@Sgt_G, One of the advantages of the Contributor Covenant is that it's licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. As a result, we are free to create our own version of the document and make any changes we wish. In fact, it's already a project on GitHub, so forking the Covenant would be pretty trivial.
This is why I find it disappointing that you fail to articulate any specific argument against the actual language or wording of the Contributor Covenant. If you believe in meritocracy, shouldn't things like the Covenant be judged solely on their merit? If you could explain that certain language should be changed or removed for specific reasons, we could make those changes directly. In fact, even if I disagreed with your reasoning, you yourself could make those changes on your own in your own personal fork.
Speaking of "meritocracy", after reading a few articles, I think some of the objections that some people have to meritocracy are that it's a system that sorts people into an arbitrary hierarchy (often a pyramid-like structure) by subjective criteria that change depending on what the position in question (and the person charged with filling that position). What "merit" actually consists of is typically a matter of opinion (with some skills being overvalued, ignored, or simply too difficult to measure in any meaningful way), and the hierarchy is usually just a traditional structure passed down over the years without challenge rather than a reflection of the actual skill set of all employees, making it more likely that people will be selected for scarce jobs based on arbitrary grounds. I'm not sure "Post-Meritocracy" is a real, workable solution, but I've definitely seen meritocracies go awry.
For example, I worked for a large company once in a relatively unskilled position, in spite of the fact that I had a college degree and several years of experience in a highly technical field. I looked into positions that were in my intended career path, and I noticed that there wasn't really a way to advance to the job I wanted. I'd basically have to spend my own money to learn a particular skill, go work for another company for several years to gain experience with that skill, then come back and hope I'm not missing some special sauce needed to land that particular job. In other words, there were rungs missing on the metaphorical merit ladder within the company.
So, I guess Meritocracy is kinda like Democracy. It's the worst system except for all the others.
Regarding the use of a Code of Conduct to depose long-standing members of a project, the responsibility of enforcing the Contributor Covenant is in the hands of "project maintainers". I presume this refers to the people running the project. If someone is thrown off a project, it's usually because the people in charge of the project decided that's what should happen, regardless of whether a code of conduct is in place or not. Thus, if you had a large group trying to drive someone out of the project because of some political reason, the project maintainers could just say "no" regardless of what the code of conduct says. In fact, they could decide to change the code of conduct, or even drop it entirely. They may face a claims of hypocrisy or favoritism for violating their own rules, but the actual decision was always theirs to begin with.
So why have a code of conduct? For the same reason we have the Guidelines: to let everyone know what behavior will and won't be tolerated. (Except the Covenant implies that they won't go after you if you actually follow the rules.)
You don’t have to open and read the thread. No one is making you
How would that keep other people from having their time wasted? You do know that these forum posts are indexed on Google, right? You do know that if you type in "code of conduct for fan productions" in Google, this is the first result, right? And if someone clicks on that link and posts something of actual merit here, how would I know if I never open or read the thread?
Of course the real question is this: If you think this thread isn't worth the time of the very person who created it, why do you think it's worth your time?
I finally looked at the page in the OP and found it...perplexing. At the bottom it claims:
This Code of Conduct is adapted from the
Contributor Covenant, version 1.4, available at
https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct.html...which leads in a circle back to itself. It is adapted from
itself?
I think the idea is that if you copy the page wholesale, it links back to the original page.
There's got to be something at one of the unions, Sag or IATSE, about how to behave on set and while in production.
Most small productions like fan films, even when they have the money to employ professional cast or crew, are non-union jobs because it's cost prohibitive. Star Trek Continues basically had to use union workers because Vic and most of his friends are already union.
But, now that you mention it, that might be a good starting place if you're trying to craft a code of conduct specific to film production.
