Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

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You inadvertently gave away the game.

We can all agree that everyone has the right to be arbitrary and capricious. Codes of conduct are a formalization of expectations and rules for behavior. The are often tied (explicitly or implicitly) to an adjudication and enforcement process much more complicated than the person in charge just saying "get the fuck out".

However when someone brings up the idea of improving that bureaucratic process by comparing and contrasting Codes of Conduct language and enforcement to our society's hard-fought experience in creating fair justice systems, you retreated right back to the right to be arbitrary and capricious.

This is why people can't help but wonder: what the fuck are we trying to accomplish here? All I know is I need to publish a specific flavor of bureaucratic boilerplate so I don't get my reputation attacked for not publicly promising to kick out people I would have kicked out anyway. And that I can use that document to dole out punishments with a larger air of legitimacy and seriousness than just telling someone not to come around my place anymore.

I think in your cynicism you've totally lost all meaning and purpose of the code of conduct

It's not a piece of legalese with which you can bludgeon people to get your way (I mean it can be, but that is not and should not be the point)

When an organization has a code of conduct, it makes clear how I can complain about actions or events that occur under their jurisdiction. This is important because if you have high friction to reporting issues, issues don't get reported. [1]

What happens then? People who have legitimate grievances are the ones who stop coming around and you're left surrounded by the assholes who chased them off

The code of conduct should be cheerfully received by everyone:

1. I know that my actions are above board, because I can read what is allowed

2. I know that any actions that aren't will be reported and processed not in public (eg on Twitter) but in some sort of well-defined process

3. I know what the range of penalties can be

4. If I experience a violation caused by someone else I know how to report it

Four is arguably the most important point. Otherwise you end up with would-be coc violations adjudicated on Twitter.

[1] I'll add that it should also describe how people who receive reports respond and how the issue will be mediated. All of these steps are important. It's important for conference volunteers to know what to do when they receive a report. It's important that you know how to make a report.

These documents don't stop at describing the appropriate mechanism for reporting an incident, but rather they address topics of remediation and punishment: topics of justice.

defen points out that when these constitutions tread into topics of justice, they would do well to consider how to set up a fair system and what common mistakes to avoid.

This is a reasonable point and should not be at all controversial. Do you want fair treatment?

This begs the question of who decides the rules of an organization.

I want to attend events with rules I like - I might like them because they're fair, I might like them because they ban symbols I find offensive.

Ultimately, it's up to the organization to define the rules, and it's up to me to decide if I want to attend an event with those rules.

Oh, I think you underestimate my cynicism. I think some people adopted a piece of legalese without caring about the exact bounds and effects of implementing the terms of that legalese. It was vaguely in the direction of "stopping the bad stuff from happening" and was written with serious-sounding words so they just sort of assumed everything would work out fine. This blog post and HN thread are proof it has not.

>The code of conduct should be cheerfully received by everyone

I never cheerfully receive process. Process is valuable, process is important to have, but god-oh-god is it ever a massive pain in the ass.

Designing, drafting, implementing and refining process is HARD. I professionally maintain what I'll brazenly call "actually important" process so I don't get why everyone is so squeamish around the idea of maintaining the CoC process. (Well, I suspect that they're worried it will be corrupted by those nogoodnicks that they inartfully adopted this process to get rid of instead of growing some spine and just tossing them out on their ass in the first place.)

>legalese with which you can bludgeon people to get your way (I mean it can be, but that is not and should not be the point)

Understanding that this _will_ happen is just another part of designing process.

This is a great response, thanks!

I think I agree with 99% of it.

I'll take the rest of this comment to note that elsewhere I'm lauding codes of conduct because they are lighter-weight than certain legal processes.

I think many of the people who write CoCs are oblivious to the fact that people lie, or may just be unreliable witnesses. Nor are the creators of a CoC trained or able to run an adjucation process.

If you punish anyone who has a report filed against them without evaluating those reports or requesting any proof, then you will quickly be left with a small pool of very manipulative people looking to game the system.

> I think many of the people who write CoCs are oblivious to the fact that people lie,

I posit that those who write CoCs are _precisely_ the type of people who lie. The average person DOES NOT lie as a matter of course. Small lies, bigger lies occasionally when embarassed. People who write CoCs want to control others. People who want to control others are narcissists/social dominants. Narcissists lie ALL THE TIME.

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