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I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

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Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#71

Post by cindyllm »

treetalker wrote: post #67
jerbearito wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's also both. Everyone should manage their own feelings and exchange information both efficiently and respectfully.

I don't disagree that all people should. But Crocker's Rules are specifically to give the other person permission to give it to you straight because you assume responsibility and maturity to deal with the information itself, regardless of social niceties. And those rules cannot be imposed on the other person: invoking them yourself doesn't mean you can be an asshole back — as the very description of the rules linked…

[dead]

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#72

Post by rendall »

tombert wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the rest of the company operates like that too, so you were indeed not a good culture fit.

I'm not sure that I'm a "culture fit" for most companies. I should probably start buying lottery tickets instead.

FWIW if I were the interviewer, I would have green-flagged you as a must hire.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#73

Post by andrewflnr »

tombert wrote: post #53

Everyone says that they value directness, and from what I can tell the vast majority of people actually don't. For example, I had a job interview a couple years ago where the interviewer showed up fifteen minutes late for a thirty minute interview. Eventually he did show up, and the interview proceeds more or less fine, and near the end he asks if I have any questions. I said "is it common to show up fifteen minutes…

A passive-aggressive interview "question" is a hilariously bad example of "directness". Nah dude, you were just a jerk.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#74

Post by wk_end »

Smaug123 wrote: post #17
d-us-vb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog post is an open letter: the author wants everyone reading to follow the those rules.

No. Crocker's rules are a request for people to act a certain way with respect to you , not wrt anyone else.

Crocker's rules themselves might be, but the essay is plainly contemptuous of people who aren't naturally disposed to follow them.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#75

Post by jandrewrogers »

This post is a poor exposition of Crocker’s Rules.

Crocker’s Rules were a reaction to the avoidance of direct discussion of topics where some people treat the mere act of discussion in any capacity as offensive. Sacred cows and taboos for which there are social consequences even when asking honest questions. Crocker’s Rules, practically speaking, were a declaration that no good faith discussion was intrinsically offensive ipso facto for the person making the declaration. All taboos were open to good faith arguments and attempts at rigorous intellectual inquiry.

This article is focused too much on communication style and not enough on the subject of communication. The latter was the crux of it. Crocker’s Rules were about being able to rigorously discuss topics that society has deemed to be beyond discussion without taking offense at the fact it is being discussed.

I was present when Crocker’s Rules were “invented”. I see a couple other handles here that may have been as well.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#76

Post by lich_king »

If you're running your open source project or other hobby endeavor, you can do it however you want. People will either adapt to your style or leave. The same, with some caveats, applies to running your own company (the caveats being lawsuits and needless drama if you take it too far).

But if you're a line employee for a corporation, this is the wrong approach, for two reasons. First, you will encounter many people who misinterpret directness as hostility, simply because your feelings toward another person are hard to convey in a chat message unless you include all that social-glue small talk. And if people on average think you're a jerk, they will either avoid you or reflexively push back.

But second... you're not that brilliant. Every now and then, the thing you think is wrong isn't actually wrong, you just don't understand why your solution was rejected beforehand. Maybe there are business requirements you don't know about, maybe things break in a different way if you make the change. Asking "hey, help me understand why this thing is the way it is" is often a better opener than "yo dude, your thing is broken, here's what you need to do, fix it now".

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#77

Post by retsibsi »

roenxi wrote: post #63

If we accept that any one person can take responsibility for their feelings then it follows that everyone is responsible for their own mind. Otherwise what exactly are we saying? And emotions are complex, especially offence, it is practically impossible to say that something will reliably offend a specific person without trying it and seeing how they react. Even for the reactee. Someone can easily say "whatever happe…

> If we accept that any one person can take responsibility for their feelings then it follows that everyone is responsible for their own mind.

I don't think this follows! People are very different, so something can be genuinely true of a subset without generalising to everyone.

Crocker's Rules definitely wouldn't work for me, but it's explicit in them that they can only be self-invoked. Some people seem genuinely to be very thick-skinned (but easily annoyed by indirection and politeness) and able to 'take responsibility for their own feelings' in this sense. I doubt (m)any of them are truly unoffendable... and one could argue that they should be taking responsibility for their own feelings of frustration triggered by normal politeness... but I assume they know themselves well enough to know that they are better off when people try to be as direct as possible when interacting with them.

Where it breaks down is if/when they treat this as an objectively superior state of being and mode of interaction, and use it as an excuse to be rude to others.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#78

Post by kuboble »

wk_end wrote: post #70
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>considerably worse place if everyone abided by such rules Those rules are not meant for everyone.

That's the theory, but there's absolutely normative statements in this piece. For example: > When you spend the first third of your message establishing that you are a nice person who means well, you are not being considerate but you are making the recipient wade through noise to get to signal. You are training them to skim your messages, which means that when you actually need them to read carefully, they might not.…

Yes, exactly.

I strongly prefer directness in technical communication at work.

But the way the article author phrases his preferences as absolute truth rubs me the wrong way.

Also if I worked with that person then after reading the article I would have perhaps the opposite reaction to the author's intentions.

You still have to walk on eggshells to not offend him by including any bit of information that he might consider not relevant enough.

Re: I beg you to follow Crocker's Rules, even if you will be rude to me

#79

Post by Barbing »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #75

This post is a poor exposition of Crocker’s Rules. Crocker’s Rules were a reaction to the avoidance of direct discussion of topics where some people treat the mere act of discussion in any capacity as offensive. Sacred cows and taboos for which there are social consequences even when asking honest questions. Crocker’s Rules, practically speaking, were a declaration that no good faith discussion was intrinsically offe…

Anyone have a preferred resource?

I do appreciate the OP as it stands!

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