> Does this help? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18075200

But I still can't fathom a _real_ situation where CoC would cause me to reconsider participation, let-alone quit and look for alternatives which serve up something like that "Code of Merit".

In the high-profile spaces which have implemented CoC's, they've been a reaction to long-established patterns of bad behavior (I am thinking specifically about stackoverflow). It remains to be seen whether the CoC in stackoverflow helps, but I don't think it hurts.

In general, I think online communities are much more prone by being overrun with assholes than face-to-face communities. In the case of stackoverflow, they've game-ified the interactions to such an extent that it has become a very weird place to ask a question. In their quest for quantifiable objectivity, they've attracted personality types that think it's OK to be hostile in order to satisfy what they think "the mission" of stackoverflow is. It has gotten bad enough that people are reacting and their new CoC is their attempt at making amends.