[WhitneyLand]

Your post is so right I don’t understand how it’s not self evident. How could anyone be against the very concept of setting or codifying expectations?

What would Voltaire say after finding we’re still debating perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good? An imperfect document can’t invalidate the entire concept.

A code of conduct is not a solution, it’s just another form of communications and standards that may do some good if you iterate on and refine it enough to be useful.

[flukus]

> Your post is so right I don’t understand how it’s not self evident. How could anyone be against the very concept of setting or codifying expectations?

The first is that they are often overly broad and police what people can say in entirely different contexts, the second is that they become weaponised so that people can only contribute if their entire political position doesn't offend somebody.

Neither are usually intended consequences, but the people putting CoC's in place don't tend to realize they are potential consequences at all.

[rmartelli]

> How could anyone be against the very concept of setting or codifying expectations?

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

Yes, it sounds good on paper, but in my experience, a code of conduct is used as a veil of legitimacy on top of partisan decisions.

Even when a CoC exists, it is ignored or twisted to use as a justification for kicking someone out of a project based on their unconventional sex life (BDSM): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935918

A frequently used code of conduct is explicitly used to invalidate others complaints. For example the Open Code of Conduct says: "We will not act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’" I'm Asian and I hate that discrimination against Asians is still institutionalized behavior (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16497551) and codes of conduct seek to silence any complaints.

We have situations like Opalgate where someone not associated with a project, dug through a contributors old tweets to find one instance where he said something politically contentious about trans people to try to get him kicked off the project. A code of conduct would encourage more behavior like this: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

In my own experience, I was participating in a computer science organization which had a code of conduct. A speaker went on stage and gave passionate speech about how Fascists are invading our city, and we need to resist and join Antifa.

I wrote an email to the organizer explaining how this goes against their code of conduct which states that they are to be inclusive to all people no matter their beliefs. I mentioned that the group the speaker was encouraging people to join would likely be engaging in violence against peaceful protesters. Of course it turned out as expected: https://twitter.com/shane_bauer/status/901910682030882816 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/2...

But of course the organizer ignores behavior that breaks the code of conduct as long as it suits them.