Why are there rules for meeting in public? This isn't dangerous machinery; we're not warning people against behavior that causes loss of life or limb. It feels incredibly unwelcoming.
How does a group decide what “acting up” is? Who is actually making the decision to kick them out?
When you have a group this is either large or long-standing, these questions eventually come up. I’ve been in a 5-hour-long meeting that was the 2nd of 3 attempts to eject a mid-30s non-student from a University student computing club. I fail to see how this sort of stuff is easy.
If you do, then have a meeting amongst the leaders to see how to reconcile actions with the charter.
Most problems occur when the dictator just wants to step aside and let the general population decide an issue, but there’s no real mechanism for doing so.
Generally speaking, this is caused by too much policy, not too little policy -- and adding an official code of conduct (which a university likely already had!) isn't going to solve that.
How many people? The first comment of that thread was talking about a 3-4 peoples groups. I personally agree that for large group you NEED formalities. It's not even a question of if it's better with or without, the group will just not survive without formalities.
What acting up? Did you felt right about how someone acted? That's acting up. Is it enough to kick someone out? That would be mostly about if he keep doing it or not... and how everyone else feel about it. Maybe it just means that this group isn't meant for you either.
That means implicit unstated arbitrary code of conduct where participants are expected to guess it.
If you are in position to enforce arbitrary rules on whim, that is fine. If however there is expectation on fairness and kicked person has option to complain about you, the it is better written.
Having to explain to be respectful to an adult is just pandering unless they've already shown themselves to be a disrespectful person.
Guess? We should know the difference between right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome. We don't have to be told not to murder or steal. If there is a line that gets crossed, it can be dealt with, or even turned into a teaching moment so long as it wasn't too egregious.
> kicked person has option to complain about you
I'm not going to get upset if someone complains about me kicking them out. No big deal.
Maybe that's it? The actual point where I disagree. I expect people to be adults _and_ to have thick skin. This is why code of conducts feel like coddling to me.
Maybe I'm in a place of privilege and there are people that get repeatedly harassed. I get that, and I sympathize. But damn does it feel like being called a "bad boy" when there's a set of additional rules that feel like platitudes. It's kind of like the feeling you get when being followed by a cop even though you've made no traffic violations.
In the same way, for the organizer, it provides something to follow when making a decision, and to point to to justify their decisions when challenged. Something that amounts to "I'll kick people out if they break those rules" is easier to accept than "I'll kick people out when I want to" (even if the latter is often the organizers right from a legal POV too).
If everyone "know[s] the difference between right and wrong, welcome and unwelcome", a Code of Conduct is redundant (which also means one existing shouldn't cause no problems, and when it does the ideas about whats right or wrong typically weren't as common as expected). But experience shows that this doesn't reliably survives contact with reality, and it's easy for issues to never get brought up or silenced because "surely we all are adults and nobody would really do something bad", where again the commitment part of a code of conduct comes into play.
It's always just a tool: It doesn't magically make problems go away, and I'm certainly not saying all code of conducts are perfect, fit the same for all groups or are always applied well.
Re "set of additional rules that are platitudes": So you don't have a problem with an organizer saying "If you misbehave I'll kick you out", but making it more explicit what counts as "misbehave" is a problem?
I'm glad you're a reasonable person, but I've been part of a group where people did get upset about being kicked out. They tried to argue about it. They tried to rules-lawyer their way out, they tried all sorts of emotional appeals.
> Maybe I'm in a place of privilege
It kind of sounds like it.
Well if there's no rules, there's nothing to rules lawyer about is there? You just kick rude buddy out and they can sit and complain outside.
I mean if I kicked someone out of my place and they started arguing with me, I would physically remove them my house. There would be no arguing. Someone disrespects my house, my friends and me by not leaving when asked, they are no longer welcome there. There's no appealing to emotion, no anything. They leave.
I don't think I was clear; their chief complaint that technically they didn't break any rules, and that there was no warning, and that they didn't know, etc.
If you have a concrete rule to point to - especially one that's loose enough to cover most issues - then you can kick them out much more easily, especially because your co-organizers won't be stuck waffling.
This is important to you? That will happens code of conduct or not... better be prepared to live with that.
> the it is better written.
What if it's not written? Your solution is to only allow what's written? That's going to be quite a conundrum and awful to live with. There's reasons why the laws are that large and the court system is required.
A small gathering isn't meant to become a simulation of a government you know?
If anything bad happens, discuss it together, decide the course of action based on that and act on it. It could be to kick out someone, or it could means for you to go because that's not the kind of interaction that you want to live in a small gathering.
With all due respect, that sounds like something someone would say if they haven't spent a lot of time running events where all sorts of strangers show up.
Think of the Birthday Paradox. How many people does it take before there's a 50% chance of someone sharing a birthday? It's surprisingly low. How many people does it take before there's a 50% chance of someone being an unreasonable asshole? Significantly less.
Similarly with "missing stairs" and "whisper networks"; there have been plenty of workspaces where Alice knows that no female staff should be left alone with Bob, and manages to communicate this obliquely to Carol shortly after she joins. This usually co-exists with none of the male staff of the office admitting to being aware of what's going on.
That’s why a lot of people are getting fired up about in here. People who don’t actually put themselves out there and communicate with others face to face, are saying rules are required to interact with others.
Thus, the real asshole is the rules lawyer who barges around saying everyone must do certain things to cater to their sensitivities.
- Someone's birthday party, followed by Karaoke.
- Puzzle hunt at a pub.
- Dinner, then watching a video-game themed dance performance
- Dinner, then folk dance, then small house party
I'm one of the people who thinks that its worth putting some amount of thought into how to handle people being jerks. I also think a Code of Conduct is one tool that is reasonable to use in community building/management.