I think the value of a CoC is merely to signal to people who have experienced abuse or disrespect in communities before (which would describe, I think, most women and people of color who have participated in technical communities for more than a short time) that the community is on their side when sexists or racists show up. That has some value. It doesn't really matter to the majority, and it doesn't actually alter how people behave (generally), nor does it really alter a project leaders ability to excise a toxic person. But, it does say, "We will excise toxic people. We will try to make you feel welcome here, even if you have been made to feel unwelcome elsewhere."<p>Even if that's all it does (which I think it probably is), it is enough to make it worth doing in most cases. (Which reminds me that I don't have a code of conduct on any of the open source projects or communities I work on, but I'll make it a project for the first quarter of this year.)
He gives off mixed signals here:<p><a href="https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11" rel="nofollow">https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,11</a><p><i>Now, me </i>personally<i>, I couldn’t give a crap whether a project has a CoC or not.</i><p><i>Frankly, if someone acts irredeemably toxically in this project, I won’t feel like I need to have a CoC to justify taking corrective action — I’ll just take the action</i><p><i>So, I’m definitely </i><i>not</i> <i>going to “require” a CoC; if someone acts like an ass then they can expect me to take some kind of action.</i><p>But then comes out with:<p><i>I’m pretty disheartened by the intensely negative response this suggestion has drawn;</i><p>I'm at a loss as to why he didn't just let the discussion roll for a bit without expressing his "disheartened" feelings and if the outcome from active members is "we don't think this is a good idea" then let it go. He's already stated that thus far the project has no known issues regarding conduct and that anyone being an asshat dickhead would be dealt with anyway.<p>Odd.
I disagree with him both about the usefulness and harm of CoCs. There are jackasses, and not having preemptively adopted a CoC, they can leverage the lack of clear rules to divide the community.<p>On the other-hand, once you have rules, there are some people who for some reason or another go out of their way to argue that a behavior violates/does not violate the rules and completely ignore whether the behavior was benign or malignant, which is what one should really care about.
I have attempted to ascertain the need of a CoC for this community by reading through the mailing list and issues... The more that I read through it, the less I see the need for one. It simply appears as a power play from this individual user, as such is identified by this lengthy blog post which signals some red flags.<p>The previous owner says it all himself pretty clearly:<p>> The current attempts to adopt CoC in various FOSS projects are IMO doomed for similar reasons. It has zero effect on abusers (no abuser thinks of himself as an abuser) and the message it sends to decent folks is: "There's an elite in the community that will decide what's good and what's bad and enforce it by censoring your emails/posts/contributions." Which in turn erodes trust within the community and, consequently, its ability to spontaneously deal with abuse.
I found Martin Sustrik's comment[1] very informative. It is a bit of history and also states some of the fears of this CoC additions to projects. His idea about "abuse postmortems" seems a lot more workable.<p>1) <a href="https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7" rel="nofollow">https://www.freelists.org/post/nanomsg/Adopting-a-CoC,7</a>
I don't understand. The people who are -1, what do they care if it is adopted? Is CoC that controversial? Are personal attacks, doxing, trolling and slurs part of their daily routine they will be seriously inconvenienced by inability to use them?<p>---<p>* The use of sexualized language or imagery<p>* Personal attacks<p>* Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments<p>* Public or private harassment<p>* Publishing other's private information, such as physical or electronic addresses, without explicit permission<p>* Other unethical or unprofessional conduct<p>---<p>As a maintainer they should have just said "There is a CoC now. Check it out: <link>. Happy new year everyone".
I disagree with him regarding the usefulness of CoCs -- spelling out the rules of engagement can be powerful -- but I respect that he put his money where his mouth is, so to speak.
CoCs do layout some rules for engagement but I believe there should be a positivity in the engagement itself. There should not be abuse in any form , either by disrespecting others or pinching others that they are abusing this segment of Coc (which might happen in some cases) . Disrespecting others in any form is not acceptable and hence I think Coc may not be a perfect solution . I can completely see his point .