Comment by rgbgraph | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rgbgraph | Hacker News Reader

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Wow, no kidding:

https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_the...

Mod response:

> For all those wondering about removed comments, there was some trolling going on which was summarily removed by the mods.

> Please avoid any trolling and/or drama seeking comments and remember our subreddit rules.

"Trolling" on display in the archives of that thread: https://www.reveddit.com/v/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_t...

And then there's Graydon's reply to the "we will exclude you," in the code of conduct, and the subsequent drama: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6ewjt5/question_about...

Frankly, even though no one has asked for my opinion, the amount of effort people put into the code of conduct (and the discussion around it) is ridiculous; utterly ridiculous. In a time long ago, before everyone was incapable of compromising and cooperating with one another, we had two rules in an informal code of conduct for interacting with one another:

1. Be cool

2. Don't be an asshole

And then we all went back to trying to achieving the task at hand.

I've been involved with Software Development for over 20 years started with VB6 and some perl/python in 1998. I saw the "informal code of conduct" and it never worked. What really happened: many people were treating terribly and most of it was swept under the rug. CoC were created for valid and good reasons. I'm not defending the Rust community here, it seems childish to me. The past is not what you are trying to claim it was in this post. Look up the MANY Rails conference sexual harassment issues and worse.

We should not whitewash the past because the present isn't what we want.

Full disclosure, I usually do not involve myself with large groups -- so my views are likely to be a bit more innocent/naive.

The past that I lived in was comprised of people you personally knew; not anonymous membership in a large organization or group, where you could never hope to know everyone on a personal level.

There was very little opportunity for people to be unchecked dicks to one another, because you saw everyone consistently and could easily notice when something was going on.

Perhaps this is an unsolved issue about scaling human communities?

I do think this is kind of naive. If you consider something like a sexual assault, or even the more severe forms of harassment, that tends to happen among people who know each other, and people often don't talk about it after being victimized. So you not knowing those stories out of your tight knit community doesn't mean much -- if those stories exist you might need to have the parties involved trust you a lot to confide it, or you might need to really probe people about it.

And now we have a CoC and people are still mistreated. smh.

You shouldn't need a giant, complex CoC to tell people engaging in sexual harassment and creepy behavior to leave. Which is usually the type of stuff people point to for why it's so important to spend thousands of hours debating the rules.

If I've learned anything for Reddit mod culture it's that when you see super involved rules on the sidebar it's still ultimately just post-defacto justifications for whatever emotional mood the mods are in that day. The longer the rules = a good measure how aggressively the mods gatekeeps their community for things that go well beyond the scope of what the community was originally about.

This is how things like Programming becoming lower priorities in such communities than personalities/views of the people running it.

more like "and now we have a CoC, so when anyone is even slightly grievanced, multiple careers will get torched (and not even always the party you'd expect)"

Instead of a tool to be used to solve problems local to an organization or an event, it's wielded as a bludgeon in always the most public way possible (either by the org/conference or target of the CoC itself) and time and again this has shown to be bad for everyone and an endless source of drama.

I am an older geek. I never got the CoC against sexual harassments. It is f*cking illegal. Should be reported to the police and taken care of by the actual laws.

Coc seems like a law thing but who is enforcing it? Laws you have democratic elected people voting which laws, you have police checking if people follow them, courts giving out punishment. See they are 3 separate entities for a reason. Coc is written by the org, enforced by the org an punished by said org. Doesn't seem like an improvement.

If the police actually cared about sexual harassment, that might be a good idea. They've never shown any sign that they do.

Also, lots of behaviour can be pretty shitty without being illegal.

Sexual harrassment isn't necessarily illegal, it's so loosely defined.

From this “Graydon's reply” you linked:

> Some people, naturally, feel that the norms spelled out in the rust CoC makes them feel excluded. To which all I can say is, yes, it's true: the rust CoC focuses on behaviour, not people, but if there's a person who cannot give up those behaviours, then implicitly it excludes such a person. If someone just can't get their work done effectively or can't enjoy themselves without stalking or harassing someone, or cracking a sexist or racist joke, or getting into a flame war, or insulting their colleagues, I suggest they go enjoy the numerous other totally viable language communities.

Hm... So, if someone just can't get their work done effectively or can't enjoy themselves without going behind the backs of the whole ostensibly “Leadership” group, what then? Has that person been ostracized yet? Have they even been named?!? (I sure ain't seen no sign of it.) If not, why not? There seems to be a hyuuuge amount of effort being expended to spare that person's feelings...

Which seems a) misdirected AF, and b) all too typical of these “governance by namby-pambyism” CoC committee organisations that everything on the Internet appears to have turned into in the last half-decade or so.

If (2) was a core piece, then having worked on enough open source projects I can assure you that informal code of conduct didn't do shit. ;P

State your assumptions, prepare to be boarded -9front IRC banner.

Since micro aggressions are a thing number 2 is hardly possible.

That's not my understanding of micro-aggressions [1]. IIUC, inadvertently doing a micro-aggression isn't being an asshole, but persisting in it after it has been pointed out definitely is.

[1]: Disclosure: I'm a minority (disabled), but I'm also a white man.

The question is whether everything that is called a micro aggression is one.

Ever heard of the Law of Penetrance of Negative Residues?

Your assumptions about micro-aggressions existing are wrong. "Don't be an asshole" is (or should be) about how you act towards others not how others perceive your actions. If someone wants to be offended, that's them not being cool.

I feel offended by woke people.

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