A Suggestion for Your Community Terms and Policies

Published on Nov 13, 2025, filed under misc, advocacy. (Share this post, e.g. on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

Please refuse entry, attendance, and membership to anyone serving or having served in the armed forces of any country that is known to commit war crimes or genocides.

The determination of war crimes and genocides can be based on international bodies like the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, or independent human rights organizations with established investigative standards. Wikipedia also maintains a list of genocides and their perpetrators.

With that, terms and policies would be improved tremendously, especially at a time when genocides, war crimes, and disregard for international law are not dealt with effectively by world powers and international bodies.

More importantly—even though we’re not discussing detection and enforcement—, it will make many in your community feel safer, and alleviate their just concern they might inadvertently associate and collaborate with murderers and war criminals.

Doing so will therefore also protect your community: Expect members to leave ^*, and more to leave, communities that don’t position themselves clearly and don’t do anything about such association.

Thank you.

^* Personally, I’ve just left a high-profile technical community for this reason. I’ve deemed it too likely, and the question alone unbearable, that members of that community have been serving in the IDF, thus being complicit in the Gaza genocide and other crimes. In my mind, even the question alone is unacceptable.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you use every day and companies you’ve never heard of, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and perspectives. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)