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Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

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Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#71

Post by pavel_lishin »

archagon wrote: post #61
nether wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a taste of MeFi politics, here's a fun one: http://www.metafilter.com/151267/Wheres-My-Cut-On-Unpaid-Emo...

I do in fact love those kinds of MeFi threads, and I credit them with broadening my understanding of the world and helping me become a better feminist. I think many HN users wouldn't feel comfortable in that sort of discussion, however.

HN always felt like a bit of the agora, with the occasional thunderbolt from dang to shut down flagrant shitposting; MeFi seems more civil. People seem more caring there.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#72

Post by Nullabillity »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #66
cowpatcallr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is ridiculous. You think that someone who wants to play WoW in a library is of the same importance as someone finishing a highschool assignment in the library because their parents can't afford a computer at home? Get real. How about going back to library of alexander and letting the commoners play dice games in it. > Entertainment is one of the basic human needs. Ok, if you believe that, then fine. But where is…

No, not WoW. You can leave WoW whenever you want and come back later. It also consumes huge amounts of time, so it's not at all the same. Dota / LoL / CSgo matches last an hour and have severe penalties for leaving, and they are very popular at internet cafes so I wouldn't be surprised if that was what's being played. Let's be honest: that highschooler will almost certainly spend as much or more time on Facebook than…

> No, not WoW. You can leave WoW whenever you want and come back later. It also consumes huge amounts of time, so it's not at all the same.

> Dota / LoL / CSgo matches last an hour and have severe penalties for leaving, and they are very popular at internet cafes so I wouldn't be surprised if that was what's being played.

Perhaps not the most fair comparison, as soon as you get into even casual raiding/mythic+ dungeons.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#73

Post by pavel_lishin »

vikasg wrote: post #10
jordigh wrote: post #6

> the community blog Metafilter, which is like the civilized version of Reddit. Wait, what? That sounds wonderful, I'm signing up.

While MeFi has its own blind spots, it is definitely one of the nicest communities online because of: (1) $5 fee to sign up. (2) It doesn't believe in absolute "free speech" like Reddit or HN. The moderators will tell you to cut it out.

> It doesn't believe in absolute "free speech" like Reddit or HN. The moderators will tell you to cut it out.

HN absolutely moderates certain speech, and every subreddit is different - I'm a mod on one, and I absolutely do not hesitate to swing the hammer when necessary.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#75

Post by kome »

Chaebixi wrote: post #29
ddellacosta wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has it gone downhill?

What was once an open place is now very, very constrained. The acceptable range of viewpoints has ratcheted into a narrower and narrower consensus, to the point where the discussions are boring and you have to be careful to not make them interesting. The viewpoint racheting alienated a lot of people from the site who used to feel like they were part of the community.

So true! Controversial topics and confrontation are avoided at all costs. So from one side metafilter it is very civil and quiet, but from the other side is quite uninspired and dull.

Metafilter is like the American suburbs of the internet. Nice and tidy, but boring.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#76

Post by wwweston »

arkitaip wrote: post #39
sien wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very civil. But that's because it's an echo chamber where everyone must have the same views. The parent is dead right. MeFi was interesting was then was civil disagreement. Everyone piling on and 'favouriting' how bad Conservatives | Trump | Business | Capitalism | Libertarians | Rupert Murdoch are is very dull. It's still good for some funny cat pictures and stuff though. Oh, and just for HN readers, MeFi thes…

Mefi has always been to the left, everyone knows it. Just because it doesn't align your your politics doesn't make it bad. Probably does you good to get out of your own bubble.

It's always been to the left, which has suited me pretty well, better than some of the glibertarian and technoutopian edges of HN. But I think the moderation had a lighter hand and less of a political slant in the past. And it used to be easier to make an argument against the grain and get it engaged on its merits (on top of the usual clever mockery and insults).

It's not as if there isn't anything good to be gleaned from the site, so I'm not likely to flame out (though I do find every moderated comment provides a nice motivation to take a self-imposed break from the site and find other places to speak my mind). And it's not as if the past was a golden age of nothing but enlightened philosophers arguing betwixt hilarious quonsar shenanigans. Nor is it the case that I always feel like I'm fighting a battle and most of my comments disappear. There's plenty of my comments that are also decorated with many favorites, so I guess you win some you lose some.

But sometime in the last 3-4 years (out of the 15-ish that I've been frequenting it), the comment deletion started happening more often with rationales that looked thin to skewed to me. Along with that I think I've sensed a change in the gestalt of the site. And when stuff like the Google Memo and subsequent firing comes up, I know that even if I think the Metafilter gestalt is wrong about a handful of things among other opinions that I agree with, and I think can articulate a good thoughtful case that might be worth considering.... I know it's not a good idea to put in the time there. And my guess from the Metatalk discussions I've monitored and other interactions on with the site, Josh and the current mods largely consider that a win, believing that Metafilter is a better place without pushback on some opinions/politics/ideals, even if it's expressed politely and thoughtfully.

That's within the rights of any online publication or community, of course. Not every space has to be purely open-speech or even polite speech with a committed culture of critical review, editorial slant is and probably will inescapably be a thing no matter who you are. But I also think it's reasonable to say that it's changed notably in that regard.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#77

Post by acdha »

arkitaip wrote: post #41
acdha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the second person I've heard make that claim but I don't think it's anywhere near as accepted as you're presenting it. I personally don't see a quality hit so much as the general decline in all sites which aren't Facebook and when Google chose to cut their ad revenue by ~40% which forced them to lay off moderators: https://matt.haughey.com/on-the-future-of-metafilter-941d15e...

There has been no decline in quality and blaming cortex is utter bullshit. My guess is that the haters never liked mefi in the first place and are abusing the change in management to attack the site.

I think it's more likely that we're seeing the average drift upwards and a non-trivial percentage of the community is less involved than they were in the earlier days of the web, so the active community isn't as varied as it used to be.

The other big thing which is hard to under-estimate is how much the web has homogenized over the years. MetaFilter was where you went to find someone's personal blog, collection of cat scans, etc. and people just don't do that the way they used to: instead of blogs that largely happens on Facebook or Instagram (and it's private), individuals are competing with for-profit content mills and SEO spammers, etc.

HN has followed a similar arc – you used to see more personal tech blogs and open source but now that's competing for attention with major companies paying staff to blog as a recruiting effort. Nothing wrong with that but it feels rather different and it changes the values of aggregator sites.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#78

Post by kwindla »

mschaef wrote: post #67
packetslave wrote: post #12

As an aside, Jessamyn is also the daughter of Tom West (of Data General and "Soul of a New Machine" fame).

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to get around to reading it, but that book's an absolute classic if you like the story of how things are built. A few others: * Kerry Nietz - FoxTales (FoxPro, mostly pre-Microsoft) * Mary Walton - Car: A Drama of the American Workplace * Chase Morsey Jr. - The Man Who Saved the V8 (Ford's flathead V8) * Dealers of Lightning (Xerox PARC) Related to that last, there's also a gr…

Also Andy Hertzfeld - Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made.

Many of the stories in that book are here, as well: https://www.folklore.org/

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#79

Post by DashRattlesnake »

gumboshoes wrote: post #52
deepspace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its just me, but back in the day (early 2000s) we used to have raucous (but still very civil) discussions about controversial topics, with little or no moderator interference. Shortly after cortex joined, submissions and comments which did not conform to a very narrow set of socio-political viewpoints started getting censored, and these days there is pretty much no room for controversial content. Sure, I can se…

To put it another way, the mods are modding. They're modding out reposts. Repetitiveness. Copypasta. The same-old rehashes. Trolls. Vitriol. Attacks on other users. Rule violations. Pile-ons. That's what makes it great and better than most of Reddit on any given day. That modding affects everyone. I had a comment deleted just last week: I was too chatty on an Ask Metafilter response and bloop, away it went.

> They're modding out reposts. Repetitiveness. Copypasta. The same-old rehashes. Trolls. Vitriol. Attacks on other users. Rule violations. Pile-ons.

Eh, I don't think that's really a fair characterization. Yeah, sure, they delete dups, etc., but no one's complaining about that. The mods also delete stuff from an ever-increasing (but ill-defined) list of topics that "Metafilter doesn't do well," which basically means anything that could upset the cool kids or other favored groups.

There's a lot of hype about Metafilter's famed moderation, but all it's really done has caused the site to reach a different failure mode. Rather than discussion, you get a bunch of commenting that's bracketed by passive aggressiveness and anxiety, carefully moderated into an illusion of civility.

Re: Jessamyn West, Technology Lady (2015)

#80

Post by DashRattlesnake »

kome wrote: post #75
Chaebixi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was once an open place is now very, very constrained. The acceptable range of viewpoints has ratcheted into a narrower and narrower consensus, to the point where the discussions are boring and you have to be careful to not make them interesting. The viewpoint racheting alienated a lot of people from the site who used to feel like they were part of the community.

So true! Controversial topics and confrontation are avoided at all costs. So from one side metafilter it is very civil and quiet, but from the other side is quite uninspired and dull. Metafilter is like the American suburbs of the internet. Nice and tidy, but boring.

> Metafilter is like the American suburbs of the internet. Nice and tidy, but boring.

And full of anxiety and dysfunction masquerading as something else.

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