Hacker News Reader

Comment by swed420 | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't be the first time CoC was used as a lame attempt to harm open source.

Thanks for speaking up.

I find it weird to jump to this from the scarce information we have.

"Someone did a CoC violation" is just a way for an org to say "someone was an asshole to such an extent it was driving other people away or getting us into legal trouble", with the manner of assholery defined in the CoC. 9/10 times it is nothing sinister.

Of course right now we just don't know what happened.

The one thing I know is that for threads such as this one it is best to ignore all of the stuff from accounts made just for the purpose of participating in the thread.

In this case, given the topic of this thread is targeted harassment in response to public social media criticism, I think it's understandable that some folks might like to participate anonymously to avoid becoming a future target.

You are by far the least subtle sock puppet account.

Nonsense, if you feel strongly about the subject comment in your main account. Otherwise this is just taken as "oh the guys are arguing through side accounts now".

Also this is not some russian mafia drug deal gone wrong, it's nerds disagreeing on the internet.

Are you HR or something?

Nah but I recognize that HR, unfortunately, has to exist for larger organizations.

Unless you have an infinitely wise and patient dictator who can just say "you're an asshole, you go" and always make the right call or something.

> I find it weird to jump to this from the scarce information we have.

If you look at how I worded my comment, you'll see I didn't jump to any conclusion. Only you have, apparently.

(edit: Also unsurprising to see your account is two days old)

> "Someone did a CoC violation" is just a way for an org to say "someone was an asshole [...]"

Not even that, since so many CoCs are vague enough that someone unprincipled wielding them could be using them for petty interpersonal disputes. Unless I already have reason to trust the accuser, when I see "CoC violation" it tells me there's drama but it doesn't tell me who the asshole is.

Overall I think Code of Conducts are a net negative. Alleged violations of them seem to be used to lend credibility to actions that otherwise would be hard(er) to justify.

This is nothing to do with Code of Conduct and just one business chosing not to do business with another.

This is like saying "overall laws are bad" because whoever is applying them is doing so maliciously. Even in the absence of COC companies like this always find a way to justify this sort of pressure. If not a COC, it's a TOS or NDA or whatever document acronym you can find.

Nobody would accept the rule of law if we didn't all know the alternative was the local bullies with the most friends and guns declaring themselves warlords and selling your family into slavery.

An open source project without a CoC on the other hand is quite normal and harmless. Maybe some people sometimes get their feelings hurt, but CoCs obviously don't prevent that anyway. The whole thing is dumb.

I would argue that laws are “bad” if there’s no way to get a proper hearing when you’re accused of violating them. Laws should constrain both sides of the law (the person subject to them and the person enforcing them) otherwise they’re just arbitrary rules by the person with more power. And while that’s a perfectly valid way to run something, it’s dishonest to dress “arbitrary personal decisions” up in the trappings of law. And realistically that applies to all the things you listed, COC, NDA, TOS etc.

But if someone can just drag out a law and vaguely accuse someone else of violating that law and then enforce a punishment with no way for the accused to get a hearing or present their case and have a real chance to prevail, then yes I would say the law is bad.

Overall I wish we lived in a world where they are not needed. But in every community, some people are assholes so they are often needed.

Communities were doing just fine without a CoC up until they became a trend. People got banned too but the moderators couldn't hide behind a CoC to justify questionable decisions.

> Communities were doing just fine without a CoC

I mean kinda, but also not. CoCs just codify what the moderators think.

Even Hacker news has a CoC: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html its just called a guide.

A community has to have a set of rules which most people agree on. One of the most common attacks in a moderated forum is "Oh but X did Y" and "thats not fair X can do it"

A CoC can be a simple way to "tap the sign" when someone is being a dick.

It also allows communities to set expectations at the start, not after someone has transgressed and pissed in the well.

In an ideal world, you'd just have a thing that says "don't be a dick" but that doesn't work for many and hilarious reasons. Engineers who who either have a god complex, parsing issues or empathy gaps (either learnt or inherent ) are notoriously difficult as a community to keep from getting into frothy arguments that colour everything and give off a bad smell.

CoCs are a tool, that can sometimes help.

I perceive "guidelines" or "rules" having a very different connotation compared to a "code of conduct."

See for, example, the SQLite team adopting the Rule of St. Benedict as their "Code of Conduct," getting criticized for it, and changing it to a "Code of Ethics" in accordance with the Rule about seeking accommodation with your adversaries.

Note also that Hipp pretty much just let any criticism for that wash over him and, from all public appearances, stayed cool and just kept working on his stuff while the loudmouths got bored and found other people to bother.

Goes to show that drama is a choice.

Communities were not doing fine. CoC didn't come out of nowhere because someone was bored. Having a CoC doesn't absolve moderators any more than having laws absolves judges from having to make good rulings.

I've been part of a lot of communities and never have I felt that a CoC was missing or needed. CoCs didn't come because they were needed but because of a social justice fad. Have a look at the Tim Peters incident with the Python community. The decision to suspend him, a core maintainer (he wrote the Zen of Python), was justified by made-up absurd alleged CoC violations. Without a CoC they couldn't have suspended him as easily without totally losing their face.

It just means you get different kinds of assholes who are better at navigating around the CoC or even weaponizing it.

Yes but it was always this way. Any organisation with rules can suffer from rules lawyers as a lot of people who have tried to contribute to wilipedia/serve on a committee of a voluntary organisation etc will testify.

I would say incorrect. All that is true is that something is needed, but there is nothing about the problem that requires that particular poor framework for dealing with it.

They're a weapon of "social justice" - 90% of CoC rules are common-sense stuff that doesn't have to be said, combined with one or two "progressive" ideas shoehorned in.

And "social justice" is often a weapon of capital interests in disguise.

That's why it was kicked into overdrive during/after Occupy Wall Street. The message of bankers screwing over everybody else in the country had clear broad appeal and people were paying attention and talking about the issue. Then, newspapers started reporting that the OWS protestors were using a "progressive stack" to silence white men and give all the talking time to the freak squad... I don't even know if that narrative had any truth or if the newspapers made it up whole cloth, but regardless it was something most American's certainly could never agree with, so OWS was overnight transformed into a social justice freak show in the eyes of the public and people stopped talking about bankers.

I was once told I couldn’t present a calorie counting/diet app at an Elm conference because it violated their CoC about discrimination based on “body size”.

That's just absurd.

Mate, thats just rules. rules you don't agree with.

Often these "rules" extend to conduct far outside of the purview of a project - typically crossing into identity politics.

"If you espouse views I don't like on your personal Twitter, you can't contribute to this entirely unrelated software project."

This can sometimes, in practice, be reasonable. If letting muh_dick_1488 open PRs means everyone else stops contributing, well, you're gonna have to pick a group to keep.

I mean, that probably depends on how extreme are the views? If you write a blog post about there being too many colored people in London, how are non-white developers supposed to collaborate with you?

Perhaps by minding your own business and focusing on the work? Nobody is forcing you to view that person's blog or to even know it exists.

If that individual's viewpoints somehow visibly leak into their work or professional communications, then you might have a case for complaint or concern.

That's demanding too much from minorities IMO. OK, you should tolerate a racist colleague, what about a racist boss? Like, you know he'd like to see fewer people like you, and also gets to decide about your promotion or layoff.

Why and how do you know they are a racist?

Cause he decided to let the world know

Again, why are you stalking these people - just ignore it?

Furthermore, by codifying and enforcing whatever your personal viewpoints are in a code of conduct, you've summarily decided for everyone else as well.

Reading what someone has written under their own name for everyone to read is not stalking.

Also not sure what code of conduct you have in mind, but most specify that you should treat others with respect regardless of <list of protected characteristics>. That's not a viewpoint, that's a necessary condition for collaboration. If you feel an uncontrollable hate towards people of some nationalities or gender identities, it would be wise too keep it a private matter indeed, and not make this hate known to everyone

The point that you seem to be missing is that these are projects open to the public: if the person isn't espousing these ideas in the space in question, you're just as intolerant as they are to try and use the color of authority (a code of conduct, etc.) to bar them from those spaces.

"Treat with respect" is a dog whistle - easily coopted for whatever nefarious reason.

"If you do not agree with me, you will not participate in any space where I can drum up enough sympathy (headache) to have you excluded from."

You are just denying people their freedom of association. I personally wouldn't want to associate with a racist for the simple fact that he is a racist, no matter where they display their racism.

Sounds good - you're free to not associate. The original topic at hand was a code of conduct: this is forcing your "freedom of association" on to everyone else.

> Often these "rules" extend to conduct far outside of the purview of a project - typically crossing into identity politics.

So rules you don't agree with?

What is purview, and why should a software project be allowed to police all aspects of life and communication because "them's the rules and rules is rules!"

In the same way that any other organisation has rules, which they agree amongst themselves.

The joy of a free (as in not being arrested) society is that if you don't like those rules you are free not to join. Or free to moan about them repeatedly until everyone dogpiles on them to change the rules, or not.

Either way, they are allowed to make rules how they like. Just as you are allowed to not like those rules, and talk about it incessantly.

As I said, CoCs are just rules, some of which _you_ don't like

No, the problem with CoCs is exactly that they are not "just rules".

They are something else hijacking the legitimacy of normal justified functional articulable rules.

It just dawned on me that CoC docs are basically HR for open source. Point to a violation and voila, that person is gone. “Sorry, nothing personal, CoC violation, there’s nothing I can do”.

Exactly. Without a CoC the persons making hard decisions have to stand behind them. With a CoC they can hide behind the CoC and wash their hands in innocence. This lowers the barrier for making questionable decisions and overall decreases honesty. We've seen this with the suspension of Python core maintainer Tim Peters.

Honestly, this is the first argument against CoCs I've seen that I agree with. They do kinda act as a tool to deflect responsibility.

I had never heard of the Tim Peters incident, but I just googled it. (It's not on his Wikipedia page.)

I found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1ep4dbt/the_shamefu...

Which points to this:

https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...

This characterizes it as completely unfair, and the /r/python community seems to agree.

Is there a rebuttal from the other side?

Wow, I somehow missed all that. That's horrendous. I've always felt that a code of conduct is a tool for bureaucrats to hide behind, and episode doesn't alter my view. Thanks for sharing.

There are bad CoCs and ways to abuse them and people who do. That doesn't mean the concept of setting social expectations for a collaborative project is inherently bad. Same as for discussion forum guidelines and moderation.

No CoC is better than a bad CoC or one where interpretation is centralized to someone with an agenda. But many times a decent CoC can help newcomers in reading the room and support well-intended moderators in making judgement calls.

I also think good CoCs are small and mostly reactive. It's premature social engineering to spend energy on formulating general policies for things that happened once or twice if ever for the project.

Like, maybe wait until you actually had a couple of slop PRs before spending time, energy, and political capital on an AI contribution policy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com