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GitHub: Block the Bullies

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Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#31

Post by endlessvoid94 »

jonursenbach wrote: post #30
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #5

I think this was a good response to an attention whore. EDIT: I wasn't trolling. Not even a single response?

I never understood why people absolutely loathe Zed Shaw.

I don't loathe him at all. I just think he could spend his time better, especially when he has such a captivated audience. Instead of setting an example of being a troll and responding immaturely (and threatening to leave github, oh my). He's fairly arrogant and preaches his opinions on how to run startups, of which he's never done.

He seems to inflame conversations for the sake of inflaming them. That's all. He likes the attention.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#32

Post by endlessvoid94 »

compay wrote: post #7
mycroftiv wrote: post #3

This is a very good feature, but I am also afraid it will make Zed Shaw and others think that his attempt to out-troll the trolls and multiply internet drama was a force for positive change. "If you throw a big enough temper tantrum and incite a large enough shitstorm, developers will address your concerns" is an unfortunate precedent. The fact that controversy and negativity attracts eyeballs and can trigger improve…

Sometimes you have to look at what somebody says, and not how they say it. I personally wouldn't have approached the trolls the way Zed did, but he was right that this was broken and needed to be fixed. Github did a great job - as far as I can tell they handled things professionally and cranked out a fix in just a few days. Everybody wins (except the trolls).

I do not agree. You can't simply ignore HOW somebody says something. How you say something almost more important than what you say.

If Zed hadn't written a blog post detailing how he fucked everything up (in all his greatness, apparently) it wouldn't have gotten such exposure and would likely have died out.

He had to make his point with a hammer or it wouldn't have mattered. And it's unfortunate that it took a hammer to make the point. I'd even go so far as to say this feature isn't actually all that important. Zed Shaw just MADE it important.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#33

Post by omaranto »

masterzora wrote: post #20
kneath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to me that so many people want confirmations. You can remove yourself from any repository you wish at https://github.com/account/repositories (yes, I know — this is a confusing place. It's something I'd like to improve). But the idea is that "Confirm? Reject." is the same number of steps/interactions as "Added. Reject." Confirmations wouldn't make the experience any better for someone being annoyingl…

I agree that I don't want to see confirmations in my GitHub, but you are incorrect about them being equivalent. The optimal way to use confirmations is often not hitting "Reject" to requests you don't want. Just do nothing. In most well-designed systems, as long as there's an outstanding request, they can't bug you any more.

You can't have "do nothing" mean both "do not accept (yet?)" and also "accept!"; if no action keeps you from accepting, it means it'll take an extra step to actually accept an invitation. If the common case is not trolling, that adds friction.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#35

Post by redthrowaway »

jonursenbach wrote: post #30
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #5

I think this was a good response to an attention whore. EDIT: I wasn't trolling. Not even a single response?

I never understood why people absolutely loathe Zed Shaw.

I don't actively loathe him, but the persona he spends so much time cultivating is brash and irritating. It seems whenever I see his name mentioned, it's because he's making a stink about something, rather than doing something useful. I get that he does useful things, and LPtHW is apparently a great resource, but he (intentionally) attracts far more attention with his antics than his works.

The court jester may make a good point every now and then, but he's still a clown.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#36

Post by masterzora »

omaranto wrote: post #33
masterzora wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that I don't want to see confirmations in my GitHub, but you are incorrect about them being equivalent. The optimal way to use confirmations is often not hitting "Reject" to requests you don't want. Just do nothing. In most well-designed systems, as long as there's an outstanding request, they can't bug you any more.

You can't have "do nothing" mean both "do not accept (yet?)" and also "accept!"; if no action keeps you from accepting, it means it'll take an extra step to actually accept an invitation. If the common case is not trolling, that adds friction.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Obviously "do nothing" can't mean both. Obviously the entire point of a confirmation would be such that it would take an action to be "accept", so that means that "do nothing" would have to be "do not accept (yet?)". Obviously this is only useful for GH if trolling is the common case. And obviously I started my post by saying I did not want confirmations. So what exactly are you trying to argue against?

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#38

Post by willvarfar »

The profile page needs tidy up - if only it split the projects into tbose you collaborate on,and those you are invited to collaborate on. Its just wording, but it makes it clear that being added to a repo you haven't contributed to will not be shown publicly.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#39

Post by ktsmith »

kneath wrote: post #9
getsat wrote: post #2

Is this due to the recent drama with Zed Shaw being invited to the "DongML" project? Very entertaining as an observer, but very annoying for Zed I'm sure. Sad that they still haven't added a requirement that you accept an invite to become a collaborator, or at least a profile setting on your account that requires that confirmation.

It's interesting to me that so many people want confirmations. You can remove yourself from any repository you wish at https://github.com/account/repositories (yes, I know — this is a confusing place. It's something I'd like to improve). But the idea is that "Confirm? Reject." is the same number of steps/interactions as "Added. Reject." Confirmations wouldn't make the experience any better for someone being annoyingl…

I think the number of steps isn't really that important. For me I care more about permission being explicit and not implicit. I prefer systems where other users have to get my permission to interact with me rather than automatically having permission to do so. It matters more on systems other than github but I think there's still an avenue for abuse with the current set up.

It should be fairly trivial to script account creation, project creation, and marking someone as a collaborator. As such a troll could simply automate the process of creating accounts and junk projects and then add the victim as a collaborator to them. The result is a useless dashboard full of crap that the victim has to manually remove themselves from. The troll succeeds in screwing with the victim by wasting lots of time. If permission had to be explicitly granted there would be no change to the dashboard and all of the confirmation messages could be ignored, or ideally bulk deleted from the incoming message queue. I don't have any idea if there's flood prevention mechanisms built into github to prevent this, but with unlimited public projects on the free accounts it seems like an avenue of abuse for trolls.

Re: GitHub: Block the Bullies

#40

Post by catch23 »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #32
compay wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you have to look at what somebody says, and not how they say it. I personally wouldn't have approached the trolls the way Zed did, but he was right that this was broken and needed to be fixed. Github did a great job - as far as I can tell they handled things professionally and cranked out a fix in just a few days. Everybody wins (except the trolls).

I do not agree. You can't simply ignore HOW somebody says something. How you say something almost more important than what you say. If Zed hadn't written a blog post detailing how he fucked everything up (in all his greatness, apparently) it wouldn't have gotten such exposure and would likely have died out. He had to make his point with a hammer or it wouldn't have mattered. And it's unfortunate that it took a hammer…

You still have to admit that zed went through a lot of trouble just to stop the harassment. I'd probably make a blog post too if the harassment went on for as long as it did for zed.
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