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Apropos of nothing, that Lynx image is styled using my code from 1996. Almost certainly the most used and successful code I’ve written unless the cookie jar handling is still mine too.
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The top priority is speed.
For me, the top priority is “doesn’t thrash the CPU, cause my laptop to heat up, and shag my battery” which Firefox is exceptionally good at. But since there’s no other option if you want a portable browser, I’m stuck with it.
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If somebody says “I think that Angersock is mean to everybody”, that’s a pure statement of their opinion, and that cannot be incorrect.
Opinions cannot be incorrect insofar as they’re opinions, sure, but the beliefs behind those opinions can be provably incorrect.
“I think that climate change is an Illuminati conspiracy” might well be their opinion but what they believe is provably incorrect. How to handle this situation?
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You can politely point out that there is no evidence to support that belief, or you can just ignore it. I mean, people believe silly things…no need to take up space trying to fix everybody.
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Today I learned that downvoting a comment requires you to pick a category. I guess I’ve never tried to do that here before.
The comment provided as an example is the first comment I tried to downvote here on Lobste.rs…
And indeed, none of the available categories fit.
If there was a ‘destructive’ category, I’d pick that one. Meanwhile, I’ll use ‘troll’, which is clearly not correct. AFAIK.
[EDIT: uh-oh, it looks as if I’ve committed a “me-too”!]
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I only learned that downvotes require a category today as well. And I was pleasantly surprised both because I realized that I haven’t needed to downvote a comment here before, and because I really like that lobste.rs requires a reason for a downvote. I feel like your comment had value beyond just a me-too, so you’re fine :)
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People reading that comment who missed the thread might not know it was very context-sensitive. Remember that the context (OP) is specific people pushing a specific set of political views on everyone asking that all disagreement be censored. They say they benefit minorities but wont allow them to have a say if they have different beliefs. Coraline et al are uncompromising in that the options are (a) agree with them pushing same things or (b) shut up and leave every public space they take over.
With that backdrop, I read the various Github articles and the OP. She constantly talked about extreme negative reactions she got as if it’s incidental to being a minority. She was a minority, did some work, and piles of hate emerged. She never mentions when doing so that she aggresively evangelizes, insults, and coerces FOSS projects usually with a pile of likeminded people behind her. I kept bringing that behavior up since I think her showing up at people’s doorsteps insulting them and telling them to do her bidding in their projects might be why people dont like her. That pisses all types of people off here in the Mid-South, including minorities. Consistently. I imagine some in other areas, too.
Anyway, in the thread you linked, my main comment on that article was judged by site as follows:
+73 yes -4 incorrect -1 off-topic -8 troll
It means the main post got overwhelming support esp considering how few upvotes I normally get. The others were peripheral supporting it as part of a larger debate. Anyone trying to judge the linked one should probably look at OP and first comment to get context:
https://lobste.rs/s/js3pbv/antisocial_coding_my_year_at_github#c_h8znxo
Im just a political moderate calling out hypocrisy/deceit of an article’s source (i.e. source integrity) and protecting right to dissent as usual. I do it on all topics. Even my favorites on occasion. On political ones, people tend to have strong emotional reactions that clouds judgment or just evokes strong reactions. Im not saying whose right or wrong so much as disagreement they take personally, get disgusted/angry, and will hit any button to make that person or post disappear.
I think I warned of that in either linked thread or Community Standards discussion. Both then and now, people started calling out others that should disappear with often opposite views of what should be allowed. There was no consensus except against comments that are blatantly harmful where there is a consensus by most peeple that it’s abusive. The same thing I see play out in person every day. So, I oppose comment deletions or bans in political situations without consensus so long as people keep it civil and about specific claims with supporting evidence. And if one side can speak, the other parties better be able to as well.
And a minimum of politics on Lobsters period! Keep it focused on tech and such. Somone had to post something by a decietful activist on politics pushing a mix of truth and propaganda. And that hit my mental button of calling them out staying as civil and factual as I could despite knowing with every word I might be censored for it. Might. The upvotes from my first comment were reason I kept taking the risk of more argument given there was a surge of dissent that needed to be represented. Not just me. I always help the underdogs. :)
Note: That was long as we were just talking about but I wanted context and intent clear given it’s about whether to filter or ban me. I also hold no grudges against anyone who did. It’s their deeply-held, personal beliefs about what’s right and wrong. People will do what you believe is necessary there.
Note 2: Lunch break is over. Darn. I was hoping for tech over politics. Ill do what’s necessary, though, since I value and respect this community. Gotta defend dissent as it’s critical.
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While I disagree with your positions on the topic of the OP, that’s not really what I wanted to bring attention to in this thread. And, as you correctly point out, the longer post you had there does contribute to the discussion. This is why I specifically linked only to that one comment, because that is the only one I feel is not contributing, constructive, or otherwise meaningful as a part of the larger thread. Under no circumstances do I think any of what happened in that thread is cause for banning or deletion; on that, we are in complete agreement. What I wanted to highlight in this topic is that we should have a way of discouraging comments that are solely inflammatory without carrying other value, and I believe that particular one was of that kind. I did not downvote your other posts despite disagreeing with them, because (as also mentioned elsewhere in this thread), I do not think disagreement should be a reason for downvoting. We can have a whole different discussion about how politics and tech mix, but that does not belong in this thread.
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This is why I specifically linked only to that one comment, because that is the only one I feel is not contributing, constructive, or otherwise meaningful as a part of the larger thread. Under no circumstances do I think any of what happened in that thread is cause for banning or deletion; on that, we are in complete agreement.
Well, my respect just went up for you quite a bit. Very reasonable position far as critiques go. The selected comment was lower info than the other one and maybe even unnecessary. Likely because it was part of a back and forth on politics where comment quality on all sides (including my own) tend to get lower as it goes on. One of reasons I don’t like political discussions in low-noise sites like Lobsters. They also can have less info since more of the specific points and context is already defined where the replies start just implying that stuff with less info content in general. That one was some combination of those.
In any case, I appreciate you clarifying your position. I at least get why you’d want to see less of that kind of comment than the main one.
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I’m glad we’ve found common ground. As I’ve said elsewhere (this thread is getting pretty large), I don’t want to see downvotes used as a way to signal disagreement, nor do I want them to be used to “punish” a particular user or otherwise label the user as bad. Downvotes to me are a way of signaling that a particular comment is unwanted, along with the reason why, nothing more, nothing less.
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I’m fine with that as long as there’s a consensus across majority of community’s users. That’s really all I ask with these sorts of things even though I’m biased toward free speech or low censorship. Your proposal isn’t a big risk to that esp given it’s mostly a tech-focused forum.
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What’s needed is an expanded signup form with ten or so position statements (“programming in php is ethical”) that one chooses to agree or disagree with. Then all the comments made by anyone who agrees with a statement I strongly disagree with are automatically hidden. Works for okcupid, why not lobsters?
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You are free to not do whatever you don’t feel comfortable with, but if neither of you brings up minorities because you’re talking about technology, why would that even be relevant? Are you worried about being associated with such a person or do you think their ideas about minorities are going to creep into their ideas about tech?
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I believe the concern is that people holding those views ,and as a result the views themselves will be percieved as welcome in the broader technical community, or in our case specifically in the Lobste.rs community. The result of this will be that minorities will in turn feel unwelcome in the community, and they have every right to feel that way.
If you own a restaurant and host a nice dinner for a Jewish family celebration while there’s a Nazi convention at the next table, there’s no amount of politeness, courtesy, good intentions or kindness that you can bring to bear that will make them feel welcome.
Do we have the explicit racist behavior on Lobste.rs that’s equivalent to a Nazi convention? No. But I’ve seen comments on here defending racists, using SJW as a perjorative, using the incorrect gender pronoun for a trans person (in a way that makes it hard to believe it was not purposeful) and a variety of other behaviors that would signal to someone in a minority group that they wouldn’t be welcomed here. Most of these posts did not recieve many downvotes, and when they do, it’s often enough that there’s an outpouring of discussion about what downvotes are for.
The point of this is that it’s the decision of the person entering a community as to what will make them feel unwelcome. As the hosts, we decide what behavior is acceptable in our community. No matter what we decide, someone will feel unwelcome. So it falls on us to decide how to make trade-offs about who feels unwelcome and why.
Personally, I think it’s not unreasonable for a minority to look at the Lobste.rs community and say “I see a lot of people there defending racists/sexists/transphobics and their views, and I don’t feel welcome as a result.” On the flip side I think it’s less reasonable to say “I don’t feel welcome at lobsters because I came to the defense of a guy who said slavery was a good idea and I got downvoted a bunch.” Even if you soften it to “I played devils advocate to argue the case for a guy who thought slavery was swell and got downvoted” I think the first position is more reasonable.
Given that we can only welcome one of those groups in that situation, I’m inclined to welcome the folks with the more reasonable view. I think it would be nice to give the community better tools to make that decision. I think downvotes for “hostility” and “unconstructive” could both work, with a few caveats:
“Hostility” would be intellectual hostility, not emotinal tenor. It’s pefectly possible to politely and calmly argue that women are inferior to men, or that that’s an acceptable view that has a place in modern discourse, but I’d argume both of those positions are hostile toward women.
“Unconstructive” is broader in scope and the hope would be that it reduces hostile viewpoints as a side effect, as well as cutting down on the number of pointless technical rants, which I also don’t feel add much to the discussion. I suspect it’s hard to be politely hostile toward a group and simultaneously provide actual constructive criticism. I find it hard to imagine some of the more SJW-hostile folks proposing suggestions that would make both trans/minority folks and the hetero/caucasian men they see as under attack feel more welcome, but I would certainly like to hear about it them if it happens.
In either case, I think we’ll have to recognize that these judgements are subjective, and that there’s no way to avoid being subjective if we want to consciously set a tone for our community. I’d also suggest that losing ephemeral internet points is not the end of the world. It’s a very mild form of social reprimand and a fairly gentle tool in the larger scheme of things, and isn’t mutually exclusive with open discussion. I understand being cautions in the application of downvotes, but perhaps we have erred too much on the side of caution in the past.
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I think the easiest way to address the concern that the first thing people see when they come here is “hate” (for lack of a better word) is to post more and better comments. You’re fighting a difficult battle, in no small part because there’s little agreement about what constitutes hate. But banning the haters is not the only way to reduce the likelihood a newcomer will see something they don’t like. One can hope they don’t stop at the first comment they read, so work to ensure the next ten comments they read after that are all worthwhile.
There does seem to be a phenomenon where people will have accounts for months, not post any comments, then one day announce “I’ve had it with this site; I can’t believe somebody in this community wrote that.” If you’re so concerned about what the community is, try being the community. (Not directed at any particular individual.)
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I understand the appeal of the “fight content with content” approach, and I think encouraging folks who are friendly and welcoming, and being the community you want is important. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.
That said, the issue I have with this approach is that it ignores outside constraints on community members, and cedes the discussion to whoever has more free time and energy. Or in the presence of malicious behavior, whoever puts the most effort into gaming the system. This is a general problem with community moderation, and it seems like people with more hostile views often are willing to devote more effort to spreading their views than more reasonable individuals. I have a number of hypothetical ideas about why that may be which may or may not be correct, but it does seem to be a consistent pattern across many of the communities I’ve participated in, and others have made the observation as well.
Speaking for myself, I try to participate and be a friendly and welcoming voice as much as I can, but I don’t have time to rebut every mean-spirited comment, or even comment all that often. I’ve got two small children to raise, three-and-a-halfish teams of folks at work to manage, a couple of side projects as well as the very rare occasional social engaement. I literally don’t have the time and energy to put in that some people do, and I don’t think that “whoever has the most time on their hands in aggregate wins” (that sounds snarky - not intended, sorry.) is a good strategy for building a welcoming community. My view is that communities have to make conscious decisions about what they want to be, otherwise the unknown trade-offs we make by not deciding will end up biting us, much they way they would if we were to abdicate making explicit decisions in engineering information systems.
Additionally, I’ve found that trying to speak up against hostile viewpoints and/or people who defend those views often leads into some pretty gnarly rehtorial weeds that end up being particularly time-consuming. Perhaps I could be better about disengaging when the conversation feels fruitless, but at some point that further discussion is no longer useful and it might just be best to let the community literally “vote on it”.
I also want to reiterate that I’m not suggeting that anyone should be banned, but that we create a category of downvote for the sorts of behavior we decide want to discourage, so that we can express our collective opinion without always having to engage in extensive (and at times fruitless) discussion in order to make headway toward whatever we decide we ant our community to look like.
Apologies if this comment is a bit redundant/rambling. I’m running on small amounts of sleep because children, and I’m a bit too tired to proofread. Think it’s time to call it a night.
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There does seem to be a phenomenon where people will have accounts for months, not post any comments, then one day announce “I’ve had it with this site; I can’t believe somebody in this community wrote that.” If you’re so concerned about what the community is, try being the community. (Not directed at any particular individual.)
I saw this happen in some of the community discussions. It came off to me a bit like the people in FOSS projects using them, not contributing, and then demand the developers are bad people for not doing (feature/fix here) in (time here). Whether that’s valid comparison or not, I just rolled my eyes thinking “yeah, you’d be a big loss…”
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To be clear, I’m for it staying off the site as much as possible. Most of Lobsters and the better parts of HN are a mental break from all that crap for me. I’d rather it not even show up. Also, @Irene made a great point in the last discussion that keeping the articles focused on tech or non-political things in general avoids all this crap as a pleasant, side effect since there’s fewer opportunities for it to show up. I’d rather not even see it on front page. There’s other places where they can talk to folks about it. I’d even support banning such discussions on all sides as off-topic since it’s rare good comes out of them. Or at least the flamewar-level, personal stuff where we can still talk, say, NSA surveillance tech and legal implications. Or copyright/patent law w/ people’s opinions coming in. Those things haven’t been so bad.
And what led to this thread? People butting heads or getting irritated by a thread about politics. That figures…
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I focused a lot on the issues of social inclusiveness in this sub-thread, partly because of the parent comments, and also because it’s an issue that’s important to me.
On reflection, I think it’s worth tying it back into the larger conversation. To that end, I want to say that even if we were to only ever discuss technology, I think having an explicit downvote category for nonconstructive / hostile comments would benefit us. I think many of the points I’ve made about the exclusion of specific groups of people also apply in the context of being a welcoming community in general, and improving the general quality of discussion.
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I think we may have seen that keeping it off the site is not really possible in practice, as there’s a strong desire to address these kinds of questions in the community.
Additionaly, I think that simply by saying that topics of equality and fairness in the tech industry are off limits, we’ll end up excluding some folks that we might be better off hearing from. Perhaps I’m wrong there, but I’d prefer we reach consensus through a more organic process than a blanket moderator-imposed ban on that sort of discussion.
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I see where you’re going with that. It just hasn’t worked well in practice so far with more problems reported than benefits from what I can tell. There’s all kinds of sites and even private messaging to help people on politics. The unique thing about Lobsters for me was it was very focused on tech, little BS in general, few comments, and they had more signal on average. If I told someone about it, I found @friendlysock’s description in “What Lobsters Is” to reflect the better content:
https://lobste.rs/s/oackyq/lobsters_community_standards/comments/sybvqw#c_sybvqw
I say leave it for that sort of thing which is how it grew into what it was. The political stuff adds to noise but doesn’t seem to help hardly anyone unless they’re just not searching for information elsewhere. I mean, just Googling a bunch of things would probably get them more information. They’d need to, too, if subject really mattered for them. So, let’s leave it offsite.
Of course, I’m just pushing my preference. You’re pushing yours. I’m for whatever jcs decides or if a vote what the consensus is. I’ll just probably ignore them more often. ;)
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The unique thing about Lobsters for me was it was very focused on tech, little BS in general, few comments, and they had more signal on average.
This is what attracted me as well to the site. There are some good people in here, and I want to hear what they have to say, but after being here for a while I’ve came to the conclusion that it’s full of the same old SJW/PC-rhetoric like on HN and other sites.
Some people like to discuss tech, but there’s a strong militia that intervenes when they think you discuss tech the wrong way. Meaningless words like “snark” and “condescending”, and harmful concepts like “this is not constructive” are uttered as justification.
In effect I have stopped discussing anything.
I must say this is somewhat unexpected to me. Since there are relatively many OpenBSD developers here, and this website was created by an OpenBSD developer I expected (and desired) the atmosphere and discourse here to match the atmosphere on OpenBSD mailing lists, but it’s pretty much the antithesis of that.
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after being here for a while I’ve came to the conclusion that it’s full of the same old SJW/PC-rhetoric like on HN and other sites.
I’ve only been here a week or two and yeah, I agree that there’s too much anti-SJW/PC rhetoric. The comment thread about Coraline at Github was a garbage fire that needed a strong moderator to step in and say “cut that crap out” but no, they instead got upvoted and now use those upvotes as defensive armour in this thread.
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As an outsider, it appears to me that the OpenBSD community has a strong, filtering process on who will get in there and some way of indicating what’s expected. Whereas, Lobsters is more open-ended plus did the mass signup. There’s so many more kinds of people and interests here that you’re going to see really different behavior.
It’s interesting how well the site handles the meta-threads, though. I’ve been impressed or even proud of those Lobsters engaging constructively and carefully in this thread. I don’t see it happen that way in a lot of forums. There’s more fighting and mud slinging in those than anything.
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There are plenty of non-technical reasons for not wanting to talk shop with someone. Perhaps they have terrible personal hygiene and you can’t be in their presence without gagging. Or maybe at some company event they got drunk and made a pass at your wife and you can’t be in their presence without thinking about it. Or, more relevant to this conversation, they might agitate for politics that have a visceral negative effect on your life. It seems obvious to me that someone might find these scenarios deeply unpleasant and would seek to avoid them, and in such a case it would not be hypocritical for them to be fine with talking to someone who is religious.
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Or maybe at some company event they got drunk and made a pass at your wife and you can’t be in their presence without thinking about it
What a weird example to use. Surely if it bothers you this much (FYI people probably make a pass at your wife every week, 100% sober), just go talk to that person.
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I do agree with the rest of your post though. It’s hard to have a discussion about anything if you know the person is advocating against you.
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You still don’t know what kind of person I am. The commenting guidelines of Hacker News and Lobsters don’t allow me to show you what kind of person I am. How I say or do things, esp in high-stakes situations, defines me more than what words you read. The people I work with, especially the black folks, have a lot of respect for me and enjoy my company. Almost everyone fist bumps me or (women) big smile or hugs me even though I’m not popular per se. Infamous, too, for reasons I’ll say in a minute but I’ll avoid doing what bothers them when asked. Online in a low-noise forum, I’m just blunt, try to be informative, help people out, and call out BS with counter-arguments usually with citations. All I can do that matches what subset of my nature is allowed on such forums. I slip up and be more combative or low-info at times usually of high stress, low sleep, or just personal failure in self-control. Usually, though, I’m data driven and civil enough.
As you see in this thread and there, I won’t hide when called out. I put myself out there at great risk since I believe in being honest and standing up for your beliefs even when it hurts. So, you want a personal profile? In person, I’m a “nerd” that was ostracized & beat up in kindergarten since I could count without my fingers (a “freak”), that went to black school by 2nd grade, experienced constant discrimination + physical attacks due to skin color (including with concrete! it works, too!), ostracized by white rednecks since I was an intellectual non-hater vs football guru w/ “right” friends, ostracized by white liberals in some places since I was a devout Christian who loved or held to account everyone instead of targeting one group (white males = The Devil), an UU/agnostic later after a lot of reading of Old Testament too much to believe divine inspiration for its evils, a civil rights activist, help people locally (esp society’s outcasts or young workers), a pseudo-union rep defending employees from corrupt/abusive management (including against minorities) for years staying in management’s cross-hairs, gave research/advice on INFOSEC away for no money for years (do that here), and risked my life numerous times to protect strangers that I knew were good people w/ nobody else to help them with no reward expected or given (maybe just sincere appreciation). Plus, unlike imagined “offenses,” watching people suffer from real things makes me feel sick and enraged. I’d probably be richer or popular if I didn’t care.
The result of all this, much of which I didn’t ask for, is I have a blunt style w/ plain dress to filter superficial people, a twisted sense of humor that PTSD victims often develop for managing stress, quick to counterpoint any echo chamber where many people aren’t represented (like I lived in for years), avoid most unnecessary fights, don’t back down in necessary ones (perceive as necessary), and I’m great at “checking” with solid, improvised references thanks to years of self-defense at black school in many on one attacks where weakness = maybe beatdown. At work, I mostly just listen to people’s thoughts/gripes, inform them on interesting stuff, or especially make them laugh. I do the heavy lifting plus most unpopular tasks. Exhausted by the time I get home with sleeping problems on top of it. I think I do OK since most people that came from where I’m from (esp whites in black schools) are racists that mostly look after themselves. A mean, practical bunch. They get much worse in hostile environments with low sleep. I do still constantly listen to feedback from everyone to try to improve myself.
Now, did you guess any of this based on my Hacker News comments outside maybe race since I’ve brought up white guy in black school/company/city issues before? Or did you see me in a few threads represent some dissenting views personally or as devil’s advocate doing same against an echo chamber where you then projected all kinds of terrible judgments on my life as a whole? And while we’re at evaluating each other’s goodness, how many times have you risked imprisonment or stared at death trying to help strangers born in unfortunate circumstances that just needed a boost in life? I’m guessing you didn’t or rarely did based on your response to what little I say on moderated sites. Armchair quarterbacking or low-risk charity is the default of most people since it’s the safest and easiest to do. I’ll still overall reserving judgment in case you similarly sacrifice regularly at risk for others and simply slipped over-projecting.
Note: I’m not even mad in case anyone is wondering. This thread happening after a holiday week and long day at work is just a little more draining… maybe annoying. This one comment just has my focused attention since it opened with a personal attack. Although not easy, years of practice at de-escalation lets me keep it at “lets talk” instead of “lets fight”… most of the time… I’m happy to share what kind of shit produces a walking contradiction like myself with people who may see morality as too binary. Long, tough, complicated life I spent most of helping others with me being in bad circumstances for it esp after Great Recession with lots of layoffs. I’m still recovering from that and bad job I landed but still keep helping folks survive and learn with what resources I have. I learned a lot back from many, too, esp at work, on HN, and on Lobsters. Much appreciation to all for your contributions. I give back what I can.
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alynpost’s suggestion meets my needs and I withdraw my support for a new category.
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In that thread @nickpsecurity shared a lot of views I deeply, deeply disagree with. I also shared those views eight years ago. People aren’t all-good or all-bad, and our beliefs aren’t simple or static. Are those arguments stemmed in malice? Ignorance? Circumstance or experiences? I don’t know, but I do know that nick has made many contributions to our community in computing history, formal verification, and software engineering. He’s been nothing but respectful and insightful when I’ve talked with him.
Does that mean it’s okay to be hostile and malicious? Definitely not. Does that mean it’s okay to be ignorant or come from a different context? To me, at least, it is. And while I don’t know whether he’s being malicious or ignorant or hurt or what, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m willing to give everybody the benefit of the doubt.
We can’t hold everybody up to every standard. God knows I’d fail that, and I suspect everybody else here would, too. Being human is hard, and being a good human is infinitely harder.
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To me, that reinforces the fact that having an appropriate downvote label is the right thing. That way, we could downvote that particular comment with a clear reason, without otherwise penalizing or alienating them. In theory, this could even serve as constructive feedback, though I admit that’s a stretch.
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100% agree. I am in favor of a rude/snark/hostile/abuse tag as a means of shaping what we want our community to be. I’m not in favor of banning a person for saying something rude now and then (unless there’s clearly malicious intent and/or they are unwilling to stop being rude).
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If someone writes a shitty comment but you don’t see it, does it exist? In every thread about downvotes and mean people, there’s a similar comment that somebody is surprised at all the bad things going on. Maybe if we stop collecting and highlighting all the bad things fewer people will be exposed to them? It seems contradictory that people who don’t want to read bad comments are so eager to click on links to bad comments. Maybe you were right the first time, when you didn’t read the thread.
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I’m hesitant to support a ban here, as they clearly have contributed a bunch to the site too (4486 karma at time of writing). The particular comment linked, and some other sentiments expressed in that thread, are ones that I disagree strongly with on a personal level, but it’s unclear whether that alone is grounds for banning someone.
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What about his karma per story/comment? Is it low or something?
Let’s compare him to his direct peers.
5574, averaging 8.48 per story/comment 5232, averaging 3.90 per story/comment 5191, averaging 2.82 per story/comment 4882, averaging 2.86 per story/comment (moderator) 4762, averaging 5.44 per story/comment 4488, averaging 2.45 per story/comment <== 4165, averaging 6.35 per story/comment 3863, averaging 4.19 per story/comment 3585, averaging 3.55 per story/comment 3098, averaging 3.03 per story/commentNo, this isn’t data that speaks for itself. I don’t have a conclusion.
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I’m not willing to generalize “they made a comment I found unnecessarily inflammatory” to “the contributions of this user are tainted and should be purged from the site”. I don’t think you should either, but that’s your prerogative. If a user has repeated offensive behavior, then banning becomes something that can be discussed, but I don’t think there’s evidence of this (at least not that I’ve seen thus far). And suggesting that a ban is an appropriate reaction without extended examples to back that up seems unnecessarily provocative in and of itself.
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Well put.
I’d be thrilled if lobsters turned out to be a place where “the culture war” was more of a heated discussion.
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I wouldn’t. I already have every other forum to wage the culture war. If this is going to be a place where it’s waged, I’d like it if all culture war links and discussions were regulated to a specific thread that could be easily ignored or hidden.
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I genuinely fear the fragmentation into two camps who refuse to talk will (in years to come) cause a civil war.
Civil discussion with people whose Overton windows barely intersect ours might yet stop it.
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You seem to be under the misapprehension that I (and potentially others like me) don’t wish to engage at all in politics or in what we’re calling the “culture war”, because we’re scared or weak or obstinate or have any other set of emotional characteristics that make debate hard.
That’s not the case for me at all. I spend nearly all day every day in it, on the internet and in my personal life. I have plenty of avenues to converse with folks who agree and who disagree with me. Speaking hyperbole about a desire to stay focused on a certain subject leading to civil war is frankly hilarious. Politics are important but they are not the most important, and they don’t need to be involved in every single conversation.
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You seem to be under the misapprehension that I (and potentially others like me) don’t wish to engage at all in politics or in what we’re calling the “culture war”, because we’re scared or weak or obstinate or have any other set of emotional characteristics that make debate hard.
I apologize for coming off this way; not at all my intent.
My point (poorly made) was that the ‘no culture war here’ boat sailed long ago (we have hundreds of active users on each ‘side’ now and they aren’t about to ignore their differences to talk tech).
The best plausible outcome I can imagine is the discussion remaining civil (if heated).
Speaking hyperbole about a desire to stay focused on a certain subject leading to civil war is frankly hilarious.
Sorry, not really the right parent comment to attach that idea to. The concept stands, however; there is an increasing urban/rural political divide (in the USA, Australia and the UK, at least), and this sort of geographic political divide has been a precursor to civil war elsewhere.
It’d take a decade or more of the trend continuing (and it might reverse in the meantime), but I’d not be so quick to discount it.
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I appreciate your reply. I agree that the boat sailed a long time ago. My hope is that we can keep the discussion focused in as much of the site as possible, and limit the war to defined spaces. Fostering community (or even disunity) is all fine if it’s sequestered.
And I see now that I misunderstood your comment. I agree about the growing divide. I don’t see as grim a future as you, but I certainly fear for how the disparity in value-sets between the two “sides” grows and festers.
(I had a small worry about it earlier this year, but reading this Quora answer/article changed my mind pretty definitively. Even if the young-to-old doesn’t hold, the sheer number of deaths sustained pre-Civil War compared to now is startling and I can’t imagine a modern-day America (or Great Britain/Australia) waiting until it got that bad.)
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“Our forum shouldn’t tolerate posts that I believe denigrate activists fighting for the rights of minorities, therefore we should also ban Gophers who disagree with me on the value of generics.”
Terrible argument. Try engaging with the actual content of the post rather than its broad structural properties (disagreement).
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that I believe denigrate activists fighting for the rights of minorities
I’m an activist that fights for the rights of minorities. I constantly survey them. Huge chunks of minority members disagree with the political views or expectations of the group I called out. Your categorization makes no sense in light of that. Instead, proper categorization is I pointed out that they represented one group among many that was dictating how minorities would live or be treated despite a lot of disagreement by minority members outside their group. They also have no interest in what those minority members have to say. One commenter here even said there was a denigrating term for the latter where they were considered deluded or brainwashed by society instead of simply having different views.
So, I don’t think that’s denigrating “activists fighting for the rights of minorities” if they’re (a) harming the interests or wishes of a lot of minority members, (b) don’t care what they have to say or want a discussion, and (c) will actively censor them or go after their job if they disagreed since that’s the doctrine of those I called out. If anything, that looks like an uncompromising, political movement forcing its views on everyone with a sizeable chunk of liberal non-minorities or minority members agreeing with them but also plenty in disagreement. That means resistance is fighting political pushes, not minorities’ rights. I’m fighting for the rights of all groups that a few on left and right are trying to control, dominate, or punish for non-compliance with those few’s political views. Instead, each group, including within minorities, should have a say on their future with our laws or policies coming from consensuses or compromises from such discussions.
That isn’t what’s happening. The few are dictating the many including against their wishes.
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Sorry if I jumped the gun. Quite a few of these were about me then I projected onto a quick read of your comment. Then, let’s consider that one directed at whoever that was if they’re reading.
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I think that’s a disingenuous interpretation of the opinions expressed in this thread as a whole. If anything, the overall impression I’m getting is that we are all concerned about how to get this right such that it doesn’t cause downvoting and banning just because you disagree with someone. You’re right that the specific comment you replied to did bring up the question of whether the poster of the comment in question could be banned, but as you can see from the subthread below it, this is not something most people seem to agree with. As far as I can tell, your comment is at best unnecessarily inflammatory, if not outright trolling — what constructive discussion were you hoping to initiate with your post that couldn’t also be stated in a much less snarky and passive-aggressive way?
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what constructive discussion were you hoping to initiate with your post that couldn’t also be stated in a much less snarky and passive-aggressive way?
I believe this type of language police that you are trying to practice here is more harmful to humanity than nuclear weapons, global warming, Donald Trump, and even Google; and I will fight my whole life against all effort to police language and thought.
I speak the way I want to speak and absolutely nobody can tell me I speak the wrong way.
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I’m baffled that you feel as though any of that advocates policing what you’re allowed to think, or what you’re allowed to speak about. That was not at all my intention. I think there is real value to having a conversation be civil, and especially so if it’s with someone I disagree with, and that’s what I’ve been suggesting here. That the way in which you put your argument into words matters, and that you should take care to make it precise and to-the-point. Otherwise it all reduces to petty shit-posting back and forth, which serves no-one and resolves no disagreements.
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This post has everything
- Opinionated UX decisions
- Publicly trashing a main project maintainer for something happened 10+ years ago
- PS we’re hiring
- yet another git wrapper that pretends to be easier to use based on 1.
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I don’t think he’s trashing him. He says, “I would have done the same thing”. He’s just trying to figure out what happened. More
git annotatethangit blame(hey, by the way, why does git not have that alias? svn also hassvn praiseas another alias in this family.)Furthermore, the proliferation of git wrappers says something. Mercurial has a lot of users too (Facebook), and guess what, they don’t write wrappers for it. They do write aliases and extensions, using hg’s established customisation mechanisms, but they don’t feel like the entire UI is so terrible that it has to be completely replaced by a different UI. There’s a reason for this – we spend a lot of time thinking in hg about how to make things consistent with itself (in our defense, a lot of the modifications that Facebook does is to make hg more consistent with git). Every time a new feature comes in a lot of time is spent naming that feature, seeing what options it should take, seeing what other similar or related features already exist and what options they use. It’s not a perfect process, and there are some small historical mistakes, but at least we have a process.
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Has anyone made a Git equivalent of https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt ?
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Why does being “a tool” give it carte blanche to have bad UX? In fields outside of software tool ergonomics is a serious topic.
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In the tools I maintain at least, user experience is pretty far up there with one of the most important things to optimize for. (Among other things, like ease of maintenance.)
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This effect is greatly magnified if you use the tool for a long time.
Using a weirdly shaped hammer for 5 minutes is annoying. Using it for 8 hours is unbearable.
Same with digital tools.
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I said this elsewhere, but 60% of the industry has “numerous personality deficiencies”. Who hasn’t gotten into arguments with the Linuses or … those systemd people?
Why do they get a pass? Supposedly for their contributions. But this blog post listed a decent amount of contributions to Github as well. And according to the blog, the managers thought as much for their technical performance.
So many of us get a pass for social deficiencies. But here, apparently not. This could be a “cultural fit” thing, but based off of what I’ve heard about Github, I feel like some accommodations could be made if the technical contributions were good.
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Why do they get a pass?
Because they’ve actually made valuable contributions to the field, instead of making money via political parasitism. We wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) tolerate someone like Linus if he held some nouveau-middle management mumbo jumbo fluff job. Instead, he’s effectively created and managed a project with social utility at least in the tens of billions of dollars, and his rudeness, beyond being excusable, is actually extremely useful in discouraging time-sinks that would hurt Linux development if humoured.
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his rudeness, beyond being excusable, is actually extremely useful in discouraging time-sinks that would hurt Linux development if humoured
It also hurts Linux development when the likes of Alan Cox quit because Linus gets confused and decides to go on a half-cocked rant. And there is potentially people who would make good contributions but see what happened to the likes of Cox and decide they don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.
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Did he quit because of a rant? He seems to dispute this himself -
“I’m aware that ‘family reasons’ is usually management speak for ‘I think the boss is an asshole’ but I’d like to assure everyone that while I frequently think Linus is an asshole (and therefore very good as kernel dictator) I am departing quite genuinely for family reasons and not because I’ve fallen out with Linus or Intel or anyone else. Far from it I’ve had great fun working there.”
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He resigned as tty maintainer over the rant.
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But that’s a long way from “It also hurts Linux development when the likes of Alan Cox quit” given he spent the next 4 years still working on kernel development.
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So you don’t think him resigning as tty maintainer hurt Linux, at all? The work he did in other areas made up for it? And when greg k-h (begrudging) took it on, that didn’t detract at all from the work he did (or would have done) in other areas if he hadn’t needed to step into that role?
I’d argue it would have been better for Linux if it hadn’t happened, ergo it hurt Linux.
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I think Zimpenfish thoroughly refuted the Alan Cox example, and as for
And there is potentially people who would make good contributions
There are vastly more people who would make bad contributions, either because they’re low quality, useless, or incur excessive technical debt. Linux’s inaccessibility to immature coders and egotists discourages people you don’t want contributing more than those you do.
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Author clearly has numerous personality deficiencies
This is a highly inappropriate personal remark.
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Author clearly has numerous personality deficiencies just from reading between the lines of this post
Since the analysis was so easy for you, can you make some of your conclusions explicit? What are these numerous ‘personality deficiencies’ that she clearly deserved to be teated this way and then fired?
the most glaring of which is the fact that they can’t admit fault
But, can’t she? I mean, reportedly she received the criticism of “un-empathic communication style”, lack of code reviews, and the performance improvement plan, and was clearly working to address each of them. She wouldn’t have kept notes each week, have made herself available for doing code reviews, and pointed out the ways she was working to grow if she couldn’t admit fault.
Given her thoughts on pair programming (helping her identify any negative ingrained behavior she wouldn’t have otherwise noticed), I don’t think it’s fair to claim ‘they can’t admit fault’ is fair at all.
they can’t admit fault. Github was right to fire them
She has a gender, which comes with nifty pronouns including she and her.
Github was right to fire them, just based on reading this article alone.
Let’s slow down there for a second, maybe talk about this a bit? The values she quoted from the CEO and the goals of her team were clearly in conflict with the actual organizational behavior she experienced.
Unless you think that providing really sound feedback on the questioner that was exactly within her job description was a ‘personality deficiency’.
Can we talk about that, by the way? What the hell is a personality deficiency, and to what degree do they have to exist for an organization to treat someone this way and then fire them? I mean, I get that certain things might make someone more difficult to work with, but isn’t that the point of inclusivity? That we tolerate people’s quirks and where they are in life so that they can bring their voice and experience into the organization?
You know, experience like continuous harassment in the open source community.
because I have dealt with folks like the author bring toxic and destructive attitudes into the workplace
Please elaborate, as it was so clear to you.
Actually, I’m a bit confused by your stance I suppose. This post exists explicitly and solely to point out the things the author experienced that were in conflict with both what she was promised and what Github claims to represent. And she does that in this article, right?
She isn’t trying to get her job back (obviously she doesn’t want to return, and the fact that she is a senior engineer with a history of productive development, I think her clear desire to be away from Github counts as signal).
Does her “deserving to be fired” erase what she experienced, or are you claiming that everything she talks about having experienced either a) wasn’t actually a problem or b) didn’t really happen that way?
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She has a gender, which comes with nifty pronouns including “she” and “her.”
Are you seriously bringing that up as a point in your argument? You could’ve just as well used the argument that it’s more courteous to use genderless pronouns. Why put the form of an argument over its substance?
Anyway, if you need an example of her taking her views to places where they’re not really relevant, you need look no further than here.
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Not the person you are talking to but:
Are you seriously bringing that up as a point in your argument? You could’ve just as well used the argument that it’s more courteous to use genderless pronouns. Why put the form of an argument over its substance?
When you know someone’s gender identity it is polite to use their preferred pronouns. Personally, I wouldn’t have brought it up but my guess is that the author was deliberately using neutral pronouns because they don’t respect her gender identity but knew if they used male pronouns they’d get hell for it. But it can also just be a style of writing, so as said, I wouldn’t have brought it up.
Anyway, if you need an example of her taking her views to places where they’re not really relevant, you need look no further than here.
I, and she herself in https://medium.com/@coralineada/on-opalgate-2efd0fc1e0fd (ugh, I hate the trend of adding ‘gate’ to everything), acknowledge that the way she opened the issue (specifically the title) was overly inflammatory.
However, reaching out and letting people know that a member of their community is likely scaring people off from the project is a relevant view and needed in some cases. As said above, she did it in an overly inflammatory way but I don’t agree that it is not relevant.
After this whole thing I was: 1. Upset with how coraline handled starting it 2. Never ever going to touch opal (supported by the fact that the actual owner (NOT meh) implemented coraline’s Code of Conduct but now they are using ‘No Code of Conduct’).
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In point of fact, she does share that she has bipolar depression, which is a mental illness (though disorder is a more appropriate term).
Or maybe you meant it in a derogatory way, which, I’ll admit, would give the post more of a purpose. However, that’d also be a pretty shitty and mean-spirited, destructive thing to say.
Please clarify.
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Ehmke seems obsessed… It’s not healthy.
That’s not your call to make though, right? What is and isn’t helpful or healthy for her life? And even if it were, this thread certainly isn’t the place to talk about it. The article is clearly about Githhub having made promises and then breaking them.
Think about it this way: how many of Github’s actions would a recruiter told the author when she initially reached out, had she known?
Which is to say, if how Github acted were Github policy, then of course a recruiter would talk about it. It is the company policy of how they treat employees and Github should be proud of it, especially given how proud they are of their values.
Is it’s Github’s policy to be strict and unhelpful accommodating any mental health needs of their employees, including when family members die? Is their policy, “sorry, need you at your best regardless of your mental health provider’s advice, so you definitely need to go home.”
So really this article is about how Github acted, in light of how they lead the author to believe they would act, and how it runs contrary to their professed goals of inclusivity.
Which is all to say, why are so many people focusing on the often irrelevant supposed faults of the author, instead of the actual content and arguments she is providing? Especially for such a clearly structured and functional post. Say what you want about her points, they are clearly made and have well presented evidence and anecdote.
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the article is about a lot of things. the inability to have perspective on a situation and petty retaliation for small grievances seem the prominent ones to me as well, unfortunately.
I’ve seen my fair share of office politics, and it sounds like at the very least her manager could use some 360° review, but providing this kind of feedback publicly and after leaving a company is so obviously not the time nor the place to do so that I’m really unclear on what her motivations are aside from vengefully smearing a company.
certainly she doesn’t think this will cause any kind of change internally? if she does, that seems a bit unrealistic and grandiose. had she left of her own accord while sending sent this to a sympathetic person in HR she would have had a significantly greater impact and significantly less attention.
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https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/882636914981036032
“So I lost a bunch of money posting that story. I had to turn down the severance offer because it contained a hush clause.”
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not that much, and you don’t get it if you quit. most SWE make enough that it’s really not in their interests to take a month’s salary unless they have nothing but nice things to say about their time employed somewhere.
personally, I think the best exit one can make out of a shitty situation that they don’t want to see through getting fixed is to document it and quit w/o signing anything.
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This is what I’m betting: this gender identity politics stuff was all Ehmke talked about while they were at Github.
…That’s why she was hired.
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The core question seems to be, “Do a person’s personal views regarding certain minority groups always result in interpersonal issues?” If so, all people who are not fully tolerant must be fired (at least according to militant supporters of this ideology—see here for an example); and if they are not fired, some projects might risk alienating minority contributors, depending on the personal views of their existing contributors. If this is not true, however, then all existing projects go on smoothly regardless of their contributors’ views about each others’ member groups.
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That’s not your call to make though, right?
What does that even mean?
If somebody was injecting heroin into his bloodstream, am I allowed to comment that it is unhealthy? Or is it not “my call to make’?
You can not divorce the fact that Caroline xirself has always pushed identity politics and been extremely toxic to every person that doesn’t kowtow to schmer ideological agenda from the fact that now paxer is complaining about supposed ‘injustice’ that occurred during xomer time at github, and the fact that it is likely that it is not injustice at all, but that the people at github didn’t want to completely kowtow to all of xober demands.
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Whether or not someone is an asshole, it’s rude to deliberately misgender them. Caroline apparently prefers “she/her” pronouns, and you know this. So why are you using the wrong pronouns?
If your problem is with her actions, then her gender doesn’t matter. So why not be polite? But the pronouns in your comment make it read to me like your problem is in fact with her gender identity. And if that’s the case, then you’re doing a good job of making her case for codes of conduct, so that folks don’t have to deal with being randomly attacked for who they are.
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Online vigilantism can certainly have negative effects, but in a country like the United States, which often refuses to prosecute criminals when they are government employees, it is often the only option available.
I’ve also seen examples of vigilantism that have been created by mainstream media. Take the “pizzagate” conspiracy, which most people probably thought had something to do with a pizza restaurant. It turns out that’s only because that’s how the media represented it in the news. I decided to spend an afternoon researching it in depth and discovered that the term has almost nothing to do with restaurants, but instead refers to a code word found in emails leaked by Wikileaks. None of that is mentioned in most MSM articles about the conspiracy.
Fast-forward, and we see news stories about a vigilante walking into that pizza restaurant with a gun, and I think we have mostly the MSM, who decided to focus exclusively on a pizza restaurant while ignoring pretty much 98% of what the conspiracy is about, to thank for it.
Actually, it was Alex Jones and colleagues who made up that insane story and pushed it on naive and gullible people. http://thehill.com/homenews/325761-infowars-alex-jones-apologizes-for-pushing-pizzagate-conspiracy-theory
So, first, thanks for that link, as it’s a perfect example of what I was saying. The entire thing is focused on the “Comet Ping Pong” restaurant, which is again, about 1% of what the conspiracy is actually about.
Alex Jones is not the origin of the conspiracy, which predates him by probably many years, so if he also misrepresented it, that’s on him.
I’ll check out the linked apology video, but here’s also a recent interview from the Joe Rogan show where Joe interviews Alex about pizzagate among various other topics, and in that interview Alex is very clear on this point I’m making, that the conspiracy has little to do with the restaurant (although yes, it is one of the things mentioned in some of the emails).
Alex Jones is a con and people who take him seriously need help. When he is in trouble, he calls his work “performance art”. There is no pizzagate conspiracy, just a money raising hoax for people who like to be frightened.
If he’s a con, he’s far less of a con than the MSM, and unlike the MSM he isn’t responsible for generating fraudulent wars that have destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives. EDIT: I take that back. Looks like he might soon be.
He’s also been right more often than the MSM has been, and as your apology video link demonstrates, he actually apologizes when he screws up, unlike the MSM. The MSM issues token apologies for little things, but for launching this country into a bunch of illegitimate wars? Nope.
People who prefer style over substance need serious help.
Well, the fact that information about a conspiracy exists, is indisputable. That you have no idea what said information is, appears to also be the case.
I support precise use of language, but I also support common sense reading comprehension. “There is no conspiracy” usually means “Conspiracy, which exists, has no relationship with reality”. Your literal interpretation is unhelpful.
However you interpret that sentence, it’s unfounded. To comment on something you need to be informed first.
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Good man.
There are two different things being talked about here:
#1 is easily proven, simply by searching online for pizzagate material. This isn’t difficult, you just avoid everything MSM. Why avoid everything MSM? Well because if any of a number of conspiracy theories are true (e.g. the factually-proven-beyond-all-reasonable-doubt “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy), then you’ll realize that the MSM is the government’s mouthpiece, pretending to represent a diversity of viewpoints when in fact its agenda is to represent a single viewpoint.
So. If you’re good about avoiding MSM, you’ll stumble upon this wiki, where you can explore what the topic is actually about. There you will eventually discover, by following various links, that not only does “pizzagate” have little to do with a pizza restaurant, but in fact it even has little to do with the term’s origin (Podesta’s leaked emails). Rather, it is a catch-all term for exactly what you termed “a government conspiracy exists to cover for a massive child sexual abuse ring”.
If you aren’t turned away by this point by your own mental conditioning and brainwashing, you might continue exploring the subject further, finding article after article after article containing evidence supporting various aspects of the theory, and at some point you’ll remember that it’s not at all surprising to find powerful people in powerful organizations accused and proven guilty of molesting children (cough Catholic Church cough).
Now I am not saying #2 is true, but I am saying that you have been mislead about what pizzagate is (click the links and verify for yourself), and that there is certainly plenty of evidence to consider not all but perhaps some aspects of the narrative to be true.
Safe travels to you in exploring the world of conspiracy theories, I’ve written a handy guide for keeping yourself sane while doing it.
So let’s see if I got this right. 9/11 was an inside job, and the “MSM” is covering it up, hence “pizzagate” is also covered up. Although “pizzagate” might be false.
Troll harder @apy!
I’m dismayed that you think I’m a sock puppet. I would think the lack of spelling errors should make it obvious I’m not @apy. Also, trolling?
Invited to Lobsters by @apy with 3 comments in your life, two of which are in this thread. Yeah, I think you’re either a sock puppet or a stooge.
I’m not @apy, although I did once work with him IRL. You seem pretty conspirational… But be that as it may,. I’m in all honesty interested in your line of reasoning. Especially these quotes; “[Since some] conspiracy theories are true (e.g. the factually-proven-beyond-all-reasonable-doubt “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy), then you’ll realize that the MSM is the government’s mouthpiece” and “Now I am not saying [pizzagate] is true, but I am saying that you have been mislead about what pizzagate is” So if this is true (the Government controls mass media), how come you can find the Truth on the internet? Seems to me the Govenment is doing a pretty good job on controlling e.g. Google.
How do you ask me such dumb questions? Honestly?
This is why I downvote you as trolling, because I can think of no other explanation.
Where on Earth did you get the idea that MSM includes the entire Internet?
And what on Earth does that have to do with the actual content that I’ve linked to?
Troll harder!
I honestly don’t think the question is dumb. I might be dumb, but I don’t understand your mental model of how the world works. Like if the government controls the “MSM”, how come it can’t control Google/Youtube the same way? Or the entire internet, for that matter? I mean, if you can pull off a false flag 9/11, getting some videos taken down from Youtube should be a piece of cake?
You know, those are much better questions, and they actually do have very good answers (although if you think videos aren’t taken down from YT… you haven’t been paying attention), but, I unfortunately have spent more than enough energy answering people’s questions here and pointing them down roads that they are free to explore on their own.
If I had all the time in the world I would gladly answer. But the answer is (a) complicated, (b) I don’t have all of it, and (c) I have to run. Sorry.
Adding this video as well, which I just came across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP1MtaSIePk
Could you give me 5 factual things he’s been right about that the MSM hasn’t?
(I take it we’re just ignoring his snake oil and pills business that he profits from?)
Yeah, 9/11 being an inside job is the one that stands out most to me and puts him above most other American journalists.
I honestly don’t watch him enough to come up with a longer comparison list than that. But being right on 9/11 goes a very long way.