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I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dullin

by mankyd 11y ago

I really like these two paragraphs towards the end: Being kind isn’t the same as being nice. It isn’t about superficial praise. It doesn’t mean dulling your opinions. And it shouldn’t diminish the passion with which you present them. Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. It requires you be mindful of their feelings and considerate of the way your presence affects them. This get's missed a lot here on Hacker News. Many people are often hostile towards content creators or other commenters. It's perfectly OK to disagree with someone; but please consider doing so in a respectful and thoughtful tone. Remember that others often shut-down when they read criticism, even when well warranted. The way you phrase and present yourself defines whether you're giving criticism or critique.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Most peoples' reactions to things are arbitrary at best and constant worrying about how they will take something is just way too much BS to put into my day. I bought pretty deeply into this philosophy once and it just made me neurotic and quiet at a time of my life where those things very much hurt me. I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to children and animals and my loved ones. People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant. I'm not one of those "grow a thick skin, jerk" types, but there's this cheap sentiment I see about how everyone needs to be more kind and compassionate, and when its not phoned in, it usually ends up as a way to take advantage of others. Its easy for celebrity millionaire Kurt Vonnegut to write about compassion and be quoted by tumblerinas and its totally another thing for some kid no one gives a shit about trying to make his way in the world try to live it. I find high-concept philosophies are often the playthings of the well-off and comfortable. If you're fighting for your living, its not a luxury most of us can have. Sadly, this often justifies hostility, but I think there's a sane middle-ground here, but curt statements like "be kind" just seems so classist and off-putting to me. Like a soccer mom telling me how wonderful the Maharishi is or how relaxing doing 4 hours of Yoga is (no, she doesnt work, her husband does) and after I got off a long shift and dealt with a lot of shit and a crappy commute. Cheap sentiment just doesn't resolve the fundamental issue facing humanity today and probably until our final extinction event: we are all competing for the very same resources and competition can sometimes be ugly. It doesn't need to be truly awful and we shouldn't be encouraged to be overly negative and vindictive, but conflict and disagreement happens on a certain level and pretending we can kindly make it go away is just being unrealistic about our fundamental economic beings. Kindness is often taken advantage of as one party feels obligated to engage in it moreso than the other. This is a fairly large problem in gender politics where we raise women to be kind and then they find themselves at a disadvantage to men in the workplace who don't have these values. Considering everyone here is visiting a hard-nosed libertarian-leaning entrepreneur forum about becoming wealthy quickly, but the second something pseudo-spiritual gets posted suddenly we're all Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree. We're not. If anything, the personality types here are very, very far from any sort of selfless ideal. Patting ourselves on the back because our six-figure salaries let us rise above the struggle doesn't mean the struggle doesn't exist and that struggle means acting in a rational, usually unkind way. High class pseudo-spirituality is such a hilariously hypocritical thing its a running gag on HBO's Silicon Valley, yet here we are Gavin Belson'ing it up. At least I'm honest with myself to say that, no, I'm not "kind" by these standards and that I will argue and fight with you when I feel its appropriate and more importantly -- I will not feel bad about it afterwards. Sadly, most of the replies to my comment are fairly unkind responses telling me how much of a horrible person I am, especially to retail staff even though I gave no concrete examples of how I act. How ironic. If anyone is truly interested, I meditate daily and follow Buddhist ideals. I just refuse to go to the yogi-like extremes of insincere self-love in an attempt to con my way out of the struggle of Samsara. Accepting the reality of who I am is real mindfulness and liberating, and that person is not this uber-kind enlightened being who is 'above it all' and I doubt anyone here reading this is either. If anything, if we're buying into cheap manufactured sentiment that just happens to be self-complimentary, I'd say we're fairly far from that ideal. The same way we point at the nasty evangelicals will hearts full of hate who pat each other on the back for being so pious. Lets not go that route, as tempting as it is. All the technology is showing you this message was made by sweatshop-style labor. We're just not kind.
- slvv 11y ago
  "If you're fighting for your living, its not a luxury most of us can have. Sadly, this often justifies hostility, but I think there's a sane middle-ground here, but curt statements like "be kind" just seems so classist and off-putting to me." I've consistently found that (in particular when treated with kindness and respect) poorer people respond with kindness in much greater measure than wealthy people. Like the author said, kindness isn't the same as niceness.
- ericabiz 11y ago
  > "People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant." The addition of "retail staff" here surprised me. I'm a techie who took a break from tech and startups the past few months to help out my S.O., who owns a retail store. I worked the front counter, ran inventory, etc. for the past 3 months. I had never worked retail before. I got into tech at an early age and skipped most of the "menial" jobs that typical American teenagers have. So working retail was eye-opening for me. Retail workers get paid shit wages to deal with your crap. Yes, you. Whatever crap you've been dealing with, we have to take it with a smile and help you out. I've stood behind a counter and listened to a homeless guy ramble about anything and everything for 12 minutes (I had a small clock within view.) Your attitude in this post indicates to me that you could probably use a bit of this type of work yourself. If you think it's beneath you, doubly so. If you're curious what it's like for a techie/introvert/successful entrepreneur to work retail, I've been blogging about it. (Blog link in my profile) To be honest, the 3 months I spent there made me a far better person than any given 3 months I spent in the tech industry (I've run tech companies for 14 years now.) It humbled me, and gave me far more respect for my fellow human beings. And I learned there's nothing like the priceless joy in someone's eyes when you do something for them and can see pure joy radiate from them. I hope you, too, can experience this.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    Not the OP, and cool story; however, what they're paid doesn't matter, it's a red herring. It's their JOB to deal with people and and it's not my job as a shopper to validate the emotions of the counter worker or my co-workers. Ring up my stuff, take my money, and let me leave. You're chastising him for his "attitude"; what attitude? He's correct and he didn't display any attitude other than simple honesty.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?
- spb 11y ago
  Why not both? In general, strive to follow the robustness principle: be liberal (forgiving) in what you accept, and conservative (delicate) in what you output.
- btilly 11y ago
  "Text does not communicate tone" is a huge problem. You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. Being kind can be more concise. Here is an example that my fiance recently pointed out... I think the single biggest mistake people make in communication is reminding the other person they are incorrect when that does not change the content. "As I told you Monday, the reason is X." "I have not heard from you when I asked for feedback, so I am following up." "We could have done it the other way, but since you already set it up, let's use this." It is amazingly tempting, almost everyone does it, and your communication becomes an order of magnitude more benevolent when you edit those clauses out. For more ideas on how to be concise and kind, I highly recommend the parenting book, _How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk_. It is not just for parents. What works with 13 year old kids also works with 30 year old kids.
  - derefr 11y ago
    > You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. And in the case where your only relationship with these people is online in the first place? (As in this community, but also in quite a few FOSS projects or remote-only companies.)
    - btilly 11y ago
      That is a tricky case. It never hurts to be aware of the issue. Beyond that, try to stay within community norms. Every approach will have failure modes. Know and accept which ones are likely with what you are doing, and deal with them when they come. In some communities this will mean that you are very straightforward and technical. Don't say anything emotional. Always work from facts. If you are misunderstood, note it, apologize for the misunderstanding, and move on. In other communities it might mean that you actively solicit input from decision makers, and carefully avoid controversial topics. A variety of approaches will work. But following strategy X in a community that is set up for strategy Y is a recipe for disaster.
austenallred 11y ago
I'm really glad that he worded that so well; it's really easy to disguise "being a jerk" as "just being right," and I often see it justified as such (at times by myself). Being right and being kind aren't mutually exclusive.
fweespeech 11y ago
> It's perfectly OK to disagree with someone; but please consider doing so in a respectful and thoughtful tone. The problem I've found is I literally get ignored and end up repeatedly dealing with the same mess until I stop being "kind" about it. I generally have to do literally 10x as much work to be "kind" than when I'm less generous about it. The problem with kindness is its frequently taken [in IT, in places I've worked] as it not being a serious problem that actually needs to be addressed except as a favor to you. It eventually, frequently, gets to the point where serious problems are repeatedly introduced and you end up having to clean it up. Because from their point of view, if it really was a problem, you would have stopped being nice after the first or second time.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Miss Manners wrote about her newspaper subscription not arriving. She called repeatedly and was nice. Finally she got somebody in charge who told her "We don't do anything unless the customer is angry". She asked nicely if he would put her down as having been irate. He kindly did.
  - serve_yay 11y ago
    Ah, now for the important question - Was she angry or not? My answer is yes.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah, oddly enough in the real world, no one ever admits that in social situations with coworkers.
- hckr1292 11y ago
  This is confusing "kind" with "nice". If your audience can handle some directness, be direct. It's okay to say, "This is a horrible idea, and I can't believe we're considering this." That can be kind when you care about the person you're talking to. What's unkind is saying, "You're an idiot, and that's a ridiculous idea." Attacking people is not kind, but directness _can_ be kind. On the other hand, you deserve to be shown some kindness too. If your coworkers don't listen to you, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job.
JshWright 11y ago
Two of my favorite quotes about being 'nice' come from the musical, Into The Woods. The first is Red Riding Hood's quip, "Nice is is different than good", which is then fleshed out later by the witch: "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right." I think "kind" and "good" are reasonable synonyms here, and Boz and Sondheim express very similar sentiments.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
candu 11y ago
Exactly this. IMHO, the first paragraph quoted above is especially important to understand. This post reads like someone discovering the line between aggressive and assertive. Aggressive is most definitely unkind. Assertive is often confused with unkind, but it isn't really that: it's about demonstrating respect both for yourself and for those around you.
solve 11y ago
> Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.
- iolaknfd89 11y ago
  Agreed. I will never share anything I make with HN for this reason. We all know the last 20% (polish) takes 80% of the work, and isn't the fun stuff. Yet that's generally what gets criticized when someone shares a link. For any of my hobby projects, it's about making a POC or rickety MVP. I want to build things and learn quickly, not doing the last 20% schlub work that eats at my time to learn something else. Because of that, and what I've seen of the reception to other hobby projects, I have determined that HN is not an appropriate forum for me to share projects with.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    Ignore 80% of the feedback (about the lack of polish) and pay attention to the 20% of 'useful' feedback. :) I'm 100% guilty of criticizing the lack of polish on some things that get posted. Often times because I am not familiar enough to criticize more important details that may not be apparent to the average observer. For example - I might have to comb through an entire project in a programming language I'm not familiar with to perhaps give feedback on a better algorithm they could have used for X to improve performance... Or I could criticize that their search feature is entirely broken and always results in an empty results page. The latter is easier to find and a casual user might run into it, although it might be a pain for the programmer to fix on the front end. The former will likely have less notice for the casual user, but is more beneficial for the programmer. This is my take on why you see a lot of criticism about the lack of polish compared to other aspects or details.
- dang 11y ago
  > The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people Of course there's no rule against swearing. This whole description is so remote from everything we try to do that I'm at a loss to know what else to say.
brongondwana 11y ago
*gets :p
vijayr 11y ago
This is very evident in the styles people do interviews. For example, Bill O'Reilly is loud, calls names etc when his guests disagree with him - to the point that some of his conversations end up being loud shouting matches and the only thing left to do (as a viewer) is to turn it off. Jon Stewart on the other hand - he disagrees with his guests in a kind, calm and funny manner - it is interesting to watch him and his guests go back and forth on ideas. I'm guessing that attitude probably spills into other areas of their lives too Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHPD6AJ5Fg&t=2m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHPD6AJ5Fg&t=2m (Bill ends up calling his guest a fascist)
- 6502nerdface 11y ago
  Unfortunately some claim [1] that if Jon Stewart really disagrees with you, he has no qualms against using editing tricks and false pretenses to make you look foolish and stupid. [1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-ever-appear-on-the-daily-show http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-ever-...
  - vijayr 11y ago
    Wow, didn't know that :( Thanks for the link.
    - mucker 11y ago
      He's famous for it. Even going so far as to do multiple shows in an attempt to humiliate you.
  - tanderson92 11y ago
    That's very interesting (and I will never go on the daily show now if I disagree with them), but I am not sure that it applies here. The parent was discussing the interviews that Jon Stewart performs himself in the interview part of the show. Often when there is a serious ideological difference there they publish a long-form interview(20 minutes) which is clearly the whole interview. The piece you link to seems to be more about the field pieces which are not what was being discussed, and not what the parent was comparing O'Reilly's interviews to.
serve_yay 11y ago
Of course it costs nothing to address people in a way that they feel comfortable with, so you should do it. But, in a Postel's law sort of way, in terms of critiquing argument I don't think it's worth dwelling on the tone. Two plus two is four no matter how many times the person arguing it uses the word "fuck", to put it crudely. And often, addressing tone is a way of eliding real argumentation.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > Of course it costs nothing to address people in a way that they feel comfortable with, so you should do it. It doesn't cost nothing, it's costs a lot of time and attention to find out what they're comfortable with and much attention to filter yourself to to fit that, so no you shouldn't just do it without a good reason.
  - serve_yay 11y ago
    OK, I guess it costs. But I say it's unwise to be miserly along such lines.
    - gnaritas 11y ago
      Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but you assume it's a choice and that's a mistake. You presume it's easy to know how people want to be treated, but there are a great many conditions that make reading other people difficult for entire classes of people. They aren't necessarily being miserly, they may be doing the best they can and that's all they've got. Those with Aspergers for example have to do with intellect what most people do instinctively socially speaking, and that's exhausting for them; they simply aren't wired to be social.
ffn 11y ago
Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep out someone else's opinion because you disagree with it and labeled it as "toxic" from your perspective. I mean, it's one thing to downvote someone because of spam or noise (e.g. one line posts of "lolwtf" or "this is dumb"), but every time I scroll through the comments and see discussion chains of folks arguing some valid points (about say referrals and paywalls or the ever controversial issue of sexism) under a flagkilled or completely invisible down-voted-to-hell post, I think to myself "this shouldn't be how our community operates."
- mkramlich 11y ago
  well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly rude. Folks who say something in a comment they'd never dare to say to your face. Therefore I've given up on caring and now much prefer Reddit's community. Less pinheads there, greater topic variety, greater sense of fun, can collapse threads, can delete comments much later (if you discover one that attracts a hate mob). I still enjoy reading HN, mostly the off-site articles linked to. But not so much the comment threads here. Not anymore.
  - latchkey 11y ago
    What if you could see who downvoted you? I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
    - 11y ago
donlzx 11y ago
Being kind also mean being more open-minded. I visit HN not to argue about the right or wrong, but to get more informed and educated. The more you know, the more you'll be humble and kind to those who you disagree with. The notion that there is not absolute correctness even for a most trivial problem may be hard for engineers to understand, but I've learned it the hard way. I've learned a lot and working better with others since I started reading more on non-technical books and articles. It's a lot easier to being kind socially than to being kind on technical discussion and decision times. I think every engineering major should take courses in philosophy and psychology or read some related books.
- mreiland 11y ago
  > Being kind also mean being more open-minded. Should I be more open-minded about climate change deniers when NASA has stated multiple times human activity is affecting it? I have better things to do with my time.
  - donlzx 11y ago
    Yes. And you'll know more and save more time for better things.
    - mreiland 11y ago
      Because if there's one place everyone can go to be better informed about climate change, it's definitely not NASA. This is why people like you get dismissed in the first place. I can choose to spend time worrying about why you would think that, or I can go on with my life. I choose to go on with my life. It is not true that all opinions are created equal. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
    - jorgearturo 11y ago
      I don't agree with mreiland. I didn't dismiss you donizx, your first comment was a smart POV. mreiland is just being rude, he probably had a bad day or was recently frustrated with some discussion gone eerie with a climate change denier and he's taking it out on you. And he's worried about climate change, that's understandable, cut him some slack.
marincounty 11y ago
If someone has to wonder wether they are kind; I have found they are just Not kind. They don't change unless they have a nervous breakdown, major health scare(like a TBI), or become poor(really poor). Capitalism seems to cater to selfish individuals? A lot of selfish individuals get far financially in life. Think about some of the "successful" people, some of us, idolize here on HN. Think about that person before they became rich and famous. I can usually bring up a list of retched things they did to become financially successful. That's the rub. They become comfortable in life and are in complete denial over how they carved their way to the top of their version of success. That's all I have--I have a headache, but kind people know they are kind. They don't need to advertise it. They don't need an audience in order to give to the suffering (human, animals, environment). They are just kind! Now, the Fakers--well that's what makes me unkind. Oh there are so many Fakers. (I have a sister who stepped on family members in order to become financially successful, and her journey was ugly. I might be a little over sensitive when it comes to people and kindness.)
rdudekul 11y ago
How to be kind? http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind
edpichler 11y ago
This text could be on the down there, on the "Guidelines" of HN.

by mankyd 11y ago

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

To be fair, this is also incredibly exhausting. Most peoples' reactions to things are arbitrary at best and constant worrying about how they will take something is just way too much BS to put into my day. I bought pretty deeply into this philosophy once and it just made me neurotic and quiet at a time of my life where those things very much hurt me. I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to children and animals and my loved ones. People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant. I'm not one of those "grow a thick skin, jerk" types, but there's this cheap sentiment I see about how everyone needs to be more kind and compassionate, and when its not phoned in, it usually ends up as a way to take advantage of others. Its easy for celebrity millionaire Kurt Vonnegut to write about compassion and be quoted by tumblerinas and its totally another thing for some kid no one gives a shit about trying to make his way in the world try to live it. I find high-concept philosophies are often the playthings of the well-off and comfortable. If you're fighting for your living, its not a luxury most of us can have. Sadly, this often justifies hostility, but I think there's a sane middle-ground here, but curt statements like "be kind" just seems so classist and off-putting to me. Like a soccer mom telling me how wonderful the Maharishi is or how relaxing doing 4 hours of Yoga is (no, she doesnt work, her husband does) and after I got off a long shift and dealt with a lot of shit and a crappy commute. Cheap sentiment just doesn't resolve the fundamental issue facing humanity today and probably until our final extinction event: we are all competing for the very same resources and competition can sometimes be ugly. It doesn't need to be truly awful and we shouldn't be encouraged to be overly negative and vindictive, but conflict and disagreement happens on a certain level and pretending we can kindly make it go away is just being unrealistic about our fundamental economic beings. Kindness is often taken advantage of as one party feels obligated to engage in it moreso than the other. This is a fairly large problem in gender politics where we raise women to be kind and then they find themselves at a disadvantage to men in the workplace who don't have these values. Considering everyone here is visiting a hard-nosed libertarian-leaning entrepreneur forum about becoming wealthy quickly, but the second something pseudo-spiritual gets posted suddenly we're all Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree. We're not. If anything, the personality types here are very, very far from any sort of selfless ideal. Patting ourselves on the back because our six-figure salaries let us rise above the struggle doesn't mean the struggle doesn't exist and that struggle means acting in a rational, usually unkind way. High class pseudo-spirituality is such a hilariously hypocritical thing its a running gag on HBO's Silicon Valley, yet here we are Gavin Belson'ing it up. At least I'm honest with myself to say that, no, I'm not "kind" by these standards and that I will argue and fight with you when I feel its appropriate and more importantly -- I will not feel bad about it afterwards. Sadly, most of the replies to my comment are fairly unkind responses telling me how much of a horrible person I am, especially to retail staff even though I gave no concrete examples of how I act. How ironic. If anyone is truly interested, I meditate daily and follow Buddhist ideals. I just refuse to go to the yogi-like extremes of insincere self-love in an attempt to con my way out of the struggle of Samsara. Accepting the reality of who I am is real mindfulness and liberating, and that person is not this uber-kind enlightened being who is 'above it all' and I doubt anyone here reading this is either. If anything, if we're buying into cheap manufactured sentiment that just happens to be self-complimentary, I'd say we're fairly far from that ideal. The same way we point at the nasty evangelicals will hearts full of hate who pat each other on the back for being so pious. Lets not go that route, as tempting as it is. All the technology is showing you this message was made by sweatshop-style labor. We're just not kind.

slvv 11y ago
"If you're fighting for your living, its not a luxury most of us can have. Sadly, this often justifies hostility, but I think there's a sane middle-ground here, but curt statements like "be kind" just seems so classist and off-putting to me." I've consistently found that (in particular when treated with kindness and respect) poorer people respond with kindness in much greater measure than wealthy people. Like the author said, kindness isn't the same as niceness.
ericabiz 11y ago
> "People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant." The addition of "retail staff" here surprised me. I'm a techie who took a break from tech and startups the past few months to help out my S.O., who owns a retail store. I worked the front counter, ran inventory, etc. for the past 3 months. I had never worked retail before. I got into tech at an early age and skipped most of the "menial" jobs that typical American teenagers have. So working retail was eye-opening for me. Retail workers get paid shit wages to deal with your crap. Yes, you. Whatever crap you've been dealing with, we have to take it with a smile and help you out. I've stood behind a counter and listened to a homeless guy ramble about anything and everything for 12 minutes (I had a small clock within view.) Your attitude in this post indicates to me that you could probably use a bit of this type of work yourself. If you think it's beneath you, doubly so. If you're curious what it's like for a techie/introvert/successful entrepreneur to work retail, I've been blogging about it. (Blog link in my profile) To be honest, the 3 months I spent there made me a far better person than any given 3 months I spent in the tech industry (I've run tech companies for 14 years now.) It humbled me, and gave me far more respect for my fellow human beings. And I learned there's nothing like the priceless joy in someone's eyes when you do something for them and can see pure joy radiate from them. I hope you, too, can experience this.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gnaritas 11y ago
  Not the OP, and cool story; however, what they're paid doesn't matter, it's a red herring. It's their JOB to deal with people and and it's not my job as a shopper to validate the emotions of the counter worker or my co-workers. Ring up my stuff, take my money, and let me leave. You're chastising him for his "attitude"; what attitude? He's correct and he didn't display any attitude other than simple honesty.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Trouble is, tone doesn't come through text very well. Takes a lot more typing and very careful word choice. So haste often comes off as unkind. Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?

spb 11y ago
Why not both? In general, strive to follow the robustness principle: be liberal (forgiving) in what you accept, and conservative (delicate) in what you output.
btilly 11y ago
"Text does not communicate tone" is a huge problem. You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. Being kind can be more concise. Here is an example that my fiance recently pointed out... I think the single biggest mistake people make in communication is reminding the other person they are incorrect when that does not change the content. "As I told you Monday, the reason is X." "I have not heard from you when I asked for feedback, so I am following up." "We could have done it the other way, but since you already set it up, let's use this." It is amazingly tempting, almost everyone does it, and your communication becomes an order of magnitude more benevolent when you edit those clauses out. For more ideas on how to be concise and kind, I highly recommend the parenting book, _How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk_. It is not just for parents. What works with 13 year old kids also works with 30 year old kids.
- derefr 11y ago
  > You can solve that by deciding that certain types of communication should be done face to face. And in the case where your only relationship with these people is online in the first place? (As in this community, but also in quite a few FOSS projects or remote-only companies.)
  - btilly 11y ago
    That is a tricky case. It never hurts to be aware of the issue. Beyond that, try to stay within community norms. Every approach will have failure modes. Know and accept which ones are likely with what you are doing, and deal with them when they come. In some communities this will mean that you are very straightforward and technical. Don't say anything emotional. Always work from facts. If you are misunderstood, note it, apologize for the misunderstanding, and move on. In other communities it might mean that you actively solicit input from decision makers, and carefully avoid controversial topics. A variety of approaches will work. But following strategy X in a community that is set up for strategy Y is a recipe for disaster.

austenallred 11y ago

I'm really glad that he worded that so well; it's really easy to disguise "being a jerk" as "just being right," and I often see it justified as such (at times by myself). Being right and being kind aren't mutually exclusive.

fweespeech 11y ago

> It's perfectly OK to disagree with someone; but please consider doing so in a respectful and thoughtful tone. The problem I've found is I literally get ignored and end up repeatedly dealing with the same mess until I stop being "kind" about it. I generally have to do literally 10x as much work to be "kind" than when I'm less generous about it. The problem with kindness is its frequently taken [in IT, in places I've worked] as it not being a serious problem that actually needs to be addressed except as a favor to you. It eventually, frequently, gets to the point where serious problems are repeatedly introduced and you end up having to clean it up. Because from their point of view, if it really was a problem, you would have stopped being nice after the first or second time.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Miss Manners wrote about her newspaper subscription not arriving. She called repeatedly and was nice. Finally she got somebody in charge who told her "We don't do anything unless the customer is angry". She asked nicely if he would put her down as having been irate. He kindly did.
- serve_yay 11y ago
  Ah, now for the important question - Was she angry or not? My answer is yes.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yeah, oddly enough in the real world, no one ever admits that in social situations with coworkers.
hckr1292 11y ago
This is confusing "kind" with "nice". If your audience can handle some directness, be direct. It's okay to say, "This is a horrible idea, and I can't believe we're considering this." That can be kind when you care about the person you're talking to. What's unkind is saying, "You're an idiot, and that's a ridiculous idea." Attacking people is not kind, but directness _can_ be kind. On the other hand, you deserve to be shown some kindness too. If your coworkers don't listen to you, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job.

JshWright 11y ago

Two of my favorite quotes about being 'nice' come from the musical, Into The Woods. The first is Red Riding Hood's quip, "Nice is is different than good", which is then fleshed out later by the witch: "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right." I think "kind" and "good" are reasonable synonyms here, and Boz and Sondheim express very similar sentiments.

deleted 11y ago

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candu 11y ago

Exactly this. IMHO, the first paragraph quoted above is especially important to understand. This post reads like someone discovering the line between aggressive and assertive. Aggressive is most definitely unkind. Assertive is often confused with unkind, but it isn't really that: it's about demonstrating respect both for yourself and for those around you.

solve 11y ago

> Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you. Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.

iolaknfd89 11y ago
Agreed. I will never share anything I make with HN for this reason. We all know the last 20% (polish) takes 80% of the work, and isn't the fun stuff. Yet that's generally what gets criticized when someone shares a link. For any of my hobby projects, it's about making a POC or rickety MVP. I want to build things and learn quickly, not doing the last 20% schlub work that eats at my time to learn something else. Because of that, and what I've seen of the reception to other hobby projects, I have determined that HN is not an appropriate forum for me to share projects with.
- Nadya 11y ago
  Ignore 80% of the feedback (about the lack of polish) and pay attention to the 20% of 'useful' feedback. :) I'm 100% guilty of criticizing the lack of polish on some things that get posted. Often times because I am not familiar enough to criticize more important details that may not be apparent to the average observer. For example - I might have to comb through an entire project in a programming language I'm not familiar with to perhaps give feedback on a better algorithm they could have used for X to improve performance... Or I could criticize that their search feature is entirely broken and always results in an empty results page. The latter is easier to find and a casual user might run into it, although it might be a pain for the programmer to fix on the front end. The former will likely have less notice for the casual user, but is more beneficial for the programmer. This is my take on why you see a lot of criticism about the lack of polish compared to other aspects or details.
dang 11y ago
> The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people Of course there's no rule against swearing. This whole description is so remote from everything we try to do that I'm at a loss to know what else to say.

brongondwana 11y ago

*gets :p

vijayr 11y ago

This is very evident in the styles people do interviews. For example, Bill O'Reilly is loud, calls names etc when his guests disagree with him - to the point that some of his conversations end up being loud shouting matches and the only thing left to do (as a viewer) is to turn it off. Jon Stewart on the other hand - he disagrees with his guests in a kind, calm and funny manner - it is interesting to watch him and his guests go back and forth on ideas. I'm guessing that attitude probably spills into other areas of their lives too Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHPD6AJ5Fg&t=2m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHPD6AJ5Fg&t=2m (Bill ends up calling his guest a fascist)

6502nerdface 11y ago
Unfortunately some claim [1] that if Jon Stewart really disagrees with you, he has no qualms against using editing tricks and false pretenses to make you look foolish and stupid. [1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-ever-appear-on-the-daily-show http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-ever-...
- vijayr 11y ago
  Wow, didn't know that :( Thanks for the link.
  - mucker 11y ago
    He's famous for it. Even going so far as to do multiple shows in an attempt to humiliate you.
- tanderson92 11y ago
  That's very interesting (and I will never go on the daily show now if I disagree with them), but I am not sure that it applies here. The parent was discussing the interviews that Jon Stewart performs himself in the interview part of the show. Often when there is a serious ideological difference there they publish a long-form interview(20 minutes) which is clearly the whole interview. The piece you link to seems to be more about the field pieces which are not what was being discussed, and not what the parent was comparing O'Reilly's interviews to.

serve_yay 11y ago

Of course it costs nothing to address people in a way that they feel comfortable with, so you should do it. But, in a Postel's law sort of way, in terms of critiquing argument I don't think it's worth dwelling on the tone. Two plus two is four no matter how many times the person arguing it uses the word "fuck", to put it crudely. And often, addressing tone is a way of eliding real argumentation.

gnaritas 11y ago
> Of course it costs nothing to address people in a way that they feel comfortable with, so you should do it. It doesn't cost nothing, it's costs a lot of time and attention to find out what they're comfortable with and much attention to filter yourself to to fit that, so no you shouldn't just do it without a good reason.
- serve_yay 11y ago
  OK, I guess it costs. But I say it's unwise to be miserly along such lines.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but you assume it's a choice and that's a mistake. You presume it's easy to know how people want to be treated, but there are a great many conditions that make reading other people difficult for entire classes of people. They aren't necessarily being miserly, they may be doing the best they can and that's all they've got. Those with Aspergers for example have to do with intellect what most people do instinctively socially speaking, and that's exhausting for them; they simply aren't wired to be social.

ffn 11y ago

Yes, totally this. Moreover, I'd like to add anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names. Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep out someone else's opinion because you disagree with it and labeled it as "toxic" from your perspective. I mean, it's one thing to downvote someone because of spam or noise (e.g. one line posts of "lolwtf" or "this is dumb"), but every time I scroll through the comments and see discussion chains of folks arguing some valid points (about say referrals and paywalls or the ever controversial issue of sexism) under a flagkilled or completely invisible down-voted-to-hell post, I think to myself "this shouldn't be how our community operates."

mkramlich 11y ago
well said I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly rude. Folks who say something in a comment they'd never dare to say to your face. Therefore I've given up on caring and now much prefer Reddit's community. Less pinheads there, greater topic variety, greater sense of fun, can collapse threads, can delete comments much later (if you discover one that attracts a hate mob). I still enjoy reading HN, mostly the off-site articles linked to. But not so much the comment threads here. Not anymore.
- latchkey 11y ago
  What if you could see who downvoted you? I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about. In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.
  - 11y ago

donlzx 11y ago

Being kind also mean being more open-minded. I visit HN not to argue about the right or wrong, but to get more informed and educated. The more you know, the more you'll be humble and kind to those who you disagree with. The notion that there is not absolute correctness even for a most trivial problem may be hard for engineers to understand, but I've learned it the hard way. I've learned a lot and working better with others since I started reading more on non-technical books and articles. It's a lot easier to being kind socially than to being kind on technical discussion and decision times. I think every engineering major should take courses in philosophy and psychology or read some related books.

mreiland 11y ago
> Being kind also mean being more open-minded. Should I be more open-minded about climate change deniers when NASA has stated multiple times human activity is affecting it? I have better things to do with my time.
- donlzx 11y ago
  Yes. And you'll know more and save more time for better things.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    Because if there's one place everyone can go to be better informed about climate change, it's definitely not NASA. This is why people like you get dismissed in the first place. I can choose to spend time worrying about why you would think that, or I can go on with my life. I choose to go on with my life. It is not true that all opinions are created equal. Sorry, that's just the way it is.
  - jorgearturo 11y ago
    I don't agree with mreiland. I didn't dismiss you donizx, your first comment was a smart POV. mreiland is just being rude, he probably had a bad day or was recently frustrated with some discussion gone eerie with a climate change denier and he's taking it out on you. And he's worried about climate change, that's understandable, cut him some slack.

marincounty 11y ago

If someone has to wonder wether they are kind; I have found they are just Not kind. They don't change unless they have a nervous breakdown, major health scare(like a TBI), or become poor(really poor). Capitalism seems to cater to selfish individuals? A lot of selfish individuals get far financially in life. Think about some of the "successful" people, some of us, idolize here on HN. Think about that person before they became rich and famous. I can usually bring up a list of retched things they did to become financially successful. That's the rub. They become comfortable in life and are in complete denial over how they carved their way to the top of their version of success. That's all I have--I have a headache, but kind people know they are kind. They don't need to advertise it. They don't need an audience in order to give to the suffering (human, animals, environment). They are just kind! Now, the Fakers--well that's what makes me unkind. Oh there are so many Fakers. (I have a sister who stepped on family members in order to become financially successful, and her journey was ugly. I might be a little over sensitive when it comes to people and kindness.)

rdudekul 11y ago

How to be kind? http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind

edpichler 11y ago

This text could be on the down there, on the "Guidelines" of HN.