Comment by ericpruitt
2 days ago
Amusingly, this post violates Zig's own code of conduct: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct
> Examples of behavior that contribute to creating a positive environment include:
> - Using welcoming and inclusive language.
> - Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences.
> - Showing empathy towards others.
> - Showing appreciation for others’ work.
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.
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”.
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.
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You get penalised in some ways if you don't have a code of conduct. For example github will nag you about having one.
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.
CoC are the HR department of open source.
> 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?
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Not even virtue, codes of conduct just signals leftist control over an organisation.
US leftists, or non-US leftists?
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Just FYI github nags projects to have a code of conduct.
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Oh my code of conduct allows using profanities but not directing them at people :D
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
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.
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Is it really? In this example, could you not see anything wrong with calling employees losers and monkeys, until someone linked you the CoC?
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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”.
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.
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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.
They are also used to exclude control speech and exclude certain people https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
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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!
There is a difference between what you say to and about volunteers working for free on their hobby and what you say about the work of a company famously known as "The Death Star"
You want to work with people and the group says "yay and this is how we will work together" you do that or go away. This is entirely separate to stating a universal truth such as "Microsoft product blows because they do not care", "Oracle sucks" or famously "You can't anthropomorphise Larry Ellison"
Did Linus ever blow-torch community volunteers or did he get the pip purely with big corp submitting paid trash for their own purposes? He seems to cop a fair bit himself from people saying thou shalt not...
The standards differ. Microsoft is going to be ok guys.
Microsoft is actually just a group of people as well.
All companies are 'a group of people'. But that's not how you treat them. You should treat the individual employees of microsoft as the people they are. You should treat microsoft as a whole as the evil entity it is (TBF they're not worse than apple or google or etc...)
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I have no connection to Microsoft but I think this take is terrible.
Part of maturing and growing up, for me, was realizing that there are really very few people who truly deserve scorn and disrespect[1]. Those I disagree with politically, mostly think they’re doing the right thing and they think that if people only understood, they’d change their tune (and that’s basically what I think of them). Those “big companies” like Microsoft, Atlassian, etc, their incentives line up - and literally must line up - in a fashion where they make software that frustrates many users constantly. It really isn’t malice or incompetence - no one, from the intern that wrote some snippet of JS on GitHub dot com, to Satya Nadella, is either intentionally phoning it in nor waking up in the morning asking himself, “how can I frustrate the efforts of people out there?”
And anyway, because most people are trying their best, regardless of how the outcomes line up to affect my life and my interests personally, really do not deserve my scorn and derision. If I were in their situations, very little if anything would actually change. So spouting insults at these people who I don’t know, and whose roles I don’t really understand, is really not a mature, productive, nor fair thing to do.
[1] if you are curious I’d say murderers, etc. dominate that group.
What would you say about people who knowingly do actions that will lead to widespread harm and future deaths even though they're killing no one directly?
Murdering can be done very well without ever having to touch weapon.
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I don't always get it right but I try not go on the internet and contribute even more anger and negativity that is already there. Try not to be a dick to other people.
It's not really for anybody's sake except my own, because I'm the one who has to sit with a mind full of shit at the end of the day and I'm just going to wear myself down. Nobody who matters is gonna read any of the bile I could write and change who they are, after all.
I think it's healthy, even necessary, to utterly distrust microsoft (or any large compny, for that matter). And while I don't think it's a-ok to call an individual microsft employee a monkey by name I think it IS a-ok to say any microsoft product is 'written by monkeys' or any other suitable derogatory term.
The way github develops is steered by microsoft-the-company and not so much by it's individual employees. A company, especially such a huge one, is not to be trusted and can (should) be made fun of.
It's interesting that maturing and growing up for me has resulted in opposite conclusions to yours. We're all different, of course, but I'd like to offer a different perspective.
> And anyway, because most people are trying their best, regardless of how the outcomes line up to affect my life and my interests personally, really do not deserve my scorn and derision.
The fact that most people are "trying their best" doesn't mean that their goals and interests can't be selfish, or that their actions can't negatively impact others. Particularly people who pursue positions of power, in politics or corporations, often treat others with hostility. And unlike most hostile people, it's these high-rank individuals that have the capability to impact millions of people.
So while I agree with your overall sentiment that well-intentioned people don't deserve my scorn and derision, the real world has taught me that governments and corporations often abuse my trust, my rights, my freedoms, and my quality of life. And for that, the least I can do is speak freely about how I feel about them as people on an online forum. I'm sure that my actions have practically zero impact on their lives, unlike theirs on mine.
> Amusingly, this post violates Zig's own code of conduct: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct
Not sure it does. Right there in the same link you posted:
I believe any reasonable person could understand the previous comment is about the rules themselves, not about a statement in the CoC saying where they apply or not.
Also, the fact that the website is not covered by the CoC makes it worse, since the leadership is excluding themselves from their own engagement rules.
It may not violate the letter of the document, but it does seem to violate its spirit to me.
coc says this:
> This document contains the rules that govern these spaces only:
> The ziglang organization on Codeberg
> #zig IRC channel on Libera.chat
> Zig project development Zulip chat
doesnt seem to include the zig page!!
so no, it does not violate CoC
Honestly, I don't see where it violates that code of conduct.
Luckily, no one cares about my (or your) opinions on that matter because, as far as I can tell, neither of us have contributed anything to Zig.
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