[zrail]

> You don't need to tell people to be polite (and you shouldn't). If someone isn't everybody will notice it.

Unless it's done in private. If someone is a jerk to me in private (over email or Slack or whatever), what do I do?

If I'm contributing to a project without a CoC and someone is a jerk to me, I'm much more likely to just contribute to a different project, or start my own fork, or just stop contributing to open source entirely.

Projects with CoCs have a stated procedure in place for dealing with abusive contributors. That's what the whole thing is about. Of course you shouldn't have to tell people to be polite, but that's not how the real world works. There are jerks everywhere, and more often than not they're going to express that in private.

[mabynogy]

I always reply to offensive people. Someone who is offensive has no arguments. Saying him he is offensive is often enough. If there is a public (like here) people will understand who is insulting who.

You're looking for a way to be less implicated. It's because you're accustomed to live in systems based on laws and rules.

People aren't bad. Most are kind and they don't want to harm anonybody. The bad guys are very few (like 1% or 0.1%) and as they are few they should be handled case by case. Building a complicated system of rules for them will just bother the "not-bad" majority.