I'll reply to myself because of the general sentiment of the comments seem to be about the safe space aspect. I read this article in a completely different way, I read it as a way to set a tone for the rest of the events within a new group. The examples she uses suite her groups and how she wants her groups to interact. If on the other hand one wants to actively dis-encourage a safe place(it's just an example, I am not advocating this), one could explicitly setup their code of conduct to do so. If nobody shows up, okay so be it, but if people do show up, congratulations you have now built a culture around those specific ideals. Sure maybe this is a little much for a group of 3-5 people, but if one wants a large group with a specific style of culture to form, setting some simple guardrails does seem advantageous. Perhaps 'code of conduct' is to authoritarian but setting group ideals from the get go does not strike me as necessarily bad.