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I Violated a Code of Conduct

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Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#471

Post by labster »

the_only_law wrote: post #311
labster wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments. Most of us have heard all of the simple one-liner thoughts before, we want something that might be insightful and novel. And politics-adjacent threads like these are not the place to earn karma, because lots of people will always disagree. But it’s an excellent place to lose karma. A lot of us go to places like HN, Ars…

> The solution to low karma — if, indeed, you care about such things, is to make productive comments. Fwiw my most upvoted comments are typically my lowest effort comments. Typically either low effort "me too" type confirmations or sarcastic quips that happened to be in favor of whoever was browsing the thread. [What I beleive to be] my more productive, thoughtful, on topic comments tend to mostly get ignored. This h…

Yes, sometimes the quips work the best. But that's also harder. Comedy relies on a good sense of humor, timing, and making sure you read your audience. It can be done, but it's not easy, and no one wants HN to turn into Slashdot of yore. Sometimes I've written jokes that end up with 1 or 0 karma after a lot of votes -- you can only farm karma this way if you're good and lucky.

I think people have a tendency to confuse productive comments with long comments, which isn't helpful either. I find I am most convincing to other people when I speak three to five sentences. If people truly wanted the essay format, they would have actually read the OP!

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#472

Post by dash2 »

creata wrote: post #176
obviouslynotme wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>diversity of opinions It takes a level of maturity that most people never reach to handle real diversity of opinions. This is why universities used to be small places with only highly interested intellectuals trained to handle that diversity. And even they weren't great at it. Modern universities are a joke, and they are better than most organizations.

> This is why universities used to be small places with only highly interested intellectuals trained to handle that diversity. Which time period, and where? Universities used to be more exclusive, but I somehow doubt that exclusivity was for "intellectuals trained to handle that diversity" and not just "well-connected people".

I'd say that universities did contain only highly interested intellectuals. But they contained just a small subset of all highly interested intellectuals: those who had been able to go to university and pursue a doctorate. It's much easier to do this now - for example, if you are a woman. On the other hand, there are probably more networkers and grifters too.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#473

Post by tester34 »

trhway wrote: post #394
echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

it is a luxury of modern times. Century and more ago only upper classes were having debates/arguments/discussions because only they had the option to try to control their fate by trying to win those debates (and those white males had less diverse set of opinions then we have in the society today). The rest of society was consumed in daily grit for survival, they had no impact on decisions and whatever decisions were…

>(and those white males had less diverse set of opinions then we have in the society today).

how's skin color relevant here?

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#474

Post by C19is20 »

csnover wrote: post #380
newscracker wrote: post #184

After reading the entire post, I feel really bad for him, and I hope he gets the time off and the support necessary to recover from this incident. I also feel quite angry with how he has been treated. So please let me vent it out here as politely as I’m able to. I can imagine something like this or worse happening on social media groups, but an ostentatious “committee” that listens only to one side and never gives th…

> And the chuckling in the call when someone has already said they’re not in a proper emotional state is just bullying. I can’t speak to who this person was or why they did this, but I did just want to mention that there is at least one good faith explanation that isn’t straight up bullying. When I am in uncomfortable situations, I have a nervous chuckle. If I were in this call, giving this feedback to this person, I…

My son used to get in so much trouble - he has a mocking laugh when situations are serious. Infuriating! It took us parents years to work it out, and also his school. For his recent transition to senior school we explained this ahead of time to his new teachers: so much easier. He still occasionally gets in trouble, but for what he did/ didn't do instead of the same, with additional rudeness.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#476

Post by tester34 »

ikiris wrote: post #327
xwdv wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, my karma here on HN used to be at least double of what it is now. But at some point there was a change in people’s moods, and now it has been slowly eroding over time. I suspect someday it will be zero, or worse. My writing style and sharp criticisms of damn near everything hasn’t changed much, except perhaps knowing I’m going to be downvoted makes my wording more bitter. I suspect it is the HN crowd whi…

"Unfortunately “anti-racism” has been weaponized as a shortcut for silencing anyone who may at one point have said something that could be interpreted as racist or even not anti-racist enough. No thanks. Rather be labeled as a racist and keep my free speech than silenced by some mob authority." This kind of comment was not surprising to find in your history's first page.

why so snarky? argue with it.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#477

Post by bryanrasmussen »

whack wrote: post #211
echelon wrote: post #6

We're literally tearing ourselves apart, and I don't want to hold opinions about human beings anymore. Anyone can be an enemy or dislike you. Social media has rotted us from within and from all sides. Left, right, it doesn't matter. Everyone is so hostile and eager to end other people. This is madness. Yes, I did read the article. We're cancelling people over criticism . Somebody needs to hide Linus. I don't like cri…

Some relevant statements from the author on this topic: > Code of Conducts can be a useful tool, when thoughtfully created and thoughtfully enforced, to address sexism, racism, and harassment, all of which have been problems at tech conferences. Given the diversity issues in the tech industry, it is important that we continue the work of making conferences more inclusive, particularly to those from marginalized backg…

> You wouldn't advocate scrapping the entire criminal justice system, just because one innocent person was convicted. A little more nuance is useful here as well.

Sure, but following Blackstone's ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio if one innocent person is convicted we should probably look at if things need changing.

on edit: I see a couple others made the same point.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#478

Post by zimpenfish »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #430
softwaredoug wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also encourage reading about the press before the 20th century. Every random pamphleteer or newspaper churned up all kinds of despicable rumors or partisan rhetoric as bad or worse than Twitter. The idea of “objective press” is pretty new...

I wonder how the perception of who the writer is influences the people who read the 'message'. When "the press" publishes something, you know it's "the media", since you're reading it in the paper. On Twitter, the message presents itself as coming from "regular people, like you and me". What I mean is that maybe people may have some kind of skepticism when reading a paper, such as I they know that this paper has rath…

> I wonder how the perception of who the writer is influences the people who read the 'message'.

Given e.g. the propensity for politicians to emphasise their "salt of the land, common folk" attributes whilst hiding their gold-plated toilets, etc., I suspect it's not inconsequential.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#479

Post by rleigh »

skohan wrote: post #406
tptacek wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, and me I thought most of them were just a way to assure newcomers that your project wasn't going to allow racist trolling on the mailing list. My take is that the problem with this code of conduct was that it was dumb. I want to recommend to you the degree to which it is easy and relaxing to just acknowledge that and move on, maybe with a note or two about what not to do in any code of conduct you write. It seems…

> racist trolling on the mailing list Is this a widespread problem in software-related communities? I'm genuinely asking, because if it is maybe I am just not aware of it, but for example in the open-source projects I have been involved with the conversations tend to be extremely focused on the subject matter, and I'm not even aware of the race or gender of the people I'm conversing with.

I have never encountered this in 23 years of participating in open source projects of all kinds.

20 years back (in Debian) there was some banter on the mailing lists, but never of that nature. It was mainly jokes about women. The community was primarily of young males, and that did stop as more women got involved. However, I should state for completeness that none of it was anything that anyone should have been banned over; sometimes a joke was just a joke, before humour was effectively outlawed lest anyone get even slightly offended.

Re: I Violated a Code of Conduct

#480

Post by luckylion »

paganel wrote: post #423
ScottBurson wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it seems to me that you're not the sort of person who should be on such a phone call, unless you can get this habit under control.

> unless you can get this habit under control. The OP is not alone in that, I also chuckle/grin when under huge stress (it sometimes also happened when I heard about the very bad health condition of people really close to me), and saying that "one should get this habit under control" is like saying to depressed people just to smile so that they won't be depressed anymore (and it's also like calling depression just a…

You need to get it under control if you want to work in the kind of roles where it creates issues.

If you freeze up when you see fire, you can't be a fire fighter. If you faint when you see blood, don't be a surgeon. If you can't handle the stress of ganging up on someone, don't sign up for a CoC committee.

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