kindness guidelines seem to be a lot gentler to me, in that someone who happens to make a mistake is expected to be kindly brought back into the community-agreed norms, rather than shunned and ostracized. this is the most fundamental distinction to me.

I also see that, particularly in communities of coders, codes are taken as ultimate truths, and go into details typical of software engineering, which is not kind on people, and tends to bring about triggers and negative reactions from people who are sensitive to such unkindness, so it ends up inviting rather than avoiding undesirable conducts.

and then, there's the issue of lack of clarity that neurodivergents like me often experience and occasionally describe, of rules that seem to be applied inconsistently, which leads to a lot of anxiety (and often exclusion) to people who strive to abide by rules strictly (numerous neurodivergents do), and even to cynicism as we perceive the sea of differences between the rules as written vs the rules as applied. the CoC and the way it has been applied in the Guix community are the primary reason why I don't feel welcome there. which is unfortunate, because I find it a very interesting project. alas, I'm too much like people who have been shunned, ostracized and victims of discrimination and hatred there, for reasons that I know to be unfounded, resulting from misunderstandings that I'm too likely to trip myself (and have tripped as recently as this week, in contexts unrelated to the project). so I self-exclude, so as to avoid disrupting the project; it's not like I'd be able to make significant contributions anyway (-ENOTIME), but it is somewhat disappointing.

CC: @hfaust@shitposter.world @baleine@piaille.fr @taylan@feministwiki.org