10 ms·
What the fuck. (And I rarely say that word.) We've got to grow up. This is 9th grade all over again. You know, those weird people that do things that you don't
by jlongster 14y ago
What the fuck. (And I rarely say that word.)
We've got to grow up. This is 9th grade all over again. You know, those weird people that do things that you don't understand? They're the ones that grow up and make big impacts on the world.
Why can't we get over our negativity? We can't stop ourselves from thinking horrible things, or even saying them out loud to people around us, but surely we can restrain ourselves from publicly humiliating someone in front of thousands (or more) people. And for what purpose? To say "funny" things like "our eyes are bleeding!". Seriously?
I really will never understand why people can't simply be more positive. If I ever start a company the #1 thing I will look for in others is positivity. I wouldn't stand for this crap.
- donniezazen 14y agoFolks on internet fail to understand that there are people on the other side of terminal and some civility is warranted. All of us should discourage uncivil behavior by non-participating in a silly conversation.
- doktrin 14y ago>> If I ever start a company the #1 thing I will look for in others is positivity. I wouldn't stand for this crap. What's conspicuously lacking here is not positivity per se, it's the absence of civility & decency. Those are two very different sets of attributes. Lack of an outright positive demeanor won't sink a team. Lacking civility and decency, however, will stick a severe wrench in any project. edit : On a personal note, reading this was unpleasant and embarrassing. I'm sorry the OP had to go through this. edit 2 : retracting the following statement after reading apologies published by those involved - "I'm glad I now know who not to interact with in the community"
- jlongster 14y agoI guess you're right. Civility also sounds less cheesy than positivity! I find that teams can be balanced with people positive and negative, and it's how you handle negativity that's important, which is what you point out.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- quasque 14y agoI wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a strong undercurrent of misogyny involved here, motivating their incivility and rudeness.
- yen223 14y agoIt's the reverse - a lack of civility among those alpha-nerd types leads to the general acceptance of misogyny (and racism, for that matter) among them.
- illuminate 14y agoThey both feed into each other.
- mkhattab 14y agoPerhaps you are correct. While I completely agree that what happened to her was completely uncalled for regardless of her gender. I find that sometimes myself I am slightly harsher in criticism of my male colleagues and friends. Perhaps dcramer and steveklabnik didn't realize they were addressing the project of a female programmer? Nonetheless, their rudeness is still wrong especially in the public sphere.
- cookiecaper 14y agoI'm quite skeptical of this. It's not like her gender is immediately obvious from the GitHub repo, and it seems obvious that if these guys recognized the screen name they wouldn't have been foolish enough to make these comments about an engineer at Mozilla.
- eksith 14y agoI seriously doubt it was misogyny as much as it's just online disinhibition. Twitter is especially notorious because the very format forces you to be curt.
- catwell 14y agoAccusing everybody criticizing a woman of sexism is certainly not helping. They almost certainly didn't know she is a woman. Moreover Steve Klabnik at least is a widely known ally (http://confreaks.com/videos/1089-madisonruby2012-anti-opression-101 http://confreaks.com/videos/1089-madisonruby2012-anti-opress...)
- kyro 14y agoAt this point, I blame it on the assumption that Aspergers must run rampant and is severely underdiagnosed in the dev community.
- DanBC 14y agoI understand your point, but "makes my eyes bleed" is not a typical comment from a neuro-atypical person. The neuro-typical can be assholes too.
- babs474 14y agoNeuro-typical people can be assholes, but they tend to understand that they are being an asshole when they act asshole-ish. I think a big problem in the dev community is a lot of asshole behavior out there from people who don't intend to, or even _understand_ that they are being an asshole. Regardless of intent, this asshole behavior has consequences on neuro-typical and atypical people alike. I think nerdy/geeky/dev/asberger/whatever people need to be more mindful of how they interact with people. Unfortunately the recent asberger pride movement doesn't help.
- DanBC 14y ago> Unfortunately the recent asberger pride movement doesn't help. The word is "Asperger's". 'Asperger pride' is an attempt to reduce the hateful ignorant bigotry that the neuro-atypical face every day. The kind of ignorance that leads to early death, reduced job opportunities, reduced educational opportunities etc.
- babs474 14y agoThanks for the correction, I got lazy there. I think the problem with 'Asperger pride' is it tends to focus on how neuro-typical people have wronged people on the spectrum. A lot of times the painful truth is that person with aspergers is at least partially culpable for the negative outcome of their social interactions. This becomes a major problem when you work in a place where almost everyone is on the autistic spectrum. There are no oppressive neuro-typical people, yet stubborn asshole behavior skyrockets because all the nerds are being dicks to each other.
- anthonyb 14y agoI like his earlier writing too, on dealing with "open source assholes": http://harthur.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/dealing-with-not-dealing-with-the-open-source-assholes/ http://harthur.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/dealing-with-not-dea...
- sinak 14y agoCorey Haines wrote a thoughtful apology here: http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html Only one of the three to do so thus far.
- MartinCron 14y agoClassy. None of the "I am sorry if you were offended bullshit" just a sincere "I messed up". Take note, just about everyone else.
- keyboardP 14y agoI agree. Everyone makes mistakes at some point and that apology seems to be the best possible way to deal with it IMHO.
- thetron 14y agoSuper relieved to see that - I was seriously disappointed to see Corey's name in amongst the mob. That's how an apology should be written.
- keyboardP 14y agoSteve Klabnik has now also posted an apology http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2013-01-23-node http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2013-01-23-node
- Gigablah 14y agoAnd unfortunately it is exactly the "I am sorry if you were offended" type.
- pbiggar 14y agoI don't think it is. I think its the 3rd kind: "I didnt say what I thought you said, but I can see how I hurt you and I'm sorry". Assuming that's true - which I think is a reasonable assumption based on how he teaches and his blog post from last year about being nice - it would seem wrong for him to post a full out apology.
- Xion 14y agoI somehow feel the "Twitter culture" itself is partially to blame. A setting that rewards short, sharp, witty remarks that skirt over the surface is just few small steps away from endorsing sarcastic, bitter, passive-aggressive or even over-the-top spurts. It's no wonder that no one who made those stingy tweets did respond to author's replies and questions. They didn't want to start a discussion in the first place. Fortunately, the pendulum can also swing the other way here, as they are people who readily jump to defend against harassment.
- overgard 14y agoA good test of character is how one treats those that they perceive to be lower status than them. I'd say these guys fail that test.
- wwweston 14y agoIt might be better to say that they failed last night and leave a more general judgment open. It's a good thing that people are calling this out and giving the participants cause to reflect on the problems with that kind of conversation (along with the rest of us). But I think it's also good if we don't rush to reduce people to some of their meaner moments. A lot of the participants have done a number of good things in the past, and they may well apologize and make this the exception rather than the rule.
- tectonic 14y agoAnd some of them have: - http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2013-01-23-node http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2013-01-23-node - http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html
- overgard 14y agoI was being pithy. I don't mean to suggest that they're awful people. I think in the open source community there's an ugly culture of celebrating people that act like jerks about technical things that reasonable people could disagree on (the poster child of that probably being Linus). I don't think that's a useful culture to have around. I think the best way to get rid of that culture is to make clear that those people can go fuck themselves. Just because you can be a dick doesn't mean you should, and the community should reflect that. I'm not the positivity police, I don't think people should be nice just for the sake of being nice, but there's no reason to go pick on someone's project just because it does something you'd rather do with another tool.
- rektide 14y agoSo you ascribe personal, leveled, directed malevolence directly against Heather Arthur and her replacer library to their actions? You don't think it had anything to do with just doing it for kicks, anything to do with how people see Node?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rjzzleep 14y agothe hell are you talking about? every person that created something worthwile in this world has been ridiculed. for good reason. i hate the fact that people here spout that uber positivity crap. you know what, you mess up -> you get ridiculed, what do you do? you make something better. The world is not this pretty flower place where everyone can be happy and strive at the same time. there is no rich without poor, and there is no great without bad. please everyone be happy is a stupid argument to make. it actually makes people NOT improve. it has nothing to do with elitism developer community. it's the same everywhere. you don't get patted on the back for doing something mediocore at best, well that is, unless you're an mba.
- friendly_chap 14y agoI fail to see what is being wrong with being positive and happy. We should strive to make the whole world as universally happy as possible. We can improve others with constructive criticism.
- megablast 14y agoClearly you can take it too far. If somebody does something wrong, are you allowed to tell them? Even though it is going to be negative? Do you never correct your children? Do you keep people on who need to be fired?
- thisone 14y agoThere's a rather large difference in saying "what you've done is not only useless, it's so stupid it's making physically ill" and providing constructive criticism It's the shit sandwich approach, say something good, say something critical, say something good. Tearing someone down, just because you can is not productive. I wonder if these same tweeters would have said the same thing to this persons face, and then turned their backs and walked away.
- eropple 14y agoSo explain to me how she messed up. Because I don't see any messing up on her part. I see a number of assholes (and some generally good folks who did mess up) unable to get out of their own headspace and into someone else, but that's about it. And there is a large gulf between "patting on the back" and being an asshole.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- brazzy 14y ago> If I ever start a company the #1 thing I will look for in others is positivity. Good luck with ever hearing about any problem before it's too late to fix it then...
- chris_wot 14y agoNow hold on... you can, in fact, raise issues in a positive way. "Hey Larry, after I spoke yesterday I checked and we've got corruption on our RAID array... I think I can work towards resolving it, but if not then we need to come up with a mitigation plan." vs. "Larry, we've got corruption on our RAID array. I told you yesterday and you didn't work fast enough on my suggestions, so now we're all screwed. I can't believe your stupidity!"
- brazzy 14y agoSure you can, but I suspect that if positivity is the #1 priority, you're pretty likely to see issues ignored or hand-waved away.
- chris_wot 14y agoNo more so than if you were extremely negative and played the blame game. Ignoring issues is not what I'd call positive though. That's just delusion.
- brazzy 14y agoBeing positive in the face of unrealistic deadlines is exactly that, delusion, and it's a pretty damn common and popular one in a large percentage of all software projects. Look, I'm not saying that a positive attitude is bad, just that it definitely shouldn't be your #1 priority as proposed in the first comment I was replying to.
- chris_wot 14y agoFair points :-)
- hosh 14y agoNo one taught middle school kids how to deal with emotions. That's because the adults around them don't know how to deal with them. We are educated in a math & science heavy society. That's good. However, it puts the focus on evidence. Emotions don't leave much of a trace unless you act on it. So we use behavior resulting from emotion as evidence of reality and ignore the experience of reality. Then we say, "be real" and cut off an entire spectrum of reality -- that of experiencing emotions. These are the makings of the shadow side, the Jungian shadows. When you disown or suppress experiences, then they get stronger. So yes. We have not grown up because we don't know how. Or at least, no one told you how. You cannot "get over" negativity. That's a form of rejecting something you don't want to feel. The only way out is to accept the experience of it as is, without rationalizing it and without acting on it. That's probably the hardest thing you will ever do in your life, but the most important if you want to grow as a person. There are several methods by which one can do this. One of them, called vipassana, was taught to some prisoners with great results (http://www.dhammabrothers.com/ http://www.dhammabrothers.com/). However, you don't need to be a criminal to use this.
- reinhardt 14y agoSerious question to you and any offended people here: what do you think of sites like The Daily WTF? Is it an anathema to any civilized person and the owners should be ashamed of themselves and apologize? After all there are real people behind every TDWTF story and if - god forbid - someday they stumble upon it they may recognize themselves and their feelings will be hurt! Or is the whole point here that Github accounts are not (necessarily at least, as in this case) anonymous and as long as no individual is identified personally we can all share a chuckle at their crappy code?