C2 wiki closed for remodeling

If you complain in a way that you are setting yourself up as judge and jury (a common mode here on HN), then yes, I'd rather you put a sock in it. Ward's a smart guy, he knows more about the topic than you, and he's spent much more time thinking about it. Truly respecting that eliminates certain kinds of critique.

Note that this doesn't stop you from commenting. If you would like to mention your feelings in non-judgmental ways, that's fine. E.g., "I'm worried: what will happen to the archives?" Or "I don't understand how he will solve problem X." It also doesn't prevent you from expressing different values, as long as you respect his values.

But you are only competent to disagree with his decision once you have as much information as he does and has put a similar level of thought into it. Otherwise you're one of those people who froths at a trial outcome without actually looking at the trial record and carefully reading the judge's decision. Not all opinions are equally valuable. If I suggest my ignorant opinion is just as good as somebody else's informed one, I am unavoidably being disrespectful to them.

I'm happy to recognize the middle ground where someone can effectively just be whining and have nothing useful to say, and the appropriate thing to do is just shut up. That middle ground has nothing to do with respect though, which gets back to my point.

Certainly I agree that the way a concern is voiced has a major impact on how it will be received.

> But you are only competent to disagree with his decision once you have as much information as he does and has put a similar level of thought into it. Otherwise you're one of those people who froths at a trial outcome without actually looking at the trial record and carefully reading the judge's decision. Not all opinions are equally valuable. If I suggest my ignorant opinion is just as good as somebody else's informed one, I am unavoidably being disrespectful to them.

Absolutely not. This is a terribly unhealthy attitude. By this logic, you can virtually never question someone's choice because you effectively never know everything that goes into someone else's choice. This is yes man logic that leads to an echo chamber. Less charitably, this is apologist behavior. This is the argument put forward to defend every shady government decision in history. "Oh, you don't have all the information so you can't have an opinion on the issue."

What you should be doing in a situation where you disagree but don't feel well informed is to become well informed so that you can either defend your position or understand the decision.

It feels like you're trying really hard to avoid addressing the point directly. It's really not as complex as you're making it out to be. I literally posed a yes or no question about the specific example of Ward Cunningham and somehow it's now a multi-dimensional issue that you've been unable to answer?

I think your answer is "no" but for some reason you're unwilling to just say so, which is why you're bringing in other dimensions that are unrelated to respect in order to try to make the question seem difficult. If you think the commenters should shut up about Cunningham's actions because you think their complaints come from a place of ignorance or entitlement, that might be reasonable, but it's got nothing to do with respect.

> You were talking criticism. Here you have shifted ground to questioning. Which is still a little entitled, honestly. You could ask questions, though.

You're trying to nitpick semantics. To question someone's decision is to criticize it.

> Also, your parallel to government decisions is ridiculous. Government is of, by, and for the people. People have a right to know. Ward Cunningham, on the other hand, is of, by, and for Ward Cunningham. You have no right to get up in his business.

The government example was provided to illustrate why this mindset is fundamentally wrong, not to equate government actions and Cunningham's actions. I could have provided equivalent examples involving business, or friends, or strangers. But it doesn't matter because you're nitpicking the example instead of addressing the unhealthiness of the attitude.

> Yes, and I for one wish you had done that here instead of pitching a fit.

Where do you imagine I pitched a fit? Is criticism something you just fundamentally don't agree with? My comments here have been polite and, yes, respectful.

> But ultimately, Ward doesn't owe us an explanation. If he chooses to inform us, that's great. But if not, the respectful thing to do is to, absent evidence to the contrary, assume he knows what he's doing.

I never claimed he did and repeatedly stated that he didn't owe me anything. I think I made it extremely clear that I was criticizing the comments/attitude linking respect and silence, and not Cunningham's actions. (I'm not sure why you're equating whether he owes us something with whether he knows what he's doing, though. These are unrelated.)

This is why your example about governments is off-point, by the way.