Hi Anonymous Techie.  I'd just like to point out just about every group, organisation, and company has a terms of service document, which usually include a code of conduct terms. This includes your email provider - Protonmail. Just in case you haven't read theirs -though you have certainly have agreed to them- they can found here: https://proton.me/legal/terms. In particular I think point 4 is interesting: 4. Harassing, abusing, insulting, harming, defaming, slandering, disparaging, intimidating or discriminating someone based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, nationality or disability;  That doesn't sound "woke" to me. Just sensible.  To quote my favourite film: "...the needs of the many outweigh needs of the few. Or the one." Hence the need for a code of conduct. I could go on, but I've got code to write. Just saying. Patrick  --  --------------------------------   -----Original message----- From: Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend@proton.me> Sent: Monday 29th May 2023 15:16 To: Jacob Michalskie <hellcp@opensuse.org> Cc: Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de>; project@lists.opensuse.org Subject: Re: Codices of Conduct: A fundamental critique Hello,

On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 07:28:30 +0000, Wouter Onebekend wouter.onebekend@proton.me wrote:

...

I can only speak for myself, but so far what did get rejected was a version of the post with rather pointed (let's make that razor pointed) language commenting on the situation at hand, so I guess that's fair enough as long as it applies to both sides of the debate. And while, on that basis I trust the current moderation, I wouldn't trust the board with an appeal, given the rather strong political attitudes they showed on that other thread. Moderation that blps o*t swr w*rds I can live with, barely (I do like my cussing, after all). What I'm worried about is going beyond that, i.e. moderation that censors opinions like the ones I sketched in the start of this thread.

I feel like I might be a bearer of bad news but the board seems to be far more neutral of an entity than the moderation team.

I only have the one moderator I interacted with to go on and I could not complain about that experience. As far as the board is concerned I only have some board members' comments on that infamous factory thread to go on and these definitely were not fostering an inclusive climate for anyone disagreeing with the usual far left talking points.

...

Now that is something, sure. But independent of who sits on the board, I'd like to see stronger protections of free speech. And sanctions on the kind of smear campaigns commonly referred to as cancel culture. I.e. a strong statement of "What happens here stays here, and if we ever find anybody reporting someone to their employer or an organization they are a member of for something they said here

...

we exclude them."

This kind of thing has been happening a lot to people disagreeing with any tenets of woke political ideology, even though the perpetrators like to deny it (just google "there is no cancel culture"). This makes for a very toxic social environment and it needs to stop.

The role of the moderation in the project is restricting free speech to some extent. We don't want to be overrun by spammers, stalkers, people

who aim to discredit others in the project for whatever is specified within our standards. It does not mean that the goal is to cancel anyone though, the goal is community building, we don't want to end up in a scenario where half of the community hates the other half based on their identity, family or beliefs, so people that represent that do have their speech revoked for a limited amount of time or until they show improvement.

The standard for that "improvement" is agreeing with the set of far left views commonly described as "woke". Departing from that set of values or indeed publicly disagreeing is dangerous. As long as that - rather unbalanced - situation persists, you will have a situation where there is (a) Radical leftists (I have never seen anyone on the right side of the political fence propose a code of conduct, ever) calling the shots. (a) A group of people who are not radical leftists and secretly hate the radical leftists calling the shots but cannot ever speak up for fear of getting excluded from the open source project and or losing their job because a smear campaign will usually be launched against anyone who angers group (a) with their real name attached.

...

Yes, that is one of the problems with private complaint mechanisms that have absolutely no repercussions for somebody leveling a complaint in bad faith. If you can rally 20 people to all voice the same complaint (and you absolutely can if you are organized) you can

...

get someone you like into deep trouble. Especially if the arbiter of

...

wrongdoing has got vague criteria for wrongdoing to work with and happens to be on your own side of the political fence.

I'm not really sure what your expectation here is, the board was voted

in by the project members, and so presumably reflects the views of the

majority of the project, including their politics (the board is a political body by itself after all). Do you want the board to reflect the views of the minority of the project that did not vote for them? Is this the will of the people?

Well. Do minorities not preserve protection? Or do just the minorities that happen to be the radical left's current revolutionary subject deserve protection? My expectation is for codices of conduct to be abolished, period. I am quite radical about this. For they sow exactly the sort of discord outlined above. They only ever are introduced at the request of vocal, radical leftists. And they are then being used to threaten and/or silence those who disagree with that particular demographic. In a pre code of conduct world, people were free to speak their mind. In a post code of conduct world anything can be interpreted as a violation of the code of conduct. I believe this is not an accident, especially given how suddenly this concept sprang up and how it spread like wildfire throughout the tech world, always justified the premise that the tech world was "toxic" and a "patriarchate" run by "old white men", to borrow the leftists' parlance. I disagree with this premise, and more so, I happen to think that this "cure" being peddled over the past five years or so created a quite toxic, divided environment.

...

Yeah. The process outlined in these two my main gripe. The decision rests with the board which is on one side of the political dividing line that runs through this community. There is no balance of powers. The board is not accountable and there is no oversight beyond the board. Who watches the watchers?

You probably should have read the election rules that Simon sent, there are quite a few options for the community to step into the process and

mend the situation.

The problem already begins with being able to talk about the situation, with campaigning for such change. I am posting under a pseudonym because I am worried about smear campaigns (including tens to hundreds of emails and Tweets getting directed at my employer, telling them I'm unbearable and should be fired). I've seen that happen before, to a guy who disagreed with the woke mob in public. His employer eventually fired him. Codices of conduct enable that very strategy or rather make it easier to apply because anyone out there can misconstrue something the target said in public to be in violation and launch an outrage campaign. Pretty much any employer/organization will fold in the face of such an assault and a code of conduct increases the attack surface even more. Regards, An Anonymous Techie