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Erin Kissane

Considering how extremely mainstream and normal codes of conduct are now—for both live events and online groups—it's super interesting to me to look back at how fiercely some relatively loud voices in many parts of tech resisted them, often insisting they would make [abuse/ harassment/ whatever] worse and inevitably result in lawsuits and bankruptcies.

Like, I'm not going to name names, but I wonder sometimes if those people came around or are still enraged, just silently.

Relatedly, I increasingly appreciate the gift/curse that is the destruction of a coherent searchable mass Twitter archive. I will happily hold a grudge for one thousand years, but even I recognize that there's value in shaking the Etch-a-Sketch once every decade or so.

@kissane 100% of them turned out to be abusers and harassers who didn't want the scrutiny, I'm sure.

@fraying I mean, I don't *think* that's true? Not across the board.

I expect some of them were, and some of them were definitely super aggressive, but god knows I've had my aggro periods as well—I don't react well to shouty men *at all*.

I imagine there was, for some, a more general investment in pushing boundaries or being edgy or whatever to win attention, even if not in ways that are actually abusive or harassing.

@kissane of course you’re right. I was being hyperbolic with that 100%.

It’s probably more like 99%.

@fraying @kissane I mean, I will happily criticize Codes of Conduct all day long as often enforced in the direction of tone policing and mysteriously often enforced against non-white, non-cis, non-straight people way more often than they are against white cishet men, even when those men are literally rapists.

which doesn't mean that having a code of conduct isn't a good idea. indeed my main complaint is that Code of Conduct is often confused with a code of conduct. mere text is not action.

@jubilee @fraying People who railed against CoCs often fell back on this years ago, which always made me laugh.

Like, actually saying right away what you're disagreeing with seems a lot more efficient than saying "CoCs will never work!!" and then walking it back to "…unless you did it in a not completely shitty way, which probably you won't."

@jubilee @fraying I was involved in early CoC work and our codes were backed with highly detailed externally and internally communicated safety plans and systems and they worked *great*. And not one of the dudes yelling about how they would fail bothered to look at any of that, or ask us.

@kissane @fraying Yeah. It's easily possible to implement. And I don't see why one would argue not to. My concern lately has been noticing people just kinda copying and pasting because it's one more item on their GitHub "have you finished setting up your repo?" checklist and assuming that's good enough.

@kissane @fraying some cases I know were genuine cluelessness and being utterly ignorant about their own privileges. and so concluded there can't be an issue

they came around when they realized that their public stance made them an idol among nazis

still enormous damage they caused before the realization hit them

@sima @kissane @fraying What's amazing to me are the ones who still haven't twigged and point and berate people who *did* learn as if that makes them weak. It's crazy. Toxic masculinity and deflection I guess but wow. Once you spot the crappy behaviour you see it in so many places

@kissane @fraying Sounds a bit like they grew up watching South Park.

@kissane @jenniferplusplus biblical jubilees but for our cringe social media posts

@kissane At least for the detractors I was following at the time, I’ve never seen any of them recant.

But yeah, I am curious.

@beep I mean, for all I know, they think things are actually worse now.

@kissane @beep oh I guarantee there’s a “How Codes of Conduct gave us Donald Trump” take out there in the same vein of “the democrats are so woke I was forced to become a reactionary conservative”

@kissane YES! Admittedly though, I did chat with two highly visible antagonist-voices—and through chatting we all realized their lone objection was the assumption a CoC was simply a document, and not a well thought-out mitigation system. With real actions & consequences anticipated. Semi-duh, but a good reminder to challenge people's assumptions.

@kissane this is something really interesting, having been involved in the early days of 'we don't need a code of conduct' now to the work that's happening in CNCF to attempt to build a much more nuanced community understanding.
The questions that get asked between now and then are worlds apart.

@kissane they're still around, and some of them will flat-out deny ever having been opposed to the idea (even when their old emails and tweets are quoted back at them).

@kissane In SF fandom the 'it will make things worse Because Rules-Lawyers' was a really standard position amongst the old guard - the same folks that ignored sexual harassment & child sexual abuse for a disturbingly long time, because of who was doing it, & that made heroes out of abusive assholes because they could write well.

OTOH I know a guy locally (another SFF old timer) who runs a fairly successful con & he's had zero problems with his code of conduct, which is pretty good.

@kissane speaking as someone who is involved with online community leadership of various kinds in various places: it's the latter. silent rage.

@kissane we've also run into behavior - for privacy reasons we can't give details, sorry - that we would characterize as attempting to manifest the worst-case outcomes into existence by treating these policies as exact, prescriptive recipes to get legalistic about, and opposing any human element to enforcement

@kissane none of this ideological opposition to having written policies about civil behavior is at all quiet or silent when you're the one dealing with it. it is of course a core goal that the general public should not have to be aware of all the stuff going on (and for us personally it's also a goal that people CAN get involved when they choose to, that stuff isn't done in secret, but that does make it all even harder). so the apparent lack of fuss you see tells you who's won, basically :)

@irenes This is super interesting, thank you! I think most of the spaces I was in (sometimes as a community lead, often not) all went pretty overwhelmingly to “yes to all the safety things,” but some of them I left, and those are probably still roiling

@kissane the people who are against codes of conduct tend to be the ones who think there are things in there they might wanna do/have done & want to get away with

@kissane As the author of Contributor Covenant, I can assure you that there are plenty of people who are still enraged, and the abuse and harassment and hate and death threats and doxing, while it ebbs and flows, has been a continuous part of my life for the past 10 years.

@CoralineAda That’s awful, and I’m sorry. It has been my impression that although a lot of people are still mad, there are many fewer recognized leaders in tech who openly oppose things like this. But I could be wrong.

@kissane while I agree with the need for them, the language in many of these CoCs can be problematic. Many conferences and projects adopt "standard" versions that contain puritanical language hindering discussion on topics of sex for example.

@kissane I've seen people who are against enforcing a Code of Conduct do a couple things to derail the process:

1a. If other leaders in the project want to create an inclusive CoC, the person who is anti-CoC gets involved in the CoC creation process and slows it down every step of the way. Endless arguing and "what if"s make everyone exhausted until they burn out and no action is taken.

1b. If they are a lone project lead, they create their own CoC, adding language that excuses their behavior (see the Linux kernel's previous "Code of Conflict" for example).

2. After push-back on their weak code of conduct, they adopt a standard code of conduct. Then they either do not create a CoC team, or they put people on the CoC team who would excuse their behavior.

3. Introduce legal FUD about how much they can actually do to enforce a CoC, question the scope of the CoC, what actually counts as a violation of the CoC, etc.

4. Ignore reports, do not respond promptly, or make terrible judgement calls.

5. Sit on the CoC committee to defend their friends' behavior. "Shouldn't we hear the other side?" "I'm sure they didn't mean it that way!" "Does our CoC actually say that's an inappropriate behavior?"

There are so many ways CoC continue to be derailed internally.

@brainwane @kissane @luis_in_brief same.

That resistance has permanently damaged the reputation of some very otherwise-respected professionals in my mind, honestly. I cannot forget it. I’m not sure I can forgive it.