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> We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battl

> We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.

KirinDave 9y ago
If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.
- yebyen 9y ago
  There's a thing about text communication, like the kind you find on Hacker News and on mailing lists, and that is the difficulty of communicating with nuance or subtlety. I have learned not to try to use sarcasm, for example, because it often doesn't come across at all. I'm not specifically trying to defend anyone's "retroactive abortion" comments but, there is a stark difference between reading a comment that says you (op) should be retroactively aborted, and reading a comment that says with some subtlety and nuance that you have made a bad decision and should be ashamed of making a bad decision. The main difference? Impact. Agreed it's not a positive impact if it causes you to be totally humiliated and leave, rather than causing you to re-evaluate how you arrived at the bad choice and do better next time. But a poignant message should be making an impact, that's what makes it effective. These people are primarily responsible for writing code, they may not be skilled at nuance or subtlety in English language, and they may view exercises of those particular disciplines as significant time-wasting sinks that they've spent too much time on with too little ROI. (From experience, I know I often write too much, and say too little!)
- falsedan 9y ago
  > If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can. I feel like you're pushing an agenda & have discarded any possibility of listening to other points of view, or modifying your position. I recognise it as 'listening in bad faith'. I didn't say I liked being inconsistent or tribal, you are putting words into my mouth in an attempt to discredit my position as irrational. It's still a false choice: I can choose how I spend my time, and I can spend it in a way that I think is effective.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I did read your post. I just disagree with it entirely. You're picking and choosing who gets to be a bad actor based on your moral compass. That's a thing you can do, but I have a different compass. Don't expect appeals on the axis of your internalized morality to be compelling? You can choose how you spend your time. But that doesn't mean you can choose how people evaluate that time and if it's fair or not. This is a direct consequence of your own point! This thing where you suggest I listened in "bad faith" but your point is dancing around the definition of "can" seems pretty bad faith to me.
    - falsedan 9y ago
      I’m sorry that I implied that you were acting in bad faith; that’s just the phrase I’m familiar with that describes the style of listening that I recognsed in your replies. If I understood your argument correctly, your position is that both Lennart and Linux exhibit aggressive, egotistical, “asshole” behavior. This makes them equally bad and thus condemning Lennart more that Linux is unfair. I recognse this style of argument as the Continuum Fallacy: that if two things fall into the same scale of badness, then as a whole they are equally bad. I disagree with this argument, and think it is possible for someone to complain & take action against one problem without being obliged to do the same against another similar problem. I also think that people can choose which problem to address, and do not necessarily have to only address the most egregious issue. As I understand it, your complaint is that people complain about Lennart’s antisocial behaviour but remain silent on Linus’. I think that, since this topic is regarding systemsd, people will take about Lennart, and as the topic is not about the Linux kernel, people won’t talk about Linus. So, there may be lots of comments addressing Linus’ behaviour, but I wouldn’t expect to see them here. Finally, I think the thing that makes Linus more acceptable than Lennart is that Linus is open about mistakes and has grown a developement community which encourages collaboration, and his outbursts are directed at changes which don’t match his expectations (which are fairly well established: run tests, check for merge conflicts, etc.). I hope I have been clearer, and that this helps you make sense of some of the behaviour you have seen that you think is inconsistent/irrational.
      - 9y ago

> We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.

KirinDave 9y ago

If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.

yebyen 9y ago
There's a thing about text communication, like the kind you find on Hacker News and on mailing lists, and that is the difficulty of communicating with nuance or subtlety. I have learned not to try to use sarcasm, for example, because it often doesn't come across at all. I'm not specifically trying to defend anyone's "retroactive abortion" comments but, there is a stark difference between reading a comment that says you (op) should be retroactively aborted, and reading a comment that says with some subtlety and nuance that you have made a bad decision and should be ashamed of making a bad decision. The main difference? Impact. Agreed it's not a positive impact if it causes you to be totally humiliated and leave, rather than causing you to re-evaluate how you arrived at the bad choice and do better next time. But a poignant message should be making an impact, that's what makes it effective. These people are primarily responsible for writing code, they may not be skilled at nuance or subtlety in English language, and they may view exercises of those particular disciplines as significant time-wasting sinks that they've spent too much time on with too little ROI. (From experience, I know I often write too much, and say too little!)
falsedan 9y ago
> If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can. I feel like you're pushing an agenda & have discarded any possibility of listening to other points of view, or modifying your position. I recognise it as 'listening in bad faith'. I didn't say I liked being inconsistent or tribal, you are putting words into my mouth in an attempt to discredit my position as irrational. It's still a false choice: I can choose how I spend my time, and I can spend it in a way that I think is effective.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I did read your post. I just disagree with it entirely. You're picking and choosing who gets to be a bad actor based on your moral compass. That's a thing you can do, but I have a different compass. Don't expect appeals on the axis of your internalized morality to be compelling? You can choose how you spend your time. But that doesn't mean you can choose how people evaluate that time and if it's fair or not. This is a direct consequence of your own point! This thing where you suggest I listened in "bad faith" but your point is dancing around the definition of "can" seems pretty bad faith to me.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    I’m sorry that I implied that you were acting in bad faith; that’s just the phrase I’m familiar with that describes the style of listening that I recognsed in your replies. If I understood your argument correctly, your position is that both Lennart and Linux exhibit aggressive, egotistical, “asshole” behavior. This makes them equally bad and thus condemning Lennart more that Linux is unfair. I recognse this style of argument as the Continuum Fallacy: that if two things fall into the same scale of badness, then as a whole they are equally bad. I disagree with this argument, and think it is possible for someone to complain & take action against one problem without being obliged to do the same against another similar problem. I also think that people can choose which problem to address, and do not necessarily have to only address the most egregious issue. As I understand it, your complaint is that people complain about Lennart’s antisocial behaviour but remain silent on Linus’. I think that, since this topic is regarding systemsd, people will take about Lennart, and as the topic is not about the Linux kernel, people won’t talk about Linus. So, there may be lots of comments addressing Linus’ behaviour, but I wouldn’t expect to see them here. Finally, I think the thing that makes Linus more acceptable than Lennart is that Linus is open about mistakes and has grown a developement community which encourages collaboration, and his outbursts are directed at changes which don’t match his expectations (which are fairly well established: run tests, check for merge conflicts, etc.). I hope I have been clearer, and that this helps you make sense of some of the behaviour you have seen that you think is inconsistent/irrational.
    - 9y ago