Is an Order of Precedence Implied? about programmers-oath

[Widdershin]

Good question: I don't recall laying them out with deliberate precedence, but there is undoubtedly implicit precedence in terms of what I thought of first when adding tenets.

I'm open to the idea of re-ordering the tenets. To that end, I would love for anyone who reads this to comment with your ideal ordering of the tenets, from most important to least important. I would like to see if there is any clear commonality.

The other thing this makes me think about is that order is often used as a mechanism for resolving ambiguity or conflict. Do we currently have any tenets that conflict or have ambiguous areas? Is there a hypothetical situation where two tenets would require different courses of action from you? Interested if anyone can identify any issues here.

[mo-g]

The only Tenet that explicitly proscribes a course of action is the 0th one. All the others (to date) are guidelines rather than hard rules. Respecting a users' privacy is not the same thing as protecting it at all costs - one can respect privacy and still breach it when necessary - the respect requires that one only do it with forethought and as necessary.

The only critical prioritisation that seems apparent to me is that life and death takes priority over privacy - You find a piece of data in your testing that plans a murder spree - you call the cops. In a way, this is already explicit 'tread most carefully in matters of life and death', but it would be logical to order them to reinforce that precedence. Since that example is an explicit implementation of 'considering the consequences' - that's why I felt that should be second only to honest and moral work (again, as that is the only explicit proscription in the tenets).

Edit:
I realise that tread most carefully is really more aimed at those writing airliner autopilots, etc - but felt it applied, nonetheless.

[mo-g]

Closing on my own regard.