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Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

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Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#351

Post by dleslie »

eropple wrote: post #330
dleslie wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it's that simple. Many people have some emotional stake in the acceptance and quality of their efforts; telling them that the code they wrote won't be accepted because X, Y, and Z will almost certainly rub many the wrong way. And what of questions about their process? I've seen LKML questions along the lines of, "This code produces many warnings when compiled; did you even compile it?" It's a valid qu…

Asking if somebody compiled the code is kind of shitty, yeah. Assume good faith. But even that is nowhere near the kind of direct and point-to-point insults that some folks, particularly Linus, have gone to on occasion. I think that you are arguing apples and apple pies.

Assume good faith, certainly; but when compiling the code shows strong evidence that the assumption was incorrect...

Questions of process are made valid when it becomes clear there may be a flaw in the process which was applied. Asking them if they compiled the code is warranted, is it not?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#352

Post by 13years »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #340
mike22223333 wrote: post #317

I'm probably a person with not so great social skills. I'm a person of color. I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture. All of a sudden this movement to add "diversity" and other crap is just not right. I agree there is some casual racism/racism for the sake of racism in the community, but I am personally not even bothered and it has never affected me (I ignored them and they stopped and so…

>I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture. All the SJW issues are like that, a group of people who feel they need to defend someone else. Like these people have solved all their own problems and can move on to "helping" everyone else. I'm not going to get too fired up about it. But... I really cringe when I read "We're trying to change the predominately white face of programming" . But, the…

The problem is this entire ideology is paradox.

Improving inclusivity through exclusivity filters.

Being accepting of everyone by closely monitoring all parameters of all individuals to determine if they should be accepted.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#353

Post by thetrumanshow »

taeric wrote: post #341
JohnBooty wrote: post #323

> I'm still not exactly the most empathetic person. > But I'm hoping I can at least 'fake it until I > make it'. This is great! If you ask me, "faking it" is really just as good as "actually" being a more helpful or empathetic person. What do you think "actually" being a helpful or empathetic person is like? It's basically just continually expending the effort to be helpful and empathetic. Let's say my brother calls…

Depends entirely on how good you are at faking it. That is, if it can be easily seen that you are faking; then no, it is not as good. Not even close. Your brother scenario is silly. If someone calls and I don't want to help, but can. I'll be honest and make my own choice. If they ask if this is what I'd truly like to be doing, I'll always say no. However, in most cases, I don't actually care what I'm doing. Could I c…

On the far end of the scale, if you always answer, "Would you like to help us carry this heavy stuff down these stairs?" with "No, in fact I would loathe that, but I will comply in order to maintain the social bonds that are necessary to sustain my chemically-driven life functions for the long term."... then that will be problematic for your relationships.

I'm like you, I say yes often, and I'm honest about how excited I am to do it... but it comes at a social cost.

Sometimes its better to fake it and be nice, even when you're bad at faking it.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#354

Post by scrollaway »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #332
scrollaway wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've generally been against CoC in less-than-huge projects for practical reasons (as a founder and leader of several communities, both in FOSS and outside of software, I have my informed opinion on what works to maintain good community health). I can attest that the people GP refers to exist, but it's more complicated than that. Codes of Conduct are established sometimes without a problem actually existing in the com…

>Codes of Conduct are established sometimes without a problem actually existing in the community in question I don't understand the word sometimes . I have yet to be shown an example where a woman, trans person, person of color, Muslim, or someone on whatever the oppression index is today was discriminated against when pushing code to a project. No one knows what you are unless you tell them - and it's always been 10…

> [...] was discriminated against when pushing code to a project. No one knows what you are unless you tell them - and it's always been 100% irrelevant to the topic of coding.

Well, we're not just talking about commit logs. Projects usually need discussion, and depending on the environment, that might be one where real names, professions, photos and various other bits of real life seep into (or are a pillar of). In those environments, discrimination can 100% be present.

Saying "it's just code" dances around the issue IMO.

> while flat out saying things like...

That is also what I refer to in my post above. It's noise, not signal.

> Because that was IMMEDIATELY what actually happened.

You clearly have an example in mind. I don't. Keyword is once again sometimes.

"Code of Conducts" are the software community rediscovering what we used to call "community guidelines" or "forum rules" in other fields. They're not necessarily oppressive or progressive. They're not necessarily helpful. And they're often unnecessary.

They don't give enough credit to the positive message that "be good to each other" sends. They give far too much credit to bigots by suggesting that merely because "the rules say not to be a bigot", they won't be.

Until I left, I ran a ~30k user strong gaming chat community. We still don't have "community guidelines", and the prevailing rule is "don't be a jerk". Very few people have been banned. (It is getting right about the correct size to introduce community guidelines, though)

The health of a community is primarily determined by how it's moderated. If you allow bigots to be part of it, bigotry will run rampant. If you allow personal attacks to fly freely, it'll be a tense environment. If you start silencing any form of criticism, it'll turn into an extremist echo chamber.

Either way, CoC documents tend to be just talk. Only recently, I tried to contribute to a project, only to be completely ignored and shut down without any discussion because the project owner didn't like my feature proposal. When I pointed out the owner's attitude didn't match what he promoted in the code of conduct he himself had added to the project, I was ignored.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#355

Post by whiddershins »

eropple wrote: post #101
notyourday wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever fire people who are nice and really trying?

The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising. I have fired "nice and really trying" people. Because they were decent people, I have also then recommended them to my personal network for positions that are better suited to their skills (and more than once have they gone on to success at a friend's company), because hiring somebody who can't do the job is manag…

I would like to point out: you just insulted a number of people’s emotional intelligence, while talking about how important it is to be nice.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#356

Post by CJefferson »

beaconstudios wrote: post #158
evanspa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel it is "the natural tendency" to make minorities feel less welcome? My natural tendency -- and anecdotally, pretty much everyone I know -- is to treat people well regardless of their race; to treat people the way you'd want to be treated.

the question of the status quo is itself politicised. One side (progressive sphere) says people who don't belong to the normed group (cis-white-hetero-male in US/EUR) are inherently treated worse, either consciously or unconsciously (bias), and conscious effort has to be made to overcome this. Another (classical liberal sphere) says that exclusionary behaviour are the exception and most people abide by the golden rul…

Your bringing up the "golden rule" is interesting, as I there are various situations where i have felt discriminated against and in retrospect the golden rule was to blame.

If I'm in a room full of (in my case) people much posher than me, and they all treat everyone in the room as they wish to be treated, that can easily create an oppressive atmosphere. Also, if I try treating them as I wish to be treated, and can easily be seen as a troublemaker.

Now I try to treat people as they wish to be treated (within reason).

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#358

Post by gambler »

notacoward wrote: post #275
evanspa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel it is "the natural tendency" to make minorities feel less welcome? My natural tendency -- and anecdotally, pretty much everyone I know -- is to treat people well regardless of their race; to treat people the way you'd want to be treated.

"Natural tendency" does not mean intention. Few people intend to make minorities feel less welcome, but many more adhere to habits and cultural norms which have that effect. Here's an example from right here a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18061725 Another example: where I work, I recently took someone to task for saying "your shit is broken" in a very public thread. It's a phrase I've seen…

I'm sure turning public forums into language/tone correctness minefields does miracles to encourage participation from people who aren't native language speakers and aren't keenly aware of nuances western socio-political background. Miracles.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#359

Post by GW150914 »

jnurmine wrote: post #327
GW150914 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would cost you nothing to replace your last line with, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we’re seeing and we won’t merge it until you fix it. I understand your passion, but I won’t sacrifice the quality of this project for that. Fix the code so that it no longer invokes undefined behavior and we’ll review it, otherwise we have nothing more to talk about.” The end. No need to call it crap, no need to burn a bridge.

But... what you wrote means exactly the same thing, with way more words. The code was obviously bad enough to not get accepted and should be fixed. What is so bad in saying it like it is instead of dressing things up with layers of words? Even with that long reply everyone will understand the intent behind it. Maybe it is a cultural thing in the end. North American culture is very different from, say, Finnish culture…

I’m somewhat familiar with Finnish culture, and to be honest I sort of wish the world worked that way. The Finnish version of the example conversation could have just been:

Merge my code! It’s great!

No.

Aaaand scene.

Hell, that “no” could even have been a silent stare, or a grunt and it would have worked. Sadly much of the World finds that crosses the line fopekm taciturn and direct, into either rudeness or lack of communication. Dressing things up with layers of words, while tedious, is also the basic way many cultures keep arguments from turning into murders. North America (and the UK and some other parts) probably do take it a bit far. Not as far as Japan, but still, too far.

All of which is to say, yes it’s probably cultural, but it’s also a matter of people who are invested in something missing the obvious. Sometimes you really have to drive a point home, and my general recommendation was that it’s better to do so directly and civilly, rather than rudely.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#360

Post by eropple »

dleslie wrote: post #351
eropple wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking if somebody compiled the code is kind of shitty, yeah. Assume good faith. But even that is nowhere near the kind of direct and point-to-point insults that some folks, particularly Linus, have gone to on occasion. I think that you are arguing apples and apple pies.

Assume good faith, certainly; but when compiling the code shows strong evidence that the assumption was incorrect... Questions of process are made valid when it becomes clear there may be a flaw in the process which was applied. Asking them if they compiled the code is warranted, is it not?

No; it's just being shitty, and to be frank I think you know that.

"This code has more warnings than we accept under our process; please remedy." You aren't telling onlookers that they will be lit on fire for the temerity to contribute, you aren't causing anyone to lose face and you aren't hurting anyone. No aspersions, no chilling effects, and a positive path forward. Done and done. Everyone wins. To do otherwise is inhumane.

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