This is very much so for small communities who don't have the infrastructure to litigate issues in a legalistic manner... but, even in areas like public law, the rules don't really matter, it's the perceived authority and impartiality of the courts that keep a legal system up and running. (think of any controversial Supreme Court decision -- do people really care what the law actually says and whether the legal reasoning is sound... or do they just speculate about the political leanings of the judges?)
Since most people writing up CoCs aren't good lawyers or experts in drafting (and finding loopholes in) rules... having a smaller "attack surface" actually makes a lot of sense.
That said, if the community is large or important enough that it already retains some legal advisors, then maybe yeah, make the rules more specific or something.
... I understand that's the theory, but in practice, I've never seen it working that way.
I don't see how having the CoC affects any of this. If someone is behaving poorly, first of all, a CoC will not deter them. If someone behaves so poorly that you decide you need to remove them, the community (the small portion of people who give a f) should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say (without pointing to a document you put in your repo when you were bored), that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision".
Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
1) point both involved and uninvolved people to the code of conduct when you end up taking action.
2) avoid disparity of enforcement within your team
3) funnel disagreements (from both teammates or community members) by focusing them on the rule, rather than on a general debate on how should the community should be managed.
If people commit a lot of energy to a community/project then for many "I didn't like this behavior, end of discussion" won't cut it.
Of course it does. If the community/project leaders are not aligned with your ideology, it's better to find one with alignment than to attempt to corner them with a written set of rules.
I think you mean, "if someone is behaving poorly, the coc did not deter them".
The people who it did deter aren't behaving poorly.
None of these things happen in real life.
You are so focused on the strawman of problematic people being mustache-twirling villains trying to disrupt spaces they dislike, that you're discounting the actual purpose of CoCs, which is to make it clear who your space is for.
Code of conduct is not about that. It's about how to behave. My community is not that special that you need a user manual on how to behave, you should have learned it by age 10, latest.
Technology Z meetup / user group is a space for people who are interested in Technology Z. Repository Y is a space for people who are interested in Repository Y.
If someone needs a CoC to figure that out, bad luck.
You want to start discussion about War X, vilify everyone just by being born in that country, please do it outside my repo / user group. Plenty of spaces you can do it and there, you'll be welcome to do so. Want to talk about evil black / white / DEI / right wing people, please also leave my group out of it.
Behavior is who people are. It's the 'content of their character' that MLK spoke of.
> My community is not that special that you need a user manual on how to behave, you should have learned it by age 10, latest.
And yet different communities have vastly different concepts of acceptable behavior. CoCs let people know whether their behavior is acceptable in a community.
> should see why you removed them, and again, a made-up "contract" will not be needed.
It's not a matter of the action being transparent, it's the motivations. Sometimes, it's not clear to community members why the action was taken, if there's no CoC or rules. "They're being an asshole" is a lot more subjective than "They were breaking the rules"
> It's ok to stand up for yourself and simply say, without pointing to a document you just put in your repo, that: "John Doe was behaving poorly, and I don't want to deal with him, I banned him, you don't need to like it, but it's my decision". Just my 2c.
Sure, this might work for a small community or group, but the fiasco with Nix seems to suggest this isn't the case at a certain size. Some people apparently want accountability and transparency from their moderators.
> Just my 2c... I don't want to add more procedures to my open source projects or voluntary organizing. I'm doing it because I like it, not because I want to pretend I'm at a townhall meeting.
Great! That's fine! Not every community needs such things. Some do.
I'm sorry, but that's just not true.
You're treating humanity as if it's divided into two distinct sections: Those Who Behave Well, and Those Who Behave Poorly.
In reality, different humans have different ranges of ways they prefer to act, and most are quite amenable to reasonable, clearly-stated codes of conduct for interaction in a particular space.
There is a small subset of people who are either deliberately antisocial for the sake of it (trolls/griefers/etc), and another subset that are genuinely just assholes who will, if given the leeway to do so, cause endless problems in a community.
But there are many, many more who would cause friction with others in such a community without a code of conduct not because they actively want to, but because their unstated assumptions about how people should interact clash with the unstated assumptions of other people there. Having the code of conduct lets everyone coming in in good faith align their expectations and avoid these unnecessary conflicts. They're like a Session 0 in a TTRPG in that sense.
Hard disagree... I've never seen one have this effect. IMO you don't need a CoC to suddenly understand what should already be common sense i.e. don't be a dick. Either they were already going to act that way, or they weren't.
How do you think you would see it?
Under normal circumstances, what it would look like from the outside is just...someone not causing friction, because there is a code of conduct. Or someone causing friction, because there isn't one.
The former looks identical to someone who would never have caused trouble in the first place, and the latter looks, if not identical, at least very similar to someone who would have caused trouble, no matter what.
Whether or not anything needs to be written down afterwards seems like it would be a separate thing.
And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Another commenter (cannot find their name now but I saved the text) said exactly what my experience has been:
> A written code of conduct can legitimize petty disputes based on interpretations of the text, even if the issue itself is something easily addressable like using the word “master” in a programming context. It can become a tool for manipulation (pushing someone out for “CoC violation” vs simply correcting the wording).
> And the people who wouldn't cause friction are already behaving so they don't need one.
Both correct. By definition, in fact.
CoCs are for the people in the middle of those. Who do, in fact, exist.
It's about setting a shared understanding of norms.
It's about whether the kinds of jokes allowed among members are "as raunchy as you please", "polite jokes only," or "none".
It's about whether you're expected to work out differences in private chats, address them in public, or bring them to a moderator.
It's about whether your comments on a code review started by another member have to be addressed by the committer before the review can go forward.
Any time you think the way you do things in the open source project (or any other kind of community) you contribute to or run is The Natural, Obvious Way Everyone Does Things, you're probably wrong, and some other people or projects do things exactly the opposite way and think that's just as natural and obvious.