New code of conduct discussion

Meta Moderation
42

Now when first writing it, I wasn’t aware that my comment on mandating empathy had this specific dimension for non neuro-typical people to it. I was more thinking about political implications of empathy. However having read it again and going back in my mind a little bit to stuff I read on neuropsychology once upon a time, it does make quite a bit of sense to me.

to merely taking into account whether doing something would constitute ‘being a jerk’ from someone else’s perspective

I think merely is the key problematic word in your comment. This ability is actually not a trivial thing. Cognitive and affective perspective taking is the name that is sometimes given to it in the scientific literature. And let’s just say it is not uniformly distributed among humans, as you recognize. However
about this

almost anyone can learn if they try

I am not so sure. ADHD and autism come to mind.

With many abilities it appears fairly doable to acquire them once you have them. However that might just not be the case for everyone.

2 Likes
43

Not saying it is. The ‘merely’ describes the relative difficulty of this ability compared to being an empath as in science fiction.

One: I did say ‘almost’.
Two: Without going into detail, let’s say I have relevant experience with this matter. It’s a skill like any other; most people can at least get better at most skills if they train. Natural talent and affinity plays a huge role in how far you can go and how hard you have to work at it but everyone can improve.

But. But. But.

This is an international mostly-online-only community of people who want to be able to collaborate with and trust each other. There are some functional prerequisites that come with this. One of these is to be willing and able to figure out, through whatever combination of intuition, explicit study, and direct feedback from others, how not to be a jerk, and execute on that. Ideally, everyone would be able to meet that qualification, but some people truly can’t. Other people are on the margins—they could, if they worked at it, but other things are more important to them.

A supportive, empathetic community should aspire to do two things—and it doesn’t matter if this is in a document labelled ‘Code of Conduct’ or if it’s an ethos by which the mods operate. One, it should make clear that figuring out—via cheat sheet, charm school, or just being a good sport about apologizing every time you step on someone’s toes—how not to be a jerk is something that is expected of everyone. This may be a bigger lift for you or me than it is for Deanna Troi. I wish I were taller too; life isn’t fair, and this is what it takes to have a civil multicultural online community. And yes, maybe you and I each know people who would be unable to meet that standard, and sad to say, if someone simply can’t help but be a jerk to people in online communities, I think the fact is that we’re better off without them.

But two, it should make clear that perfection is not expected. It is okay to make mistakes! It is okay to learn! It is okay if some of us make more mistakes than others, and if some of us have more to learn! And when a Code of Conduct, as ours does, says that showing empathy is AN EXAMPLE OF POSITIVE BEHAVIOR and does not use the word ‘mandatory’, I don’t understand how it could be read in any other way than in that spirit of anti-perfectionism.

And it really… I don’t know man, it really creeps me out when people are enthusiastic about arguing against the idea of not being a jerk to each other. I don’t know why you keep using the phrase ‘mandating empathy’ in your posts. It looks so very much like you’re trying to change the norms here to make it acceptable to be a jerk. (As opposed to trying, but failing, not to be a jerk, which is something that all of us do occasionally—I do it! Pretty sure the mods do it! Maybe I’m doing it right now!) And I don’t want that, and I don’t think most of us do either.

12 Likes
44

The word «empathy» is in the original text under discussion, and the word «jerk» is not; the arguments are specifically about the primary dictionary meaning of the word as written.

I agree, though, that the text is not trying to enforce or mandate empathy; and it is unfortunate that it gets interpreted this way.

On the other hand, the text does promote the idea that empathy works usefully in a group the size of Nixpkgs project, and I agree that this in itself is already a harmful idea — if empathy is interpreted according to the most typical primary dictionary definition of empathy.

As for literalism, implied intent, and dictionary definitions — disrespecting literalism is how one gets undebuggable code, compartmentalisation is not a virtue.

And the hard technical discussions we have — the very thing that we need to keep civil and productive — are often exactly of the empathy-breakdown kind where to sides cannot share each other’s perceptions and have conflicting technical values and preferences. We have to get by with negotiations of trade-offs, described as literally as possible because there is no initial shared undestanding. This is the kind of communication we need to be good at.

1 Like
45

but everyone can improve .

I should say as a closing remark on the issue of non-neuro-typical people from my side: the burden of improvement might be quite high.

And to actually make improvement possible, you need a good feedback mechanism. In particular one that doesn’t put blame on people. Right now, the moderation team acts more by issuing warnings and then imposing sanctions against people that have been seen as problematic. (At least that is my impression) You might need a change of communication style which is more based on offering help to people to better integrate, explain things to them in detail, give positive alternative examples for interactions gone wrong, and work constructively with people over a longer period of time.

So yes, I suppose it is possible, but as I see it, we would need a really conscious effort for this.

I’d be for making this effort btw. I am very grateful that I was made aware that my earlier comments have this dimension to them. As I said, I didn’t realize that when I first wrote them.

It looks so very much like you’re trying to change the norms here to make it acceptable to be a jerk.

This seems to have come up multiple times now from different people if I recall correctly. If you want I can address this in private. Feel free to send me a message. And anyone else who reads this and wants to know more, too.

I am just not sure if I should write yet another little public philosophical essay explaining why I argue for these things. In a way it might also be off-topic if it gets too deep.

1 Like
46

I think your perception of the moderation team suffers from a selection bias, by the fact that the public only learns about our work when things turn sour. We actually do reach out a lot to people in private, and we do try our best to help people within our capacity and capability, but most of the time you’ll never hear about that.

13 Likes
47

Yes, my perception of the moderation team most likely does suffer from massive selection bias. I acknowledge that without hesitation. However there is nothing I can do about it, as the information to correct it is not publicly available. So I am left with an imperfect judgement that I cannot improve upon. I have to say, I did try to obtain corrective information though, in private, in one recent case! It didn’t do much sadly.

But just as with the other issue mentioned above, I don’t think it would be best to open up an entirely new line of debate right here. I would however also extend an invitation to you personally to contact me privately, individually and not in your official function, maybe sometime after New Year’s Eve when there is some free time. Maybe there is way to a better mutual understanding of why everyone is doing whatever they are doing. So in case you are interested, let me know!

On the more general horizon, what I know now, and what I didn’t know when I entered this thread here for the first time, is that these issues of community politics have been brewing for a few years. And for some reason the nix community (like other communities) has not found a really constructive way of critically discussing political proposals. Maybe part of the reason is that the RFC process, which has been used for this in the past, isn’t actually made for political debates, but rather for larger technical changes? Maybe another part is a reflection larger social issues?

Just as a reminder of what I mean by a non-constructive way: The very first reply to my very first post on any of these political debates ever in the entire nix community – I had no prior exposure to them whatsoever, I just thought this Code of Conduct thing is so important even for me as a rather minor figure in all of this, that I should add my five cents to it – led to one of the two release managers of the 23.11 release of NixOS calling me a concern troll, in spite of there being literally zero possible evidence for it.

Now I clearly managed to recover from there. :sweat_smile: But it’s a symptom of something. Whatever that means, it isn’t really great. Maybe it’s a bug in the community communication protocol?

Anyways, I still wish everyone who celebrates it: A merry Christmas!,

and to all else for whom these are holidays: Happy Holidays!,

and to all else just a few nice days!

(p.s. if you have some really important comments on all of that for me, you can of course also send me a PM!)

:wave:

3 Likes
48

I would interpret “we as contributors and maintainers” as referring to the moderation team, since that’s the only way other uses of the second person in the text (like “Our Responsibilities”) make any sense.

I wouldn’t, since this appears before any reference to the moderation team in the text. The first “we” sets the scope. This is my struggle with the text on first sight. I did not pledge – maybe I will, but I did not, and I am a contributor and maintainer, although a lousy one, nowadays, lacking time.

Therefore, I created a pull request to hopefully improve the text in this regard.