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This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.

by oneJob 11y ago

afarrell 11y ago
There are other options between unconstrained direct democracy and monarchy by someone who does not listen to colleagues. For example, a model wherein one person makes the final decision but is socially pressured to earnestly listen to the opinions of other members of the community often works well.
- softmodeling 11y ago
  Exactly. Democracy does not imply that all members of the project (including non-technical users) have to vote every single decision. We could have elections and let elected experts to act unsupervised for a period of time, use liquid democracy (where you delegate your vote when you're not involved in a certain decision),...
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, because it is. What scares me is those constant attempts to turn software projects into social gatherings.
- oneJob 11y ago
  Yeah, like GitHub. Can you believe how socialist their intro statement is: "GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over 12.4 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together." I mean, it doesn't use the word 'technical' once!
  - dingo_bat 11y ago
    While the language Github uses to describe themselves has become increasingly "social", and "sharing" and basically political, their success is backed by solid tech and innovation. All the sharing and social aspect of the website is a byproduct of the innovation and technical superiority (owed in part to git).
dingo_bat 11y ago
Note that I do not think non-experts should be ignored. I think everyone should be able to voice their opinion, expert or non-expert. But there should be a final authority where the buck stops, and their word should be final, no matter how many people wanted something else. Also, I agree that experts are not always right, but they are right in overwhelmingly more cases. Which is practically "always". The small number of times an expert is outright wrong, is a risk I'm willing to take.
- oneJob 11y ago
  You realize your first sentence is practically the definition for a democratic republic? I wasn't taking issue with the proposed decision making mechanism. I was taking issue with the idea that there are purely "technical solutions". In math, the most intangible of disciplines, I was taught that when working solving an open problem, the most important question to answer will always be, "So what?" It's easy to come up with novel but trivial proofs all day long. If you can't explain why the new proof is important, then, so what? Go play with Legos. If such an intangible discipline requires some justification part of its most foundational task, then surely there must be some broader justification in software development. And I'm being specific when I use the term 'software development'. It's not like we're talking about computer science or applied mathematics. Software development builds things that are to be used by end users for a purpose. There is plenty of room in software development for non-technical perspectives, and non-technical discussions will never be black-or-white. Often a software development project with be built specifically for a non-expert. In that case, to say that the end-user "should not necessarily be ignored" is such a bad tenor to be set for the discussion. Last, I'd like to mention the idea of a do-ocracy, which is what many OSS projects have organically turned into. In these cases, the technical expert and the novice alike can do whatever they want, because folks will either choose to work with them or not. But in a do-ocracy it's not likely that someone will be forced to do something they don't agree with or at least sign-on-to. If you want a "buck stops here" set-up, then go to a company that has a hierarchy or pay people to do what you tell them to do. But otherwise, there is no Utopia where programmers can go write whatever software they want and that others will be required to use without getting to share in the decision making process.

This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.

by oneJob 11y ago

This sort of sh*t scares me. Thinking that software is a purely technical endeavor where an expert can always be "right" and thus ignore non experts.

afarrell 11y ago

There are other options between unconstrained direct democracy and monarchy by someone who does not listen to colleagues. For example, a model wherein one person makes the final decision but is socially pressured to earnestly listen to the opinions of other members of the community often works well.

softmodeling 11y ago
Exactly. Democracy does not imply that all members of the project (including non-technical users) have to vote every single decision. We could have elections and let elected experts to act unsupervised for a period of time, use liquid democracy (where you delegate your vote when you're not involved in a certain decision),...

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Well, because it is. What scares me is those constant attempts to turn software projects into social gatherings.

oneJob 11y ago
Yeah, like GitHub. Can you believe how socialist their intro statement is: "GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over 12.4 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together." I mean, it doesn't use the word 'technical' once!
- dingo_bat 11y ago
  While the language Github uses to describe themselves has become increasingly "social", and "sharing" and basically political, their success is backed by solid tech and innovation. All the sharing and social aspect of the website is a byproduct of the innovation and technical superiority (owed in part to git).

dingo_bat 11y ago

Note that I do not think non-experts should be ignored. I think everyone should be able to voice their opinion, expert or non-expert. But there should be a final authority where the buck stops, and their word should be final, no matter how many people wanted something else. Also, I agree that experts are not always right, but they are right in overwhelmingly more cases. Which is practically "always". The small number of times an expert is outright wrong, is a risk I'm willing to take.

oneJob 11y ago
You realize your first sentence is practically the definition for a democratic republic? I wasn't taking issue with the proposed decision making mechanism. I was taking issue with the idea that there are purely "technical solutions". In math, the most intangible of disciplines, I was taught that when working solving an open problem, the most important question to answer will always be, "So what?" It's easy to come up with novel but trivial proofs all day long. If you can't explain why the new proof is important, then, so what? Go play with Legos. If such an intangible discipline requires some justification part of its most foundational task, then surely there must be some broader justification in software development. And I'm being specific when I use the term 'software development'. It's not like we're talking about computer science or applied mathematics. Software development builds things that are to be used by end users for a purpose. There is plenty of room in software development for non-technical perspectives, and non-technical discussions will never be black-or-white. Often a software development project with be built specifically for a non-expert. In that case, to say that the end-user "should not necessarily be ignored" is such a bad tenor to be set for the discussion. Last, I'd like to mention the idea of a do-ocracy, which is what many OSS projects have organically turned into. In these cases, the technical expert and the novice alike can do whatever they want, because folks will either choose to work with them or not. But in a do-ocracy it's not likely that someone will be forced to do something they don't agree with or at least sign-on-to. If you want a "buck stops here" set-up, then go to a company that has a hierarchy or pay people to do what you tell them to do. But otherwise, there is no Utopia where programmers can go write whatever software they want and that others will be required to use without getting to share in the decision making process.