Zhuang Biaowei: In addition to the license, the rules and unspoken rules of the community | DEV. Together 2021 China Developer Ecological Summit

content source: On June 5, 2021, the 2021 China Developer Ecological Summit hosted by SegmentFault came to a successful conclusion. At the meeting, HUAWEI CLOUD product expert and chairman of the Open Source Society Zhuang Biaowei delivered a speech with the theme "Other than License, Community Rules and Unspoken Rules".

Sharing guests: Zhuang Biaowei, Huawei Cloud Product Expert, Chairman of the Open Source Society

shorthand compilation and release: SegmentFault Editorial Department

Hello everyone! I am very happy to come to this China Developer Ecological Summit to chat with you about rules related topics.

There are tables, water, and cups in the first row of our venue, but not behind the second row. This is a rule. Last time I went to a Digital China Innovation Conference, there was a row of leather sofas in front of the table, and one position was as wide as two people. This is also a rule. Different communities, different occasions, have different rules. Let’s talk about rules today. Of course, in addition to rules, there are hidden rules.

The first is the pre-explanation, including what is a rule, what is an unspoken rule, what is a community, and so on. This is actually just a thinking frame. This ppt will continue to grow, maybe one day it will become a longer article, or n articles, or even evolve into a collection and other forms.

What is the rule

The first is the three parts of love, etiquette and law. Human feelings are sophisticated, basic human feelings are warm and cold, and what kind of relationship is between people. These are the basic ethical rules. This is the first part. I speak courtesy to you, and you also talk to me. You must have etiquette and understand etiquette. These are the rules of etiquette and etiquette. This is the second part. The last is the law. When we talk about rules, we often stop at the third part—laws. We often understand rules as laws, but in fact, rules are not just written laws. We have statutory laws, statutory norms, our community has licenses, authorization agreements, CLAs, etc., all of which belong to the legal level.

But why does Code exist? To put it simply, we believe that this society is constantly developing. In a primitive village of hundreds of people, everyone would not talk about etiquette or law, but only talk about basic ethics and morals. In a slave society or a feudal society Begin to talk about basic etiquette, and then develop a process of enlightenment, virtue, benevolence, righteousness, and etiquette. At the beginning, people preached, then they began to talk about virtue, and then they talked about benevolence and lectures. The general public will only speak courtesy after losing benevolence and morality. The law will not be enacted until the courtesy is not abiding. Because society has become more complicated: your etiquette is different from mine, and your principles are different from mine. At this time, a coercive and more consistent written law is needed to regulate society. But the law is actually very backward, because all laws need to be interpreted by professionals, and they need to be enforced by professionals, such as lawyers, judges, law enforcement officers, and so on. So there will be codes, for example, swiping a door card at the entrance guard, and the door opens. There is actually a rule behind this, that is, people with permission can enter the door, and people without permission cannot enter the door. But the person who executes is not a guard, but a smart, executable code. There are actually rules behind it, but it is executed more quickly and without any ambiguity. This is the rule as we understand it.

What are unspoken rules

The feature of the unspoken rule is the part before the rule is made. For example, if we set up a WeChat group, one day someone posted an advertisement, and we formulated the first rule: red envelopes must be sent before the advertisement. When someone posted an advertisement every day, we made another rule: You must send a big red envelope before posting an advertisement. This process has changed from unspoken rules to rules, but this kind of rules are difficult to enforce. If he has a particularly familiar relationship with the group owner or gives the group owner some benefits, he can keep posting in the group without being caught. Kick off, so there are still unspoken rules. But these rules do not take effect every time. It depends on the awareness of the manager and the reasons behind the manager, but some of the reasons are not public. In larger communities, we will observe various phenomena in the community. We will form small circles and figure out why he has been blocked, why he has been banned, why his posts have been deleted, etc. We will try to figure out various reasons, such as he may have done certain things, or he may have not done certain things, these things are unspoken rules. We can find that any community will have unspoken rules, no community has no unspoken rules, completely open and transparent.

What is a community

First of all, a group of like-minded people gather together to create something together, such as making an open source software. In the process of making this open source software, we continue to polish, improve, upgrade and perfect the work, and the community formed is There will be a kind of "near, happy, far away" effect: more and more people will come because of your products, open source projects, and the atmosphere of the community. People in the community will also be immersed in it. When there are more people, there will be more conflicts, so we will continue to improve the rules. At this time, we will return to the process of like-minded people, because in the process of perfecting the rules, we will constantly think about what can be done and what can’t be done in the community, what is encouraged, and what is not. Encourage. If this community has enough group awareness, we will introspect: why did we come together, why do we become a community, what is our ambition and original intention? That's why we set the rules. So this is a cycle. If you do well, you will have a healthy development, the community will gather more and more people, and there will be more and more complete and well-functioning rules, which will create better works. This is what happens in a successful open source community.

General ethics

I think "do not do to others what you do not want to do" is the simplest ethics. In any community, we will see some phenomena, that is, arguing about what can be done and what cannot be done. At this time, we will return to this ethics: do not do to others what you do not want. The other is that the rulers, fathers and sons are in order. This is traditional Chinese ethics, but is this still the case in the open source community or the technology community? not necessarily. Because in the technical community, everyone is equal but also contribution. We will expand on the specific background later. Of course, benevolence, justice, etiquette, wisdom and trust are also ethics needed by society, so I won't repeat them here.

Hacker ethics

Hacker ethics is actually the most basic ethic that most open source communities believe in. There are two books, one is called "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism", the other is called "Hacker Ethics and the Spirit of the Internet", the content is about how hackers do things. The book mentions not being superstitious in authority and promoting decentralization, because everyone is essentially equal. The standard for us to evaluate hackers should be their behavior, not their degree, age, race, gender, position, etc. And other false standards. This is a very important point in hacker ethics.

Equality for All and Elite Governance

There is a phenomenon in the open source community: equality for all and elite governance. There is a certain contradiction behind it. At first, everyone was equal. Gradually, those who have made a lot of contributions have a higher status, more voice and even the most privileges, and they are not easy to be held accountable for making mistakes. For example, there was a person named Linus who cursed in the community and even pointed his middle finger. Although there will be people in the community who criticize Linus, those who criticize are not important. Everyone thinks that he is a big cow, big cow is so powerful, and big cow is so cool.

There is such injustice in the community. In a sense, we need to suppress this phenomenon, but this phenomenon will inevitably occur, because we naturally worship those who do the most, the best, the fastest, and the best, and we will definitely worship They, and we are bound to be more tolerant of them. We will inevitably evaluate them high rather than low on many things. On the contrary, when a newcomer comes to the community, when he submits the code, everyone will look at him with a vigilant eye and be more harsh on him. This phenomenon also needs to be suppressed. If a community can be more friendly to newcomers, then the community can grow better. But some communities with a particularly strong self-awareness can easily be unfriendly or more demanding towards newcomers.

Social Gifts and Community Gifts

Let's talk about the polite part. On the left is the etiquette of society, and on the right is the etiquette of the community. Today we divide it into etiquette, etiquette and gifts. There are various etiquettes in our society, such as weddings and funerals, we have to hold ceremonies, wines, or dinners. This is social etiquette. A group of us met new friends through a conference like today, and we chat together. This is our community etiquette.

The second part is etiquette. In society, we have to be polite in dealing with people, and what kind of title and posture should we use when we first meet each other? This is social etiquette. In Japan, it is even more exaggerated. For example, the degree of bowing is regulated. For people of different status, the angle of bowing is different. This is their etiquette. In our community, there are actually some etiquettes. For example, when you first go to the community to ask questions, you have to figure out how to ask questions. And when you communicate with people in the community, what kind of attitude should you look like? "Kneel for answers", "please help me", "wait online, urgent!" These are very bad gestures of community communication. Conversely, if you ask questions in a very objective and peaceful way, you will get more respect instead. This is the art of questioning. As for gifts, both in society and in the community will emphasize. Because of the gift, there is a heritage in the open source community. There is a book called "Cathedral and Bazaar" which mentions why people in the community are willing to contribute their own code, and why after contributing their own code, they will be universally respected by the entire community. In fact, this is a gift culture. Whether in traditional society or modern society or even primitive society, those who have contributed the most gifts have the highest social status. Corresponding to the open source community, those who write the highest level, the best, the most important open source projects, open source code, they have contributed the most important gifts to the society, they will have the highest social status, this is the gift of the community.

Statutory law in the community

There are many statutory laws in the community, such as licenses, trademarks, privacy, Code of Conduct, GDPR, Code Style, information security, intellectual property rights of trade secrets, and so on. These are all researched by professionals, because I am a non-professional, so I skipped it.

Automated rules in the community

Next, I will talk about Code. There is a book I highly recommend, which is called "Code 2.0" written by a jurist. Soon after the Internet was born, he studied various codes in the Internet. He believed that Code is Law, all the rules that can be automatically executed by code, will occupy more and more in the community, in society, and even in the world in the future. More and more proportions.

I once stayed in a community called JavaEye, which was the first to implement a certain point-and-authority linkage model in the community. For example, when you first entered the community, your level was one star, slowly, as you write the number of posts, it will become two stars, three stars, four stars, five stars, and then become a crown. , Two crowns, gradually to five crowns. Your star and crown represent the weight of your points. For example, there is a post that we think is very bad and we click to consider it as spam. When a spam post has 20 points for voting, the post will be received directly in the trash can. Everyone can only click, but the higher the weight, the higher the value of the vote. Whether it is Stack Overflow or Si or not, they have their own points system, the logic behind them, and their own different designs. We think they are all rules that are automatically executed by the code. Of course, there are also GitHub's automation rules, such as Action, Robot, and an Issue & PR Template that came out in recent years. Another example is Gerrit, which is also a Code Review tool. It represents that if a piece of code is considered good by more than two or three people, then this piece of code can be merged into the trunk. In fact, our company is also using similar points rules. There are many variants of this scoring rule. For example, we can stipulate that a certain piece of code can only be merged when it exceeds five points or three points. The weight in each person's hands is at most two points, or even one point, which means that the larger the number of people in the team, the higher the proportion of people who need to agree to this code. These rules are used to more easily regulate the various behaviors of the community and help to manage the community more fairly and reasonably.

Unspoken rules in the community

There are many personal settings in a community. In a community, how others perceive you and what kind of personal settings you set for yourself are very important. There is such a person called a posting machine. They usually post in WeChat groups first, and then send a red envelope, please help forward. Such people are at the bottom of the food chain in the community. They may be forced to do such things, but no one will respect them or value them. They are such a persona. Once I chatted with a professor at a business school on WeChat and found that he was also doing this kind of thing. He posted an article he wrote to the group. After two days, he sent it again, and the group owner reminded him that you sent it too hard. He said lightly, "Oh, I'm sorry." I told him, you are set by someone in the community, and your set determines whether others will read your article. If your personal setting is a posting machine, no matter how well your article is written, others will not read it. The unspoken rule is that no one will tell you that your personal setting is a posting machine. Once you are tagged with this kind of label, it will be difficult for you to survive in the community. Many friends who have just started community operations, especially children, are particularly easy to set their first person there. I especially hope to be children in the community. If possible, make more high-end personal design, and others will accept you more. Some people especially like to find a sense of presence in the community, such as Kong Jing. Once such people are identified, they should be kicked out as soon as possible, because they do not increase the quality of discussions in the entire community, and do not improve the level of discussions in the entire community. They will only bring traffic, and this traffic is poisonous. But if it is a community that operates purely by KPI, it will love and hate such people and feel that they are at least an active part of the community, which has also triggered debate in the community. But such people can poison the community. When talking about aunt’s physique, the first person I think of is Zhou Qi (Python aunt). He talks about big and small things in the community. This kind of person is actually very remarkable. He is the core or community existence. s reason. When we started to operate the community, we did not make a bargaining machine or a posting machine, but determined to become the aunt of the community, then the community would be more promising. When we are in a community, we have to think clearly about where we are and what I want others to think of me. For example, the person I like better is that others think my speech is more reasonable. If you can maintain this kind of personality, then others will ask me when they encounter something: What do you think of this matter? So you are a sharer in this community, and others are willing to accept your opinions and opinions, then you will become a kind of KOL. And this is a personality worth pursuing.

The tolerance of the rules has been mentioned before, so I won’t repeat them here.

In the communication channels within the community, the "prosperous" WeChat group usually has some little-known small groups. These small groups are small circles, used for small reports and private discussions. Not long ago, I encountered a "Gong Jing" in the WeChat group. Many people in the group were very upset with his style and language, and took turns arguing with him. Later, I found the group leader in private, implying that the group leader could kick him, and then he was kicked out, so the whole group leader returned to a harmonious and pleasant atmosphere. This is the unspoken rule. Another unspoken rule is very important. If you are a community operator, you have to have an intuition about the community. You need to know what the atmosphere of the community is now, whether it is good or bad, whether a certain rule should be implemented, how to implement it, and adjust it. These all rely on the intuition of community operations.

Conclusion: Zen and the art of community operation

The most important characteristic of a community operation is to have community intuition. Therefore, I really want to recommend a book called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair." The author of this book mentioned a word in the book, which translates into "good quality", which is called quality in English, which means quality. He repeatedly said: I can't define what good quality is. After I read this book, I don't define what good quality is. We can use a circular definition. What is good quality? That can be felt by taste. What is taste? That is, the ability to experience good quality. For example, if I am a gourmet, I think a certain dish is delicious, that is, I am a person with good taste, and this dish has good quality. So, if someone is not a gourmet and does not know whether the dish is delicious or not, he is a person with no taste. Do any business, you must constantly hone your skills. For example, if you are a gourmet, you can tell whether dishes are delicious or unpalatable, but you don't have the ability to make a good dish by yourself, because you are not good at it. So first of all you have to have a taste, you have to constantly hone your skills, and finally you can not only know what good quality is, but also create good quality. Returning to the situation and context of community operations, you have to be immersed in the community, constantly feel whether the community is good or bad, and constantly experience and understand how the rules of this community operate, how its rules should work, You have to keep honing your skills. In the end, you may create a better and better community.

thank you all.