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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

With the pressure put on antirez, Linus and now Dwayne Richard Hipp, I'm getting nervous when imagining of falling outside of the "accepted social norms".

The web was always a rough place, but it was a place that allowed separate cultures with different standards to develop. Lately it feels like this is being actively demolished, where only places of anonymity (4chan f.e.) or banality (Facebook Comments) are used to discuss contrarian opinions.

The biggest indicator that something chilling is happening to me is that I feel obliged to underline that I'm not in favor of the ideas postulated in DRHs previous CoC...

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When CoC's exist to foster inclusivity, exactly which "contrarian opinions" are you feeling are being suppressed? That's it's OK to harass or exclude minority groups? I am not trying to put words in your mouth, but the purpose of a CoC is to create a constructive and progressive environment. A CoC is project wide, not internet wide. This is not an attack on freedom of speech, but providing a stable environment and refusing to give a platform to those who's views do not align with a project's. And a project choosing what views it wishes to platform is entirely within its rights.

> And a project choosing what views it wishes to platform is entirely within its rights.

Ah, so you are OK with their original CoC, right?

The original CoC was not a code of conduct in any meaningful sense of the word and is not really comparable to this current one.

As a Christian, I don't have any objection to The Rule.

As an American who believes in the separation of church and state, I definitely understand and sympathize with the instinct that, although religious laws often provide good moral guidance for secular codes of conduct, the two serve distinct purposes. You don't have to reject the ten commandments to recognize why we need more graularity and detail in actual laws regarding murder.

As a developer, I recognize that there are concrete and specific ways in which documents like The Rule fail to meet the pragmatic needs of a code of conduct, including:

1. clearly delineating acceptable from unacceptable behavior

2. establishing a reporting mechanism

3. codifying specific consequences for doing things that were clearly delineated as unacceptable.

A perhaps important thing to realize about monkish orders is that they were intrinsically self-selecting; you didn't need to worry about the "spirit" vs. the "letter" of the law. Monks did not need to worry about people misunderstanding ambiguously stated laws (e.g. "love thy neighbor"). The process of joining a monk-hood or a a religion includes an indoctrination/inculcation/instruction into the "spirit" of the law. Sending a pull or posting on a message list is not even remotely similar.

I.e., if you want to extend the development community beyond a small a close-knit group who understands each other, then you need something closer to laws than to religious commandments.

> if you want to extend the development community beyond a small a close-knit group who understands each other...

But of course, the development community for SQLite has always been, and likely will continue to be, a close-knit group who understands each other. Which means that the requirements for a "true" code of conduct (the benefits of which have yet to be proven) don't really apply here.

Yes, I was, and I was also OK with not using the project while they held that "CoC".

The literal written meaning of a Code of Conduct and the way that Code of Conduct can be used as a political weapon do not have to be congruent.

Exactly. Just add the NCoC type of CoC, like https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC or this text:

We are all adults. We accept anyone's contributions. If you are feeling harrassed speak up by yourself. We do not censor, we don't stop any discussions. Nothing else matters.

It's the threat of force that bothers me. I don't find looming threats very welcoming, particularly where they pertain to behaviour that may be interpreted rather differently depending on the location of the speaker.

I, personally, would feel much more welcomed by those which adopt non-violent communication. RMS' recent proposal is one such example.

If the purpose is to create a progressive environment and a person doesn't identify as progressive, they may not feel included.

Possibly what may make people nervous are statements like this (from Mozilla's): "we recognize that it is possible for actions taken outside of Mozilla’s online or inperson spaces to have a deep impact on community health."

This may be a perfectly reasonable caveat, as the given example that follows seems to be, or not, because it doesn't really say much more detail than that. But it's fairly certain it means that the CoC is not strictly limited to Mozilla resources and functions and how you behave in them; i.e., it isn't just project-wide, and you might run afoul of it other places. I know it certainly gives me pause to consider, and I've been a Mozilla community member for almost 15 years.

Most CoC's I've seen have been more about exclusion than inclusion. It boils down to "by not excluding people who talk about X, you aren't being inclusive of group Y". And it's not even talking about harassing or excluding minorities, it's anything that goes against extreme leftist views. Something as simple as "illegal immigrants should be deported" is considered racist hate speech by some groups. Outside of the SV tech bubble, it's considered a political opinion about how laws should be enforced, but even on this site I've seen people say that wanting immigration laws enforced is almost as bad as being a white-nationalist nazi. You can usually look at the wording of the CoC and see that they have an agenda behind it. For example, the FreeBSD CoC only bans comments that reinforce systemic oppression, so when you know about who wrote the CoC, it means that negative comments about white males are acceptable because they don't fit into the "systematically oppressed" groups the author's had in mind.

Also, if a project was deciding on it's own code of conduct, that's one thing. But when you have people creating twitter hate mobs that threaten to contact your employer and get your fired, or get you blacklisted from events if you don't adopt their CoC, it's not really the project owner's wishes. The people trying to force adoption of certain CoC frequently don't even participate in the project who's owner they're harrassing.

People are making it Internet-wide, though. There's a chain reaction affect where upstream projects are contacting their dependents and forcing CoCs on them. Even if there weren't, the people who started the "movement" are aggressively pushing their views. No wonder they are facing resistance.

Indeed.

From their new statement:

> While we are not doing so in reaction to any current or ongoing issues, we believe that this will be a helpful part of maintaining the long-term sustainability of the project.

I respect the SQLite team regardless, but I have to feel somewhat cynical about this. I really hope that this wasn't because clients or donors threatened to stop doing business with SQLite.

They are not an "open to contribution" project, and the contribution team unanimously accepted the previous CoC months ago. It's not really clear to me how anyone who complained even had a stake in the outcome. If genuine discrimination were a likely outcome, that would be another matter, but as it stands anyone who read what DRH wrote could plainly see neither he nor his team had any intent to discriminate.

>The web was always a rough place, but it was a place that allowed separate cultures with different standards to develop. Lately it feels like this is being actively demolished, where only places of anonymity (4chan f.e.) or banality (Facebook Comments) are used to discuss contrarian opinions.

The web has become mainstream, and the mainstream doesn't 4hcan to be the standard by which every social media platform is measured. That's not a demolition so much as an evolution, as much as some might not like it.

And there are still plenty of places on the web where contrarian opinions are discussed freely. Let's not pretend the entire web is just a few social media silos... even though there is still plenty of contrarian discussion even there.

I never said that everywhere needs to be 4chan, I honestly hope nowhere becomes something similar to it, but this is beside the point entirely.

The web has indeed become mainstream and I'd agree that to some extent what I tried to describe is a direct result of that.

Maybe I was wrong to call it "discuss contrarian opinions", when the more unnerving part to me is simply the fact that ones intentions & opinions can be expected to be taken out of context and misrepresented as much as possible to generate the highest effect for others.

This effect can be something like the "triumph" of pushing someone to change their behaviour or even their work, or even more sinister to change the life circumstances of someone for not conforming to their value system.

I don't want to wake up in 20 years and have an angry mob call my employer because I have made the mistake of injecting my value system that is 40 years old and fallen out of favor in something that is publicly available and attributable to me.

On the contrary, these code of conducts are here to help everyone feel welcomed, and to allow everyone to have their differences (cultural or otherwise).

There's absolutely no reasons to fear anything if you are respectful of other people.

> There's absolutely no reasons to fear anything if you are respectful of other people.

DRH has, as far as I can see, always been emphatically respectful of others, and has made it abundantly clear that he never intended for anyone to be excluded.

And yet a bunch of people who are not in any way contributors to the SQLite project gave him a bunch of hate online, including calling on backers of SQLite to pressure him to change his CoC.

For a private project whose hard work has been gifted to the public domain for decades, you'd think we could maybe cut them some slack?

I agree that the HR-speak of most CoC's is pretty harmless, but when there's a vocal minority of jerks pushing these CoC's accusing people who want to (respectfully) try a different approach of some pretty uncharitable things, it makes me doubt that these CoC's really do anything.

EDIT: fixed typo

What's an example of a different approach that is incompatible with the current CoC?

The religious code published instead of a real CoC was a mockery of CoCs. It clearly wasn't honestly trying a different approach, but it was a jerk reaction or malicious compliance[1].

A respectful and emphatic response could be along lines of "I don't think it's needed, but if it makes you feel better, I'll copy this template and be done with it".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance

That definition of "malicious compliance" refers to orders that come from a superior.

Why should people outside the SQLite project have standing to give such an order to the SQLite maintainers in the first place?

Why should the "respectful and emphatic" response be to resign oneself to reluctant compliance, even if the SQLite maintainers disagree with it? That sounds Orwellian to me.

I think that's what rubs people the wrong way about this. It all feels very authoritarian. It's expressed in language of positivity and inclusion, but it operates in terms of pressure and coercion. It all sounds great if you're aligned with all of the politics of it. If you're not, then you're the enemy: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1042249983590838272

Your response implies that you do not believe that the original CoC was published in good faith.

It seems to me that there are two broad mindsets that could lead to this (though I am abundantly aware of my own failings of creative thinking, so please let me know if I am neglecting a viewpoint).

1. That it is not, in fact, possible to post a CoC in good faith that is derived from religious texts.

2. That there is evidence in this specific instance that the population of contributors to SQLite, or some subset of these individuals, was, in fact, choosing to adopt the prior CoC out of malice or mockery or other mal-intent.

So, is it impossible or did the contributors act in a way (outside of the text of the CoC) to indicate that they were in fact mocking other CoCs?

Coverage in El Reg for those, including myself, who didn't see this occur: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/22/sqlite_code_of_cond...

I am fearful of zealots. Zealots are almost never tolerant of anything outside their narrowly defined rules of propriety. So far, these codes of conduct seem to be most often pushed by zealots, and that makes me distrusful that they will be used in good faith and not as a tool.

The most ironic thing about this SQLite kerfuffle is that the previous code stood unnoticed for most of a year, but within 48 hours of being posted here enough rage was manufactured to demand it be changed.

> With the pressure put on antirez

What pressure?

I'm refering to everything that lead to this Tweet[0] & Blogpost[1] and the subsequent changes to Redis[2].

[0] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1037809132303208455 [1] http://antirez.com/news/122 [2] https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/5335

The web is replacing cable TV. Therefore the thought allowed here is being pushed into the same box where it will be as bland, premeditated, and uninteresting as cable tv.

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