The second draft of our Code of Conduct is available for feedback and review

Question

You provided us with some really helpful feedback on our first draft attempt to expand our 'Be nice' policy into a formal code of conduct, and we're extremely grateful for your time, patience and insights. This was not an easy discussion to have and we are extremely proud of the civility and insight that everyone brought to the table.

We'd also like to thank the folks who took time to provide us with insight off the stage and out of the spotlight through email, in-person interviews, surveys and other research channels. Your voices were positively critical in forming a well-balanced code that aims to represent all reasonable needs.

Together, you helped us to form a Code of Conduct that reinforces our expectations of civility, charitable intent, mutual respect for individual feelings and the emotional labor that helping strangers entails, and our commitment to always learn and improve.

Please, have a look at the second draft (Google Doc), and tell us what you think.

There are some notes that we'd like everyone to keep in mind:

Major changes to the document have settled.

Based on hundreds of hours of feedback (on both your part and our part), we've incorporated all major changes that we felt strengthened the document and ensured that it met as many needs as possible. At this point, we're considering all major construction done - what we're looking for are things like small sentence tweaks, accidental loopholes, grammar fixes, opportunities for brevity, and similar improvements.

Any feedback that needs to be evaluated prior to the new CoC being implemented must be posted on or (ideally) prior to Friday, July 27, 2018.

This document is designed to evolve.

Implementation doesn't preclude improvement, it just means that we have to arrive at a point that looks sound enough to test in the real world for a while, and then see what (if anything) needs to be changed.

We will be opening periodic surveys to solicit feedback on the efficacy of the CoC, and will make adjustments based on the results. Similarly, you can suggest improvements to the CoC by creating a feature-request or discussion with the code-of-conduct tag to raise any concern. Please open all discussions here, on Meta Stack Exchange, so that everyone interested can find them in one place.

Try not to worry, well, not too much.

In case you didn't hear us, we're extremely proud of you, and thankful that we've even gotten to this point. We want to make sure that we remain a relevant tool that our kids will use one day, and we know that we will.

Teachers have to talk to everyone in the class, even those sitting at the front looking annoyingly over their shoulders at the concealed spit-ball launching arsenal behind them; I learned that in my second year of college.

When you're speaking to something like a code of conduct, you must be extremely clear, it applies to everyone, and we're not making any exceptions.

With that said, we don't expect most folks reading this to find themselves in a precarious place due to enforcement; the worst most might expect is seeing a hastily-written comment that was uncharacteristically insensitive removed unceremoniously by a moderator in flag-processing mode.

You're here talking to us because you care - these aren't easy conversations to have and we get that. You, the folks that put a sincere effort into helping us shape this code are the people that understand why it's so important to embrace the intent of the document, and the ones most likely to learn from mistakes, however unlikely they might be.

The need for this stinks, but embracing it sends a strong signal that we care about everyone enough to commit to not being demeaning and honestly listening to them if they feel like we got that wrong. While that might sound trivial, like something we do every day, it's a major thing for an online community of this size to achieve.

Over to you.

See anything? Let us know. Do you have further questions? Let us know. Please be respectful, try not to assume the worst in folks, and keep in mind that having these kinds of problems is also a sign of lots of other stuff going right - let's not lose sight of that.

Thank all of you again, so much, for your time and patience here. I'm not sure what yet, but we're going to have some kind of decompression festival once this all gets put in place.

Answer 1

I understand the limits of suggestions you prefer to be offered for this final revision:

At this point, we're considering all major construction done - what we're looking for are things like small sentence tweaks, accidental loopholes, grammar fixes, opportunities for brevity, and similar improvements.

• R7-V2 has some links and includes the word "help" 14 times, but offers no link to the help pages. A short mention of the Hamburger along with generic FAQs would show thoughtfulness and concern that the visitor has a productive and enjoyable experience, so they have a positive experience and feel encouraged to return.

  Sometimes we see frustration for everyone when there's a misunderstanding of what is expected, indeed such past experiences may have led to several revisions of these rules of conduct.

• In the section titled "Our Expectations" there is no mention that a well researched question is easier to provide the best answers for and often generates the most interest and best response. The wrong way to explain that would be to demand sensible on-topic questions that require more than a minute of search to find the answer.

  It can be helpful to mention that each community can have a different help file, and an additional one for their Meta. Each community represents a friendly welcoming group whom doesn't necessarily do things the same way as another Stack Exchange site. Have a look at our tour page, join and ask or answer a question. The wrong way to explain that would be mention that there's no lifeguard on duty: Look before you leap.

• Once people read the expectations and are clear about what they should do it would be useful to direct them to a "Getting Started" document that explains how including some information in the Profile can be useful to the askers and answerers.

  Suggest that they might want to get started by doing X,Y, and Z; more information here ...

The short version:

Add:

• Visit the help pages for more details.

  Here's an example of one flavor of help: Interpersonal Skills - beta (Help Center).

• Go here next, to get started.

  Here's a getting started Q&A: How should new users get started with Skeptics?

Answer 2

Unacceptable Behavior

For the third bullet point, how about...

No bigotry. We don’t tolerate any language meant to offend or alienate people based on things such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

This includes three changes:

1. "Meant to offend or alienate" would replace the vague and open-ended "Likely to offend or alienate."

It's often hard for well-meaning and respectful individuals to predict what is "likely" to offend or alienate, especially when dealing with different cultures from around the world. People should be careful -- but they shouldn't be treated like bigots if they make an honest mistake.

2. "When in doubt, just don't" would be removed.

Guidelines like "When in doubt, just don't" are for people who don't mean harm, but are just not being careful enough. That's different from actual bigotry, which surely belongs under Unacceptable Behavior.

3. "Things such as" would substitute for "and those are just a few examples."

Simpler, more succinct, and more readable.

And I think the phrasing "things such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion" is just flexible enough to include types of bigotry not on the list, yet limited enough so people cannot stretch it to cover whatever they want.

Answer 3

I'm still not comfortable with some of the things that this implies are unfriendly/rude. For example, "you could Google this in 5 seconds." I have a separate Meta post here discussing that particular example.

It's a little less clear in the revision, but the first draft strongly implied that you could be suspended for comments like that. The new code also seems to imply the same thing (I could be wrong, though).

If the moderators are going to start handing out suspensions for calling people lazy, are they going to hand out for actually being lazy, too?

Personally, I only recall one case where someone was actually suspended for blatant laziness, and that was on Math SE where someone had a pattern of being a help vampire that dated back at least 5 years.

The original announcement of the creation of the suspension specifically mentions being a help vampire as a suspendable offense, but it doesn't seem to happen very often (correct me if I'm wrong).

TL;DR If put-downs are going to be suspendable offenses, can we start suspending more help vampires too?

Answer 4

TL;DR:

What does this mean?

Perhaps I could find out by Googling for 5 seconds, but my point is that this sort of internet slang should not be included in any official document that new users may not understand because of language or (in my case) age or culture. There's no reason to do it. Use clear standard English that everyone can understand, and by doing so you will set a standard that encourages new users to express themselves in this way too.

--

And as a minor point, SE uses the utf-8 character set for its HTML pages, so there’s no need to use ASCII from the last century. You can use proper typography in the documentation:

—

Answer 5

This Code of Conduct helps us build a learning community

No, SE is not a learning community. It's a platform to share knowledge, but not specifically about learning. Several answers have already raised this point, but I wanted to mention it again because a fundamental misrepresentation in the very first sentence sets things off really badly.

team, moderators¹, and anyone posting to Q&A sites or chat rooms

Remove the footnote. This sentence doesn't need that level of detail. Furthermore restricting moderators to diamond mods is wrong here: the sentence shouldn't be restricted to exclude editors, voters, and other curators, who would be called “moderators” on many Internet forums.

Be kind. ​Be polite and friendly with others. Avoid jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online

The recommendation to “avoid jokes” is good advice, but it doesn't fit under the heading “be kind”. Making jokes that are misinterpreted because the reader doesn't have the expected context is not unkindness.

“I came to get help, not to get my question edited.”
→ “Thanks for improving my question. I’m happy to provide any other info you’ll need to answer it.”

You've completely inverted the meaning between the “unfriendly” and the “friendly” formulations. That's sarcasm. Sarcasm in a text that recommends against sarcasm is a really bad idea.

This includes terms that feel personal even when they're applied to content (e.g. “lazy”

I really cannot bring myself to telling someone off for saying that posting one's homework assignment (“homework dump” post) is lazy. I'm pretty sure we have several “official-looking” meta posts across the network that use terms like “homework dump” and “lazy”, some of them mine, and I do not see any inappropriate conduct there. Asking strangers to do your homework for you is lazy.

For most first-time misconducts, our moderators will (…) send you a warning

There are many cases where a warning is not sufficient for the first offence. I think this table as a whole is still too directive.

This is how moderators generally handle reported issues: (followed by a big image that draws attention because it's typeset differently)

You're spending way too much reader attention on sanctions. The description of possible sanctions should be limited to one sentence. Make each word count!

learning community.

Again, this is not a learning community.

Answer 6

Reading the very first bullet in the CoC ('If you're here for help') leaves with with an uncomfortable feeling that you are missing an opportunity to address a core cause of strife.

There are many different modes of asking for help. The SE sites are designed for a specific subset of those modes: Posing concrete questions. In my view, the external view of us as a bunch of heartless jerks comes from a disconnect here. People expect to open up a sort of support ticket and have an interaction with someone who will help them. There's nothing wrong with this idea -- except that it's not what these sites are designed to do. So even very polite deflections can be read as heartless. And, on the other hand, those who answer feel harassed to the point of snark by the flood of questions-that-are-not-concrete-questions.

So, I posit, the CoC might want to spent a phrase here setting the expectation, and distinguishing, briefly, 'I need help with X' from 'I did X, I got Y, I expected Z'.

Answer 7

If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Explicitly recommend not commenting. People on the internet don't always seem to understand that that's a very good option. A good time to exercise this option is when the OP is wrong and you feel very strongly about that. Another time is when you fail to come up with a constructive response. Saying nice things instead of mean things it's great, but it's also harder, and it's not practical for a lot of people a lot of the time because constructive, kind human interaction is genuinely difficult, but it's much easier if we can actually choose the situations where we want to be kind and constructive. If I were enforcing a "be kind" clause in a code of conduct, I would feel on far better footing to point out to an offender that they didn't have to say anything at all, so the burden is not on the moderator or the platform to make sure it's always possible for them to say something nice.

I think the code of conduct is really incomplete without explicitly highlighting that not commenting is an active expectation we have alongside our active expectation for those who comment to comment constructively.

Answer 8

I'd prefer formatting with em dashes in contrast to the double dashes used now.

From

Be kind. Be polite and friendly with others. Avoid jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online. If a situation makes it hard to act kindly, stop engaging and move on.

To

Be kind. Be polite and friendly with others. Avoid jokes and sarcasm — tone is hard to decipher online. If a situation makes it hard to act kindly, stop engaging and move on.

Spaces around the em dash are considered optional.

Answer 9

I have seen instances where codes of conduct have been used to "get rid of" members of a community for political reasons. What safeguards are in place to prevent this from happening at StackExchange?

Answer 10

'Moderators' is used problematically

Using 'moderator' without qualification, with the expectation that it excludes community moderation by ordinary members, decreases the visibility of the expectation of said moderation, and consequently both the availability of that information to new users and the likelihood that any user will engage in difficult community moderation when an opportunity is presented to them. This in turn decreases site quality and increases elected moderator workload.

Use '♦ Moderators' Instead

This covers community managers, elected mods, mods pro tempore for beta sites, and anyone else with ♦ - level privileges, which is probably what was intended. This has the downside of being somewhat confusing on its own (i.e. it begs the question "What's a ♦ moderator?"), but the upside that it doesn't reinforce the incorrect idea that we have one set of secret moderators with no accountability as our bread and butter site management people, like many new users expect.

Answer 11

Thank you. This version is IMO a great improvement over the previous one, especially since I think it makes expectations very clear without allowing rules lawyers a lot of room to play.

I'm particularly pleased that it passes one of the most important (but rarely considered) tests for a set of rules: Would we be happy if someone took the rules literally and enforced them as they were written? And I think the answer is now "Yes, we would be comfortable."

The one thing that struck me while reading it is primarily a style or wording issue, not one of substance. The opening sentence says "This Code of Conduct helps us build a learning community that is rooted in kindness, collaboration, and mutual respect." "Kindness" seems just a bit...I don't know, touchy-feely? overly abstract? loaded? I'm groping without success for just the right words. Regardless, I honestly think it will incline many readers of the CoC to hold the whole CoC in less respect than it it were left out.

It actually detracts from the point which is made much more robustly by the latter two items. I think you'd have a stronger, clearer, cleaner statement if it just read "This Code of Conduct helps us build a learning community that is rooted in collaboration, and mutual respect." Collaboration and mutual respect do not leave room for unkindness, anyway.

Regardless, thank you for listening to the feedback you got.

Answer 12

Holy Carp, this is much better!

I see very little that I feel could be improved.

Are you speaking English? If so, I can’t tell.

---

“I think you’re asking how to add a swap after system installation. Is that correct?”

I think this alternative could be replaced with something more along the lines of "This is an English speaking site. While we'd like to help you, we first need to be able to understand your question."

This handles both questions posted in another language (and not on the not-English-version of the site, eg. Spanish SO) as well as questions posted in poorly written English. Sure, an attempt to understand ("I think you're asking X, is that right?") are nice, the key point that the "Are you speaking English?" comment is trying to make is: questions need to be readable, understandable, and posted in English.

“I came to get help, not to get my question edited.”

---

“Thanks for improving my question. I’m happy to provide any other info you’ll need to answer it.”

I would change "edited" to "closed" (e.g. "Why is my question being closed? I came here to get help!") as well as replacing the alternative to something like "no comment is needed (see Community Guidelines and How to Ask for more information)."

Answer 13

This looks significantly better then the first one. Most of what I feared would be invitations for people to rule lawyer over particularities has been removed, the language has been broadened and generalised such as to cover a wider area instead of narrow examples, and the importance of intent and good faith attempts to follow have been highlighted.

I'd suggest going a bit further with emphasizing intent instead of reaction in defining what is punishable, but this will serve well. I imagine for most people this will be a very uncontroversial and unconsequential change (as they're already not in the habit of routinely denigrating others for giggles), so if it does help anyone feel better about participating, that's a win in my book.

Answer 14

The existing answers here look like they're mostly about the meaning and intent of the content, but you also asked for "small sentence tweaks" and "grammar fixes", so here we go with some copy editing:

Document-wide

In the first "Our expectations" bullet point, you use a double dash. That should become a true em dash, and it should not be bordered by spaces. Same for other occurrences of the double dash. (Granted, the rule about spaces seems to be older usage, and now somewhat disputed; see EL&U, Grammarist, and The Punctuation Guide for more.)

For most of the document, you use the serial comma, but in the last bullet point on the first page, you do not. I'm not trying to start a holy war about whether the serial comma is appropriate, but I generally advocate for picking one style and sticking with it. In the case of this doc, it looks like one or two just got left out as typos.

The doc contains a blend of links in Markdown format and links that are underlined blue text. I suppose this is not necessarily an error, depending on your implementation process, but I figured better safe than sorry as far as mentioning it in this list, in case some formatting gets forgotten or not applied at all.

Page 1

The footnote starts with "(?)". I can't tell whether this is an intentional use of some shorthand I'm unfamiliar with, or a typo.

Page 2

Under "No bigotry", it might be clearer/less awkward to replace or supplement "and those are just a few examples" with a general description of what you're trying to cover, like "or other groups that people identify personally with".

Page 3

In the left pane of the graphic, the text includes "send you a warning". This is the only time in the graphic where the word "you" is used. I recommend rephrasing that (example: "send the author a warning" or simply "send a warning") to remove "you"; it's good for pane-level parallelism, and the word could come off as a little accusatory, especially to the many readers will never deserve to be warned by a mod themselves.

In the right pane of the graphic, the context makes your meaning fairly clear, but the sentence is grammatically ambiguous. I'd change "displaying" to "who display" (or similar) to make it clear that the bad stuff is modifying "users" rather than "moderators".

There's a single dash on its own line in the middle of the page. I don't know if it's a placeholder for a horizontal rule or something, but it looks odd on its own.

"the respect our community members expects" should be "the respect our community members expect".

The header at the bottom of the page says "Stack Overflow"; earlier, you used the "$CommunityName$" shorthand. Should be changed to that shorthand if you mean SO the site, or changed to "Stack Exchange" if you mean the network. (You could argue for "Stack Overflow" meaning the network, but "Stack Exchange" as the network name is more consistent with the rest of the doc.)

Answer 15

“This is called Invariance and Covariance. […]”

Do not capitalise invariance and covariance. If you want to highlight that this about the word itself, use italics or quotes.

Answer 16

First off, I appreciated having a PDF on Github. Google Docs and Github are both pretty sluggish on my computer, so being able to download and open it in my PDF reader was a lot nicer than the last time in Google Docs.

As for the document itself...

The header

Mark Olson noticed a problem with the use of "kindness" in the header, but couldn't pin down the specific problem. I think that problem is that "kindness" is noticeably more casual than "collaboration" and "mutual respect". I'd suggest changing it to "courtesy" instead. I also think it would read better moving "can" to before "feel", and changing "We commit..." to "We are committed..." I've put the changes in italics below:

This Code of Conduct helps us build a learning community that is rooted in courtesy, collaboration, and mutual respect​. Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a community where all people can feel welcome and participate, regardless of expertise or identity.

We are committed to enforcing and improving the Code of Conduct. It applies to everyone using $CommunityName$ and the Stack Exchange network, including our team, moderators 1, and anyone posting to Q&A sites or chat rooms.

Our Expectations

I agree with Rob that researching your question is something the community generally expects, and I feel that it would fit well under the first bullet. The part about feedback is a bit redundant and would be better placed under the feedback bullet. I'm not sure the volunteers sentence is actually important.

If you’re here to get help, make it as easy as possible for others to help you​. Include your research and what you've already tried when asking a question so we can provide the best answer.

I'm pretty sure new people are the only ones who will need to learn about our community, so "especially if someone is new" is probably redundant in the next bullet. I've read a lot about people having a hard time with the StackExchange model, treating it like a forum instead, so maybe that was what you intended? It seems like a good thing to mention here.

If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming​. Learning how to participate in our community can be daunting, especially for people who are used to discussion forums instead. Offer support if you see someone struggling or otherwise in need of help.

To put some comments by Tom Limoncelli and Tim into an answer, I'd suggest the following rewording for the next bullet:

Give and expect feedback. Kind, respectful, clear and constructive feedback is an essential part of our culture. When someone suggests an improvement, consider how you can use it to improve your question or answer.

Like others, I agree with avoiding humor all together being trouble, but the warning still sounds reasonable to me. I think "friendly" and "kindly" are a bit inconsistent with the otherwise professional-sounding writing, and it took me a minute to figure out what "engaging" meant in this context. My suggested rewrite:

Be kind.​ Be polite and respectful to others. Be careful with jokes and sarcasm -- tone is hard to decipher online and it can be easy to misinterpret. If a situation makes it hard to act respectfully, leave the situation and move on.

Unacceptable behavior

The second bullet might benefit from some examples like the first. An example of an example:

• Personal attack: People who believe in rocks are lazy, ignorant idiots who can't be bothered to do a simple google search and read about the mountains of evidence proving they don't exist.
• Personal-feeling attack: This question is lazy and ignorant. It doesn't account for the mountains of articles a simple google search pulls up for "do rocks exist". Spoiler alert: They don't.
• Subtly personal attack: A google search for "do rocks exist" would turn up mountains of articles proving they actually don't.
• Focusing on the content: I noticed your question is important whether or not rocks exist. If you remove the paragraph about rocks, it would be easier to read and likely see more people who can answer.

On the "No bigotry" bullet, I'd prefer to just say "groups they identify with" and leave it at that rather than making a list of them.

"When in doubt, just don't" is witty and concise. It also feels flippant to me and reads like a subtle put-down. Maybe it's just the negativity in this section getting to me, but I dislike it a lot. I'd go for this instead:

No bigotry.​ We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on the groups they identify with. When in doubt, it never hurts to rephrase it more tactfully or omit the remark entirely.

Reporting and Enforcement

Personally, I don't care whether flagging alerts moderators or triggers an automatic deletion. The process could involve chanting while interrogating a rubber duck taped to a counterfeit Mona Lisa and I'd be perfectly fine with that (well, maybe it'd be a bit creepy). What matters to me is whether the bad stuff goes away.

Saying "We'll respond as quickly as we can" on the Contact part but not the Flag part suggests contacting you gets faster results than flagging the content. I suspect you'd prefer the opposite implication so the moderators can handle the stuff they can and leave staff more time to handle what moderators can't.

"We take your reports seriously" is topically similar to the bullets and dissimilar to the remainder of the paragraph. Combined with the colon at the end of the first paragraph, it makes more sense to me interpreting the bullets and two surrounding paragraphs as a broader "reporting and enforcement" paragraph, briefly interrupted by a bulleted list, rather than a narrower "What you can do" paragraph (with bulleted list) followed by a "what will happen" one.

Thanks to the above interpretation, "We take your reports seriously" is most closely associated with the Contact bullet. By combining with the "We'll respond as quickly as we can" problem, it implies you take contacting more seriously than flagging. Again, that would promote contacting first and flagging second.

It also occurred to me while writing this that I was operating under the assumption that flagging and contacting were equivalent. A brief look at the contact form suggests they're actually very different, and should probably be addressed separately.

I'd rearrange things as follows:

Every person contributes to creating a kind, respectful community. If you find unacceptable behavior directed at yourself or others, you can flag the content to alert the moderators. We take flags seriously and will respond as quickly as we can.

Those who don’t follow the Code of Conduct​ in good faith​ may face repercussions deemed appropriate by our moderation team. All actions will be taken on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of our moderators. This is how moderators generally handle reported issues:

{graphic}

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

I'd personally like to see the middle section of the graphic softened a little. It suggests to me that making one (different) mistake per month for six months would get me suspended, even if I'm clearly trying to improve. I'm pretty sure the moderators would avail themselves of the "case-by-case basis" part to just give a warning in each case, which makes the middle section seem overly harsh to me. Or maybe my lack of experience with moderators has driven a false assumption and they really would suspend me for that, in which case I suppose that's fine to leave in.

Also, the hard-of-seeing will need some OCR tools to read that graphic if you don't include an alt text or replace it with plain text.

The footer

The term "avenues" seems to be synonymous with "methods" in this context, but I don't think that's what you intended. I suggest changing it to "direction" instead.

We created this Code of Conduct because it reinforces the respect our community members expect from one another. Also, having a code provides us with a clear direction to correct our culture should it stray off-course.

Chat TL;DR

I don't have much (any) experience with Chat, but I get the impression it's more of a "learning and social" community than just a "learning" one.

Emotional summary

I feel apathetic toward the TL;DR sections, largely because they're essentially duplicates of what I've already read. I'd likely feel differently if I hadn't already read everything else and made them redundant, or if they had been at the top instead. It's probably not typical that someone would read the whole document and then the TL;DR though, so I think it's all right.

I feel fairly neutral about the Reporting and Enforcement section. It feels like impassively describing the system to me. I think that's okay too.

I feel a little depressed reading the Unacceptable Behavior section. There's a lot of negativity. I think I feel like it's accusing me of being the type of person who would do those kinds of things. I don't like the section. I understand it's necessary, but I still don't like reading it.

I like the Our Expectations section best. I know I hit on it pretty hard, but it's still my favorite and I think that's why I did. It has a lot of potential to be friendly, positive and welcoming. It also feels like good advice for life in general, not just StackExchange. If I were the kind of person who put motivational stuff on my wall, I'd make the edits I suggested and pin the first section up.

I might do that anyway.

Answer 17

• No bigotry. We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion -- and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

It’s clear that this bullet prohibits throwing insults because of who someone is or what they believe (at least, within the four listed categorizations). Attacking someone with a comment like “you’re an up-tight, narrow-minded religious bigot” is not allowed.

However, this bullet is ambiguous as to whether it also prohibits questions and answers that touch on topics or contain information that might offend others. For example, it’s possible that the premise of a question or a fact proposed in an answer might imply that there is a God (which could offend atheists) or that there is no God (which could offend theists). At least up until now, questions and answers along these lines have been allowed on relevant SO sites as part of discussing allowed topics.

In light of this bullet’s text, it’s not clear if they’ll still be allowed. Would you consider clarifying to remove this ambiguity?

If this bullet is intended to prohibit content that might offend, then it seems that should be made crystal clear. If the intent is to prohibit personally-directed attacks that incorporate who someone is or what they believe in their unkindness, it seems this is already covered by the previous point (“No name-calling or personal attacks.”)—if needed, the explanation given with that bullet could be expanded to explicitly address attacks based on who someone is or what they believe. If the intent is something else, hopefully this point’s wording can be clarified in a way that states that intent without ambiguity.

Answer 18

How do we know what language is acceptable, now?

I have a problem right now, with an answer on IPS in which I used the word "damn" for emphasis; specifically somebody lifting a dog by "his damn ear." It has received over two hundred upvotes; but moderators insist on deleting "damn" as profanity.

As an excuse, many point at This Answer by Jeff Atwood, (SE Developer and User #1), in which he says:

... in general you should not use expletives anywhere, under any circumstances. If you can't effectively communicate what you need to say without resorting to lowest common denominator cursing, then keep it to yourself.

However, he leaves the question of "what exactly is an expletive?" unanswered. By the dictionary the British word "bloody" is an expletive, so is "wicked". Are these banned?

Consider this 2009 answer By Jeff Atwood:

Hey man, I had to do all the work to format that damn thing into 140 characters!
Where's my credit for that?!?

I infer from that Jeff did not consider "damn" as an intensifier to fall into the realm of "lowest common denominator cursing". Nor should it be so considered, it is considered "mild language" and isn't even bleeped on prime time broadcast TV. It is in the Title of books; "How to Write a Damn Good Novel," (Mystery / Thriller). It is used without issue in thousands of SE questions and answers, and over 40 times on IPS alone.

The issue I am having with moderators now is just an example; a selectively enforced vague warning gives liberty to those in power to exercise their own bigotries and whims that are shared by very few others.

Yes, the police force needs the power to enforce the law, but that law should not be so vague that the police just shut up whomever they want for whatever reason they want and can always say "the law says it is my judgement call," while leaving hundreds and thousands of others, doing exactly the same thing, unmolested.

I'd like more clarification on what kind of language is acceptable on SE. Our users are specifically NOT supposed to be children, I don't think G-rated language is the answer. Certainly, any language, profane or not, used to insult another user should be prohibited, insults should be deleted. My issue is with "mild language", PG-13 language, that is not even bleeped on American prime time major network shows. If our users could hear it there, I see no reason to flag it on SE.

The language "likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion" is far too vague.

I am an atheist. Just saying that offends some deeply religious people, not to mention detailing anything about how an atheist approaches life or morals. Other deeply religious people are offended by any discussion of sex, homosexuality, promiscuity, rape ... All of which are relevant topics in Writing for novels or screenplays. If somebody strongly disagrees with me, have I offended or alienated them? If a moderator strongly disagrees with me, can they with impunity censor me for offending their personal taste in language?

Answer 19

Those who don’t follow the Code of Conduct ​in good faith​ may face repercussions deemed appropriate by our moderation team.

I fail to make sense of the function of in good faith in this sentence and I honestly do not understand what you want to communicate here.

I see the following groupings of the parts in this sentence:

• Those who don’t (follow the Code of Conduct ​in good faith​)

  Here the only difference made by in good faith is to add users who follow the CoC in bad faith (to those who don’t follow the CoC). I could understand this as a catch-all clause for those who adhere to the CoC but are disruptive anyway. If you really want to communicate this, this should be less subtle. However, I doubt that this is what you want to say since it would implicitly the CoC to be incomplete.

• Those who don’t (follow the Code of Conduct) ​in good faith​

  Here the effect of in good faith is that it explicitly excludes those who break the CoC in bad faith – which would be absurd.

My best guess is that you want to say something like:

Those who violate the Code of Conduct (even in good faith) may face repercussions […]

Answer 20

Wikiquettes, (permalink) the code-of-conduct in Wikipedia; seem to be more brief, to-the-point and clear than our's. Although they have lot of similarity with ours' ; they have a big dissimilarity in the range of flexibility.

They did not made any religious script of "this type of wording is bad". They simply left it over on readers' discretion.

Here are quote from wikipedia:

• Assume good faith. Wikipedia has worked remarkably well so far based on a policy of nearly complete freedom to edit. People come here to collaborate and write good articles.

• Keep in mind that raw text may be ambiguous and often seems ruder than the same words coming from a person standing in front of you. Irony is not always obvious when written. Remember that text comes without facial expressions, vocal inflection, or body language. Be careful choosing the words you write: what you mean might not be what others understand. Likewise, be careful how you interpret what you read: what you understand might not be what others mean.

• Do not intentionally make misrepresentations. Apologise if you inadvertently do so.

• Do not ignore reasonable questions.

• Although it is understandably difficult in an intense argument, if other editors are not as civil as you would like them to be, be more civil, not less. That way at least you are not moving towards open conflict and name-calling; by your own action you are actively doing something about it. Try to treat others with dignity—they are people as well.

• Be prepared to apologize. In animated discussions, we often say things we later wish we had not. Say so.

• Forgive and forget.

• Recognize your own biases, and keep them in check.

• Give praise when it's due. Everybody likes to feel appreciated, especially in an environment that often requires compromise. Drop a friendly note on users' talk pages.

This makes a whole lot of difference, with amazing flexibility. From the quoted text I have highlighted the most important portions.

On the current examples, I felt, pointing at "This type of language is bad language" could have bad consequences, particularly the current "unacceptable" or "unfriendly" column does not contains any direct hate speech like "You should die" or "Get lost from here".

They are some absolutely normal sentences (to my view) which have scope of ambiguous emotional interpretation (for some other people). So I think the column for example of "unwanted language" is inappropriate. This sort of ambiguity is unavoidable time to time, from most decent people. So these can't be a criterion for a confirmed "unfriendly" or "unacceptable".

Although that column hurted and confused me a lot. I'm not telling to completely go without examples (as wikipedia did; they completely avoided examples); because to explaining what to avoid, but without citing examples, could have some other consequences.

So instead telling those examples "unacceptable" or "unfriendly"; they should be renamed as "could be confusing or misunderstood as unfriendly", and they should keep scope of apologising (as wikiquette tells "Do not intentionally make misrepresentations. Apologise if you inadvertently do so.") and clearing up any misunderstanding. otherwise this column is going to punish a lot of innocent people.

Thanks.

Answer 21

This is called Invariance and Covariance. If you Google it, you’ll find tutorials that can explain it much better than we can in a comment here.

I think the "Google it" culture might need some tweaking. Here are my two reasons:

• Many visitors to Stack Exchange are here exactly because they are in the process of Googling the question they are trying to answer. It is quite frustrating to Google for an answer to a question and the number one result is a Stack Exchange article telling you to search Google for an answer to your question. This problem grows with the popularity of Stack Exchange.

• "Google it" is not a repeatable, time-invariant, location-invariant solution. Depending on how long ago the original answer was posted, Google may return vastly different results. Depending on where you live Google may return vastly different results. Depending on your browser cookies, you may get vastly different (and potentially less useful) results to the Stack Exchange member answering this question.

I would prefer the following:

I Googled "Invariance Covariance" and the first result was [insert link]. See if that link helps. Try performing a similar search to see if it gives you a better explanation than what we can in a comment here.

Answer 22

My main concern with this site in past years was that it gamified moderation. This caused a lot of problems, because it became an easter egg hunt to find reasons to criticize the questions and answers of those here simply to enlighten and be enlightened. If these changes helped reduce that problem, I'll be very greatful.

Answer 23

Avoid jokes and sarcasm.

From what point in time does this new Code of Conduct apply? Specifically, does it apply retrospectively to "historical" jokes such as these:

• Why is this program erroneously rejected by three C++ compilers?
• What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?
• Stack Overflow needs direct-to-brain interface for post-human users

Is the "historical" value of these jokes greater than the value of the Code of Conduct? In other words, can these "historical" jokes be deleted now, and the undeserved reputation earned from these jokes be withdrawn?

Answer 24

The following comments showed up on a new user's post. Names removed.

Apology not accepted. Fix it. There is no excuse. No, I'm not going to tilt my head upside down. Closing as unclear, and -1 for not just fixing the problem. – One User

The next has a quote by op apologizing to reply to:

(Sorry for the wrong image orientation) You should also apologize for asking a question that is unanswerable. It's like me asking you if you like my Aunt's cooking. You know nothing about my Aunt same as we know basically nothing about this alternator. How do you expect anyone to be able to give a decent answer? -2nd User

"The type id on the plate would make it unambiguously answerable." This is an ironic (and somewhat of a hypocritical) statement. Then why ask us in the first place? Also, it is hard to interpret the this identification because I can't tell if that's a B or an 8, or if that says 65 at the end, etc. Admittedly, to expect us to clearly see every little detail on this picture and to not tell us any numbers that you see on this seems rather unreasonable and arrogant. -3rd User

They were flagged as unkind, which a moderator quickly declined. Are these not the type of things the new conduct code are supposed to target?

If not, shouldn't they be? And shouldn't moderators agree to adhere to this? Because it seems that the code of conduct proposed is simply a sign on the wall that no one reads, especially the ones that are supposed to enforce it.

Point being that either the CoC is not being communicated properly in its examples, or its not being communicated properly to moderation teams. The next revision needs to take that into account. I am not looking for a reply or answer, these are rhetorical questions to illustrate an issue with the CoC as implemented.

Answer 25

A few thoughts:

• On "no subtle put-downs", you're inviting moderators to overreach. Subtle things are hard to judge, and banning them tells moderators it is ok to dive into things reasonable people might disagree on. It'd be better to go the opposite way and refuse to act on subtle things. And the examples are things that probably should not be banned; sometimes in societies people get frustrated with each other. Expressing that should be okay. You're building this for humans.
• On the other hand, the "no name-calling or personal attacks" seems workable and positive.
• On "no bigotry", there's really no way to do this right. "Likely to offend" is not the right standard - people get offended about all sorts of things, and trying to control people's language will (rightly) offend them too.
• On "No harassment", you should probably prefer a less expansive definition of harassment, focused on repeated unwanted contact after requests to stop. Other offenses should be discussed as separate things.
• Also, banning jokes seems culture-killing, and I think would require exceptionally strong justification.

Answer 26

"Thanks for improving my question..."

This could not be more condescending. That should be something along the lines of, "Can you explain why you edited my question so I can leave high quality content here in the future", not "Thank you for feeding me your scraps high rep overlords"

Other than that I thought it was good.

Answer 27

Others have answers regarding downvotes, but here is my suggestion.

Consider giving explanations when downvoting questions and/or answers. Knowing the problem with their contribution will help them rectify the problem and/or make better contributions in the future.

Of course this does not necessitate commenting, but leaves it to the discretion of the possible downvoter.

Answer 28

I agree with majority of answers: great improvements, thanks for listening to our feedback!

The only small thing I'm missing now is to speak about voting. When it's about welcoming atmosphere of the site, downvoting new users' questions may hurt a lot.

I think about something along the lines of

be patient with new users, suggest improvements and ask for clarification instead of down-voting.

(honest questions doesn't deserve downvoting, blatantly off-topic / spam questions will be closed / deleted anyway).

---

To address down votes and the comment about requirement for new users:

I fully agree that posts of new users should have the same requirements as established users' posts.

And I think way of keeping those standards are closure and deletion of questions.

Voting is not a way of moderation, it's the way to express opinion

• up-vote means agreement with the post, appreciation of the effort / knowledge demonstrated...
• down-vote means disagreement, expressing frustration overt a low quality post...

What I try to explain is that down vote on new users' questions had more negative effect than educating.

Changing CoC have started by realising SE network isn't very welcoming, not welcoming new users with a down vote would be a good start to improve.

Answer 29

No bigotry. We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion -- and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

Totally approve of this message. I'd like to see another item on that list though:

• Lack (or amount) of knowledge

The worst offenses I've seen on this site comes from people who feel that questions asked are beneath them, and yet take the time to complain about the intelligence of the poster and then explain why they won't answer the question.

I understand that this behavior falls directly under the "Be Nice" rule. Explicitly stating that treating people poorly - who have less knowledge - is also bigoted won't hurt the message and I believe would drive home the idea of why that behavior is destructive and not welcome here.

Thanks.

Answer 30

It's scary and unfair

Let's me explain. It says that we should be good and kind. OKAY.

But, at the same time, this "code of conduct" (that is a rule) put penalties, real penalties.

In the very first lines, it says "... and mutual respect". How is it mutual respect if we should be kind and the moderation/administration of StackOverflow could punish me because of some vague rules.

I'm not a lawyer but I can see a bad contract, and it is a bad contract.

I wish to see punishment for both sides!

This image is not a joke or sarcasm. It is straight! You are abusing, in the same way, that the character of this cartoon abused of his power.