5 ms·

Dont we see this with open source? More people show up. More people can find issues. Many more people can find issues than can fix them. The bug tracker bloats

by op03 6y ago

Dont we see this with open source? More people show up. More people can find issues. Many more people can find issues than can fix them. The bug tracker bloats. Core team members get called incompetent every 2 hrs. As a counter reaction some core team members get it into their head, to share less or react in unhelpful ways that have long term costs and things go back and forth in waves. We have a few rules at work. 1. Focus on solutions over reactions. 2. It becomes easy to take advantage of weaknesses in people and squander their strengths, so try as much to do the opposite. 3. Have a plan to handle highly ambitious people before they show up. Don't start wondering what to do after someone with more energy/drive/talent/resource shows up and wants to take over everything, which will keep happening as networks expand. For this we treat things like sports teams, which have to deal with a whole spectrum of highly driven people and get them to work in sync. Works out some days and blows up in our face on others. There is no free lunch with transparency and growing networks. Just lot of tradeoffs.

Super_Jambo 6y ago
Can you expand upon point 3? I do not really follow sports.
- op03 6y ago
  There are a lot of different things but basically in Team sports its "easier" to get agreement on division of labor, on leadership, coordination and communication, individual strengths and weaknesses etc because the group has someone external to beat or atleast there is agreement on what a team "win" is. So we try to nail that down and keep having conversations about it. It then has effect on how we coordinate, give and take, decide who leads etc Without those conversations to provide some framework, it turns into a free for all, which reduces trust/faith in the group, esp when some new group or individual joins that have their own ideas and goals.
  - Super_Jambo 6y ago
    Aha, thanks.
- de_watcher 6y ago
  Point 3 is also relevant to opensource/FOSS.
- Kye 6y ago
  People who consider themselves driven, ambitious, and intelligent often struggle to deal with teams/projects where results come from people working together instead of from one gracious person heroically dragging everyone through to the end. They have to learn to trust that everyone is there for a reason and it's not always immediately obvious.
AI_WAIFU 6y ago
I think you also need a 4th point. 4. A clear and unambiguous heirarchy of power. When who's in charge of the project is unambiguous, the head committee/bdfl can (relatively) easily tell all the haters to fuck off and focus on the main objectives of the project. But with IRL governments, people who appear useful are put into power rather than those who actually are useful, because they're accountable to a massive hoard of people who often barely understand the complexity of the issues that the people in charge face.
gameswithgo 6y ago
I think it has more to do with how quickly trolls can spread insane memes than anything like this. Flat earth, QAnon, pizza pedos. People have insanity trying to get in their heads all day. I bet it isn't just government people trust less since mobile internet, but everything.
- yodelshady 6y ago
  I'm inclined to agree it's not limited to government, but what's incredible about fringe theories is that the very same people who espouse "trust no-one" also lend enormous amounts of credibility to terrible sources. Disclaimer: I think hacker communities have some soul-searching to do here: "trust no one" and "gubbermint bad" enjoy far too cosy an acceptance, in vast disproportion to the reasoning or evidence behind them. Trusting no one isn't feasible, so all we're doing is transferring trust, on the basis on anecdote at best and usually just memes, from organisations with flawed but improvable accountability to organisations with none whatsoever.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    The meme war between the two camps on either side of the conspiracy theory divide is quite interesting if you're able to view it from a truly disinterested (disable your priors) and abstract (observe the nature of the discussions, not the topic) third party perspective. The anti-conspiracy-theory camp can read an individual conspiracy theory and identify erroneous assertions and logic, with ease. Similarly, the pro-conspiracy-theory camp can read an individual mainstream news article and identify erroneous assertions and logic, with ease. And then when observing each other's camps (in sufficient qualtities over a long period of time), they each consider the other community to be foolish (and unaware of it) in an aggregate sense. And they're both correct. The anti-conspiracy-camp is correct in that if one spends any time in the conspiracy community, it is not difficult to observe that many of them clearly and passionately believe things, with absolute certainty, for which there is not sufficient conclusive supporting evidence. Similarly, the pro-conspiracy camp is correct in that if one spends any time in mainstream communities, it is not difficult to observe that many of them clearly and passionately believe things, with absolute certainty, for which there is not sufficient conclusive supporting evidence (aka: axioms). Members from both communities will take offence (usually "quite" passionately) at some portion of the above, and attempt to rebut the assertion in the standard form: [rhetoric, narrative, "logic", "common sense", "facts"/axioms/intuitions presented as facts] + [and then therefore we shall conclude...]" ...but there will almost always be a flaw in the respective rebuttals: invalid epistemology. At least part of the reason these two camps cannot have a productive dialogue and agree to a compromise somewhere "in the middle"...to agree on some things (that which they agree on) and only disagree, explicitly and precisely, on the subset of points where disagreement actually(!!) exists, is because both camps suffer from loose epistemology - a willingness (and often, extreme eagerness) to believe things (that are consistent with their priors) to be True(!!!), without adequate and conclusive supporting evidence. So, the minds then seem to develop a kind of all-or-nothing, total war defence of each respective comprehensive idea they hold (each of which is typically riddled with errors and untruths), and hilarity inevitably ensues. I think the same argument is also quite applicable to many other realms, politics being perhaps the most obvious. I wonder...if members of the two camps could come to realize the above, might it diminish the ability of those in power to so easily pit them against each other in a never ending cultural meme war, and in turn free up their minds and time to be able to more closely and skilfully observe and analyze the actions of those in power (who can currently operate largely unmonitored, unanalyzed, and unopposed, who can censor anything that gets too dangerous to their interests with <some semi-plausible reason>...something which is in the best interests both camps, and typically the majority of all peoples regardless of group affiliation? And if we extended this principle even more broadly, across all current hot-button topics in the country, and in the international world, could we maybe usher in an era of more calm, reasoned, cooperation between various parties who disagree on a few specific details, but largely agree (but don't realize it) on the vast majority of issues from the "big picture" perspective?
specialist 6y ago
Keen observations, terrific comparison. Thank you. Pieter Hintjens, Clay Shirky, Bryan Cantrill, Nadia Eghbal caliber. I'd read anything you write about FOSS, organizational psychology, governance.
vivekd 6y ago
I don't know if government is comparable with open source. Open spurce is like an ideal utopian society where everyone wants to see the project work well and have different ideas for how. Government has a lot of corruption, people who don't care about their jobs and the stakes are much more personal - greater personal wealth and power at stake.
- Proven 6y ago
  Exactly. In terms of rewards and gains, OSS is a way to help other people (for free). Government takes everyone's money and normally the goal is personal gains (bennies, paychecks, overtime, theft, power). One of the reasons why trust in government drops when mobile tech becomes available is that people tend to consume less of the corrupt state owned media, whether it's TV or newspapers or radio.

by op03 6y ago

Super_Jambo 6y ago

Can you expand upon point 3? I do not really follow sports.

op03 6y ago
There are a lot of different things but basically in Team sports its "easier" to get agreement on division of labor, on leadership, coordination and communication, individual strengths and weaknesses etc because the group has someone external to beat or atleast there is agreement on what a team "win" is. So we try to nail that down and keep having conversations about it. It then has effect on how we coordinate, give and take, decide who leads etc Without those conversations to provide some framework, it turns into a free for all, which reduces trust/faith in the group, esp when some new group or individual joins that have their own ideas and goals.
- Super_Jambo 6y ago
  Aha, thanks.
de_watcher 6y ago
Point 3 is also relevant to opensource/FOSS.
Kye 6y ago
People who consider themselves driven, ambitious, and intelligent often struggle to deal with teams/projects where results come from people working together instead of from one gracious person heroically dragging everyone through to the end. They have to learn to trust that everyone is there for a reason and it's not always immediately obvious.

AI_WAIFU 6y ago

I think you also need a 4th point. 4. A clear and unambiguous heirarchy of power. When who's in charge of the project is unambiguous, the head committee/bdfl can (relatively) easily tell all the haters to fuck off and focus on the main objectives of the project. But with IRL governments, people who appear useful are put into power rather than those who actually are useful, because they're accountable to a massive hoard of people who often barely understand the complexity of the issues that the people in charge face.

gameswithgo 6y ago

I think it has more to do with how quickly trolls can spread insane memes than anything like this. Flat earth, QAnon, pizza pedos. People have insanity trying to get in their heads all day. I bet it isn't just government people trust less since mobile internet, but everything.

yodelshady 6y ago
I'm inclined to agree it's not limited to government, but what's incredible about fringe theories is that the very same people who espouse "trust no-one" also lend enormous amounts of credibility to terrible sources. Disclaimer: I think hacker communities have some soul-searching to do here: "trust no one" and "gubbermint bad" enjoy far too cosy an acceptance, in vast disproportion to the reasoning or evidence behind them. Trusting no one isn't feasible, so all we're doing is transferring trust, on the basis on anecdote at best and usually just memes, from organisations with flawed but improvable accountability to organisations with none whatsoever.
- mistermann 6y ago
  The meme war between the two camps on either side of the conspiracy theory divide is quite interesting if you're able to view it from a truly disinterested (disable your priors) and abstract (observe the nature of the discussions, not the topic) third party perspective. The anti-conspiracy-theory camp can read an individual conspiracy theory and identify erroneous assertions and logic, with ease. Similarly, the pro-conspiracy-theory camp can read an individual mainstream news article and identify erroneous assertions and logic, with ease. And then when observing each other's camps (in sufficient qualtities over a long period of time), they each consider the other community to be foolish (and unaware of it) in an aggregate sense. And they're both correct. The anti-conspiracy-camp is correct in that if one spends any time in the conspiracy community, it is not difficult to observe that many of them clearly and passionately believe things, with absolute certainty, for which there is not sufficient conclusive supporting evidence. Similarly, the pro-conspiracy camp is correct in that if one spends any time in mainstream communities, it is not difficult to observe that many of them clearly and passionately believe things, with absolute certainty, for which there is not sufficient conclusive supporting evidence (aka: axioms). Members from both communities will take offence (usually "quite" passionately) at some portion of the above, and attempt to rebut the assertion in the standard form: [rhetoric, narrative, "logic", "common sense", "facts"/axioms/intuitions presented as facts] + [and then therefore we shall conclude...]" ...but there will almost always be a flaw in the respective rebuttals: invalid epistemology. At least part of the reason these two camps cannot have a productive dialogue and agree to a compromise somewhere "in the middle"...to agree on some things (that which they agree on) and only disagree, explicitly and precisely, on the subset of points where disagreement actually(!!) exists, is because both camps suffer from loose epistemology - a willingness (and often, extreme eagerness) to believe things (that are consistent with their priors) to be True(!!!), without adequate and conclusive supporting evidence. So, the minds then seem to develop a kind of all-or-nothing, total war defence of each respective comprehensive idea they hold (each of which is typically riddled with errors and untruths), and hilarity inevitably ensues. I think the same argument is also quite applicable to many other realms, politics being perhaps the most obvious. I wonder...if members of the two camps could come to realize the above, might it diminish the ability of those in power to so easily pit them against each other in a never ending cultural meme war, and in turn free up their minds and time to be able to more closely and skilfully observe and analyze the actions of those in power (who can currently operate largely unmonitored, unanalyzed, and unopposed, who can censor anything that gets too dangerous to their interests with <some semi-plausible reason>...something which is in the best interests both camps, and typically the majority of all peoples regardless of group affiliation? And if we extended this principle even more broadly, across all current hot-button topics in the country, and in the international world, could we maybe usher in an era of more calm, reasoned, cooperation between various parties who disagree on a few specific details, but largely agree (but don't realize it) on the vast majority of issues from the "big picture" perspective?

specialist 6y ago

Keen observations, terrific comparison. Thank you. Pieter Hintjens, Clay Shirky, Bryan Cantrill, Nadia Eghbal caliber. I'd read anything you write about FOSS, organizational psychology, governance.

vivekd 6y ago

I don't know if government is comparable with open source. Open spurce is like an ideal utopian society where everyone wants to see the project work well and have different ideas for how. Government has a lot of corruption, people who don't care about their jobs and the stakes are much more personal - greater personal wealth and power at stake.

Proven 6y ago
Exactly. In terms of rewards and gains, OSS is a way to help other people (for free). Government takes everyone's money and normally the goal is personal gains (bennies, paychecks, overtime, theft, power). One of the reasons why trust in government drops when mobile tech becomes available is that people tend to consume less of the corrupt state owned media, whether it's TV or newspapers or radio.