We'd like your feedback on our new Code of Conduct! [duplicate]

Question

TL;DR: We've put together a code of conduct (CoC) that is a bit more comprehensive than our existing be nice policy because we feel that our current policy isn't meeting our needs.

Some background, our reasons for doing this and a link to the draft (Google Docs | GitHub) can be found below. We'd like your feedback by July 11, 2018.

In the beginning, there was 'Be nice'.

From the earliest web archive snapshot of http://stackoverflow.com/faq (circa September, 2008):

Be nice.

Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. We're all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.

And that's all we needed when we started. Stack Overflow began with a large group that were fairly avid readers of Coding Horror and Joel On Software. While many of us sort of knew each other from interacting on both blogs and via mediums like Twitter, what can be said is, through our shared interests, we had much more in common with one another than we had differences. For many of us, Jeff & Joel spoke to the majority of what we valued and were passionate about.

We had essentially one rule: be nice. But, it was seldom, if ever that we actually had to enforce it. We were a group that, despite numerous geopolitical differences, essentially behaved the same through the handful of circumstances one might encounter while using the site.

Sure, the mechanics of the site encouraged sincere collaboration, but many missed that we were already a community that (mostly) agreed on the fundamentals of many things needed for our group to self-govern; it wasn't just the software and gamification that was creating a runaway success.

From our bootstraps, we showed tough love by editing and voting ruthlessly, but we were a small enough community that we could sweep away criticism by accurately stating this is how we like it. We and the site were something new, and people wanted to be part of both things. And we grew, wow did we grow; what an amazing machine where one could plant a programmer and grow a good communicator.

And then, there was 'Be nice'.

Maybe in context, we could call it 'Be Nice(r)?'

We expanded our policy a little bit, because it was simply too ambiguous. In fact, a key balance point that we struggled a bit to find in our initial RFC for the re-write was just that, breadth vs. depth:

Some people wanted more detail and examples (for clarity), others wanted less (for broader applicability).

We knew we needed to create something where folks embraced the intent, or spirit of the document, rather than using the document as a checklist of stuff to avoid moderators, while giving some examples of what's bad for use as landmarks. But, the voice of the policy was still better not do that rather than here's how to not do that.

Since then, we've absorbed an enormous amount of feedback from people that have interacted with our sites for the very first time, some stuff has been pretty consistent across rather vast groups of people.

We fell short in our 'Be nice' re-write in the following ways:

• We needed to write for the best of folks in our community. Off-putting things tend to mostly come from folks who will probably only ever blow their top once. We have moderators to deal with the tiny fraction of people that never care about rules, so our code of conduct needs to mostly resonate with the overwhelming majority of people we really want to keep. We need less over-posturing for troll dispatching and more guides to help decent folks avoid more common pitfalls.

• Codes of conduct help identify your community to the outside world, and help people decide if your community is a place where they'll feel safe and flourish. Our expanded 'Be nice' policy doesn't hold up to much scrutiny if you're fresh from seeing a bunch of nasty comments go unmoderated because they weren't technically rude.

• We're at a point where 'Be nice', which first originated in a group where we pretty much already had a strong social contract, just isn't enough. What worked well for hundreds isn't working well for millions, and we need to write something more comprehensive.

But our policy is short on other things, too. What we need is a formal code of conduct that's similar to what free / open source projects and even conferences use in order to set behavioral expectations and norms.

The difference between what we have now and what a formal code of conduct would look like is best expressed by simply showing you our first draft of a formal code of conduct.

For your feedback, we're presenting our initial draft of a real Code of Conduct.

We'd very much appreciate your time in taking a moment to read our draft (Google Docs | GitHub). If you have some cycles to spare, we're specifically seeking the following types of feedback:

1. Even if you don't agree with all of it, do you feel that this is a reasonable code of conduct? Does it affect your recommending Stack Overflow as a resource in any way? How so?

2. Is anything in this document, including its purpose, unclear to you in any way? Are there any instances where you'd suggest alternate language or copy? Where? Why?

3. If you're a long-term contributor, how does this document impact your feelings toward new users and their needs, if at all? How does it impact your feelings toward the company? Or, more broadly, did this document inspire any metacognition at all?

4. If you're someone who wants to contribute more often, or have felt yourself sort of stuck on the fringes, how does this document change your perception of the site, if at all?

We're open to all feedback.

We understand that not all of you feel like this is necessary, and we understand that truly being inclusive means making sure everyone has seats at this table too, as long as we can possibly extend one. That means we need a civil dialog, so we're asking for any negative feedback to be respectful and honest. Please remember, we're listening to you as well as many, many people that simply aren't comfortable coming here, and a big part of our goal is going to remain to include them.

We'd like feedback by Wednesday, July 11, 2018, however this question will allow for feedback until a final draft is released, at which point this question will be closed as a duplicate of that one. We'll monitor for new answers as long as this remains open.

Please, post an answer and avoid comments if you have anything of substance to say.

We'll respond to comments that are readily and practically answerable with a few dispassionate sentences, but if you've got anything even remotely substantive to say, we're asking that you leave an answer. Using comments instead is actively harmful because it requires us to spend more cycles moderating and archiving than actually engaging.

In closing

We'd like everyone to remember that we're talking about ways to be nicer to one another - so please, let's have a conversation about this in the spirit of that intent.

We're in the process of gathering a lot of feedback through UX research and having a bunch of conversations with interested groups to gain a variety of perspectives. The more open and specific you can be about any concerns that come up as you read this draft, the better our next draft will be. For instance, it's fine to say "that scares me but I'm not quite sure why".

Thanks for reading this far, and let us know what you think!

Answer 1

Random comments while reading the document:

Our mission

Our mission is to build an inclusive community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise, identity, or language. Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a learning community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect.

err... is it? I think this is our mission:

we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about programming.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favor of a code of conduct - it is becoming a standard for communities to have a code of conduct, and I think it's great you're formalizing it. But I find the mission statement a little confusing.

Unacceptable Behavior

• No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language
• No name-calling or personal attacks
• No discrimination of any kind
• No harassment

Intuitively, I'd expect these to be in reverse order - with the more severe offenses on top.

No discrimination of any kind. This includes any language likely to offend or alienate people based on (but not limited to): race, gender, gender identity or expression, English fluency, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, nationality, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, or religion.

Besides discrimination, many of this also fall under harassment and hate-speech. Discrimination is something that is almost impossible to prove for an individual case - but of course it still worth mentioning.

Reporting and Enforcement

The example table of Behavior/Typical Action is mixing serious and illegal behavior like sexual harassment with childish, SE-specific acts like sock puppet voting. I think you should separate internal rules regarding voting or post quality to another section.

Answer 2

I'm not seeing a whole lot in here about meeting our primary expectation: show effort. I see lots about being more welcoming and not use subtle put downs and the effect of no effort, but the only nod we have to meeting our quality standards is, "Follow our guidelines".

If we're going to be showing this to new users, I think making it understood that we're different and we expect more, we need to acknowledge that we are different, and that our expectations very much include a level of effort almost no other site (at least, that I know of) has.

Answer 3

I'm a bit worried about how specific and absolute the following bit is:

If someone points out that your behavior is making others uncomfortable, stop doing it. Sometimes, people unconsciously say things that negatively affect others. Even if this wasn’t your intent, apologize and move on.

It reads to me like it allows for no exceptions, and might very, very easily be misused. Just like you sometimes have a storm of chat flags for 'offensive' messages raised on a conversation where people are discussing the weather reports for that day (figuratively), phrasing it in such an absolute way might make this an ideal rule for rules-lawyering and chatroom/comment/post trolling.

I've been on both sides of this: One time I was drawn into a chatroom conversation on periods, and when another user came by and pointed out the amount of detail was uncomfortable for them (I must admit, on closer inspection, it probably crossed the PG13 line), the conversation stopped and we moved on.

On the other hand, I've seen users in the chatroom that weren't acting in good faith, and they'd have a field day with this 'rule', shouting they're uncomfortable with the topic just to stop the conversation and obstruct the community building a good discussion or conversation can achieve. Even discussing site policy in a chatroom might then be cut down.

I'm honestly not sure on how this could be worded better though. On the one hand, I agree we need to be aware that if someone says 'this is making me uncomfortable', people should stop and think, apologize and move on, and people should not be afraid to speak up out of fear of being excluded. On the other hand, I also would hate to see every little thing cut down with an 'I'm no longer comfortable, let's never discuss this!'. I've learned a lot from constructively having uncomfortable conversations.

Is the 'others' here deliberately chosen to point out that there needs to be more than one person uncomfortable before you actually need to take such a complaint seriously?

Who's the someone that get's to decide when my behavior is making others uncomfortable and should stop? There are probably situations where people not seeing the problem will say the others are being <...>, and feel empowered to just continue because not one of them has ever experienced their behavior as a problem. So, leaving it entirely to one's own discretion or that of a group of users might not work?

Answer 4

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language

(emphasis mine).

I get that the idea is to broadly categorize "not nice" but it seems to me like this is easily mis-interpreted.

Are:

• Sorry, but this question is too broad. A good Stack Overflow question doesn't encompass an entire program, but a specific programming problem.
• Questions are expected to be in English on Stack Overflow, until this is translated this question will be put on hold (for languages without a localized version)
• Questions asking for an off-site resource are considered off-topic on Stack Overflow.

problematic? I would assume the sane answer is no but none of them are particularly welcoming. Quite the opposite, they all say your question is not welcome here. And those questions aren't welcome here. And yet; they could easily be contrived to violate the CoC.

OPs already respond shall we say, negatively, to very similar comments (no snarkasm) all the time. Quite commonly with something along the lines of:

You don't have to be such a jerk and downvote my question. I'm just looking for help

(Source: repeated experience. At least once a week, so common I wrote Why is "Can someone help me?" not an actual question? )

So reinforcing this behavior by stating that we have to be welcoming no matter what to any possible post seems like the wrong message to be sending, especially to the volunteers.

Answer 5

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language. Regardless of intent, this behavior can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down.

This reads like I'm stranded in a scifi dystopia. Now I have a language police. Great.

Beloved Citizen of the most free Democratic People's Republic. Please kindly check your language before you use it. Should you accidentally overstep the boundaries set by our beloved guidelines, our helpful employees of the department of oral corrections will gently escort you to the nearest improvement facility.

Now that sounds like a fun land to live in, doesn't it?

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I don't care about polite or sugar coating. What I would want to see is friendly and constructive. Please note that friendly is not the same as polite. I can lose a hand in poker to friend, flash a big smile and say "you are an asshole" and it might be friendly. In my country police officers are polite and will ask you to "please come with me, sir" but you can tell that they are not friendly. That's plain politeness. I have little use for the latter, but I expect the former from a community. Both would be ideal, but my priorities are on friendliness, not politeness. Politeness is an empty gesture. Like wearing a suit. I prefer a friend in jeans any day over an idiot in a suit.

So lets give it a try without that language police involved:

Be friendly and constructive. If you have to criticize, help the user by showing up a way to improve. For example, saying "you could have Googled this" is not adding any value on the path to a solution to the given problem. Instead, "This is called Invariance and Covariance, put it into Google, there are tutorials that can explain it much better than we can in a comment here." gives a clear direction how to proceed forward.

Answer 6

No discrimination of any kind. This includes any language likely to offend or alienate people based on (but not limited to): ...English fluency,...

It seems strange to say that we shouldn't/won't discriminate based on English fluency. I think the goal of including "English fluency" in the above list is to stop people from saying subtle put-downs like: "Did you pass second grade?", "Do you speak English?", etc. But that seems to be handled by other sections of the Code of Conduct. More importantly, most Stack Exchange sites must discriminate on the basis of English fluency.

For an extreme example, if a fluent Spanish speaker has zero English fluency, they should not and cannot post on the default Stack Overflow (English) site. This is true for most Stack Exchange sites. Of course the same would be true for non-English sites like Stack Overflow (Russian). The community members there discriminate against me. Since I'm not fluent in the language, I cannot post there.

The best possible interpretation of including "English fluency" in the list of attributes that cannot be discriminated against is that you are trying to stop subtle put-downs directed towards people who write mostly understandable posts, but with minor flaws that often come with not being a native speaker. The worst interpretation is that this is Stack Overflow (the company) once again trying to lower the standards (in a top-down way) so that anyone can participate and not feel left out.

Either way, it seems like this is an unnecessary element in the Code of Conduct since subtle put-downs based on language fluency are already disallowed and discrimination based on whether people can communicate is necessary on every Stack Exchange site.

Answer 7

I've already added two answers of things I think should be changed based on objective criteria. This is subjective and my "feelings toward" things, so it's a separate post.

If you're a long-term contributor, how does this document impact your feelings toward new users and their needs, if at all?

If anything, it makes me reconsider whether I should help newcomers at all. I'm not here for gaming or other hobbies where a suspension might be a nuisance over the weekend, those SE sides are a side-effect of me hanging out on the professional sites. My account is a professional resource. ⁽¹⁾ Of the 300+ days a year I use Stack Overflow, sometimes even before I had my first coffee, I'm sure there will be a day or two where I get snarky if I see a poster that shows no effort. I'm only human. I think it goes without saying, but I say it anyway: I'm talking about sarcasm or snark here. No insults, no harassment.

This document is made to tell me that I jeopardize my professional resource by commenting. So I will simply not do that anymore or only with accounts I recognize as friendly. I will downvote those that don't conform 100% to the rules instead of commenting and trying to help. That is a safe action. I think it's unfriendly and not welcoming, but it's safe from punishment by the thought- and/or language police.

My experience says that sites that already drive "be nice" to higher levels suspend people for things I don't want to be suspended for. I have been suspended for basically repeatedly saying that I think specific actions of the moderators are unprofessional. Yes, that's how badass insulting I am when I'm really mad: "unprofessional". I really rock it. I should become a rapper. Saying it too often got me a suspension for "Abuse of Moderators". If that is abuse, we definitely need a new term for what you are describing in the CoC. By the way, it took 5 weeks to even get somebody but the original mods to look at that suspension. So no, there is no trust from my side that SE can handle a policy like that and it's fallout. Because not only the user-base grew, the moderator base too. And those, too, are not this tight-knit group you once knew by heart.

And again, I will not risk a professional resource on the off-chance that a mod might have a nice day when I have a bad one. If being human once in a while means I lose my account, I will immediately stop helping people that don't know the ropes here and need help.

I will leave that task to all the new people who will come in and contribute because it's so "nice" now (how was that sentence on the snark level? Close to being suspended already?).

How does it impact your feelings toward the company?

It feels like you guys got off course. I see the ugliness that sites invite that make the user tell their personal problems. And all the harassment that follows. That's not SE or SO. SO (and I guess everything around it, like superuser, dba, programming etc) has always been about relatively neutral information exchange. I care whether someone can solve my programming problem. I have no need for information about gender or age or skin color and there is no discrimination based on those properties if the users don't have those properties. Yes, once you expose those properties creepy people come out, because creepy people exist. Everywhere. That hasn't changed and you will not change it with a Code of Conduct either.

I said it in a comment earlier: I'm here because I'm a professional and I'm looking for a solution to my professional problem. Being a professional sometimes means you have to put up with stuff. Just ask a random waitress if "professional" means everybody is nice to them all the time. I will take any amount of snark or sarcasm or any other type of comment if there is a tiny chance it helps me solve my problem. Because that is my priority. Solving my problem. Not being nice, not being welcomed. Solving my problem. I can ignore any comment I don't like, but I cannot ignore not getting a solution.

It does not feel like that is your focus anymore.

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Clarifications:

⁽¹⁾ My account is a "professional resource" because I develop software as a job. StackOverflow is a valuable resource for that, I use it multiple times a day. You can get free professional advice there. Every single software developer I know uses it to look things up multiple times during their working day. My reputation allows me to put bounties on my own question or ask for clarification from others. Threatening me with a suspension is threatening access to that resource.

Answer 8

I'd like to see

Unacceptable Behavior

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language. Regardless of intent, this behavior can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down.

Extended to include something like:

If other community members have decided to offer you constructive feedback and suggest improvements, do not insult or harass them for it. For instance, insults (subtle or obvious) against users who chose to moderate your contributions is not acceptable. "Which idiot downvoted this?!" would be an example of unacceptable conduct.

This would make it clear that this policy and code of conduct cuts both ways, and would serve to assuage fears that volunteers are being asked to make an undue extra effort to be welcoming while no such effort is expected from new users. I'm sure that's not your intention in formulating this, but why not be proactive to dispel such fears right now? It'd work fine to further explain this paragraph, too:

If you’re here to get help, make it as easy as possible for others to help you. Our community is made possible by volunteers. Follow our guidelines and don't worry if others suggest changes or edit your question - they’re trying to make your question helpful to as many people as possible.

I'm also confused why serial voting and sockpuppetry is included in the code of conduct - that seems more like a terms of service technicality thing. From my reading of it, the code of conduct deals exclusively with intrapersonal and social conduct perusing the network, while a sockpuppet account is technically gaming the system to multiply or amplify your voting power - not something you'd normally conflate with actual verbal or written abuse.

Answer 9

I'd like to add some additional clarity to Our Expectations

1. If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming. Learning how to participate in our community can be daunting, especially if someone is new. Be supportive while others are learning.

   Yeah, the whole welcoming bit didn't go so well. It's too vague. This is aimed squarely at curators, and I wrote a Meta.SO about why curators are cynical. So I would proposed this

   If you're here to answer questions, or moderate content, please remember to support the questioner as well. We want people to feel that they can get answers (it's why we exist). While not every question deserves an answer, remember to be kind to the person who asked it. Explaining constructively what would help get an answer, or what rules were broken, can help the questioner learn.

   We're no longer being vague. We're talking to a specific group (one SO/SE needs) and offering concrete things to be done. Avoid using welcoming if at all possible. Nobody knows exactly what that means.

2. If you’re here to get help, make it as easy as possible for others to help you. Our community is made possible by volunteers. Follow our guidelines and don't worry if others suggest changes or edit your question - they’re trying to make your question helpful to as many people as possible.

   In keeping with the rewrite of #1, let's offer some concrete suggestions

   If you're here to ask questions, please listen to the criticism of others. We want your question to help not just you, but anyone else with that question as well. To that end, other users may edit your question, leave comments and possibly even close your question. Pay attention to what these actions are trying to tell you. Other people are volunteering their time to help you, and in turn by helping the site be helpful to others. Respect them by trying to work with them. Most of the time, taking criticism can help you get the answers you need.

   This is much more "big picture" in its advice. Suddenly curators aren't bad guys who want you to feel stupid, they're people who want to help, but perhaps not in the way you were expecting. Closing questions is being helpful, but may not seem welcoming to a new user.

3. Be friendly, clear, and constructive. Editing, commenting, and sharing feedback are healthy parts of our community. When giving feedback, avoid jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online. Be open to receiving constructive feedback.

   Mostly this is talking about tone. I think this misses the crux of the issue though. People are reading too much into some statements. For example here's one someone else listed

   

   It was read as openly hostile, when I simply read it as a terse statement. It didn't attack anyone, it just stated facts. In other words it wasn't "welcoming enough". I think we need people to not necessarily be friendly, but to assume the best of intentions, absent any open attacks

   Be clear and constructive, while assuming the best about others. We want everyone to feel welcome here, but we also want people to get their questions answered. Assuming the best about others helps you the most, because it keeps you able to take constructive criticism instead of feeling insulted when no offense was meant. Remember, the intent of words is hard to discern online.

4. If someone points out that your behavior is making others uncomfortable, stop doing it. Sometimes, people unconsciously say things that negatively affect others. Even if this wasn’t your intent, apologize and move on.

   So... what exactly happens to violators here? Are we going to hand out bans for people who made others felt "unwelcome", but weren't overtly rude or even belligerent? There's not a "be reasonable" exception here. A help vampire could wear someone's patience down and then turn it into a flaggable offense. Again, this could benefit from a more concrete standard

   Respect requests to stop behavior that is making others feel uncomfortable. Remember that no question, answer or comment is worth getting worked up over. If someone is making you upset, ask them to stop. Do your best to resolve it civilly with the other person or take a break from the situation. If they still won't stop, we may consider that harassment (see Unacceptable Behavior).

   This still largely preserves the original intent (no harassment) while adding an important directive to try and resolve it with the other person. Otherwise, people may feel free to run straight to mod flags for otherwise simple disagreements

Answer 10

It has taken me a few months for me to figure out why the recent, overt, pushes to "Be Nice" feel off. I think this code of conduct has helped me figure out what was bothering me though.

If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming. Learning how to participate in our community can be daunting, especially if someone is new. Be supportive while others are learning.

That first sentence is great. The problem is the second and third.

especially if someone is new

while others are learning

Other than a user with 1 rep and a creation date in the recent past, how do I know if someone is new? Even if someone has hundreds or thousands of rep, how do I know they are learning a technology?

I feel these pushes have subtly created an "Old Guard" vs. "Noobs" mentality, especially on Stack Overflow. We're being told to treat less established users and "learners" with friendlier, fuzzier, welcoming hugs. Yet, at the same time, I end up deleting comments by those very users that attack the more established members for attempting to help them. Responses back are one of three things

1. Publicly ignoring it and flagging it for moderator attention (Good!)
2. Responding back in a professional manner (Also good!)
3. Responding in a way that matches the tone they received (Bad).

The code of conduct should do a couple additional things:

1. Help set expectations. Answers may be provided in minutes, but they may take days or weeks. Users can't expect an answer to occur immediately.
2. Remove the subtle requests for different treatment between a new learner and an established user. Even if we aren't calling this "Be Nice" any more, we should be treating all users the same.

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Unrelated to the code of conduct but still important: These pushes for improved behavior are great. However, I feel that a large amount of work that is going into this is being done at the expense of the "Old Guard", I mentioned above. This is the group that is invested in the moderation tasks of the site. They are the ones that keep the site tidy, presentable and running smoothly. There are a lot of requests for improved tools and features for this group of users. When are those going to happen?

Answer 11

Honestly? After skimming the new Code of Conduct, I kind of feel like...

Look, I get the need to be nice, I get all of this, and I largely agree with it all since I can't really get on board with the subtle barbs that we at Stack Overflow tend to throw at others.

But there are at least three problems that this doesn't cover.

1. While there are clear designators of "harmful", the unclear designators lack a lot of definition and prescription, and would result in a large amount of false positives generated for moderation.

2. The burden of moderating comments is still heavily on moderators, and on any normal site this could fly, but on Stack Overflow I'm less convinced.

3. This doesn't actually fix the problem of scope on any site which suffers from this issue. A site which is large who has users who blithely ignore the scope of the site that they're posting on itself are more than bound to ruffle feathers, and while this gives those users a way to redress wrongs against them, it offers no solace for users who are only trying to help with curation.

The n-1 th, lesser concern is that somehow I fear I'm losing some of my voice and personality on the site...but I'm not sure how high I should rank that concern right now. I'll peruse it in all honesty afterwards and add this as an extra point.

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The first issue is how comments are perceived. That is to say, someone saying, "This is a duplicate link, and this specific answer addresses your question" could be perceived by OPs as them being called unpleasant names and having their ability to perform searches called into question. Hey, it's happened to me more times than I care to remember.

Heck, some people get offended and angry at you for asking a clarifying question.

The Code of Conduct makes it seem such that anyone who feels that they've been wronged by someone in comments is fair game to get punished by the system. And that's fine...if they actually were wronged.

I suppose this is to say, what this is lacking are guidelines on what would be acceptable discourse with polite yet forceful comments. That is to say, it doesn't explicitly prohibit or permit comments which suggest to the OP that their answer is somewhere else, or any examples on those annoying Welcome to Stack Overflow-style comments.

The second issue is a matter of scale. Moderators handle this all the time, but I'm not sure that this is going to scale. This new Code of Conduct allows for a lot more stuff to be flagged - which is overall good - but I don't know how well suited Community Moderators are going to be with handling all of this at once. Maybe time will tell.

The third issue... hopefully I've captured a decent amount in there, but that conversation will be evolving, no doubt.

Answer 12

I guess I'm going to have to say what I said last time:

People will get offended by anything.

Because...

People, fundamentally, do not care what you think.

There are a lot of good posts here about how the CoC draft puts too much pressure on us (the existing community) to try and conform to an ideal that cannot be objectively achieved and not enough onus on the new asker to make sure that they adhere to the guidelines on acceptable content. Making the site 100% welcoming to 100% of people is impossible and you've started to make The Good the enemy of The Perfect. Do we need to be better? Can we be better? Probably.

But.

There has to be the possibility of people being able to make comments along the lines of "what have you tried?" because questions that show no effort are worthy of downvoting and closure and the attempt to inform the asker that this is the reason that their post is being downvoted and closed should be an acceptable comment.

With a population of millions, literally any comment can be seen as "unwelcoming" by somebody. Remember...

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

...just replace "fool" with "please." At some point, we're going to have to shrug and say, "we tried" and just let some folks think we're a bunch of arrogant a$$holes. We aren't, on average, but we simply cannot please everyone all the time and attempting to do so is only going to turn other people away as the site becomes more and more stuck up and elitist...only over politeness instead of helpfulness.

Answer 13

As a moderator of two sites, I don't think I can moderate against the "no subtle put-downs" rule. Almost any disagreement or any attempt to deal with poor-quality content can be re-construed as breaking this rule. In fact, a lot of the actions I have to take to moderate could easily be construed as "subtle put-downs". For example, often people post incomprehensible gibberish posts. I have to close such questions or delete such answers, and I usually include the phrasing "You might like to ask a friend who speaks English to help you." It's not wonderful, but it's the best I can do for a visitor who is probably not going to come back anyway. But now I feel like it's only a matter of time before someone with an axe to grind decides to recast this as a subtle put-down, or as discrimination against people who don't speak English.

Another example is that recently I suggested-edit--banned a member of my community who has a long history of suggesting "spelling and grammar fix" edits that introduce spelling and grammar errors into the posts they're supposed to fix. Roughly half of his edits are wrong in this way, and it has taken a lot of time from people to filter them out. Of course I've also messaged him to describe the problem, and described the situation in a sensitive way, and he understood and accepted the situation, and continues to contribute in other ways. I'm not sure the situation would be as easily resolved with a user who has read the new CoC and feels entitled to continue their edits regardless of the harm they cause to the site and the time they take from other users, because they've been given the expectation that we will lower our quality standards to avoid discriminating based on English fluency.

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The "No discrimination of any kind" is way too broad to be enforceable. There are many kinds of discrimination, and not all of them are as obvious as harassment or negative remarks. What if we have a user who is a prolific answerer, but never answers questions from someone with an Indian-sounding username? What if they never answer questions from one particular individual, who is known in the community to be homosexual? Am I supposed to do something about that, as a moderator? This isn't a job. We can't interrogate people about their intentions like an employment tribunal would, and we can't force people to answer questions from different users equally or fairly. We could ban them completely, but I don't think I would be up for banning a user who is causing no harm to the site just because of how they decide which questions to answer, especially if it's also on me to judge whether their behaviour is discriminatory or not.

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You say in the post that:

We need less over-posturing for troll dispatching and more guides to help decent folks avoid more common pitfalls.

but I'm seeing a gap between what you say and what the draft CoC actually says. If you really want to help people be welcoming and inclusive, set examples of good behaviour, and show off exemplary behaviour in difficult cases. Give people a repertoire of strategies for dealing with low-quality content and visitors who don't want to engage with the site, while living up to your idea of what "welcoming" is. You can't achieve that by just giving people a list of what they can't say: you'll find that a lot of people choose not to say anything at all, and that it's disproportionately the people who were being nice to begin with. A sure way to make the site look less welcoming is to scare the nice people into silence while the bullies keep doing what they were doing.

Answer 14

Fundamentally, I feel that a COC needs to be a shield not a sword or a potential bludgeoning stick. One of the… unintended consequences of the blog posts is folks using it that way. It needs to reflect the best we can be, rather than the worst we could be.

A glaring omission (having talked this through) is a requirement to try to deal with people with good intentions. Our current "Be Nice" FAQ contains the line

Be welcoming, be patient, and assume good intentions.

Assuming good intentions is important. It blunts the chances of some of the drama, internal or external, and is a solid basis for solving our problems like adults.

One thing I'd suggest is, many of these things are universal. Decency and civility shouldn't vary whether it's main or chat — the language on making people uncomfortable, for example is just as useful on somewhere like IPS, comments or chat. We shouldn't really be splitting fundamental things into "chat" and Q&A. As far as conduct goes, there are no second and third class citizens.

Some of the language… might reflect "assume good intent" better. I know folks ask for examples (I do, but I like concrete complaints I can sink my teeth into, rather than vague ones, especially externally), but sometimes conciseness is better.

Let's consider

This includes any language likely to offend or alienate people based on (but not limited to): race, gender, gender identity or expression, English fluency, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, nationality, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, or religion.

We can probably condense it down to

This includes any language aimed at offending or alienating others

Firstly, this is a lot shorter. It doesn't create a list of things (that honestly feel rules lawyerly). It focuses on intent — and along with

If someone points out that your behavior is making others uncomfortable, stop doing it. Sometimes, people unconsciously say things that negatively affect others. Even if this wasn’t your intent, apologize and move on.

lets people sort things out mostly like adults. The lack of examples actually helps folks use the rules as they need to. The latter is kinda as true for Q&A as much as chat.

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language. Regardless of intent, this behavior can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down.

Feels kinda vague too, and potentially interpreted a little too flexibly. I'm not too sure how to word the intent of it better though.

The problem I have with is it's... kinda absolute and imperative. It feels like a command, that needs to be suffixed with an "or else"

Consider how

Regardless of intent, subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down. Be welcoming and patient, especially with those who may not know everything you do.

Is a little longer. But it kinda feels more adult. It tells you why it's wrong, what's wrong and why. It respects the reader just a little more.

Answer 15

Even if you don't agree with all of it, do you feel that this is a reasonable code of conduct? Does it affect your recommending Stack Overflow as a resource in any way? How so?

This is going to be a rambling, I fear not entirely cogent response based on many factors, only one of which is this code of conduct.

Lately, I feel like the volunteers on the site have been asked to take on much ... additional effort. It feels like we're held to the highest personal standards of both etiquette and professionalism, with the added task of carefully considering the impact of our words on people who are easily dissuaded from using the site. This is kind of ... at odds with the general experience volunteers face. You're expected to:

• Be on your best behavior
• Excuse mistakes and non adherence to the rules and standards
• Be the better person in the face of insults and personal attacks
• Temper your criticism with the perspective of the other person in mind

A lot of effort has gone into actualizing this lately on Stack Exchange's side. I don't begrudge focusing on what the volunteers can do for this - after all, unless you're already an engaged user of the site, the Stack Exchange team has at best a very dubious influence over your behavior.

This comes into play with my friends. Here is where this answer gets personal and uncomfortable to share. My friends are mostly like me - direct in their wording, maybe not entirely easy to deal with, but motivated. They like being part of a bigger whole, and in the past I have recommended Stack Exchange heartily to them as a place where they can fully come into their own and make their mark on the world as helpful people.

For better or worse, Stack Exchange has gotten quite a bit of publicity for its public efforts in the past months, but this has arrived and appeared entirely differently in my circle of friends. To put it bluntly, I've lost contact with some extended acquaintances over this, I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I do know that Stack Exchange suffers a pretty horrid reputation in my social circle right now.

The last five conversations (easily) I've had with my friends about this site was about how they think it has gone off the deep end in order to please people on Twitter with an axe to grind. The public presentation of this change isn't helping that.

I personally know (or at least choose to believe, I have a lot of respect in Stack Exchange staff and other users that are with them on this that is difficult to shake, so I assume best intentions for now) that this isn't the case and that we're not in the middle of a culturally Marxist*² takeover of the network.

Selling that to my friends and strangers however is ... exhausting. I've deliberately avoided the topic with them lately because I'm loath to justify my continued support for this site time upon time again.

I do think most of this is a perception problem and not an actual network problem. The code of conduct reads ... one sided, skewed towards those who would do anything at all with enough regularity to care about the site. It does not explicitly mention people taking criticism poorly, but it does mention people giving criticism in a less then ideal way, for instance.

All this has made me hesitant to bring up Stack Exchange to friends, lest I get sucked into another hour-long discussion about inclusivity and how they feel this site has kowtowed to special interests too much. I have plenty of communication issues of my own, and I'm not very good at appealing to emotions and easily exhausted by such talk, which is why I've avoided the topic for now.

So no, at the moment I wouldn't recommend Stack Exchange to my friends and colleagues. Not because of the code of conduct in particular, but because of the perception and PR problem the latest efforts have created.

From a user perspective, I maintain my trust in the staff and users I know on the network that seem to trust this will be a success and not to the detriment of long term users.

*² I'm loath to use this terminology. It is often not used in good faith and annoys me to hell and back to repeat. But I'm not sure how to paraphrase this without going into a 2000-word tangent about current political events.

Answer 16

I like this; it's pretty clear, and it covers a lot more than I thought it would.

One thing that pops out at me is the section on Reporting and Enforcement:

Reporting and Enforcement

Every person contributes to creating a kind, respectful community. If you find unacceptable behavior directed at yourself or others, you can:

• Flag the harmful content. Depending on the content, flagging will alert moderators or trigger an automatic deletion.
• Address it directly. If you’re comfortable addressing the person who instigated it, let them know how this behavior affects you or others. You can also remind them of the Code of Conduct. If the behavior escalates, disengage immediately -- staff or moderators will take action.
• Contact us. We’ll respond as quickly as we can.

I feel like this presents all three options as equally beneficial choices in a given situation, but they often aren't. For instance, if a person makes a single rude comment, you wouldn't go straight to contacting Stack Overflow; you'd either flag or maybe address it directly. Similarly, if there's a large-scale problem - say, a couple of users harassing people on a larger scale - you probably don't want to only address it yourself; letting a mod know is a good first step.

So, can there maybe be a way of making it clear that not all of these actions are appropriate for every situation? I know it's hard to succinctly do that, so maybe linking to an FAQ page or two about flag use (in addition to the one already linked) could put the options in context.

Answer 17

Our mission is to build an inclusive community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise, identity, or language. Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a learning community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect.

That's not the mission of Stack Exchange.

The mission is correctly described on the Tour Page of every site:

With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about (site topic).

This is not a minor problem with the Code of Conduct. It's a key problem.

Ask questions, get answers, no distractions

This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat.

The Code of Conduct MUST reflect the actual mission of the site.

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Obviously there is no point in having a Code of Conduct that just repeats the Tour Page. But the MISSION STATEMENT should either be left out entirely, or it should match the actual mission of the site.

You could state the purpose of the Code of Conduct, which is different from "our mission."

It looks like the Code of Conduct authors wrote what THEIR mission is, in writing the Code of Conduct. That's different from the mission of the site.

The purpose of the Code of Conduct should align with the purpose of the site.

---

A possible new wording:

Our mission is to work together to build a library of detailed answers to every question on a variety of specific topics. The purpose of this Code of Conduct is to help the site run as smoothly as possible and to help guide our diverse contributors to interact with each other in a professional, collaborative, kind and respectful manner.

I'm sure this could be improved and tweaked, but the current text's complete misalignment with the actual mission of the site should be viewed as a HARD failure (blocker, showstopper).

---

Even more bluntly, stripping away modifying clauses:

Our mission is to build an inclusive community....

This is flatly wrong. Our mission is to build a library of detailed answers.

Answer 18

How do we deal with lazy users (I hope I'm safe saying this until the CoC goes live ;) persistently trying to offload work in chat?

Most language-specific chatrooms on chat.SO will every once in a while get a user who asks questions, doesn't really read answers, and does no thinking of their own when they receive help. Typical dynamics involve pages worth of "Please, could you post the actual code you're trying to debug?" and "We just told you how do to that, why do you keep asking this?" and "Did you really read the 10-page tutorial which I linked you a minute ago and ascertained that it somehow doesn't do what it does?". And yes, "You could have literally searched google with what you asked here" is also relevant.

Most people are patient and understanding with users asking for help. However, when there's a clear lack of effort on the asker's side, and no intent to learn what they're asking about, we need them to stop in an effort to protect our sanity and not waste our time.

I have seen several users whose behaviour is perfectly described by the "help vampire" syndrome. A possible remedy to this situation is confronting the user with their behaviour, telling them in very clear terms that their behaviour is simply inappropriate, and optionally pointing them to the help vampire info-page in hopes of getting the message through.

Now, as I understand it, none of this feedback will be appropriate under the new CoC. Linking that page or even calling someone a help vampire would be unthinkable, right? So even if I let go of this, how do I communicate in a welcoming, friendly manner that they need to stop asking and they need to start thinking for themselves, and reading the help that they get? And if I manage to communicate this to them but they keep on continuing with this disruptive behaviour, how can I kick them from the room in a welcoming, friendly manner?

Don't let my cynical tone fool you, I'm genuinely concerned and curious about handling entitled users who show no effort in trying to solve their problems. On main we can just downvote, close and move on, but the dynamics of chat are very different, and this needs to be addressed.

Answer 19

The major issue in the successive policies of SO, is running the danger into enforcing double standards: the registered users who play by the rules are being held to a higher standard of conduct, and actually penalised against drive-by users.

If the system gets so twisted, old and new users may actually have no incentive both to create or maintain registered accounts, as it far easier to just use low-rep accounts, and trow away them at the minimal signal of problems. I would not like to go there honestly, it is not the reason I am here.

There also might be a latent problem of having a segment of users that does not see the effort of building reputation, following our FAQ, or often taking the time to write good questions as productive. One of the problems is that it is far too easy to use one time throwaway accounts. Again, I rarely heard anyone mentioning this.

For instance, I am in a car related free forum. My account had to be formally accepted in as other users of that group were, and anyone that deviates from a certain standard and quality of posts will see the account cancelled. I do not advocate such extremism, however it could be an interesting experiment allowing a cool-off 24h period of an account before it could be used to comment or give answers, if not posting questions.

As for the discrimination of language, I as a foreign English learner, do find it strange an English forum not imposing certain standards for people to be able to participate coherently. I have helped improve many questions and answers. However, putting the onus on others of correcting questions (or answers) of people who often do not want to invest time in writing things correctly in English does not seem entirely correct. Please do call my attention and correct my English, I am here mainly for learning, and not for being worried about being discriminated against my mother tongue being something else.

Lastly, the bigger elephant in the room is considering all rep 1 questions new users. Trow away accounts are clearly being gamed by people who do not want to follow the code of conduct of this community, for evading moderation, niceness enforcement and bad reputation building, and we are ignoring that against enforcing heavy standards to the established user base.

Answer 20

As a moderator, I have concerns with the list of behaviors and typical actions. I'm afraid that this will lead to rule-lawyering. Even with the statement that actions are taken on a case-by-case basis, I think that people will focus on the behavior and typical actions.

It says that content that contains a subtle put-down is typically met with content deletion. That's generally true. However, repeated put-downs are dealt with in an escalation. The first deletions may not come with a warning. Repeated deletions may come with a warning, and then escalation into longer and longer suspensions.

Likewise, it also says that some content may result in an account suspension. If the user has a very long history of positive contributions and no history of previous poor conduct, it would have to be a pretty heinous comment for me to jump immediately to a suspension. I would delete, and would probably not wait on a warning, but I wouldn't place a strong member of the community into a suspension for one comment that may have been made in jest or that didn't come across well over the Internet or may offend a group of people unintentionally.

I'm afraid that people will read this CoC and interpret these "typical actions" as mandates for moderators. I'm also afraid that users may bring their complaints to Meta and not present the full picture - other users may not have access to the full backstory, especially if there's a lot of deleted content. Moderation is a volunteer activity - I don't want to deal with people who want to rule-lawyer. I am open to feedback on my actions, either publicly on Meta or via feedback to the community team, if anyone things that my actions as a moderator are inappropriate.

I do think that it's totally appropriate to give clear, specific examples of behaviors that violate the CoC. I do not believe that it is appropriate to link the course of action that moderators take with specific behaviors.

Answer 21

What's good

First of, I like the Code of Conduct in concept and content. All single issues that I might have are already carefully worded in other answers. You stated a goal what you wanted to achieve with this Code of Conduct.

We needed to write for the best of folks in our community. Off-putting things tend to mostly come from folks who will probably only ever blow their top once. We have moderators to deal with the tiny fraction of people that never care about rules, so our code of conduct needs to mostly resonate with the overwhelming majority of people we really want to keep. We need less over-posturing for troll dispatching and more guides to help decent folks avoid more common pitfalls.

From my point of view that's a good CoC to reach that goal.

What's Concerning

My feedback however is concerned if that's the right goal. What is the CoC supposed to achieve? It's fed by the general problem by all policies that are longer than a paragraph. Nobody reads them.

“[...] Apple could put the entire text of "Mein Kampf" inside the iTunes user agreement, and you'd just go agree, agree, agree - what? - agree, agree.” - John Oliver

Be it Terms and Conditions, User Agreements, Terms of Service, Codes of Conduct of however they are called they are basically worthless documents until someone sues. Which is even more useless in this case since we've got a few million Stack Exchange users who've never heard or agreed to said Code of Conduct—unless you plan to force-feed it to every user with a mandatory accept box before continuing to use the site. Furthermore, I'm guessing, nobody wants to use this document to sue.

My Question: What's the CoC really for?

Can a CoC really replace a half-pager guideline on what's okay and what's not?

Be Nice

It has three bullet points in relatively easy to understand language.

The Code of Conduct

The new Code of Conduct has eleven bullet points and contains the words neurodiversity and instigated while proclaiming one shouldn't discriminate due to English fluency with the former not even in most modern dictionaries and the latter easily being replaceable by caused.

Even worse the bullet points are not contained within themselves. The bold typed start proclaims something different than the following sentences will:

Be friendly, clear, and constructive. Editing, commenting, and sharing feedback are healthy parts of our community. When giving feedback, avoid jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online. Be open to receiving constructive feedback.

The further sentences are trying to explain the bold stuff but are demanding something completely different. The ability to be friendly, clear and constructive has very few to do with the expectation of handling other people's feedback openly.

Additionally I wonder why only people here to help should be patient and only people looking for help should make others' lives easier?

By honest counting we'll get to about 12-15 bullet points with behavior requirements in the Code of Conduct, possibly based on user roles. That's longer than the creative commons license that legally covers our posts...

Again, that's okay for a Code of Conduct. Those are wordier documents since they are the modern insurance of employers to either sue employees if they violate it or at least being able to say publicly they told them to be better. As employee I have to sign that I read it and will act accordingly.

What's it good for?

Sure Stack Exchange can set up such a document and point to it if there's a shitstorm about an escalation of racial slurs in the comments. Goal achieved? :|

Meta can discuss that document forever but that won't change a thing. The people civilly discussing a Code of Conduct on Meta are not our problem. Which brings me back to my question, what's the CoC really for? Giving meta a great basis for discussion or reaching the goal that Be Nice originally set out to do? It's very well for the former but in my opinion a step back for the latter.

Why it cannot replace Be Nice

Airplane emergency check lists have at most 5-6 items. No good modern checklist has more because people can't remember more consistently. (Cf. The Checklist Manifesto) We as community and especially the moderators need that check list to point to. You've started alright with the tl;dr part, already anticipating that—well, nobody reads the full thing.

The problem is that the tl;dr is currently the boiled down rainbow unicorn part of the document. It says basically be a good person. It's missing, don't be a jerk. When was Be Nice used? Exactly, when someone wasn't. The CoC cannot be very well used for that. Most of the target group Be Nice was thrown at won't read that much text. The CoC sounds like nice background literature and the tl;dr version is a nice opener to set a communities tone.

However, the target group we need the current Be Nice for was forgotten. Jerks. With the rainbow unicorn "be a good person" version as opener and the linked CoC the people who need behavior guidelines will never pass the guidance, "don't be a jerk", or any of the unaccepted behaviors in the CoC. This cannot be stressed enough, they will not be read.

Let's have a look at racist comments for example.

• Previously any racist comment failed to meet the criteria of two out of three points from a half-pager.

• Now the reason to delete said comment is buried behind a preamble, in a bullet point list, on item seven, in a sub-enumeration of items which might partly require a dictionary (depending on English fluency).

Exaggerating a bit, will moderators in the future write after deleting an insult to an overweight person, "deleted comment due to CoC, Section 2, Sub-Section 3, Item 10"? That is not making it easy on anyone who wants to uphold any standard.

I very much prefer a hint to something simple, like Be Nice, Don't be a jerk. Maybe the current Be Nice is the best tl;dr the CoC can have.

Most times simplicity is key. That's why airplanes rarely crash.

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_{I see the irony in my post failing that simplicity badly. But it's late and I didn't have time to write a shorter post.}

Answer 22

Sigh.

I think the SE team really wants to put a new Code of Conduct through, so I am not particularly convinced that many criticisms will have an effect. Fundamentally I find an overview how cases and differences in opinion should be handled very good. It helps other people to understand how a site works (if they bother to read it; the shorter, the better) and it gives everyone a guideline what to do if something is amiss. A kind of manual if "Be Nice" does not work.

But one point which I personally miss in the existing answers is

Not anticipating the effects of difference of culture and worldviews.

While being mostly active in other groups, I also participate in Politics.SE. The people visiting Politics.SE are very, very different in nationality and political beliefs and often quite vocal about their beliefs. They also have often...erm...a not so good opinion of other viewpoints and worldviews.

Let's play devil's advocate here.

Follow our guidelines and don't worry if others suggest changes or edit your question - they’re trying to make your question helpful to as many people as possible.

Important to note: Here it is assumed that the behavior (edits or changes) come from good intentions. Am I too pessimistic to assume that not all changes or edits are well-intentioned? Especially with politically charged items like e.g. "Crimean accession"/"Russian annexation"?

If someone points out that your behavior is making others uncomfortable, stop doing it. Sometimes, people unconsciously say things that negatively affect others. Even if this wasn’t your intent, apologize and move on.

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language. Regardless of intent, this behavior can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down.

I really can't imagine that trying to enforce this in Politics.SE will not cause pandemonium. Opinions of politics who are deviating from the own belief are making people often extremely uncomfortable. Politics is also full of charged words who can be extremely easy misinterpreted as put-down or unwelcoming. Given that intent should not matter at all and an apology should be issued to a political opponent (!), I cannot see that this will work out.

But even on less controversial themes I see that we have a plethora of many, many different cultures and worldviews. Some people are more straightforward than polite, some cultures have other core values than others. The nice thing about "Be nice" is that is an accepted behavior in all cultures. Even if someone violates expectations, talking together will solve this easily if both sides have good will. The new Code of Conduct tries to introduce a "One Size, Fits all".

Another problem I see is that the Code of Conduct now urges people to point out behavior they think others find uncomfortable. People cannot read minds, so if e.g. I am targeted by a remark, at least I would like to retain personal autonomy if and how I find a remark offensive or hurtful.

Overall, I do not like the overall tone of the Code of Conduct. It feels in my opinion too...patronizing.

It is not more the tone of "Be nice": We trust you that you have good intentions. If something goes awry, try to fix it to the best of your abilities.

It is now more: "We need to show you what correct and acceptable behavior according to our standard is. Intent does not count anymore, if something goes awry, we will decide if there is an offense and how to cope with it".

I think SE goes the wrong path. Trying to project a good image, trying to be welcoming to everyone, trying to avoid and subdue conflicts, trying to urge others to report others. But I don't think what I say does matter at all.

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. Karl Popper.

Answer 23

There is a difference between what you write and my expectations of Stack Exchange.

SEN CoC:

Our mission is to build an inclusive community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise, identity, or language. Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a learning community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect.

My CoC Expectation:

Our mission is to build a website with good questions and excellent answers on a diverse number of fields. Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. We're all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor. Be Nice.

---

SEN Expectations:

• If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming. Learning how to participate in our community can be daunting, especially if someone is new. Be supportive while others are learning.

• Etc.

My Expectation:

• Be nice. Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. We're all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.

• If you are here to find an answer, and did not find it, please check how to ask a question. If you did find your answer, please upvote.

• If you’re here to help others, be patient and nice. Learning how to participate in our community can be a learning curve, as this is not a forum.

• Be friendly, clear, and constructive. Editing, commenting, and sharing feedback are healthy parts of our community. When giving feedback, avoid jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online. Be open to receiving constructive feedback.

• If you are reading something that is making you feel uncomfortable, let it go. If you see a pattern, flag it and move on. Sometimes, people unconsciously say things that negatively affect others. You can handle this (as an adult) and move on.

Unacceptable Behaviour:

• No discrimination. This includes any language you know is offensive to people. This includes (but not limited to): nationality, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or mental illness.

• No harassment. This includes, but isn’t limited to: bullying, intimidation, vulgar language, direct or indirect threats, sexually suggestive remarks, patterns of inappropriate social contact, and sustained disruptions of discussion.

• No name-calling or personal attacks. Focus on the content, not the person.

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My 2 cents

I don't think there is anything wrong with the current Code of Conduct. Worse yet, Stack Exchange and I have different things we want out of it. SE wants to be an inclusive community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise, identity, or language. I want a site where I can get a solution to the problem I am facing. I want expertise. I expect decent human behaviour.

If I ask a stupid question to my friends, I will get a stupid answer back. If I ask a question to my wife that tells her I have put little effort into it, I will get an answer to do my own homework. And I am fine with both of them: Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. Effort in, effort out.

If you want an an inclusive community, go find your sub reddit. I want good questions with excellent answers.

Answer 24

There is a large amount of redundancy in this document, which is the main issue I have with codes of conduct in general. More text means more opportunity to exploit the wording. Even if such an attempt is not successful, it wastes people's time. In particular, everything under the section describing unacceptable behavior is redundant. These are all covered by the Be Nice policy. Why do you need to specify that you can't use discriminating language for people based on their race? In other words, why do you have to say "be nice to everyone" and then, right after that, say "be nice to people of other races"? It seems unnecessary and overly politicized. Just say that you have to be nice and keep feedback constructive.

In addition, simply calling it a "code of conduct" leaves me with a dirty taste in my mouth. Such documents are very frequently used for abuse, both by people with good intentions and those with bad intentions. As such, many people do not like such things.

I think the current Be Nice policy is wonderful. It is simple, easy to read, and highly inclusive. I would like to see anyone point out a negative action that would be allowed in the Be Nice policy, but not with this new code of conduct.

Answer 25

A single, simple question in response to this question:

What problem(s) is a Code of Conduct intended to solve?

Is the problem "new users don't read the Help Centre and therefore don't know about Be Nice"? Because... if they can't be arsed to read the short-and-sweet policy, do you really think they're going to read the much longer Code of Conduct?

If the problem is "someone got moderated and complained about it because they allegedly don't understand why, and the current Help Centre documentation isn't thorough enough to give an adequate explanation" then fair enough, a more comprehensive document than Be Nice will probably be helpful. Unfortunately, it's been my past experience that most people who choose to challenge administrative decisions do so not because they believe a mistake or bad judgement call was made, but because they are bad actors who either get their kicks out of wasting others' time, or honestly believe they are in the right despite any and all evidence to the contrary; self-entitlement seems to be a helluva drug.

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As for the new CoC itself, I have a fundamental objection to it on the grounds that I feel its language is too restrictive and open to abuse by bad actors; but if (as it appears) it's already been decided that it shall be imposed, then I have the following comments:

• Keep the original/legacy Be Nice mission statement as the very first item in the new CoC, with a blurb before and after that gives context. Something like:

Our Code of Conduct can be summed up by the following statement:

Be nice.

Treat others with the same respect you'd want them to treat you. We're all here to learn together. Be tolerant of others who may not know everything you know. Bring your sense of humor.

The above can be ambiguous, so in order to clear up any misinterpretations we've outlined fuller guidelines below.

<rest of CoC follows>

• @Kobi's answer re "Our mission" is spot-on, I won't bother repeating what he's said here, except to concur.

• "Our expectations" section: move the "If you’re here to get help..." bullet point to the top of the list (same for the abridged versions) - IMO the CoC is primarily aimed at new users, so let's put them front and centre.

• "If you’re here to get help...": as @fbueckert noted, add something about demonstrating effort.

Answer 26

I think the intent is (broadly) good. I get what it's trying to do.

However, some of the specific phrasing seems to be setting us up for not being able to moderate effectively (whether as diamond moderators or ordinary users). For example consider this heading:

No discrimination of any kind.

(emphasis mine, because that's where the problems arise)

On this network of sites, we're dealing (almost entirely) with responses to text. The very function of the site is to discriminate between good answers and poor ones, and so we must be careful only to proscribe what we actually want to avoid, not to make it impossible for the site to function.

This kind of overly-broad prescription gives people who write poor answers every excuse to cry foul.

My suggestion is avoid 'dealing in absolutes' like that, because it gives people too much opportunity to point to the policy and turn the tables -- to make life very difficult for the people trying to keep the site functioning by constantly finding this or that objection to their crappy posts "discriminatory". It is discriminatory -- ultimately because their post is bad.

Please allow us to continue to discriminate in the ways we should -- against poor content -- rather than setting yourself up for compulsory defense of poor content on the grounds that someone may cite discrimination ("you're discriminating against me because I can't spell, cite a reference or express a coherent thought -- that's not fair, I am just differently-abled, I am offended and I demand the commenter be suspended according to the clear wording of the guidelines. At the very least their discriminatory comment should be removed and their discriminatory downvote reversed").

[In actual cases, though it won't be framed quite so obviously, but rather more subtly.]

That we should be nice when we do discriminate against poor content, and avoid being (by some reasonable standard) personally offensive, sure, I agree with that -- we should focus on the content and not the attributes of the poster, but people's capacity to find any form of criticism personally objectionable is boundless.

I also think the document focuses too much on the action to be taken. This is akin to the usual objections to mandatory sentencing in judicial systems -- they reduce or remove the ability to consider mitigating circumstances. That such recommendations should exist somewhere (as guidelines for moderators) sure; I don't think their place is in a policy document.

Answer 27

In the spirit of not discriminating against people based on English fluency, what do you think of making the CoC available in simple language?

The first two sentences in the code are already prime examples of sentences that are possibly hard to parse for non-native english speakers.

Instead of a long sentence like:

Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a learning community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect.

What about multiple shorter sentences?

It does not matter whether you came to ask questions or share what you know. Join us in building a kind, collaborative and respectful community.

Carrying this on throughout the CoC is... challenging. Simple language is hard

It applies to everyone using the Stack Exchange network, including our team, moderators, and anyone posting to our Q&A site or chat rooms.

---

It applies to everyone using the Stack Exchange network. That means our team, moderators and every user on any Q&A site or chatroom.

---

In a similar vein the vocabulary used in the CoC belongs to a pretty high register. That's all fine, but be aware that not everyone will know all the words. And of those not everyone will actually go and look them up to understand the CoC...

Answer 28

1) It is understandable that as SE becomes an actual corporation, political correctness will infiltrate the official language. The usual side effect is that the text becomes boring, and this is what happened with the new Code of Conduct. In other words, you turned "be nice" into "be heavenly" and the rather universal consensus is that heaven is a boring place while you're alive.

2) You spit on the glorious past of the SE universe by not including the motto "Be nice" in the new text.

3) You start the Code of Conduct by writing

Our mission is to build an inclusive community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise, identity, or language.

Regardless of expertise? Consider that in all cases where the subject matter of an SE site is also a subject matter of formal education, the "regardless of expertise" part is a clear signal that it can be also used as a do-my-homework mill (and without pay).

4) It is also understandable that you want to increase control over the moderators. But by suggesting

If you have concerns about how a moderator has handled a situation, contact us directly

you do it in a most belittling way. The suggestion should be to first discuss such issues on the meta-sites.

But apart from the above, the new code of conduct is certainly more suitable for a massively massive audience, that really needs to be told not to put the cat in the microwave oven to dry. And I write this without any degree of sarcasm whatsoever.

Answer 29

Stop pretending you care what we think.

Stack Overflow is not a community

A nightclub is not a party, it is a business that provides a party-like experience to sell overpriced cocktails.

Stack Overflow is not a community, it is a business which provides a community-like experience, in order to sell eyeballs to recruiters and other advertisers.

The nightclub owners have decided that rather than cater to the die-hard fans, they are going to pivot and make a mega-club that trades off the cool of the old name. But they can't say that's what they are doing, because that would kill the cool.

Stack Overflow owners have decided that rather than cater to the professionals, they are going to pivot and turn into a do-my-homework, write-my-code site for CS students, and lazy or incompetent programmers. There are a lot more of them than there are of the experts, and they'll ask and answer far more questions. They'll mostly be duplicates, but so what? It's engagement, it brings the eyeballs, and that's where the money is.

Like any other social network, we are not paying, we are not customers, we are the product.

The goal of quality is taking a back seat to increasing the audience.

90% of new questions are poor quality, duplicates, answered by the most basic one-page tutorial, or all three. "join with group by" must have been asked thousands of times.

What to do about it?

If it's a problem, there are solutions:

Homework must be banned outright

These are ALWAYS duplicates, often people doing the same course. Create a new site: https://cs-homework.stackexchange.com.

SQL-Help must be moved off the main stack overflow

There's clearly a lot of demand for it and plenty of people willing to provide it. But SQL is hard and it's in the nature of SQL that it's not obvious how one question relates to another. The answer is often something like "you need use a subquery not a join", and the question is not strictly a duplicate of anything, and will never be useful to anyone else.

Create a new site: https://sql-help.stackexchange.com.

Finding duplicates must be incentivised

Closing as duplicate should be rewarded, answering a question later closed as duplicate should be negative rep - you should have duped it.

But is it really a problem?

Not for the "community", that's a side issue. Is it a problem for the owners?

So that last three sections suppose that quality is actually a primary goal. In fact I don't believe this is true of the leadership: It's clear that growing the audience is the primary goal and quality has been sacrificed for 4 years as no way has been found to align the two.

Closing duplicates is not incentivised because they don't want us to do it - it kills engagement. At the moment, answering an easy duplicate will earn all parties 30 rep, and this is intentional: Whatever they say they want, what they really want is what they reward.

From now on, it's newbies answering duplicate questions all the way.

Because "engagement" beats curating a high quality resource in cash terms.

Answer 30

It fails to address the source that ignites the rude comments, which is very often rude questions.

For example, if we look at this:

Unacceptable Behavior

No subtle put-downs or unwelcoming language. Regardless of intent, this behavior can have a significant negative impact on others. For example, saying “You could Google this in 5 seconds” is a subtle put-down.

I agree. But take a moment to consider who was the first offender here. It was the rude poster who is abusing the site by asking something that they could Google in 5 seconds.

We need a clause about Unacceptable Behavior when asking a question. Examples:

• Asking questions where the OP has not even done minimal research.
• Asking questions which is nothing but a copy/paste homework dump, with no effort by the OP.
• Asking questions that are not even remotely on-topic.

These are among the rudest things I see on the sites. We offer free expert advise that would cost a lot of money in a different context. The bare minimum to ask in return is to not abuse that service by asking questions like the ones mentioned above. Doing so is plain rude to the people who are taking their time to answer questions, free of charge.

Failing to understand why the community views such question as rude, is a failure to understand and deal with the root of the problem. This is where a whole lot of friction regarding this topic comes from. People rarely post rude comments out of the blue, they are rude when something upsets them.

If there is no clause about rude questions, SE will once again antagonize the community.