- Do not act against the interest of, or with lack of care for, the Valetudo mission
- Participate with genuine respect for others as individuals, not treating them as obstacles or instruments
- No bad faith communication
- No hidden agendas
- No sustained emotional reasoning
- Do your own homework
- Additional rules may be added if necessary
Rule interpretation can be subjective and may be exploited through bad-faith tactics like sea-lioning. Therefore, when a violation is suspected, the burden of proof to demonstrate compliance lies with the user.
Failure to comply will lead to temporary or, in severe cases, permanent removal.
Additionally, temporary removal may be conducted when deemed necessary for signal-to-noise or de-escalative reasons.
- Don't be a dick
People found to be in violation of the rules have the option to appeal their case through the general process through which adults resolve misunderstandings and other conflicts.
This usually entails giving everyone involved time to cool down and think, then diplomatically reaching out in private, explaining where they came from, displaying effort being put into understanding, showing genuine regret for the situation and a desire to resolve it.
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The one outstanding detail/bug/feature of this CoC is that it depends on me, Hypfer, to be reasonable and/or be at least open to reason. This is in stark contrast to "normal" writing of this purpose, as those are written with the implicit assumption that the system and its creator are (or at least can be) separated. (e.g. democracy continuing even after the founding people are long gone).
Valetudo is not built with that assumption.
You can read more about its stance in the "Contingency" section of the FAQ.
But, say, hypothetically, it was.
And let's say, hypothetically, that the person in charge (and building everything) was not open to reason + there would be a constitution-like document, providing leverage against that.
How would that play out in the real world?
Would someone who isn't open to reason by force be brought to say "Okay yes, you've changed my mind by telling me that I'm not allowed to do this as per this piece of writing I myself put here"?
Is that a thing that can actually happen?
Essentially, the question I'm asking here is "Laws are nice, but who enforces them and why and how even?"
And, say, someone can actually do. Maybe the Twitter Tribunal.
What happens after that?
In that situation, you might be able to force someone to stop doing what you do not want them to do, but how do you also force a volunteer to keep building what you want to see built?
The point I'm trying to make here is that this ruleset isn't necessarily "different" but just "later" in the sense of the state of a system with these parameters, having the "normal" ruleset and then also having went through all the implications and consequences of a hypothetical conflict.
... or so is my foundational belief at least. Which, while not universal, is at least rooted in a career built on understanding systems.
Another beauty of this perspective on the matter is that even if you disagree with the CoC being as it is, that doesn't necessarily mean that we would disagree on principles.
Zooming out, I think most people would agree that this kind of constitutional document would be a horrible idea for a system like a nation-state, which is defined by characteristics such as involuntary membership, acting more as a general-purpose platform to facilitate instead of being a leaf of itself and being created, built and maintained by the people living inside it.
What greatly confuses me though is why people would argue/believe that the inversion would be a sane stance. Perhaps it might be the "everything is a platform" (because only platforms generate 10x recurring revenue) mindset, trickling down through VCs and corporates into the default thinking of people within or adjacent to tech?