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I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

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Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#161

Post by gowld »

_qulr wrote: post #159

I think the fundamental problem is that the web has no clear organizational structure. Although the internet itself is decentralized, it has a fairly clear organization structure, where each part of the internet has ownership, and there are explicit relationships, and expectations, and modes of cooperation between the various parties. In the past, the W3C was at least nominally "in charge" of the web. They were the n…

> think the fundamental problem is that the web has no clear organizational structure.

think the fundamental problem is that the Universe has no clear organizational structure.

We have to make it up as we go a long. Even a national government was simply made up by some people and enforced by the use of force, the only law of nature.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#162

Post by acdha »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #155
bccdee wrote: post #113

> I Love MDN hinges on the expectation on the part of web developers that this sort of information ought to come for free — the expectation we’re entitled to this sort of free ride. I think people should be entitled to a free ride. Important infrastructure can, paradoxically, be both free and expensive. We've committed, for instance, to spending a whole lot of money on maintaining all of our roads, but access to the…

>street is still free for everyday pedestrians No it's not. Taxes pay for this. Business taxes, property taxes, local taxes, gas tax, etc. It is decisively not free for pedestrians or commuters.

The three words you stripped out before that part of the quote address this: “access to the street”. With those, you are just echoing the poster's point that we use taxes to pay for common goods.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#163

Post by NikolaNovak »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #155
bccdee wrote: post #113

> I Love MDN hinges on the expectation on the part of web developers that this sort of information ought to come for free — the expectation we’re entitled to this sort of free ride. I think people should be entitled to a free ride. Important infrastructure can, paradoxically, be both free and expensive. We've committed, for instance, to spending a whole lot of money on maintaining all of our roads, but access to the…

>street is still free for everyday pedestrians No it's not. Taxes pay for this. Business taxes, property taxes, local taxes, gas tax, etc. It is decisively not free for pedestrians or commuters.

I feel that is addressed two sentences further into the post (unless it was a later edit), and as such contributes to the main point - who pays for it when and how much.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#164

Post by hansjorg »

dang wrote: post #157
thomasz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a dogwhistle, not unselfconscious use of a loaded term.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You routinely seem to allow (as in it not even warranting a comment) straight up dehumanizing language from many participants in here.

I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#165

Post by gowld »

MattGaiser wrote: post #65
CarelessExpert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. Interestingly, this same sentiment is a huge part of why charitable giving runs into problems. A lot of people are willing to give, so long as they get to decide what is done with their funds. Of course, these same people have no i…

It is not a matter of expertise, but a matter of setting priorities and valuing projects. I value MDN and Firefox. I am fine with every other aspect of Mozilla dying to save those two. How do I donate my dollar with that goal in mind? As my goals are not really aligned with Mozilla as a whole.

Do you boycott every business that spends some money of stuff you don't like?

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#166

Post by _qulr »

gowld wrote: post #161
_qulr wrote: post #159

I think the fundamental problem is that the web has no clear organizational structure. Although the internet itself is decentralized, it has a fairly clear organization structure, where each part of the internet has ownership, and there are explicit relationships, and expectations, and modes of cooperation between the various parties. In the past, the W3C was at least nominally "in charge" of the web. They were the n…

> think the fundamental problem is that the web has no clear organizational structure. think the fundamental problem is that the Universe has no clear organizational structure. We have to make it up as we go a long. Even a national government was simply made up by some people and enforced by the use of force, the only law of nature.

Sure, but that only works if a critical mass of people rally behind specific leadership. Millions of individuals acting independently is just chaos. So the question is, which web organization should we rally behind? WHATWG? Well, ok, but... ugh.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#167

Post by muricula »

manquer wrote: post #140

I find the premise technical writing is under appreciated or is only a professional skill little odd. Wikipedia and StackOverflow have proved that technical writing can be done by community and crowd sourced effectively with active moderation . This model has and can work, even independent sites like caniuse.com have been able to good quality content and are used widely.

The community can do an okay job but not a great one. The writing on Wikipedia is shoddy and inconsistent, and there are many many missing sources even if the article is accurate. I'm a huge fan though!

Similarly, many stack overflow questions are out of date, and good luck getting them updated to reflect current best practices. And if you do ask the same question again trying to resurface a newer, better way to do something it will almost certainly be closed as a duplicate. Huge fan of the resource though.

Ultimately, experienced professionals who are paid full time to be both writers and technologists can do a better job, especially over a long period of time.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#168

Post by gowld »

wolco wrote: post #129
Goronmon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I donate my dollar with that goal in mind? As my goals are not really aligned with Mozilla as a whole. Seems like you want control over the project, not to just be donating? At that point it appears one of your main solution would be to start a project like MDN that you can have such control over.

You have a responsibility to safeguard your donation to further your personal charity goals. In this day and age charities can't expect blank cheque donations without specific goals and targets they are personally aligned to. The project gives up some control when they accept donations.

That's a far higher bar than we safeguard the rest of our consumer spending. At the end of the day it just sounds like excuse-making to not pay for free stuff.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#169

Post by cmrdporcupine »

dang wrote: post #150
shirakawasuna wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bigoted dog whistle borrowed from literal Nazis. Edit: interesting that there are so many downvotes. Consider yourself lucky that this seems absurd to you, because it's borrowed directly from Nazi "degenerate art" and "degenerate music" and used like this almost exclusively in modern alt-right contexts to mean those falling outside of their ideal (bigoted) worldview.

I used the word "degenerate" myself the other day ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24041589 ) and assure you it wasn't any kind of dog whistle. Obviously the GP should have ommitted that flamebait ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160738 ), but a comment like yours also breaks the site guidelines—specifically this one: " Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a…

It's absolutely clear what the commenter meant, since the whole controversy with Brendan Eich was about gay rights issues. It's not a stretch in any way to understand that "degenerate" meant "homosexual" or otherwise "immoral." Downplaying that interpretation really stretches "good faith interpretation" into the realm of "denial." Perhaps the commenter does not have English as their first language, in which case I'd give more leeway, but given the expression in the rest of the comment I doubt it.

As you said elsewhere it was not necessary for the commenter to use the word degenerate. I don't think anybody should be surprised by the reactions to it. It's entirely reasonable to criticize Mozilla's activist focus, or what went down with Eich, without stooping to that kind of language.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#170

Post by dang »

hansjorg wrote: post #164
dang wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You routinely seem to allow (as in it not even warranting a comment) straight up dehumanizing language from many participants in here. I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.

We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links to give you specific information. Always happy to do that.

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