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> Whether he's a great programmer/contributor not isn't really important here. I don't see why not. Personalities fall on a broad spectrum. Still seems strange

> Whether he's a great programmer/contributor not isn't really important here. I don't see why not. Personalities fall on a broad spectrum. Still seems strange to me that the recent broad pushes for more inclusiveness, including neuro-atypicality, does not cover people that inconvenience you personally. > that would chase people out of the community with his behaviour [...] but it did make the Go community a better place I've noticed that claims like this are never backed by any evidence of this improvement, or evidence of people who have actually been chased away by rudeness. It no doubt causes great relief in the minds of those who dislike the exiled person, but it's always justified with a broader claim that "it's for the greater good". I understand comments can be non-constructive, and that some people are more prone to it, but total exile is a big hammer that should be used more judiciously IMO.

Beltalowda 4y ago
> I've noticed that claims like this are never backed by any evidence of this improvement, or evidence of people who actually have been chased away by rudeness. I am one of them. I've seen other people claim the same. I did not keep a list, nor did I keep a list of all of his posts that I found egregious, and I don't really feel like spending a lot of time crawling through all posts to find them, so I guess this is all I have. It's hard to get "hard evidence" for these kind of things in the first place. Most people just disengage and don't come back. The best I know of is "Assholes are Ruining Your Project"[1] from a few years back. It would be interesting to check similar numbers for Go and other projects. I'm not sure if it's easy to get these kind of numbers from e.g. Slack or Reddit though. [1]: https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-your-project-fosdem https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo... / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg > total exile is a big hammer that should be used more judiciously. It wasn't the first time he was banned, but I'm not privy to the exact details on this. Was total "total exile" proportional? I don't know: obviously I didn't see everything. I just wanted to say he didn't "just" get banned over a minor thing, but after many years of problematic behaviour that had been raised plenty of times.
- naasking 4y ago
  > [1]: https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo... This is the kind of thing I'm asking about. Lots of numbers are trotted out but where's the actual data? Where's the methodology? The blurb says, "This talk will teach you, using quantified data and academic research from the social sciences, about the dramatic impact assholes are having on your organization today and how you can begin to repair it." Social science research has a dramatically poor replication rate, so on that basis alone I'm skeptical of the numbers even if he did interpret them correctly. That said, I agree asshole behaviour has to be reigned in, but exile is pretty dramatic if you really think about it. It's super easy and I think that's why people do it, but that doesn't make it good option.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    No one considers it a good option. It's usually the last option, done after a fair bit of mediation to try and improve the assholes behavior. Only when it's clear that they can't or won't do you ban.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > Only when it's clear that they can't or won't do you ban. I'm saying that's still not a reasonable measure even in that case. Why not an exponential backoff, where the first measure is that they only get one post a day. If they want to be heard they have to be more careful in how they word things and they have more time to think about how it might be received. If they transgress again, then it's upped to every three days, then once a week, then once every other week, and so on. A total ban is the limit of this more nuanced process. No doubt this feature doesn't exist, so I'm suggesting something like this should be added because I'm not at all a fan of bans. Even this is a stopgap measure used to manage assholes because we don't yet understand what's at the root of asshole behaviour. Edit: to clarify, I mean the backoff/retry strategy is still not ideal, but an easy first attempt at trying to reframe this as a problem we can maybe address using programming abstractions to inhibit rather than facilitate communication. Most software is focused on reducing barriers to communication, which is why banning is the only recourse, but in cases like this you obviously want to raise barriers to communication in controlled ways so you don't have use the ban hammer.
geodel 4y ago
> but total exile is a big hammer that should be used more judiciously. Well it was used judiciously, considering there are not more than couple of people banned in Go spaces in a decade.
xeromal 4y ago
In general, humans don't like working with assholes. Once the asshole limit is reached, we shun people who are assholes. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/212/873/d5f.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/212/873/d5f...
- ikiris 4y ago
  This could be rephrased as "people who are different than me" and be just as accurate. It's not a good look.
CJefferson 4y ago
I left various projects due to rudeness. I joined other projects as they felt welcoming. In my (limited) experience, naming projects you left due to rudeness or bad behaviour tends to lead to that bad behaviour noticing your message and pestering you with questions about exactly why you left, and arguing that you are being unreasonable -- which is why I'm not naming those projects.

Beltalowda 4y ago

> I've noticed that claims like this are never backed by any evidence of this improvement, or evidence of people who actually have been chased away by rudeness. I am one of them. I've seen other people claim the same. I did not keep a list, nor did I keep a list of all of his posts that I found egregious, and I don't really feel like spending a lot of time crawling through all posts to find them, so I guess this is all I have. It's hard to get "hard evidence" for these kind of things in the first place. Most people just disengage and don't come back. The best I know of is "Assholes are Ruining Your Project"[1] from a few years back. It would be interesting to check similar numbers for Go and other projects. I'm not sure if it's easy to get these kind of numbers from e.g. Slack or Reddit though. [1]: https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-your-project-fosdem https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo... / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg > total exile is a big hammer that should be used more judiciously. It wasn't the first time he was banned, but I'm not privy to the exact details on this. Was total "total exile" proportional? I don't know: obviously I didn't see everything. I just wanted to say he didn't "just" get banned over a minor thing, but after many years of problematic behaviour that had been raised plenty of times.

naasking 4y ago
> [1]: https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo https://www.slideshare.net/dberkholz/assholes-are-killing-yo... This is the kind of thing I'm asking about. Lots of numbers are trotted out but where's the actual data? Where's the methodology? The blurb says, "This talk will teach you, using quantified data and academic research from the social sciences, about the dramatic impact assholes are having on your organization today and how you can begin to repair it." Social science research has a dramatically poor replication rate, so on that basis alone I'm skeptical of the numbers even if he did interpret them correctly. That said, I agree asshole behaviour has to be reigned in, but exile is pretty dramatic if you really think about it. It's super easy and I think that's why people do it, but that doesn't make it good option.
- joshuamorton 4y ago
  No one considers it a good option. It's usually the last option, done after a fair bit of mediation to try and improve the assholes behavior. Only when it's clear that they can't or won't do you ban.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Only when it's clear that they can't or won't do you ban. I'm saying that's still not a reasonable measure even in that case. Why not an exponential backoff, where the first measure is that they only get one post a day. If they want to be heard they have to be more careful in how they word things and they have more time to think about how it might be received. If they transgress again, then it's upped to every three days, then once a week, then once every other week, and so on. A total ban is the limit of this more nuanced process. No doubt this feature doesn't exist, so I'm suggesting something like this should be added because I'm not at all a fan of bans. Even this is a stopgap measure used to manage assholes because we don't yet understand what's at the root of asshole behaviour. Edit: to clarify, I mean the backoff/retry strategy is still not ideal, but an easy first attempt at trying to reframe this as a problem we can maybe address using programming abstractions to inhibit rather than facilitate communication. Most software is focused on reducing barriers to communication, which is why banning is the only recourse, but in cases like this you obviously want to raise barriers to communication in controlled ways so you don't have use the ban hammer.

geodel 4y ago

> but total exile is a big hammer that should be used more judiciously. Well it was used judiciously, considering there are not more than couple of people banned in Go spaces in a decade.

xeromal 4y ago

In general, humans don't like working with assholes. Once the asshole limit is reached, we shun people who are assholes. https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/212/873/d5f.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/212/873/d5f...

ikiris 4y ago
This could be rephrased as "people who are different than me" and be just as accurate. It's not a good look.

CJefferson 4y ago

I left various projects due to rudeness. I joined other projects as they felt welcoming. In my (limited) experience, naming projects you left due to rudeness or bad behaviour tends to lead to that bad behaviour noticing your message and pestering you with questions about exactly why you left, and arguing that you are being unreasonable -- which is why I'm not naming those projects.