Code, conflict, and conduct

Posted Sep 19, 2018 6:23 UTC (Wed) by madhatter (subscriber, #4665)
Parent article: Code, conflict, and conduct

I take your point about the "laundry lists of misbehavior", but the list in this CoC is pretty short. More to the point, as a fellow white bloke of a certain age, I can't find anything in this list of example unacceptable behaviours that I would be happy to be subjected to. If taking more care that I don't subject anyone else to such things is the price for not being subjected to them myself, I'm happy to pay it.

to post comments

Code, conflict, and conduct

Posted Sep 19, 2018 9:18 UTC (Wed) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (2 responses)

I agree with this. I think Jon should have gone further to criticise 'everybody is protected except me' by showing its wider context: the place in some 'worldwide pecking order' that being an intersection of white (e.g. from one list of traits coded by society to be desirable to undesirable) and male (another) and educated (another) and experienced with computers (yet another) is itself protection. When we're able to unpack and confront that thought, we can accommodate difference and override our unconscious biases to achieve the goal: getting the best code merged from whoever wrote it.

K3n.

Code, conflict, and conduct

Posted Sep 19, 2018 16:38 UTC (Wed) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (1 responses)

Indeed. I would think the only white males who would feel targeted (or threatened?) by the enumerated list of bad behaviour are those who do not believe such behaviour is bad. Everyone else can probably benefit from having some things spelled out so that no one is surprised when a dispute arises. To me it reads as all very generic and applicable to everyone (though the first one might be construed as aimed at men more than women), with the fourth a particularly useful bit of etiquette that bears reinforcing.

Code, conflict, and conduct

Posted Sep 19, 2018 19:57 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

It's possible to fear being accused of bad behavior based on privilege etc without really understanding what that means. I can see that as legitimately scary for some people.

Thankfully, it's not very hard to learn about. It should only remain a problem for those who don't really want to understand what it means.

Also some people fear issues like this being raised in bad faith, and potentially use confirmation bias to convince themselves it's usually in bad faith. I haven't really seen that happen in my personal reality though.