Overall I wish we lived in a world where they are not needed. But in every community, some people are assholes so they are often needed.

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MaKey 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Communities were doing just fine without a CoC up until they became a trend. People got banned too but the moderators couldn't hide behind a CoC to justify questionable decisions.

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mrgoldenbrown 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Communities were not doing fine. CoC didn't come out of nowhere because someone was bored. Having a CoC doesn't absolve moderators any more than having laws absolves judges from having to make good rulings.

	▲	MaKey 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've been part of a lot of communities and never have I felt that a CoC was missing or needed. CoCs didn't come because they were needed but because of a social justice fad. Have a look at the Tim Peters incident with the Python community. The decision to suspend him, a core maintainer (he wrote the Zen of Python), was justified by made-up absurd alleged CoC violations. Without a CoC they couldn't have suspended him as easily without totally losing their face.

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KaiserPro 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Communities were doing just fine without a CoC

I mean kinda, but also not. CoCs just codify what the moderators think.

Even Hacker news has a CoC: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html its just called a guide.

A community has to have a set of rules which most people agree on. One of the most common attacks in a moderated forum is "Oh but X did Y" and "thats not fair X can do it"

A CoC can be a simple way to "tap the sign" when someone is being a dick.

It also allows communities to set expectations at the start, not after someone has transgressed and pissed in the well.

In an ideal world, you'd just have a thing that says "don't be a dick" but that doesn't work for many and hilarious reasons. Engineers who who either have a god complex, parsing issues or empathy gaps (either learnt or inherent ) are notoriously difficult as a community to keep from getting into frothy arguments that colour everything and give off a bad smell.

CoCs are a tool, that can sometimes help.

	▲	none_to_remain 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I perceive "guidelines" or "rules" having a very different connotation compared to a "code of conduct." See for, example, the SQLite team adopting the Rule of St. Benedict as their "Code of Conduct," getting criticized for it, and changing it to a "Code of Ethics" in accordance with the Rule about seeking accommodation with your adversaries.

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Brian_K_White 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would say incorrect. All that is true is that something is needed, but there is nothing about the problem that requires that particular poor framework for dealing with it.

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account42 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It just means you get different kinds of assholes who are better at navigating around the CoC or even weaponizing it.

	▲	seanhunter 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes but it was always this way. Any organisation with rules can suffer from rules lawyers as a lot of people who have tried to contribute to wilipedia/serve on a committee of a voluntary organisation etc will testify.