Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference.
The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.
Likewise, for more mundane stuff, it's all common sense. Don't be obnoxious, rude, make people uncomfortable, etc. If you are doing that, they'll ask you to leave and ban you from future attendance if it's severe. You shouldn't need a CoC to know that and they don't need one to do it.
Consider something that's not covered by their CoC. Maybe I bring my pet skunk with me and they don't have a provision about skunks in their CoC. Are they now powerless? No, they're going to do what's sensible and ask me to not have the skunk, and if I say "Your code of conduct doesn't prohibit skunks" they're going to ask me to leave.
Codes of conduct are silly. They create these dumb regulations and committees for no real reason and create the apparatus for mistakes like these.
I'm actually shocked that Jeremy supported and still supports codes of conduct. He seems like a smart guy and they're obviously a bad idea.
"Why should rules exist? We should just operate on intuitive feelings of what is or isn't acceptable all the time."
Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse. In fact, you can easily read this post as a pro-COC argument.
After all, the author is able to make a really strong case that he didn't really infringe on any part of the COC, and that the COC was poorly constructed to begin with. With no COC, he'd have to just be saying "I think Numfocus exercised bad judgement," which is a much harder argument to make since it's so subjective.
We're professionals. Rules shouldn't be implicit in professional environments. Explicit rules are easier to use, and they make it easier to hold the authorities accountable for misusing them.
Because, at least in the case of CoCs in open source, the sorts of people most vocally pushing to implement and enforce them are almost invariably of the sort most likely to use them as political weapons and enforce them lopsidedly.
Exactly. 99% of the time, CoC gets ignored. The 1% of the time it is exercised, it's because some random person with a chip on their shoulder from Twitter is looking for blood.
"Boot this developer from your project because they made a remark on social media I was offended by."
The problem here, though, is inconsistent enforcement. Assuming this side of the story is correct, he didn't actually violate the CoC at all, and the committee he spoke to did.
The problem here is not the CoC, it's that the organisation doesn't enforce the CoC, violates it, and punishes people who didn't violate it. They might as well not have a CoC in that case.
His point, at least as I grok it, is that the coc can be perfect in wording, but due to the nature and incentives of its birth, he sees it as more a weapon that a rigorous and fair standard.
Because the formalization is "fake" -- it's still just as poorly defined and arbitrary as it was before (as social convention), and just as poorly defensible as it was before.
It just gives power to the accuser to say "Please refer to article 3 section 2 for compliant behavior. BANNED". But unlike a proper ruleset, the defense cannot do the same, because there's no actual definition of rude specified that I could say "In fact, I did none of those things, your honor"... and the accuser must iteratively prove his case. Instead I have to say "Im not being rude", and then it becomes a he said, she said, but with the accuser weilding "formal rules".
These are rules in the form of "don't be someone I don't like", and at best follows the fashion "the accused is presumed guilty until shown otherwise"
Besides the reams of examples of CoC's being abused and arbitrarily enforced like the one in the attached article you mean? I've never even heard of a CoC being applied in any way except a petty, bureaucratic way.
Guidelines != CoC. People break the HN guidelines all the time and it is fine, they are there to help make people become better contributors and not to punish people.
I'm genuinely not seeing the distinction here. I can be warned, banned, or suspended for violating the guidelines, I can be warned, banned, or suspended for violating the CoC. Both spell out values (be kind) as well as disallow certain actions (don't call names).
The main difference I see is that the CoC also spells out enforcement actions and processes, while the enforcement process for the guidelines is whatever dang feels like it is. In other words from my perspective the CoC is less arbitrary.
HN guideline is a set policies and conflict resolution document. The purpose of those are to define the community focus and get people back to cooperation if members start to falls into argument and conflict.
An CoC on the other hand is exclusively about removal of members to achieve additional goals set by the CoC. It identify who is an "other" and gives power to a small group to opaquely remove the individual without constraints or liability. It also usually supersede any existing rules, goals and processes already existing in the community.
The distinction is thus in purpose, methods and results. If we imagine that we replaced the articles CoC with the HN guideline, we can read this: "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument". The Code of Conduct Enforcement Team could have talked to both Jeremy Howard and Joel Grus and steered the discussing on the factually arguments in favor or against the use of a Jupyter Notebook. They could have reminded both speakers to assume good faith, respond to the strongest plausible interpretation, and avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. It could remind them to focus on the purpose of the community, such as having a curious conversations with thoughtful and substantive comments.
Instead they exercised the power granted by the CoC.
> An CoC on the other hand is exclusively about removal of members to achieve additional goals set by the CoC.
Source? It seems like your assigning motives to others rather than listening to what they have to say.
> Instead they exercised the power granted by the CoC.
If you actually read the parent you'd know they explicitly did not follow the CoC. The CoC sets out a process very much like the one you described in which the enforcement team is actually supposed to have a discussion with everyone involved and get all accounts of what happened. The fact they ignored the CoC isn't a problem with the CoC, it's a problem with the human beings not following the process.
Dang could start banning people at random, that wouldn't mean the HN guidelines are bad, it would mean dang decided not to follow the rules and has the power to do so.
Let say the enforcement team had a discussion with everyone involved and got all accounts of what happened. What would the purpose and motive be? To collect evidence, to determine if a person is guilty or not, and to measure out punishment if guilty.
The goal of conflict resolution is not about determining who is guilty and measuring out punishment, but rather to deescalate situation and fixing problems before there is a need for someone to be punished. The best moderation are those that are not seen because intervention occurred early and without escalating something small into something big.
The primary evidence for this exist in the names and words used in the CoC. A Enforcement Team is distinctly different than a Conflict Resolution team. A group full of mediators is different from a group full of enforcers. Enforcement is a different word from moderation.
If a CoC were focused on conflict resolution and had teams full of mediators, and where enforcement only came afterward when the mediators has failed and there exist documented proof of failed deescalation, only then would we have a situation where a CoC and a guideline would be much more similar in purpose, method and result. In which case the CoC enforcement would likely be called under a different name.
I think you're commenting primarily on the first, second, third instance of breaking the guidelines. I've certainly read threats of people being banned for repeated violations, read suggestions that accounts have been banned, and I can see accounts that are shadow-banned here.
Whether the guidelines are used to punish people who act a certain way or just as a way to document how to act so as to avoid punishment is a fairly fine distinction IMO and maybe a distinction without a difference.
Entirely possible, but it's impossible to tell because most of these committees and panels are completely opaque about their actions. Hence the need for standards from common law like not allowing anonymous accusations, etc.
Formalizing rules is fine. But then be clear about the expectations. Either those rules exist to create a fair, safe, productive space for everyone - at which point, as 'wruza[0] and 'defen[1] wrote, you should go all in and set up institutional support that ensures the rules are fairly applied and there's appeals process to correct mistakes - or, they exist only to codify the capriciousness of the rule setter, at which point it should be said explicitly. Either is fine, but it's important they never get confused.
Just now occurs to me: Adjudication could be escalated to arbitration or mediator.
Governance is the evergreen crisis. Was part of an org that had a constitutional crisis over conduct not covered by existing bylaws. HUGE drama. HUGE effort to resolve. Basically a mock trial.
Other orgs need more accessible, more lightweight ways to resolve their own slap fights.
> If someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.
I think they're right on point with this. Law is incredibly complex and you're likely to end up with a very shitty sub-implementation of the law when building a code of conduct, be it in itself or the application & litigation procedure.
"Be nice to each other & follow the local official regulations" should probably be a valid c&c.
Worked briefly at a place where male developers were actively harassing female employees. Not extreme, but clearly unwanted behavior.
20 years professional work, first time Ive ever seen that.
Noped out of there as fast I could.
Now, As a white male, I’ve seen it going the other way much more lately.
Walk into a place where it’s all about diversity and tolerance, but failing, because hiring for diversity means passing on experience. Or frankly interest in doing the job.
So spent months cleaning up messes. The entire time everyone is bashing white males, unless non-binary.
Explicit rules that create and escalate conflict is worse than implicit rules that assumes good faith and gives benefit of the doubt. Not all explicit rules are good and not all implicit ones are bad, and it depend a great lot of how enforcement is made.
Good formalized set of rules and rule enforcement focus on conflict resolution and deescalation, assumes good faith and give benefit of the doubt. Most legal system does this, but also community rules like Wikipedia.
From the article I don't see any attempt of conflict resolution between Joel Grus and Jeremy Howard. I don't see any process by NumFOCUS towards deescalation and refocusing towards a common goal. The process seem to have been opaque, the accusation hidden, purpose unclear. The authorities (the Code of Conduct committee) not held accountable. As a result it seems that their explicit rules did not serve a purpose of creating a professional environment.
The vast majority of rules are implicit and to make them explicit you have to put in place the machinery of the law or something like it. This CoC nonsense is a childish and incompetent attempt at solving a complex problem which arguably is leaving us worse off than we started. This is very representative of the extraordinary mixture of hubris, self-loathing and ignorance that characterizes our age.
Because they will be used to lawyerize innocent people out
of the organization by entryist grifters. That's what they're for, that's what they're used for.
> Having a hidden set of implicit mores is far worse.
In every arena I've operated this is always the case. Military, Big Company and on the streets. Not saying it's right, but it's extremely common (in my experience)
> Rules shouldn't be implicit in professional environments.
Totally agree. But again, everywhere I've been there are at least 2 sets of rules.
Maybe I am jaded by conforming to the 'It is what it is' mentality. In practice though, that has been my experience.
It is hard. Without a common background (raised with similar upbringing, same religions), your implicit rules can diverge greatly with the others. Not to mention born in different era will play a big role in this. Some people simply don't grow with the changing time.
That's why it is more favorable in today's environment to have explicit rules like CoC. At least it brings people to the same understanding quicker.
It does carry risk though. When living in a world with more explicit rules, people tend to treat anything not in the rule to be OK, and ignore most implicit rules. That will rush more rules to be explicit, also, written poorly without broader debates and discussions during these rushes.
I agree. I work in a company that had only few stated rules and operated under the assumption, that people had a common sense of what is right and what should not be done. The implicit rules were actually working quite well.
At least up to a point where some people clearly, but mostly not openly acted as if these unwritten rules don't apply to them. And these transgressions were not dealt with from management even when they became aware of it.
Was a shitty situation if one was trapped in such a bubble within the organisation.
Fast forward being acquired by a global corporation with an endless amount of rules and regulations. Nobody reads them. Everybody knows the important ones. Nonetheless nobody really cares in the global corp.
Exactly what I see happening in our part of this global org now starting. A sad situation.
Formal rules only make sense when there is sizeable bureaucracy to execute them. Otherwise they just get used by privileged individuals for their own purposes, adding a veneer of legitimacy. And creating bureaucracy is just not compatible with software communities - developers want to focus on software, and continue to do software outside of work to get away from heavyweight management and HR. The rise of COCs have more to do with the corporate colonization of software communities than the desire for social justice.
If OP had just been informally ostracized for whatever they actually did that made them not liked, they likely wouldn't be writing this blog post. They might find a different community, they might learn the unwritten social rules, or they might never learn. But they wouldn't need to write a blog post attempting to exonerate themselves from the black mark of a "COC violation" and rationalizing how the system attacked them.
Because code of conducts makes it easier to harass people. If there are formal rules then all a harasser has to do is to find something out of context and then start harassing the person by starting a CoC breakage investigation. Doing stuff like that without a CoC would get you kicked out.
Not neccessarily. Usually that's a new "exception" to the formal rules. (This happens anyways with more generalized rules.. but that's done under the spirit of the rules and is accepted as such)
Pretend-legal agreements that are overly broad, capriciously enforced and written by out-of-touch culture “warriors” are a bad joke that should be regarded with contempt. Let the attorneys do their job, and devs, or the pop-dev-blogger entourage, should do theirs.
> Pretend-legal agreements that are overly broad, capriciously enforced and written by out-of-touch culture “warriors” are a bad joke that should be regarded with contempt
> Let the attorneys do their job
The foundation of labor law in this country was built thanks to out-of-touch culture “warriors” and their lawyers going back to the early 1900s.
Most certainly not equivalent. COCs are welcomed by corporations because it could be a door into exercising power over content that is worth pursuing. If it was really about labor laws, you would see union busters instead of open arms.
He may not support them, but in the current culture you have to pretend to otherwise people might think you're a sexist or a racist. I don't support them, but I pretend to.
Somewhere along the lines disagreeing with kafkaesque processes like OP experienced, became similar to professional suicide, so I understand you completely.
> Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.
I think the meta is we have to understand we are all *-ist at some level. This is the world we were born and raised in and it is incredibly silly for me to suggest that I am somehow above my nurture.
Of course, I will deny everything if you find my real name and attach it to this post because we can't really say this out loud but just between us I think the key is to understand that we all have inherent biases and actively try to fight ones that we consider not helpful.
I agree, but I think it’s silly that we have to pretend to agree with stupid SJW policies just because people are afraid of the backlash if someone traces their account name back to their real name.
Since it’s fairly unlikely for similar resistance to have any effect on my career, I kind of feel inclined to always respond according to what I think, instead of what people like to hear.
In this case it actually garnered downvotes, which I found fairly surprising, given, like you said, that we all have inherent biases.
If there are multiple organisers of a conference then it makes sense for them to talk amongst themselves, decide what they disagree on, and document it.
Say I believe no swearing and no pink shirts and my co-organiser thinks no swearing and no blue shirts. It makes sense for us to sit down before the conference and document our official stance on those issues. Then when I see someone wearing a pink (or blue) shirt I know how to respond without starting a fight on the day with my co-organiser. That sort of CoC makes sense - one that the organisers use to settle their own disputes.
CoC implemented as part of some sort of rules-lawyering process are a waste of time. The as-written CoC is meaningless compared to what people organising the conference agree on.
Say I believe no swearing and no pink shirts and my co-organiser thinks no swearing and no blue shirts. It makes sense for us to sit down before the conference and document our official stance on those issues. Then when I see someone wearing a pink (or blue) shirt I know how to respond without starting a fight on the day with my co-organiser.
The problem is that you'll never be able to write things down in a sufficient level of detail in a CoC to avoid this situation. Sure, your CoC details what to do when someone wears a pink shirt or a blue shirt. But what happens when someone comes in wearing a purple shirt, and you co-organizer kicks them out because "that shade of purple is too close to blue"?
I agree that conference and event organizers and moderators ought to sit down together and figure out how they resolve disputes among themselves. I disagree that a Code of Conduct is helpful in facilitating that.
Have you read all the laws in your country? Are you aware that there are probably thousands of examples where they've been arbitrarily enforced and put innocent people in prison (or even executed them)? Many of them are just a matter of common sense and yet there's an entire apparatus around them. Does that mean they're silly and useless?
I've never organised a conference, but people who have told me that there's a level of craziness that most attendees or speakers aren't exposed to. I don't know if a code of conduct makes their job easier or not, but your glib dismissal fails to take into account that conference organisers don't enjoy judicial immunity and enforcement of anything -- be it written in a code of conduct or just common sense -- can make them liable for damages. One way to protect yourself is with a system of due process, and some lawyers think that a written code is helpful in establishing due process while others disagree.
Many laws are silly and useless. Many laws are ambiguous. Sometimes you read a law and think you know what it means but it turns out it applies where you don't expect and doesn't apply where you do expect.
The law is complicated and expensive and painful. You need lawyers and judges and juries. People are, as you observe, severely hurt by the law.
These are reasons why we don't need some pseudo sub-law drafted quickly by amateurs. The real law still applies and the fake law is arbitrarily enforced.
Obviously there are pros and cons, but one cannot conclude that one way is worse than another if you only look at the bad outcomes of that one way. You need to compare the overall picture of both ways.
> "The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced."
The whole point of CoCs is to avoid this arbitrary enforcement. The problem in this particular case seems to be that they ignored their own CoC and picked on someone who didn't violate their CoC, while the committee did violate the CoC.
That situation is indistinguishable from not having a CoC at all. If you've got a CoC, it needs to be clear, and you need to be consistent about how you enforce it.
It has been shown plenty of times that if you don't have a CoC, there will be some people who think that racist or sexist jokes, sexual harassment, etc., are okay. They are not, and a CoC can help to make that clear. But you have to take your own CoC seriously and follow it, and not use it as an arbitrary excuse to harass people, like what seems to have happened here.
You'll never be able to completely encode everything. Someone takes offense at criticism or a joke that the vast majority would think was completely inoffensive or someone who cursed once, etc. At that point, you have two choices. Tell them "Welp, no." or at least mildly tap the speaker etc. on the wrist. (Or, I suppose, just lie and tell the person you'll take care of it and then don't.)
> You'll never be able to completely encode everything.
No resilient human system expects everything to be completely encoded in a written statement - it's entirely unreasonable, akin to asking one prove that unicorns don't exist.
The devil is in the implementation details and how the CoC is wielded.
Of course you always need some common sense in the process. But it needs to be sense, and not arbitrary, capricious behaviour. And you're right that's something you can never quite encode in the rules. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have them. Real world laws are also subject to interpretation, with tons of unclear edge cases, but it's still good that they ban murder, theft, and those kind of things.
But yeah, except in extreme cases, I would expect an organisation of such an event to indeed mildly tap the offender on the wrist and maybe help to prevent it in the future. Or tell the complainer that it's not actually a violation of the CoC when it isn't.
Not everything needs to be punished. Just informing people is often enough.
The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced
But that was always the point of them. Sure they have some nice words about equality and so on, but the purpose was always to give those who produce nothing themselves power over those that do. Look at the way long standing projects have had CoC’s forced on them by recently-arrived outsiders who have barely contributed a single line of code. Look at who the first targets of the CoC committee are. It’s just bullying.
This might sound bad especially to you or the someone you know, but if the legal system (criminal or civil) was not able to act (presumably due to lack of evidence), then I don't think events or other organizations should act either.
The whole point is that the legal system is very slow, very hard to report to, and in some cases actively discourages assault / rape claims. CoCs can do better because they don't require as involved of a process
I'm not too worried about someone being banned from an event on hearsay, but I am very concerned about serial harassers
The former, while unfortunate, is not career ending. It just means they can't go back to that event. The latter scars many people and will likely cause some of them to leave tech. Also none of them will ever come back to that event.
I think that's covered by the CoC free case too. If there is or isn't a CoC and you convince the organizer that someone assaulted you, the organizer can and should ban them.
We do have different criteria for sufficient evidence for different consequences.
It makes sense to require something like 'beyond all doubt' to put someone behind bars for a few years.
It may make sense to have even stricter criteria (e.g. unanimous votes) to execute someone.
It makes sense to have lower criteria (e.g. 'preponderance of evidence') to impose a civil liability that takes all their money but does not put them in jail - there are cases of crime accusations where the level of evidence is so that were acquitted in the criminal court as the evidence was not sufficient for that, but the same evidence resulted in them being found responsible in civil court.
So it does also make sense to have a different (lower) standard of evidence and process to resolve CoC disputes, without bringing in all the heavyweight legal machinery designed for the high-stakes evaluation of whether someone's guilty of a felony. If the worst penalty that can be imposed is "our organization will consider you a baddy and won't deal with you ever again", then the accused does not need as much protection as if their life or liberty was at stake.
However, there still has to be some standard of evidence and at least some reasonable due process - in this particular case it seems that the bar has been set too low and this might need to be changed.
As far as I can tell, CoCs exist merely to provide a pretext for actions that a committee would take anyway. "See, we're justified in doing this because we have a CoC! We're not arbitrary at all!"
You can't go to the police for someone making racist or sensitive insults. The problem isn't the CoC concept, because there exists a domain of actions that strictly speaking are legal but warrent expulsion from a professional community. The problem here is gross overreach and power without democratic control.
That doesn't really chance GP's argument. There are a lot of countries where it's not illegal. Should it be? A lot of people would disagree with banning every kind of insensitive behaviour by law. And yet a conference might not want to host that kind of behaviour in their event, and want to make clear what kind of behaviour they find acceptable or unacceptable. Especially for such temporary events, it's useful to have clear lines and guidelines about what's acceptable and what not, especially in a society where some people don't seem to know or care. But that doesn't mean everything should immediately be legislated by law.
They're useless for their stated purpose, but they're quite useful for their real purpose: as a punishment tool used by social justice sadists which are parasitizing projects conferences and organizations.
This is the saddest part of all; not because of the toxic influence of these bad actors, but because it detracts from actual issues of discrimination and misconduct.
What does anyone think happens when an organizer breaks the code of conduct? I can write the list of actions here:
Doesn't even have to be social justice sadists. They're ripe for arbitrary enforcement and likewise can be used by people with power to direct the enforcement people against anyone they don't like. Depending how cynical you want to be that's arguably the point of them.
Some conferences ask you to check a box that you've read and agree to the CoC before your speaking/attendance registration can go through. What do you do in those situations / do you just check those anyway or not attend?
Honestly, I do the same thing as with just about any "I agree to these terms and conditions," etc. boxes. I check it and move on like just about everyone else. I assume there's nothing especially egregious or unusual in there.
Where do you think they come from? The issues that people have to deal with at conferences aren't new [1] - and when the offender is a friend of the organizer, or works on their team, having a predefined process is good.
It also means that people can't say "I didn't know it wasn't ok to ____" or "XXX punishment is too harsh" - a common issue with poor actors. A CoC means you can take action with less effort and drama when someone is being a jerk.
I'm not sure I'd describe multiple committee meetings, emails, and phone calls as less work or less drama. If someone is causing a problem ask them to leave and/or ban them. Maybe you need some policy internally that says who handles complaints of this kind, but you don't need to tell all conference attendees they aren't allowed to threaten one another or assault each other.
As far as friends of the organizers, I assume that's not settled with CoCs either. I bet if Jeremy were good friends with the right people this wouldn't have happened at all. Maybe it's not solved either in the CoC-free case, but I don't think it's worse and I think it's a relatively rare thing anyway.
It's not just correct to say that "people can't say..." Of course they can. People don't read the codes of conduct and don't know that they say. Even if they did know, the language is bound to contain ambiguity. Jeremy, for example, didn't know he wasn't allowed to disagree with people.
Genuine question for you: do you read the code of conduct at conferences you go to?
Do you read the code of conduct when you attend a conference? Personally, I haven't even read the code of conduct for my job, and certainly wouldn't read one if I was speaking at or attending a conference.
The CoCs are completely unnecessary and, as shown in this example, arbitrarily enforced. In the blog post I read that their CoC prohibits threats and assaults. Consider how silly that is. If someone's threatening you or sexually assaulting you you're going to go the police, not report them for a code of conduct violation.
Likewise, for more mundane stuff, it's all common sense. Don't be obnoxious, rude, make people uncomfortable, etc. If you are doing that, they'll ask you to leave and ban you from future attendance if it's severe. You shouldn't need a CoC to know that and they don't need one to do it.
Consider something that's not covered by their CoC. Maybe I bring my pet skunk with me and they don't have a provision about skunks in their CoC. Are they now powerless? No, they're going to do what's sensible and ask me to not have the skunk, and if I say "Your code of conduct doesn't prohibit skunks" they're going to ask me to leave.
Codes of conduct are silly. They create these dumb regulations and committees for no real reason and create the apparatus for mistakes like these.
I'm actually shocked that Jeremy supported and still supports codes of conduct. He seems like a smart guy and they're obviously a bad idea.