"On the one hand, I'd love to be able to (for instance) outsource all CoC engagement and enforcement to a specialized body, that could manage a whole investigation / accuser / defense / jury system for a number of different organizations."

You know, that's a pretty good idea. And if there were actual laws backing it, then you already have a "working" system. Now I am starting to wonder, should CoCs even try to transcend the law, is that part of the problem, where we try to legislate for things that are in many cases subjective?

> should CoCs even try to transcend the law

Yes? Companies do this all the time with codes of conduct and nobody really thinks twice about it.

Nobody would think it's bizarre that (hypothetically, I don't know what their actual rules are) Coca-Cola has a rule barring employees from wearing a "Pepsi > Coke" shirt to client meetings.

> where we try to legislate for things that are in many cases subjective?

We do this all the time, even in our actual legal system.

"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.

>"Disturbing the Peace" is one example off the top of my head of something that's incredibly subjective that we consider the purview of the legal system.

That doesn't mean it's a good thing. Good laws (especially criminal laws) should be normative, i.e. it should be deducible for anyone which behavior is punishable. Laws not adhering to this principle are ripe for selective enforcement and have no place in a rule-of-law society.

This is going off on a tangent obviously compared to the OP's point (that the legal system doesn't try to control for subjective behavior, which is incorrect), but sure, I'll indulge.

> That doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I don't think this is a popular position, or even a necessarily logical one. There are a great deal of "I'm not touching you" type behaviors that society collectively despises and often falls under these catch-all categories.

Legal doctrine is rife with "reasonable person" standards as a result that would be impossible to codify thoroughly and properly. Obviously, the mythical "reasonable person" doesn't exist and is often a judge or jury left to subjectively decide.

For example, harassment laws sometimes rely on a "credible threat of violence" based on something that would "make a reasonable person afraid for their safety". Good luck enumerating all the possible definitions of that.

> Rather, Codes of Conduct are more difficult than you think.

That's a bug when trying to apply a coherent standard, but it's a feature when using the document as cover for arbitrary mob action.

> That's a bug when trying to apply a coherent standard, but it's a feature when using the document as cover for arbitrary mob action.

I hate to break it to you, but bad actors will use any available tool they can to gain power and do harm. If there's no Code of Conduct, some bad actor will take advantage of the ambiguity to do things they know make other people uncomfortable, just because they can. If there's an overly broad Code of Conduct, or one which doesn't protect the rights of the "accused" (either in how it's written or how it's enforced), then other bad actors will take advantage of it to exert power.

That's why laws have to be written "defensively", like code exposed to the open internet. You have to try to anticipate exploits by bad actors ahead of time; and fix the ones you didn't spot as they're exploited.

> bad actors will use any available tool they can to gain power and do harm

Of course they will. That's what makes them bad actors :)

But are the bad actors in the two scenarios (with/without Coc) the same kind of bad actors? Do they have the same set of motivations for being in the community, and the same ability to rally supporters? My perception is that the bad actors in the two scenarios are wildly different, and that they're different because Codes of Conduct tend to distort the core incentives for participation in the community.

Why do you need a Code of Conduct to prevent people acting like jerks? If someone acts like a jerk tell them to stop, and if they don't, take action. IMO you don't need it enshrined in a dodgy pseudo-contract. That's a recipe for more problems than it solves.

> Why do you need a Code of Conduct to prevent people acting like jerks? If someone acts like a jerk tell them to stop, and if they don't, take action.

There are lots of reasons.

Ideally forces you to think ahead of time what kind of conduct you are OK with or not OK with, so you don't have to decide at the moment when someone you actually have a relationship with does something.

Ideally you think ahead of time how you would respond if someone did one of those things.

Ideally you think about a process for people to follow that balances several contrasting goals: Namely, to avoid doxxing or blaming the victim, but also to prevent the system from being used against innocent people (which it seems what happened here).

Ideally people who are prone to act like jerks decide not to act like jerks at all: Either they behave themselves, or they don't join your community.

If you don't do a Code of Conduct, and just "tell the jerk to stop, and if not take action", then it's a crap shoot whether you overreact (as happened here) or underreact (as has happened in many cases). If you deploy a Code of Conduct properly, there's at least a better chance that you'll respond constructively.

To pencil out even further what my sibling comment mentioned; you want to be able to say

"you repeatedly did x and this is explicitly against our Code of Conduct that you said you'd read before your first contribution"

instead of

"you're being a jerk and as such we will be refusing any contributions from you going forward".

The second example is completely arbitrary, and is up to the whims of the core team - whomever they might be. With a Code of Conduct you're (ideally) told up front what you can and cannot do. This reduces ambiguity and arbitrary decision making.

I can also tell you that a Code of Conduct isn't a change to how I personally govern the projects and communities I'm in charge of. Instead, it's about writing down what I would already remove people for anyway.

The effect is the same though?

It’s not as if a code of conduct ever contains anything that sane people don’t already know.

And like some other commenter said, it basically boils down to “don’t be an asshole”.

All very true. But then you get drama about "what is an asshole". Trust me, it's not just a made up strawman argument. That happens regularly.

Breaking the Code of Conduct isn't a one-and-done thing. You talk to that person, and tell them that what they said was over the line. Be that using a slur, being increasingly insulting to another community member, or something else.

I, as an administrator, basically tell them "not cool". If their reaction is "yeah, alright" then nothing more comes of it. No citations. No three-strike rules. But if someone continually defies our reprimands we have the backing of saying "you've repeatedly been told... " and "this is written in ..." meaning nothing should come as a surprise.

It's also a way for normal users to understand what might be rule-breaking behavior. I can't observe everything happening in a community, as much as I like participating in them. Instead, I have to rely on other non-admin members reporting bad behavior. Making it clear to other users what kind of behavior they can report someone for is also super helpful - and for some people induces trust.

I find dishing out punitive measures on the basis of the nature of one's conduct always a nebulous, case-based business and as such see it not reasonable to make for a crude guideline - a flowchart, if you will - for the line of action to take for what one deems a transgression against the project's behavioral norms. Codes of Conduct always seem to me a way for one, a profit-driven corporation, for example, to posture its morally virtuous conduct, evident from the eagerness to expressly list out all the kinds of infringements against people of oppressed-against backgrounds coming to the mind of the CoC's writer (the use of neological hip labels makes a telltale dog whistle), instead of simply listing out goals of the nature of, say, inclusion, diversity, and general amiability. The presence of these prohibitive, morally prescriptivist qualities of CoCs is what I find to be the source of discord here.

For exactly the reason this article is being discussed: Without a code of conduct you're left with an arbitrary line about what "being a jerk" is.

Codifying rules is meant to prevent that from happening, even though as we see it doesn't always work that way.