[quantummagic]

Codes of conduct are perfunctory virtue signalling. Do we really need a unique set of "rules" posted on every project? They all sound like they were written by the same AI bot. That said, it's telling that the Zig leader can't even follow them. The rules should just be taken down.

[freehorse]

Every org has a code of conduct and this is nothing new. How seriously it is taken in each case is a different issue. Code of conduct usually amount to some rules that say “don’t be an asshole to others”. Can’t see why this is problematic or “virtue signaling”.

[miki123211]

CoCs are like HoAs. The people behind them are usually well-intentioned, and they certainly have their place, yet they're still quite dangerous. If the wrong kind of person gets into a position of enforcement, they can basically do whatever they wish, with no due process, recourse or principles of law being observed.

[cobertos]

This is not a problem with CoCs, but authority in general.

A CoC is still a useful communication tool. Guidelines are useful to have.

[LtWorf]

You get penalised in some ways if you don't have a code of conduct. For example github will nag you about having one.

[skullt]

I would think leaders sometimes not following their own codes of conduct is the strongest argument in favor of having them: yes, they are obvious to everyone but they are also evidently easy to forget in the heat of the moment. It's a standard of behavior to strive for not one statically attainable. Reminders are needed and that's the purpose their deliberate codifying serves.

[SanjayMehta]

CoC are the HR department of open source.

[serial_dev]

> HR is to protect the company, not the employee

The CoC is not there to protect the community, but to protect all the bad actors and give ammunition to attack the good ones.

Happens every time, the maintainers who add CoCs to projects have no problem being an ahole to others.

Update: I know some people love their CoCs, but answer me this, how is this kind of childish name calling allowed and still online, if what I wrote above is not true?

[prmoustache]

> Update: I know some people love their CoCs, but answer me this, how is this kind of childish name calling allowed and still online, if what I wrote above is not true?

Where you born 30 minutes ago to not have realized yet that people are not infallible, are subjects of emotions and contradict themselves all the time?

[MrBuddyCasino]

Not even virtue, codes of conduct just signals leftist control over an organisation.

[LtWorf]

Just FYI github nags projects to have a code of conduct.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Well.

[otikik]

US leftists, or non-US leftists?

[MrBuddyCasino]

Whats the difference? Both are (or were) funded by NGOs and the state department.

[otikik]

US has a special definition for what constitutes "left" that doesn't apply outside. Compared to European leftists, US leftists are center-right.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Charlie Kirk was shot by a center-right guy on September 10, 2025?

Luigi Mangione shot the UnitedHealthcare CEO December 4, 2024 and had an anti-capitalist manifesto, was he center right?

What about Elias Rodriguez (leftist activist, Israeli Embassy Staff Shooting)?

Michael Reinoehl (antifa) who shot Aaron Danielson?

"No Kings" Vance Boelter who shot two politicians?

"Anti-ICE" Joshua Jahn who killed two detainees and wounding an agent in the Dallas ICE Facility Sniper Attack?

US leftists are the same murderous closeted communists as they are everywhere else.

They assassinate people (see recent cases), perform terrorist attacks (peaking at ~500 (!) bombings in 1971), form mobs to socially ostracise people they don't agree with, distribute brazen propaganda in mass media and subvert every organisation they join.

[Mawr]

Am I to understand that all killers are leftist? It's either that, or you looked at the list of all killers and cherry-picked the leftist ones to make an argument.

[otikik]

I don't think I get your point. Is it that the more someone is left-wing, the more they are likely to be killers? And extrapolating, the more right wing people are, the less likely they are? That is a wild take.

My point is that Democrats and Republicans disagree on social policies, but on the economical side they are very close to each other. They are two shades of capitalist policies. Other countries have parties that are simply non-capitalist - that is the "left".

[duped]

It's helpful when people are being assholes to point to a document describing how they're being an asshole and to cut it out

[lmm]

In my experience it's the opposite of helpful, because it's actually a lot easier to reach consensus on whether someone's being an asshole than on whether they have violated the code in the document.

[p-e-w]

It’s a very helpful tool for establishing opaque power structures, because it allows those with real power to pretend that they are simply following some legalese document instead of doing as they please.

The fact that this behavior, which would violate most CoCs ever written, came from the top tells you everything you need to know.

[jakobnissen]

Is it really? In this example, could you not see anything wrong with calling employees losers and monkeys, until someone linked you the CoC?

[hshdhdhj4444]

Code of Conduct cannot stop someone from doing something.

It’s just a document.

However, in this case, the presence of the code of conduct has made it trivially easy to point out the language as wrong in a way whoever wrote this for Zig cannot refute.

It’s working exactly as it should.

[kelnos]

How is it working? The post is still there, referring to people as "losers" and "monkeys". Was the author of the post chastised? Have they edited the post and apologized?

[fulafel]

Seems there was some latency, now the post has been updated and those words are not there anymore.

[KingMob]

Heh. You've rediscovered Critical Race Theory, which was a graduate-level theory about how rules/laws are systematically applied to minorities/the powerless, and not applied to the powerful/project leaders.

Holding the powerful to the law is unfortunately, a separate issue to whether it's worth it to have written rules/laws in the first place.

A CoC could still be better than no CoC, even if it fails to rein in abuse from the top.

[IshKebab]

They don't have to refute it; they have the power to ignore it.

[reactordev]

Which suffice to say is not at all

[serial_dev]

To add to it, the post is still calling people losers and monkeys, so the CoC is clearly not working properly.

[amake]

Might as well get rid of laws against murder because sometimes people commit murder anyway?

[ifh-hn]

Not the same thing at all. There's consequences for murder, absolutely none for not abiding by this CoC; as clearly seen by the fact the posted remains as is.

[graemep]

A better analogy would be getting rid of laws against murder if its unevenly applied so people from a particular group always got away with it.

[prmoustache]

Yes the same way laws don't eradicate delinquency and crime magically. Humans are humans.

[LtWorf]

Oh my code of conduct allows using profanities but not directing them at people :D

[armchairhacker]

CoCs are useful at least for autists. They don’t have to be unique for every project.

A good CoC for most projects is: “tl;dr: don’t act rude or illegal”, followed by a detailed explanation of what is rude or illegal, ending with “project maintainers have final discretion”.

[dijit]

I've got skin in this game: Grew up in UK's social services with undiagnosed mental health quirks; too "smart" for ADHD, too "social" for autism, per my assessors. Ended up in classes thick with neurodivergent kids, from non-verbal to quirky misfits. Plus, I've moderated an IRC community for 20 years, where text chats strip away nuance like a bad compression algorithm, leaving everything ripe for misinterpretation.

I'm sharing these facts not to "credential-dump", but to underscore: This comment comes from compassion, not condescension.

Vague CoCs bug me because they're well-intentioned landmines. Take "don't be an asshole"; it could mean "act in good faith" (why not just say that?), or morph into "don't seem condescending" based on who's reading.

Pair that with commitments to safe spaces for neurodivergence, like autism (where social cues in text can be a foggy maze), and you've got a recipe for unintended clashes.

An earnest comment misfires, gets flagged as jerkish, and boom: escalation via subjective enforcement.

I've flagged this before: good faith-vague inclusivity can ironically exclude through feelings-based policing, which is how communities often roll anyway. So, why not tighten rules for clarity? Swap "don't be an asshole" for "assume good intent and clarify misunderstandings." It'd make safe spaces safer for all, autists included.

I don't doubt I'll get a tirade of "how can you call Autistic people assholes" just like always, totally missing the point on purpose.

[armchairhacker]

Hence the detailed explanation after "don't be rude". And "maintainers have final say" is 1) another otherwise-unwritten rule (it's true regardless), and 2) justifies banning repeat offenders when the maintainers don't have time to keep writing specific rules for them, and there's a vanishingly small chance they're not acting in bad faith.

Also, when people cause social issues, they should be reprimanded referencing specific parts of the CoC, and in most cases given warnings or opportunities to recover. For when the person causing the issue genuinely isn't aware what they're doing is wrong and can learn to be tolerable; and even when the person is completely bad faith, for unaware bystanders to learn what's right and wrong.

Diagnosed autistic people aren't the only ones who suffer from unwritten social cues. Also people from other cultures, e.g. where rudeness is considered more acceptable.

[Mawr]

Ok, but as you've sort of implied yourself, the CoC of every project is essentially the same. Which means there's no reason for 99% of projects to have a distinct CoC.

[paxcoder]

They are also used to exclude control speech and exclude certain people https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...

[hexbin010]

A relic from the ZIRP era when people had time and job security to engage in politics and creating drama on Twitter instead of doing their job.

Ah the good old days!