On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:49 AM, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey(at)proteus-tech(dot)com> wrote:
> I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a
> CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be abused
> than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was ever
> invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I previously
> personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner that I had
> feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not like rather
> than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not such an unusual
> circumstance as one might hope in these projects or conferences. It is
> impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from these CoCs
> I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear. We should
> tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.
It's impossible for me to know what really happened in that situation,
but it doesn't seem like the CoC was likely to have been much of a
factor in any telling. If this individual was in a position of
influence and decided to act maliciously, they would no doubt have
found another way to do so in the absence of a CoC. On the other hand,
it's easy to imagine a newer non-influential community member finding
no recourse against abusive behavior because that isn't explicitly
provided for; they might simply not know where to start, and become
totally discouraged.
Nobody is claiming that the CoC is perfect, or that it can anticipate
every situation; it's just a framework for handling disputes about
abusive and/or antisocial behavior. The core team have had exclusive
responsibility for "Handling disciplinary issues" as part of their
charter, at least until now. You can make exactly the same slippery
slope argument against that.
--
Peter Geoghegan