Introduce a Code of Conduct

achow101 commented at 4:37 pm on January 13, 2023: member

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a pattern of behavior from some who participate in Bitcoin Core’s development that is abusive and disruptive. These people have made it increasingly difficult to work on this project and generally produced a more toxic working environment. I have heard complaints about specific individuals in the past, but no action was taken nor were there any guidelines on how to deal with such individuals. By introducing a Code of Conduct, we can set the expectations for behavior (it’s surprising that adults need to be told how to behave) as well as guidelines for enforcing and punishing those who violate those guidelines.

This code of conduct comes from version 2.1 of the Contributor Covenant.

Currently the Code of Conduct has people report to a conduct@bitcoincore.org email address. This will need to be setup to forward emails to those who will deal with conduct violations. However we should also have those people be listed by name and email in the document as well so that they can be reached individually. I suggest that we have all of the current maintainers be able to receive reports of conduct violations as well as laanwj and sipa. Additionally, in order to properly handle violations, I propose that these people have at least the Moderator permissions (note that maintainers have the Write permission, which afaict, does not allow blocking of users) and Operator permissions on the #bitcoin-core-dev IRC channel.

As some aspects of dealing with code of conduct violations involves public posts, I would also suggest that we enable and use the Discussions feature for that purpose so we can keep them separate from normal issues.

DrahtBot commented at 4:37 pm on January 13, 2023: contributor

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michaelfolkson commented at 5:05 pm on January 13, 2023: contributor

Concept ACK

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a pattern of behavior from some who participate in Bitcoin Core’s development that is abusive and disruptive.

Can you post publicly (perhaps in an accompanying issue to this pull request) examples of the behavior that you personally have noticed @achow101 that wouldn’t meet this Code of Conduct? What I have noticed is people waving this accusation around and the accuser does the exact same thing. I have also noticed people use this general accusation as a rationale for not discussing anything in public or expressing their view in public. I don’t see private DMs etc but I rarely see evidence backing up this general accusation in say public IRC channels.

I’m supportive of project norms being clear and skimming the wording it looks reasonable to me though I will give a closer read at a later date.

Thanks for opening. I do want everyone to feel comfortable discussing and expressing their view in public. If this PR helps with that that’s great.

jonatack commented at 5:25 pm on January 13, 2023: contributor

I’ve considered proposing a code of conduct for some time.

This was due to seeing ad hominem attacks on GitHub and IRC, comments dunking on or punching down on contributors, and here on GitHub other contributors piling on with :+1: reactions. We even saw a motivated, active new contributor quit the project in early 2020 due to behavior like that.

However, a main issue with adding process like this is that it is invariably wielded arbitrarily. For example, depending on popularity or perceived status/power/value.

Another issue is that this is a worldwide project and the planet isn’t a monoculture. For instance, more tolerance regarding language may need to be initially extended to people who learned English as a second language or who don’t live in certain countries. As someone who has lived in quite a few different places, cultural norms vary pretty widely across the globe. Community leaders probably need to have experience with and empathy of different cultures.

Sjors commented at 7:39 pm on January 13, 2023: member

My first meta-thought is to not put this in the bitcoin codebase. It could live somewhere in the bitcoin-core Github organisation. Individual repositories can point to it in their Github description. And you can point to it from IRC.

That way we keep a clean separation between bitcoin the code and those who happen to have control over the main Github and IRC channels and need to deal with moderation somehow.

My second meta thought is that a formal code of conduct is ~useless when the actual moderation happens behind closed doors. From the outside people can’t tell if a given action was justified. But it may still be better to have a set of publicly stated rules.

Third meta thought: do the current maintainers really want the burden of a more formal moderation system? Especially knowing that saboteurs will game it anyway and cause even more grief? Does it create more legal attack surface? But that’s for the maintainers to decide amongst themselves.

I find the current text rather annoyingly fluff, and it reveals the political leanings of the original author. It also contains wording that’s inappropriate for a decentralised project, e.g. phrases like “leaders” and “officially representing the community in public spaces”.

Perhaps a better approach is to start with an extremely small document that simply list things you shouldn’t do and potential consequences: don’t spam, don’t go off topic, no ad homonyms, etc. Expand that list as new bad things happen, rather than trying to preempt every contingency.

I’m worried about expanding the scope of moderation to behaviour outside the publicly visible channels. For example “private harassment”, does that mean moderators can (must?) kick someone off the Github comments for something they did on Twitter? (and what if a moderator knows that friendly nym A is bad persona B IRL?)

I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to removing the ability of people to comment on pull requests. I’d rather not ship a zero-day because a mean person couldn’t point it out. On the other hand such a person can probably get the information across by contacting another dev via-via. And of course Github can unilaterally ban folks too with the same effect (or delete their comments at the request of some spy agency, but that’s another tangent).

achow101 commented at 9:24 pm on January 13, 2023: member

My first meta-thought is to not put this in the bitcoin codebase. It could live somewhere in the bitcoin-core Github organisation. Individual repositories can point to it in their Github description. And you can point to it from IRC.

That way we keep a clean separation between bitcoin the code and those who happen to have control over the main Github and IRC channels and need to deal with moderation somehow.

I’m not sure that this is something that we necessarily want to apply to all projects in the orgs. There are separate projects such as secp256k1k, bips, hwi, etc. that may wish to adopt their own code of conduct. I don’t want this to be something that the biggest project in the orgs forces upon all of the smaller ones who may not necessarily be following here. I do want there to be discussion and to have consensus among the contributors that this is something we want.

I also don’t think that separation would be meaningful in anyway. It’s not as if this applies to anyone who uses bitcoin, just those who choose to participate in the development of this project. The scope section can be made clearer about this.

My second meta thought is that a formal code of conduct is ~useless when the actual moderation happens behind closed doors. From the outside people can’t tell if a given action was justified.

I agree, but it’s also possible that there are sensitive things that may warrant privacy? My initial thoughts on how to handle this is that we essentially would have discussions of moderation actions occur in public through the Discussions feature, with other contributors being able to chime in. However as I have no experience in this area, I’m not certain that this would always be the right choice, depending on the type of violation. Although I think an important part of this is protecting the privacy of the violation reporter.

But it may still be better to have a set of publicly stated rules.

I agree. We have made moderation actions in the past but without actually having guidelines on this, it’s hard to say whether they were correct or appropriate.

Third meta thought: do the current maintainers really want the burden of a more formal moderation system? Especially knowing that saboteurs will game it anyway and cause even more grief? Does it create more legal attack surface? But that’s for the maintainers to decide amongst themselves.

I don’t think this necessarily has to be on the current maintainers. As a group, it seems convenient since some of the maintainers already have the ability to block people from the org. However Github does have more granular roles such as Moderator that gives that ability but not the ability to add new commits to the repos. So we could definitely have people who are not maintainers involved in moderation actions. But I also think that it’s necessary to have the people who can block be part of the moderation system to avoid having someone who can moderate but isn’t part of the moderation process.

I find the current text rather annoyingly fluff, and it reveals the political leanings of the original author. It also contains wording that’s inappropriate for a decentralised project, e.g. phrases like “leaders” and “officially representing the community in public spaces”.

Yes, the wording definitely needs some tweaks. I’ve started looking around at other projects to pull in some wording from there. Detailed review is welcome

Perhaps a better approach is to start with an extremely small document that simply list things you shouldn’t do and potential consequences: don’t spam, don’t go off topic, no ad homonyms, etc. Expand that list as new bad things happen, rather than trying to preempt every contingency.

The problem I have with an approach like that is that if someone does something that we would want to add to the list, it becomes problematic as to how to deal with that kind of violation. Adding that new bad behavior could then be interpreted as targeting a particular individual in order to censor them, rather than a behavior that we want to avoid in the future which happens to be something an individual did now, especially if that ruling is applied retroactively. But I’m not sure, and I have proposed this as an IRC meeting topic for further discussion. Tbh, I don’t disagree with the list provided already.

I’m worried about expanding the scope of moderation to behaviour outside the publicly visible channels. For example “private harassment”, does that mean moderators can (must?) kick someone off the Github comments for something they did on Twitter? (and what if a moderator knows that friendly nym A is bad persona B IRL?)

I think the original authors’ intent on this wording is to deal with situations where a contributor goes privately messages someone to be abusive and harass them. I think the concern is that if you can only be banned for doing things publicly, then those people will just go to private messages to avoid consequences. This kind of behavior is something that has happened before. Recently, a (former) contributor posted on Twitter that another (former) contributor harassed them in private messages, with some pretty heinous stuff. If either were still active contributors, I think it would be reasonable to have banned the person who sent those messages. But I could also be convinced otherwise. This is also something that I think needs wider discussion.

I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to removing the ability of people to comment on pull requests. I’d rather not ship a zero-day because a mean person couldn’t point it out. On the other hand such a person can probably get the information across by contacting another dev via-via. And of course Github can unilaterally ban folks too with the same effect (or delete their comments at the request of some spy agency, but that’s another tangent).

Certainly, but I don’t think this makes that worse. Frankly, right now it’s completely ad-hoc and up to the org owners. I think having a code of conduct actually adds accountability and would actually make it harder to unilaterally remove the ability of people to comment.

Introduce a Code of Conduct

Adds a Code of Conduct adapted from the Contributor Covenant: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/

9c8ed7fe19

achow101 force-pushed on Jan 13, 2023

achow101 commented at 9:44 pm on January 13, 2023: member

I’ve made some wording changes:

Replaced references to “community leaders” with “moderators” to be more inline with the thoughts I’ve posted above about having more people who are involved in moderation actions than just the maintainers
Made the scope more explicit to be about this repo, it’s ancillary repos, the IRC channel, and CoreDev.tech events (although they have their own code of conduct so perhaps not needed?)

midnightmagic commented at 9:49 pm on January 13, 2023: contributor

Hello; so, I think partly the reason why Bitcoin has been difficult to deal with in a personal interaction sense is because literally billions of dollars are hanging in and on it. For what it’s worth, I think it will be extremely difficult to prevent the weaponization of the loose language, including the requirement to accept veiled criticism and encouraging weaponized demands for apologies.

The appearance of regression to arbitrary enforcement will be difficult to disentangle to an outsider. Rule-based diplomacy can become a diffusion shield under which actions can be attributed to other than the personal responsibility of the people taking them.

After wrangling the nutbar attackers in IRC for a decade, I would offer my gentle warning that the insidiousness of the characters you are going to be dealing with in the coming years can’t really be understated. I would suggest that a CoC of this type will be more likely to be used against you than it will be the tool you hope will become a facilitator of diplomatic discourse.

I unfortunately have no better suggestions for you, and I understand that you are attempting to solve a problem which clearly exists. Although.. probably a contributor release form might be a good idea to help defend against future legal liability?

Anyway, much appreciate the effort you all are putting into the project. <3

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:36 in 9c8ed7fe19

31+* The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of
32+  any kind
33+* Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
34+* Public or private harassment
35+* Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address,
36+  without their explicit permission

unknown commented at 4:31 am on January 14, 2023:

0* Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address
1 or other private information that may pose a security risk, without their explicit permission

ajtowns commented at 6:19 am on January 14, 2023: contributor

some who participate in Bitcoin Core’s development that is abusive and disruptive

For people who are being deliberately abusive and disruptive, a code of conduct can just provide another way of doing that; eg, by harassing people for unintentional violations, extending the scope of what’s considered “inappropriate”. It can also be used to make issues more divisive: find something that’s a borderline violation of the policy, then either get the moderators to act, and criticise them for acting and being anti free speech, and encourage other people to also push the line to demonstrate how either arbitrary/inconsistent the moderation team is or how absolute/totalitarian they are or how they’re just enabling group think etc; or have them not act, and criticise them for not following their own rules, or giving passes to their friends, etc. Then of course, it also adds another “process” topic for people to argue about, rather than actually doing work. It can also be stressful if you’re constantly watching what you say, in order to avoid the hammer coming down on you for offending someone or violating some rule.

I’d suggest doing things the other way around: figure out if anyone’s willing to do moderation of disruptive behaviour in the repo (which will get you personally attacked as being bad for bitcoin and open source, even if for no reason other than that doing so is also disruptive and abusive), and, if anyone is willing, just have a really simple policy like “we expect discussion in github/irc/whatever to be productive and cooperative; we’ll give a brief nudge/warning where people appear to be being unproductive/uncooperative by accident, but will remove posts/access when it becomes repeated or appears deliberate”.

(Note that sometimes you’ll find yourself in a position where you ought to be nudging/warning people you respect, for saying something unconstructive in the heat of the moment; and if they were being unconstructive because they were already angry about the topic, they might not react well to such a warning/nudge either. It can be a pretty un-fun job)

(Also, whether something is “productive” or “cooperative” is a judgement call, but so is whether something should be merged or not – if you don’t like the judgement calls being made in the repo, the productive solution is to move somewhere else, either forking the code or making your own discussion space and demonstrate the benefits of your preferred approach)

yancyribbens commented at 1:14 pm on January 14, 2023: contributor

just have a really simple policy like “we expect discussion in github/irc/whatever to be productive and cooperative; we’ll give a brief nudge/warning where people appear to be being unproductive/uncooperative by accident, but will remove posts/access when it becomes repeated or appears deliberate”.

Personally I like the Bill and Ted code of conduct “Be excellent to each other”.

unknown changes_requested

unknown commented at 6:16 pm on January 14, 2023: none

NACK

Create a burden for project maintainers and community members to enforce the code of conduct
Who are these moderators, their bias and investments?
Could create censorship or repression, which can discourage open discussion and collaboration
Freedom of speech

Legal issues in different countries:

Defamation lawsuit
Privacy issues
Anti-discrimination
Difficult to enforce consistently and easy to misuse when required
Grey areas in terms of what constitutes inappropriate behavior

Other issues:

Different moderators may have different opinions on how to handle specific situations
Difficult to make a code of conduct that applies to all situations, so there may be situations where the code of conduct is not appropriate or effective

Overall, I agree with comments of a few contributors in this pull request, seen such docs in open source and companies or their misuse and it will won’t improve anything in Bitcoin Core. Instead it might increase problems.

ghost commented at 7:30 pm on January 14, 2023: none

In case some contributors were not aware of this: https://docs.github.com/en/communities/maintaining-your-safety-on-github/reporting-abuse-or-spam

Some policies are already applicable when you use GitHub for this repository and it covers a lot of things.

I discovered it when PR author asked me this question in an issue:

Additionally, maintainers also do not have actionable power over other contributors or other maintainers. If a contributor violates the privacy of another contributor, what exactly is the privacy maintainer supposed to do?

#25875 (comment)

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:6 in 9c8ed7fe19

0@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
1+
2+# Code of Conduct
3+
4+## Our Pledge
5+
6+We as contributors pledge to make participation in our

brunoerg commented at 9:50 pm on January 14, 2023:

0We, as contributors, pledge to make participation in our

michaelfolkson commented at 9:38 am on January 15, 2023: contributor

Unless there is some kind of “block size war” carnage going on I don’t think this is a good use of your time @achow101. You’re better than this and this isn’t a priority. You could be spending your time on much more important things than trying to justify the silence of others.

I’ve Concept ACKed but don’t think @achow101 should be stuck doing this and responding to comments. I’d rather someone else picked this up.

ariard commented at 2:08 am on January 16, 2023: member

If you take the history of liberal professions (surgeons, lawyers, accountants, druggists, architects) in numerous occidental countries, most of their structured professional organizations (law bars, surgeons orders, etc) were purely voluntary, and not all the practicians of the field had a duty to get registered. Originally, they were scoped on promoting deontology among the profession and organizing the common tasks (e.g for lawyers the order of appareance in justice courts). Slowly, along the XXth century they were recognized missions of public order and practicians charged with more and more duties (e.g in some countries druggists have a duty to inform your on the risks of the medications with your state of health, or for surgeons to request patients consent before to proceed to care). Those duties encumbering the practice of professionals are constantly challenged in justice courts and extended or refined case by case.

In the field of software engineering, while there is a professional organization like the ACM, and there has been discussion during the 90s/20s to license software engineers, most of the countries do not have a disciplinary authority with the mission to self-regulate their practicians. More recently, there has been a trend to adopt so-called “code of conduct” among a numerous of open-source projects (e.g the Linux kernel since 2018). I think this is an open question if those code of conducts can be kindred to a company code of practice and recognized legal sanctions, you have cases where they have been sanctioned.

All of that are general remarks potentially applying to the Bitcoin Core project. However, we’re concerned here with a project with far more specifities. We’ve not only the infamous CSW case where some historical Bitcoin Core contributors have been sued as an organized group for the recognizance of a “fiduciary duty” over the codebase. There is also the recent Tornado Cash case raising the status of cryptocurrencies developers in the public space. Even if in the Tornado Cash sanctions have been called out as illegal in the US, I think this is still a pending matter.

My concerns would be as a project to adopt a formalized disciplinary authority such as proned by the code of conduct, we might open the door to lawsuit against the moderation team members for code and statements of contributors, not only on the repository but on any Bitcoin venue. As such, by inserting statements such as “accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from experience” we would not in the eyes of external third-parties (financial regulatory bodies, courts plaintiffs) allow the legitimacy of diverse claims, like breach of a “fiduciary duty” or mandatory insertion of “software backdoor” for the purposes of XYZ. I believe putting a disclaimer in the code of conduct there is no legal binding assigned to this document might not hold the stand of court contest (just see the cases on “association de malfaiteurs” in French law).

As recommended on IRC, I think it would be very valuable for the project to query qualified lawyers opinions on the subject before to move forward. Recently, there has been announced the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund. There is also the Electronic Frontier Foundation. However, those organizations sounds to focus only on the US legislation, and given the permissionless nature of the project, we have active contributors of all the continents. Beyond, we have in law what we call “foreign elements” that you might have to consider, where you might be drag in another jurisdiction than the one of your permanent residency. And lawyers opinions the project might collect today could be perished quickly in function of the evolution of cryptocurrencies regulations.

Personally, I think as an open-source contributor on cryptocurrencies codebases, based on four decade of FOSS history, I’m only responsible of my own code and statement, and I don’t make any claim, plaint or demand of any kind on the conduct of other contributors. Minding requesting the respect of courtesy and civility that one would expect in all the venues of daily life (subway, streets, public parks, etc). I believe the social norms in vigor are the ones in an international community of scientists or artists, there is no legitimacy of a disciplinary authority of any kind. Confusions in this statement should be assigned to my persona not being an English native.

I won’t comment further on this PR. Law and software engineering are two different fields, Github PR is just not adequate for the fomer – Withdrawing my NACK as I took time to express my concerns about the legal implications of a code of conduct. I believe I’ve done the job to raise awareness about the severe legal risks the project might be exposed due to the existence of code of conduct. Whatever the adoption outcome, I won’t respect its enforcement as doing so as a contributor I might increase my personal liabilites in all the jurisdictions where you have a Bitcoin Core node running.

achow101 commented at 10:04 pm on January 16, 2023: member

@ajtowns

For people who are being deliberately abusive and disruptive, a code of conduct can just provide another way of doing that; eg, by harassing people for unintentional violations, extending the scope of what’s considered “inappropriate”. It can also be used to make issues more divisive: find something that’s a borderline violation of the policy, then either get the moderators to act, and criticise them for acting and being anti free speech, and encourage other people to also push the line to demonstrate how either arbitrary/inconsistent the moderation team is or how absolute/totalitarian they are or how they’re just enabling group think etc; or have them not act, and criticise them for not following their own rules, or giving passes to their friends, etc. Then of course, it also adds another “process” topic for people to argue about, rather than actually doing work. It can also be stressful if you’re constantly watching what you say, in order to avoid the hammer coming down on you for offending someone or violating some rule.

I’d suggest doing things the other way around: figure out if anyone’s willing to do moderation of disruptive behaviour in the repo (which will get you personally attacked as being bad for bitcoin and open source, even if for no reason other than that doing so is also disruptive and abusive), and, if anyone is willing, just have a really simple policy like “we expect discussion in github/irc/whatever to be productive and cooperative; we’ll give a brief nudge/warning where people appear to be being unproductive/uncooperative by accident, but will remove posts/access when it becomes repeated or appears deliberate”.

I’m not sure how either of what you have described is all that different from how we do things today, with the exception that there are no policies in place for making moderation decisions.

Although we don’t formally have a moderation team, moderation does occur, and it falls on the maintainers to do it as they are the ones with the permissions to do them (or, more often, the github org owners). We routinely block spammers and delete their posts. We have temporarily banned contributors in the past when they have made comments that are clearly disruptive and unprofessional (e.g. a threat of violence). We have temporarily locked threads when they have gotten heated, brigaded, and had ad homs being thrown. We’ve equally received flak and criticism for some of these actions in the past. However we’ve never had a policy that specifies when these actions should be taken, nor what kind. I think having such a policy written down would be beneficial, both in helping to determine when to make a moderation action and in informing contributors what kind of speech is acceptable.

I also don’t think this is a problem unique to Bitcoin Core, although perhaps there are some unique challenges due to the nature of our project. It would perhaps be helpful to observe (and possibly get some insight from) other large projects that have added a code of conduct, such as the Linux kernel. @michaelfolkson

Unless there is some kind of “block size war” carnage going on I don’t think this is a good use of your time

This absolutely is a good use of my time. The behaviors of some contributors have measurably led to me feeling more and more burned out. I hope that even just this discussion will prompt some introspection and hopefully a change in behavior. Even if we don’t adopt a code of conduct, I hope that this has at least made people think why a long time contributor feels the need to bring this up. @ariard

I understand your legal concerns, but I’m not sure that there are such legal issues. There are a lot of open source projects that have adopted a similar code of conduct that would potentially have even greater liability if what you suggest were true, but I don’t think they do have such liability. Regardless, I’ve reached out to some people who should be able to help us answer these legal questions.

yancyribbens commented at 10:52 pm on January 16, 2023: contributor

I think the maintainers have done a good job at maintaining the peace (with or without a code of conduct). It also seems like the maintainers catch a lot of flack and abuse when some community members don’t get their way. Lots of flack and not much kudos when things do go well can cause some burnout issues which isn’t good for anybody on the project.

ajtowns commented at 11:59 pm on January 16, 2023: contributor

I’m not sure how either of what you have described is all that different from how we do things today, with the exception that there are no policies in place for making moderation decisions.

I think having such a policy written down would be beneficial, both in helping to determine when to make a moderation action and in informing contributors what kind of speech is acceptable.

Sure, that does make sense. Having a policy can be helpful for anyone who’s trying to be cooperative, which definitely includes the people trying to moderate. It’s just that, in my experience anyway, having detailed policy doesn’t seem to do much good when people aren’t trying to be cooperative, whether because they’re trying to prevent something bad from happening and that’s more important than being nice, or because they’re just being deliberately disruptive.

This absolutely is a good use of my time. The behaviors of some contributors have measurably led to me feeling more and more burned out.

I guess a different way of phrasing my view: worry about the people doing the moderating first; check they’re actually willing to do it, and give them the support they need to do it reasonably well, rather than worrying overly much about documenting or standardising the process they’ll use. (And maybe the support they need/want is a detailed policy doc; in that case, go for it, though I expect it’s more likely to end up being more of a hindrance than a help. Tends to be easier to add details/examples later, rather than simplify things, too)

Some specific criticisms of the doc:

promising “all complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly” and “all moderators are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident” can create a big burden for yourself, particularly if moderation isn’t what you want to spend all your time on.
claiming the doc applies to all “in person events where multiple contributors convene to discuss the project” seems like overreach
“Moderators have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct” is also probably a bit of a power grab in any project where moderators aren’t already essentially project admins

michaelfolkson commented at 6:43 am on January 17, 2023: contributor

@achow101: Ok if you insist.

The behaviors of some contributors have measurably led to me feeling more and more burned out.

I’d like to see examples then. I don’t know who in particular you are referring to and what in particular they have said that has caused you to feel burned out.

Perhaps I should do the same. Some people over the last couple of years have caused me to spend months on things I didn’t want to be doing (or made things drag on by refusing to express their view publicly unnecessarily inviting others to cause chaos), made accusations about others only to do even worse months/years later themselves, left unenviable mind numbing tasks to others only to later throw insults at them for picking up and making progress with those unenviable tasks. I’m happy to open an accompanying issue with my own examples and you can open an accompanying issue with your examples.

bitcoin deleted a comment on Jan 17, 2023

petertodd commented at 5:04 pm on February 4, 2023: contributor

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a pattern of behavior from some who participate in Bitcoin Core’s development that is abusive and disruptive. These people have made it increasingly difficult to work on this project and generally produced a more toxic working environment. I have heard complaints about specific individuals in the past, but no action was taken nor were there any guidelines on how to deal with such individuals.

I do not believe it is productive to discuss a code of conduct without openly and honestly discussing who exactly those individuals are and what are the exact circumstances that you believe a code of conduct would have aided in the past.

Of course, I personally have seen the dark side of code-of-conduct type policies: I was subject to a campaign to get me blacklisted from the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency communities via the use of false sexual assault allegations. One of the ways abusers use codes of conduct is precisely that, and we need to carefully consider the pros and cons of adopting codes of conduct.

ghost commented at 5:00 pm on February 5, 2023: none

Over the past couple of years, I have noticed a pattern of behavior from some who participate in Bitcoin Core’s development that is abusive and disruptive. These people have made it increasingly difficult to work on this project and generally produced a more toxic working environment. I have heard complaints about specific individuals in the past, but no action was taken nor were there any guidelines on how to deal with such individuals.

I do not believe it is productive to discuss a code of conduct without openly and honestly discussing who exactly those individuals are and what are the exact circumstances that you believe a code of conduct would have aided in the past.

Of course, I personally have seen the dark side of code-of-conduct type policies: I was subject to a campaign to get me blacklisted from the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency communities via the use of false sexual assault allegations. One of the ways abusers use codes of conduct is precisely that, and we need to carefully consider the pros and cons of adopting codes of conduct.

This code of conduct authored by by @achow101 (blockstream) would affect bitcoin negatively.

As far as legal thing things are involved, they would be more increased against devs contributing in this repo. Maybe bad actors would have more things to affect some devs.

petertodd commented at 5:19 pm on February 5, 2023: contributor

As far as legal thing things are involved, they would be more increased against devs contributing in this repo. Maybe bad actors would have more things to affect some devs.

Actually come to think of it, the proposed code of conduct may have legal implications. Remember that myself and a number of other Bitcoin Core contributors are being sued by Craig Wright on the basis of alleged fidicuary duty. Exactly how a code-of-conduct works could easily be relevant to the question of who is in control of Bitcoin.

Safest thing to do is just NACK this for now until the legal questions are more fully resolved. Lawsuits involving billions of dollars of claimed damages are certainly a bigger threat to Bitcoin than the occasional contributor being turned off by claimed trolling, and as I’ve said above, codes of conduct can themselves be weaponized to push out contributors, so this isn’t an obvious good either.

ghost commented at 5:36 pm on February 5, 2023: none

CSW is nothing.

We dont need to give some X in these discussions. There are people and organizations who manage everything. I dont even care because so called “satoshi” cannot do anything legaly even if I say “CSW is a scam and harassing some devs”.

Its just wrong country. CSW has nothing here and we will prove in court he is a fraud.

ghost commented at 5:42 pm on February 5, 2023: none

IDK if it was moderated. CSW has no value in my country. And I will support devs if some scammers like him affects bitcoin.

petertodd commented at 5:56 pm on February 5, 2023: contributor

On Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 09:36:42AM -0800, 1440000bytes wrote:

CSW is nothing.

Well, that’s easy to say when you are not on the receiving end of a lawsuit with claims of billions of dollars worth of damages.

Unfortunately, ignoring the courts has significant consequences as there are many things courts can do to compel your cooperation, especially in jurisdictions such as the UK. As long as CSW can keep paying for his lawsuits, the most realistic option is to continue fighting those lawsuits. Part of fighting lawsuits - and discouraging further lawsuits - includes avoiding doing things that make your legal position worse.

ghost commented at 6:35 pm on February 5, 2023: none

On Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 09:36:42AM -0800, 1440000bytes wrote: CSW is nothing. Well, that’s easy to say when you are not on the receiving end of a lawsuit with claims of billions of dollars worth of damages. Unfortunately, ignoring the courts has significant consequences as there are many things courts can do to compel your cooperation, especially in jurisdictions such as the UK. As long as CSW can keep paying for his lawsuits, the most realistic option is to continue fighting those lawsuits. Part of fighting lawsuits - and discouraging further lawsuits - includes avoiding doing things that make your legal position worse.

There was someone in ordinals discord group who said he cannot download bitcoin core. I said you can. Just change the URL to bitcoincore.org or VPN. He did.

Same as courts or first thing I learned in my class.. use a different IP and of different countries,

I never ever expected Bitcoin developers who knew more than me still struggling with these things. Yeah devs and hackers are different but, I always thought bitcoin developers are hackers.

petertodd commented at 6:56 pm on February 5, 2023: contributor

On Sun, Feb 05, 2023 at 10:35:53AM -0800, 1440000bytes wrote:

There was someone in ordinals discord group who said he cannot download bitcoin core. I said you can. Just change the URL to bitcoincore.org or VPN. He did.

Same as courts or first thing I learned in my class.. use a different IP and of different countries,

I never ever expected Bitcoin developers who knew more than me still struggling with these things. Yeah devs and hackers are different but, I always thought bitcoin developers are hackers.

We all know that running from the courts by fleeing the country can work. We’d just rather not have too. Doing so is extremely disruptive, and often doesn’t work anyway.

Anyway, all the devs in question have chosen to fight Craig Wright in court, further discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of doing so is very off topic for this issue.

ghost commented at 7:19 pm on February 5, 2023: none

We all know that running from the courts by fleeing the country can work. We’d just rather not have too. Doing so is extremely disruptive, and often doesn’t work anyway.

Anyway, all the devs in question have chosen to fight Craig Wright in court, further discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of doing so is very off topic for this issue.

As I said in another PR some devs dont know how legal issues work, I respect for C++ and cryptography:

Be anon ( they aren’t)
Maybe have opsec like who zcash shilled and is their hero
Live in countries that laws are meaningless if you have some wealth

Note: If you still contribute to bitcoin core, there is nothing core and we can save save you.

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:7 in 9c8ed7fe19

0@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
1+
2+# Code of Conduct
3+
4+## Our Pledge
5+
6+We as contributors pledge to make participation in our
7+community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body

luke-jr commented at 6:20 pm on February 6, 2023:

Bitcoin Core is not a community, and this paragraph seems to suggest discrimination on the basis of personal beliefs or actions outside the project.

Instead, IF there’s a CoC, it should be limited to project-specific forums like GitHub, #bitcoin-core-dev IRC meetings (maybe channel, though it occasionally strays from the topic), and such. Things like in-person meetings are tricky since there isn’t always a clear delineation between personal and professional activities.

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:11 in 9c8ed7fe19

 6+We as contributors pledge to make participation in our
 7+community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body
 8+size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender
 9+identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status,
10+nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual
11+identity and orientation.

luke-jr commented at 6:23 pm on February 6, 2023:

I don’t think there’s a benefit to trying to iterate every attribute irrelevant to development. Instead, mentioning at least some of these (which are in other contexts debatable whether they even exist) would infer a particular political position “of the project”.

Suggest a generic “personal attributes or off-topic and irrelevant factors” or something like that.

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:14 in 9c8ed7fe19

 9+identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status,
10+nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual
11+identity and orientation.
12+
13+We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming,
14+diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

luke-jr commented at 6:24 pm on February 6, 2023:

s/community/project

in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md:50 in 9c8ed7fe19

45+or harmful.
46+
47+Moderators have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject
48+comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are
49+not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation
50+decisions when appropriate.

luke-jr commented at 6:25 pm on February 6, 2023:

This seems to give a broad brush to “moderators”, even to interpret authoritatively with no oversight/review.

I don’t know if there’s a good solution to this, or whether it should be a blocker to a CoC.

petertodd commented at 7:47 pm on February 7, 2023:

The “will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate” sentence brings up an important issue: evidence.

If we’re going to adopt a code of conduct, use of it should be done in a way that’s open to third party review. So decisions made on the basis of it should be documented in such a way that third parties can evaluate the actions taken for themselves, to determine if the code of conduct is being used appropriately.

Courts are by default public for very good reasons. Code of conduct actions probably need to be even more public, because unlike independent courts, they’re taken by people who are not at all independent.

luke-jr changes_requested

luke-jr commented at 6:30 pm on February 6, 2023: member

I’m generally against CoCs, simply because the project is benefiting from contributions, rather than the contributors benefiting from making them. But it’s also true I’ve seen some contributors get frustrated and leave. I’m not sure a CoC would have changed things - it’s also possible it’s just the code review process or lack of funding; it may be good to ask them before assuming it’s about conduct of other contributors.

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth spending time on this right now, so a light concept NACK from me - but if others want to go to the trouble to make it a reasonable CoC, I don’t necessarily object firmly and can retract the concept NACK.

achow101 commented at 8:14 pm on February 8, 2023: member

Closing this for now.

From the comments I’ve received here, on IRC, and offline, it seems that most contributors would prefer that we do not introduce the possibility of appearing to have a central authority for this codebase. Many contributors have also indicated that they are okay with maintainers making more active moderation decisions, even without a formal moderation policy. Perhaps this is something that we will revisit in the future, but it does not appear to be something that we want right now.

achow101 closed this on Feb 8, 2023

bitcoin locked this on Feb 8, 2024

Introduce a Code of Conduct #26890

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