19 ms·

Of abusive behavior in programming communities

156 points by symkat 14y ago

nikatwork 14y ago
I run a net radio show with a live chatroom that is frequently trolled. "Troll hugging" really does work - it's amazing how fast a user can turn from troll to punter. My theory is they're bored and just want attention. It doesn't always work. Some People Are Just Assholes.
- aneth 14y ago
  I agree. Treat trolls and snappy shitheads like they didn't do anything offensive or annoying. Reward their good behavior and don't respond to their bad. Most will quickly realize that constructiveness instead of belligerence is getting them the attention and respect they seek. Challenging trollish behavior will just force them to attempt to justify their behavior through argument and attitude.
unfortunat 14y ago
i think the worst i've ever seen was people on slashdot saying unkind things about w. richard stevens after he passed away. apparently he preferred c to perl. of all people to disrespect, the abusive posters seem to pick the smartest ones.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  The smartest ones are the ones they are most threatened by.
  - phn 14y ago
    Is this really that common? Even yesterday I was talking to some friends about this, are people really more agressive towards "smarter" people just because they feel threatened? I try to be the most open I can and learn the most from people that I feel are smarter than me. But it seems that it is not the norm, even with "non-tech" people.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  It wasn't really C vs perl, the languages have pretty different use-cases. Rather it was that he used awk, and said he considered perl "an unreadable write-only language". That was only half the issue though, he was also widely respected as an old school unix hacker. Like virtually all of the old school guys he preferred using BSDs, and slashdot was a linux noob circle jerk at the time (it may be still, I haven't been there in years). The combination of those two things led to a lot of really bad comments that demonstrated just how terrible the slashdot community really was.
AngryParsley 14y ago
I completely agree with rjbs's opinion of online discourse. It is positively shameful how many communities are filled with insults, trolls, snark, and incivility. That said, I have some qualms with the proposed solution. In my experience, "patience, correction, explanation, and an outpouring of civilly-worded disapproval" are often not enough. Frequently, these methods do nothing more than increase stress and waste time. After reading Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism[1], I am convinced that banning is vastly underused. Many of us are professionals. Our time is valuable; our communities, even more-so. There are so many fools with so many maladaptive behaviors. Considering what else we could be working on, correcting them all simply isn't worthwhile. The opportunity cost is too high. I wish this problem could be solved in a less forceful manner. Sadly, banning is the most effective solution I've found. 1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
- symkat 14y ago
  One problem I've found with banning: the rare troll on things like IRC who will take the act of banning as an act of agression and engagement in a war of "how many of my IPs can you ban while I harass your channel." Those same people, ignored or hugged will often just find harassing your channel boring and move on.
  - AngryParsley 14y ago
    I agree. Different communication mediums require different tactics. In the case of IRC though, I think it's due to a lack of good banning tools. One of the reasons I love Freenode is because they have good banning tools. For example, /mode #channel_under_attack +r will prevent people from joining if they aren't identified with nickserv. Once the attacker gets bored, you can remove the restriction.
  - cabalamat 14y ago
    > Those same people, ignored or hugged will often just find harassing your channel boring and move on. I wonder if an "invisible ban" would work with trolls? What I mean is that their messages appear to them, butr not to any other user. So the troll isn't aware they've been banned. Has anyone used this?
coffeemug 14y ago
^ (IV) | (I) | People | People everyone | everyone | wants to work n | feels bad | with i | for | c | | e +---------------+---------------- n | (III) | (II) e | Get off | People everyone s | my lawn | just tolerates s | people | | | | | +-------------------------------> talent
- fpgeek 14y ago
  It's worth noting that the borders between these categories aren't simple vertical and horizontal lines. Within limits, the more talent you have, the less niceness you can get away with. In other words, the line between (I) and (II) slopes down. The line between (IV) and (I) (and between (II) and (III), for that matter) might also slope down, but that's complicated by the talent threshold being more important, I believe.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    There isn't a claim that the points that would represent various people would be equally distributed among the four boxes. The more detail you add, the more evidence you have to provide.
  - numeromancer 14y ago
    Within limits, the more talent you have, the less niceness you can get away with. This misreads the situation a little, I think. The more talented you are, the more likely you are to recognize the value of “niceness” (in its current meaning (“kind”) and its older meaning (“careful and particular”)). That's why someone whose code is well-commented and carefully designed has shown more talent than the arrogant trickster whose 2k-line functions full of 1-letter variable names “comment themselves”.
- rjzzleep 14y ago
  it's a common misconception to think that the greatest things come from people that tolerate or like each other. a lot actually come from really "harsh" rivalries, which are everything but nice. equally so in the offline world.
DanBC 14y ago
See also Vested Contributors (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor) and Dissuade Reputation (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/DissuadeReputation http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/DissuadeReputation) and most of the troublesome characters category on meatball wiki.
anon_d 14y ago
IMHO, it's just the way of things everywhere on the internet. It wont ever change, and the entire population will eventually develop a thick skin. I personally have zero tolerance for abusive verbal behavior, but I've become very comfortable with it in text. On the other hand, user moderated communities like Hacker News and Reddit seem to cut back on this a lot. Only funny or informative abusive comments are shown.
aneth 14y ago
I occasionally venture into the IRC rooms for Rails, node.js, or some other technology when I need a quick answer that can't be found elsewhere. I'm always shocked at how stereotypically asinine and snarky the responses to legitimate questions are. Yes it's IRC, yet somehow I expect it not to live up to its reputation - yet it does every time.
- davedx 14y ago
  Haha, I was in the node.js IRC the other day and found people there to be pretty civil actually. If anything, I was being the snarky one. Not really snarky to people though, more a technical snarkyness.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    What is technical snarkiness, and do you believe that a newbie would be able to tell the difference between it and snark directed at themselves?
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  The rubyonrails channel is indeed awful, because of the demographic of people who use rails right now. The ruby channel is much more civil. They are usually unwilling to help on rails-specific issues though.
  - aneth 14y ago
    > "because of the demographic of people who use rails right now" What do you see as the problem with the demographic? While I know historically Rails had a heavy conceited, dickhead user base (in Seattle particularly), the demographic has expanded so much that it doesn't seem to be the case overall anymore.
    - JonnieCache 14y ago
      Thats not what I mean. I can't really comment on the actual community at large, but in places where people go to get help, such as the irc channel, there are increasingly a lot of people looking for easy answers who don't seem willing to work things out for themselves. More so than in a lot of other languages. I couldn't attribute this to any specific group of people, but I think it has to do with rails increasingly becoming a "workhorse" tool amongst shall we say, less hackerish web devs. It's basically a sign that rails is being used more for workaday things, perhaps at the expense of .net or PHP. This is surely a good thing. It isn't the same as the mythic internecine rivalries in the rails/ruby development community everyone always talks about, which I've never thought were that important.
hynek 14y ago
I don’t want to sound like an old smart ass but I’m regularly grateful how the tech community evolved; the article mentions it too, it was _really_ bad. The usenet of the 90’s and early 2000’s was a fierce battle zone and newbie chip pan. Nowadays community leaders refuse to tolerate assholes (<http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/> http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/>) – back then they more often than not acted like those. I wouldn’t have thought back then that we’d come ever so far. Not that we arrived yet…
einhverfr 14y ago
I see a huge problem with the piece. There is certainly overlap between thick-skinned and abusive individuals but the sets are not identical. There are many abusive individuals who are covering for their own insecurities, and many quiet, confident people who have thick skins but don't abuse others. Additionally there's a difference between taking offence to abusive behavior and taking offence where none was intended. I am of the opinion that it is worth expecting members of the community to be thick-skinned, professional, courteous, and respectful. If you have the latter three down well, then telling someone that no offence was meant but that you stick by your original point, that has a great deal more credibility. Thick skins are good. But expecting them doesn't have to mean tolerating abuse.
- obtu 14y ago
  I think part of his point was that expecting everyone to have a thick skin is a small step away from requiring everyone to have that thick skin, and to not reacting appropriately to people who direct flames against those supposedly thick skins. “Thick skin” is often used but poorly defined when talking about online communities, and I think the end of the article does a good job of deconstructing the notion by explaining more precisely what is a good standard for reacting to abuse. Another point to make is that this is a stronger expectation than simply: don't be an asshole, and that acceptance criteria that don't match the emotional reality of most people (for example, if “thick skin” means you're not allowed to feel bad after being treated harshly) will ghettoise a community.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Ok, perhaps I wasn't clear, perhaps as you say because "thick skin" is relatively ill-defined. To sum up my point, if you don't tolerate abuse and everyone knows this, then saying "What so-and-so said wasn't really out of line. Please be more professional when taking criticism" is credible. When you personal attacks and trolling, it isn't.
gaius 14y ago
Who was he referring to as We are not even close to free software's most wretched hive of scum and villainy. ? My guess would be the Ruby "community".
- brohee 14y ago
  The really nice Ruby people must hate being confused with the Rails ghetto hoodlums.
  - enko 14y ago
    What rails ghetto hoodlums? Seriously, every community has a few bad apples, it's totally unfair to judge the whole by the behaviour of a very few. You'd probably object if you heard someone judging an entire ethnic group by the actions of a couple of extremists - how is this any different? /rails dev frustrated by the seemingly bad image of the community despite 99.99% of it being actually really nice
    - brohee 14y ago
      You may be missing a reference or two : http://www.zedshaw.com.sharedcopy.com/rants/51489cec9386f7c13f69b3a58cd50b02.html http://www.zedshaw.com.sharedcopy.com/rants/51489cec9386f7c1... and http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a-ghetto/ http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a...
      - enko 14y ago
        A couple of >3 year old blog posts proves that all rails developers are assholes? Is that really what you're hanging all your beliefs on? Sorry dude but that's just stupid. There are hundreds of thousands of rails developers all across the world and all you can cite is a couple of years old blog posts - one of them a cache because the author regretted posting it! I just got back from the Red Dot Ruby conference in Singapore and it was nothing but wall to wall nice people. This attention seeking nonsense you cite may as well be light years away. We are all just focussed on sharing knowledge, growing the community, and developing good software. It's 2012. Rails is far and away the best choice for developing pretty much any normal web app. Trying to tar the entire community with some old blog posts is pretty lame at best. Oh, and for what it's worth, there were quite a few women at the conference, and high school students too. Thank god you weren't there to spread this bullshit.
thedeuce 14y ago
I wish we could stop with all the sissy stuff and get on with our lives. YES assholes exist, put them in their place when you can. nuff said.
rjzzleep 14y ago
it's a self regulating system. the moment you put too many constraints on it, it will become like any other system. suppressed until it explodes. the whole troll, smartass, jerk concept we have is not the only one in the internet, but it's the most obvious. you may call it abusive, but I say it has created some of the most beautiful open source code/projects there is. the moment you start strangulating it, it will lose it's value. this is from a person who's wished for a remote electroshocker.
falcolas 14y ago
I'm reminded of a comic that pointed out the best way to get an answer to a "newbie" question on the internet. Ask the question, and have a friend give you the wrong answer, publicly. They will then be derided and scorned, while providing you with the correct answer. It's sad that this is often what it takes to get an answer out of jaded people with experience - it's even more sad that the scorn is integral to the experience.
itmag 14y ago
The "troll" label gets thrown around a lot here. I would like to see some samples of what people consider troll behavior, so I can get a better idea of what it is. Labelling someone "troll" is the same as labelling them wrong and that should not be taken lightly: http://sivers.org/ss http://sivers.org/ss

156 points by symkat 14y ago

I run a net radio show with a live chatroom that is frequently trolled. "Troll hugging" really does work - it's amazing how fast a user can turn from troll to punter. My theory is they're bored and just want attention. It doesn't always work. Some People Are Just Assholes.

aneth 14y ago
I agree. Treat trolls and snappy shitheads like they didn't do anything offensive or annoying. Reward their good behavior and don't respond to their bad. Most will quickly realize that constructiveness instead of belligerence is getting them the attention and respect they seek. Challenging trollish behavior will just force them to attempt to justify their behavior through argument and attitude.

unfortunat 14y ago

i think the worst i've ever seen was people on slashdot saying unkind things about w. richard stevens after he passed away. apparently he preferred c to perl. of all people to disrespect, the abusive posters seem to pick the smartest ones.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
The smartest ones are the ones they are most threatened by.
- phn 14y ago
  Is this really that common? Even yesterday I was talking to some friends about this, are people really more agressive towards "smarter" people just because they feel threatened? I try to be the most open I can and learn the most from people that I feel are smarter than me. But it seems that it is not the norm, even with "non-tech" people.
papsosouid 14y ago
It wasn't really C vs perl, the languages have pretty different use-cases. Rather it was that he used awk, and said he considered perl "an unreadable write-only language". That was only half the issue though, he was also widely respected as an old school unix hacker. Like virtually all of the old school guys he preferred using BSDs, and slashdot was a linux noob circle jerk at the time (it may be still, I haven't been there in years). The combination of those two things led to a lot of really bad comments that demonstrated just how terrible the slashdot community really was.

AngryParsley 14y ago

I completely agree with rjbs's opinion of online discourse. It is positively shameful how many communities are filled with insults, trolls, snark, and incivility. That said, I have some qualms with the proposed solution. In my experience, "patience, correction, explanation, and an outpouring of civilly-worded disapproval" are often not enough. Frequently, these methods do nothing more than increase stress and waste time. After reading Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism[1], I am convinced that banning is vastly underused. Many of us are professionals. Our time is valuable; our communities, even more-so. There are so many fools with so many maladaptive behaviors. Considering what else we could be working on, correcting them all simply isn't worthwhile. The opportunity cost is too high. I wish this problem could be solved in a less forceful manner. Sadly, banning is the most effective solution I've found. 1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/

symkat 14y ago
One problem I've found with banning: the rare troll on things like IRC who will take the act of banning as an act of agression and engagement in a war of "how many of my IPs can you ban while I harass your channel." Those same people, ignored or hugged will often just find harassing your channel boring and move on.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  I agree. Different communication mediums require different tactics. In the case of IRC though, I think it's due to a lack of good banning tools. One of the reasons I love Freenode is because they have good banning tools. For example, /mode #channel_under_attack +r will prevent people from joining if they aren't identified with nickserv. Once the attacker gets bored, you can remove the restriction.
- cabalamat 14y ago
  > Those same people, ignored or hugged will often just find harassing your channel boring and move on. I wonder if an "invisible ban" would work with trolls? What I mean is that their messages appear to them, butr not to any other user. So the troll isn't aware they've been banned. Has anyone used this?

coffeemug 14y ago

fpgeek 14y ago
It's worth noting that the borders between these categories aren't simple vertical and horizontal lines. Within limits, the more talent you have, the less niceness you can get away with. In other words, the line between (I) and (II) slopes down. The line between (IV) and (I) (and between (II) and (III), for that matter) might also slope down, but that's complicated by the talent threshold being more important, I believe.
- saraid216 14y ago
  There isn't a claim that the points that would represent various people would be equally distributed among the four boxes. The more detail you add, the more evidence you have to provide.
- numeromancer 14y ago
  Within limits, the more talent you have, the less niceness you can get away with. This misreads the situation a little, I think. The more talented you are, the more likely you are to recognize the value of “niceness” (in its current meaning (“kind”) and its older meaning (“careful and particular”)). That's why someone whose code is well-commented and carefully designed has shown more talent than the arrogant trickster whose 2k-line functions full of 1-letter variable names “comment themselves”.
rjzzleep 14y ago
it's a common misconception to think that the greatest things come from people that tolerate or like each other. a lot actually come from really "harsh" rivalries, which are everything but nice. equally so in the offline world.

DanBC 14y ago

See also Vested Contributors (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor) and Dissuade Reputation (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/DissuadeReputation http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/DissuadeReputation) and most of the troublesome characters category on meatball wiki.

anon_d 14y ago

IMHO, it's just the way of things everywhere on the internet. It wont ever change, and the entire population will eventually develop a thick skin. I personally have zero tolerance for abusive verbal behavior, but I've become very comfortable with it in text. On the other hand, user moderated communities like Hacker News and Reddit seem to cut back on this a lot. Only funny or informative abusive comments are shown.

aneth 14y ago

I occasionally venture into the IRC rooms for Rails, node.js, or some other technology when I need a quick answer that can't be found elsewhere. I'm always shocked at how stereotypically asinine and snarky the responses to legitimate questions are. Yes it's IRC, yet somehow I expect it not to live up to its reputation - yet it does every time.

davedx 14y ago
Haha, I was in the node.js IRC the other day and found people there to be pretty civil actually. If anything, I was being the snarky one. Not really snarky to people though, more a technical snarkyness.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  What is technical snarkiness, and do you believe that a newbie would be able to tell the difference between it and snark directed at themselves?
JonnieCache 14y ago
The rubyonrails channel is indeed awful, because of the demographic of people who use rails right now. The ruby channel is much more civil. They are usually unwilling to help on rails-specific issues though.
- aneth 14y ago
  > "because of the demographic of people who use rails right now" What do you see as the problem with the demographic? While I know historically Rails had a heavy conceited, dickhead user base (in Seattle particularly), the demographic has expanded so much that it doesn't seem to be the case overall anymore.
  - JonnieCache 14y ago
    Thats not what I mean. I can't really comment on the actual community at large, but in places where people go to get help, such as the irc channel, there are increasingly a lot of people looking for easy answers who don't seem willing to work things out for themselves. More so than in a lot of other languages. I couldn't attribute this to any specific group of people, but I think it has to do with rails increasingly becoming a "workhorse" tool amongst shall we say, less hackerish web devs. It's basically a sign that rails is being used more for workaday things, perhaps at the expense of .net or PHP. This is surely a good thing. It isn't the same as the mythic internecine rivalries in the rails/ruby development community everyone always talks about, which I've never thought were that important.

hynek 14y ago

I don’t want to sound like an old smart ass but I’m regularly grateful how the tech community evolved; the article mentions it too, it was _really_ bad. The usenet of the 90’s and early 2000’s was a fierce battle zone and newbie chip pan. Nowadays community leaders refuse to tolerate assholes (<http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/> http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/>) – back then they more often than not acted like those. I wouldn’t have thought back then that we’d come ever so far. Not that we arrived yet…

einhverfr 14y ago

I see a huge problem with the piece. There is certainly overlap between thick-skinned and abusive individuals but the sets are not identical. There are many abusive individuals who are covering for their own insecurities, and many quiet, confident people who have thick skins but don't abuse others. Additionally there's a difference between taking offence to abusive behavior and taking offence where none was intended. I am of the opinion that it is worth expecting members of the community to be thick-skinned, professional, courteous, and respectful. If you have the latter three down well, then telling someone that no offence was meant but that you stick by your original point, that has a great deal more credibility. Thick skins are good. But expecting them doesn't have to mean tolerating abuse.

obtu 14y ago
I think part of his point was that expecting everyone to have a thick skin is a small step away from requiring everyone to have that thick skin, and to not reacting appropriately to people who direct flames against those supposedly thick skins. “Thick skin” is often used but poorly defined when talking about online communities, and I think the end of the article does a good job of deconstructing the notion by explaining more precisely what is a good standard for reacting to abuse. Another point to make is that this is a stronger expectation than simply: don't be an asshole, and that acceptance criteria that don't match the emotional reality of most people (for example, if “thick skin” means you're not allowed to feel bad after being treated harshly) will ghettoise a community.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Ok, perhaps I wasn't clear, perhaps as you say because "thick skin" is relatively ill-defined. To sum up my point, if you don't tolerate abuse and everyone knows this, then saying "What so-and-so said wasn't really out of line. Please be more professional when taking criticism" is credible. When you personal attacks and trolling, it isn't.

gaius 14y ago

Who was he referring to as We are not even close to free software's most wretched hive of scum and villainy. ? My guess would be the Ruby "community".

brohee 14y ago
The really nice Ruby people must hate being confused with the Rails ghetto hoodlums.
- enko 14y ago
  What rails ghetto hoodlums? Seriously, every community has a few bad apples, it's totally unfair to judge the whole by the behaviour of a very few. You'd probably object if you heard someone judging an entire ethnic group by the actions of a couple of extremists - how is this any different? /rails dev frustrated by the seemingly bad image of the community despite 99.99% of it being actually really nice
  - brohee 14y ago
    You may be missing a reference or two : http://www.zedshaw.com.sharedcopy.com/rants/51489cec9386f7c13f69b3a58cd50b02.html http://www.zedshaw.com.sharedcopy.com/rants/51489cec9386f7c1... and http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a-ghetto/ http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a...
    - enko 14y ago
      A couple of >3 year old blog posts proves that all rails developers are assholes? Is that really what you're hanging all your beliefs on? Sorry dude but that's just stupid. There are hundreds of thousands of rails developers all across the world and all you can cite is a couple of years old blog posts - one of them a cache because the author regretted posting it! I just got back from the Red Dot Ruby conference in Singapore and it was nothing but wall to wall nice people. This attention seeking nonsense you cite may as well be light years away. We are all just focussed on sharing knowledge, growing the community, and developing good software. It's 2012. Rails is far and away the best choice for developing pretty much any normal web app. Trying to tar the entire community with some old blog posts is pretty lame at best. Oh, and for what it's worth, there were quite a few women at the conference, and high school students too. Thank god you weren't there to spread this bullshit.

thedeuce 14y ago

I wish we could stop with all the sissy stuff and get on with our lives. YES assholes exist, put them in their place when you can. nuff said.

rjzzleep 14y ago

it's a self regulating system. the moment you put too many constraints on it, it will become like any other system. suppressed until it explodes. the whole troll, smartass, jerk concept we have is not the only one in the internet, but it's the most obvious. you may call it abusive, but I say it has created some of the most beautiful open source code/projects there is. the moment you start strangulating it, it will lose it's value. this is from a person who's wished for a remote electroshocker.

falcolas 14y ago

I'm reminded of a comic that pointed out the best way to get an answer to a "newbie" question on the internet. Ask the question, and have a friend give you the wrong answer, publicly. They will then be derided and scorned, while providing you with the correct answer. It's sad that this is often what it takes to get an answer out of jaded people with experience - it's even more sad that the scorn is integral to the experience.

itmag 14y ago

The "troll" label gets thrown around a lot here. I would like to see some samples of what people consider troll behavior, so I can get a better idea of what it is. Labelling someone "troll" is the same as labelling them wrong and that should not be taken lightly: http://sivers.org/ss http://sivers.org/ss