[falcolas]

> thevast majority of modern software developers do not want to use email as their communication channel

Wait. What? I must be old school then, with my ~12 years of experience, because I think email is much more approachable than some of the modern communication methods. I create text and send it in an email. I get an email back. Repeat until complete.

Or do people really think it's better to go out and sign up for yet another account with Slack (or is that Github? Or Discourse? Or HipChat? Or BitBucket? or...), verify my email (ironic, no?), get into a chat room, try and get a dev's attention in the rolling spam of giffy links... Or perhaps I'll create yet another gitlab issue and pull request, so they can get lost in the thousands of others, due to the lack of organization capability present in most email clients. Yeah, I prefer email, personally.

> the Old Guard and the Next Generation

An excellent way to alienate the people you're trying to get help from.

> put a Code of Conduct in place for all communications on gitlab.

Sigh. This again?

> If Emacs could move onto gitlab and use a pull request workflow

What real benefits does this offer, over an email patch?

If this is the "New Guard", perhaps it's best they are scared away by email.

[marssaxman]

Regarding the "code of conduct" fad/trend, I don't understand where it came from or what problem it's trying to solve. I suspect that I might be sympathetic to their goals, if the "code of conduct" people did a better job of explaining them, but they just seem to take the necessity of this practice for granted. I therefore assume that the cultural conversation which produced the idea must have taken place in some venue unknown to me, and the "code of conduct" therefore largely functions as a shibboleth - these are clearly not my people, whoever they are, because they clearly don't consider me to be one of theirs.

Also, I hate the pull request workflow; it's a big barrier to entry for people dipping their toes in with small changes. If you're trying to recruit more participants, or encourage an open-source project to open itself up to more participants, why on earth would you adopt a workflow which requires more up-front folderol on the part of the patch submitter? Just let people send in their patches and be gracious about accepting them. You can gently suggest that they start jumping through git branching hoops and other project-specific processes later, when they're already on board and committed to participation.

[xenadu02]

Are you serious or arguing insincerely? I can't tell.

Codes of conduct are a direct response to ongoing harassment and stalking against various contributors of various open-source projects, followed by inaction on the part of the project maintainers or the excuse of "that just can't handle criticism".

What is so offensive about saying "make it about the code, not about the person" and "don't stalk, dox, or harass people"?

A code of conduct is a signal that juvenile behavior won't be tolerated and that if your code reviewer starts sending you dick pics they'll get banned from the project. It doesn't do anything by itself - if the project maintainers don't follow through it is worthless but like security lights and door locks the signaling value has an effect on people's behavior.

And for the record it protects while males too.

[mikekchar]

I'm not the parent poster, but will post anyway. I really don't want to get into this discussion, which is kind of ironic because the reason I don't want to get into the discussion is the very reason codes of conduct are purported to exist. It is very easy to become targeted and vilified if you happen to have a different point of view on the subject.

A very common clause in codes of conduct is that people who are identified with a project must uphold the code of contact when they are communicating, even when they do so outside the context of the project. Usually "identified with a project" is defined loosely enough that it can be used fairly indiscriminately. It has happened that people who voiced objectionable ideas outside the context of a project have been forcibly removed from those projects.

For some, this is a triumph of justice. For others (and I include myself in this camp) it is further fostering an "us" vs "them" viewpoint, vilifying those whose ideas differ. Interpersonal conflict is difficult and requires considerable skill to moderate. A code of conduct, while it can simply be a communication of the ideals that the project strives towards, can be used as a scaffolding to attack those who we disagree with and wish to punish.

[cariaso]

He's quite sincere, and there are others of us who agree. Codes of conduct are a flavor of the month, and they don't achieve anything. I don't need to pre-announce that I will not accept patches from murderers or pedophiles, I can simply do it. The same is true for the types of offenses typical of a code of conduct.

Perhaps it is generational, and the new guard will eventually win this battle one funeral at a time. But as a politically liberal curmudgeon, 'codes of conduct' feel like the beta release of 'safe spaces'.

please go back to Pokemon Go-ing on my lawn... quietly. Daddy has to focus on writing code.

[sanswork]

>Codes of conduct are a flavor of the month, and they don't achieve anything

In other words you've never felt harassed. That's a good thing but it doesn't mean your situation is all encompassing.

>The same is true for the types of offenses typical of a code of conduct.

Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?

[dredmorbius]

I support codes of conduct, for multiple reasons stated and not in this thread.

I do not support putting words into someone else's mouth, particularly on socially explosive (hence the discussion in the first place) or ideologically driven issues.

Asking if someone's ever been harassed is one thing. Stating point blank that they haven't, crosses a line. Your interlocutor knows their personal history. You don't. Don't presume. It's a cheap shot, often derailing.

[sanswork]

You're right.

[mixedCase]

He says "Codes of conduct" don't work and your response is this?:

>In other words you've never felt harassed.

Do you fail to see the problem here?

>Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?

Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?

[sanswork]

He said codes of conduct don't achieve anything. The only way to believe that is to have never felt harassed. So no I don't see the problem.

>Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?

Apparently yes given the number of abusive people that have been active members of a lot of communities which now have codes of conduct.

[RaleyField]

People police themselves better if they know what is expected behavior and there aren't any gray areas.

Otherwise you have owner arguing with contributor drama trying to explain implied etiquette. Of course unless the transgression was severe the owner is forced to be lenient for fear of appearing overly authoritarian (which would drive away some contributors), but they can't be entirely forgiving because the transgression might drive away some other (or same) people. CoC removes this bargaining.

[flukus]

>I don't need to pre-announce that I will not accept patches from murderers or pedophiles, I can simply do it.

The question is, why would you care? What the person does in their personal life is outside the scope of the project.

[marssaxman]

I am completely serious and meant exactly what I said. I did not say that it was offensive; I said that I don't understand where the practice came from. I have never been part of an open source community where "stalking, doxing, or harassing" was a problem - or at least not a problem anyone talked about. It sounds very strange, and it's hard to imagine how people that immature could be capable of doing good engineering work, but if that's the problem then I understand why people are trying to solve it.

[vertex-four]

A whole bunch of projects suffer from the issue - even (especially) ones as large as FreeBSD[0]. The issue usually winds up being that some minor contributor - or even just someone who hangs around in the dev channels - harasses some specific woman/trans person/other minority member, and the project has no official framework in which to approach this issue. Often in the project leaders' eyes, the project leader's job is all about code, not community management, leading to a call of "sort it out yourselves" when it's brought up to them - which is essentially a signal that the project will allow its contributors to harass each other without repercussion.

Basically - the sorts of people who women have to get conference organisers to have a quiet word with and/or ban don't stop being assholes on the Internet. If anything, they become worse, and it's easier to hide that behaviour when it winds up being in large part through private messages and communication systems other than the project's official ones.

(If you were associated with a volunteer group irl, and you started harassing your co-volunteers through Facebook and email and text messages, you'd hopefully be kicked out. Various CoC debates show that many people think that if the volunteer group is online, such behaviour should be excused.)

A Code of Conduct isn't magic, but it does provide social proof that the project leaders at least thought of the issues that can affect their contributors, and can provide a yardstick to judge whether a project is likely to at least listen about issues affecting contributors who are members of minorities.

[0] https://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-know...

[marssaxman]

Thank you for explaining and providing a really shocking example. This helps me understand.

[sanswork]

> or at least not a problem anyone talked about

Is a big part of the problem. A lot participants don't want to be seen to be rocking the boat so they let stuff slide that they really shouldn't in the effort to not be "that person".

A formal code of conduct gives people the support up front to come forward with complaints about other members.

[wtbob]

> A code of conduct is a signal that juvenile behavior won't be tolerated

Hardly: a code of conduct is juvenile behaviour. It's like when I was a little kid and drafted a huge constitution for my amazing awesome cool club — that was just me.

Adults don't need to write down a code of conduct, because they adhere to an unwritten code of conduct. Children whinge, 'you shouldn't do that, because this says not to!'; adults don't do that, because they know that they oughtn't — and they refrain from associating with others who do. Children want their clique to gang up on the people they don't like; adults simply walk away from those people.

Childhood is all about, 'you can't'; adulthood is all about 'I won't.'

[mwfunk]

I agree that that's how it ought to be; I strongly disagree that that's how it is. Plenty of people are physically adults; a subset of those people are mentally adults. This is even worse in the world of tech forums and open source projects than it is in the world at large.

FWIW, I have yet to see a code of conduct that really says anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup". It might be silly if it also told me how to dress on Tuesdays and who to vote for, but in reality they rarely or never say anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup." I also have no problem with someone else reminding me of that, because I have to remind myself of that all the time. I don't know why anyone would be offended by such a thing.

[marssaxman]

I suppose that's part of the reason I've had trouble understanding this phenomenon: the couple of "code of conduct" documents I've read have seemed so inoffensively obvious that it is hard to understand why such a document would be necessary, much less why it would be controversial. It alarms me that people care so much about them that merely expressing confusion about the purpose or utility of such a document acts as an invitation for criticism, and it reinforces my perception that these are not my people, arguing about something that doesn't concern me, and I don't want to get involved. I suspect that this is not what the people promoting codes of conduct are actually trying to do. I'm mentioning it in hopes that becoming aware that the harsh moralistic approach is alienating people who might otherwise support their project will help them do a better job, because it sounds like the overall effort is worthwhile.

[mwfunk]

I guess I don't interpret the presence of a code of conduct as an alienating, harsh, moralistic approach to anything. It's about as alienating/harsh/moralistic as a kitten, if the kitten was easily ignored and made of ASCII.

[ofbriggs]

> Adults don't need to write down a code of conduct, because they adhere to an unwritten code of conduct. Children whinge, 'you shouldn't do that, because this says not to!'; adults don't do that, because they know that they oughtn't — and they refrain from associating with others who do. Children want their clique to gang up on the people they don't like; adults simply walk away from those people.

Because no adult has ever harassed another in a programming community? I would love it if everyone behaved politely and courteously, however this is not currently what is happening in some projects. Having a CoC is merely a preventative measure to curb bad behavior for those who can't self-police.

[colemickens]

In this thread are men literally defending sending unsolicited dick pics to unwilling participants.

Feel free to waste your breath trying to convince me that CoCs aren't needed.

[nitwit005]

I can't help but notice that no matter how often this comes up, no one ever points to an incident of a code of conduct fixing something.

I do see a lot of complaints about heated arguments about having a code of conduct, and plenty of evidence of those arguments existing.

[sanswork]

There is one from the Rust team below.

[nitwit005]

As far as I can tell, they are simply claiming it's a project with a code of conduct that seems welcoming. There appear to be projects that don't have a code of conduct that could be described the same way, so it's not useful as evidence of an effect.

My university participated in a study that found their anti-alcohol posters appeared to increase student drinking. Admittedly, with not as large a data set as desired, so it's also possible they simply did nothing. You find this with a huge array of both government and non-profit efforts. Most of the time, the things we try to improve society simply don't work, or not to the degree desired.

[sanswork]

They said their discussions have been more productive since the change.

[prodigal_erik]

Out of all codes of conduct, how many will allow the next Linus or Theo de Raadt to emerge? It seems to me that most are driven by the same animus against crimethink that brought us donglegate.

[ciupicri]

What's so bad about a code reviewer which starts sending you dick pics compared to a code reviewer which starts sending you cat pics? They're both a waste of time.

[moosingin3space]

Dick pics fall into the category of "unwanted sexual advances", which is a form of harassment.

[ciupicri]

I guess some people could see it that way given the donglegate scandal, but it can't be harassment if it's not repeated. And if something is to be repeated, then lots of things can be used besides dick pics.

[moosingin3space]

> it can't be harassment if it's not repeated

Pretty sure there are a LOT of women who would strongly disagree.

[dragonwriter]

> but it can't be harassment if it's not repeated.

Incorrect. Sexual harassment doesn't require repeated conduct, though repeated conduct is more likely to be harassment (both because it is more likely to create a hostile environment simply because of the pervasiveness, and because it is more likely that the actor will be in a position where they should reasonably have known that it was unwelcome.)

[to3m]

The thing that's so bad about dick pics is people don't like them. And what better reason for something being bad could there be?

[ciupicri]

Not people, just some people. Also there are people who don't like cats.

[to3m]

Would you believe I've just spent 25 minutes trying to figure out how to respond to this, and I still don't know.

I suppose that means you win.

[drivingmenuts]

While one might be an annoying waste of your time, the other is not only annoying, but quite possibly illegal as well.

I leave it to you to figure out which is which.

[ciupicri]

What's so illegal in some dick pics?

[drivingmenuts]

Send one to a person under the age of 18 and I'm sure the prosecution, the judge and possibly your eventual roommate might be willing to explain it in ways that make you regret ever asking that question.

[niftich]

Code of conducts are a response to the democratization and increased accessibility of software development. Like in other communities, as the number of collaborators increases and the number of personalities, behaviors, backgrounds, and ideologies intersect, the chance of disagreements goes up.

Code of conducts are a sane effort to highlight behavior that won't be tolerated, such that it's written down and no longer implicit.

That being said, one is free to disagree with the content of a particular code of conduct if the content does not appeal, but a mere presence of one should not result in becoming dismissive of a project.

[MichaelGG]

Maybe the content is usually "objectionable", hence the reaction to any code?

I'd also love to see actual stats showing a CoC improved a project on objective criteria. Less defects or something.

[jcoffland]

The best CoC is simply DBAD.

[zeveb]

> > put a Code of Conduct in place for all communications on gitlab.

> Sigh. This again?

+1. Whenever I see a Code of Conduct I think, 'these people aren't going to be welcoming, and indeed there's a very good chance that they will slam the door in my face.'

[xenadu02]

That's the exact opposite of the intention of a Code of Conduct. Can you point out exactly what isnt welcoming about rules like "no racism" or "criticize code, not people"?

Do you have a burning desire to call people "honkey" in code reviews? Can't live without calling people stupid for being old/young? Is being prohibited from stalking other contributors so you can call their workplace and get them in trouble a huge problem for you?

This sounds like unjustified whining without any basis in actual fact or experience... iow "get off my lawn damn kids!!!".

A code of conduct is usually just shorthand for "don't be a jerk, be a professional".

[MichaelGG]

GitHub code of conduct actually is in favor of racism, if you're in the wrong group. Ditto for sexism.

"We will not act on complaints regarding ‘reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’"

That they even use the term "reverse racism" is telling. This is from a company that, in internal training, has anti-white material. "This is not work for white people", "biggest barriers to progress are white women". https://m.imgur.com/7YaVYUx?r

I don't particularly care, but if you're going to be inclusive, it should be technically inclusive, not loaded with politics. I'd bet there's a lot of people like me, thinking a egalitarian would be far less of an issue though I don't like curtailing expression, abrasive it may be, nor policing people in their personal lives.

[jcoffland]

Those quotes are inexcusable but are from a talk given by the presenter prior to her working with Github.

[MichaelGG]

Ah my mistake. It wasn't at GitHub then? I guess it fit the narrative so I didn't verify. OTOH if they hired such a person for a related position, that speaks a lot. (If it was a technical hire, less so.)

[falcolas]

If you have to rely on a CoC to get your contributors to not "be jerks" and "be professional", you have other issues with your community which really need to be addressed first.

No CoC is ever going to stop a jerk from being a jerk. It will just prompt the jerks to work around it and cause even more headaches for the contributors. Worse, it brings about those who only want to criticize the CoC, either because it's too strict, or too lenient.

Taking the time to address critiques on a CoC is time taken away from actually developing on a project and building a community who cares about the project, not the CoC.

[sanswork]

>No CoC is ever going to stop a jerk from being a jerk.

Right but it will remove the jerks from the community.

>It will just prompt the jerks to work around it and cause even more headaches for the contributors.

How do you imagine this happening?

>Taking the time to address critiques on a CoC is time taken away from actually developing on a project and building a community who cares about the project, not the CoC.

Spending time complaining about a set of guidelines that say don't be a jerk is time taken away from actually developing on a project. Except the people doing it are complaining about not being allowed to be jerks.

[falcolas]

> Right but it will remove the jerks from the community.

How, exactly? The CoC does nothing but codify someone's values for a community. It doesn't actually do anything, other than state a set of unacceptable behaviors and potential solutions to those behaviors. It's still up to the contributors to actually act, and if your community is good in the first place, they won't need the prompting of a CoC to act against jerks.

> How do you imagine this happening?

Easily - a CoC leaves a lot of grey areas, which provide plenty of room for griefing and harassment which isn't technically against the CoC. And if an action falls within that grey area, someone, or several someones, has to take time and not just say "this is bad", they have to tie that judgement back into the CoC somehow. It's even worse when there are consequences in the CoC for "lack of enforcement of the CoC" - being perceived as doing nothing can remove someone as a contributor. It's worth remembering, we're (mostly) developers, not lawyers.

> Except the people doing it are complaining about not being allowed to be jerks.

Are most of the people in this thread of comments complaining about not being able to harass or abuse other people? Or are they raising concerns about the ambiguous nature of these CoCs, and the perceived unnecessity? More specifically, how much time did Matz have to take out of his development schedule just to address the complaints against Ruby's CoC?

[sanswork]

>How, exactly?

By giving members of the community a place to point to which explains why exactly they are excluding someone and a set of reasons why they will exclude others in the future.

>Easily - a CoC leaves a lot of grey areas, which provide plenty of room for griefing and harassment which isn't technically against the CoC.

Like what? Saying it could happen then when asked for examples replying with "it could happen" isn't exactly convincing for it being possible.

>Are most of the people in this thread of comments complaining about not being able to harass or abuse other people?

Well I see a few complaining that they don't feel comfortable in a space where one exists so for those people it probably is though I doubt they'd use those words to explain their actions. I see others complaining about their existence but not really providing any arguments against them other than "they aren't needed" or "they don't work".

I mean your whole argument here is that it should just happen as the CoC outlines. But history isn't on your side as open source in general has been historically full of harassment both sexual and non-sexual and various levels of abuse. To the point that it's actually celebrated from some of the bigger names in the space.

[ciupicri]

> Right but it will remove the jerks from the community.

As if the maintainers/leaders can't remove someone from the community if they wish to, without the need of codes.

P.S. By the way, the Rust Code of Conduct [1] states:

> Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.

[1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/conduct.html

[sanswork]

They can but it is a lot easier to remove someone from the community when you can point to actual rules of the community they've broken besides just "we don't like you".

I honestly can't see peoples objections to CoC. If as you say it doesn't actually change anything why do you object?

[moosingin3space]

I agree with you. For a practical example, the Rust Code of Conduct has done an excellent job at being inviting. Even our community's most divisive arguments remain civil, which, as a side effect, means more discussion, so each others' perspectives are better explored.

[ciupicri]

What does professional mean, someone who doesn't say shit as mentioned in the history of the Agile manifesto? [1]

> This freedom from the inanities of corporate life attracts proponents of Agile Methodologies, and scares the begeebers (you can’t use the word ‘shit’ in a professional paper) out of traditionalists.

[1]: http://agilemanifesto.org/history.html

[sanswork]

If you believe everyone with a code of conduct won't like you it might be a good sign it's time to re-evaluate your actions and behaviours.

[PeCaN]

Not just you. Age-wise I suppose I'm part of the ᶜʳⁱⁿᵍᵉ ‘New Guard’ ᶜʳⁱⁿᵍᵉ, but I consider email + IRC to still be really hard to beat in terms of low barrier to entry.

[koja86]

I think this might be special case of more general and more important topic of software project (or basically any human operated project) spanning multiple generations. Knowledge transfer, continuity of ideas, experience sharing ... all that difficult stuff.

[moosingin3space]

The Rust community, comprised largely of "New Guarders", is very active on IRC. It seems to me as though this community split is really an issue of a (relative) lack of developer community-building and marketing.

[xkcd-sucks]

I strongly suspect that the only people who want to rely on slack/gitter/hipchat/kik/etc are employed by those respective companies

[moosingin3space]

> If this is the "New Guard", perhaps it's best they are scared away by email.

This isn't a healthy attitude to have toward an open-source project -- as a "New Guarder" myself, I would be very sad to see Emacs contributions dry up.