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D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

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Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

samstave wrote: post #29
smtddr wrote: post #9

Hey, so... this is a sorta good time to ask. I assume this website's visualization was meant to spark some discussion. Do people on HN support/condemn the BART strike(s)? I've always been under the impression that the huge salaries being reported were some how an exaggeration. Because of this, I support the BART strike(s)... but perhaps my impression is wrong. Also, the strike doesn't impact me nearly as much as some…

Here is my perspective as a daily BART rider where 99% of the time I also have a bike, as well as often travelling with small kids/strollers (Forgive my BART Rage): If you have ever taken a BART elevator; every single BART employee should be fired, here is why: BART elevators, in 100% of my experience over the years has been a cesspool covered in urine and who knows what. EVERY time I take the elevator - I hit the em…

> I am enraged that I have to pay for such a horrible rider experience, that I have to subject my small children to the horrific conditions of the BART elevators, their filthy cloth seats and their terrible customer service.

You don't have to. You choose to. Assuming this enrages you, you should probably stop doing it. There are other transportation options in the Bay Area besides BART, including busses (many of which can transport bikes), rental vehicles (including ad hoc rentals like ZipCar), and owning your own vehicle.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

samstave wrote: post #69
throwaway86 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're being an ass: Call someone a pretentious jerk but get it back and suddenly that person's an ass. Got it. > This is THE ONLY BUTTON to all the agent. That button contacts BART police dispatch in some cases because stations do not always have operators. Particularly in my old home station, I've seen people use it and communicate with someone while the station agent was not in the kiosk. That's the expectation…

> Do you ever listen to yourself? Seriously, I was being brutally honest. Your comment ranks among the most pretentious and awful I've ever read on HN, and I received a link to it in an e-mail thread where the subject was you. There is no plane of existence where anything you have typed in this thread is normal, rational human behavior. Seriously? Calling the emergency when I come out of a piss-filled elevator to a b…

Your original story was that you use the emergency call button every time you use the elevator. You later added that the most recent time you used the elevator, there was a someone convulsing on the platform floor.

No one has suggested that the latter single incident was an inappropriate use of the emergency button, what people have said is that the former, recurring use was inappropriated.

> Complaining about this is "on no plane of existence rational"?

Complaining is not the isssue. Using the emergency call-button for those complaints when there is not an actual emergency is the issue.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#73

Post by samstave »

throwaway86 wrote: post #70
samstave wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you ever listen to yourself? Seriously, I was being brutally honest. Your comment ranks among the most pretentious and awful I've ever read on HN, and I received a link to it in an e-mail thread where the subject was you. There is no plane of existence where anything you have typed in this thread is normal, rational human behavior. Seriously? Calling the emergency when I come out of a piss-filled elevator to a b…

> Calling the emergency when I come out of a piss-filled elevator to a body convulsing on the floor on the platform is not an emergency? Yes, it is, and good for you for doing something. Minus the piss-filled elevator part, which is an irrelevant detail. > And when I am attempting to bring small children through a public service elevator where there is real risk of infectious disease? No, it isn't. The difference bet…

I'm pretentious, yet you're teaching me as though I am a second grader, right.

You insinuated that I was "sheilding my precious kids from the homeless" and have stated that I'm pretentious for expecting a functional, clean elevator from a service which already pays a respectable income while threatening strikes if not given more money while doing nothing to fix their current issues.

So, while I obviously did a poor job expressing to you how I find a piss-filled elevator unacceptable - and you're clearly not bothered by human excrement in your public transportation systems - I find calling to the attention of the system, by the only means made available, perfectly reasonable. I also did that holding a standard for cleanliness for a system that wants more money an acceptable thing to expect as a user of the system.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#74

Post by Osiris »

cmsmith wrote: post #41
mrmaddog wrote: post #31

I like how you can click on a person's representative dot and follow them through the different sorting metrics. One point stood out to me: how does Assistant Treasurer Ms. Collier get $289,534 in "other" pay? The raw data provided didn't offer any details, and http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2012 classifies "Other" as lump sum payouts for vacation, sick-leave, bonuses and comp-time. How does the assista…

Perhaps she retired and was awarded the value of her accrued vacation time?

My brother is a CHP officer and they have the same type of arrangement. They get paid out vacation, sick leave, etc if they don't use it. But then they end up getting double-paid. You get paid because you worked and then you get paid again because you didn't take vacation. if they USE the vacation, then they only get paid once (no work pay + vacation pay).

There should be a vacation cap. Once you hit the cap, you can't accrue any more. The cap should be 2 years worth of vacation. You should never get paid out vacation. It's a benefit, not an entitlement.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#75

Post by pg »

samstave wrote: post #73
throwaway86 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling the emergency when I come out of a piss-filled elevator to a body convulsing on the floor on the platform is not an emergency? Yes, it is, and good for you for doing something. Minus the piss-filled elevator part, which is an irrelevant detail. > And when I am attempting to bring small children through a public service elevator where there is real risk of infectious disease? No, it isn't. The difference bet…

I'm pretentious, yet you're teaching me as though I am a second grader, right. You insinuated that I was "sheilding my precious kids from the homeless" and have stated that I'm pretentious for expecting a functional, clean elevator from a service which already pays a respectable income while threatening strikes if not given more money while doing nothing to fix their current issues. So, while I obviously did a poor j…

Please stop this, both of you.

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#76

Post by zorpner »

discardorama wrote: post #61
zorpner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hit the emergency help button and complain about the stench, the state of the service. Please stop wasting everyone's time with your abuse of the emergency help button. Your problem is not an emergency. Additionally, you do not "have to pay" for the experience, you choose to do so.

> Additionally, you do not "have to pay" for the experience, you choose to do so. Actually, we _all_ have to pay, even if don't ride BART. There's a 0.5% sales tax addon to fund BART in the Bay Area. Next time, check your facts.

Of course. That's neither what I nor the GP were talking about (read the next few words after "have to pay" in either of our posts if you're still confused).

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#77

Post by martindale »

javajosh wrote: post #57

Wow - I'm a lot less interested in the BART strike and more inspired about the idea that news stories and their source data will be published as github projects . This is an amazing concept. I can fork this "story" and edit it to my liking, add different analyses, commentary, etc. I could combine the data with other data - all without bothering the author. I can also verify the data, amend it, etc (which is a little…

You might also be interested in Coursefork, my startup for creating forkable educational materials [1]. We're considering building some "deploy to x" tools, where x is a set of publishing tools such as Wordpress or Jekyll, or even a GitHub pages instance.

[1]: http://coursefork.org

Re: D3 visualization of San Francisco BART employees' salaries and union membership

#78

Post by rmc »

anonymoushn wrote: post #13
rmc wrote: post #12

USA is weird. How come you can get this data on people's personal lives? Why do you not have privacy laws?

They are public employees. Wouldn't it be a bit weirder to expect people to pay taxes without knowing what they were spent on?

Public employees are still people, and hence have the right to privacy.
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