LWN: Comments on "Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines"

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

dgm — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 09:34:41 +0000

Nobody is saying that theoretical problems and solutions should not be explored and talked about. On the contrary, it's a very good and interesting exercice. But sometimes it's tempting to try to push for implementing them, even if they are not needed. The right thing to do, IMHO, is keep the ideas as ideas, and implement them when needed, not before.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

em-bee — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 17:35:37 +0000

to add to this thought experiment, this is exactly what is happening in china. the country is to big for traffic police to bother with anything other than serious accidents. traffic management is done bey either preventing bad behavior by making it physically impossible through road barriers, or ignoring it as long as no accidents occur. as a result everyone drives defensively and aggressive driving is being rewarded.

greetings, eMBee.

“Do you know where this kind of reasoning goes?”

dgm — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 14:31:57 +0000

Be careful, or you will be stomping them before 1920.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

jospoortvliet — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 22:45:30 +0000

I like the sentiment but often, finding a solution under pressure is harder than in advance....

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

jospoortvliet — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 22:44:16 +0000

Well, he's not wrong. There has been a lot like this lately and yes, entitled crybabies that don't contribute anything to open source is a good description.

There are people who genuinely don't get what the problem is and I'm happy to explain it but I totally get that some people just assume "troll" when people ask the same short sighted questions again.

“Do you know where this kind of reasoning goes?”

CRConrad — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 07:26:51 +0000

Yes, most people realise where it goes: Stomping out the Nazis *before* 1932. Are you saying that would have been a bad thing?

“People like you”

CRConrad — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 07:24:16 +0000

= People who bring this kind of argument.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

raven667 — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 21:46:30 +0000

I'm not sure how you are reading this as aggressive in any way, it's advocating for accountability and responsibility, to prevent people from hiding behind a misreading of tolerance to avoid consequences for harm. It's not hypocritically intolerant to, for example, eject a person from a mailing list who is harassing other people, that's just accountability. People who argue for one-sided tolerance extended by a victim to an attacker, either legitimately misunderstand, or are making a bad-faith argument, but are wrong either way, that's just an abdication of responsibility.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

dgm — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:58:57 +0000

> tolerance is a mutual pact

Do you realize how this is pure "us versus them" talk? Do you know where this kind of reasoning goes?

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

raven667 — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 21:07:46 +0000

> the inherent hypocrisy of their core message ... be intolerant of intolerance.

This is a common misconception, tolerance is a mutual pact and can only extend as far as _both_ parties support it, so intolerance should be met with intolerance, you cannot give the intolerant the un-earned benefit of tolerance that they refuse to extend to others, tolerance is earned by being tolerant of others, a kind of corollary to the Golden Rule.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

ras — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 10:37:13 +0000

+1.

The major problem with all CoC's in the inherent hypocrisy of their core message ... be intolerant of intolerance. The CoC's opponents seize on it to goad the CoC supporters into being loudly proud of their intolerance. It's a very effective strategy - usually driving the tenor of the discussion to a historic low. I think it all works out in the end, meaning the things are more cordial after everything settles down, but geeze you would rather not be around when the sausage is being made.

I thought there was no solution. Now Stallman comes it with something that makes the solution so obvious, you don't know how didn't see it.

And not for the first time. The man has an amazing track record for being spectacularly right.

K.V. rule emerges from Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

anselm — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 14:40:28 +0000

I don't think “your own reason and your own common sense” in this case is supposed to mean “your own gut feeling” or “your own convenience”. Obviously the Buddha exhorts us to use critical thinking instead of blindly believing whatever some guru or pundit tells us. That is not a bad idea.

The problem comes in where, as in global warming, there is pretty clear evidence for something that – for whatever reason – people don't want to believe, or, in the case of statistics, where people's gut feelings tend to run counter to what the actual data tells somebody with appropriate training in the field (e.g., the ongoing hype about the menace of Islamic terrorism vs. statistically – in terms of annual per-capita fatalities – much more dangerous activities such as eating too much and/or the wrong things, participating in road traffic, or for that matter taking a bath).

K.V. rule emerges from Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

mathstuf — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 13:35:24 +0000

> "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha, 563-483 B.C.

Though this is dangerous for actually doing things about problems no one wants to acknowledge, but still exist anyways (e.g., climate change). And for understanding statistics in general really.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

dgm — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 09:11:42 +0000

I would argue that, as long as we don't have an instace of a real problem, we will be better sticking to guidelines. Trying to preemtively fix a problem you don't have usually means you are not going to fix it right, and in the process you will probably create new problems (unintended consequences). Let's keep it simple.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

nix — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 22:21:16 +0000

It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized

They probably have been anyway, in order to function in society at all. (And if they haven't figured out that acting kindly towards people makes those people act better towards them and makes their lives easier, a nice document describing what to do and how to do it actually seems quite likely to be helpful. I wish I'd had one a quarter-century ago.)

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

nix — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 22:15:03 +0000

Oh yes, that makes much more sense. The original sentence was an excellent example of a sentence that can be parsed in two ways with precisely opposing meanings, and like a Necker cube, if you latch onto one of them it's almost impossible to notice the other one. :)

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

rweikusat2 — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 20:01:05 +0000

> And to further muddy the waters, those folks with poor social and communication skills are often (by far) the most prolific
> contributors of (good!) code.
>
> It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized, while not > holding those on the other end to that same expectation/standard.

The assumption that people who are perceived as "having poor social and communication skills" are actually capable of "changing themselves", especially "changing themselves *quickly*" while being exposed to a (perceived to be) highly chaotic environment (perceived to be) extremely hostile, up to the point of (perceived to be) being hell-bent on physical/ psychical extermination of "the offender/ enemy" isn't necessarily true.

Eg, as a hopefully completely harmless example, I've meanwhile learnt to answer the "Eat in or take away?" question common in takeaways. That's a devilish bit of language confusion as the only way to eat something someone intends to buy is "inside", the other half of the sentence implying that the product is not supposed to be eaten which is wrong. This took me about 15 years. There are others which still leave my mind entirely blank as to "What does this person want from me???".

That's a problem people without it usually cannot imagine to be a problem hence, they usually arrive at

assumption A) must be an imbecile.
assumption B) must be doing this intentionally to annoy me.

Plus some rather more nasty options I don't want to put into words now.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

pizza — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 12:19:42 +0000

> I would also like to throw in the mix that some people just have poor social and communication skills and don't really pick up as well on social feedback as other people, to the point of it being a neuroligical / psychiatric issue. This isn't really helped by isolating and ostracizing.

And to further muddy the waters, those folks with poor social and communication skills are often (by far) the most prolific contributors of (good!) code.

It is somewhat hypocritical to say that these folks should expend great effort to change themselves lest they be ostracized, while not holding those on the other end to that same expectation/standard.

Anyway. As with most things, balance is necessary but it is highly presumptuous to state a-priori where that balance "obviously" must lie.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

nilsmeyer — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 06:46:00 +0000

> I like the wording and getle rationale in this document, but I do think the personalities who most need reining in are just going to look at such a thing and say "people are too sensitive, they just need to toughen up". I guess it depends who the target audience is.

I would also like to throw in the mix that some people just have poor social and communication skills and don't really pick up as well on social feedback as other people, to the point of it being a neuroligical / psychiatric issue. This isn't really helped by isolating and ostracizing.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

rgmoore — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 00:35:59 +0000

There's a point where defensive driving starts *rewarding* the bad drivers - that nothing ever happens just encourages them to become worse drivers.

That assumes that getting into accidents is the only form of feedback bad drivers get. But that isn't the case. We have traffic police whose job it is to hand out tickets to bad drivers; they can even lose their license for repeated and/or severe violations. That's the point of the "Punishing bad drivers is a related but separate topic" comment. By separating the jobs of accident avoidance and punishing bad driving, we get the benefits of defensive driving while minimizing the risk that bad drivers will be rewarded for their misdeeds.

Translating back into codes of conduct, this suggests the rules need to come in two parts. One part are guidelines like the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines that try to encourage best practices so people who want to avoid confrontation don't create it inadvertently. The other part are hard rules about what is absolutely unacceptable and will result in some kind of punishment for violators. There can and should be a big gray area between following best practices and getting in trouble for breaking the rules, just as there's a big gray area between being a careful defensive driver and getting a ticket.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

interalia — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 23:49:51 +0000

> The point of these guidelines is to reduce the frequency of arriving at the situation where a contributor becomes or is remaining aggressive.

Yes, if you read again that's pretty much how I started my comment:

>> Well, writing the "here is how to do it better" is excellent, and I take the point that you want to nudge things before they get bad.

Overall I was responding to the people who were saying this document is the "best of its kind" they have seen, probably because the tone is more encouraging good than punishing bad (the carrot vs the stick). I was just saying that encouraging good is fine, but since it's just guidelines rather than an actual conduct policy then the difficulty comes if someone aggressively ignores it, and there is no procedure/policy for blocking that person.

Well, other than "I'm the BDFL and I'm booting you out of here" I suppose, as anselm suggested.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

niner — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 21:19:30 +0000

No, of course I don't think that. I may have expressed myself confusingly. What I meant is, that by being nice to each other instead of flaming, we'll not offend or deter people who write good code, therefore we will get that good code. Does that make sense?

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

nix — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 21:05:14 +0000

And we will get better code exactly because people who write good code are not turned off by completely irrelevant personal matters

What? That doesn't follow at all, unless you seriously think that people who write good code are all robots devoid of feelings.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

rweikusat2 — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 14:53:40 +0000

"Historically", open source pretty much meant "you must be the kind of person who socializes effectively on IRC, otherwise, whatever else you do doesn't matter".

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Tara_Li — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:51:36 +0000

> It's like defensive driving. You can prevent other people from
> causing accidents, and fewer accidents is good for you and
> everyone. Punishing bad drivers is a related but separate topic.

I don't quite agree. There's a point where defensive driving starts *rewarding* the bad drivers - that nothing ever happens just encourages them to become worse drivers.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

niner — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 10:37:45 +0000

You can look at it from the other way round: the whole point of code of conducts or kind communication guidelines is that the discussion is about code. That good code prevails. Not thick skin, not stubbornness, not the "right" upbringing, not belonging to the "right" social group. And we will get better code exactly because people who write good code are not turned off by completely irrelevant personal matters and people who do not yet write good code will be able to learn from better feedback.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

coriordan — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 09:12:15 +0000

> But the real test happens when a contributor or developer
> aggressively doesn't follow such guidelines

That's kinda a separate topic, rather than a real test.

The point of these guidelines is to reduce the frequency of arriving at the situation where a contributor becomes or is remaining aggressive.

It's like defensive driving. You can prevent other people from causing accidents, and fewer accidents is good for you and everyone. Punishing bad drivers is a related but separate topic.

K.V. rule emerges from Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Wol — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:40:17 +0000

> Learn to be happy about others' happiness, not dwelling on your own lack.

Plus a thousand-fold!

Cheers,
Wol

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

mcatanzaro — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 13:57:42 +0000

"The only thing that matters is the code you write."

Doesn't this attitude seem rather... horrible?

I care about the people I work with. Being nice to each other is basic decency and shouldn't be controversial. The primary flaw with the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is that there's no mechanism for redress when people fail to be decent to each other. Hopefully this is a rare occurrence in most communities, but when it does occur, it needs to be handled appropriately.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

anselm — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 09:58:58 +0000

I like the wording and getle rationale in this document, but I do think the personalities who most need reining in are just going to look at such a thing and say "people are too sensitive, they just need to toughen up".

That is where people in BDFL-like positions get to (a) show some leadership-by-example (since the tone in a community is usually influenced by what its leaders are doing), and (b) take such a person aside and unambiguously tell them what's what.

K.V. rule emerges from Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

bokr — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 09:31:24 +0000

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in
the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies,
you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I
know of, babies -- God damn it, you've got to be kind." - Kurt Vonnegut

Not sure where I clipped this from, maybe a unix cookie, or such.
Pretty sure he wouldn't mind my use of it here though ;-)

NB: The fragile and limited can be kind too, by not demanding that others
refrain from enjoying themselves freely in ways impossible for themselves.

(Of course it is not kind to surprise people with what they are not ready for).

So, go ahead and dance, though I am too shy and stiff; and let me eat without
thinking too much about your unfortunate allergies. This goes for acquired
word allergies too ;-)

Learn to be happy about others' happiness, not dwelling on your own lack.

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, even
if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own
common sense." - Buddha, 563-483 B.C.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

interalia — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 05:23:18 +0000

Well, writing the "here is how to do it better" is excellent, and I take the point that you want to nudge things before they get bad. Perhaps the benefit is that everyone is reminded to be a bit nicer, and day-to-day list behaviour is better - a good outcome.

But the real test happens when a contributor or developer aggressively doesn't follow such guidelines, because they are just guidelines and nothing says people have to follow them. If there is no punitive social ostracising, then a developer/contributor who consistently behaves badly still hangs around and eventually makes it unpleasant enough that people spend less time in the community, or leave it completely.

I like the wording and getle rationale in this document, but I do think the personalities who most need reining in are just going to look at such a thing and say "people are too sensitive, they just need to toughen up". I guess it depends who the target audience is.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

billygout — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 03:46:01 +0000

"People like you", eh? I hope you know this person...

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

k8to — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 02:10:04 +0000

The emerging term for this type of behavior is fragility.

The need to reframe discussions of inequity away from the parties harmed by it is a common pattern, and a useful one to recognize in our peers and our selves. Of course not all of us express it in such a nutty way.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

flussence — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 23:25:15 +0000

>The only thing that matters is the code you write.

I've noticed a pattern with people like you. The ones that crawl out of the woodwork whenever an article like this comes up on this or other sites, making throwaway accounts to vent their spleen about some hallucinated injustice or slight toward some hypothetical endangered demographic. Chronically offended at the notion that anyone should be expected to behave like an adult and having difficulty reading the room or communicating in a coherent manner, and when pressed to clarify what said demographic is, and why anyone would want to preserve it, you almost always escalate into passive-aggressive evasion or outright histrionics.

And your routine is always one of demanding, selfish, unfounded entitlement, from someone with no contributions to the project they're making political demands of, and no intention to ever start either way. Sometimes it comes with vague threats, sometimes specific threats. (On that note, will someone please take ESR's toys away before we end up with another Reiser on our hands?)

If you're not writing code, why should you hold any power over those that do? If you can't be civil, from where do you derive this divine right to shove your entitlement in the face of others trying to get work done?

With apologies to the GPLv2: You are not required to accept this code of conduct, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to complain or interfere with the people actually doing the work.

Get a new script from your ringleaders, please. I'm sick of hearing meritocracy propaganda from people of no merit.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

rweikusat2 — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:14:14 +0000

"Good enough" is often very much a matter of opinion.

For a past example, the kernel CodingStyle document calls for functional decomposition in order to make code easier to understand. That's a proposition many people, and many quite vocally so, disagree with. Eg, a certain Patrick McHardy used to, "This function is only used once. Get rid of it." (that's a quote, BTW).

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

mathstuf — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 20:11:59 +0000

First, this is not for the kernel, so that part of your comment is a non sequitur.

Anyways, in an ideal world, yes this would be true. Unfortunately, we don't live in one. There are underlying biases that all of us have (including me!) that the possessor may not be aware of. These can have a "tilt" across all of society[1]. At the least, these codes can those the target of such phenomena to point them out to those already in "power" and knowing that there *is* such a process can help to ease concerns of those that are more likely to be targets that the project is willing to approach any such problems that may arise.

As an example relevant to GNU, someone developing a non-free application shows up to ask questions about autoconf for their project. One might have worried that they'd be attacked for the non-free-ness of their application (or their @badcompany.com email address) before rather than just getting an answer to their question. Now they know that such things are not tolerated at the project level and can rest assured that if such does happen, something will actually happen about it.

Of course, communities can neglect them and knowing the social code is meaningless is a reputation thing (not dissimilar to neglected code bit-rotting to outside contributors as time passes).

[1]One might not be racist but might unknowingly perpetuate societal norms which *are* racist.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

ibuildwalls — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:46:28 +0000

These rules have no sense, they are not related to the kernel development. It doesn't matter who writes the code men or women. The only thing that matters is the code you write. If the code is good enough, it gets into kernel, if not, then not. In the UNIX world there is a very good principle - KISS !

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

Abrahams — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:42:01 +0000

100% agreed. I would love to see this set of guidelines grow in popularity, and quickly.

Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

naptastic — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 18:34:29 +0000

> [A Code of Conduct] is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn't try to teach people to do better than what the rules require.

No, not really... a CoC defines boundaries and mechanisms of enforcing those boundaries to protect contributors and would-be contributors from abuse.

RMS isn't wrong here, but he's missing three important points. First, dev communities with codes of conduct ARE teaching people how to be nice, in very specific ways, by providing a CoC, and asking them nicely to abide by the rules. Second, a CoC doesn't have to go straight to "heavy-handed"ness; sometimes people just need to be reminded of the rules. Third, some people are not going to be nice no matter how well you teach them, and at some point, you have to get out the ban hammer.