Is a big part of the problem. A lot participants don't want to be seen to be rocking the boat so they let stuff slide that they really shouldn't in the effort to not be "that person".

A formal code of conduct gives people the support up front to come forward with complaints about other members.

Basically - the sorts of people who women have to get conference organisers to have a quiet word with and/or ban don't stop being assholes on the Internet. If anything, they become worse, and it's easier to hide that behaviour when it winds up being in large part through private messages and communication systems other than the project's official ones.

(If you were associated with a volunteer group irl, and you started harassing your co-volunteers through Facebook and email and text messages, you'd hopefully be kicked out. Various CoC debates show that many people think that if the volunteer group is online, such behaviour should be excused.)

A Code of Conduct isn't magic, but it does provide social proof that the project leaders at least thought of the issues that can affect their contributors, and can provide a yardstick to judge whether a project is likely to at least listen about issues affecting contributors who are members of minorities.

[0] https://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-know...

Perhaps it is generational, and the new guard will eventually win this battle one funeral at a time. But as a politically liberal curmudgeon, 'codes of conduct' feel like the beta release of 'safe spaces'.

please go back to Pokemon Go-ing on my lawn... quietly. Daddy has to focus on writing code.

In other words you've never felt harassed. That's a good thing but it doesn't mean your situation is all encompassing.

>The same is true for the types of offenses typical of a code of conduct.

Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?

>In other words you've never felt harassed.

Do you fail to see the problem here?

>Also a good thing. How many times have you rejected a patch because someone was harassing another member of your community?

Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?

>Does one need a written down, politically charged, potentially divisive document in legalese to say "I don't want to share my toys with the class bully"?

Apparently yes given the number of abusive people that have been active members of a lot of communities which now have codes of conduct.

Try believing that I could have been harassed, but feel that a code of conduct would not have prevented nor resolved the problem.

But hey, https://xkcd.com/386/

I did not say anything about 'what happened', I was speaking of 'belief' which was part of your sentence.

I'm not claiming I've been harassed, nor am I denying it. I find the term a bit vague, as it runs a spectrum from minor trolling which I think we've nearly all experienced (and perhaps committed), to real world doxing and stalking and physical violence. So let's pick something much more concrete.

Rape. Since even that has a somewhat ill defined colloquial use, I'll specifically restrict to a narrow and somewhat historic subset: The act of a man forcing coitus upon a woman.

There is recent precedent for this in the Tor community. I don't know enough of the specifics of that to claim my hypotheticals reflect any of the reality of that case, but I think it's a useful way to make this seem less abstract.

I don't believe that the Tor project had a specific 'code of conduct'. Despite that, they seem to have been able to report appelbaum's behavior as inappropriate, and remove him from the project. This suggests a CoC is not a requirement -- it is not necessary. Does anyone claim a CoC would have prevented those events from happening? -- it is not sufficient.

Let's imagine that there was a CoC. I don't think any of the CoCs I've seen specifically mention rape (nor murder or pedophilia - my original examples). I find it hard to believe that there was (or even could be) a woman who was ready to contribute to Tor, but due to previous experience with rape, and the lack of it being mentioned in the CoC, decided this was not an environment where she was welcome.

trigger warnings, safe spaces, and codes of conduct have all become strangely familiar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCU_(film) , but bland ways of marking some tribal identity. But they do not seem to actually achieve any of their stated goals.

I've previously been involved in organizing one tech conference, where a single member of the admin board felt it was urgent that we nail this down, and it became a time consuming and long recurring part of our calendar, which to my mind achieved little beyond bike shedding. None of us are strongly opposed to the core idea. We do want a healthy vibrant community. But if that's all we wanted, we'd have joined some other social forum, be it a book club, a sports team, or whatever suits you. Instead we joined a code base, a conference or some other technology focused community, and advancing that specific goal is actually priority #1. To the extent a community helps us to advance that goal, wonderful. But to the extent that certain members of that community actively hurt progress, we're glad to see them excluded. Sometimes we decide that exclusion is necessary due to social practices like criminal activity ( Hans Reiser ) sometimes it's due to some (race/sex/other)-ism which is taboo. But one of the great things about the way we do online collaboration ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... ) is that I've gotten to meet and collaborate with a lot of people who are WAY outside my usual social bubble. And it's allowed me to build a tolerance and respect for people who I would otherwise have probably dismissed too early. Satanic polytheist -- have you seen his filesystem API? Blind transexual with a diaper fetish - built that 9 dimensional rubics cube app in 4k of assembly. CoCs set a dangerous precedent of deciding in advance who's one of us, and who is not, based on things other than tech skills. I've got enough of that in my corporate and real world life. This is the internet. 99.9% of the time the absolute worst that can happen is that you get your feelings hurt. To prematurely constrain it to prevent that, is a medicine more dangerous than the disease.

You accept that you need to exclude people for the health of the community but you continue to reject CoCs because....you once were involved in a board with someone that took a long time to establish one?

I personally think a lot of the push back is from jerks fearing that they will be pushed out of the only communities that have dealt with them up to now.

There are stereotypes about programmers and their social skills and if over 20 years programming has taught me anything it is that they portray way too many individuals involved in it accurately. A lot of people do need to be told exactly what is or isn't appropriate. A lot of people do need something like a CoC to feel comfortable reporting abuse.

I do not support putting words into someone else's mouth, particularly on socially explosive (hence the discussion in the first place) or ideologically driven issues.

Asking if someone's ever been harassed is one thing. Stating point blank that they haven't, crosses a line. Your interlocutor knows their personal history. You don't. Don't presume. It's a cheap shot, often derailing.

The question is, why would you care? What the person does in their personal life is outside the scope of the project.

Otherwise you have owner arguing with contributor drama trying to explain implied etiquette. Of course unless the transgression was severe the owner is forced to be lenient for fear of appearing overly authoritarian (which would drive away some contributors), but they can't be entirely forgiving because the transgression might drive away some other (or same) people. CoC removes this bargaining.

A very common clause in codes of conduct is that people who are identified with a project must uphold the code of contact when they are communicating, even when they do so outside the context of the project. Usually "identified with a project" is defined loosely enough that it can be used fairly indiscriminately. It has happened that people who voiced objectionable ideas outside the context of a project have been forcibly removed from those projects.

For some, this is a triumph of justice. For others (and I include myself in this camp) it is further fostering an "us" vs "them" viewpoint, vilifying those whose ideas differ. Interpersonal conflict is difficult and requires considerable skill to moderate. A code of conduct, while it can simply be a communication of the ideals that the project strives towards, can be used as a scaffolding to attack those who we disagree with and wish to punish.

Hardly: a code of conduct is juvenile behaviour. It's like when I was a little kid and drafted a huge constitution for my amazing awesome cool club — that was just me.

Adults don't need to write down a code of conduct, because they adhere to an unwritten code of conduct. Children whinge, 'you shouldn't do that, because this says not to!'; adults don't do that, because they know that they oughtn't — and they refrain from associating with others who do. Children want their clique to gang up on the people they don't like; adults simply walk away from those people.

Childhood is all about, 'you can't'; adulthood is all about 'I won't.'

Because no adult has ever harassed another in a programming community? I would love it if everyone behaved politely and courteously, however this is not currently what is happening in some projects. Having a CoC is merely a preventative measure to curb bad behavior for those who can't self-police.

FWIW, I have yet to see a code of conduct that really says anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup". It might be silly if it also told me how to dress on Tuesdays and who to vote for, but in reality they rarely or never say anything beyond "don't be a jerk, and act like a grownup." I also have no problem with someone else reminding me of that, because I have to remind myself of that all the time. I don't know why anyone would be offended by such a thing.

It really is magical to see these people that think that everyone are supposedly always courteous to each other throw such a shit fit over codifying that into an official policy.

Feel free to waste your breath trying to convince me that CoCs aren't needed.

I leave it to you to figure out which is which.

I suppose that means you win.

Pretty sure there are a LOT of women who would strongly disagree.

> Simple Definition of harass: to annoy or bother (someone) in a constant or repeated way; to make repeated attacks against (an enemy).

Incorrect. Sexual harassment doesn't require repeated conduct, though repeated conduct is more likely to be harassment (both because it is more likely to create a hostile environment simply because of the pervasiveness, and because it is more likely that the actor will be in a position where they should reasonably have known that it was unwelcome.)

I do see a lot of complaints about heated arguments about having a code of conduct, and plenty of evidence of those arguments existing.

My university participated in a study that found their anti-alcohol posters appeared to increase student drinking. Admittedly, with not as large a data set as desired, so it's also possible they simply did nothing. You find this with a huge array of both government and non-profit efforts. Most of the time, the things we try to improve society simply don't work, or not to the degree desired.