Procedural note: I’m going to give this a couple more days to gather feedback, then come up with another version based on all the feedback we’ve had here, so that we can have a CoC in place for 2020.
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It was the word “people” there that threw me – “kinds of people”.
Because to criticise a “person” is anathema, IMO? That’s where or how I draw a line, as moderator.
It doesn’t feel right to me to welcome or not welcome based on the “kind of person” a person is – instead it’s only and all about what behaviour is welcome, what varieties and forms of expression.
Oh I see.
Yes I “haven’t had the pleasure” of reading Reddit – but I guess I can imagine then where your concern is coming from – the open internet.
The few Twitter feeds I read are some American lawyers, who comment on contemporary news – that (and their way of talking) is enough of a news window for me.
That sounds like what they say about ‘Gab’ – which splintered from Twitter.
Still, the Covenant forbids …
Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
… which I think isn’t bad. I’m not really here to criticise individuals’ politics.
That’s cool. I think I get what you’re saying.
(Or “all people” rather than “all kinds of people”, per the discussion.)
This seems like a good approach; it preserves the high-level rules that we expect people to follow the spirit of, but gives some examples to provide the signal that some are looking for. Because they’re examples, they’re less valuable for rules-lawyering but are still valuable for communication.
What I don’t want to see is an attempt at an exhaustive list of specific rules. (I know you’re not suggesting that, but some are likely inclined that way.)
The Codidact project can only set rules for its own conduct – this forum, chat, and the like. A Codidact instance will presumably have a baseline code that it requires of all users and communities it hosts. A Codidact community on one of those instances should be free to augment the code from its instance; for example, some sites might have additional rules about sensitive topics. But a community shouldn’t be able to invalidate parts of the instance’s code.
And that means the instance code should be only as specific and detailed as it needs to be to get the job done.
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So to make this 100% clear - the current CoC is for BOTH the organisation and the official production instance.
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Let’s please keep in mind that the SE organization attempting to impose a specific, politically-motivated, identity-based harassment policy upon everyone via Code of Conduct was precisely what triggered the crisis that led to this project being organized in the first place.
If we start out by repeating that exact same mistake, this project will never get off the ground, because we won’t be able to attract users if we can’t show that we’re any better than them in the one thing that the community has shown with their voices and their actions really, really matters to them right now!
Identity politics of any kind are toxic and destroy communities. If there’s anything that needs to be banned and completely not-tolerated-at-all by our Code of Conduct, it’s people trying to introduce identity politics where they don’t belong, and they don’t belong anywhere in our project. Period.
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After reading all the discussion here, I’d like to come back to this:
Really, doesn’t this cover it, assuming we’re not going to go the detailed-laundry-list route? If this isn’t enough, then at most I think we should do this, but I don’t think we need to.
Whatever we do would be accompanied by public guidance for moderators, which can be updated as needed just like any other help. The code, though – the thing we expect users to explicitly agree to – should be aspirational and durable. We don’t want to be changing our terms/code monthly like some sites. (Facebook used to do that, which was one reason I never signed up.)
@ArtOfCode, this is my proposal (the first quote, from @luap42).
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@cellio Agreed. That really should be all we need.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And especially don’t “fix” it with something broken!
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Please define “identity politics”.
In all of this, we do need to keep in mind that this CoC isn’t intended for us. Anyone here, discussing this, has already shown themselves to be conscientious enough that their conduct won’t be an issue. The CoC is intended primarily to have an explicit policy to refer to when people do misconduct themselves, to say “look, it’s written down here, we’re not making this up”. Secondarily, the CoC is something that folks from marginalised groups will look at to see what reception they’re likely to receive. If all it says is “be nice”, there’s a non-trivial number of users we’ll lose then and there.
That’s not me saying we have to have reams and reams of CoC and definitions of harassment. I don’t believe we do. That’s just to say - keep in mind that while “be nice” is clear to you personally, it’s not enough to make folks who’ve been the target of abuse before feel safe - that needs some form of affirmation that we will take action on harassment. Not long, or lawyerish, or excessive, but it does need to be explicit and clear.
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While it’s just one anecdatum, I would like to point out that I am a member of several marginalized groups, not all of which I have disclosed publicly, and as a user I would be satisfied by the short version quoted here.
Some people won’t care at all. Some people will not be satisfied by anything short of bending-over-backwards subservience. Our target is in the middle, not at either extreme.
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I think a reasonable compromise might be to add a line saying that we take reports seriously and that flagging is encouraged if you see anything that seems to be a CoC violation.
This should make it clear that we actually protect harassed/harmed people by enforcing our CoC.
Also, I’d add “groups of people” to the parenthesis under (2).
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Good suggestions.
So (revised proposal):
Be nice and respectful.
This should cover everything. The following is definitely not okay:
- Being unfriendly or rude
- Hate speech and ad hominem attacks, whether directed against individual people or groups
Always be constructive, especially when criticizing.
Always presume that others are acting with good intent.
If you see anything that seems to be a violation of this code, flag it. We take reports seriously.
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Welcome to 2020 - here’s our updated Code of Conduct.
I’ve based it off Monica’s latest proposal, with some adjustments for other feedback in this thread:
- Dropped “unfriendly” - you don’t have to be friendly with everyone else, just polite. No rudeness covers this.
- Split “hate speech” and “ad hominem”
- Added a “no harassment” point
- Noted that the CoC should be followed to the spirit, not to the letter.
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@ArtOfCode It looks like I can edit the docs Wiki but not the core Wiki. So here are my minor technical edit suggestions:
- all online spaces seems awkward to me and also vague enough to be misunderstood. Though maybe I am just behind the times. I think the intent is to include “Codidact software development” + “instances of Codidact or other software run by the Codidact organisation”.
- Move “deliberately” to the beginning: We’re deliberately not setting out everything that is and isn’t allowed - I think it reads more clearly that way.
- “criticizing” - not sure if that is the best word, though it might be. Maybe “providing feedback” is better. Then again, maybe not.
- “with you we will” should have a comma: with you, we will
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Yes, I’m well aware of the theory, and if everything worked out properly, according to the theory, I’d have no problem with it. But I’m also aware of how they work in the real world. We all are, aren’t we? It’s kind of the backstory for why we’re all here, afterall. In practice, CoCs of the style you’re proposing are always used as a weapon. Always. If the price of protecting our community from the sort of people who would do that to them – the sort of people who did that to Monica – is losing “a non-trivial number of” that sort of people, well, the only proper response to being presented with that particular tradeoff is:
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In one post you say that “identity politics” should be banned, in a next post you talk about “the sort of people who”.
I’d suggest again, do not talk about sorts (or kinds, groups, subgroups, minorities) of people.
Buddhist doctrine if you’ll forgive me is that all forms of “identity-view” are unsatisfactory or may give rise to suffering. I don’t expect people to understand or agree with that, but I interpret “no ad hominem” as meaning that you don’t criticise people at all (you may of course criticise behaviour and written content).
People and sorts of people are off-topic IMO. You might mean (or intend) something benign and agreeable, harmless, when you say such things. There is some tendency towards identifying though, which I call “a thicket of views” and which it’s difficult to disentangle from.
If you talk about “sorts of people” then the thought might occur – “am I that sort of person? am I not? am I unwelcome here? or is my view the majority’s and superior?”
I fear the phraseology in your post is overtly unwelcoming towards “that sort of people” - instead the function of the CoC is to identify sorts of conduct.
I know you mean “the sort of people who use the CoC as a weapon” (i.e. the sort of people who behave in a certain way), even so, if you believe that “identity politics of any kind are toxic” then be wary of identifying (at all).
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Yes, and it’s meant to be. I affirmatively want a site that is “overtly unwelcoming” towards the sort of people who would employ the sort of conduct that set in motion the chain of events that caused the necessity for us to create this site in the first place. I want them to know that they are not welcome here, and I’m not going to dance around that point in order to avoid stepping on the toes of exactly the people I’m actively trying to drive away in order to protect the community. Why are you suggesting I ought to do that? That doesn’t make any sense.
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I think it’s necessary and sufficient for a code of conduct to specify a code of conduct, not a sort of person.
“Presume good faith” means you needn’t presume – and certainly, not presume out loud, in public – that “that sort of person” will use the CoC as a weapon.
And “no ad hominem” means “no ad hominem”, does it not.
I used to fight with my little brother when we were little, allegedly to get our mum’s attention. Her judgement was, “I don’t care, who started it – you both have to stop.”
I think it’s unwise, unkind, unwelcoming, to say “good riddance” about a sort of person. If you want to say more about identity politics in the CoC you might – is this right? – you might want to expand on what’s meant by “no ad hominem” as a topic or a mode of speech.
I thought that “Art’s” new proposal though gave plenty of guidance already, to users, and lee-way to moderators (and therefore might be a successful example of “less is more”). I also like that it covers some common use-cases, like, “especially when giving feedback”.
My one quibble with it was that ad hominem isn’t English – perhaps it exists though as a “well known” phrase because it is more precise, meaningful, compact, resonant, than alternative ways to say that.
The thing about presuming is the pre- part. It’s essentially “pre-assuming.” Which is the exact opposite of what you’re doing when making a decision based upon observed past behavior; I’m “post-assuming” here, based on one of the safest assumptions in all of human psychology: consistency. Someone who has done something repeatedly in the past is very likely to do the same thing in the future.
It’s important to be aware of the paradox of tolerance here: a tolerant community must necessarily be intolerant of intolerance, otherwise they will end up welcoming intolerant people into their midst who will spam up the place with intolerance and end up fracturing and destroying the community. And that’s exactly what we saw with SO’s CoC, and what we’ve seen with similar CoCs throughout the software industry over the past decade: rather than enforcing tolerance, they invariably provide a toehold for intolerant people to use them as a weapon against their political enemies.
Well, here we are, literally standing on the first day of a new decade. Let’s commit to do better, and leave this ill-conceived relic of the intolerant 2010s in the past, where it belongs.
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Religious references do not belong here.
Some private group of people sharing a belief is not relevant here, since there is no expectation of others to share that belief, live by their code, or whatever. No, we don’t want .“The bible says …”, “It is written in the Torah …”, “The Great Spirit decrees …” either. You can make your point without any of these references.
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@Olin I think the Buddhist references here (which were in two ways in the phrasing clear that they were only brought in for context, not to push a religion or belief system) are a well-intentioned way of explaining the concern. Making a point based on a religion or belief system (as I have done at least a few times) is very different from incorporating any references to a religion or belief system into a Code of Conduct (or any other policy statement) - and I don’t think anyone has proposed such a thing. (Though arguably it would be fine within Mi Yodeya or another religion-specific Community).
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