A plea against COC's

Please god, no code of conduct for kernel development! Its a road to hell sold on good intentions. It destroys trust, it encourages tattle telling, reduces organizations into self censorship and political correctness hallway monitoring. (FWIW I also find them insulting for some reason I can't quite explain. but, this fact about me is not part of my argument against them.)

Social norms are "social" until they are codified into law. CoC's are basically laws (with limited government enforcement) They limit freedoms and expression in the name of "protecting the children".

I think its more than enough to have anyone periodically ask if it was really necessary to be a huge ass in that case or could the same message been given a bit less personally?

Strong messages defining priories in real time are critical in hierarchical yet loosely coupled organization of strong personalities with high IQ's to get the people working with common priorities/values. Especially for Sr helpers. If they don't line up behind the leader then the leader can't trust them and the work can't scale. Delivering strong messages is an effective way of removing ambiguity, getting the message across and building trust that the helpers are working coherently with the directions, priorities and expectations set by a leader.

Sure, you can argue that what is the different between that and a CoC. CoC's are written down is the difference. Priorities and values are more dynamic.