[MauranKilom]

Your argument as stated also applies to e.g. unions, police, workers' councils or any other place where individuals are elected to "protect" the group. And it is undeniable that these have overall improved the situations of these groups. The argument is flawed in that it does not consider the upsides of instituting them.

This does not mean that CoCs are unequivocally the best solution. But fully ignoring their benefits due to the potential for abuse is not inherently sound.

[btilly]

It can apply to those situations, but the fact that in those cases the people most likely to be affected have a voice in who gets chosen is an incentive to good behavior that is missing in this case.

If you're running a conference, you APPOINT who will be deciding whether the CoC has been violated. If you appoint people who are not trusted by activists, you will face criticism from said activists. If you appoint people who are trusted by activists, you've appointed people who likely got ahead by getting activists fired up in the past. What they did in the past they will do in the future, and you've just given them the platform on which they will do it.

That's a catch-22 for the organizer, and a set of perverse incentives that makes it easy for the people I don't want to see in that position to get in that position.