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Person posts cool tool they wrote, that they find useful. Shows it to the community, this community, which many may really appreciate. Then gets ripped for not
by bluejekyll 9y ago
Person posts cool tool they wrote, that they find useful. Shows it to the community, this community, which many may really appreciate. Then gets ripped for not thinking through the complex privacy issues with said tool. Not everything is malicious.
It would be better to give constructive criticism, like:
This is a really cool tool! I might even choose to use it, but I have a few concerns: 1) it sends too much data unfiltered to the algolia search servers. Could you instead make it a button that only then triggers the request or opens another browser window? 2) the analytics are also a concern. In general, you should always make these opt-in; better, ask the user through a dialogue to enable them; even better, request feedback through some other system (github for example).
Let’s try and be nice here and give people the benefit of the doubt.
- jdormit 9y agoHeh, thanks bluejekyll. I appreciate this. FWIW, I am taking the privacy and security concerns raised in this thread seriously. In fact, this type of candid feedback is one of the best things about HN. I anticipate it will take me a few days to choose and implement some of the fixes suggested here.
- staunch 9y agoI agree with the sentiment but not this example. Sharing people's browsing data with third-parties can threaten their lives in some circumstances. There's no excuse for a developer creating browser extensions not to take this threat seriously in 2018. It's negligent.
- bluejekyll 9y agoI did read your comment (and I didn’t downvote you b/c I agreed with you). The reason I wrote this response was because your comment read as being very aggressive in response to an honest attempt at explaining an issue the dev was having. What your comment lacked was any additional information about better approaches. I get the concern and share it, but your comment only said that what they did was wrong. It didn’t offer any ideas of how to fix it. Telling someone they’re on the wrong road but not telling them how to get to the correct one leaves them just as lost.
- staunch 9y agoWhat the developer didn't seem to understand in this case was the gravity of the issue. I don't think your explanation would have conveyed it as well.
- jklinger410 9y agoTake care of yourself.
- staunch 9y agoThank you! And let's all try not to get the users of our software imprisoned or killed: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/28/30000-accused.html https://boingboing.net/2018/01/28/30000-accused.html
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]