I wrote a blog post about it but it was used against me by an interviewer at riot games. So I unpublished it.
Essentially it boils down to outlawing vague arrays of behaviour that can apply to essentially anyone and thus must be selectively enforced. I used examples from history surrounding vague laws and the implications that came from that (usually it’s the precursor to huge atrocities or totalitarian regimes. Although I’m certainly not saying they always are).
The wording for the freebsd code of conduct was the most troubling, if you take it at its letter then you basically shouldn’t (or can’t) have non-work discussions because any comment on appearance, lifestyle, diet or even sending “hug” without prior consent is verboten.
It’s also a list of things that are not allowed. Not a way of actually presenting yourself.
Some of the hacker news guidelines are a good example of the inverse: “assume good faith”
The thing is. It comes from a very US-centric political source (geekfeminism) and was barely given any time to be disseminated or discussed, so people were a bit sour- and the handling of criticism only made people more sour
Anyway. This thread doesn’t need us to digress into this topic, and we already have.
I shouldn’t have included that snippet in my comment. I know it’s controversial.
Regarding commenting on other people’s appearance: this is something I find personally super tedious. When I am at work I really don’t want people to start commenting on my appearance, both negatively or positively.
Yeah; without commenting on any specific CoC, I'm broadly quite in favor of officially discouraging using official project channels to discuss or say anything that's not explicitly about the project. It's not just a question of making people uncomfortable, it's just... irrelevant. You think there's an issue with a proposed refactoring? Great, let's hear it. You like someone else's new haircut? That's nice, but it is at best spam in project-specific channels.
Almost all of the CoCs being discussed here explicit make no distinction between project communication channels and general communication channels. In other words a comment you made on a generic social media account will see you removed from a project.
Do you not want it enough that it should be forbidden for anyone?
Maybe I come from a different culture (British) but it’s fairly common for people to find something they like about someone else and then comment on it. That can be appearance or other things.
For instance I was at google next last year and I told someone that they had a really nice t-shirt and enquired about where it was purchased. Did I make them uncomfortable?
If I didn’t, is it forbidden?
Does it matter at all to the progress of a project?
Or in other words, a greater number of laws shifts power to the adjudicator, because eventually everyone is doing something illegal.
And when passes for illegal behavior become the norm for everyday functioning, whoever has the ability to give out passes becomes all-powerful.
Wheaton's law seems to suffice and produce more positive communities. If you find yourself needing to rules-lawyer your contributors -- maybe take a step back and solve some underlying issues instead?
> I wrote a blog post about it but it was used against me by an interviewer at riot games.
Honestly? That sounds like the system is working as intended. I'm not from the US, never been there, and I wouldn't want the author of such a post on my team either.
> Harassment includes but is not limited to: Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, [...].
-- FreeBSD CoC
Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part? I can only assume that they'll be more lenient on disparaging comments that don't reinforce "systemic oppression", i.e. they'll apply "positive discrimination", otherwise it makes no sense to include such an expression in the CoC.
I refuse to participate in any project that discriminates people based on their personal traits, that includes "positive discrimination".
> Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part?
Because systematic oppression is more of a systemic problem. Individual problems are easier to solve than systemic problems, i.e, you don’t need a code of conduct to solve a problem with one or two people in your association. If you make one disparaging comment to someone, we can hope that they take that one comment in stride and move on. If you make a disparaging comment that reinforces systemic oppression, it’s no longer a single comment, but it’s part of a larger problem. The way these comments harm the group is that e.g. in response to low-level misogynistic comments, women silently leave the group. You might not even notice this happening until it is too late.
One of the core freedoms which is protected by the first amendment is the freedom of association, and a key part of that is the freedom not to associate with people you don’t like. If you don’t make an explicit choice about who you want in your association, the choice will be made for you by the most toxic members. So you are basically given a choice between an open code of conduct which people can discuss or comment on, or a secret/hidden network of people who make the decisions without any clear way to understand why they make these decisions or how to appeal them.
> You absolutely need a code of conduct (laws) to solve a dispute between two people. That's the whole point of rules.
This is so counter to my experiences that I have difficulty responding. Have you really never resolved a conflict without appeal to rules? I find this hard to understand.
Rules exist only because systemic problems motivated their creation. You see a sign that says “no dogs” not because dogs aren’t allowed, but because of some systemic problem with dogs in the past. We shouldn’t invent additional rules to solve problems that may or may not exist. That way lies ridiculous bureaucracy.
For example, some organizations (non-profits, HOAs, etc) adopt parliamentary procedure for their meetings. Some don’t. The fact that an organization adopts parliamentary procedures tells you that the specific organization has had problems with people disrupting meetings in the past, or that people in the organization had that problem in other orgs.
> Why even bring in the "systemic oppression" part?
'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted, and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.'
I think things like this are stealth politics and/or propaganda.
> Harassment includes but is not limited to: Comments that reinforce systemic oppression related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, [...].
I translate this as:
> words, words, words, message worded in such a way as to make it easy to accept and/or normalize, words, words, words
Systemic oppression in used in place of a lack of meaningful, quantified, real oppression. When oppression is your cause and you can't find it you image the structures of society itself are composed of it. Never mind that people are literally dying to come to your country to get some of that good systemic, institutional, oppression. When ideology becomes your religion nothing else matters.
Last I saw, the FreeBSD code of conduct is a list of things you can't do, so it's easy to interpret that as "anything that isn't explicitily denied is allowed", and it only disallows negative comments that"reinforce systemic oppression" against certain groups (ignoring that opressed groups can vary across the globe). I don't use FreeBSD, so their CoC has no impact on me, but it's far from neutral.
