I know one guy who appears to be able to write (answers) but not read (comments) and who goes completely off the handle if anyone even questions the slightest detail of their answer. So it’s easier not to comment. They arguably shouldn’t be (allowed) on the site – they do get banned from other sites – that’s what I think of though, the “case” that this reminds me of.
Another case would be, if you post an answer and I say “You should change that because of reasons”, and you decide “No thank you” – then, I should respect your decision (and not etc. too much).
So it counter-balances a rule which says, “You must accept gracefully” and/or “take it in good spirits.”
Yes it’s not in the original Covenant and I’m not sure I like it as an addition, I think that’s what it is though.
If you’re asking, I don’t much like it because it is rules-lawyerly? I hope it’s obvious (goes without saying) as a rule, and if it isn’t obvious to someone in some case, then adding it to the CoC won’t make it more obvious (instead. perhaps it’s something which the OP or a moderator must explain at the time).
And it makes the clause more complicated, 3 verbs and a decision (A and B or C) instead of 2, a matched pair (A and B):
Maybe the two is enough – as in the Covenant, “give and accept”
And/or replace “give” with “offer” feedback – offering gracefully includes not forcing
Or possibly “receive” rather than “accept” – receive matches “give” and might imply “non-hostility” without necessarily “compliance”
The first, though, describes a situation where many communities would retort that writing an answer on a public Q&A site is to invite (polite, constructive) criticism: an over-arching CoC shouldn’t be construable so as to inhibit that.
Yes an opportunity for peer review is one of the whole benefits of Q&A being in public.
A heuristic I use on SE is that people are allowed to post one (potentially critical) comment. If the comment is welcome then that conversation can continue (if they want). Of if the author appears to decline or reject that feedback then perhaps that’s it – the author should be allowed the last word (but the other person was allowed to post their comment, now the reader can decide for themselves).
The site on which I’m most active, & on which I’m a moderator, tends to be rather tolerant of discussions in comments; they’re often useful & very rarely acrimonious even when agreement isn’t reached. At any rate I’d say it’s for each community to develop its own etiquette around this.
Yes what I wrote was a matter of “hard cases make bad law”.
Comments are generally exchanged without any seeming ill-will and without me intervening.
So it’s rare (or only with specific users, with the “usual suspects”) that I arbitrate somehow.
I’m moderating the Buddhist site – the large majority are moderate, already.
As a lurker, I’m slightly nonplussed that a code of conduct gets more attention on this forum than, well, other things. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, since CoCs are a trendy infection nowadays.
In my book, a mod who is a benevolent dictator can do a lot more for the good of the site and its members if not constrained by elaborate codes of conduct.
We will not tolerate harassment of anyone based on any aspect of their personal identity": personal identity is a recondite concept & it’s unclear which of someone’s attributes might be aspects of it & which not. Why drag it in at all unless harassment based on other attributes (ethnic identity, say) is all right? Why not just write “We will not tolerate harassment”?
That’s because many aspects have been decided already and we’re just waiting for our Tech Lead to provide the code skeleton.
The whole process is currently somehow delayed due to the holidays. However, that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. For example work is happening on our CSS design framework.
Yes the Convent just says “Public or private harassment” – full stop.
I guess Art’s original wanted to dictate the ad hominem distinction – i.e. that it’s OK to disagree with someone’s posts, content, but not their identity or “person”.
I’d also like to delurk to make a case for a more Community Covenant-like laundry list of recognized harassment behaviors, even though I know that for some that’s what drove us away from SE in the first place. I hope you’ll hear me out anyway.
The “be nice to each other”/“don’t be a jerk” approach to codes of conduct absolutely has its advantages, especially (or possibly only) when backed up by a team of moderators with a shared vision for what is and is not acceptable behavior. The problem I have with it is that it doesn’t communicate to new or potential community members what that vision is. Saying that all allegations of harassment will be taken seriously is all well and good, but it’s a bit of a misdirect—clearly some claims are worth taking more seriously than others. The difference between “I was called a [slur]” and “I was called a bad question-asker” is the degree to which there is an implied threat in the words, which, in the absence of a code that specifically addresses such things, is a subjective judgment. And when it comes to things like “I was called a woman [when I think of myself as a man, and have presented myself as such here]”, certain prospective community members may have a very strong interest in knowing ahead of time whether moderators of a site are likely to perceive the same implied threat in those words as the prospective member does. (I’m using transgender people as a sort of “representative” harassment target throughout this post, but the argument applies to any sub-community facing a form of harassment in the culture at large which may not be acknowledged as harassment by members not of or allied with that sub-community.)
It’s very difficult to get a sense of how moderators are likely to make judgments when one first stumbles upon a community, unless there is something like a CoC that provides that information. A site with just a “don’t be jerks”-style CoC could be a site where misgendering a trans person is treated as an instance of harassment, if the mods are aware that in some cultures, trans people face threats of physical violence that are often preceded by a singling out of that person for their identity. A site with the same CoC could also dismiss such claims out of hand, either because the mods are gender-critical and/or believe the participant making the statement in question is not in fact “misgendering” the aggrieved party, or because the mods think that such speech is incorrect and/or impolite but not actually threatening or harassing. Without a CoC that explicitly says “misgendering is harassment”, a passerby is unlikely to be able to tell such sites apart ahead of time, and a trans person concerned for their well-being may be reluctant to join any “don’t be jerks” sites out of fear that they are of the second type.
I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater; I think that a CoC that focuses first on goals and spirit, such as the one currently taking shape in this thread, can be excellent. I only propose adding an appendix to it that describes the moderation team’s position on specific issues that prospective community members may be concerned about. It needn’t be an exhaustive list; it needn’t say that mods aren’t free to use their own judgment in any given case. It can even be presented as “commentary” as opposed to “law”, in order to keep the “law” part of the CoC as brief and timeless/culture-agnostic as possible. But explicitly calling out as many different varieties of harassment that have been seen in the wild as possible (limited, of course, to those the site’s moderators actually believe are harassment) would go a long way towards making the CoC seem more welcoming to groups that have been the targets of such harassment.
(And of course, although this is not the main thrust of my argument, it also helps with getting all the mods on the same page about what is and isn’t harassment, which I hope you agree is also worth doing!)
No I don’t see that difference, one might be worse but neither is OK IMO – both are hostile to the person (not the content) neither ought to be tolerable/tolerated IMO (except perhaps in private in a discussion between moderators).
(See also Children Learn What They Live)
It’s always “criticise the action not the person”, e.g. “don’t bite people” not “you’re a bad boy” – or critique the question, and preferably never the person asking it.
Begging your pardon, I wouldn’t single out specific categories of person for special protection.
I hope that “no harassment”, period – also, “nothing inappropriate in a professional setting” – may be enough official protection for any and everyone.
I see that sometimes in legal texts – for example, “including but not limited to race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, marital status, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation”.
Does that add something, does it make it more welcoming, are you saying?
I’d fear it might encourage rules lawyers again, no?
I’m not personally opposed to that principle, but I think it’s a bit of a tangent from the main point I was trying to make. Even if you make that the policy, there can still exist users and mods who think that calling a trans man a “she” is not hostile to the person, and users and mods who think that it is. I think prospective users deserve to know which kind of mod they’re signing up to be governed by.
(But also,
I really hope you didn’t mean that to include the slur case!)
To be clear, the value (that I see missing in a CoC that doesn’t make explicit reference to specific types of harassment) is the signal to potential users that this community considers certain controversial things to be harassment at all.
The legalese you quote above sounds like it’s describing prohibited reasons for discriminating against a person, not describing prohibited behaviors considered to be harassment, but it does satisfy the value of signaling that discriminating based on those qualities is considered wrong. Perhaps it also has the effect of encouraging rules lawyers, which is something that I too would hope to avoid.
I would propose something more along the lines of:
I would hope that something written along those lines would not be a breeding ground for rules lawyers, while also sending a clear signal to prospective members about specific types of harassment that may concern them.
Yes – I suggested an alternative, but also (politely, I hope) tried to reject your premise.
Well if I were running for election I suppose you might have a right to ask me, depending.
As it is my personal, political, or religious views – if I even have any – are not on-topic here and now.
And “the same rules that protect you, protect me…”
Well in context, I meant that moderators might discuss or perceive a problem user as having some habitual behaviour, or way of posting.
As well as describing reasons, I think it’s also prohibiting discriminatory expressions – please forgive the example but if I referred to you an “old fart” or “born yesterday”, as a “spring chicken”, for example, that’s kind of a rude phrase (e.g. because it’s describing a characteristic of a person), even regardless of the reason or motive – so “only joking” doesn’t make it better.
I think that might all go without saying, though.
It could be in your “Terms of Service” – which I’d expect to be legalese.
I think that’s how I’d do it. And I see value and safety in adopting something like the Covenant – adapted and stripped of its extra sections – which is prewritten and standard. It has already been peer-reviewed, I hope it’s fit-for-service, it seems to me to be considered, adult, and general rather than ad hoc.
I’d be chary of trying to be too explicit - bear in mind that there will be several - let’s hope, with time, many - Q&A sites hosted on Codidact.
Will Codidact HQ be decreeing in detail how users ought to behave, & expecting site moderators to snap to & set about enforcing their rules? (Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.)
Or will they be setting broad parameters within which each community is empowered to determine for itself acceptable standards of behaviour?
To clarify: this CoC is intended to apply to Codidact the organisation, and to any official Codidact Q&A instance we stand up. We may make it available to other communities to use if they see fit, but we will not attempt to dictate policy to instances we do not run.
I’m indifferent as to whether all Codidact sites ought to have the same Code of Conduct or many different ones. The premise of this thread seemed to be that there would be a single one for all Codidact-hosted sites, but if you think different communities under the Codidact umbrella merit different standards of behavior, I don’t really have a problem with that.
For any of those Codes of Conduct, though, I think that a site that values being welcoming, especially to members of marginalized communities, benefits from explicitly describing how its moderation team is likely to rule on what is and isn’t harassment, for the reasons I’ve laid out. I wouldn’t call it a “decree”, just a statement that hey, we’ve thought about some very common issues that arise when strangers from different cultures interact on the internet, and these are the ones that in most cases we would call not nice. The alternative is to not have thought about those issues, in which case, the first time one comes up, different moderators may react differently and you have an inconsistent standard being applied; or to have thought about them but decided to keep your conclusions secret, and I just don’t see how that benefits anyone.
Perhaps my central example was ill-chosen—maybe I’ve wandered into a community of gender-critical people here, who don’t want misgendering to be considered harassment? In that case, just leave it off the list! You’ll still benefit relative to not having a list at all—people who would complain about behavior you consider acceptable will be less likely to join your site and cause problems, and like-minded folks will see the omission as a signal that this community is for them.
Either way, you can’t truly opt out of making a decision—you can only defer making it until it comes time to take mod action or not. And then you can offer transparency about the decision or not. I feel like the values of this community, as I understand them, would be best served by offering that transparency up front, provided it doesn’t do harm with respect to other values like brevity and common sense. But that’s just my opinion; feel free to take it or not.
You have a good point in here re making sure enforcement is handled consistently. On the other hand, I would still like to balance that against keeping it short and effective, so people are more likely to read it.
Perhaps instead of detailing cases of harassment in the CoC, a more detailed look could be made available as moderator guidance - that’s something that, again, could be done per instance - so we can have one standard for the official instance, but still allow self-hosted communities to decide their own guidance and policy.
If you go that route, I would recommend the moderator guidance to be (a) public and (b) either linked from the CoC, or otherwise very easily discoverable by prospective users. I would expect a prospective user who is very concerned about finding out the answer to whether or not the mod community here considers X to be harassment to read the CoC first, and upon not finding anything specific there, leave forever.
But I don’t see “kinds” of people when I’m online – only an individual.
I feel inclined to welcome anyone (who’s well-behaved) – but not to welcome “sectarians” (and sectarian arguments).
I’d reference the dogs cartoon except, that too is a form of “identity view” (and thus, I’m warned, potentially or eventually a cause or form of “suffering”) – to call myself or you *a dog" is obviously imprudent and unwise, right?
Instead of people or kinds of people I’m more used to the idea of there being voices on the internet.
I find that there a slightly rude suggestion, but whatever? An attempt to “tar everybody with a same brush”? And imputing motive?
But sympathies – as an outsider (in some ways but not others) I too was worried that this might be an exclusive monoculture.
I didn’t think you can fix that though for everyone by welcoming kinds of people, or do you think you can?
If you did want to categorise I’d rather it were topic-specific too – like if this were a community of musicians then what kinds of musician, levels of skills, types of music and question and so on.
That sample which you wrote seems … harmless?
But the idea though, for example of using a “racial slur” is so far beyond the pale – and vanishingly rare in my experience, not a frequently-occuring problem which therefore needs to be clarified up-front – that it’s not my idea of what’s to insert explicitly … that kind of list doesn’t suggest to me that participating here will be “a good time” – like instead it suggests that if you don’t use racial slurs then other possibly-neighbouring forms of speech might be acceptable.
Hence “no ad-hominem” – that people and their persons are (always) off-topic, beyond comment – it’s about the content (and, to quote MLK, perhaps the “character” of the discussion) not the participants.
I retract the word if it causes trouble. All I meant to illustrate with my sample was that you can have a CoC that achieves what I’m asking for that is still easy to read and understand for the readers for whom “no harassment” is enough. Replace the bullet points with whatever makes you happy, as long as there’s a reference to a more explicit clarification of what the mods here mean by “harassment” somewhere in there.
I’m sorry! I wasn’t trying to slyly accuse anyone of any specific beliefs; I just wanted to acknowledge the possibility (and my ignorance of people’s actual political beliefs).
For what it’s worth, I lurk in a few gender-critical communities. I disagree with the views expressed there, but I think they’re by and large populated by people who believe they’re helping protect and improve the lives of all people, but who happen to disagree with me on an issue that for some people is very important. I wouldn’t feel right delurking in such a community and starting an argument against the central premise of their community, and if that was what I was accidentally doing here, I wouldn’t feel right about that either. I didn’t (and don’t) think that was a central premise of Codidact, which is why I wrote what I did. For anyone insulted by the implication that I might believe otherwise, again, I’m sorry.
I’m glad you’ve seen so little of that to believe it to be vanishingly rare. In fairly well-trodden parts of the internet—Reddit, for example—it is not.
Reddit started with a pretty laissez-faire approach to censorship—if it wasn’t illegal, it was allowed. When they decided to start cleaning up, a small fraction of its users, dissatisfied with the corporate direction and (what eventually became) the new content policy, went off to start Voat, whose central ethos is still “No legal subject in this universe should be out of bounds.” Even if its initial creators didn’t intend for this to happen, it’s now considered a home for white supremacy and hate speech. (But you don’t have to take my word for it; register for a burner account and look yourself, if you have the stomach for it.)
Again, I don’t want to accuse anyone here of any -isms. But it wouldn’t be crazy for a passer-by, learning of the story of how Codidact split off from SE, to wonder whether the story of Reddit and Voat was being repeated. Such a passer-by will look for a Code of Conduct to see what the community considers to be appropriate. The more guidance said passer-by sees, the more confidence they can have in the moderation team’s intentions. If all they see is “be nice”, or “no ad hominem”, that still leaves ambiguity as to whether the mod team would ever consider using “he” versus “she” to be a possible ad hominem attack. That ambiguity doesn’t help the mod team make consistent judgments, but more importantly, it doesn’t give some prospective users the information they may need to decide whether they want to start investing in this community.
At risk of repeating myself to death: it’s not about being a decree, or constraining mods. It’s about signaling up front what the mods already think on issues that, sadly, are less rare than I’d like them to be. If the mods disagree on those issues, it’s a good thing to iron out those disagreements early, before they fragment an existing community. Having done so, putting your conclusions in or near your Code of Conduct just signals to prospective community members that yes, we are aware of the ways you’ve been treated poorly elsewhere, and you won’t find that here. Leaving them out signals that we do think all this stuff is so vanishingly rare as to be not worth mentioning, and if that doesn’t match the prospective user’s experience, they will leave.