On 10/2/22 14:54, Tim Bray wrote:
Codes of conduct are very fashionable these days and seem likely to remain so. On one level, codes of conduct serve two useful purposes: (1) outlining the bounds of acceptable speech or behavior within a community, and (2) informing people how to remedy the situation if someone crosses those lines. Different communities necessarily have different rules, so making those things clear is a valuable service.Just want to point out that the IETF is not alone. For the first few decades of life online, it was generally considered OK to be an asshole in community discourse. Disclosure: I have been such an asshole. In recent years, in many online communities, a consensus has grown that things work better when that kind of behavior is actively discouraged. Another obvious example would be the Linux kernel community, and I've seen this happen in Apache-land too. Many (most?) high-visibilty GitHub projects now have a code of conduct. These days, when you're setting up a new GitHub project that expects to have a lot of people, the conversation is usually along the lines of “We should have a CoC, right?" "Right. Let's copy the one from ${Other-Project}."
Unfortunately codes of conduct can also be forms of virtue signaling and empowering control freaks, and can themselves be toxic for those reasons. Fortunately I think we've dodged that bullet in IETF, but there's always some risk there.
Keith
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