A CoC might be just fine. GCC's looks nice -- basically "act professionally".

But, there are people out there who jump at the opportunity to take offense on someone else's behalf.

The female analog to "guys" seems to be "gals", but nobody uses that anymore, preferring "girls". The word "girls" is a word of automatic offense taking to some, even if everyone involved in the conversation is cool with it.

I've seen the "girls" one play out with someone stating that the women get a pass self-referencing and the guy who actually goes to lunch with them can't say it.

These same people who want to take offense are sometimes drawn to these CoC's -- either to implement or enforce them.

Then add in the desire to drop life changing punishments to such mild things. Say the wrong thing and get fired. See Python and the stupid dongle joke. That didn't need a video, that needed a brief reprimand of, "grow up" and it could have been done. Instead it got an interrogation and people fired -- and more CoC's for everything.

Holy crap, if some of these people had seen the 70's.

Again: details would be nice. People do indeed take offense on others' behalves (and probably should do so less often), but that's more of a human nature thing; it's not evidence that CoCs actually make that phenomenon worse.

> Then add in the desire to drop life changing punishments to such mild things. Say the wrong thing and get fired. See Python and the stupid dongle joke. That didn't need a video, that needed a brief reprimand of, "grow up" and it could have been done. Instead it got an interrogation and people fired -- and more CoC's for everything.

To be clear: this had nothing to do with a CoC; I don't think PyCon even had one at the time. Given that both people ended up being fired it's unclear that a CoC could have even possibly produced worse individual outcomes for either, given that the power implied by one is normally limited to an online community or physical conference center.

It's nuanced. There are good and bad CoC's: be nice here vs. we are the thought police on your entire internet history.

A problem people have with them is they are being weaponized by people attracted to enforcing their concepts of thoughtcrime.

I don't see anything particularly interesting in the GCC one. It's just saying it's not a free for all like some places are ok with.

There is no CoC in existence that goes full thought police on your full internet history. That's not nuance you're holding, it's straw.

I'm not sure what kind of details you're looking for?

You said you personally witnessed something; I'd like to understand more about it.

In particular: did you witness the instigating incident, the bullying, or both? Did the bullying actually weaponize a CoC, or is it your impression that the presence of a CoC empowered the bully? Is "bullying" your characterization or someone else's? And so on.

I witnessed everything, the bullies used the CoC to justify their behavior and told me their committee encouraged their enforcement of the CoC in this way. People on the committee have published articles on the matter calling for such enforcement. Bullying is well defined https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying, I specifically mean it in the sense of repeated abusive behavior by people with more power.

> The only effect of a Code of Conduct I have ever personally witnessed was that people were being bullied for greeting others.

They probably means you should name the opensource project that "bullied (people) for greeting others".

What project?

I think hangops slack has one of those; https://twitter.com/hangops

The dbt slack community has a bot that says

> Hi! Reminder: “guys” is an inherently gendered term. Great alternatives include “everyone”, “folks”, “team”, "friends" or “y’all”. Thank you for helping us build a more inclusive community!

The only thing that really bothers me personally about this is the mistaken idea that language can be "inherently" anything. The meaning of a term varies based on usage, it is not inherent.

You're entitled to an opinion about it, but a Slack bot that pings you when you say "guys" is not remotely comparable to bullying (which is the top-level claim in this thread).

He's responding to the parent:

> I have never seen or heard someone chastised for using “guys” informally

A bot that is doing this is tantamount to a person doing it, since a person made the bot and a person installed the bot.

> Hi! Reminder: “guys” is an inherently gendered term.

That's not a ping, that's imposing your language on others. A ping would be something like "guys is a gendered term for some people"

I would consider it a form of harassment and such petty language policies would certainly impact my desire to participate in a community. I would feel unwelcome.

On my work's slack, we have a bot that says (I'm paraphrasing) "please use folks, as guys is exclusionary/gendered etc".

And I would take offense to being called a folk...