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

bbc.co.uk

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

#461

Post by Viliam1234 »

notacoward wrote: post #201
gambler wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The creeps should consider themselves on notice, whether there's a CoC or not. Yep, no politics here. No us-vs-them tribalism. No power plays. No jeering and celebrating a "victory" over "the other side". Just improving the community and making it more welcoming to everyone, that's what it's all about.

Why do you assume "the creeps" refers to all opponents and not just specific individuals? That you would take it personally says more about where you're coming from than about anything else.

It only takes a few seconds on Twitter to apply any label to anyone, and then a few hours more to have it retweeted several thousand times. So it makes sense to assume that labels will be used for all visible opponents, whether it makes sense or not.

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

#462

Post by dang »

mcguire wrote: post #386
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…

" Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you. " When I was growing up, being a nerd or a geek or, in fact, any kind of intellectual was regarded as a bad thing. I found some outright harassment, a considerable amount of belittling, and a whole lot of lack of interest. (The 57th time you are asked if you play football or basketbal…

Why on earth did you put racial slurs in your post? That's the kind of thing we ban people for on HN. Please don't do that again.

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

#463

Post by shawn »

dang wrote: post #462
mcguire wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you. " When I was growing up, being a nerd or a geek or, in fact, any kind of intellectual was regarded as a bad thing. I found some outright harassment, a considerable amount of belittling, and a whole lot of lack of interest. (The 57th time you are asked if you play football or basketbal…

Why on earth did you put racial slurs in your post? That's the kind of thing we ban people for on HN. Please don't do that again.

Ok. I'm sorry for harassing you. Regardless of anything else, that alone is worth a hellban.

We may not see eye to eye, but ultimately you're the bottom line. Talking about it publicly does nothing but reinforce that yes, you are in fact the bottom line and no, that won't change. And your bottom lines are eminently reasonable – I've seen how much you have to deal with on a daily basis, and my reaction is mostly embarrassment at being classified into the same category as them.

For now, I'll try to focus on writing quality comments and serve out my sentence.

(I'm still going to launch LN as an experiment, but it's in good fun. The median outcome is that people will show up to harass and say "This is stupid.")

I managed to get Lumen's startup time down to 18ms:

  $ time lumen -e 1
  1

  real	0m0.018s
  user	0m0.010s
  sys	0m0.006s
This is finally on par with Rust, and I can focus on demonstrating that XSV can be written with the same performance qualities. In a Lisp, no less.

It's on npm: `npm i -g lumen-language`. I figure that HN has shown that people can do interesting things when hellbanned, so I may as well throw my hat into the ring, if possible. :)

And thanks for making it three months rather than permanent.

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

#464

Post by daveFNbuck »

notacoward wrote: post #347
daveFNbuck wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your metaphor is that "good cop, bad cop" is something you do to someone you're trying to deceive in order to further your own agenda at their expense. It's a way to behave toward an adversary, not someone who you're trying to work with.

> "good cop, bad cop" is something you do to someone you're trying to deceive That's funny, because the goal is often to get at the truth. Is that an agenda you find objectionable? Do you see something noble in people who are harmed by the truth becoming known? "Bad cop" is not far from "devil's advocate" and the tension either creates is often useful to all involved. Is role-playing the same as deception? > It's a w…

> That's funny, because the goal is often to get at the truth. Is that an agenda you find objectionable?

Yes, I think that's the wrong agenda to have when you're collaborating on software. A pull request shouldn't normally be an interrogation to figure out whether the person who wrote the code is lying.

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

#465

Post by matz1 »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #427
matz1 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better to train myself to not be affected with insult ? If some one say to me "No, you stupid pile of sheet, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." I'll just ignore the insult part or at very least to not let myself negatively affected and move on.

No, because you're never going to do that, and in trying, you're probably going to cause yourself to send out more insults to others. You're also going to normalize a culture of calling everyone a "stupid pile of sheet" or worse when something goes wrong, which leads to a pretty unwelcoming and hostile atmosphere.

These days there is hardly any insult that can negatively affect me. I found it can be useful skill to have.

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

#466

Post by Vinnl »

trukterious wrote: post #237
Vinnl wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a way to get more of those ideas to me, and people in general, and less of the "I drink white male tears".

I don't think that there are any garbage people. Everybody has some good in them. (This doesn't imply we shouldn't set some boundaries).

I agree, and I think even the "I drink white male tears" people probably have good intentions. I just don't care about hearing them say they drink white male tears.

Perhaps a better wish would be to be able to hear what insights they have that I don't, without it being wrapped in a package that makes me angry.

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

#467

Post by Vinnl »

notacoward wrote: post #238
simias wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be garbage people in "your camp", whatever that camp might be. Hell, for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one. The big problem with the internet and modern social networks is that they suck at filtering the noise and getting the interesting bits. In the end if we're not careful we only hear those who shout the loudest and most provocative things. A well researched essay on gender studi…

> for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one. I'll go one further. "The nasty one" is a role that usually begs to be filled, even in a good cause. Sometimes it's even essential to progress. "Good cop, bad cop" works. I'm more likely to play "bad cop" myself, though at least I'm usually aware of it being a situational role. I've definitely said things that would have violated a CoC if there had been one in…

So as you can see in the original article, the "bad cops" here were reason for Linus not to examine his own behaviour. That only happened because the other side had bad cops as well. In other words: at least in this case (and in mine as well), it only worked to achieve the opposite effect from what's intended.

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

#468

Post by Vinnl »

smoothy2 wrote: post #326
notacoward wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a minority (non-white) person, I don't need you to speak for me and me to be your pet. Nor was I making you one. There's nothing patronizing about pointing out how language can affect different people differently. Surely you're aware that others do need and appreciate people who will use whatever advantages they have to help raise awareness of these issues. Please don't use your own personal good fortune to prom…

I'm not sure you realize but this exact tone of discourse comes across as patronizing. Please stop playing messiah for minorities. Also, I'm not some super rich privileged person. As a matter of fact, I'm unemployed right now but privilege or no privilege, there's no reason to cripple good open source software which is already one of the most equalizing resources that has been produced by mankind.

They were not play messiah for minorities; they were explaining how some people (i.e. not all minorities) prefer to be addressed in a way different from other people -- the fact that you consider his tone patronising when I don't is proof of that. And the point of the comment is that we should keep that in mind when conversing. Because I'm doing that, I can now imagine why you might consider it patronising, and can try (not necessarily succeed, unfortunately) to make it more palatable to you.

(Unless of course you consider that patronising as well, in which case, my non-patronising advice would be: deal with it. Either way, I hope they'll still be able to make comments like the above in the future :) )

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

#469

Post by Vinnl »

gambler wrote: post #358
notacoward wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I think the point is that language/tone is already a minefield, and being aware of that can be of help to avoid triggering some of those mines.

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

#470

Post by Vinnl »

dsajames wrote: post #253
Vinnl wrote: post #64

His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause. In effect, they're really counterproductive, and t…

What privileges do you have when interacting with people?

Plenty, I think. A personal example is that people are more likely to assume my authority when I have a beard, so being able to grow one is a privilege. It's a small one, but I'm guessing it's indicative of what I mean.
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