EthicalSource
It's reasonable to expect tolerance, not respect
The current version states the following as expected behavior:
- Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
However, as the recent debate regarding Cambridge University's freedom of speech policy demonstrates; respect cannot be mandated: Cambridge University rejects proposal it be 'respectful' of all views.
Respect cannot be manufactured at will. If you don't respect an idea (for example that the Earth is flat), then it doesn't matter how hard you try; you still will not respect it. In that sense respect is like belief; nobody can force you to believe the Moon is made of cheese. Either you do or you don't.
You can pretend to believe in something, and you can pretend to respect something, but you really don't. Any policy that asks people to pretend is not a good policy.
As Stephen Fry puts it:
A demand for respect is like a demand for a laugh, or demands for love, loyalty and allegiance. They cannot be given if not felt.
The commitment should be towards tolerance; which can be honestly given, not respect; which can only be faked.
Additionally, the purpose of the contributor covenant is to be enforced, not merely added as a dead document. Currently many projects do not enforce respect, in fact, differing opinions are constantly disrespected and dismissed.
Instead of demanding something that no project enforces, and cannot enforce, the covenant should request tolerance, which is what 86.9% of the governing body of Cambridge University ultimately decided was the sensible thing to do, after scrutiny from countless intellectuals, and the society in general, not only from the United Kingdom, but the world.
- Being tolerant of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
That means even if you don't personally respect an opinion (hold it in high regard), you should still tolerate it (allow it to exist).
This affects version 2.1.
"respect" is not particularly well-defined. Cambridge defines it as:
admiration felt or shown for someone or something that you believe has good ideas or qualities
If so, it does seem unrealistic―if not misguided―to mandate admiration of any opinion/viewpoint.
Tolerance would be a more reasonable expectation indeed.
That being said, asking to respect experiences is strange. It is unclear what respecting or even tolerating an experience means.
It's clear my opinion on this topic has not been respected.
@Chealer it seems to me the real issue is ideological, not technical.
People with a realistic ideology understand that it's not possible to demand a person to think in a certain way.
On the other hand people with an idealistic ideology wish for everyone to think in a certain way and they don't care if it's realistic or not.
The person who closed and locked #969 clearly has an idealistic worldview and as such is not interested in what realists have to say about the topic.
The opinion of realists has thus been decreed incorrect and not worthy of any respect. This is an ironic contradiction.
It is very obvious that the Contributor Covenant is not interested in what's realistic or objective — since the creator of Contributor Covenant is objectively not interested in respecting the opinions of others. The true objective is idealistic and subjective. The people who enforce the code of conduct get to decide which opinions are incorrect and what arbitrary punishment they earn.
Even more ironically is that the issue was locked with a comment referencing the "powerful", but it's the ones that get to enforce the code of conduct that have all the power, and there's nothing in the document which suggests when that power might have been misused.
I was permanently banned from the Git project with the guise that I was "disrespectful" (even though I didn't disrespect anybody), and I wasn't even granted a response. Yet somehow I — the one who cannot respond — is the "powerful" one, simply because I'm privileged with the ability to be tolerant.
No, the ones that get to decide what is "disrespectful" and what is the punishment for failing to be so are the powerful ones and they can flagrantly disrespect the opinions of others.