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Thanks for the post. Yesterday you strongly rebutted me for saying that the widespread outages also were impacting Cloudflare [0], even tho it wasn't obvious to

Thanks for the post. Yesterday you strongly rebutted me for saying that the widespread outages also were impacting Cloudflare [0], even tho it wasn't obvious to me at that time who was being impacted by who. Knowing the intricate connections of all the app and infrastructure and cloud providers is tricky! When stuff goes down, the blame gets spread around. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29568319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29568319 edit: changed "scolded" to "strongly rebutted"

eightysixfour 5y ago
Is there a particular reason you perceived their response as "scolding?" It just looks like a straightforward answer.
- sneak 5y ago
  In my experience, a lot of Americans interpret direct, no-wasted-word statements as aggressive or confrontational. Euphemism and indirect implication is the norm in American communication, much to my dismay. It can wrap around to extremes sometimes, too. https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/
  - rexreed 5y ago
    It's possible it's cultural. Sometimes strong, absolute rebuttals come across as someone just trying to shut down a conversation and deny. Other times a direct answer is just a direct answer. The problem is that context and tone are helpful here.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    as a native, I can say this is absolutely true and also horrible for productive communication. particularly the pacific and mountain west is really rough. Especially when discussing politics it can be confusing as hell trying to figure out what somebody really believes/wants because the tip toeing around egg shells can make the words impossible to decode.
  - jedilord 5y ago
    This is a fair statement. Didn't use to be this way - I blame the participation trophy era of kids.
    - sneak 5y ago
      You're engaging in it yourself right now by using euphemism/implication to suggest a certain type of person instead of just saying "whiny, overly sensitive children" (which I assume is what you mean). You should remove the plank from your own eye, first. You don't get to blame others for your voluntarily chosen courses of action.
      - jedilord 5y ago
        You're fast! Good job. I present you with a trophy.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - novok 5y ago
        There is a difference between euphemism and idiom, nicknames and handwave identifiers.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > I blame the participation trophy era of kids. As one Gen Y/Zer once commented: Those trophies weren't handing out themselves, and they weren't the kids' idea. Whose idea were they?
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    > a lot of Americans interpret direct, no-wasted-word statements as aggressive or confrontational. I think this can be said of the British too. Though we would probably make the mistake of interpreting it as rude rather than aggressive. As someone who doesn't communicate particularly directly, I often make this mistake myself. Though I'm not sure which side of "the pond" is worse in this respect.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    This reminds me of the younger generation sometimes perceiving messages ending in a period as rude. I'm also sometimes surprised by how effectively a simple statement like "I don't want to spend money on that" can shut down even a pushy salesman. Or even the simple "No." can work wonders.
    - ziddoap 5y ago
      >This reminds me of the younger generation sometimes perceiving messages ending in a period as rude. I've never seen any comments regarding a single period, but I've seen comments (and sometimes agree with them) regarding the perceived rudeness when ending messages in ellipses. "Good job..." seems almost sarcastic compared to "Good job.".
      - sneak 5y ago
        Good job. seems almost patronizing in comparison with good job Then again, I grew up on IRC.
        Buttons840 5y ago
        Studies have shown the same.
      - rackjack 5y ago
        Language is so weird.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Interesting: IME, it's the Americans who are called rude and overly direct. Go to Japan and give it a try, for example. Edit: Reading your link: First, that's well-written and insightful; thank you. However, it seems like a common (young, if I dare guess) frustration with human communication, especially among geeks (if I dare guess, here on HN, and including myself as one): Communication is not transmission of information, but a social interaction. You have to think about all these other things (where many geeks feel out of their depth), and in fact those other things are more consequential than the information (with which many geeks feel very confident). In other words, it sucks to have all the information, to be a master at it, and find that it doesn't matter so much. Tip: Don't try to dismiss it; it's human nature and won't change; learn the skills. 'Skill' #1: learn to not objectify the other party (they aren't an endpoint device in your communication network), and the best tools for that: curiosity about them - about their unique universe in their mind, their own wants and perspectives, completely unrelated to yours - and compassion: they have a difficult life too. (Of course, that's just my perspective! :) )
tailspin2019 5y ago
Unless the comment was edited, I don't think that was a "scolding" :-)
- rexreed 5y ago
  Probably my interpretation. I should have said "strong rebuttal". Edited my comment above ;)
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Maybe "corrected"?
jgrahamc 5y ago
Sorry if that came across harshly. ASCII is a tough medium.
- rexreed 5y ago
  Yes text is indeed devoid of context and sentiment. But to the main point, I fear that the comments on tone are a bit beside the point anyways. So let's move past that to talk about what I really wanted to comment on. To be direct - yesterday I spotted what seemed like an Internet-wide issue that was also impacting Cloudflare. You told me yesterday that no in fact, there was no impact on Cloudflare. Today there is a post about a separate issue where there is an impact on Cloudflare. In my mind I make the connection between these two events, and on the one hand the quick and direct denial of the issue being that of Cloudflare on the first day, but today an acknowldgement of issues, even if they were a different set of problems. It would be helpful on outages where Cloudflare is showing an outage when the problem doesn't originate with Cloudflare to put on your own error page an indication of where the error might be. I know this might be touchy to do so, but you should feel free to point fingers when you know that an outage to your client is caused by another party. For example: "Error. Cloudflare reports this site is down. Issues point to an outage with [AWS, Google, Azure, Oracle <-- just kidding] as being the source of that outage" That would help make it clear that yes, there is an outage, and no, Cloudlfare is not the proximal cause. All this chatter about your use of words and my use of words kinda misses the main point of what I was trying to communicate.
  - jgrahamc 5y ago
    I think we may have done that in the past. I'll bring up internally.

eightysixfour 5y ago

Is there a particular reason you perceived their response as "scolding?" It just looks like a straightforward answer.

sneak 5y ago
In my experience, a lot of Americans interpret direct, no-wasted-word statements as aggressive or confrontational. Euphemism and indirect implication is the norm in American communication, much to my dismay. It can wrap around to extremes sometimes, too. https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/
- rexreed 5y ago
  It's possible it's cultural. Sometimes strong, absolute rebuttals come across as someone just trying to shut down a conversation and deny. Other times a direct answer is just a direct answer. The problem is that context and tone are helpful here.
- freedomben 5y ago
  as a native, I can say this is absolutely true and also horrible for productive communication. particularly the pacific and mountain west is really rough. Especially when discussing politics it can be confusing as hell trying to figure out what somebody really believes/wants because the tip toeing around egg shells can make the words impossible to decode.
- jedilord 5y ago
  This is a fair statement. Didn't use to be this way - I blame the participation trophy era of kids.
  - sneak 5y ago
    You're engaging in it yourself right now by using euphemism/implication to suggest a certain type of person instead of just saying "whiny, overly sensitive children" (which I assume is what you mean). You should remove the plank from your own eye, first. You don't get to blame others for your voluntarily chosen courses of action.
    - jedilord 5y ago
      You're fast! Good job. I present you with a trophy.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - novok 5y ago
      There is a difference between euphemism and idiom, nicknames and handwave identifiers.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > I blame the participation trophy era of kids. As one Gen Y/Zer once commented: Those trophies weren't handing out themselves, and they weren't the kids' idea. Whose idea were they?
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  > a lot of Americans interpret direct, no-wasted-word statements as aggressive or confrontational. I think this can be said of the British too. Though we would probably make the mistake of interpreting it as rude rather than aggressive. As someone who doesn't communicate particularly directly, I often make this mistake myself. Though I'm not sure which side of "the pond" is worse in this respect.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  This reminds me of the younger generation sometimes perceiving messages ending in a period as rude. I'm also sometimes surprised by how effectively a simple statement like "I don't want to spend money on that" can shut down even a pushy salesman. Or even the simple "No." can work wonders.
  - ziddoap 5y ago
    >This reminds me of the younger generation sometimes perceiving messages ending in a period as rude. I've never seen any comments regarding a single period, but I've seen comments (and sometimes agree with them) regarding the perceived rudeness when ending messages in ellipses. "Good job..." seems almost sarcastic compared to "Good job.".
    - sneak 5y ago
      Good job. seems almost patronizing in comparison with good job Then again, I grew up on IRC.
      - Buttons840 5y ago
        Studies have shown the same.
    - rackjack 5y ago
      Language is so weird.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Interesting: IME, it's the Americans who are called rude and overly direct. Go to Japan and give it a try, for example. Edit: Reading your link: First, that's well-written and insightful; thank you. However, it seems like a common (young, if I dare guess) frustration with human communication, especially among geeks (if I dare guess, here on HN, and including myself as one): Communication is not transmission of information, but a social interaction. You have to think about all these other things (where many geeks feel out of their depth), and in fact those other things are more consequential than the information (with which many geeks feel very confident). In other words, it sucks to have all the information, to be a master at it, and find that it doesn't matter so much. Tip: Don't try to dismiss it; it's human nature and won't change; learn the skills. 'Skill' #1: learn to not objectify the other party (they aren't an endpoint device in your communication network), and the best tools for that: curiosity about them - about their unique universe in their mind, their own wants and perspectives, completely unrelated to yours - and compassion: they have a difficult life too. (Of course, that's just my perspective! :) )

tailspin2019 5y ago

Unless the comment was edited, I don't think that was a "scolding" :-)

rexreed 5y ago
Probably my interpretation. I should have said "strong rebuttal". Edited my comment above ;)
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Maybe "corrected"?

jgrahamc 5y ago

Sorry if that came across harshly. ASCII is a tough medium.

rexreed 5y ago
Yes text is indeed devoid of context and sentiment. But to the main point, I fear that the comments on tone are a bit beside the point anyways. So let's move past that to talk about what I really wanted to comment on. To be direct - yesterday I spotted what seemed like an Internet-wide issue that was also impacting Cloudflare. You told me yesterday that no in fact, there was no impact on Cloudflare. Today there is a post about a separate issue where there is an impact on Cloudflare. In my mind I make the connection between these two events, and on the one hand the quick and direct denial of the issue being that of Cloudflare on the first day, but today an acknowldgement of issues, even if they were a different set of problems. It would be helpful on outages where Cloudflare is showing an outage when the problem doesn't originate with Cloudflare to put on your own error page an indication of where the error might be. I know this might be touchy to do so, but you should feel free to point fingers when you know that an outage to your client is caused by another party. For example: "Error. Cloudflare reports this site is down. Issues point to an outage with [AWS, Google, Azure, Oracle <-- just kidding] as being the source of that outage" That would help make it clear that yes, there is an outage, and no, Cloudlfare is not the proximal cause. All this chatter about your use of words and my use of words kinda misses the main point of what I was trying to communicate.
- jgrahamc 5y ago
  I think we may have done that in the past. I'll bring up internally.