* Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss) <936-846-2...@kylheku.com> [2021-04-29 10:30]: > A code of conduct document is little more than a condensed set > of corporate or governmental HR policies, disguised as some > sort of "organically grown" community document.
Every organization may have its own codes, variety of codes are out there, and there is nothing wrong in attempt to harmonize behavior of its members. Here we have the context that is different from commonly used organizational codes, the new context encompasses new politics such as feminism, gender problems, and may be construed often as a general method for thought police. Say something wrong and you are done. Problem at hand here is that we have various people, some people are more sensitive than others, but don't want and cannot express themselves. Some others will come along and inevitably have different opinions. Those sensitive want to survive well and without being offended, Code of Conduct mostly serves those who are unable to tell others how they feel, why they feel so, and unable to provide concrete objective reasons for it. As Codes of Conducts are very generalized, not well defined such as attorney made agreements, they are often abused by their own authors or by the managers who wrote those Codes of Conducts, they allow wide range of interpretations and thus misrepresentations. Example is the Guix' code of conduct as adopted from Contributor Code of Conduct: https://github.com/pjotrp/guix/blob/master/CODE-OF-CONDUCT Where it says that they are committed to avoid (among other things): - Personal attacks - Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments - Public or private harassment Despite that Guix has its own code of conduct and GNU project does not have code of conduct, in other words they are not same entity, Guix finds it appropriate to gather group of people, incite them to provoke personal attacks, annoy others, and make derogatory comments on RMS: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ and to tell "we must also acknowledge that Stallman’s behavior over the years has undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users. GNU is not fulfilling its mission when the behavior of its leader alienates a large part of those we want to reach out to." That is "derogatory" statement as by definition 1. derogative, derogatory, disparaging -- (expressive of low opinion; "derogatory comments"; "disparaging remarks about the new house"). Despite that it is quite clear how people are in support for RMS, the small group of Code of Conduct people continues with their derogatory statements. What is even more interesting is that they use the subdomain guix.gnu.org which is on GNU.org domain and are able to make such derogatory statements, and personal attacks. None of them signers of those defamatory statement did not tell of any personal issue with RMS, neither how they wanted to handle it in a good faith. It is personal attack and public harassment. It is in contradiction to Guix's Code of Conduct. The Guix's code of conduct and so many others may have this clause: "Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting a project maintainer at guix-maintain...@gnu.org. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. Maintainers are obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident." That clause basically say that accuser will be held anonymous and maintainers or whoever will be judges to punish the accused. This is in contradiction to the legal system and established norms of our civilization, including any mediation process, that accuser and accused must be brought together in a hearing to make issues evident, without words, without evidences and hearing, nobody shall be considered criminal neither should be accused. Now GNU came first, then came Guix under GNU umbrella. GNU does not have Code of Conduct, Guix has. Would GNU have Code of Conduct, that Guix statement would be removed right away. It is not removed, as the purpose of GNU is not politics, but distribution of free software. When looking at purposes, the purpose is stronger and has to be supported foremost. GNU project does not, obviously it does not practice the methods of thought police. Here is a story of injustice where Code of Conduct has been applied and how cruel it comes over: From: https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/ > Summary: NumFOCUS found I violated their Code of Conduct (CoC) at > JupyterCon because my talk was not “kind”, because I said Joel Grus > was “wrong” regarding his opinion that Jupyter Notebook is not a good > software development environment. Joel (who I greatly respect, and > consider an asset to the data science community) was not involved in > NumFOCUS’s action, was not told about it, and did not support > it. NumFOCUS did not follow their own enforcement procedure and > violated their own CoC, left me hanging for over a week not even > knowing what I was accused of, and did not give me an opportunity to > provide input before concluding their investigation. I repeatedly told > their committee that my emotional resilience was low at the moment due > to medical issues, which they laughed about and ignored, as I tried > (unsuccessfully) to hold back tears. The process has left me > shattered, and I won’t be able to accept any speaking requests for the > foreseeable future. I support the thoughtful enforcement of Code of > Conducts to address sexist, racist, and harassing behavior, but that > is not what happened in this case. I just wonder HOW MANY OF THOSE CASES will be left unheard? HOW MANY WILL NEVER WRITE on what happened? Not everybody is like Pocock who can open up the website and tell the truth. People cannot communicate when they are blocked to communicate or told to shut up. We have numerous statements from the AntiGNU Assemble where Ludovic Courtès said how hard time he has to censor all the people who disagree with him on the IRC channel. It is lack of his communication skills. He cannot address the issue, he feels attacked as soon as somebody speaks in disagreement and uses "Code of Conduct" to justify the thought police actions. And here is what people discuss about Code of Conduct and that sad event: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926214 Quotes: - I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives the other side the chance to get details on how things were perceived or why it’s a violation? - This CoC needs to be torn apart and rebuilt, and the people in this particular committee must be sent to other areas where their expertise can be best used - 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. - 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 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. - 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. - 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" - 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. - 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. - Sounds like a classic case of selection bias. - 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. - 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 - Attorneys aren’t writing these Codes of Conduct - Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? 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. - Why NOT formalize rules to some extent? 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. Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns Sign an open letter in support of Richard M. Stallman https://stallmansupport.org/ https://rms-support-letter.github.io/
