The great thing about CoC is that they tend to be self-reinforcing, keeping out exactly the people who are bound to conduct themselves in ways that are inconsistent with the principles behind them.
I participated and co-ran a gaming community for about 10 years, and whenever drama occurred we added whatever behavior triggered it to the rule list. It grew, and grew and grew into a very large CoC. By a few year into it people caused drama over the rules, people "lawyer" over them, they got enforced selectively, people accused each other of favor-ism, splits occurred and the community almost killed itself over the rules.
When the game moved into a sequel we changed the rules. Now it says "Treat others with respect and courtesy", which don't really qualify as a CoC since its basically common sense. People see it as so obvious that it not even a rule, more of a guideline.
This new rule has since then been pretty stable. It keeps out exactly those who can't behave but welcomes everyone else. There has not been a single instance of arguments about selective enforcement or favor-ism in terms to how the rules get enforced.
My own experience from that seems very similar when people complain about CoC. Long CoC lists tend to create fear, uncertainty and doubt within the community. It creates tiers of people where different class of people get the rules enforced differently. This in turn create a deep seated distrust.
Before codes of conduct, it was reasonably common for misogynistic men to get away with poor behaviour towards women in their communities “because they write good code”. I’ve suffered this directly, so have others I’m close to.
> Before codes of conduct, it was reasonably common for misogynistic men to get away with poor behaviour towards women in their communities “because they write good code”.
And now they're just as misogynistic, but we don't get to enjoy their code. They're also hidden from view so it's less likely that someone is going to tell them to cut the crap and maybe re-evaluate their world-view. They've essentially been shoved into an echo chamber.
In the end, arguing about code of conduct means arguing about the core ideas of free speech, one of them being: Do we want to segregate wrongdoers, or attempt to deal with them?
> And now they're just as misogynistic, but we don't get to enjoy their code.
I'd rather get the code of all the women who were driven out of tech by their bigotry and hate than whatever they'd write, even if it was legendary golden code spewed forth from the fount of all wisdom.
I honestly am not amazingly fussed about what we do with them overall as long as I don’t personally have to deal with them when trying to publish some code!
Linus' use of explicit language was exactly something that should be used as an example. He rarely attacked people, but instead attacked the actions that they did or ideas that they had.
I'm not sure what point you're making here? In hindsight, he views his words as inappropriate. I'm not sure I understand what the temporal distance between the words and the apology has to do with how appropriate they were.
He's the Gordon Ramsay of the software world. Sometimes it just takes strong language to get a point across: "your code is low quality and you're wasting my time by having me review it". And to be honest, I'd gladly take being insulted over having to waste my time. Strong language doesn't hurt anyone, but you won't ever get that wasted time back. I consider it verbal self-defense.
When the game moved into a sequel we changed the rules. Now it says "Treat others with respect and courtesy", which don't really qualify as a CoC since its basically common sense. People see it as so obvious that it not even a rule, more of a guideline.
This new rule has since then been pretty stable. It keeps out exactly those who can't behave but welcomes everyone else. There has not been a single instance of arguments about selective enforcement or favor-ism in terms to how the rules get enforced.
My own experience from that seems very similar when people complain about CoC. Long CoC lists tend to create fear, uncertainty and doubt within the community. It creates tiers of people where different class of people get the rules enforced differently. This in turn create a deep seated distrust.