Proposed Code of Conduct

Announcements
84

This is where “the sort of people who” falls flat on its face. Hi, I’m one of those people who’d employ that sort of Code of Conduct. You may have gathered that from this thread. I’m a proponent of common sense and the CoC we now have here has struck a balance between entirely-common-sense and exhaustive-listing, and that’s good, but I also recognise the need to cater, to a degree, to heavily-marginalised groups.

However. I said this many times on SE, in private and publicly, and have again since - I support the changes SE made to their CoC, because they were in the right direction. They weren’t written or executed correctly, and still aren’t as far as I’m concerned, but I do think they’re necessary. That absolutely does not mean that I support what SE did to Monica, or that I support how SE is treating their communities - and here’s my proof.

There is no “sort of people”, in any useful, constructive way that we can use to inform how we write our own CoC. There is only behaviour - what we accept, and what we do not. We will not be a community that tries, explicitly or otherwise, to exclude “sorts of people”.

5 Likes
85

I’m very sorry to hear that.

You say that, and yet your suggestions WRT this issue strongly suggest otherwise. What you’re proposing is flat-out insanity in the Einsteinian sense.

Golden mean fallacy. The correct position, when confronted with a reasonable, neutral option and an unreasonable extreme option is not to “strike a balance” halfway between the two. Accepting this logic opens the door to extremists manipulating the golden mean by proposing even more extreme options to drag the balance point further away from that which is reasonable.

You seem to be under the impression that the two are distinct, easily separable things. A broader base of experience says the exact opposite: every time this style of CoC shows up in the software community, it gets weaponized by trolling extremists against good, solid community members. What happened to Monica was not an exceptional or unusual case; it was by design. It is literally the entire reason these CoCs exist. Monica is telling you this is a bad idea. I’m telling you this is a bad idea. @Scortchi and @SE_Refugee_Lurker_21 and @manassehkatz are all telling you that this is a bad idea.

Then we will be a community that fails.

You don’t think, when we launch, that we’ll be under attack? There will be people who see us as bad guys simply for existing, for daring to challenge a powerful, entrenched interest and saying that they did something wrong. We’ll be inundated with trolls, and if we give them any weapon whatsoever, they absolutely will turn it against us.

I’m an OG moderator on Christianity.SE. Due to our subject matter, we had a target on our back from literally the very first day we went “live,” out of closed beta. Some atheist subreddit heard about us and started sending over brigades to screw up our community. The only way we kept order was by making it absolutely clear that those people were not wanted and not welcome. That people willing to be respectful and behave themselves were perfectly welcome, but people trying to undermine and destroy our community would be unceremoniously tossed out on their ears.

When we launch this, I guarantee you, it will be even worse. If you persist in pushing a divisive, destructive CoC against the wishes of the community, it will be an act of sabotage against us.

Zero tolerance on tools of intolerance.

6 Likes
86

I think people are using the term “sort of people” in different, conflicting ways. I don’t read any of what’s been said here as excluding demographics or people of specific identities. I do see it as excluding the “sort of people” who troll sites for sport, or who are so intolerant of others that they jump to weaponizing codes of conduct instead of being open to respectful, diverse perspectives.

The “sort of people” I want to exclude are the ones who say “if you do not 100% align with me then you are a bigot”. The “sort of people” I want to exclude are the ones who hang out on 4chan and want to stir things up for entertainment.

That’s true regardless of what groups people belong to, what other beliefs they hold, or what their demographics are. I am a member of several marginalized groups and I have seen other members of my groups behave abusively to try to get their way. I have been the victim of members of other groups doing the same to me. It’s the behavior that’s the problem, not the groups.

We should avoid the “sort of people” language because it causes confusion. We need to acknowledge that there are “sorts of behaviors” that are completely unwelcome, and you don’t get a free pass by being the right “sort of people”.

8 Likes
87

This is what I’m trying to get at. I’ll expand once I’ve collected my thoughts, but it’s late so I’ll leave that for another day. TL;DR: Absolutely there are behaviours that are unwelcome and that we will exclude people for exhibiting; I’m not saying “everyone is welcome no matter how badly they behave”. That’s what this CoC is intended to lay out. But attempting to stratify people into “this sort” and “that sort” and “the other sort” of people is counter-productive and very prone to offending.

88

Being afraid of offending people who cause trouble is even more counter-productive.

You have moderators with experience dealing with trolls telling you that this is a fundamentally bad idea. You have Monica, a representative of several of these marginalized communities you’re claiming to stick up for, telling you that your white-knighting is not needed. You have countless examples in (relatively) recent history, from the French Revolution all the way to the Arab Spring, of marginalized, oppressed groups suddenly gaining power and immediately turning around and instituting a reign of terror. What more will it take to convince you that you are wrong here?

3 Likes
89

Not trying to blame him but I think that MasonWheeler went from …

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.

… to “protecting our community from the sort of people who would do that”.

Well people can say more-or-less anything to me. I might reply, but as moderator I recuse myself from acting on posts which address me personally – I might instead occasionally ask another moderator to decide how to handle it or not.

My job as I see it is to protect other users (and implement the rules) – e.g. to “handle” people saying that kind of thing to someone else. I’m not sure I exclude that “sort of person” though – instead I try to keep users’ conversation from even heading in that direction.

I sometimes temporarily (or for increasingly-long periods) suspend a user for repeated misbehaviour, like we’re supposed to.

SE has policies for “content” too, as well as “behaviour” (e.g. only “constructive” criticism) – and format (e.g. avoid chitchat and prefer to answer instead of comment).

Plus our site created site-specific content policies too – which, turn out to be that you can ask just about anything (related to Buddhism), except any questions which invite criticism of another school or belief (sect).

90

Yes I did. And I stand by it. But that has nothing to do with discriminating against certain “undesirable” demographics. It is, as Monica pointed out, all about discriminating against people who employ certain undesirable behaviors.

Yeah, we ended up with a fairly similar policy on Christianity.SE. It was the only reasonable way to keep order on the site, and as a member of a fairly marginalized group within the Christian world, I personally appreciate it. It’s an idea that’s stood the test of time and done well for our community. If the same idea works well on Buddhism.SE, that would seem to suggest that it’s a good idea in general.

3 Likes
91

Fair enough – I originally wrote something much stronger and then backed off. People can have all sorts of opinions, and if they express them respectfully then that’s fine even if they’re wrong (excuse me, if I disagree :slight_smile: ), but what’s not ok is weaponizing that outrage and shutting down those people whose perspectives differ from yours.

2 Likes
92

Well that “idea” was actually what the “community” said they wanted – i.e. the people who created the site off Area51 and were then active on Meta. Even quite early they asked meta-questions about (and proposed solutions to) several kinds of problem, including sectarianism. Like they were concerned about that – I guess that was from their experience of previous sites. And now, those are my marching orders (the policies which guide me and which I try to implement for them).

One of the original moderators told me that questions have a “slope” – that some questions incline towards being easy to answer … and some have an incline towards flame-wars (including questions which ask for a naive comparison between schools), and so it’s better not to ask those.

So anyway, selecting a topic is a “first line of defence” IMO – if it’s a Q&A site like SE and not a chat site. A lot of the personal views or differences which people might get heated or defensive about are simply off-topic – I don’t even see it as bad behaviour, just off-topic content to excise or wipe.

As a site+community, we also – which is unusual/unorthodox for SE – chose to discourage users’ posting questions to self-answer them: in case self-answering might be used for preaching or like spamming (so if you want to self-answer you can post elsewhere, on a blog or on YouTube etc., we stick more strictly to the “Q&A” format and user-scenario).

Well yes.

But even respectfully that’s still only within limits.

Because some (or many) personal opinions are about off-topic topics, IMO.

Buddhist doctrine (forgive me again) about “Right Speech” implies that a statement’s being “true” (or even just arguable) isn’t a sufficient justification – that it must also be, “said at the proper time”, etc.

And users – people – are kind of off-topic, IMO, as I’ve mentioned.

There’s an English joke, an anecdote – apparently Oscar Wilde said he could, “talk about any subject”. Someone asked him to talk about “the Queen”: and he replied, “the Queen isn’t a subject”.

So as moderator I can tolerate conversation while it’s friendly, but there’s no requirement to permit it.

Yes.

I do see it as unskilful to participate in outrage, and ditto to “weaponize” anything – be it words or moderators’ tools.

The cessation of negative emotions (like anger) is a core topic of Buddhist doctrine, which has and is a lot of analysis about what might “condition” them.

1 Like
93

Yes, sorry for not being clear. Off-topic is off-topic. I meant that if people are being respectful, then merely being a perspective that one disagrees with is not grounds for removal or disciplinary action. Diversity means sometimes encountering perspectives that are foreign to you or even (from your perspective) wrong, and we should not write a code of conduct that can be weaponized against the other person.

Judaism also has expectations about speech that go beyond the societal baseline. Lashon hara, evil speech, is a real thing to us, and encompasses way more than direct personal attacks. As in Buddhism (as I understand you), it’s a personal requirement, not something we think we can impose on the world at large (even if we think the world would be a better place if everyone followed these principles).

4 Likes
94

Hi, yes, I’m one of those too, on multiple counts.

To be honest, a CoC can only be weaponised if you let it. If instead you are clear that the CoC says and means this, and is to be followed to the spirit rather than the letter, then any troll trying to weaponise it has no leg to stand on.

You’re also making a whopping assumption that I’m not a member of any such marginalised groups, and thus that I’m white-knighting rather than representing my own interests.

A Code of Conduct is not law. This is not anything like real-world revolutions. This is words on the internet, not bullets in real life. Don’t over-dramatise. You still seem to be under the impression that I’m recommending we use a long-form, exhaustive-listing CoC like the Covenant: I’m not - we’re talking about a few common-sense based rules that I wouldn’t expect anyone here to run afoul of in any case.

@cellio - the CoC that’s in the wiki was based on your last proposal, with a few small changes, so the two are fairly similar. What do you make of the changes?

95

For future context (should the wiki version change later), here’s the text we’re talking about:

This Code of Conduct applies to all online spaces run by the Codidact organisation, as well as official physical meetups of its community.

Be nice; be respectful

We’re deliberately not setting out everything that is and isn’t allowed - bring your common sense, and apply the spirit of this Code. The following are definitely not okay:

  • Rudeness
  • Hate speech
  • Ad hominem attacks, whether directed at individual people or groups
  • Any kind of harassment, for any reason

Always be constructive, especially when giving feedback. Always presume that others are acting with good intent.

If you see anything that appears to be a violation of this Code, flag or otherwise report it. We take reports seriously, and although we may not be able to follow up with you, we will take any necessary action. We’ll keep your identity private.

This seems like a good compromise to me. The intro paragraph about common sense is important, as is the part that says we actually follow up on flags (confidentially). (Still not sure about the part about physical meetups, but meh.)

But the more concrete details you specify the easier it is for it to be weaponized, and we have seen this happen. A code that’s more about principles, paired with moderators to make those human judgement calls and take action, is far more effective at supporting a community – which is why we’re all here.

People are complicated and multi-faceted, and that means well-intentioned people will sometimes say things that other well-intentioned people object to. When that happens, the best outcome is respectful mutual education, not a big stick. When a community is aware of an issue and can respectfully discuss it, we can collectively find ways to meet everyone’s needs. When some people get to instead threaten others, that fact alone makes it more difficult to even have that respectful discussion/problem-solving – as we have seen.

7 Likes
96

I’m very happy with the currently posted CoC, and I hope the spirit of it does not change… well, ever.

In that vein, what are your thoughts about making an accompanying statement saying that no revisions to this CoC will go into effect until the community (or just the moderators) get a chance to discuss and vote on it?

Sort of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” concept.

1 Like
97

How will this be handled in relation to this MSE post?

https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/342779/269301

Veterans shouldn’t be harassing new users, new users shouldn’t be harassing veterans, nobody should be harassing anybody. That’s clear. What’s less clear is what will and will not be considered harassment.

Is telling a user they did something wrong harassment?
Is complaining about another user’s comment harassment (at which point does it become an ad-hominem attack)?
On SE, constructive feedback is too often assumed to be negative, damaging and unwelcoming lately. Some of it should be better, but there’s a lot of false accusations going on as well. How are we going to handle that?

We need to prevent toxicity without going down the rabbit hole and codifying everything we can think of. This site will eventually attract both trolls and overeager SJWs offended by our mere existence. I think this place wants to cater the middle and reject the outliers, but how are we going to do that?

1 Like
98

It appears, that you are refering to a prior version. Can you look at the final version and say, whether the issue still exists?

99

Yes, I think it still exists. The current version states:

  • Any kind of harassment, for any reason

Always be constructive, especially when giving feedback. Always presume that others are acting with good intent.

So pointing out harassment in a negative manner (a case where whoever points it out has ill-intent) is unacceptable. Good. But it’s not always that easy to see the difference. One can attempt to constructively point out a flaw and still be perceived as harassing, we’ve found out. Hence my previous post.

1 Like
100

Ah, I see now, what you’re refering to.

First of all, there are intentionally no hard rules, because they can lead to “rule-lawyering”, where people argumentate that their behavior is not caught by the rules, although it is obviously against their spirit:

We’re deliberately not setting out everything that is and isn’t allowed - bring your common sense and apply the spirit of this Code.

Whether something is acceptable or not is ultimately decided by the moderators/admins handling the reports. That decision can then be appealed by going to a meta-category, which we plan to implement. In Discord and here, there can be private messaging and a meta channel/category exists, too. We plan to have a “Moderation Review Panel”, where one can appeal to.

Of course, these people are also bound by the rules of constructiveness, presuming good faith and common sense.

If you see anything that appears to be a violation of this Code, flag or otherwise reports it. We take reports seriously, and although we may not be able to follow up with you, we will take any necessary action. We’ll keep your identity private.

In most cases, where some users complain, but the matter isn’t clear, the content will either be “sanitized” (edit problematic stuff out) or deleted, without any consequences. If the moderator sees a flag, where the reason for why some content is rude is not clear, they’ll probably follow up with the flagger and ask them for an explanation.

3 Likes
101

Agreed. List policy interpretations that have come up, but keep it to a separate document, and make it clear that the list is not exhaustive.

Even with a minimalist CoC to the effect “be nice, do not harass, presume good faith, flag any serious violations and staff will deal with them,” there still needs to be agreement between staff and the broader user base on how staff would handle a report from an eager social justice advocate. Consider the following, for example: “(username) and (username) have consistently referred to me as they and them and refuse to use ze and hir after being corrected. I consider this behavior to be an ad hominem and hate speech against the group ‘nonbinary people who use neopronouns.’” Lack of agreement on how to handle this led to this project in the first place.

So a new user could look at the public moderation guidance meta posts linked below the CoC and choose to join or not to join a site based on the presence or absence of policy interpretations like these:

  • “Intentional misgendering is harassment.”
    I would accept this.
  • “Use of singular they and them as a substitute for a neopronoun is harassment.”
    I imagine many users following this project would not join.
3 Likes