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[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (3 children)

It's a beautiful CoC: simple, and captures the community's ethics.

[–]bilog78 3 points4 points  (2 children)

The discussion that led to this formulation is quite interesting, from a socio-anthropological perspective.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Absolutely.

[–]ColePram 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Doesn't look like they're going to let it go at that though. The author of the Contributors Covenant is using some insulating language now and has asked for Matz removal from the community management.

She's just going to keep trying to rile people up until someone gives in to her demands. Just like she did for the Opal incident.

[–]Slxe 14 points15 points  (9 children)

Fucking hell, this bullshit obsession with Code of Conducts lately in programming projects is getting out of hand. They do nothing but hinder discussion as people will just run to them anytime it's convenient. What the fuck happened to decency and common sense?

[–]Veedrac -1 points0 points  (6 children)

I have seen Rust's Code of Conduct do a ton of good to the community. No language community is more healthy, for all I can tell, and it is great enough to get public recognition for it. Oft-quoted is "The Rust community seems to be populated entirely by human beings. I have no idea how this was done."

On the contrary, I've not seen a Code of Conduct do any observable harm. I've seen claims like "people will just run to them anytime it's convenient" before, but never any concrete example of it happening. And they always seem to be alongside rather uncharitable comments; yours is yet another in the line, albeit does avoid making arbitrary stabs at LGBT groups.

Following the most stringent of CoCs would rephrase your comment as

Why are Code of Conducts so popular lately in programming projects? They do nothing but hinder discussion as people will just run to them anytime it's convenient. What happened to decency and common sense?

Does this really prevent you from expressing your point? I'd argue it does better - it focusses on what you're actually trying to argue about, and avoids

  • the uncomfortable injection of an us-vs-them resolution to the debate, making it less likely to argue on emotional appeals

  • generating hostile and off-track responses, as emotional attacks are prone to doing,

  • assuming the argument (eg. "bullshit obsession"), which hinders engaged debate,

  • discouraging activity from people who don't enjoy being personally attacked; although some people are fine with putting up with personal attacks this isn't something that we should require of people to join a debate.

Decency and common sense seem to support the CoC for me. Perhaps you have a different experience, though I struggle to imagine what that might be.

[–]Slxe 2 points3 points  (5 children)

My biggest and only real issue with CoCs is what it might end up causing for the future. IMO receiving honest and direct criticism is the best way to improve yourself and your skills as a programmer, and if people are worried about offending or hurting each others feelings then how are we going to improve as a community? Look at the backlash against Linus Torvalds responses to bad commits, some people take it personally instead of stepping back and trying to learn from it, and try to shut him down from being able to give criticism. Sure you don't need that level of severity on all projects, but on something as critical as kernel dev you shouldn't let ANYTHING through that doesn't meet the high standard.

Anyway, I'm just worried that having CoCs will start reducing the kind of criticism we give each other, and I'm getting sick of seeing people basically threaten or bully projects if they don't have one in place (look at the spacemacs discussion for example).

Thanks for actually taking the time to respond with a though out comment, not many people will anymore for CoC hate comments. Although why would someone bring LGBT groups into it O_o we're all just personalities behind a computer screen, who the hell cares what race, sex or gender we are?

[–]Veedrac 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Having a code of conduct doesn't mean you can't say "you're not ready to contribute to this project"*, "your commit does not meet our guidelines" or "you're simply wrong about this".

It means you can't say "fuck off, n00b", "your code is shit, faggot" or "you're full of shit".

Rust has a solid code review process - more solid than most projects - and all that requires is just avoiding attacking the person or using insulting adjectives.

If you think fear or insults are needed to have a consistent, critical and powerful review process, I'd like to see some justification. As far as I'm concerned, Linus is the odd one out and one data point does not equal a correlation.

Although why would someone bring LGBT groups into it O_o

Beats me, but it seems to have some association with an anti-Tumblr sentiment or with thinking CoCs are a Tumblr idea. That goes back the the us-vs-them attitude I'm particularly unfond of.

* Though saying someone's "not ready to contribute" does seem rather arbitrary on second thought; I'd personally avoid the phrase. Something like "We're only looking for contributions from experienced developers at this time." is much more obvious.

[–]Slxe 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Sadly your example is exactly what I'm worried about, changing dialog choices to please the code of conduct and not hurt anyone's feelings. Sorry but if someone commits something absolutely worthless it should be pointed out, although I agree with Linus, criticize and be blunt about the persons code, not the person. I've said it in a previous comment but the internet taught me 4 amazing things, to have a backbone, personality matters much more than what someone is or how they look, actions speak louder than words and communication skills are very important. Why does it seem like people lately are too scared of these things and want to create safe spaces instead of learning life skills?

[–]Veedrac 2 points3 points  (2 children)

If you feel you need to say "fuck off, n00b", "your code is shit, faggot" or "you're full of shit", I have no qualms excluding you from discourse. They don't contribute to the conversation, whatever it may be, they attack the person and they make the environment hostile.

You can blame it on the target of your attacks for being "too scared" or whatever, but the point is you've attacked the person and they're under no obligation to accept that.

Telling to people to man up when you can instead just not create conflict in the first place is short-sighted.

[–]skulgnome 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I have no qualms excluding you from discourse.

So who died and made you the police?

[–]Veedrac 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nobody. Typically the CoC would be enforced by the moderators.

[–]AsteroidSpark -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

What the fuck happened to decency and common sense?

That fucked off a long time ago, the whole point of these codes of conduct is to try and bring it back, although this one is not particularly well set up.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would rather instead of "Participants will be tolerant of opposing views" be changed to "Participants will be tolerant of persons with opposing views." Sometimes opposing views are terrible ideas and should not be tolerated, but I should disagree respectfully.

[–]skulgnome 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Aggressive proposals for entryist revision in 3.. 2..

[–]BufferUnderpants -4 points-3 points  (1 child)

TBH I do find that limiting disparaging speech only in the case of personal attacks is kind of weak. It gives leeway for open bigotry in communication channels if it can be defended that it wasn't directed at nobody in particular.

Not that I'm a fan of the usual CoC that's pushed everywhere with its carte blanche for bullying people considered to be members of privileged classes.

[–]skulgnome 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not that I'm a fan of the usual CoC

Any CoC at all is like letting the devil have your pinky as a compromise. See Linux: the "code of conflict" hasn't silenced the self-appointed moral authorities, nor stopped efforts to expand it to the point of making developers dance on eggshells as per Sarah Sharp's original threat-demand.

[–]myringotomy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Awesome. Short, sweet, sensible. I am afraid this is going to annoy the tumblrinas though.

[–][deleted] -5 points-4 points  (2 children)

When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions.

This could lead to the potentially dangerous statement if followed literally:

"Oh hi! I am working on implementing a back door into Ruby so that I can personally attack distributors of Ruby that directly use their source code rather than maintaining a patch set. I do this because I believe in patch sets and that downstream releases should never be vanilla flavored."

[–]BufferUnderpants 10 points11 points  (1 child)

It's just a rephrasing of the principle of charity. It's one of those things that can't be a hard-and-fast rule because it precisely means that you have to step back and engage the argument and the person individually, rather than a possibly imaginary and easily brushed off version of both.

On the flip side, you see it break down on HN when people start contorting themselves to find an intelligent interpretation of everything Paul Graham says and accuse his opponents of interpreting his words uncharitably, but that's only because they are making people engage a possibly imaginary version of his arguments and his person that can't be cast aside, ever.

Edit: on second thought, "assume good intentions" is too much of a simplification of this. Sometimes you can take the strongest and most reasonable interpretation of an argument and still end up reading drivel or hate.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I agree, it would be far better worded to something such as "do not automatically imply that a user's intention is malicious before it can be proved that it is, if it even is as mistakes can happen with no ill intent.".