the.com/code of conduct
The rulebook proving a community expected bad behavior before anyone showed up.
means A written set of rules spelling out how people in a group, workplace, or community are expected to behave.
from A compound of two old borrowings doing new work: 'code' comes from Latin 'codex,' originally a block of wood split into writing tablets, then a bound book of laws; 'conduct' traces to Latin 'conducere,' to lead or bring together, which drifted from 'being led' to 'how one leads oneself.' The phrase itself is a modern pairing — codes of law are ancient, but 'code of conduct' as a named document of expected behavior is largely a 20th-century institutional habit, born as organizations started writing down what used to be left to manners and shame.
- origin
- Open source adopted it after harassment scandals piled up
- contains clause
- Usually bans conduct nobody admits to doing
- enforcement gap
- Written boldly, enforced quietly, if ever
- real function
- Signals values more than it prevents violations