On the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
Link to the announcement -- Do read it, it's a short email.
I'm posting this here because I think it generated some good discussion over on HN, which unfortunately got .. flamewary. (Is that irony?)
I've myself created and moderated several large-ish communities over the years and my views on codes of conduct are mixed. I'm always trying to make an envi. They themselves can range quite a bit, with 'opponents' to CoCs often picking the worst offenders in terms of overreach as examples. To me, it's always felt like the software engineering world is rediscovering... forum guidelines?
This is a politically-charged topic now, where almost all discussion on CoCs being centered on black&white "if you oppose them then you're basically alt-right". This makes the topic of CoCs an interesting example, IMO, of how we ("we" as in "the internet") give loudspeakers to the most extremist voices, silencing nuance.
Reminds me of a post by @deadaluspark here discussing the effect that this increasing divide has on us.
Well anyway, I brought up the announcement in question because Stallman (someone who tends to usually be pretty radical and have clear cut opinions) positively surprised me. This seemed to resonate with people, especially the parts about replacing sticks with carrots. It felt pretty good to see someone ignore (probably by virtue of being shielded from it) the politically-charged side of the topic and simply focus on trying to improve communication. Sounds cliché, but I feel that this approach has gotten very rare the past 4-5 years, and its higher frequency on Tildes is part of why I've been enjoying reading the comments here so much.
This, the Mozilla "meritocracy" removal and the Linus Torvalds leave of absence/Linux Kernel Code of Conflict changes are such politically charged topics when they really have no reason to be IMO... I suspect they are simply being used as wedge issues by bad faith actors (both private individuals, private political entities and State sanctioned PSYOPs) purposely trying to sow division amongst us by any means at their disposal. Now, Tinfoil hat aside...
As far as the GNU guidelines, much like you, after reading them and the announcement I was glad to see Stallman deftly avoid the politics as much as possible, while instead focusing on the positive non-political reasons for making the changes. I was also impressed by the section on diversity as well, even though I don't entirely agree with it, it was well said:
However I still vehemently disagree with relying merely on guidelines rather than crafting actual enforceable policies. Guidelines are easy to ignore when there are absolutely no repercussions for violating them, just look at Reddiquette and how well that has been working for reddit. At some point if you truly want to create a better community you need to actually take a real stance to remove the toxicity, not just a half-measure and hope it goes away. "If your [community] is full of assholes, it's your fault."
So my experience is that guidelines are there to give direction to a community's inertia. Early enforcement of guidelines is absolutely necessary. It's also usually very obvious and doesn't really need to be put on paper; humans are generally social beasts and most people get a good "feel" for the community they're in within a pretty short incubation period. (eg. reading threads, emails, looking at how people interact on chat, the tone they use to talk to each other IRL, etc)
Think of meetup groups. When you join, nobody hands you a 2 page document outlining how to behave. It's usually pretty clear how to behave, and if it's not and you make a mistake, you're usually just told "Hey, that's not cool, here's why, don't do it again". This sort of social trade makes us feel safer to join new social groups, because you have the right to make a mistake.
Guidelines are thus very useful at conception (they're your group's goals: What kind of community do you want to build?). Enforcement is then very useful early on (Make sure to shape the behaviour of the early models for newcomers so that the community picks up on it). Then once you're at a certain size, you still have to take bad actors out (get rid of spam, harrassment etc) but having a "policy" is at this point just checking a compliance box.
Since you need enforcement anyway for the bad actors (and how you enforce matters, but that's another topic), whether you have a policy, a guideline, a code of conduct, or nothing at all, none of it really makes a difference. The people your "forum guideline" is the most useful for tends to be the introverts, and those with lower social skills / ability to pick up on cues (eg. autism, high cultural differences / language barriers, etc).
This is kind of why this idea that "Hey, if we tell people it's not appropriate to harrass women, then they won't do it" always felt kind of off to me. It assumes right off the bat that this is a thing you need to ask your community not to do (and most people in your community, hopefully, won't have to be told not to do this). So you're already creating a weird situation.
But on top of this, that is not what will actually stop anything. Making sure to call out harrassment when it happens, correcting it, and kicking repeat offenders is what will.
Where it gets even worse is when people start thinking that the more token actions actually make the community safer. Make members feel safer. But really it's actually how people are treated day-to-day that makes all the difference, and how the less common scenarios are handled not just by the moderators but also by the rest of the community (which goes back to why it's so important to shape the direction very early on).
It's a masterful approach and, like you, my first thought was that Stallman is clearly operating on a higher level than most. Bravo!