I thought the code of conduct activity reflects to me the differences in compensation and intent. With Go, it is almost wholly maintained internally by google engineers who are compensated purely for maintaining and/or advancing Golang. Versus with the general code of conduct, it’s clear this is meant to bridge engineers with different technical capacities, timezones, ideas, motives, etc. are not all necessarily aligned. We get the big tent method that can more representative of a general swath of interests, versus a open source model funded wholly by a corporation’s engineers that act with a certain bias but are more likely to meet the objectives.

RE the video - the Sheldon example makes a lot of sense in terms of consesus and the need for small, tightly aligned groups who respect each other’s capacity and abiliy. Otherwise stalling is a serious risk. But obviously in real-life alignment is not a priori - which is why agreement over a set of arbitration procedures, discussion methods, and active communication is critical towards the end output. This is where I think the code of conduct makes sense as we agree on voting procedures or consesus mechanisms that keeps the ball rolling. Apart from that, I think a lot of it is intent based - if individuals want to be combative, they will do so regardless of policies. Policies just lay out penalties - and angry but smart users will ‘walk the line’, which doesn’t dispel the core concern of their intent. This is why larger projects as the video mentioned needs an unbiased perspective, like in the case of Linux a Linux Foundation Staff Member that acts as a moderator and considers the good of the project.