alt Hacker NewsI can't find the article where I read it, many years ago now, but it was about strategies that small communities can adopt to keep their culture from being subsumed by the mainstream.
One was to pick a set of norms repugnant to the mainstream that everyone currently in the community can tolerate and enforce them rigorously on all new members. This will limit the appeal of the community to people like the ones currently there and will make sure that it never grows too big.
Thus your community is as appetising to activists attempting a hostile takeover as a toxic slug is to a bird.
As an example from six years ago, when the code of conduct madness had just reached its peak:
>I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here".
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> I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here".
I think that the goal of any code of conduct is to prevent any semblance of arbitrary and whimsical punishment, which can kill entire communities.
Linux unfortunately has to endure with toxic contributors and even maintainers, and history showed that when those maintainers fail to human and consequently the community banishes them, they go on a tirade arguing all kinds of conspiracies. A code of conduct is a form of checks and balances, and code of conduct violation processes serve as processes to collect and present objectively verifiable paper trails of exactly when snd how those maintainers failed to human, and how bad at it they were. Those types can't simply argue their way out of a list of messages they were awful to others, how exactly they violated the code of conduct, and how bad it was. Thus any stunt they pull is immediately rendered moot by the deliverables from the project.
Trouble is, the people who are most likely to need a code of conduct to tell them how to behave are also the most likely ones to strongly object to one on the basis that they don’t need a CoC to tell them how to behave.
Funny, I had heard about that concept to explain the rigorous rules in religions.
Thanks for the explanation!
That sounds like a very convincing reason to switch over to OpenBSD. Great system, minimalist, good documentation, and NO ACTIVISTS!!!!!!!!!!!
> >I believe OpenBSD's code of conduct can be summed up as "if you are the type of person who needs a code of conduct to teach to you how to human then you are not welcome here".
Nice.