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When is it appropriate to assume bad faith? I feel like just never assuming bad faith ever completely decouples people/organizations from the consequences of th

by _0tsb 5y ago

When is it appropriate to assume bad faith? I feel like just never assuming bad faith ever completely decouples people/organizations from the consequences of their actions.

md8z 5y ago
Well in my opinion, it is never appropriate here, because it is against the HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." To me it is not intellectually rewarding to have a conversation talking about how someone else is a jerk or talking about how we want to make someone else suffer. Especially if the "action" you're trying to punish someone for (i.e. doing bug triage) is something that is a completely normal part of any open source project. I've noticed that once the conversation gets into that mode, it seems fairly impossible to have any kind of constructive dialogue. I just want to talk about technical stuff related to these desktops. It's really exhausting and hard to do that when every comment thread devolves into the airing of grievances against some developer based on some comments that were made years ago. I mean, come on, we are a smart bunch, we can do better than this. Edit: And I think what you've said is really dangerous, I have to ask you to please stop that line of thinking. You are talking about making people suffer for something that you acknowledge is just an assumption. If you know that there is bad faith happening then that's a different story, you would flag it and then the moderators here will usually ban the person if they keep doing it. But you didn't say that you knew it was happening, you said it was an assumption. I hope you can see how that's not fair to anybody, I don't think you would want to be punished for people making untrue assumptions about you either.
- _0tsb 5y ago
  Do we have to assume that facebook is acting in good faith, in the best interests of user privacy? Or do we take their past actions into account? >"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." It seems to me that that is setting the standards of discourse for people on the platform, and isn't intended to apply to large businesses, even if those large businesses mostly get their money from sponsorship and donations. >You are talking about making people suffer for something that you acknowledge is just an assumption. I think suffer is a bit of an exaggeration, I'm talking about warning people that a particular platform is user-hostile. Gnome (the organization) has a long history of behavior that I find unpleasant, and expecting me not to tell people about that or to pretend it didn't happen is asking far too much. Gnome is responsible for Gnome's bad reputation, maybe that's something they can fix though if they fix the behavior that's causing this bad reputation. It's the whole "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences" thing all over again. Gnome can make whatever bad decisions they want, but they don't get to be free from criticism for those decisions.
  - md8z 5y ago
    I am not going to comment on facebook because I have basically no relevant first hand experience with them. I also am not going to speculate with you based on second hand accounts we might have read in the news. Sorry. You'll have to ask those questions to somebody else who is able to answer them. "and isn't intended to apply to large businesses" This makes no sense to me, GNOME is not a large business. "I think suffer is a bit of an exaggeration" You were saying before that they should face consequences. I was just quoting you here, if you didn't mean you wanted them to suffer backlash for some actions then please explain otherwise. "expecting me not to tell people about that or to pretend it didn't happen is asking far too much." I never said I expected you to do any of this, you are making false assumptions. Please stop, you may want to go re-read my previous comments. "Gnome is responsible for Gnome's bad reputation ... Gnome can make whatever bad decisions they want, but they don't get to be free from criticism for those decisions" This also is vague and makes no sense to me. What bad reputation? What behavior? What bad decisions? What criticism? Who are you referring to when you say GNOME? The foundation? The designers? The maintainers? All of the above? That's at least hundreds of people, many of them volunteers, so are you saying they all make bad decisions all the time every day about everything? Please be more specific than this, remember that GNOME is not a company, it is a large and loosely connected open source project with lots of people who have differing opinions. This is again why I really advise that you not take this angle when you're trying to discuss this, when you do this it is extremely difficult to figure out what you're actually talking about and what problem needs to be addressed. If you want to take this in a productive direction then please, don't even bother answering the questions I asked above, and just mention your specific complaint so we can re-start from the beginning. Also please try to avoid making platitudes and generalizations, and please avoid saying things that have already been said multiple times, that is not an interesting conversation. I'm trying to help you here so you don't have to feel the need to keep repeating yourself, I'm sure that you can also acknowledge that it is not ideal when you have to do that.
    - _0tsb 5y ago
      >GNOME is not a company I hear this a lot, but Gnome is a foundation with at least a few developers paid to work on it full time. They bring in almost one million in "revenue" per year, and have a lot of sponsorships and the like. In 2020 they paid out $645,243 USD in employee compensation. That puts in firmly in small-company scale. --- My basic tenant is that when you make choices that make it difficult for developers to work with you, when you fail to cooperate and compromise, then you're going to suffer reputation damage. Reputational damage has all kinds of effects, one of which is that in situations like these people are going to look at what you say with a bit more skepticism. Another is that you're going to get people recommending against using your project. Now you may mean something very specific when you say "bad faith". What I say when I mean it is that you should be aware that Gnome developers probably won't be open to collaborating on anything unless it directly benefits the Gnome project in a pretty major way. >And I think what you've said is really dangerous That's a very strong claim considering what I said was "When does it become reasonable to assume bad faith?". For example, I do believe that the switch to libadwaita is going to make things more difficult for people building apps on GTK4, because I think that they're going to move more and more important functionality into it and leave GTK4 to more or less waste away. I suspect that we're going to see a lot of stuff that could have easily been part of GTK4 become part of libadwaita instead, and that's going to make things measurable more difficult for everyone making GTK based desktop environments. That's a prediction about the future, and if I'm right then I'd say that Gnome is acting is bad-faith, considering their current statements on the issue say libadwaita is going to change very little for those people dependent on GTK4.

by _0tsb 5y ago

When is it appropriate to assume bad faith? I feel like just never assuming bad faith ever completely decouples people/organizations from the consequences of their actions.

md8z 5y ago

Well in my opinion, it is never appropriate here, because it is against the HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." To me it is not intellectually rewarding to have a conversation talking about how someone else is a jerk or talking about how we want to make someone else suffer. Especially if the "action" you're trying to punish someone for (i.e. doing bug triage) is something that is a completely normal part of any open source project. I've noticed that once the conversation gets into that mode, it seems fairly impossible to have any kind of constructive dialogue. I just want to talk about technical stuff related to these desktops. It's really exhausting and hard to do that when every comment thread devolves into the airing of grievances against some developer based on some comments that were made years ago. I mean, come on, we are a smart bunch, we can do better than this. Edit: And I think what you've said is really dangerous, I have to ask you to please stop that line of thinking. You are talking about making people suffer for something that you acknowledge is just an assumption. If you know that there is bad faith happening then that's a different story, you would flag it and then the moderators here will usually ban the person if they keep doing it. But you didn't say that you knew it was happening, you said it was an assumption. I hope you can see how that's not fair to anybody, I don't think you would want to be punished for people making untrue assumptions about you either.

_0tsb 5y ago
Do we have to assume that facebook is acting in good faith, in the best interests of user privacy? Or do we take their past actions into account? >"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." It seems to me that that is setting the standards of discourse for people on the platform, and isn't intended to apply to large businesses, even if those large businesses mostly get their money from sponsorship and donations. >You are talking about making people suffer for something that you acknowledge is just an assumption. I think suffer is a bit of an exaggeration, I'm talking about warning people that a particular platform is user-hostile. Gnome (the organization) has a long history of behavior that I find unpleasant, and expecting me not to tell people about that or to pretend it didn't happen is asking far too much. Gnome is responsible for Gnome's bad reputation, maybe that's something they can fix though if they fix the behavior that's causing this bad reputation. It's the whole "freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences" thing all over again. Gnome can make whatever bad decisions they want, but they don't get to be free from criticism for those decisions.
- md8z 5y ago
  I am not going to comment on facebook because I have basically no relevant first hand experience with them. I also am not going to speculate with you based on second hand accounts we might have read in the news. Sorry. You'll have to ask those questions to somebody else who is able to answer them. "and isn't intended to apply to large businesses" This makes no sense to me, GNOME is not a large business. "I think suffer is a bit of an exaggeration" You were saying before that they should face consequences. I was just quoting you here, if you didn't mean you wanted them to suffer backlash for some actions then please explain otherwise. "expecting me not to tell people about that or to pretend it didn't happen is asking far too much." I never said I expected you to do any of this, you are making false assumptions. Please stop, you may want to go re-read my previous comments. "Gnome is responsible for Gnome's bad reputation ... Gnome can make whatever bad decisions they want, but they don't get to be free from criticism for those decisions" This also is vague and makes no sense to me. What bad reputation? What behavior? What bad decisions? What criticism? Who are you referring to when you say GNOME? The foundation? The designers? The maintainers? All of the above? That's at least hundreds of people, many of them volunteers, so are you saying they all make bad decisions all the time every day about everything? Please be more specific than this, remember that GNOME is not a company, it is a large and loosely connected open source project with lots of people who have differing opinions. This is again why I really advise that you not take this angle when you're trying to discuss this, when you do this it is extremely difficult to figure out what you're actually talking about and what problem needs to be addressed. If you want to take this in a productive direction then please, don't even bother answering the questions I asked above, and just mention your specific complaint so we can re-start from the beginning. Also please try to avoid making platitudes and generalizations, and please avoid saying things that have already been said multiple times, that is not an interesting conversation. I'm trying to help you here so you don't have to feel the need to keep repeating yourself, I'm sure that you can also acknowledge that it is not ideal when you have to do that.
  - _0tsb 5y ago
    >GNOME is not a company I hear this a lot, but Gnome is a foundation with at least a few developers paid to work on it full time. They bring in almost one million in "revenue" per year, and have a lot of sponsorships and the like. In 2020 they paid out $645,243 USD in employee compensation. That puts in firmly in small-company scale. --- My basic tenant is that when you make choices that make it difficult for developers to work with you, when you fail to cooperate and compromise, then you're going to suffer reputation damage. Reputational damage has all kinds of effects, one of which is that in situations like these people are going to look at what you say with a bit more skepticism. Another is that you're going to get people recommending against using your project. Now you may mean something very specific when you say "bad faith". What I say when I mean it is that you should be aware that Gnome developers probably won't be open to collaborating on anything unless it directly benefits the Gnome project in a pretty major way. >And I think what you've said is really dangerous That's a very strong claim considering what I said was "When does it become reasonable to assume bad faith?". For example, I do believe that the switch to libadwaita is going to make things more difficult for people building apps on GTK4, because I think that they're going to move more and more important functionality into it and leave GTK4 to more or less waste away. I suspect that we're going to see a lot of stuff that could have easily been part of GTK4 become part of libadwaita instead, and that's going to make things measurable more difficult for everyone making GTK based desktop environments. That's a prediction about the future, and if I'm right then I'd say that Gnome is acting is bad-faith, considering their current statements on the issue say libadwaita is going to change very little for those people dependent on GTK4.