Yup. A COC is supposed to codify that so it seems less arbitrary? I think it could be good idea in principle, if only to prevent all this pointless drama. Unfortunately, many of these seem to be pushed by political interests looking to gain power in communities, and that's never good. It seems like the most COC that would ever be needed amounts to:
"Be respectful. If someone violates this, give them the benefit of the doubt and talk to them about it before bringing it to the community. We're all adults here, lets act like it."
Different people have very different expectations of the world. For example, what does it mean to interact with other people like a mature adult? To some, this means being respectful and expecting the same in return. To others, this means "sacking up" or "putting on your big-girl panties" and welcoming as much abuse and invective as anyone can dish out. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a community to take stance on basic things like that, even if it seems obvious to those of us who already agree with the stance they're taking.
I agree, but I think the basic stance doesn't need to be more than "Be respectful and if someone isn't, talk to them about it before bringing it up with the community". Mismatches in what people think respectful means will happen, but I suspect it's impossible to write a COC that eliminates this problem.
It seems better to allow people to say what they want (with the assumption that it's reasonable and respectful) and provide a path for conflict resolution than to try to codify exactly what "respectful and reasonable" means. Both because that's different for every community, and any strict set of rules is ripe for rules lawyering/abuse.
This particular one seems aimed at "forcing" project maintainers to police what people say on Twitter or on blogs. The driving example is some guy that heavily contributes to popular Ruby library (Opal). He wrote anti trans stuff on his Twitter account, and his Twitter profile says he's involved with Opal. Third parties got upset and decided they should kick him off this project. This code of conduct now codifies that, so people can say "ha! You have the responsibility to kick this guy out, yeah!"
This kind of thing isn't that necessary. Though some rules (like, I dunno, no posting dumbshit gifs) might tend to increase the quality of conversation. These particular ones seem more about making someone feel they've made an impact, rather than driving a high quality community. Though the justification will be that by policing everyone's behavior, we'll end up with all sorts of great work being done by people that are too offended to otherwise participate.
More likely, if you want to drive involvement, is to make sure your project itself isn't intimidating for people to start on. Good starter docs, explanations on how to submit changes, volunteers that gently help new comers, etc.
Well, one purpose of the Open Code of Conduct that Atom formerly used is to make sure that the community doesn't tell you to fuck off so long as the're approved Social Justice(tm) nasty insults and personal attacks. This is important because even taking action against someone who's making threats of violence will invoke the ire of social justice activists in the tech community if they're doing it in the name of social justice.
According to some people I have seen argue against a code of conduct they would still accept your work because your insults/attacks have "nothing to do with the code".
I think that's a good idea in principle, but if they're insulting everyone you don't want them to be a part of the community, and rejecting code might be your way of rejecting them from the community. I think it depends on the value of the code as well. If someone who fixed 1000 bugs probably has a little more license to be rude than someone who fixed a typo in the README.
Sure, but that makes it hard to draw a line. I feel the main point with these covenants is to give more or less incontrovertible authority to kick someone out when they violate it. Theoretically it settles a lot of counter-arguments the person might try to make. The convenant still leaves it up to the project leadership to decide whether anything happens regarding a particular reported incident.
Comments
I honestly don't understand why any of this is necessary.
Without the doc, if I hurl nasty insults and personal attacks, the community will tell me to fuck off and not accept my work. Won't they?
Yup. A COC is supposed to codify that so it seems less arbitrary? I think it could be good idea in principle, if only to prevent all this pointless drama. Unfortunately, many of these seem to be pushed by political interests looking to gain power in communities, and that's never good. It seems like the most COC that would ever be needed amounts to:
"Be respectful. If someone violates this, give them the benefit of the doubt and talk to them about it before bringing it to the community. We're all adults here, lets act like it."
Different people have very different expectations of the world. For example, what does it mean to interact with other people like a mature adult? To some, this means being respectful and expecting the same in return. To others, this means "sacking up" or "putting on your big-girl panties" and welcoming as much abuse and invective as anyone can dish out. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a community to take stance on basic things like that, even if it seems obvious to those of us who already agree with the stance they're taking.
I agree, but I think the basic stance doesn't need to be more than "Be respectful and if someone isn't, talk to them about it before bringing it up with the community". Mismatches in what people think respectful means will happen, but I suspect it's impossible to write a COC that eliminates this problem.
It seems better to allow people to say what they want (with the assumption that it's reasonable and respectful) and provide a path for conflict resolution than to try to codify exactly what "respectful and reasonable" means. Both because that's different for every community, and any strict set of rules is ripe for rules lawyering/abuse.
This particular one seems aimed at "forcing" project maintainers to police what people say on Twitter or on blogs. The driving example is some guy that heavily contributes to popular Ruby library (Opal). He wrote anti trans stuff on his Twitter account, and his Twitter profile says he's involved with Opal. Third parties got upset and decided they should kick him off this project. This code of conduct now codifies that, so people can say "ha! You have the responsibility to kick this guy out, yeah!"
This kind of thing isn't that necessary. Though some rules (like, I dunno, no posting dumbshit gifs) might tend to increase the quality of conversation. These particular ones seem more about making someone feel they've made an impact, rather than driving a high quality community. Though the justification will be that by policing everyone's behavior, we'll end up with all sorts of great work being done by people that are too offended to otherwise participate.
More likely, if you want to drive involvement, is to make sure your project itself isn't intimidating for people to start on. Good starter docs, explanations on how to submit changes, volunteers that gently help new comers, etc.
Well, one purpose of the Open Code of Conduct that Atom formerly used is to make sure that the community doesn't tell you to fuck off so long as the're approved Social Justice(tm) nasty insults and personal attacks. This is important because even taking action against someone who's making threats of violence will invoke the ire of social justice activists in the tech community if they're doing it in the name of social justice.
According to some people I have seen argue against a code of conduct they would still accept your work because your insults/attacks have "nothing to do with the code".
I think that's a good idea in principle, but if they're insulting everyone you don't want them to be a part of the community, and rejecting code might be your way of rejecting them from the community. I think it depends on the value of the code as well. If someone who fixed 1000 bugs probably has a little more license to be rude than someone who fixed a typo in the README.
Sure, but that makes it hard to draw a line. I feel the main point with these covenants is to give more or less incontrovertible authority to kick someone out when they violate it. Theoretically it settles a lot of counter-arguments the person might try to make. The convenant still leaves it up to the project leadership to decide whether anything happens regarding a particular reported incident.