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The web runs on tolerance

shkspr.mobi

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Re: The web runs on tolerance

#41

Post by whycombinetor »

wredcoll wrote: post #34
whycombinetor wrote: post #13

What a bizarre bait and switch. Starts talking about browsers allowing malformed HTML and uses that to draw conclusions about allowing certain types of people.

My god, and we thought those english teachers were idiots when they insisted we should learn things like reading comprehension and metaphors.

It's a poor metaphor. Real tolerance necessitates intolerance - see Marcuse. What is a browser going to do, send malformed HTTP requests and name-and-shame any server who refuses to respond? Servers vs. browsers is not the same type of relationship as people vs. people.

Not to mention that the author's metaphor is implying that certain types of people are malformed.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#42

Post by auxiliarymoose »

verandaguy wrote: post #29
ktpsns wrote: post #3

The older ones among us remember when XML took over the world and everyone was supposed to use strict XHTML. It turned out that the strength of the HTML ecosystem was its fault tolerance. HTML4 was the "sloppy" answer to XHTML. It brought HTML back from a data language to a markup language. Every Markdown parser is similarly fault-tolerant as HTML parsers. However, CSS and JS are not error-tolerant. A syntax error in…

Funny enough my impression of JS (the kind you'd write in 2007 more than the type you see now, mind you) is that it's remarkably tolerant; many idioms and operations which would cause, in other languages, runtime errors or compile errors, would just get steamrolled over in JS because of just how much built-in flexibility the uber-weak type system (plus liberal use of the prototype pattern in the stdlib) allows for. -…

It is also (nearly) impossible to completely crash a web page. There isn't a main loop that can panic out. No matter where an exception gets thrown, the overall application keeps going and responding to events.

Can't access a network resource? API returns an unexpected error? Library crashes? Browser extension breaks something? Doesn't matter. The user can still view and scroll the page, and the rest of it will probably keep working, too.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#43

Post by gaigalas »

Dude.

HTML4 era was full of parser hacks. Increasingly more and more parser hacks.

XHTML tried to solve that, and make HTML parsing more acessible to everyone. It's not about rigor, it's about making it simpler.

HTML5 goes in the other direction. It formalized all those hacks into very, very strict parsing rules. It's super strict and specific, to the point that only companies with large resources can realistically invest in a proper HTML5 engine.

So, the metaphor does not hold.

You actually don't need a technical-aspect analogue to advocate for better, more inclusive human behavior. It's much better if you don't rely on those. People should not need a spec as a mirror to understand that.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#44

Post by dingnuts »

wredcoll wrote: post #34
whycombinetor wrote: post #13

What a bizarre bait and switch. Starts talking about browsers allowing malformed HTML and uses that to draw conclusions about allowing certain types of people.

My god, and we thought those english teachers were idiots when they insisted we should learn things like reading comprehension and metaphors.

[dead]

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#45

Post by wredcoll »

charcircuit wrote: post #14

>But the web works because browsers are tolerant. This is more of an artifact of needing to be compatibile with other browsers and more of an arbitrary decision where once one browser starts allowing all sorts of input than everyone else may start needing to if content starts relying on it. >But the world is better for it. It makes compatibility between different browsers more complicated due to adding a ton of edge…

> >When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent.

> I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with.

Tell me more about this subset you wouldn't like to work with.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#46

Post by wredcoll »

mvdtnz wrote: post #15

This author needs to either be specific about who and what they're talking about or not bother. I don't have the context to understand their specific complaints and I'm not motivated to seek it out.

I too celebrate my own ignorance and trumpet my lack of curiosity. At last I have found my home!

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#47

Post by Incipient »

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong.

>It had an intolerant ideology.

Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!! You can't discriminate against different thicknesses, all thicknesses are equally valuable!"

What a useless position to hold.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#48

Post by dokyun »

What the web runs on is freedom, the freedom to express and disseminate any information one pleases with impunity. That prominent figureheads embrace the hateful ideologies that you speak of is merely a tide of the current times, and will change as soon as they become unpopular, just as they had quit embracing this "tolerance" which was in full force a few years prior. Because they are not about a hate of people, but hate of freedom: hate is merely a pretense, a convenient vehicle through which freedoms can be taken. I think freedom is the most important thing worth fighting for, and you had my support up until now. But then you go on to say that those outside your own window of ideology have no place here. It's much the same methods that the people you complain of employ: to be disingenuous about what you really want-- it's your inability to force your will upon others that you're frustrated with. You have missed the forest for the trees, and the context has already been created for you: you are projecting a battle for the rights of certain groups onto a battle against the rights of all, and you've been turned against yourself. Freedom is something, if you believe in it, you must believe in in its entirety: not almost-freedom, or a convenient sliver of freedom that fits into your own ideological window. You lack the qualifications to exercise tolerance.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#49

Post by raincole »

Incipient wrote: post #47

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong. >It had an intolerant ideology. Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiri…

Thank you. These are right out of my mouth. I mean I'd have made a similar comment if I didn't worry the strong words would get me flagged.

The whole article is weird af. How are tolerating XHTML syntax error and tolerating different sexualities remotely comparable? The metaphor stretches itself so thin that you can see the fallacies beneath.

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