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Not the OP, but from what I remember they would seek out every possible opportunity in every single possible open source community they could find and propose the CoC that they wrote. 0 contributions to the projects, with the exception of demanding that people implement incredibly verbose CoC's in their projects under the guise of "protecting the minorities contributing to the projects".

Most infamous instance is probably this one, in the Opal repo: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

As well as this thread in the Ruby issue tracker that devolves into pure chaos with Ada refusing to actually participate in any of the valid points others bring up: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004

And I'm sure there's many other instances if you look around a bit.

3 comments

It was pretty funny when she shook down the venerable SQLite project, and they responded by adopting the Rule of Saint Benedict. (They later capitulated.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18273530

That is an extreme case, but some people are just naturally attention-seeking trolls. The right thing to do is to ignore them.

That's the thing though, it's hard to ignore them since they pose themselves as coming from a morally righteous place, and they have the followers to back them up with their demands. Just look at the Opal thread I posted, it's started as a demand, and then a bunch of people who've had 0 to do with Opal start spamming the thread to back up the OP and hurling insults around at all the contributors for "daring" to associate themselves with one of the most prolific contributors to the project.

All of their arguments are also posed in a way to make anyone who disagrees seem like they're disagreeing with something very reasonable. It's phrased in such a way as to imply that they're in the 100% right, and if you dare disagree you're a bigot/homophone/transphobe/whatever other bad thing that can stick.

Every time I've seen a project get targeted by these CoCs, all the maintainers approach it from a good place assuming no malice, whereas the ones pushing for it will NOT take no for an answer.

I mean just look at one of the final comments in that locked Opal issue: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941#issuecomment-1132902...

They're blatantly trying to paint anyone disagreeing with them, no matter how mild the disagreement, as someone attacking them directly, and there's a scary amount of people who would side with them as well.

Every time I've seen a project get targeted by these CoCs, all the maintainers approach it from a good place assuming no malice

That unfortunately just shows how naive the average person has become.

Anyone else notice that all of this identity politics stuff seems to mainly infect projects in more "accessible" languages? I've heard about it in Javascript, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. but not much in C/C++ and basically none in Asm. The sibling comment here about SQLite's response (a pure C project) to this trolling provides a great contrast. People and projects solidly focused on technical stuff know better.

Exactly.

I think the best way to avoid falling into that kind of trap is to learn to dissociate between a value one believe in, and a discourse/action done in the name of that value.

It's perfectly possible to agree to one without agreeing to the other.

People who haven't yet learned this[1] tend to think that disagreeing with the latter also means disagreeing with the former. Worse, they might believe that not personally sharing/believing a value constitutes an attack on this value. And since one's identity tends to be tied with one's deeply held values, it constitue an attack on them or on their peers as well.

The important point is that good people might do it in good faith, out of naivety. In the Opal thread, however, I believe most of the 'Twitter army' that came to +1 the CoC uses it as a rethorical trick, out of self-righteousness.

[1] And I honestly believe that most early twenty-something tends to fall into that category, especially the most politicaly or religiously active ones.

That is pretty invasive behavior, I won't lie. However, if [this](https://blade.ruby-lang.org/ruby-core/72916) is the tenor of the "valid points" brought up against her CoC, I'm... not impressed. It's just standard conservative whining. The language you use towards other people does matter, actually, to the kind of culture and environment you build, and wanting to have guidelines around that doesn't make you "perpetually offended." And sometimes people's opinions outside a project do actually matter, it's not accusing people of a "thoughtcrime", its pointing out that cultural and political opinions aren't just team sports or games of pretend, they have real consequences for other people, and tell you about the character of the person who holds them. Who wants to work with someone who thinks they're completely delusional freaks?

If we're talking software projects, and especially large open source projects with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of contributors, we also have to realize that there's many, MANY people from all over the world with all sorts of opinions to be found amongst the contributors. One man's (or woman's) idea of what is offensive can be entirely innocent to another, and vice versa of course.

And I don't see why anyone's opinion outside the relevant project should matter at all. I've contributed to many projects over the years and I can't think of a single time I've ever come close to caring or even knowing what the maintainer's opinions on the world are. It's simply not something that comes up unless you explicitly go looking for it, and honestly what's the point? I'm sure many of the projects I've worked with have had their fair share of people that I'd disagree with on any number of topics, but that's wholly irrelevant if we're talking PRs since we're not evaluating someones morals and opinions, but the code they're producing. Chances are there's no slurs or anything political in the code they're submitting, so why give the energy to looking at anything else?

Fair enough I guess

well guess what, as everyone likes to say, "we live in a democracy", part of the rules is respecting that other people have other opinions. If you work within the system in a legal and peaceful manner, then that is fair game, and what these people are trying to do is discriminate against others, that which they claim to oppose so wholeheartedly. It truly exposes them for what they are

> part of the rules is respecting that other people have other opinions.

not at all. We can acknowledge that other people have opinions ("respecting" a fact makes no sense in english) but we don't have to respect either the people or the opinions, depending on who they are or what they are: such respect can be earned and lost on merit

> If you work within the system in a legal and peaceful manner, then that is fair game

working within the system means complying with the CoC and any other terms & prerequisites to contributing

if you aren't doing that, you're trying to fight the system, that which you claim to support so wholeheartedly, exposing you for who you truly are

> working within the system means complying with the CoC and any other terms & prerequisites to contributing

and if there is no CoC? is it then respecting the system to throw a tantrum if they wont adapt one?

is it respecting the system to throw a tantrum if they want to adopt one?