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The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

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Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#81

Post by itsnotlupus »

rodgerd wrote: post #77
kiba wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing deleted comments on /r/askhistorians though. Community is so big that they probably get new users all the time that they don't know the rule.

> they don't know the rule. I doubt it. I've seen reddit mods complain about being harassed across multiple social media sites, sent death threats and so on, not least by people professing to be affronted by their offenses against "free speech". I would be very surprised if a goodly number of deleted comments aren't people deliberately posting off-topic.

There are ways to look at a number of deleted comments in those threads, and very few if any seem to be deliberate attempts at community sabotage.

On the contrary, most end up being made by people feeling compelled to share their opinion, or some personal anecdote in reaction to a question, which would be completely fine in almost every other subreddit.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#82

Post by jonahx »

chongli wrote: post #44
Mz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. Many people, even people running discussion forums with years of experience, simply do not know how to fix it and often believe it cannot be fixed. It is also common for them to "put out the fire with gasoline." On an email list, I used to say "fighting against the fighting is…

I think half of the reason why HN has succeeded to a degree has to do with the niche subject matter. This approach doesn't work on more general forums such as the large subreddits or twitter.

I agree with your conclusion, but the common thread I see is more the type of person than the subject matter. I don't mean that HN's audience is homogenous across some simple metric, but even among its vastly different members I see a shared respect of logical reasoning and evidence-based argument. That, and just generally smart people, are the hallmarks of the culture here for me (at least the positive part of it).

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#83

Post by Natanael_L »

coldtea wrote: post #57
mwsherman wrote: post #2

A little meta-civility goes a long way, too. If one is inclined to call people jerks, bozos and assholes, perhaps one is not understanding people very well. It’s much more effective to work learn about people, their predilections, biases and experiences. No one is a “checkbox” asshole. Much better to focus on specific behaviors, instead of writing off a person as a type. When I see a company describe its “no assholes…

> A little meta-civility goes a long way, too. Yes, but you can easily blow up the stack with all this recursion, since the real world doesn't have TCO. > If one is inclined to call people jerks, bozos and assholes, perhaps one is not understanding people very well. Well, some people legitimately and truly are "jerks, bozos and assholes" though, some even embrace the jerk ethos openly. If you're addressing them, it's…

but maybe changing them is not the author's goal, but rather routing around them.

Something about your phrasing made me think of this;

https://xkcd.com/810/

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#84

Post by kstenerud »

It's not actually "vanishing" civility. Life has always been that way among those who live above subsistence levels. Court life in the middle ages is rife with examples. It's important to realize that these "jerks", "bozos", and "assholes" are all engaged in political maneuvering. They're playing an entirely different game than you, and the only way to stop them is to remove possible political reward for such actions, or at least raise the risks so high as to not be worth the effort to begin with.

HN has largely been successful in this endeavor through a mix of technology and culture. You can't get rid of it entirely, but you can certainly subdue it.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#85

Post by pavel_lishin »

mwsherman wrote: post #2

A little meta-civility goes a long way, too. If one is inclined to call people jerks, bozos and assholes, perhaps one is not understanding people very well. It’s much more effective to work learn about people, their predilections, biases and experiences. No one is a “checkbox” asshole. Much better to focus on specific behaviors, instead of writing off a person as a type. When I see a company describe its “no assholes…

> No one is a “checkbox” asshole.

With all due respect, this is spoken like someone who's never moderated a forum.

True, an actual human being, with meat and parents and bills is probably not a checkbox asshole - but online, we almost never deal with that person, aside from the people you know in meatspace on Facebook. I am not an actual human being to you, and vice versa, and can't be unless we take a very long time to actually get to know each other as such.

On the internet, we are more two dimensional, because we present as such, and some people get their kicks out of exposing their asshole nature to others. There is no fixing this, at least not on any sort of scale, which does not work when you're moderating. You'd have to fix them as an actual person, and taking a human being on as a project is unfair to everyone else who doesn't get their kicks by doing things "for the lulz".

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#86

Post by overgard »

rsp1984 wrote: post #16

Straight to the point. My colleague clearly and succinctly explained why an inappropriate behavior occurred and what motivated him to respond. If this happens visibly to the team it is likely that the person behind the behavior will take this as an attack, especially if he/she is a true asshole. Not good for long-term working climate. Also, it has a flavor of "white-knighting" oneself if it's done in front of the tea…

I think that makes sense if you're in a position of authority over the person (manager, etc.); but if you're peers and the other person was acting in a public venue, I view this as self-policing. Frankly, no manager can do it all on their own, the entire team has to set the culture.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#87

Post by tn13 »

tdkl wrote: post #25
tn13 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from India. The a part of transgender community often known as Hijras come to public places and demand money. Often they touch you while demanding money else they will simply lift their clothes to expose their genitals. Often to avoid that touch you end up giving them money. The technique was further refined by beggar community who will deliberately be filthy and to avoid their touch you will end up paying the m…

>I think assholes benefit from the fear of rest of the people to be civil. Just see the Europe.

Such comments are heavily downvoted here.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#88

Post by overgard »

I used to work with this guy that was a prick to almost epic levels. We'll call him "Richard", because he was a Dick. (Not his real name of course)

Most assholes are subtle, but somehow this guy kept his job despite being, basically, a monster.

A few of the things he did:

- Once, he kicked over a trashcan and stormed out for the rest of the day because I checked in a visual effect he didn't like (.. even though he approved the code review and it was trivial to disable).

- Another time, he very authoritatively started inventing policy around branching. (Keep in mind, he was nobodies boss). When one of the senior engineers politely asked him if that was from our boss, or just something he wanted us to do, he incoherently started shouting and, once again, stormed out.

- Every scrum, he would pounce on even the smallest misstatement to "correct" people (even if they weren't wrong). When it came to be his turn to give an update, he would condescendingly give the most terse eye-roll of an answer he possibly could, as if the entire thing was beneath him.

- At a certain point, he just stopped showing up regularly. He'd maybe appear two out of five days of the week. Which meant three-out-of-five workdays were great! Despite this, he would get upset about not being consulted on decisions by people that actually did work daily... even though he wasn't there.

- When he did show up, for the last six months or so he was employed there, instead of working on our product, he would take his laptop, co-opt the empty front-desk, and work on his own startup. (Luckily, he would still take the time to tell us the work the rest of us were doing was not to his liking).

- One time, when me and my boss were bouncing some light-hearted banter back in forth, he immediately jumped in and started attacking my boss, which turned into a shouting match between them and he ended up storming out early... again. (notice a pattern here?)

- Once, we had to pack our desks and move around some office furniture for some office construction. Being that Richard was a Dick, he decided not to show up for this, so his colleagues had to pack his desk for him. After three hours of heavy lifting, our boss decided to take us out for lunch. ... And suddenly, Dick shows up. Team player.

That's actually the tip of the iceberg with this guy. I never thought much of the no-assholes-rule before (though I was familiar with it), but now I'm pretty much adamant that I won't work with people who think being an asshole is ok, even if it just comes to tolerating misbehaviour.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#89

Post by ank_the_elder »

mjevans wrote: post #5

I want to inline a linked reference and provide a summary as a form of protecting the reference against link-rot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_No_Asshole_Rule Their unpleasant behaviours were catalogued by Sutton as The Dirty Dozen: (Robert Cipriano (2011), "No Jerks Allowed in This Department", Facilitating a Collegial Department in Higher Education, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 978-1-118-10764-5) Insults Violatio…

But surely threats and sarcasm are not at the same level...?

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#90

Post by ank_the_elder »

Mendenhall wrote: post #50

Moderators just need a 1 click button that bans the account and deletes all their posts. 1 moderator could get rid of hundreds of accounts an hour. I am a huge fan of the banhammer with no warnings. Rules should be posted and those not following get banned. No one has time for that nonsense IMO.

And what do we do when the moderator uses that button to ban someone purely for his or her opinions being on the wrong side of the political spectrum, or unpalatable to the moderator?
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