Dear Stack Exchange, Inc. • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#341

Post by Ruthalas » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #226

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Monica Cellio's blogpost ( https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html ), I think what happened is that, last year, she posted saying that she prefers, when possible, to refer to people in ways that don't require using pronouns at all. Later, this was misinterpreted to mean that she refused to use people's requested pronouns, and she was fired from her position. That might have been reasonable if she had actu…

You're giving them too much credit. She said she'd prefer not using pronouns at all. They said if she avoids using pronouns, she's just as guilty as using the wrong one. Then they fired/de-moded her based on her stated preference, assuming she would not follow the future rules. They also did this at 6 pm on a Friday. She's Jewish.

Is this particularly onerous because she'd be unable to do work to defend herself the following day, as it was the sabbath?

(Honesty question. I'm curious what the connection is, and that's the best I can think of.)

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#342

Post by brigandish » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #280

brigandish wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be here soon enough and it'll be interesting to see how it's handled, especially as the parties pushing for change tend to apply pressure as a group to those in authority (in our tech world, project leaders and moderators, but beyond it's appeals to universities or the media…) and flag/downvote (or worse) against those who show any dissent. The Opal project's little kerfuffle[0] a while back comes to mind, and…

I can't help but feel that NCoC isn't scaleable. "Let's all be reasonable" is a great strategy when a handful of people are working on something and they are all more interested in getting the job done than talking about it. But it runs straight into the fact that there actually are people - particularly in the open source community that are perfectly willing to shout abuse at other contributors until they quit: http…

I agree. I've had other devs call me all sorts, in public, and it's not nice. One Ruby committer called me an "asshat" on his Twitter feed, simply because he failed to read my pull request properly and then seemed unable to admit it. Weird. One maintainer on another project called me a troll for opening an issue. Recently, I had one of the Rubygems maintainers be rude to me for the heinous crime of… suggesting client side validation in an issue thread! I think they have the Contributor Covenant but it doesn't seem to apply to maintainers. I get this stuff so often now I'm never surprised.

Still, like many things, it's a choice between one bad thing and one worse thing, and these "covenants" and other well-meaning straitjackets have the same old free speech arguments applicable to them - it's not nice to hear people be nasty but it's worse to have some jumped up little authoritarians choose how us plebs should be "nice" while they get free reign to be horrible.

I wonder, has Torvalds ever acted like that to people's faces?

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#343

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

kevhito wrote: post #165

ShamelessC wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing this notion that the singular they is offensive. I thought its whole purpose was to be more inclusive. At what point did it become offensive and why is it considered to be offensive?

I was just recently at a gender-inclusivity seminar. The speaker asked everyone in the room to give their name, but specifically asked for NOT everyone to state their [preferred?] pronouns. Why not? Apparently the speaker is currently in a community were certain transgender members feel quite strongly that stating pronouns is itself problematic and hurtful. For those of us not quite up to date on social movements, an…

It's a unbelievable that we take the output of these seminars as gospel. They are just groups of people - with no more authority on what "proper behavior" is than the rest of us.

...and yet the community that supports them vehemently punishes anyone that strays from their constantly changing and often contradictory directives.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#344

Post by mcv » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

abstractbarista wrote: post #317

mkohlmyr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps my reading of the situation is way off, but at the risk of making a fool of myself: My understanding is that Monica wanted to use gender neutral pronouns throughout her writing as a general case, but that this was deemed "not good enough" (or indeed hateful) in the cases where someone has chosen specific pronouns. So I suppose this is what the GP is referring to. And I can't argue that it seems like a rather…

That is what this is about? There is something wrong with the way our culture is shifting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Monica's choice. It is literally the most pacifist choice you could make. Anyone who feels "harmed" by her choice is only harming themselves.

I care deeply about social justice, and I'm totally on Monica's side here. Even more so because as far as anyone can tell, she wasn't even violating a CoC yet, and would probably have followed it if it was sufficiently clarified. But at the most basic level, I feel gender-neutral language should always be okay.

In fact, I think it would be healthy if language in general developed in a more gender-neutral direction. We don't use special pronouns to divide people based on other characteristics, so why gender?

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#345

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

Ixio wrote: post #233

sqldba wrote: post #28

Shouldn’t the CTO fire the person who was directly responsible for firing Monica? Why isn’t that part of it?

I see firing in such a case as a cop-out, a cowardly way to appease mob-mentality. In this case if the employee responsible for firing the moderator did such acts repeatedly despite management warnings than perhaps it's a good idea to fire that person. However this doesn't seem to be the case, the CTO correctly assumed responsibility in his apology of green-lighting the moderator's firing. He does the right thing, in…

In some cases, that is true. In other cases, it is an important part of removing a toxic element from your organization.

There are some people who refuse to behave in the best interests of the group, no matter how much direction you give them.

...but you are correct that they are often only one part of the problem. Then again, often firing them will motivate some of their supporters to quit.

I imagine that was the impetus behind firing Monica, so perhaps turnabout is fair play.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#346

Post by bwat49 » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

beerandt wrote: post #226

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on Monica Cellio's blogpost ( https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/2064709.html ), I think what happened is that, last year, she posted saying that she prefers, when possible, to refer to people in ways that don't require using pronouns at all. Later, this was misinterpreted to mean that she refused to use people's requested pronouns, and she was fired from her position. That might have been reasonable if she had actu…

You're giving them too much credit. She said she'd prefer not using pronouns at all. They said if she avoids using pronouns, she's just as guilty as using the wrong one. Then they fired/de-moded her based on her stated preference, assuming she would not follow the future rules. They also did this at 6 pm on a Friday. She's Jewish.

> They said if she avoids using pronouns, she's just as guilty as using the wrong one.

People that think like this baffle me

When I refer to people online, I rarely use 'pronouns'. IMO in online communication, it's most clear/neutral to just refer to people by their name or username, e.g. if I'm referring to you I might just say @beerandt. I can't imagine how that could be seen as offensive in any way

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#347

Post by gregmac » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #202

alkonaut wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my experience of the site (as an experienced long time user) is much more negatively affected by the “active moderation” than it is positively affected by it. I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question, than a race to ninja-downvote or close anything that is tangentially related to an existing question. The struggle to maintain quality in the content of the site appears to be destroying the qualit…

> I’d rather have ten duplicate questions for every question Sure, unless it really happens. I'd been burned by over-moderation as well but when I look at the process I think it's not arbitrary. There are controls and voting by more than one person. Remember, there is nothing a moderator gains by doing any of this.

Well, what is the downside to having duplicate* questions?

I would guess the vast majority of traffic to any specific question page is search, followed by specific links people have posted (on or offsite), and relatively little will come from browsing through lists of questions (tags pages) or something like that.

Search is going to surface the most up-voted and linked questions. Links people have posted are obviously very specific (no chance of confusion following the link).

I would say the upsides are that you end up with more opportunities to have nuanced differences in question handled, give more people a chance to answer questions, naturally refresh questions/answers over the years (eg: "How do I minify CSS in ?" will have very different answers in 2019 than it did in 2009).

* I'm not necessarily suggesting exact duplicates, but allowing for questions to be re-asked after a year or two, and allowing any subtle difference in the situation, stack, etc.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#348

Post by mcv » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #289

dna_polymerase wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is a duplicate, sure, but the correct answer is now different. Also, often I see newer and better answers under the 'original' question, but they never get the upvotes or the 'correct answer' badge. Sometimes I completely overlook them because they are just not as visible.

This is because the original asker has moved on with their life and doesn't care anymore. Maybe after a few years the accepted answer should be switched the one with the most upvotes? (Maybe with some margin, say, it must have at least 20% more votes than the next best one)

The answer with the most upvotes still gets shown. The problem is that much later answers that are more correct with later technologies, don't gather enough upvotes to make it to the front of the pack, so they get ignored.

Allowing duplicate questions, at least after some time, could fix this problem.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#349

Post by mcv » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

blt wrote: post #241

cameronbrown wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such twisted logic. Are you saying I'm doing unpaid work for my social group when we have a conversation? Jesus Christ not everything needs a dollar symbol attached even if it benefits a company.

I think that was the point - that answering questions on SO is like having a conversation, and feels pleasant to some people, not like work.

At least it feels pleasant until a moderator or community manager starts interfering with it.

Re: Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.

#350

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Oct 07, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #180

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose if your profile on StackOverflow is high enough you could put it on your cv. SO also has a jobs site, which I suppose can be linked to your profile if you want it to. A company I consulted at one time was trying to improve it's profile for job applicants so they wanted people to put up their github profiles and SO profiles in some advertisements or whatever they were doing - I think it was on linkedIn they…

Lots of SO points means I spend a lot of time there answering questions (usually during work hours). Not sure I’d want to advertise that.

I would totally agree with that, however I have over the years developed the suspicion that people who make hiring decisions might not be operating at the same logical level that I am.

Given both that suspicion, and how they seem to behave about prominent github profiles and such, I think that being in the top 20th percentile or so on SO and a strong focus on the tags that correlate to the terms in a job announcement might be a big draw to some HR people/managers who just really don't want to mess up one more time! After the fifth complaint or so of programmers we hire don't know how to code or whatever - it might be soothing.