There have been some recent discussions on the merits of Codes of Conduct in some of the chat channels I frequent and Twitter. I felt it prudent to make some of my thoughts public.

If you believe that privately organized communities have the right to dictate what rules members must abide by, then know that I completely agree with you. However, if you’re interested in a more nuanced reflection on the subject, then keep reading.

I’ll preface my points by saying that I am an adamant proponent of Codes of Conduct. And you won’t find me arguing against their use. Codes of Conduct play an important part in providing a structure for which recourse can be had in cases where real harassment or even potentially criminal activity is occurring. This is the main rationale for Codes of Conduct. They should not, however, be used as an excuse to forgo common sense. Administrators should take care to not set policies that could potentially exclude or censor interesting members or discussions.

But also, Codes of Conduct may be designed to make a community more inviting for a specific group. A policy written, for example, to ban all use of swear words may be appropriate for communities intending to include under age members. And generally speaking, the use of swear words are not conducive to productive discussions. But sometimes they are. If we’re talking about interesting programming languages for example, and you bring up Brainfuck, a strict adherence to such policy would leave you censored.

Another similar but more grievous example is a real name policy. Real name policies have been debated many times before but there are very legitimate reasons for using pseudonyms.

The groups of people who use pseudonyms, or want to use pseudonyms, are not a small minority (some of the classes of people who can benefit from pseudonyms constitute up to 50% of the total population, and many of the others are classes of people that almost everyone knows). Geek Feminism Wikia

A policy like this can be incredibly exclusive and not easy to vet. Even if someone uses a pseudonym that appears to be legitimate, a moderator can still use this policy as an excuse to remove them from the community. A community that excludes people who do not use their real names will be missing out on a lot of interesting, smart and possibly enlightening discussion. And not really a community I want to be part of.

A CoC can be a double edge sword. Not only can a CoC be helpful in including a more diverse group of people, they can also be used to exclude people. And moderators should note that a CoC should be a living/dynamic and inclusive document - amendments, additions and exceptions should be the norm.