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Some tactics for writing in public

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Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#161

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

zer8k wrote: post #22
wrp wrote: post #8

Summary of her rules for defensive posting: 1. Talk about facts 2. Tell stories 3. Ask technical questions 4. Fix mistakes 5. Ask for examples, not opinions 6. Start with a little context 7. Avoid flamebait triggers 8. Preempt common suggestions 9. Ignore people who challenge your viewpoint (my interpretation) 10. Don't pursue arguments 11. Pay attention to critical feedback Number 9 is I think not as defensible as t…

Up/down vote systems, especially ones that punish the poster quickly by rendering their post unreadable, create a hivemind of people who agree. HN posters LOVE to point out the fact it's "not like Reddit" when, in fact, it is. If you say something factual but disagreeable with the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social policy) you will be met with downvotes. Even a small amount begins to add up until…

HN is a forum attached to a venture capitalist company. The idea that it is in any way left-leaning is farcical.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#162

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

ant6n wrote: post #64
viknesh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "shock" at an old man page is pretty silly to begin with, but I think a better phrasing for #9 would be to ignore the trolls. The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended to be bad, but that viewed with today's (American) social context, the phrase would likely be taken to be distasteful. Therefore, I think the issue with the commenters isn't that they "challenge" the viewpoint. At a minimu…

"The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended to be bad" That's because many people in tech used to think that tech bro culture wasn't bad. Tech also used to be much very excluding. Back then, if you were not part of the tech bro culture, you already knew it was distasteful, and that you were being excluded.

Nah. In this case it genuinely wasn't intended to be bad (almost certainly). We can tell because the sexual meaning of grope makes absolutely no sense in the context of `dig`, while the non-sexual meaning does. We can exonerate the original authors. It's still good that it's been changed since.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#163

Post by wpietri »

janalsncm wrote: post #129
wpietri wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for…

> If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. If original intent doesn’t matter, your audience shouldn’t differentiate between writing which is intentionally offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well assume you are malicious. That’s not the world I want to live in. It’s also not the world we do live in. English is the most widely spoken language on the pl…

Please note that you went from my "doesn't matter a ton" to "doesn't matter" period. That's a straw man. If you'd like to argue with something I said, I'd be glad to engage. But not with a cartoon of my point.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#164

Post by wpietri »

deadbeeves wrote: post #100
wpietri wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And perhaps I should add that if I focused on my supposed good intent to the exclusion of changing, then I'd have to question what my intent was. Or, putting it differently, the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by correcting anything that is out of line with my intent. If I instead make it about my hurt feelings, I'd think that a better indicator of my deeper intent.

>So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how dare anybody consider the feelings of women" If Vanessa makes a complaint and I say "okay, but why should we care that you don't like it?", am I saying that we shouldn't care women don't like it, or am I saying we shouldn't care that Vanessa is the only one who doesn't like it? >the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by correcting anything that is out of…

[flagged]

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#165

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #34
OJFord wrote: post #23

> Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology that I’d just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the replies asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive (which of course is besides [sic] the point) or tried to explain to me why it actually wasn’t a problem. > So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post: Of course I understand no responsibility to 'prove' anyth…

"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for…

[deleted]

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#166

Post by datagram »

guy98238710 wrote: post #133

Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-consciousness and political correctness? Author is self-censoring policy suggestions and social/cultural insights, which I personally find interesting to write and read about, especially the weirder ones that provide transformational experience. And the dig-related blocking is just jarring. It makes it look like the author is quick on the trigger. PS: I just noticed t…

The author is tactically avoiding discussions that she considers unproductive and does not want to participate in, hence the title of the blog post.

> Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-consciousness and political correctness?

Good writers always consider the way their choice of words will affect their audience. Are you suggesting that this is a bad thing?

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#167

Post by schneems »

lapcat wrote: post #151
schneems wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that we’re in the infancy of context free communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn’t built (or couldn’t be changed, my extended interpretation) There are wildly different experiences with communities online. Communities are also a thing that can be built intentionally. We can also learn from prior works. Lessig (1999) identifies four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, nor…

I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government) moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps familiarity is still a factor in smaller online communities, because the participants often get to know each other. Unfortunately,…

I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I like to think it’s not “beyond moderation”. We have fairly aggressive rules (around tone and impact) and very high standards and I would say most of the time the community meets or exceeds those standards

I think there are limits but I also don’t feel that most platforms have hit them or really even tried. Most platforms that would benefit from a stronger sense of community typically do the bare minimum to not run afoul of laws (in terms of paid moderation). Even the ones with strong volunteer mods (like Reddit) are known for underinvesting in mod tools, that’s the source of the recent protests.

> one bad reply to ruin your day

On /r/ruby we have two kinds of problems that bubble up intentional and unintentional. The majority of slights are unintentional and when called out are very apologetic and seek to make things right. For the intentional abusers, there’s the ban.

I think of it less like building a wall and more like flattening the curve. If you can stop the cascade of frustration (where one pissed off user leads to another…) then it pays off dividends, even if you can’t catch 100% of the cases.

Anyway. Thanks for the opportunity for a chat. I love thinking about this stuff.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#168

Post by wolfgang42 »

lapcat wrote: post #32
zer8k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up/down vote systems, especially ones that punish the poster quickly by rendering their post unreadable, create a hivemind of people who agree. HN posters LOVE to point out the fact it's "not like Reddit" when, in fact, it is. If you say something factual but disagreeable with the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social policy) you will be met with downvotes. Even a small amount begins to add up until…

> the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social policy) HN has no zeitgeist, and "mid-to-far-left social policy" is not even close to my experience. A lot of commenters seem to think that HN has some kind of consensus, but it doesn't, as dang himself (the HN moderator) can testify. A number of different factions coexist (uneasily) here. My experience is that upvotes and downvotes are... pretty random, s…

Some pointers to dang’s comments on the topic:

“notice-dislike bias”: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

“hostile media effect”: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#169

Post by lapcat »

schneems wrote: post #167
lapcat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government) moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps familiarity is still a factor in smaller online communities, because the participants often get to know each other. Unfortunately,…

I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers. I like to think it’s not “beyond moderation”. We have fairly aggressive rules (around tone and impact) and very high standards and I would say most of the time the community meets or exceeds those standards I think there are limits but I also don’t feel that most platforms have hit them or really even tried. Most platforms that would benefit from a stronger sense…

> I’m a mod on /r/ruby and it’s got 80,000 subscribers.

I think that's smaller than Hacker News, which has only 1 or 2 moderators, whereas it appears that r/ruby has 8 moderators?

As far as scale is concerned, it looks like r/ruby had 19 comments within the past 24 hours? https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ Whereas HN had 19 comments within the past 2 minutes. https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments And a site like Twitter has something like 350,000 tweets per minute.

The most important difference, in my opinion, is that /r/ruby is focused on a single technical topic. In a sense, it's self-selecting and self-moderating, unlike HN or social media sites which are general-interest and include topics such as politics and other controversial social issues that are prone to generate nasty disagreements.

Re: Some tactics for writing in public

#170

Post by deadbeeves »

wpietri wrote: post #164
deadbeeves wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how dare anybody consider the feelings of women" If Vanessa makes a complaint and I say "okay, but why should we care that you don't like it?", am I saying that we shouldn't care women don't like it, or am I saying we shouldn't care that Vanessa is the only one who doesn't like it? >the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by correcting anything that is out of…

[flagged]

Is this really about "fixing sexism", when she herself notes that the man page was changed 6 years ago? It reads more like attention-seeking (or rather validation-seeking, seeing the response) behavior to me.

>A very common bit of misogyny is saying the second while meaning the first.

Maybe. That sounds more like a motte-and-bailey. It could be misogyny, or it could be something else. Obviously someone looking for misogyny will think the ulterior motive is misogyny, but it could be just about anything.

>So if Vanessa had an objection to some of my writing that struck me as related to gender, I might politely ask her for details, but would see it as my burden to do any deeper work.

Everyone is accommodating, until the complaint is about something you care about. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. That's all I'll say.

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