So you've made a mistake and it's public • Hacker News Board

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#191

Post by Spinnaker_ » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #33

willeh wrote: post #14

This is purely my personal opinion, but the wikipedia community seems like one of the most toxic communities on the web. The people contributing to WP - the editors - seem more concerned with coming up with Kafka-esque processes to introduce to the community than making the actual work of making an encyclopaedia. Perhaps the only area where editors are as zealous they are about creating obscure processes, is in polic…

> I hope for a new wave of optimistic idealism to swallow up tech again, bringing about a new era of amateurism. But with the professionalisation of even the free software community I have, I must admit, all but given up hope. This wave exists, we’re just old. Go talk to 16 year olds who are building virtual reality machine learning apps in their bedroom. Web is no longer the frontier. We’re old and out of touch. The…

You're probably right. I've been reading HN for 10+ years now and just assume it's still the best location for hackers.

So what's the newer, cooler, current version of what HN was in 2010?

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#192

Post by djsumdog » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #36

oritsnile wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm out of the loop, what current events?

Probably the idea that you can pretend the truth is whatever you say it is, say whatever you want, never admit a mistake, and hundreds of millions of people will still back you up and continue to trust you. As seen by the president of the US ignoring election results, and countless other things done and said by that administration and their allies.

You realize this goes both ways. There are tons and tons of election irregularities. The presidential legal team has several lawsuits that are going forward and recounts going forward. There are literally tens of thousands of dead people who have voted in areas with very small margins.

So your statement ... you're making a truth. You're saying what you want it to be, even though there is tons and tons of evidence against that point (that the main stream media is intentionally ignoring and refusing to cover).

It goes both ways and our social psyche is now fragmented.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#193

Post by loosetypes » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #94

In the age of social media I would suggest a different approach to addressing public mistakes. 1. Go silent. > Complete public blackout. No denying, no accepting. The people want retribution, not justice. The media blackout is essential. 2. Reflect on it privately and quietly. 3. If not in violation of #1, apologize to the individual people/entity affected in private. 4. Once the mob dissipates, address the issue pub…

I think I'd agree, especially with regards to the article's Step 3.

Admitting fault can open one to liability (sometimes legally). Although perhaps it depends on how one defines a mistake versus, say, an outright fault that people could find morally wrong.

An example that's not perfect (and I'm not arguing/defending one way or another) is Louis CK with the #metoo movement.

It seemed to me that his response was sincere and correct on the personal level. He acknowledged those he'd wronged, made clear the victims were in the right, apologized, and expressed a desire to improve his behavior. For all that, he was demonized.

To some extent, it felt like people were saying: "My god, you admitted it. You're worse than Harvey Weinstein - at least he had the decency to deny his actions."

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#194

Post by herodoturtle » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

justin_oaks wrote: post #71

TriNetra wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is, if you ponder for a while, you'll realize you'd have done some similar mistakes. But such reflection requires being honest to oneself and setting aside/rising above one's ego and doing an unbias reflection for few moments. Then a spontaneous smile will light up your face and unconsciously somewhere you've broken some string of ego otherwise holding you tightly all through your life.

Indeed. Whenever I get cut off on the freeway, I try to remember the times when I accidentally cut someone off but had no way to express "Oops, sorry!" We all get it wrong sometimes.

Someone oughta tell Tesla to make a "I'm sorry!" button that when pressed shows SORRY written in large LED jazz on all window panels.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#195

Post by smsm42 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #152

mannykannot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off the people who would otherwise be willing to move on. As the "mob", which may or may not exist in any given situation, is not going to be swayed by protests of innocence, the former are the only people you should care about.

In the current "us vs them" of politics, apologizing does nothing to appease "them" while making you seem weaker to "us" and denying it means you will be given the benefit of the doubt by "us." If e.g. Kavanaugh had admitted assaulting Ms. Ford and apologized, do you think enough Democrats would have said "Apology accepted" and voted to confirm to make up for the Republicans who would be unwilling to vote to confirm…

I think we are considering the situation where a mistake was made. I don't think the Kavanaugh situation applies - depending on your views on it, it is either situation of cynical rapist and hardcore liar, thoroughly corrupt evil man, denying his crimes, or an innocent man being falsely accused in a vile crime. In both situations, apology wouldn't solve anything.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#196

Post by smsm42 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

jmartrican wrote: post #75

mannykannot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denying that you have made a mistake is likely to piss off the people who would otherwise be willing to move on. As the "mob", which may or may not exist in any given situation, is not going to be swayed by protests of innocence, the former are the only people you should care about.

Agreed. Apologizing may keep the mob size small and insignificant.

Did it ever happen? Did anybody actually get out of being cancelled by mobs by apologizing?

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#197

Post by smsm42 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #23

I'm not sure apologizing publicly has made anything better for any individual, especially in the current moral panic climate. Mobs don't accept apologies. Public apologies stamp official guilt on the individual and therefore serve as a license for the mob to further punish them because now they have admitted their fault and therefore are 'officially' guilty of the crime. Public apologies, therefore, are the metaphori…

Well, that depends on a situation. If you're in an environment where people are united by a common goal and assume good faith, then admitting you done goofed up (when you did) is the best way - everybody knows you realized your mistake and will try to do better, and people can move on - and usually will be glad to offer you to help fixing it. And they'd know they can count on you to own up to your mistakes - so they'd be ready to listen if you say something isn't a mistake.

If you are in a "cancel culture" situation, then people that surround you are not you friends, and they do not have common goals with you. You can not win. Best thing is to get out of that situation ASAP, if you can not - minimize your losses in any way you can. And continue looking to get out of this situation, because you can not win, and you will surely lose sooner or later. Try to still be kind to others - you won't fix the broken culture, but at least you can have a little island of non-awfulness around you.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#198

Post by bartread » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #187

DoreenMichele wrote: post #172

I don't know. Years ago, I was on an email list and I did a lot of sincere public apologizing, in part because the internet was younger, so we didn't have a lot of stuff worked out. We were just stumbling our way forward as best we could. And the end result was that I became everyone's bitch. People would intentionally pick on me and be ugly to me and when it went sideways, the group as a whole would go "There she go…

To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to make their colleagues feel bad. But as you say, it's also been my experience that apology and... "ownership"(?) are two very different things in American (Southern) culture. "I'm sorry I did X" seems to signal weakness and invite criticism, if people are already so inclined. "I did X. It wasn't the best a…

> To preface, we're talking about people with jackasses-tendencies here. Normal, well-adjusted people don't like to make their colleagues feel bad.

Exactly this, and one of the things I eventually realised is you have to simply ignore the jackasses.

Realising that face to face these people are most likely not terribly formidable is certainly helpful but the main thing is to learn not to give a s### what they think regardless. This isn't to say you should ignore everyone, or become proud, but that you should recognise peoples' behaviour for what it is and respond appropriately, which might include ignoring it entirely.

> My gut says bullies key to subconscious signs of weakness, and the former is interpreted as such.

Without wanting to get too Homelander about it and, of course, I never would, but after a number of years of strength training it's always nice to know that if push came to shove you could probably snap the bullies in half with your bare hands. More seriously, being in physically good shape is highly underrated: it fundamentally changes who you are, and will change the way you think about difficult or challenging situations, making you more confident and capable of dealing with them. I can't really explain why this happens, but it certainly does - at least in my experience (one data point, I will grant you).

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#199

Post by aflag » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #130

aflag wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking about a very particular kind of mistake. However, for mistakes that are not hitting headlines, the original list from the article actually works. Specially for technical mistakes. I haven't been in a position that I had to go silent about my mistakes, which makes me happy. After admitting my mistakes I feel much lighter.

Yeah, the emphasis was on a public mistake and thus a public (external) reaction. I agree that there are far more constructive ways of dealing with internal (family or company) errors.

There are different degrees of public reaction. One thing is to admit a mistake in a public mailing list for an open source project or even in a blog post that were front page of this very forum. It's still a public/external reaction. However, it's a lot different than when you are a public figure and a mistake you made is the cover page of major newspapers. I think that, in those sort of situations, a more tactical approach may be desired, rather than a personal one.

Re: So you've made a mistake and it's public

#200

Post by kbenson » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

aequitas wrote: post #171

tsimionescu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs are not critiques. Working in software development, you learn extremely quickly that everyone writes bugs, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about. The openness of issue trackers even helps elevate that. On the other hand, it's not normal and not often practiced to go digging to see whose mistake introduced a bug and call them out in public on it - that would be what shouldn't be done at all.

> Bugs are not critiques. Not only (technical) bugs are reported, but also design decisions and such. A lot of those things often come down to difference in opinion. I've seen some developers be really adamant about how a bug was actually a feature. > The openness of issue trackers even helps elevate that. I agree partly. For me it helped see things different and make a positive growth. But I can image some staying a…

> I've seen some developers be really adamant about how a bug was actually a feature.

And sometimes they are feature, and it's the users that are mistaken on what the project they are using is offering them. It's a fine line, I'm sure, but different projects have different goals, and those goals will align to a specific user's needs differently depending on the user.

> So like the previous poster said. I am wondering if Github et al. should not contain a private channel.

It might depend quite a bit on the project. In an open source project with many contributors, there isn't really any meaning to "private" other than "limited to a subgroup of the people that care", and those people may have little to nothing with the design and implementation of the items in question. In a project that is mostly driven by one author that controls it and accepts some patches, that might be a lot different, and criticism may be received differently.

There's a whole spectrum there, and even if you provide the tools to allow different types of contact, what's to prevent people from using the wrong tool most the time? Rust, PHP, Perl, Bind, Apache etc aren't going to benefit much for a private list for first contact of regular bugs, but people would use it. Meanwhile someone's random personal project is still going to get people making public requests even if they prefer them private. In the end, I think we're all better served by a "public by default" for open source stuff, and for things people feel is actually private (security related items, for example), they'll look up a private contact or personal contact for someone related.