I've yet to see a CoC used for good (sample bias I know). You don't need a CoC to ban and remove fuck sticks from your spaces. But you do need one if you want to ban someone who crime was doing something you found offensive. Offensive here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I don't mean something actually objectionable, I mean something manufactured, where it's reasonable and worthy of a friendly conversation when you assume good faith, or something that's barely enough to trigger some part of the CoC to be used as a weapon. CoC give unfair power to people who want to be offended, and want to choose to assume bad faith, and abuse people they disagree with.

Yes, CoC as they commonly exist are bad because they're a net negatively tool that can be abused.

I don't apply that to all of them, I have a back burner idea to write one that can't be abused in the same way the popular and ambiguously written ones are. The primary issue is because they're written to be ambiguous so they can catch edge cases, and curated behavior intended to evade a more specific CoC. But that's not hard to fix. If you want your CoC to be fair, and just. It needs to have rules to prevent a single person from strongarming, and using it against an individual. It needs to have explicit tests and requirements for any fact finder to prove a violation, and demand a clear rational. One of these tests could easily be a pattern of behavior, and a finding this behavior is more likely to be designed specifically to evade this CoC than organic behavior, and that can serve as a single reason to implement a response. None of the ones I've read try to put the accusers on a fair rhetorical field as their targets. they're all written as if they they would never be abused by someone in bad faith, but that's not the reality we live in. Too many people enjoy pretending to be the victim, while actually being the bully.

> Are codes of conduct bad?

They shouldn't be.

But in the same way regulatory capture turns our governments against our best interests... CoCs sometimes get weaponized, empowering voices that wouldn't otherwise have a leg to stand on in terms of a meritocracy.

> This isn't the Phoronix comment section.

Is there a worse hive of scum and villainy than the Phoronix forums?

It's amusing how any thread turns into a protracted flame war rehashing the same trite and incorrect arguments.