You are arguing in favour of a code of conduct, while I am worried about this (kind of) of code of conduct. It’s worth considering what a code of conduct would have looked like 5, 10 or even 50 years ago. What values appear timeless and which appear a product of the current culture? If I do that, I find that the language of many codes of conduct, such as this one, is clearly politicised, explicitly addressing the concerns of a small vocal subculture, instead of generally addressing the concerns a code of conduct should address.
A bit offtopic:
if you’re going to quote their perspective, you may want to dig a bit deeper to see how frequently this @elia actually tweeted about transgender people, in what language and addressed to who. You’ll find that someone must really have paid attention to the twitter stream of someone they disliked, probably in some vain effort to try and convince them they were wrong. Who was being the harasser here?
Let me be clear that I thoroughly disagree with many of the beliefs of this @elia, including this one. They are a conservative Christian, vocally against abortion in their twitter stream, retweeting awful supposed arguments against abortion. I find repeating such lies very offensive. Yet I don’t call for his removal from some OSS project and I don’t think any code of conduct should lead to project leaders feeling forced to remove him from their project.
In my opinion this is a core problem in that case. I would ask person to either stop making such remarks or stop using the project name as a way to advertise themselves (especially in non-project-approved mindset).
Yes, the reply was awful and dismissive, however there is another factor to consider there.
Some people tend not to care that not everyone is native english speaker and they can be (which I find irony in which) let’s say… lacking in communication department.
When you do not know English well enough to make nice, soft and flowery elaborate and why you disagree you tend to respond in dry, simple and short phrases. And it itches people who are natives in that language. They perceive that as a lack of empathy where there is actually lack of language skill.
On top of that, even if someone is native, it’s naive to assume they are going to have great written communication skills. This I speak from my personal experience. I’ve entered multiple seminars and trainings, soaking thousands of dollars in order to improve both my oral and written communication skills and still, even though I sometimes tend to sit hours checking on a single e-mail, people think I’m heartless asshole prior to meeting me in person. Working with multi-lingual people when I get e-mail containing only “just do it”, I’m not perceiving this as a irritated order, but rather “That’s all I wanted”.
If someone expects to be mocked they will find a way in which they are mocked, even if it’s not the other person intention to do so.
Indeed, but I say - let’s check it out if it works before shoving it out in people faces. Because the line of argument is the same as for homeopathy “medicines”. They are said to work along placebo. But when placebo is not there, than having this “medicine” have no effect at all. So in order to get healthier you need placebo, not - so called; expensive - medicine, that is watered down to a point it doesn’t really make any impact whatsoever.
@codinghorror I think we have to agree to disagree on the CoC, but I still would like to have your thoughts on a hypothetical question.
Say, for instance, that you used your twitter account to root for the death penalty. You live in California, right? The death penalty is, while under heavy debate, still legal in your state, so that’s not completely unthinkable, and it’s not illegal in any way.
Say, that you proudly proclaim your contribution to an OSS project in your twitter profile.
Should you be banned from that OS project if someone demanded it?
What if that OS project was based in The Netherlands. The death penalty is illegal there, and it’s considered one of the enlightenment values not have a death penalty.
Should you be banned from that OS project if someone demanded it?
What if Elia lived in a country where transgenders are illegal? (He does not, by the way, he is from Italy)
If not, why? How do you interpret the convenant in that case?
If so? Do you see that as being civil?
So are the vows you take when you marry someone. Boring and repetitive, yet somehow, people think these generic institutional boilerplate marriage vows matter. That’s because they do matter.
That’s ironic, considering the lack of rules is what brought us to this point. There’s no rule against being an asshole, so why not?
Not the same thing; raging against transgender people targets a specific class of person entirely based on their physical characteristics. A better analogy is, “what if I used my Twitter account to root for stormfront.org?”
Regardless, people facing the death penalty are unlikely to be able to contribute to your open source project. Transgender people absolutely could.
But does it have to be a “copy pasta”? Why not ask people to sit down and figure those thing on their own, so that they can say they made it, that it’s close to their hearts and they stand strongly behind it. Not just downloaded it because it’s cool thing to do.
Jeff, your tone-policing is irrelevant, your attempts to call attention to the nature of the political view are irrelevant, and your complaints about how the original issue was dismissed are irrelevant. Once again, the question is this: is it okay for someone to try to kick a contributor off a project for a political belief he held, in his own time, on his own personal space, where he was not speaking for the project?
The way you’ve repeatedly evaded this question rather than straightforwardly saying something like “even though I think Codes of Conduct are a good idea, and I disagree with the views which were expressed, trying to get him kicked out of the project for that is bad behavior and I don’t approve of it” kind of tells me all I need to know about what these Codes of Conduct are really for. They’re for enforcing currently popular political views in formerly apolitical spaces. That’s all.
Literally speaking, no, they don’t matter. If you claim your spouse as an exemption on your tax return but you didn’t send the IRS your vows, they’re not going to care… but if you don’t have your marriage license, they’ll hunt you down. I don’t think the marriage vow metaphor works very well… codes of conduct are not vows. They don’t carry near the same kind of gravity or emotional connotation, and they aren’t so personally effecting.
I think a better comparison to make would be to driving laws. Don’t break the speed limit, don’t run red lights, don’t hit other cars, yada yada yada. When you get behind the wheel, knowledge and acceptance of those laws come implicit with your driver’s license… even if you’re driving in a different state, you’re expected to know them and are treated like it. If you break any of them, someone may report your license plate, you may get pulled over, or you may get away with it… whether you broke it willfully or ignorantly… and all this results in a generally safe, effective, and balanced environment, with a few bad eggs and a system for taking care of them. This dynamic and pattern, involving a large number of people for societal safety reasons rather than only two people for emotional reasons, is a much closer fit to the role CoCs play. Without laws, our streets would be utter chaos and undrivable… but I don’t think we need billboards of the rules of the road posted every couple miles.
Forget all of that though… consider this. This post has 3.3k views as of this writing, which seems about average, looking at the counts of your other posts… except it was posted 8 days ago, not years. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how insane of a rate that is… people clearly care about this issue, a lot. And yet, nearly every single person in this comment thread is arguing against the position you’ve taken here… and most of them are very well reasoned and articulate, too. In fact, the only person you’ve had to scold for bickering so far was one of the very few who’s in your own camp! The people who don’t want a default CoC being the most polite and respectful (despite being in opposition), and the ones who do needing correction… what?
Shouldn’t all of this tell you something? I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest you’re wrong, of course, especially on something as wholly subjective as this, but… do you never doubt yourself, man??
The thing about vows is presumably you know that person you promise to have and to hold so your idea of to have and to hold is the same as theirs.
With a Coc you don’t. So I’m blindly marrying myself to a stranger and assuming they have the same idea of what trolling means and what “The use of sexualized language or imagery” and that they are in fact honest in their concerns. Like for example is using the word “Fuck” sexualized imagery, to some it is and it really depends on context. Worst yet, I’m putting their opinion over those I’ve worked with for years and know for a fact are very caring people.
It also presumes all people when they want to punch someone verbally will do so in a manner that violates the Coc. If you’ve got a parent that’s a politician, you know how to be dismissive of people without appearing so. Nothing hurts more than being verbally abused and knowing that person even if that person did it intentionally, you can’t point anywhere in the Coc where they went wrong. In fact they probably laugh, look I called you an idiot, but I did it in the confines of the Coc, yeh for me.
I fear a similar thing occurring to the software community if widespread, generalized codes of conduct are adopted. By virtue of explicitly detailing out publically what’s prohibited, you’re also communicating what’s not prohibited… which, in the case of the Contributor Covenant, conspicuously omits ‘criminal history’ and ‘political beliefs’ from its list of “protected” characteristics. People will interpret that as encouragement to skirt around just outside of being an “official” douche without crossing the very well defined dotted line, turning the ecosystem into an even more hostile place.
That is what I fear too. In thinking about Cocs more though, Jeff has sold me on them. My issue is I don’t like the Cocs out there because they seem to do little to protect the very people I care most about - those who want to contribute to my project. In thinking about it more, here is what I would want a Coc to say, which I think the projects I’ve felt most welcomed in followed instinctively.
Like the technical community as a whole, our team and community is made up of a mixture of professionals and volunteers with vast differences of opinions and who come from many walks of life who have come together with the common goals of making a great piece of software and helping others use this software.
We value contributions from everybody. By contributions we mean code, documentation, project outreach in form of setting up conferences or working groups, package maintenance, answering and asking questions in our forums related to our mission, and providing bug reports.
If you have contributed to our project, then we consider you a member
of our extended family and value your opinions and concerns very highly.
If you are new to our community, we will try hard to make this a very welcoming experience.
We want everyone entering our community willing to help out to feel welcomed.
To maintain and encourage a welcoming environment we ask all community members to follow these general guidelines:
If someone asks a question, even if it’s one that you think has an obvious answer, either provide an example or a link to the section of the manual that covers it.
If you feel a person does not provide enough information for someone to help, do not ignore them. Be courteous and say “It would help if you told us what you have tried, what version you are running, etc”
If you feel a person is asking a question unrelated to problems the community space tries to solve, point them to a different forum that may better answer their questions. For example if someone submits a help request to the bug tracker, simply tell them the user forums is a better space and that what they are experiencing does not sound like a bug.
We understand that through no fault of anybody, a person may make a comment they consider harmless that others find very offensive or makes another feel small. As project maintainers
we will monitor these and gently call people out on them even if they are a member of our maintainer group.
By gentle call out, we mean something like “I think what X was trying to say was that you need to do this”.
We expect of everyone in our spaces to try their best to do the same in a kind and gentle manner. If you feel it’s just a minor offense and the person didn’t mean harm by it, simply ignore it unless the pattern of talk continues. If the person continues or they say something you feel is very offensive or degrading to another, tell the project maintainer preferably off-list and we will talk with the person to affect a change in their behavior or kick them out if we determine behavior change is not possible.
If you feel harassed, please notify the project maintainer group at …
We do not tolerate those we feel are trying to derail our project by injecting
discussions that have little to do with the mission of our project.
If you have contributed nothing to our project and you make demands for change, we will try to tell you that kindly
and request you to change or leave.
We promise as project maintainers to apply the same standards on ourselves as we apply to others.
I find your responses pretty disheartening. They do not address the gist what is being said and only quote some single line or paragraph with which issue is taken. They demand “Show me you are right”, instead of saying “I understand what you are saying, but I’m not convinced, can you explain further?”. Are you even interested in people with opposing opinions explaining why they have an opposing opinion? Because this is not discourse: this is arguing over details.
I will nevertheless answer your question, though it would have been more instructive if you had attempted to answer it yourself. Two prime examples:
ten years ago, nobody would have centred a code of conduct on having a ‘harassment-free experience’. That is oddly specific language, tied to a specific cultural movement of the past few years. Subsequently, examples of ‘unacceptable behaviour’ are given, implying these are forms of ‘harassment’. That’s quite a stretch of the meaning of ‘harassment’.
nobody would have explicitly mentioned ‘body size’ or ‘gender identity or expression’ and certainly not before “race, ethnicity, age, religion, or nationality”. The most common problems are discrimination based on gender, race/ethnicity/nationality, sexuai orientation and age. The remainder can be lumped under ‘or any other personal preference or characteristic whose details are irrelevant to the goals of this project’. An important phrase that is now missing.
There are other problems. Words are powerful. Details matter. I do not think this code of conduct is a good one.
Sometimes, when people aren’t responding to your opinions, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t disagree. It may mean they’re intentionally avoiding you because of your opinions.
I’m responding here as a courtesy because I wrote this blog entry and I truly want to understand how anyone can object to a Code of Conduct, which to me personally seems an unambiguously good thing from every perspective.
I think that’s great, and the points of others to make it your own document – much like coming up with your own wedding vows, which as I recall, my wife and I did, and I actually remember getting compliments on the vows – is a great way to look at this.
Words are hard, and good boilerplate exists for a reason. People need reminders.
If the boilerplate bothers you, make it your own and capture the sentiment, which is that we should all treat each other with respect. Hopefully everyone can agree on that.
Fine, then propose and promote better alternatives.
This holds true for both sides. I, personally, took part in this discussion mainly because there is no name-calling and argument-backed conversation. I know this not because welcome message/CoC told me so, but from reading your prior posts and prior discussions here. This topic is important to me, and I’m afraid, that - crowd that is very vocal, is going to push their politics everywhere they appear, as for instance in issue #176 of awesome-django: https://archive.is/vtv5X - a scenario, that I’m truly afraid of.
Rosario gave argument - he is minority as well, which might had gave him possibility to defend. But what I - a white, young, privileged male could raise? Especially, since - as a white, young, male I can only reason with merit, which is critiqued by very own Contributor Covenant website. What options I have beside that? Should I spend days explaining that I didn’t accepted pull request, because it’s not part of grand design that I have in back of my mind for the project and not because of contributor race/sex/religion?
That’s why I rather not tangle myself into politics and stuff like this. I perceive CoC as a part of politics, which while present everywhere in life, but I don’t really see the point of it being in a strictly technical environment, where people are trying to produce new technologies for well being and knowledge of other (even open sourcing it).
Jeff, don’t get me wrong, I’m your reader for a long time and even in a slightest I don’t doubt you have only wellness of people in mind and on surface - that’s what Code of Conduct seem. I also know that this is not something people change opinion on, and I’m not trying to do so. I want to provide argument against perception of CoC as unambiguously good thing.
And yet, the temperature is exactly what you had shown. Instead of coming here and arguing in civilized, moderated by you, atmosphere some people decided to judge this comment thread as horrible. How can I argue with that, as they haven’t even granted us their presence here?
I think that I cannot give any more original arguments beyond what I given right now.
I’ll take my horrible self elsewhere.
Jeff, I agree and thank you for providing this avenue for us to discuss and let out our frustrations. I think in general people for and against Cocs have good intentions. I think both sides though are speaking from a point of anger and allowing our anger to define us.
I felt alienated by the Cocs I’ve seen because I perceived them as trying to strip away my individuality and bucketing me into some convenient group. As someone who never thought my physical shell defined me, this felt very degrading. I was also appalled that everyone seemed to agree with this stereotyping and felt they villainized the minority of us that did not which left me feeling very angry.
Then I heard this podcast that my friend Andrea (@42aross twitter handle) sent along Episode 576: When Women Stopped Coding : Planet Money : NPR , and I began to understand the anger that the other side must feel and how anger defines both of us.
See as a young kid, I had an older brother and I would steal his toys. My parents would say to my brother “Learn to share your toys”. Later on when he grew out of his toys, they would belong to me. So in short even in advanced classes filled with people who looked nothing like me, I felt at home, I felt confidence, my knowledge would carry me. People respected me for what I knew and looked up to me.
I was also very focused on the things that interested me, which was very few. This meant I lacked social skills, sucked at sports, and felt very uncomfortable around most groups of people who viewed me as foreign. I felt isolated when no one wanted me on their team. My outlet was BBSs which the fact that you couldn’t see the person on the other side was a feature. It meant you were forced to see the other people for who they were inside and judge them only by what they typed and you began to understand that as individuals each expressed themselves differently. Many were socially awkward people like myself, so did not have mouth filters and always told the truth. If someone didn’t like you, you knew it and moved on and that was great, cause you didn’t need to waste time realizing your time was futile.
So those who share my experiences, the idea you would even consider what someone looks like or even care what other interests they have when determining if they share the same love for a project that you do is absurd.
Since you went to the effort of quoting them, do you agree with these random folks on Twitter who are slamming the people who read your blog and talking about how awful they are? You know, your loyal audience? The people who have been following you for years, even if, like me, they only just started commenting now? And to be clear, you’re not going to be able to guilt-trip us into agreeing with you now by pointing to some strangers we’ve never heard of sneering about us on Twitter. It doesn’t work that way.
(Not to mention that the disagreements here, while a bit sharp, have been generally civil and entirely lacking in any kind of prejudicial comments. Apparently the CoC supporters can’t even handle such mild disagreements, which doesn’t speak well for how they’d address real-world conflicts under their CoCs.)
Well, it’s apparently not my opinions they’re avoiding… the latest tweet here was 7AM on the 9th, and I hadn’t even seen the article until 6:30PM on the 9th (and my first post was considerably later than that). But even if that weren’t the case… how am I supposed to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t say anything? How am I supposed to know they even exist, let alone have contrasting opinions to me?
As a courtesy?! If you truly wanted understanding, you wouldn’t consider your participation in this thread a “courtesy”. That is incredibly insulting.
Also, to be clear, I am not objecting to a code of conduct. I’m objecting to this one in particular, and ones with similar verbiage and similar intent (because I do not believe the contributor covenant, Open Code of Conduct, or any others that carry this tone, are genuinely intended to promote harmony in the slightest).
Words are not hard, words are very easy… empathy is hard, and people who need reminders to be empathetic aren’t the type who’d be likely to heed them anyway.
I absolutely agree on that… I just wish that meant something. Because how I feel you’ve treated the other posters and myself in this thread is much closer to disdain than respect. Which, ironically, actually illustrates the general attitude of this code of conduct and the social movement behind it perfectly, to me - “Say one thing, communicate another”.
Reddiquette, The Escapist’s, and, hell, even Discourse’s own CoC are all excellent examples of how this kind of stuff should be written. They are appropriately vague, each include specific details important to their community, don’t attempt to impersonate rules, and, most importantly, aren’t blatantly designed to serve the will of any one person or group. The contributor covenant is poisonous, and despicably corrupt.
Anyrate that’s why I don’t bother wasting my breath with these close minded people. If you say something that iis not in agreement with their point of view it’s because you only have opinions and not experience.
That seems pretty pointless if someone with your fame supports this one. The little time I have to spend on this is probably spent more effectively trying to convince you or your readers to choose a better code of conduct.
Jeff, I would but what could little old me accomplish against a mob flashing their mirrors in my face. Oh look at me I am blinded by their mirrors. You know why I won’t. Because any Coc I write would a) be ignored or b) get me on their hit list.
I think that’s great, and the points of others to make it your own document – much like coming up with your own wedding vows, which as I recall, my wife and I did, and I actually remember getting compliments on the vows – is a great way to look at this.
If you truly wanted understanding, you wouldn’t consider your participation in this thread a “courtesy”. That is incredibly insulting.
I am blinded by their mirrors. You know why I won’t. Because any Coc I write would a) be ignored or b) get me on their hit list.