[ben0x539]

I'd say it's more fear? If I don't get any hint as to what kind of behavior the individual maintainers consider dickheadish, I have to worry about that with every interaction. If you have a CoC with even very vague and subjective rules, I at least know what kind of stuff you care about and then at worst I can be extra careful around that.

(Sure, I can shrug off the judgement, but being blocked from their repo is still a hassle if it could have been avoided with better up-front communication.)

[lmm]

> I'd say it's more fear? If I don't get any hint as to what kind of behavior the individual maintainers consider dickheadish, I have to worry about that with every interaction. If you have a CoC with even very vague and subjective rules, I at least know what kind of stuff you care about and then at worst I can be extra careful around that.

But knowing what's in the CoC doesn't actually tell you what kind of stuff the maintainer cares about. The maintainers will still block you if they consider you dickheadish, they'll just find a reading of their CoC that lets them declare you a racist (or whatever) first.

[ben0x539]

The maintainer can write(/adopt) a CoC as a tool to make it easy for me to not be a dickhead. The effectiveness of that is gonna vary, communication is hard. Still better than nothing.

[lmm]

Publishing informal thoughts or a semi-formal moderation policy is effective communication. Publishing a pseudo-legal code sends the message that you will be making legalistic judgements and pronouncements.