[jimws]

Yes. Those were not good days. In those days, every tech savvy person somehow automatically got the privilege to be rude to the less knowledgeable people. If a user came for help without doing sufficient homework, a project author or community would rudely ask the user to go RTFM. There are more civil ways to send the same message. CoCs are a way to bring in that civility in discourse. Do you have a better idea?

[serf]

>Yes. Those were not good days. In those days, every tech savvy person somehow automatically got the privilege to be rude to the less knowledgeable people. If a user came for help without doing sufficient homework, a project author or community would rudely ask the user to go RTFM.

Two things.

1) 'RTFM' isn't as rude as expecting to be hand-fed. That's the grace in the statement, it's meant to be used as a retort to the expectation that the person being asked the question even has the time to entertain the notion of training someone, given that the manual is available and ready for consumption.

It's (supposed) to speak to the laziness of the person asking the question.

Personally, I think a lot of 'RTFM's that got thrown around have historically lead to the person asking the original question to become a lot more knowledgable on the subject than had a simple answer. I know that I learned that way.

2) I don't have a lot of faith that the politeness that many CoCs enforce got rid of 'RTFM', it just shifted it to "Hi User! Have you tried scouring our extensive question-base for that frequently asked question?" , and that kind of unnecessary glad-handed wordiness irks me as an individual.

[pacala]

In historical context, RTFM was often times unhelpful.

* The manual was accessible via a set of arcane commands, if it was at all accessible. Poor usability and lack of good search was common. Remembering the incantations required for accessing the manual was a task in itself, which left very little brain space for the actual task.

* The manual was usually a mere list of API calls, with little in the way of big picture explanations, usage examples or tutorials. There was no widespread internet content and search to supplant the paucity of the manual.

* The person asking the question had a task accomplished by combining several parts in the manual. RTFM translated to: read the equivalent of 200 print pages, filter out the 197 pages irrelevant to your task, but keep enough of them to grok the big picture, then aggregate the remaining 3 into a working incantation. And better get it right, or else a stream of cryptic and undocumented errors will come your way.

My suspicion is that RTFM wielding persons often times didn't know on top of their heads how to solve the task either, and were too caught up in protecting their expert status image to admit so. RTFM, you lazy intellectually challenged person vs. I dunno, try RTM.

[root_axis]

An effective CoC simply outlines a community definition for abuse. The use of "glad-handed wordiness" is unnecessary, a simple "please read the docs" would likely suffice.

[test1235]

I think the bottom line is that 'RTFM' is not a professional way to reply to anything. There's no need for a "retort" when a stranger is asking a technical question - it's not like it's personal or anything.

[luckylion]

I completely disagree. Yes, you can word it less directly by saying "Please Read the Manual", but there's really no better answer to a low-effort "do my work for me" question. Those have become more and more common, just putting the question title into Google often serves up another question that solves that exact problem, but people don't even bother using a search engine - they go directly to asking others to do the thinking for them, then complain when they are given a solution that they can't just plug into the client project they are working on.

[gwright]

Ironically it is is almost impossible to engage on this topic in a thoughtful way without stepping on some sort of social landmine. As someone who has been around for a while I find much of the back and forth in this area exhausting and at times bewildering. Treat others how you want to be treated, count to ten before replying, don't engage with annoying people, pick your battles, life isn't necessarily fair. This sort of advice has been around forever and I much prefer it to the legalistic CoC approach.

[LandR]

I would also add give people the benefit of the doubt.

Don't assume that just because someone accidentally misgendered you that they were being malicious. They probably weren't. I mean, if you continually find that you see aggressions and 'isms everywhere then maybe you are just tilting at windmills.

[TeMPOraL]

CoCs aren't about regulating behavior, they're about group associations. They cover pretty much the same things that have always been covered in forum rules and moderation policies, only worded a bit differently to justify their existence. The point of replacing your old style of rules with a CoC, named "Code of Conduct", is that by doing so, you signal allegiance. You pay fealty. The mob can now go on and harass some other community.

(At least, that was some time ago. Today, CoCs are frequent enough that people just add them by default.)

[gwright]

If I understand what you are saying, I agree. The show of "fealty" associated with adopting a CoC with all the approved progressive language is problematic to me.

[gdy]

"pick your battles, life isn't necessarily fair"

What is that supposed to mean?

[gwright]

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pick+your+battles

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/headshrinkers-guide-...

[gdy]

... in the practical terms and in the particular situation discussed in the thread.

[gwright]

I was referring to the formality of CoCs vs more informal approaches to disagreements.

So in this context, "pick your battles" means that not every dispute is worth escalating and mediating in the context of a CoC. More often than not, when you have been wronged it is better to just walk away rather than intensifying the dispute.

As for "life isn't fair", It is misleading to think that a CoC is going to eliminate unfairness, sometimes things won't go your way and you should accept that and move on rather than reach towards contractual or legal frameworks for some sort of resolution.

[bcrosby95]

> CoCs are a way to bring in that civility in discourse.

Like posting on reddit that someone is a bigot because they disagree with a change in the CoC? Because that happened here. There's a whole class of people online that it's literally impossible to have civil discourse with if you disagree with them on any level. It's better to not even engage.

Some community.

[commandlinefan]

> CoCs are a way to bring in that civility in discourse

I can’t even conjure up an example of anything that is failing harder at it’s intended purpose, then.

[lacampbell]

Yeah, thicker skin and reading manuals.

All jokes aside, there's surely a middle ground between being rude to everyone and "hi guys wowzors dinosaurs and ninjas! this project is made with <3" and the overwhelming passive-aggressiveness of this inane dumpster fire drama over CoCs.