This is probably a parallel, but I still think Apple came up with the best, most self-disciplining code of conduct of all times:
> We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, "I'll know it when I see it". And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
Yes, they do publish more direct rejection reasons too. But those reasons were enumerated by experience and were repeated over and over -- like religious hate. What I like is they did not start with a committee of people saying, "Let's brainstorm what could go wrong."
To be able to deal with a large fraternity of people, the better approach is to not imagine a nominal case. You have to start openly, then establish a nominal case with experience.
Mark Stehlik once said, "But, you don't make policies around edge cases; you make policies for the nominal case and deal with the edge cases as the exceptions they are." I like this because this enforces a clear intention of being able to deal with edge cases. This is just like Apple's review guidelines. Firstly, they call it guidelines and not code of conduct. That enforces that they are human and flexible.
The problem with having a code of conduct with a large fraternity of people is that you immediately give the community an intent of what you like and what you don't like. That discourages you to find things that you may have liked but now will never get to see. That also gives idiots in a community a chance to police potential talent based on now written code of conduct. That's a grammar-nazi behavior. You may get great English teachers in that community, but I doubt a Hemingway would want anything to do with you.
Also, it has to be unique to each project. Having a blanket open source code of conduct is bad. It follows what you know, and discourages what you don't. So it's essentially an inbreeding system. And if an open source project accepts and celebrates an inbreeding system, then it is just a proprietary company with no money and wget-able code, essentially failing on both ends.
The problem with blank statements such as this is that "the line" is a moving goalpost. I'd (reluctantly) support even completely arbitrary enforcement, as long as it's not retroactive. But if they first accept apps with Confederate flag, and then ban them later, that's IMO a very bad precedent.
But those reasons were enumerated by experience and were repeated over and over -- like religious hate. What I like is they did not start with a committee of people saying, "Let's brainstorm what could go wrong."
The distinction doesn't seem that clear to me. It seems like this committee has gotten together as a response to the well known social issues that have cropped up over and over in specifically the github community and more generally the open source and software development communities.
You bless the Apple rule or guideline around religious hate, but dismiss the entire code of conduct here? Do you have any specific gripes or examples of policies you think are wrong? Could it be that you agree more with the rules Apple has put in place, or at least don't feel as strongly about the rules of the App Store, but maybe feel some distaste for someone trying to "police" this somewhat different arena?
That's the smartest thing they've done all week. Now it's time to bury it dead. This is a solution looking for a problem (tm).
The only thing this code of conduct does beside state the obvious (behave like adults) is the implied distrust expressed by introducing it in the first place: that without being nannied into proper behaviour, we would all act like vile animals.
I agree. I have yet to encounter a truly bad interaction on Github.
And what if I did? Learning to ignore things that could unreasonably sour your mood is a valuable skill in life anyway. Life itself doesn't really have a code like proposed.
It's offensive, to a woman, to talk to her without permission from her male guardian.
It's offensive, to a woman, to ask for some man's permission to talk to her.
Both of these are true. Both of these are false. In order to know what's offensive for any given group, a written summary is extremely helpful. Posit a group of people brought together from around the world from many varied cultures. They have no way to know what is, and is not, acceptable behaviour. Insisting that people just "behave like adults" is no help at all when different societies can have wildly different views of the correct behaviour of adults, and you also get the effect that each of them believes they are behaving like an adult and it's the other people who are wrong. It's a recipe for disaster.
Edit: you edited that comment from a single line since I posted this.
To elaborate:
I think that codes of conduct can be very very useful, especially in resolving disputes or setting community standards. I don't think it's driven out of distrust. High profile harassment on GitHub is not good for GitHub, or the open source community as a whole.
>Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop. [violates the code of conduct]
Yeah I don't get the 'textual' descriptions bit - and physical contact doesn't really apply to an online community. I suppose describing sexual contact is probably unwanted, but that's covered under the sexual harassment section.
Can't wait to hear a legal professional's opinion vis-à-vis simulated back rubbing.
But seriously, I'm hearing about this for the first time. Can anybody explain to me why this particular CoC is more controversial than any other random CoC?
I feel like an open code of conduct is unnecessary.
Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice. (I have screenshots of discussions that violate this simple fundamental rule). I have flagged 40+ comments (that were accepted and acted upon) on stackoverflow alone of people just being stupid jerks.
The SVN people did a great presentation about how to protect your project from poisonous people [1]. Their story goes is that someone came on the SVN mailing list ranting about how SVN sucks and doesn't have the features he wanted - according to the talk the SVN community was polite and the guy just went away.
Is it just me, or does my reading this CoC say that not being nice is okay (and accepted and required) when dealing with people deemed not nice?
This is what troubles me - I was brought up to be nice and behave well to others. We are more alike than different. To say "we should behave different to others who are different" and "we can behave as bad to others because they are different" is wrong and only leads to conflict and harm.
Of course I could have read it wrong and am reading too much into it!
> Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice.
Or even simpler - don't be an ass/jerk. I guess it's just hard to define...
We live in an age where if an action is not explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, because if it's not explicitly unacceptable, it's obviously acceptable. In short, if you don't say I can't abuse people, it's ok for me to abuse people.
Oh, and these people will also happily throw around the "First Amendment" as justification, which makes me incredibly sad for the future of our nation.
Solving that behavior though is incredibly difficult.
This section of the "code of conduct" is extremely odd without some context:
> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:
> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
> Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”
> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
> Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
> Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
I'd put this in the context of:
* normal people are political and can not understand a technological meritocracy
* the percentage of the github community that is black is much smaller than the percentage of the worldwide or even US population that is black
* the github community is a technological meritocracy and the problem of underrepresentation is external
* not understanding this, normal people would like to impose a political solution, and the form this solution takes is grotesque and offensive to people who do understand meritocracy
You may have missed the memo, but according to new wave feminism, the word "meritocracy" represents discrimination because you don't give special treatment to people based on sex, ethnicity etc.
I'm not kidding, and Github had adopted this view as well. [1]
Among many, this CoC is seen as a continuation of this largely feminist agenda. And we don't think it belong here. Open source I'd apolitical, meaning you can avoid political issues entirely in a good and neutral environment.
Why work so hard to make it political? For what gains?
Looking through some of the issues on that repo, the amount of bad faith people have in the very idea of a code of conduct is astonishing. Not to mention the sheer ignorance of issues affecting minorities within the tech community (seriously, Jon Stewart could have had a weeks worth of material).
Sure, the wording of the code of conduct wasn't perfect, but it'd be much nicer if people wanted to see it improved in good faith. There's a lot of ugly things that happen in open source projects, which aren't rosy as some may assume, and the idea that making more people feel welcomed and safe in communities like GitHub can't take precedent over the possibility that a few current contributors will find themselves outside the rules on a regular basis is very worrying.
I think many people who criticize the idea feel that it's been heavily pre-politicized to push for a particular version of "social justice" meme-complex. And if you discount that driving force and that motivation, it isn't clear that a CoC is either needed or useful.
If you try to think about it in a clean-slate way, sort of; forget "oppression", "microagressions against minorities" and all the other politicized jargon that the current version is peppered with, and ask yourself (answers are my opinions, obviously)...
Q. Is there a problem with some open source communities being too hostile, unwelcoming, potentially harassing to many people?
A. Yes. Some communities are clearly much more "nice" than others. Some are clearly much more welcoming of newbies, etc.
Q. How does this "bad behavior" manifest itself, in actual open source communities?
A. Mostly by how much rudeness and brusqueness some regulars of the community feel they can treat others with. If you hang around on forums, issues, IRC channels etc. enough you can get a clear feel of the "niceness meter". Sometimes there's also explicit misogyny, but that's relatively rare. Other explicit forms of hostility (e.g. racism, transmisogynism) are even rarer to nonexistent. It's simply that if the overall level of niceness is low, then people behave like assholes. Asshole-like behavior is easy to interpret as racism etc.
Q. Is this a huge problem? Should we invest effort in trying to make communities more nice?
A. I don't know, seems like a personal call. I personally like the nice and welcoming communities much more, and don't really see the point of being rude and hostile (I think it's counterproductive and not only wrong).
Q. Is a code of conduct a way to achieve that?
A. Doubt it. Seems like the norm set by the leaders of the community, together with a few clear examples of "we will not tolerate this kind of behavior", is how it's successfully done. Is there a project which went "not nice -> adopted CoC -> became clearly nicer"? I haven't seen any.
I agree with criticisms of the very idea of a code of conduct. Why is it astonishing? Documents like this enable the worst amateur Internet lawyering.
If your parents, teachers, and local cops did not teach you how to conduct yourself, there's absolutely no way a text file will. On the other hand, it will be used to justify all kinds of unnecessary non-technical debates.
I didn't know about this code of conduct until just now when I saw this article, so I don't know for sure why people are so against it.
Part of the problem may be that there have a been a few high profile cases (posted to HN, etc.) where a bunch of people unrelated to a project (not committers, not forkers, not users) have come in and started big commotions over committer behavior outside of the project (i.e. on their personal twitter account having nothing to do with the project), or have demanded changes like "he" be replaced with "they" or "he/she" in the documentation. Basically, a bunch of political stuff that doesn't have perceived technical value for the project.
It could be that a GitHub endorsed "code of conduct" would give those people more ammunition against projects, and I think that worries people. Most GitHub users aren't big OSS projects, they're just using it to host their hobby projects, they're not out to make political statements.
What about people who disagree and are not willing to follow the CoC? Is it preferable to turn some brilliant (but very ill-tempered; so many of them exist) mind away from a project because they are not our favourite? In the end, is it the software that matters or the 'community'?
Unfortunately, the well was poisoned from the beginning. Don't forget that this entire CoC fiasco started because someone barged into an open-source project demanding that a major contributor be ostracized because he said something on Twitter she didn't like. Anyone who sees that happen, and then sees that suddenly the same people who were demanding contributors be chucked out over Twitter arguments two weeks ago are now writing codes of conduct that are getting imposed everywhere, is not going to be inclined to read them in good faith.
Yeah, I was just gonna ask - what does this have to do with GitHub beyond being hosted there?
But now I guess my question shifts to - what does it mean to be a "member" of this group? Is using any of the services provided by member companies binding me to that CoC somehow?
It is terribly worded and quite off-putting. It also has a lot of stuff in it which could be summed up as "be a decent person". Saved space could be used to express specific ideas about desired behavior. Some comments:
Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation
Both too general and too specific. If the goal is to say offensive comments are not permitted then leave it at: "offensive comments". If comments regarding things on the list should be avoided say it. I mean, what about "comments about sexual orientation, mental illnesses etc. of other project members are not permitted". Why is political affiliation on the list I don't really know either. Political affiliation or religion might be completely off-topic for open source projects but putting them in the same list as race/age/body size/physical appearance/gender etc. makes very little sense.
Just don't talk about politics or religion if they are unrelated to the project. Don't talk about diet ideas either when we are at that.
Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
"Don't make personal attacks and avoid personal remarks in general".
Deliberate misgendering
Already covered in "comments about gender/sexual orientation/mental ilnesses/etc. of other members".
Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop
It really doesn't seem to be necessary and makes the whole thing sound not very serious.
Threats of violence, both physical and psychological
Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
Deliberate intimidation
Yeah but make it shorter: "Threats of violence, intimidation or encouraging them".
Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect others from intentional abuse
Actual problem and specific behavior hidden among 20 or so points which could be shortened to 3. More points like that please.
Publication of non-harassing private communication
Another good point: specific behavior which isn't universally understood as undesired and should be specifically included in CoC.
‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
Reverse sexism is sexism. Remove all "reverse" non-sense.
The whole text reads like mumbling on Tumblr.
Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
Yeah, refusal to explain or debate recent fruit diet should be included as well.
Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
All this is covered in point about sexism and discrimination. Cissexist or cisgender aren't actual words in a dictionary and should be avoided in an international CoC.
If someone has been harmed or offended, it is our responsibility to listen carefully and respectfully, and do our best to right the wrong.
This is nonsense. Someone being harmed is a serious issue. Someone being offended - not so much. Mixing the two takes away from serious issues and dilute them in ocean of meaningless words without any specific behaviors attached to them.
Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and technical ability.
Blablablabla, 3rd time in the same text. Just remove the whole section. It doesn't contribute anything.
If you experience or witness unacceptable behavior—or have any other concerns—please report it by contacting us via [email protected]. All reports will be handled with discretion. In your report please include:
"If you experience unacceptable behavior or have any questions, contact us at [email protected]. All reports will be handled with discretion."
The rest of the paragraph is pointless.
Overall it's a terribly written text which is thin on specifics and repeats itself several times.
Maybe ask an actual technical writer to put things together. Make it shorter as well.
The reason so many people are against “Code of Conducts” is because they are not used as a baseline for professional behavior (against which there would also be arguments in Open Source), but as a political cudgel to score points and enact things like: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignat...
But look at some instances for people who have tried to win political arguments by invoking CoC or are lobbying to instate them on Open Source projects.
Uh-oh my wrong-think senses are tingling, he had a different opinion on a social issue on his private Twitter account. How could this possibly be handled? Ignore him, discuss this issue with him or agree to disagree? No, clearly he must be somehow punished for this. Luckily he is apparently contributor to an Open Source project called Opal, so let’s bring it up there and insist: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
“By adopting this Code of Conduct, project maintainers commit themselves to fairly and consistently applying these principles to every aspect of managing this project. Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct may be permanently removed from the project team.
This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community.”
It’s basically a shakedown game for ideological control of a space and seems to work this way:
1) Someone gets offended by something someone in the Open Source community said (usually on Twitter or at an official event), they demand they be removed or otherwise punished for the offending thing.
2) They flood GitHub or similar with demands to remove said individual and/or at least adopt a “Code of Conduct” to prevent such “despicable” behavior like disagreeing in the future, which includes all Social media and official events
3) Once project creators have been socially shamed as some sort of bigots for not wanting to do anything against this sufficiently and the activists got a foot in the door they push a self-formulated “Code of Conduct” on the project like above
4) Then they demand it be upheld and anyone that says anything they deem offensive be removed from the project, if it happens another time they can point to said “Code of Conduct” and ask the project creators to abide. A “safe space” has been created. After this they don’t particularly give a shit if great software engineers get pushed out for disagreeing or the project even fails beyond this point, because said people don’t want to abide by their ideology.
Meritocracy is also generally a trigger-word for these people, they absolutely hate it. Just bring it up in conversation and they reveal themselves and their intentions rather quickly: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug
Another recent issue was GitHub removing a WebM Converter repo because it used the word “retards”, you can see the same individual involved in the first Twitter conflict pop up throughout the comments yelling at other people to leave: https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baa...
I guess the idea is, to prevent (or at least discourage) the usual types of harassment up-front, and deal with the more unusual, rare forms on-the-fly as they appear.
I group "Code of Conduct" with Political Correctness.
For anyone interested in a good read on the subject, check out End of Discussion: How the Left's Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) by Mary Ham and Guy Benson.
It's an excellent read, and shouldn't be too much of a sting to the social outrage panderers out there.
[+] [-] arihant|10 years ago|reply
> We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, "I'll know it when I see it". And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
Yes, they do publish more direct rejection reasons too. But those reasons were enumerated by experience and were repeated over and over -- like religious hate. What I like is they did not start with a committee of people saying, "Let's brainstorm what could go wrong."
To be able to deal with a large fraternity of people, the better approach is to not imagine a nominal case. You have to start openly, then establish a nominal case with experience.
Mark Stehlik once said, "But, you don't make policies around edge cases; you make policies for the nominal case and deal with the edge cases as the exceptions they are." I like this because this enforces a clear intention of being able to deal with edge cases. This is just like Apple's review guidelines. Firstly, they call it guidelines and not code of conduct. That enforces that they are human and flexible.
The problem with having a code of conduct with a large fraternity of people is that you immediately give the community an intent of what you like and what you don't like. That discourages you to find things that you may have liked but now will never get to see. That also gives idiots in a community a chance to police potential talent based on now written code of conduct. That's a grammar-nazi behavior. You may get great English teachers in that community, but I doubt a Hemingway would want anything to do with you.
Also, it has to be unique to each project. Having a blanket open source code of conduct is bad. It follows what you know, and discourages what you don't. So it's essentially an inbreeding system. And if an open source project accepts and celebrates an inbreeding system, then it is just a proprietary company with no money and wget-able code, essentially failing on both ends.
[+] [-] drinchev|10 years ago|reply
In the European-continental legal system, based on Roman law, you have a stress on written law and exceptions are dealt based on similarities with it.
In the Anglo-saxon legal system you have decision based on a set of people ( jury ) and on the practice ( precedent ) in the past.
As a conclusion I would say they both work and both of them have Pros & Cons.
[+] [-] tomp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resu_nimda|10 years ago|reply
The distinction doesn't seem that clear to me. It seems like this committee has gotten together as a response to the well known social issues that have cropped up over and over in specifically the github community and more generally the open source and software development communities.
You bless the Apple rule or guideline around religious hate, but dismiss the entire code of conduct here? Do you have any specific gripes or examples of policies you think are wrong? Could it be that you agree more with the rules Apple has put in place, or at least don't feel as strongly about the rules of the App Store, but maybe feel some distaste for someone trying to "police" this somewhat different arena?
[+] [-] josteink|10 years ago|reply
The only thing this code of conduct does beside state the obvious (behave like adults) is the implied distrust expressed by introducing it in the first place: that without being nannied into proper behaviour, we would all act like vile animals.
Generally I find such nannying deeply offensive.
[+] [-] Svenstaro|10 years ago|reply
And what if I did? Learning to ignore things that could unreasonably sour your mood is a valuable skill in life anyway. Life itself doesn't really have a code like proposed.
[+] [-] EliRivers|10 years ago|reply
It's offensive, to a woman, to ask for some man's permission to talk to her.
Both of these are true. Both of these are false. In order to know what's offensive for any given group, a written summary is extremely helpful. Posit a group of people brought together from around the world from many varied cultures. They have no way to know what is, and is not, acceptable behaviour. Insisting that people just "behave like adults" is no help at all when different societies can have wildly different views of the correct behaviour of adults, and you also get the effect that each of them believes they are behaving like an adult and it's the other people who are wrong. It's a recipe for disaster.
[+] [-] voltagex_|10 years ago|reply
Edit: you edited that comment from a single line since I posted this.
To elaborate:
I think that codes of conduct can be very very useful, especially in resolving disputes or setting community standards. I don't think it's driven out of distrust. High profile harassment on GitHub is not good for GitHub, or the open source community as a whole.
[+] [-] anon3_|10 years ago|reply
What about my feelings? No one's going to care because I'm white and conservative.
[+] [-] zxcvcxz|10 years ago|reply
I can't tell if this is a joke or not.
[+] [-] thomasfoster96|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voltagex_|10 years ago|reply
Bring back the mailing lists.
[+] [-] teamhappy|10 years ago|reply
But seriously, I'm hearing about this for the first time. Can anybody explain to me why this particular CoC is more controversial than any other random CoC?
[+] [-] pervycreeper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plonh|10 years ago|reply
Why would it be a joke to ban annoying personally-targeted behaviors that are unrelated to the work product?
I can't think of a case where discussing cuddling someone is appropriate for a Pull Request, mailing list, or IRC chat
[+] [-] nadams|10 years ago|reply
Really - the only thing you need to remember is - be nice to each other and be patient with those supplying advice and those who are asking for advice. (I have screenshots of discussions that violate this simple fundamental rule). I have flagged 40+ comments (that were accepted and acted upon) on stackoverflow alone of people just being stupid jerks.
The SVN people did a great presentation about how to protect your project from poisonous people [1]. Their story goes is that someone came on the SVN mailing list ranting about how SVN sucks and doesn't have the features he wanted - according to the talk the SVN community was polite and the guy just went away.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q52kFL8zVoM
[+] [-] chippy|10 years ago|reply
This is what troubles me - I was brought up to be nice and behave well to others. We are more alike than different. To say "we should behave different to others who are different" and "we can behave as bad to others because they are different" is wrong and only leads to conflict and harm.
Of course I could have read it wrong and am reading too much into it!
BE KIND
[+] [-] skarap|10 years ago|reply
Or even simpler - don't be an ass/jerk. I guess it's just hard to define...
[+] [-] jameskilton|10 years ago|reply
We live in an age where if an action is not explicitly called out as unacceptable, a significant number of people will perform said action, because if it's not explicitly unacceptable, it's obviously acceptable. In short, if you don't say I can't abuse people, it's ok for me to abuse people.
Oh, and these people will also happily throw around the "First Amendment" as justification, which makes me incredibly sad for the future of our nation.
Solving that behavior though is incredibly difficult.
[+] [-] ehvatum|10 years ago|reply
> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:
> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
> Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”
> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
> Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
> Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
I'd put this in the context of:
* normal people are political and can not understand a technological meritocracy
* the percentage of the github community that is black is much smaller than the percentage of the worldwide or even US population that is black
* the github community is a technological meritocracy and the problem of underrepresentation is external
* not understanding this, normal people would like to impose a political solution, and the form this solution takes is grotesque and offensive to people who do understand meritocracy
[+] [-] josteink|10 years ago|reply
I'm not kidding, and Github had adopted this view as well. [1]
Among many, this CoC is seen as a continuation of this largely feminist agenda. And we don't think it belong here. Open source I'd apolitical, meaning you can avoid political issues entirely in a good and neutral environment.
Why work so hard to make it political? For what gains?
[1] http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug
[+] [-] maxerickson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasfoster96|10 years ago|reply
Sure, the wording of the code of conduct wasn't perfect, but it'd be much nicer if people wanted to see it improved in good faith. There's a lot of ugly things that happen in open source projects, which aren't rosy as some may assume, and the idea that making more people feel welcomed and safe in communities like GitHub can't take precedent over the possibility that a few current contributors will find themselves outside the rules on a regular basis is very worrying.
[+] [-] anatoly|10 years ago|reply
If you try to think about it in a clean-slate way, sort of; forget "oppression", "microagressions against minorities" and all the other politicized jargon that the current version is peppered with, and ask yourself (answers are my opinions, obviously)...
Q. Is there a problem with some open source communities being too hostile, unwelcoming, potentially harassing to many people? A. Yes. Some communities are clearly much more "nice" than others. Some are clearly much more welcoming of newbies, etc.
Q. How does this "bad behavior" manifest itself, in actual open source communities? A. Mostly by how much rudeness and brusqueness some regulars of the community feel they can treat others with. If you hang around on forums, issues, IRC channels etc. enough you can get a clear feel of the "niceness meter". Sometimes there's also explicit misogyny, but that's relatively rare. Other explicit forms of hostility (e.g. racism, transmisogynism) are even rarer to nonexistent. It's simply that if the overall level of niceness is low, then people behave like assholes. Asshole-like behavior is easy to interpret as racism etc.
Q. Is this a huge problem? Should we invest effort in trying to make communities more nice? A. I don't know, seems like a personal call. I personally like the nice and welcoming communities much more, and don't really see the point of being rude and hostile (I think it's counterproductive and not only wrong).
Q. Is a code of conduct a way to achieve that? A. Doubt it. Seems like the norm set by the leaders of the community, together with a few clear examples of "we will not tolerate this kind of behavior", is how it's successfully done. Is there a project which went "not nice -> adopted CoC -> became clearly nicer"? I haven't seen any.
[+] [-] zxcvcxz|10 years ago|reply
You are harassed and have privileges ? I don't care, being harassed is still not fine whether you have privileges or not.
Seems to sum up what most people are complaining about.
[+] [-] blfr|10 years ago|reply
If your parents, teachers, and local cops did not teach you how to conduct yourself, there's absolutely no way a text file will. On the other hand, it will be used to justify all kinds of unnecessary non-technical debates.
[+] [-] jlarocco|10 years ago|reply
Part of the problem may be that there have a been a few high profile cases (posted to HN, etc.) where a bunch of people unrelated to a project (not committers, not forkers, not users) have come in and started big commotions over committer behavior outside of the project (i.e. on their personal twitter account having nothing to do with the project), or have demanded changes like "he" be replaced with "they" or "he/she" in the documentation. Basically, a bunch of political stuff that doesn't have perceived technical value for the project.
It could be that a GitHub endorsed "code of conduct" would give those people more ammunition against projects, and I think that worries people. Most GitHub users aren't big OSS projects, they're just using it to host their hobby projects, they're not out to make political statements.
[+] [-] return0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 13thLetter|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intortus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _mikz|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://todogroup.org/members/
[+] [-] Albright|10 years ago|reply
But now I guess my question shifts to - what does it mean to be a "member" of this group? Is using any of the services provided by member companies binding me to that CoC somehow?
EDIT: Ah, looks like there's answers in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027561
[+] [-] skarap|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaoma|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluecalm|10 years ago|reply
Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation
Both too general and too specific. If the goal is to say offensive comments are not permitted then leave it at: "offensive comments". If comments regarding things on the list should be avoided say it. I mean, what about "comments about sexual orientation, mental illnesses etc. of other project members are not permitted". Why is political affiliation on the list I don't really know either. Political affiliation or religion might be completely off-topic for open source projects but putting them in the same list as race/age/body size/physical appearance/gender etc. makes very little sense. Just don't talk about politics or religion if they are unrelated to the project. Don't talk about diet ideas either when we are at that.
Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
"Don't make personal attacks and avoid personal remarks in general".
Deliberate misgendering
Already covered in "comments about gender/sexual orientation/mental ilnesses/etc. of other members".
Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop
It really doesn't seem to be necessary and makes the whole thing sound not very serious.
Threats of violence, both physical and psychological Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm Deliberate intimidation
Yeah but make it shorter: "Threats of violence, intimidation or encouraging them".
Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect others from intentional abuse
Actual problem and specific behavior hidden among 20 or so points which could be shortened to 3. More points like that please.
Publication of non-harassing private communication
Another good point: specific behavior which isn't universally understood as undesired and should be specifically included in CoC.
‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
Reverse sexism is sexism. Remove all "reverse" non-sense. The whole text reads like mumbling on Tumblr.
Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
Yeah, refusal to explain or debate recent fruit diet should be included as well.
Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
All this is covered in point about sexism and discrimination. Cissexist or cisgender aren't actual words in a dictionary and should be avoided in an international CoC.
If someone has been harmed or offended, it is our responsibility to listen carefully and respectfully, and do our best to right the wrong.
This is nonsense. Someone being harmed is a serious issue. Someone being offended - not so much. Mixing the two takes away from serious issues and dilute them in ocean of meaningless words without any specific behaviors attached to them.
Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and technical ability.
Blablablabla, 3rd time in the same text. Just remove the whole section. It doesn't contribute anything.
If you experience or witness unacceptable behavior—or have any other concerns—please report it by contacting us via [email protected]. All reports will be handled with discretion. In your report please include:
"If you experience unacceptable behavior or have any questions, contact us at [email protected]. All reports will be handled with discretion." The rest of the paragraph is pointless.
Overall it's a terribly written text which is thin on specifics and repeats itself several times. Maybe ask an actual technical writer to put things together. Make it shorter as well.
[+] [-] Globrazu|10 years ago|reply
See also: http://dancerscode.com/blog/why-the-open-code-of-conduct-isn...
But look at some instances for people who have tried to win political arguments by invoking CoC or are lobbying to instate them on Open Source projects.
Here is a case, someone from Italy was openly against reassignment surgery for kids on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krainboltgreene/status/61156951531550720...
Uh-oh my wrong-think senses are tingling, he had a different opinion on a social issue on his private Twitter account. How could this possibly be handled? Ignore him, discuss this issue with him or agree to disagree? No, clearly he must be somehow punished for this. Luckily he is apparently contributor to an Open Source project called Opal, so let’s bring it up there and insist: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
This is fortunately brought up by someone who has already developed their own “Code of Conduct” that would require that it be followed on “public spaces” (like Twitter, Facebook or forums) and if not be removed from the project: http://contributor-covenant.org/ http://where.coraline.codes/coraline_ehmke.pdf
“By adopting this Code of Conduct, project maintainers commit themselves to fairly and consistently applying these principles to every aspect of managing this project. Project maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct may be permanently removed from the project team.
This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community.”
It’s basically a shakedown game for ideological control of a space and seems to work this way:
1) Someone gets offended by something someone in the Open Source community said (usually on Twitter or at an official event), they demand they be removed or otherwise punished for the offending thing.
2) They flood GitHub or similar with demands to remove said individual and/or at least adopt a “Code of Conduct” to prevent such “despicable” behavior like disagreeing in the future, which includes all Social media and official events
3) Once project creators have been socially shamed as some sort of bigots for not wanting to do anything against this sufficiently and the activists got a foot in the door they push a self-formulated “Code of Conduct” on the project like above
4) Then they demand it be upheld and anyone that says anything they deem offensive be removed from the project, if it happens another time they can point to said “Code of Conduct” and ask the project creators to abide. A “safe space” has been created. After this they don’t particularly give a shit if great software engineers get pushed out for disagreeing or the project even fails beyond this point, because said people don’t want to abide by their ideology.
Meritocracy is also generally a trigger-word for these people, they absolutely hate it. Just bring it up in conversation and they reveal themselves and their intentions rather quickly: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug
https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-dehumanizing-myth-of...
Another recent issue was GitHub removing a WebM Converter repo because it used the word “retards”, you can see the same individual involved in the first Twitter conflict pop up throughout the comments yelling at other people to leave: https://github.com/nixxquality/WebMConverter/commit/c1ac0baa...
[+] [-] toufka|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/
[+] [-] stefantalpalaru|10 years ago|reply
So if you are subjected to an unusual type of harassment, you're on your own?
[+] [-] tomp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plonh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] millstone|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbrazil|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] detaro|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon3_|10 years ago|reply
For anyone interested in a good read on the subject, check out End of Discussion: How the Left's Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) by Mary Ham and Guy Benson.
It's an excellent read, and shouldn't be too much of a sting to the social outrage panderers out there.
[+] [-] sagichmal|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]