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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this thread feels like stepping into bizarro land. I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future.

This reminds me of the complaints about seatbelts. Yeah, every once in a while, a seatbelt makes a crash worse. Requiring seatbelts takes away the sense of freedom you have in a car. That sort of thing. Sometimes, a CoC will be abused to harass people. Step back and look at the overall impact of CoCs (and seatbelts). CoCs help moderators make consistent decisions. When decisions are more consistent, people can worry less about whether they are breaking the rules and focus more on getting work done.

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I think unfortunately this has become something of a lightning rod with culture war topics of late. I'd really encourage people to read the article. CoCs are not all the same and it's hard to codify expectations of a group that already exists because it requires consensus or severance. Many codes of conduct lay out unenforceable or questionable rules and this is not one of them. I read in the comments somebody claiming they were trying to eliminate using any project with a CoC like they were fighting against a spreading disease. It's zealotry and I urge you, if you consider yourself skeptical -- be skeptical of your own positions too because GCC's CoC FTA says nothing that has been expressed as something folks here are afraid of.

> I see a lot of people equating the presence of a CoC with some kind of 1984-newspeak future.

I don't think this is unreasonable. As another commenter has alluded to, one of the more typical implementation details of this meme is to forbid the common greeting "hey guys" and to instead insist people use "hey folks".

Anyone can understand that the word "folks" is superficially more inclusive than "guys", but I don't think performing that switcheroo actually helps anyone[^1].

There are many examples of don't-say-this-word-but-instead-say-this-other-one in this space, so I don't think the 1984-newspeak future characterisation is unfair.

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[^1]: Ok, I can imagine someone feeling othered in some scenario, but I don't think blanket language bans are a good solution. Empathy and thoughtfulness would be better than pearl clutching and minutiae keeping.

The “hey guys” thing is always some friend-of-a-friend who says it happened. I’m sure there are receipts for it happening somewhere, but it sounds like it’s uncommon.

The CoC is mainly used to eject serial harassers out of a community, as far as I can tell. Serial harassers generally try to skirt the rules and hide their behavior, so the CoC has that “violations of this code outside these spaces” clause in it. You know, somebody making sexual remarks to other community members at a bar after a conference, or worse.

I have seen a lot of projects push to use inclusive language along the lines of whitelist/blacklist -> allowlist/denylist, or master/slave -> leader/follower. I’ve seen the CoC used to justify the changes, but nobody’s getting ejected from the community for refusing to use the terms.

(Please don’t interpret universal quantifiers mathematically.)

> The “hey guys” thing is always some friend-of-a-friend who says it happened. I’m sure there are receipts for it happening somewhere, but it sounds like it’s uncommon.

I’ve encountered it directly multiple times, so I’m feeling slightly gaslighted.

> but nobody’s getting ejected from the community for refusing to use the terms.

How do you know this? And which communities are you referring to? Surely you can’t be suggesting that no company has ever reprimanded an employee for refusing to stop using certain kinds of language? There are ramifications other than direct ejection, so this issue isn’t quite as black and white as you seem to be portraying. At least anecdotally, I can tell you that it was a problem when a former colleague refused to stop saying “that’s what she said.” It’s not a fireable offence per se, but it does move the needle with management sentiment on whether or not the professional relationship ought to continue.

> I’ve encountered it directly multiple times, so I’m feeling slightly gaslighted.

Could you elaborate on this? It’s just not something I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve never heard any direct accounts of it, so I would be very interested in hearing more about it.

> Surely you can’t be suggesting that no company has ever reprimanded an employee for refusing to stop using certain kinds of language?

You are correct—I am not suggesting that. That’s what “please don’t interpret universal quantifiers mathematically” means—it means, exactly as you said, that I am not suggesting that “no company has ever”.

It sounds like you’ve shifted the discussion from communities (like GCC developers) to companies. Companies have HR departments, and they have their own ways of managing employee behaviors—so the discussion about how someone got in trouble at some company does not seem germane.

> At least anecdotally, I can tell you that it was a problem when a former colleague refused to stop saying “that’s what she said.”

If an employee refuses to stop saying “that’s what she said”, then it is good for the employee to get in trouble. I’m not sure what kind of inferences you are making here. If you’re making the argument that someone should be able to say “that’s what she said” in a work environment without consequences, then we disagree there. To me, it’s obvious that the joke is inappropriate at work.

> Could you elaborate on this? It’s just not something I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve never heard any direct accounts of it, so I would be very interested in hearing more about it.

It's been the policy at two companies I've worked at, and the policy has been enforced. Also I have seen it in some open source communities. For example, if you type "hey guys" into the Elm language Slack channel, you get this automated response:

> Terms like guys can make people feel like they're being left out! :scream: Let everyone and all the folks know you're talking to them! :hearts: :robot_face:

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> It sounds like you’ve shifted the discussion from communities (like GCC developers) to companies. Companies have HR departments, and they have their own ways of managing employee behaviors—so the discussion about how someone got in trouble at some company does not seem germane.

Companies are communities too. Often with shared, codified values. Like, you know, a code of conduct.

> If you’re making the argument that someone should be able to say “that’s what she said” in a work environment without consequences, then we disagree there. To me, it’s obvious that the joke is inappropriate at work.

That's not the argument I'm making, so don't construct a strawman, thanks.

It's clear to me you are not listening and instead you are relying on logical fallacies, so let's end the discussion here.

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