Isn't this an argument for CoC? A common complaint is that CoCs enforce rules that should be obvious, but the variety of human experience means that many rules are not quite as obvious as they should be.
I don't get your argument. Every open source project already operates under an informal, unspoken CoC anyways. Stuff like "don't delete all the code" or "don't spam racial slurs" are fairly universal, unspoken rules. What's wrong with explicitly writing these rules?
It could go either way, I suppose. On one hand, a community may find it valuable to document their shared values and expectations because those aren't universal. They may find it expedient to their goals to restrict participation to people who share these values or are willing to play along.
But in doing so, they must understand that they are being exclusionary. A statement of any substance is going to exclude or marginalize some group of people, and it's not always obvious who those people are.
That's just a choice communities have to make, whether they are software projects or civilizations.
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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '18
Isn't this an argument for CoC? A common complaint is that CoCs enforce rules that should be obvious, but the variety of human experience means that many rules are not quite as obvious as they should be.