about...

> And did anyone write a long, statistics-citing rant about how unnecessary it is to warn people about this? I suspect the answer is no, and in fact no one did.

You're getting the sides of the issues confused here.

The conference organizers' statement about pick pockets was essentially victim blaming. They were telling people how to behave in order not to become victims of a crime. The equivalent statement within the rape context would be something like telling women not to wear "provocative" clothing in order to avoid being raped.

My point was that there tends to be outrage about this kind of victim blaming when it comes to rape, but not when it comes to other crimes. SJWs (for lack of a better term) don't feel the need to gang up on people who give advice to tourists to avoid getting mugged; they don't feel the need to call the conference organizers from my example "mugging apologists". Why is that?

And for what it's worth, the analogy to the statistics-citing rant would be somebody who reacts to conference organizers putting out statements about how attendees should not steal each others' wallets as if that was a common problem at conferences.

Obviously conference organizers never make such statements in reality because it would be kind of ridiculous, given that the incidence rate of pick pocketing among conference attendees is completely incomparable to the incidence rate of pick pocketing in society at large, but well, that kind of brings us back to the original point about incident rates of rape :)

(And just to reiterate: There's broader context in the rape case which gives me some sympathy for the double standard demonstrated by "SJWs", but I think it should still be possible to acknowledge that the double standard exists.)

I can cite statistics to create absurd conclusions and minimize points I don't like to. It's called, "being disingenuous." It is not a laudable thing simply to cite them. Statistics do not lend truth, they illustrate relationships and convey points.

> My point was that there tends to be outrage about this kind of victim blaming when it comes to rape, but not when it comes to other crimes. SJWs (for lack of a better term) don't feel the need to gang up on people who give advice to tourists to avoid getting mugged; they don't feel the need to call the conference organizers from my example "mugging apologists". Why is that?

Because rape is a heinous crime violating fundamental human rights, and yet here you are suggesting it's no more consequential than being pickpocketed.

I don't think Ted Ts'o is a "rape apologist", nor a "reprehensible person." I don't think that calling him that is "educating people", I think it is expressing a particular narrative and world view, one I happen to disagree with.

I agree that communities should be able to set standards for themselves. However, are you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with your personal standards? Many people would not agree with the way you have characterized Ts'o above -- should such people get a say in setting the community standards also?

> I agree that communities should be able to set standards for themselves. However, are you willing to accept that not everyone agrees with your personal standards? Many people would not agree with the way you have characterized Ts'o above -- should such people get a say in setting the community standards also?

It's certainly obvious that many people here have personal standard which include "selectively defining rape with many qualifiers to discourage people from citing aggregate statistics in social or organizational policy decisions."

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