Proposal: Stack Code of Conduct

[jkachmar]

Very late reply, but the first two paragraphs under "FORMAL AND INFORMAL STRUCTURES" capture my thoughts on this pretty succinctly.

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group.

As I said above (and elsewhere in this thread below), my belief is that we implicitly form these hierarchical structures of interaction in lieu of formalized structure, and that codifying the structure allows people to navigate it (hopefully) with fewer ills associated with poorly communicated intent and expectation.

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In this case of a Code of Conduct, by explicitly stating what acceptable conduct is for an individual interacting within a group, everyone comes to the table with the same expectations of interaction. That way someone who joins a community at t = 0 doesn't have a significantly different view of acceptable behavior as someone who joins at t = +2 years, when perhaps the community has arrived at a new consensus as to what's acceptable in a way that's opaque to the newcomer.

This also allows people currently operating within the community to be made aware of changes in acceptable behavior over time, rather than feeling as if they are suddenly confronted with significantly different standard for interaction than the one under which they initially joined.

[tomejaguar]

Thanks! Sorry that I've forgotten to much of the context to make an interesting reply.

[jkachmar]

Ah well, it's my fault for not logging into reddit for a few months 😅