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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

I'm just having a hard time imagining someone who wants to be racist sexist xenophobe jerk to other people, but they saw you drafted a CoC last year in the root of your repository, so they won't... Or they were racist sexist xenophobe jerks, then you point out that "our community has a CoC", and they will stop.

None of these things happen in real life.

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Written rules aren't for the offenders, they're for the conflict-adverse community members who get uncomfortable when someone needs to be thrown out for community health reasons. They don't really have strong opinions supporting the person's behavior, but they're uncomfortable with the idea of people getting exiled from the community, so come slithering out to protest when an asshole is exiled for being an asshole. Since their primary reason for speaking up in the first place is discomfort with conflict, a quick "they broke the rules" tends defuse further argument.

Why wouldn't "I have taken a dislike to them. Pray I do not take a dislike to you as well" also solve these people's problems? There's surely something more than "dislike of conflict" here, or else they wouldn't invite conflict by disagreeing with the now decided and closed conflict's resolution.

Yeah, if a community has someone with that kind of generally trusted authority, that works great. If a community doesn't, agreed upon rules are the next best thing.

The CoC isn't for them. As you mentioned, they're gonna be assholes no matter what. Kicking someone out of a group is possibly traumnatic but usually a bunch of drama. Having the god king of the group capriciously kick random people out of the group for no clear reason, and without communication as to why leaves the remaining members worried they could be next. I mean, sure, if you want to be the groups dictator and rule by fear, I guess that's fine, but imo that's no way to run things. By having something documented, with a procedure, gives a framework to follow for when you do have to kick someone out that's a bit less made up than "we just didn't like that person".

Not every person who does something problematic is actively seeking to do so in order to hurt someone. Also, there are plenty of people who are looking for spaces that are "okay" with their views, and a CoC that makes it clear the space is not can absolutely make them avoid it.

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.

> 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.

> Code of conduct is not about that. It's about how to behave.

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.

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