<story><title>I Violated a Code of Conduct</title><url>https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don&amp;#x27;t want to associate with you or me for reasons we don&amp;#x27;t find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relate to the rest of the world that I did that, and let them decide what that means to them.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve gone out of our way to encode into law the exceptions to that rule. We can talk all we want about &amp;quot;anglo-derived common law&amp;quot; in those cases.</text></item><item><author>defen</author><text>I disagree. I think we should generalize more, beyond codes of conduct: If you are building an adjudication process for resolving non-criminal personal conflicts (whether that be a Code of Conduct, an HR department, a Title IX proceeding, a professional organization, or something else), you should take a look at Anglo-derived common law and the safeguards against abuse that have been evolved over the centuries.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean everything needs to go through the courts; it means that if your process allows something that Anglo common law does not allow, you should have a good answer for why that is. Does it allow anonymous accusations? Is the accused allowed to know the charges against them, before a finding of guilt is rendered? Is there a presumption of innocence? Is the accused allowed to have a trusted third party - one who knows the rules of the game - to advocate on their behalf? Who, exactly, is responsible for deciding matters of fact vs matters of &amp;quot;law&amp;quot;? Is there an appeals process to fix possibly incorrect decisions?&lt;p&gt;Going by the linked document by Valerie Aurora, a good Code of Conduct allows anonymous accusations, the accused does not get to know the charges against them before a finding is rendered, there is no presumption of innocence, the accused does not get a third party advocate, matters of fact are necessarily decided by the same committee that makes the rules, and there is no appeal process.&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that such a committee will always do wrong. But I think it&amp;#x27;s worth thinking about how people operating in bad faith (either on the committee, or reporters to it) can abuse those features to achieve goals that are not actually aligned with what the Code of Conduct is trying to do. Yes, it&amp;#x27;s true that people can&amp;#x27;t be put in jail for these sorts of things, but a poorly-run adjudication process can have significant negative personal and financial effects on people.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>This is one of those posts where the title is going to trigger a lot of unproductive subthreads, but the piece itself seems pretty balanced and thoughtful (and links to Valerie Aurora&amp;#x27;s excellent code-of-conduct training deck).&lt;p&gt;The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions. Here, I think the story is pretty much just: people screw up, and if your project has a code of conduct (I think most professional ones should!), there are some easy pitfalls to avoid captured here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>finnthehuman</author><text>You inadvertently gave away the game.&lt;p&gt;We can all agree that everyone has the right to be arbitrary and capricious.  Codes of conduct are a formalization of expectations and rules for behavior.  The are often tied (explicitly or implicitly) to an adjudication and enforcement process much more complicated than the person in charge just saying &amp;quot;get the fuck out&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;However when someone brings up the idea of improving that bureaucratic process by comparing and contrasting Codes of Conduct language and enforcement to our society&amp;#x27;s hard-fought experience in creating fair justice systems, you retreated right back to the right to be arbitrary and capricious.&lt;p&gt;This is why people can&amp;#x27;t help but wonder: what the fuck are we trying to accomplish here?  All I know is I need to publish a specific flavor of bureaucratic boilerplate so I don&amp;#x27;t get my reputation attacked for not publicly promising to kick out people I would have kicked out anyway. And that I can use that document to dole out punishments with a larger air of legitimacy and seriousness than just telling someone not to come around my place anymore.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Violated a Code of Conduct</title><url>https://www.fast.ai/2020/10/28/code-of-conduct/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Your premise is that, rather than free association, every group of people owes a kind of due process to everyone else, presumptive of their right to associate. Sorry, I disagree: people can decide they don&amp;#x27;t want to associate with you or me for reasons we don&amp;#x27;t find justifiable. I can throw a party and not invite you simply for writing this comment; I can start a project and not allow you to contribute. You can relate to the rest of the world that I did that, and let them decide what that means to them.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;ve gone out of our way to encode into law the exceptions to that rule. We can talk all we want about &amp;quot;anglo-derived common law&amp;quot; in those cases.</text></item><item><author>defen</author><text>I disagree. I think we should generalize more, beyond codes of conduct: If you are building an adjudication process for resolving non-criminal personal conflicts (whether that be a Code of Conduct, an HR department, a Title IX proceeding, a professional organization, or something else), you should take a look at Anglo-derived common law and the safeguards against abuse that have been evolved over the centuries.&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean everything needs to go through the courts; it means that if your process allows something that Anglo common law does not allow, you should have a good answer for why that is. Does it allow anonymous accusations? Is the accused allowed to know the charges against them, before a finding of guilt is rendered? Is there a presumption of innocence? Is the accused allowed to have a trusted third party - one who knows the rules of the game - to advocate on their behalf? Who, exactly, is responsible for deciding matters of fact vs matters of &amp;quot;law&amp;quot;? Is there an appeals process to fix possibly incorrect decisions?&lt;p&gt;Going by the linked document by Valerie Aurora, a good Code of Conduct allows anonymous accusations, the accused does not get to know the charges against them before a finding is rendered, there is no presumption of innocence, the accused does not get a third party advocate, matters of fact are necessarily decided by the same committee that makes the rules, and there is no appeal process.&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that such a committee will always do wrong. But I think it&amp;#x27;s worth thinking about how people operating in bad faith (either on the committee, or reporters to it) can abuse those features to achieve goals that are not actually aligned with what the Code of Conduct is trying to do. Yes, it&amp;#x27;s true that people can&amp;#x27;t be put in jail for these sorts of things, but a poorly-run adjudication process can have significant negative personal and financial effects on people.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>This is one of those posts where the title is going to trigger a lot of unproductive subthreads, but the piece itself seems pretty balanced and thoughtful (and links to Valerie Aurora&amp;#x27;s excellent code-of-conduct training deck).&lt;p&gt;The thing HN likes to do best with any story is to generalize it and find sweeping conclusions. Here, I think the story is pretty much just: people screw up, and if your project has a code of conduct (I think most professional ones should!), there are some easy pitfalls to avoid captured here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ScottBurson</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not &amp;quot;every group of people&amp;quot; -- it&amp;#x27;s organizations that invite the participation of the public, or at least of others they don&amp;#x27;t know well, as long as they adhere to the mores of the community.&lt;p&gt;More importantly, I take the parent&amp;#x27;s point to be, not that such an organization &amp;quot;owes&amp;quot; anything to anyone, but simply that anyone formalizing a Code of Conduct and a committee to enforce it would do well to understand why the protections of due process exist.  If their intention is truly to create a safe space for interaction, setting up a process that can be easily abused is not going to help with that.</text></comment>