Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lr0.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 335 posts

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

#251

Post by lproven »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #160
lproven wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you are being blunt, but then 5 paragraphs of exegesis follows. TL;DR. Talking takes time and effort. So does listening. Be brief. Get to the point.

Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process? I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state…

> Out of curiosity, are you a reader?

Very much so. I started reading adult novels at 7 years old, and by the time I was 12 or so, I could if I was hurrying read 5 or 6 novels a day. I read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time in 5 days at that age. I've reread it again another 4 times or so.

My personal library is somewhere in the region of 5,000 to 7,500 of my favourite books. I estimate that I have read at least twice as many books as I own, and probably more: in the tens of thousands, I'd think.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6730645-liam-proven

I only started using Goodreads in my 40s though.

I am also a professional writer and have been for 30 years. I've had 2 short books published, many hundreds of articles for about 15 different print magazines and professional paid articles on 3 commercial websites.

Currently, I am the Linux and FOSS reporter for the Register:

https://www.theregister.com/Author/Liam-Proven

This was one of the hardest pieces to write for me:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/david_mills_obit/

I knew little of the man. I had to read at least 30,000 words about him in a single morning in order to learn enough about the man to write his obituary. It was hard work.

> When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun?

I have about 25 on the go currently. Most recent start was Polostan by Neal Stephenson. I also have 1 print magazine subscription on top of that, but mostly, I read online now, several tens of thousands of words a day every day.

I think it is far to say I am a big and voracious reader.

Why? Do you think I object to excessive verbiage because I struggle through it? No. I can at a push read about 3000 words a minute but I normally cruise along at 1,500 or so. When I see "estimated reading times" on things online, I typically find they are approaching 10x longer than I take.

FWIW I can also read 5 or 6 other languages than English, but I am painfully slow in all of those. Currently I'm reading a copy of Charlie Hebdo I bought at FOSDEM and the new Astérix album. :-)

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

#252

Post by lproven »

knappa wrote: post #155
lproven wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you are being blunt, but then 5 paragraphs of exegesis follows. TL;DR. Talking takes time and effort. So does listening. Be brief. Get to the point.

They said that they were going to be blunt, not terse.

Fair, but they do often go together.

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

#253

Post by lproven »

MarkusQ wrote: post #169
mapontosevenths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are you a reader? When was the last time you read a full length chapter book for fun? Does it feel like work to you? Is it a slow process? I ask not to insult, but to understand. I can't help but wonder if a lot of this demand for terse language comes from a simple inability to read well? Reading is really not supposed to feel like work to the educated, and it does not to me. For me its just a state…

Not the GP, but I'm an avid reader. One of the books I read (Strunk & White's Elements of Style) had this to say to aspiring writers: "Omit needles words."

"Needless." :-D But you're right.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brevity_is_the_soul_of_wit

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

#254

Post by lproven »

MarkusQ wrote: post #204
benregenspan wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that some of the extra words OP is complaining about aren't needless. It's on the writer to know their audience, but it's also asking a lot to tune a message in a PR review to the one particular person who demands bluntness, especially if they don't know that person well. If the majority of people in the organization respond positively to a certain style (which may involve some amount of phatic s…

Nobody is advocating for a rude communication style; the disagreement is over what constitutes rudeness. Some people/cultures see being blunt or to the point as rude. Others see beating around the bush, wasting time and hogging the listener's brain space with fill material that serves no purpose other than delaying the actual closure/completion of the thought (including insisting on various rituals, either verbal or,…

Nicely put. I like the worked example in para 2. :-)

Tell me, did you ever watch Yes, Minister or Yes, Prime Minister?

If not, I think you might enjoy them.

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

#255

Post by r0p3 »

I read this passage on the blog's diary page and I found it beautiful and poignant.

https://lr0.org/diary/

> Last week I had an argument with my Mother of which I was righteous and she was in error. In the end, I managed to convince her of my points. She accepted them. But then she said, “Okay, what about mercy?”. She told me then about a man from town who once had a serious argument with his distant brother. Time passed. And when he finally saw him, he chose to forgive everything. That story stayed with me. After the discussion was over and the house grew quiet, I began thinking about moments in my life, times when I insisted on being right, when I held onto pride, when I could have been softer but wasn’t. And I cried.

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

#256

Post by watwut »

tombert wrote: post #176
dwroberts wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling that out to that persons face, in that moment, is also inappropriate and rude. You can give that feedback some other time.

It’s actually not “inappropriate”. Are you saying that instead of directly pointing out something that really bothered me, I should instead of reported him to someone higher up? Should I have bitched on Glassdoor? Oh, I guess I could have complained to the to recruiter where there is a zero percent chance that my complaint actually gets sent to them. It’s “rude” in that I embarrassed the person for a minute, but it’s…

There is "pointing out something that bothers you" which was the first part of the story. But, the reaction to interviewer who tries to explain himself "Listen, I don't really care. I'm sure your reasons are valid to you but from my perspective it just looks like you were happy enough to let me waste half the interview just sitting around staring at my watch." is an asshole reaction.

And yes, if roles were reverts, the manager saying the same "I dont really care" thing after you are trying to explain yourself would also be an asshole.

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

#257

Post by localuser13 »

lr0 wrote: post #221
wat10000 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your post discusses communication in general terms. When you say that it’s unprofessional and rude to begin a Slack message with a greeting before getting to the meat of the issue, there’s no indication at all that you only meant this to apply to Slack messages sent to you personally. At one point you say, “Nobody reads ‘hope you had a great weekend’ and thinks better of the person who wrote it.” Who is going…

> At one point you say, “Nobody reads ‘hope you had a great weekend’ and thinks better of the person who wrote it.” Who is going to read that and think that “nobody” only applies to you? I argued why I believe this does not a good way of communication in business or professional-focused environment, because as explained, habitual padding tends to train readers to skim, because they learn that the lines often contain…

As you said yourself, this is very culture dependent.

In my culture, elaborate politeness is NOT expected, and when I first started working with foreigners I had some funnily awkward (awkwardly funny) social interactions where they greeted me with customary "How are you? How was your day" and I started politely but awkwardly going over my day thinking "this is not your damn business".

My point being, if you work in a culture that expects some behaviour, it is necessary to follow it. Breaking the protocol (even by omission) is a signal in itself, and if the signal is understood as "I don't like you" or "I am rude" or "I am better than you" then it's counterproductive. Especially important if you're not close with the person communicating with, so misunderstandings are likely.

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

#258

Post by mayhemducks »

tombert wrote: post #245
mayhemducks wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best people I have ever worked with was somebody I interviewed and recommended be hired. She missed her first interview entirely. I was waiting for her to show up, annoyed that she was late, and she called me and said she needed to reschedule. At the time, she was hiking in the greenbelt on a beautiful day. I said, sure, we rescheduled, and she was a huge asset to the team. I kept the details of having to…

I dare say that you are an outlier. When I have shown up significantly late for interviews they often cut it short before it even really starts.

Have I not established quite thoroughly that I am an outlier in many ways? Also, outliers exist. Also, being an outlier does not automatically equal "incorrect".

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

#260

Post by tombert »

watwut wrote: post #256
tombert wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually not “inappropriate”. Are you saying that instead of directly pointing out something that really bothered me, I should instead of reported him to someone higher up? Should I have bitched on Glassdoor? Oh, I guess I could have complained to the to recruiter where there is a zero percent chance that my complaint actually gets sent to them. It’s “rude” in that I embarrassed the person for a minute, but it’s…

There is "pointing out something that bothers you" which was the first part of the story. But, the reaction to interviewer who tries to explain himself "Listen, I don't really care. I'm sure your reasons are valid to you but from my perspective it just looks like you were happy enough to let me waste half the interview just sitting around staring at my watch." is an asshole reaction. And yes, if roles were reverts, t…

I mean, sure, but I didn’t really care.

Why should him being busy matter to me? For all he knows I am equally or more busy than he is. For all he knows I am skipping my mother’s funeral, or taking the entire day off of work, or turned down a dozen other potential interviews just to make this interview.

I will admit it’s a bit douchey, but why should I just nod my head happily and pretend that his excuses actually matter? Especially when all of them boiled down to “I was really busy”. We’re all busy.

Post reply on HN