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Comment by 15155 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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