|
| OJFord wrote:
| > Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology
| that I'd just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the
| replies asked me to prove that the original author intended it to
| be offensive (which of course is besides [sic] the point) or
| tried to explain to me why it actually wasn't a problem.
|
| > So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:
|
| Of course I understand no responsibility to 'prove' anything and
| can guess the comments weren't written well - but I think there
| may be a genuine misunderstanding and miscommunication here, or
| maybe it's even a BrE/AmE thing, because 'to grope' around for
| something (often blindly in the dark or similar) isn't at all
| sexual, typically not even an animate thing you'd be groping for
| (e.g. a light switch) - and I'm fairly certain that that usage
| isn't by analogy to sexual assault.
|
| Or am I just repeating what's 'besides the point'? I don't think
| it is, words can have multiple meanings, be used in foul ways,
| but still be usable fairly and legitimately. 'I coloured in a
| picture' isn't 'gross'? My 'garden hoe' is fine?
| wpietri wrote:
| "Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in
| American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to
| have sexual connotations. E.g.:
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper
|
| I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the
| common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of
| it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still
| think it a reasonable association for women to make.
|
| As she says, original intent doesn't matter a ton. If I write
| something that's accidentally a problem for part of my
| audience, I'll change it. Because what I care about is getting
| my point across. When I see instead strident defense of
| language that's bothersome to a historically marginalized
| group, I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change. A
| change I'll note the dig maintainers made back in 2017, so it's
| not like they care.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| > But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual
| connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper
|
| The first (and the only non-slang one) definition of that is
| "a person or thing that gropes".
|
| Context matters, as in "groping $person" versus "groping
| $object". You cannot sexually touch domain information, so
| that couldn't possibly be the meaning.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| >I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change
|
| That's easy to wonder when you're the one asking for the
| change. It's awfully convenient that "intent doesn't matter",
| as that puts the burden of action on the speaker/writer. If
| intent did matter, then the listener/reader would need to
| consider what the other person is trying to say and adjust
| their interpretation of the words accordingly. But since it
| doesn't, all that matters is that someone took offense at a
| particular word, and so it is the writer who needs to correct
| themselves.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Here's an example of why intent doesn't always matter:
|
| In the Star Wars universe, the kind of music that Max Rebo
| plays is a lot like our Earth jazz. But they don't refer to
| it as jazz.
|
| They call it jizz.
|
| https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz
| quacksilver wrote:
| Some accounts of the etymology of Jazz claim that they
| have the same root
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(word)
|
| jism -> jasm -> jass -> jazz and jism -> jizz
|
| Though none of us were there and nothing is conclusive,
| so I guess who knows
| [deleted]
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I'm not sure what you want me to conclude from this. Yes,
| "jizz" is indeed a vulgar slang in English. By a
| different etymology it is also the fictional name of a
| fictional musical genre that's similar to real jazz. By
| yet another etymology it is also the behavioral
| characteristics of a bird that enable a birdwatcher to
| identify it. It would be entirely correct to say "look at
| that jizz, that's definitely a golden-crested pygmy
| goose". Someone else listening in might be confused, but
| that's their problem.
|
| Words have multiple meanings. To ignore this and require
| that everyone just uses those meanings that you
| personally are aware of is an unreasonable request.
| hathchip wrote:
| The Star Wars universe is fictional. Do you honestly
| believe that the author from our universe who came up
| with this name was not aware of the (Earth universe)
| meaning of the word 'jizz'?
| deadbeeves wrote:
| When did I say that, and how is it relevant if they knew
| it or not?
| hathchip wrote:
| You said 'by a different etymology'. It's not a different
| etymology if they knew and were referring to the other
| meaning.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| That's not how etymology is determined. The etymology of
| a word describes the reason why it's spelled or spoken
| the way it is. "Jizz" was chosen because it sounds like
| "jazz", but different. We can infer that the person who
| chose the word meant to convey that jizz music is like
| jazz music but different.
|
| We can suppose that if the slang for sperm didn't exist
| that the writer would definitely have chosen "jezz",
| "juzz", or "jozz" instead, but personally I don't have
| any evidence to make that claim.
| hathchip wrote:
| It's hard to believe you're not simply trying to satirise
| the people jvns complained about, who repeatedly pretend
| to believe that an obvious choice of words to make a
| sexual joke was not chosen for that reason.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I guess I'm just less confident than you in my ability to
| read people's minds. But I do find it funny that we're
| arguing about intent when the initial point was that it
| didn't matter.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > "Jizz" was chosen because it sounds like "jazz", but
| different. We can infer that the person who chose the
| word meant to convey that jizz music is like jazz music
| but different.
|
| "Jizz" in English is etymologically closely related to
| "jazz" in English, which some sources also attest to
| having a (historical) slang use identical to that of
| "jizz", so, while you are absolutely correct about the
| point of choosing the word, that point is _quite_
| compatible with the person doing so of being aware of the
| slang use of "jizz".
| deadbeeves wrote:
| A separate question that further complicates this is
| whether the writer was aware of that etymological
| connection.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Sure, and nothing is stopping you from saying that Max
| Rebo is a jizz master--go crazy! I'm just noting that
| despite (presumably) there being no vulgar _intent_
| behind the term, it doesn 't change the fact that most
| people will read "Max Rebo is a jizz master" and
| immediately think "lol jizz."
|
| Regardless of whether your intentions are pure, if a
| certain term instills certain associations in your
| audience, you can either change it to remove the
| association or live with the consequences of not doing
| so. But it's not the audience's fault that "jizz" has an
| existing meaning that's cemented in their minds, and your
| newfangled space jazz probably won't supplant that.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Very much agreed. The principle of charity is an important
| virtue when reading things online, and only the audience is
| capable of bringing that to the table.
|
| I have on a number of occasions misread a statement as its
| opposite (skimming over a 'not' or forgetting important
| context, perhaps). That might offend me to the point of
| making an argument, and I think it would be crazy for me to
| expect an apology rather than a "I didn't say that, you
| argumentative prick".
|
| That's the extreme case, where the error is unquestionably
| my own, but there's a vast gray area where I might default
| to a less than charitable interpretation of someone's words
| and they haven't done anything wrong. For example, if
| someone were to describe my word choice as gross[1], I
| might take that as a personal insult. Putting the
| responsibility on the writer to account for every possible
| interpretation from every possible audience member is a
| great way to abolish good writing altogether.
|
| [1] Using this example not to go after the author here in
| particular, but to avoid using a more divisive example
| that's not already part of the conversation
| wpietri wrote:
| As a frequent writer, I think most of the burden lies upon
| the writer because they are the one choosing to put things
| in front of an audience. Yes, I think readers also have an
| obligation to not be, say, willfully obtuse. But if they're
| approaching something I say in good faith and have a bad
| reaction that I didn't intend, I think that's mostly my
| problem. My good intent may explain how I got there, but
| I'm still going to try to change how I write so that I have
| the effect I am seeking.
|
| So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how dare
| anybody consider the feelings of women", I do have to
| wonder at their motivation. Do they also pen strident
| defenses of writers any time something is misunderstood? Or
| is there a more particular pattern to their vigorous
| reactions?
| wpietri wrote:
| And perhaps I should add that if I focused on my supposed
| good intent to the exclusion of changing, then I'd have
| to question what my intent was. Or, putting it
| differently, the best way I can demonstrate my good
| intent is by correcting anything that is out of line with
| my intent. If I instead make it about my hurt feelings,
| I'd think that a better indicator of my deeper intent.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| >So yes, when somebody pops up to basically say, "how
| dare anybody consider the feelings of women"
|
| If Vanessa makes a complaint and I say "okay, but why
| should we care that you don't like it?", am I saying that
| we shouldn't care _women_ don 't like it, or am I saying
| we shouldn't care that Vanessa is the only one who
| doesn't like it?
|
| >the best way I can demonstrate my good intent is by
| correcting anything that is out of line with my intent.
|
| I mean, it's your writing. You can do whatever you want.
| I'm saying a) it's unreasonable to demand that others
| change what you don't like just because you don't like
| it, and b) it's not unreasonable for others to ask you to
| defend your request for changes.
| wpietri wrote:
| > If Vanessa makes a complaint and I say "okay, but why
| should we care that you don't like it?", am I saying that
| we shouldn't care women don't like it, or am I saying we
| shouldn't care that Vanessa is the only one who doesn't
| like it?
|
| A very common bit of misogyny is saying the second while
| meaning the first. This is, again, covered in Manne. I
| think it's Chapter 6, the section on "testimonial
| injustice".
|
| In any case, we are talking about the sexual connotation
| of groping, which is not something that just the one
| woman speaking up experiences. So re-personalizing it
| back to "Vanessa" strikes me as a bit of an exercise in
| point-missing. It's not the job of Vanessa to solve all
| the sexist nonsense out there. Indeed, expecting women to
| do the work of arguing every instance of sexism until men
| at last see the light is also part of sexism.
|
| In contrast, I believe it's everybody's job to fix
| sexism. Men especially, since we aren't much burdened by
| it. So if Vanessa had an objection to some of my writing
| that struck me as related to gender, I might politely ask
| her for details, but would see it as _my_ burden to do
| any deeper work.
| [deleted]
| janalsncm wrote:
| > If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part
| of my audience, I'll change it.
|
| If original intent doesn't matter, your audience shouldn't
| differentiate between writing which is intentionally
| offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well
| assume you are malicious. That's not the world I want to live
| in.
|
| It's also not the world we do live in. English is the most
| widely spoken language on the planet, and its speakers come
| from all sorts of cultural and educational backgrounds. They
| don't have the time or the privilege of knowing about every
| term which can potentially be offensive.
|
| My point isn't that we shouldn't change "groper" to something
| more inclusive. My point is that in practical terms intent
| does matter.
| wpietri wrote:
| Please note that you went from my "doesn't matter a ton" to
| "doesn't matter" period. That's a straw man. If you'd like
| to argue with something I said, I'd be glad to engage. But
| not with a cartoon of my point.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's more that intent was irrelevant than any intent should
| be presumed.
|
| Word meanings drift and we update as we go. That doesn't
| mean the previous author was evil; it means they were
| writing in a different context and the context is defunct.
| Especially for a living document like the documentation of
| a still-used tool, modifying word choice to avoid
| unintended negative connotation is wise.
| [deleted]
| 0xfae wrote:
| There is a difference between:
|
| - What I meant to say.
|
| - The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around
| those words, that I may or may not be aware of).
|
| - The impact of the words I use.
|
| Like others have said, if you care about the people who are
| hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a
| negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not
| hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I
| don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on.
|
| Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words
| and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the
| actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care
| about their feelings.
|
| In particular, in your personal relationships I highly
| encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant
| to say, especially when apologizing.
| juped wrote:
| [flagged]
| lucideer wrote:
| I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least
| today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes -
| that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that
| was the case in the 80s.
|
| --- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote
| this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently
| deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually
| relevant ---
|
| I did click through to the Mastodon link from the OP and had a
| look at the _" dudes in the replies demanding that i prove
| [...]"_ - the replies were largely supportive, apart from 2
| "dudes" saying they hadn't considered the sexual-assault
| meaning before now & weren't sure if that was intended BUT
| still strongly agreeing that it should be removed, and 1 other
| dude (possibly non-native English speaker?) surprised that such
| a sexual-assault-related interpretation existed and asking for
| further context (not "demanding proof"). That's all followed by
| a lot of extremely confrontational replies from the OP assuming
| bad faith in every case.
|
| Julia is a fantastic tech writer, & I'm sure I'll continue to
| read her blog regularly, but... this isn't a great look. Asking
| for the manpage to be changed is perfectly reasonable but the
| ad hominem really wasn't needed here.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Said the posts were deleted.
|
| >A few dudes in the replies (who I think by now have all
| deleted their posts) asked me to prove that the original
| author intended it to be offensive...
| lucideer wrote:
| ah, well spotted. I'll edit.
| metadat wrote:
| Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled
| down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend.
|
| Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the
| approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the
| author has lost some credibility with me.
|
| I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a
| dictionary site which only contained the definition she found
| offensive. If you put "define: grope" into Google, the non-
| offensive definition is the first one listed:
|
| _Grope (verb) 1. to feel about or search blindly or
| uncertainly with the hands._
|
| Which was why I latched onto this aspect in the first place -
| sexual groping has always been the minor definition in
| American English for at least the past 30 years. It's at
| least somewhat disingenuous to completely ignore this fact
| and focus only on the maximally offensive possibility.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope
| [deleted]
| haswell wrote:
| > _So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:_
|
| When I read the Mastodon thread, this jumped out at me as well.
| A couple of the guys who raised the point clarified that they
| fully agreed that the removal of "groping" was a good thing,
| but by that point, the author wouldn't be able to see the
| clarification.
|
| I'm really torn on this. I fully support people's choices to
| set boundaries and block abusive behavior. At the same time, "I
| disagree with you so I'm going to insta-block you and not even
| give you a chance to clarify" seems at the heart of the
| brokenness of online discourse.
|
| But having seen what some of the women in my life go through
| re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair
| trigger.
|
| I don't know what the right balance is, and it's likely very
| personal and contextual, but I've personally started to only
| engage with conversations if I'm willing to deal with all of
| the likely categories of response (barring obvious abuse).
| Disagree=block seems to increase polarization and seems
| counterproductive in the long run. It also seems like a good
| way to reinforce my own blind spots, even if it turns out that
| I'm "right" some of the time.
| wpietri wrote:
| > insta-block [...] seems at the heart of the brokenness of
| online discourse.
|
| > having seen what some of the women in my life go through
| re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair
| trigger
|
| Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in
| the reaction, but what people are reacting to.
|
| I am moderately mouthy on social media. I get a much, much
| smaller level of pushback than similar women do. When I do,
| the level of respect is higher, and I almost never get my
| credentials questioned. But I regularly see women with much
| stronger credentials get those inspected and/or dismissed.
| Just yesterday I saw a woman with a relevant PhD getting
| talked down to by some random guy. And then when she made a
| separate post about her frustration with reply guys and how
| she was thinking about leaving Mastodon, some different
| random dude told her to "get a live".
|
| Historically, we spent thousands of years keeping women in
| "their place". That was partly legal, but mostly social.
| We've solved the legal stuff in the US, but only recently.
| (E.g., states only started to outlaw marital rape in the
| 1970s, and it wasn't fully outlawed until 1992.) It should be
| no surprise to anybody that the social mechanisms did not
| magically evaporate the moment we passed some laws. And I
| think one of those social mechanisms is the disproportionate
| negativity women get from men when they are not in "their
| place". When they have the audacity to act like they know
| things and have valid opinions just like men do.
|
| If you want to read more on this, Manne's "Down Girl: the
| logic of misogyny" is a very careful examination of the
| mechanisms and their effects. If you're looking for "the
| heart", I think that's a good place to continue your search.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Sorry, but how is anything of what you've said an example
| of "putting women 'in their place'"? Do men not have their
| credentials questioned or their opinion dismissed online,
| or is it misogyny purely because it's men doing it to
| women?
| wpietri wrote:
| As I already said, it happens to women
| disproportionately. If you'd like to learn more about
| when exactly it's misogyny, again, read Manne's book, the
| heart of which is precisely defining the term.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I'd like to know how they arrived at the conclusion that
| it happens disproportionately.
| wpietri wrote:
| I personally arrived at my conclusion through, as I
| explained, long observation of social media. If you'd
| like to understand the contents of a book, well, there's
| a common solution for that.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| [flagged]
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Language evolves. I definitely associate "grope" more with
| sexual assault than trying to find a glass of water in the
| dark. It's understandable that the document could evoke
| discomfort.
|
| The "they're just words" argument/defense is certainly never an
| acceptable response. It's one thing to go on a witch hunt and
| extrude connotation where there is none, but that's not what
| this is. Instead, use this as an opportunity to understand
| others better and learn to be more empathetic.
| jlawson wrote:
| Indulging someone's hypersensitivities is not helping them,
| it's harming them.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I agree with you, and chalk it up to people projecting their
| own warped views onto otherwise innocuous things.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| There's a lot more interesting things in Julia's post than
| relitigating this specific example.
| OJFord wrote:
| That's why it stuck out to me I suppose - the rest seemed
| like solid advice, and this a misunderstanding that was
| treated not really in the spirit of some of the other points.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| The non-sexual meaning was almost certainly the intended one
| (because the sexual meaning makes no sense at all in that
| context). I think we can give the original developers a full
| pass and assign no blame. It may still be a good idea to change
| it (and, indeed, they have done so; it's just that Apple
| retains an older version for licensing reasons).
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't think it's worth worrying about or changing your
| writing style. I'm tired of these people who blanche in the
| face when you write something in a way that isn't how they
| expect and where they are haunted by the possibility of a
| double meaning in what you said. "Smoking a fag" for instance
| is a perfectly British phrase that will have an uncultured
| American clutching their pearls and groping around for any kind
| of downvote or report button.
|
| If you're scared, don't read anything. Reading is scary and
| dangerous.
| lambda wrote:
| Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in
| that context could be fine ("grope around").
|
| But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than
| some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope
| around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the
| word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper"
| implies the sexual assault meaning.
|
| It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing
| was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize
| that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the
| sexual assault sense.
| ctrlp wrote:
| It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er
| endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that
| do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful
| neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you
| have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find
| plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who
| X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity
| brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity
| notwithstanding.
| OJFord wrote:
| I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when
| it's a human assailant either though?
|
| And 'dig' is a tool that _searches_ (or 'digs') for certain
| information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits!
|
| I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm
| certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to
| task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a
| misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to
| me.
|
| I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (&
| learnt from) her writing on many occasions.
| javajosh wrote:
| Great post, as usual. Lots of good advice for me.
|
| However it makes me sad that she _blocked_ people for defending
| the author 's meaning of "dig". Ignoring seems like a better
| path. I've often heard grope used in a non-sexual way, as in
| "groping in the dark" for something. This kind of over-reaction
| to language is a sore spot for me; like the Stanford language
| guidelines, telling people not to use the word "field" because it
| implies slavery. In the same way, she assumes someone defending
| the word is in favor of sexual assault. This is wrong and
| harmful, both to others and herself. To others because now they
| can't follow her posts; to herself because she's cut herself off
| from people who take the risk to argue something unpopular in
| good faith. This is how echo chambers form.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Of all the good advice you say you read, why do you dwell on
| this one thing you don't like?
| [deleted]
| justin_oaks wrote:
| What you say makes a lot of sense. It would do us all well to
| seek to ask more questions and seek to understand before
| reaching for the block button.
|
| On the other hand, we all have limited time and patience for
| those who are likely arguing in bad faith. I won't fault
| someone for taking the quick route to defend their time and
| sanity.
|
| Even if the others may be arguing in good faith, this isn't a
| court of law here. We don't have to assume EVERYONE is
| innocent, especially if they're mixed in a crowd of hecklers.
| Each person has the option of using the block functionality as
| an automatic way to ignore sets of people, even if it catches
| the innocent.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> I won't fault someone for taking the quick route to defend
| their time and sanity._
|
| Nor would I. But there has to be a better solution than
| blocking, which is ostracism. It concerns me how easily we
| ostracize, how it cheapens people. This is especially true
| for someone internet famous like Julia Evans - she has so
| many followers, what does it matter to her? But I guarantee
| it mattered to the ones she blocked. It probably really hurt
| them, even if they wouldn't admit it.
| lapcat wrote:
| > This is especially true for someone internet famous like
| Julia Evans - she has so many followers, what does it
| matter to her?
|
| She's human, just like everyone else. It matters precisely
| because of "internet fame": you become an incessant target.
| Anonymous randos love to take down people who are more
| famous than them. From the article: "I realize this section
| makes me sound like a Perfectly Logical Person who does not
| get upset by negative public criticism, I promise this is
| not at all the case and I have 100000 feelings about
| everything that happens on the internet and get upset all
| the time."
|
| > But I guarantee it mattered to the ones she blocked. It
| probably really hurt them, even if they wouldn't admit it.
|
| I guarantee it doesn't. In my long experience of blocking
| people on social media, I can't recall the blocked person
| ever being sad or repentant. They're mostly self-righteous
| or vindictive.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> I can't recall the blocked person ever being sad or
| repentant._
|
| How would you know?
| lapcat wrote:
| There are ways of knowing. ;-)
|
| Technically, a block mostly just prevents an account from
| replying to you again -- which is the primary goal when
| someone writes a nasty or annoying reply -- but there are
| various ways of seeing another account's posts, such as
| private windows. And if it's not a mutual block, it may
| be even easier.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who wish her
| harm or want to make her life worse by arguing in bad
| faith. No one is obligated to welcome people who treat them
| poorly. I don't care if someone is hurt by my blocking them
| if they shout slurs at me, for example, and I don't think I
| should be morally obligated to consider if someone had
| their feelings hurt by ostracized for shouting slurs at
| people.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> Julian Evans isn't obligated to welcome people who
| wish her harm_
|
| Indeed. I take issue though with assuming a person
| arguing that "grope" has meanings other than sexual
| assault wish her harm. That's a stretch, to say the
| least. It's certainly uncharitable and, in my view,
| chilling to open conversation. Moreover I think it
| weakens the idea of "wishing someone harm" by broadening
| it so widely that it becomes almost meaningless.
|
| There is a game I invented called "Take it Personal" in
| which one player says anodyne things to the other and the
| other player has to take it personally and get offended,
| or they lose the point. It's a terrible game that I don't
| recommend. It's a game that everyone on the internet
| seems to enjoy playing, and in fact take pride in playing
| it and assert that anyone not playing it is a bad person.
|
| Remarkable.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > But there has to be a better solution than blocking,
| which is ostracism
|
| Mastodon has a time-gated mute feature, which is quite
| useful. If someone is being annoying, but not so annoying
| that you want to squelch them indefinitely, you can just
| hit them with mute for awhile so they can cool off.
|
| ... but Julia is under no obligation to serve as teacher of
| online etiquette to folks who don't know when to self-
| squelch, so if she wants to grab the block button instead,
| she's plenty entitled to do so. Her feed her rules; if
| people want the privilege of getting her signal, they can
| behave themselves.
| javajosh wrote:
| I guess I don't see the point in arguing that someone has
| the right to be offended. Of course they do. Everyone
| does. But is it a good thing? Isn't being offended a bad
| thing? Doesn't it feel bad to be offended, and doesn't it
| also feel bad to be the person giving offense? Doesn't it
| make sense to try as hard as possible to not get
| offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every
| benefit of the doubt, before being offended?
|
| The tacit assumption here is that being offended is a
| good thing. That its a point of pride. I disagree, very
| strongly. Offense weakens relationships, and dehumanizes
| the one giving offense. It's not the offense is always
| illegitimate, it's that it's a reaction of last resort,
| and encouraging others to take offense is bias in the
| wrong direction. We should encourage others (and
| ourselves) to take the least offense possible. That way
| when we do take offense it's quite meaningful.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Isn't being offended a bad thing?
|
| No. Offense is a (complex) emotional signal that you may
| not be able to ally with someone because their worldview
| differs from yours in a way that your goals are likely to
| come into conflict. It's no more bad to be offended than
| it's bad to be angry, or sad, or happy; it's an emotional
| signal, one that binds to a complex sociological model.
|
| > Doesn't it make sense to try as hard as possible to not
| get offended, to wait as long as possible, to give every
| benefit of the doubt, before being offended?
|
| Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the degree of the
| offense, the likelihood of adjustment of either party
| into a configuration where the offense is mitigated (very
| low for random internet interactions), and (here's the
| key) _the potential upside of further interaction with
| the other party._ For an Internet rando commenting on the
| feed of someone they don 't know, the possible upside to
| that someone is low.
|
| As much as we like to, each of us, think of ourselves as
| insightful luminaries and Renaissance men and women of
| the new era, spreading truth and novel insight and
| peering with the greatest minds of our generation on the
| egalitarian footing of social media... folks like Julia
| get to see dozens of folks parroting the same talking
| points as the ones she banned daily. If she's not
| planning to argue that point (and she has plenty of
| experience with the point to make that decision), it's
| fine to just toss a "The odds of any interaction we will
| have in the future producing value for either of us are
| near zero" ban on the account and go on with her day.
| Maybe some day she'll discover she banned someone who
| turns out to be fun to know in another social setting and
| she'll unban them. But the odds are near zero.
|
| > We should encourage others (and ourselves) to take the
| least offense possible.
|
| Why? What's the upside in a world of more than eight
| billion people in a context as casual as Mastodon posts?
|
| I present to you a counter-model: maybe people should
| learn to do a lot more reading and a lot less posting.
| "Reading the room" is a more complicated skill when the
| room is virtual and varies from feed to feed in something
| as diverse as Mastodon... But it never stopped being a
| useful skill.
| javajosh wrote:
| >> Isn't being offended a bad thing?
|
| > No.
|
| I guess we can stop there. Being offended is unpleasant,
| which is why people act to block people if they've given
| offense. Your worldview is based on the assumption that
| offense is pleasant, which I suppose you've managed to
| make into a reality by social construction by paying
| homage to anyone who's taken offense. Offense is the key
| to power. Offense is a good thing because it means you
| have the upper hand, and you've been given license to
| hurt and dehumanize people. Because, after all, they
| offended you.
|
| This is not a good world.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Your worldview is based on the assumption that offense
| is pleasant
|
| With respect: I believe you have misunderstood me.
| Offense doesn't _feel_ good; it 's unpleasant. Whether
| something that feels bad _is_ bad is context-specific.
| Pain, for example, can be caused by neuron misfiring or
| by having your hand on a hot stove; you definitely don 't
| want to just tell yourself "Oh, this pain is something
| I'm feeling because I've been conditioned to; I should
| self-reflect on why I feel this way" if it's the hot-
| stove case.
|
| When we feel offended, sometimes it's inappropriate (i.e.
| the signal isn't telling us anything useful). But
| sometimes it's quite appropriate. In online interactions
| with strangers? It's often appropriate and the
| appropriate response is to just silence the stranger
| rather than getting into an ultimately-fruitless back-
| and-forth over fundamentally opposed worldviews.
| hathchip wrote:
| Julia Evans has written some of the best articles and zines
| about UNIX/networking and about how to learn technical topics
| in general. The people she blocked are not arguing in good
| faith, they are vexatious commenters who have no interest in
| discussing all the other things she has written about, but just
| want to pursue a very specific identity politics debate over
| and over again.
|
| Not having those people in the discussion isn't an 'echo
| chamber', any more than asking a belligerent drunk gatecrasher
| to leave your birthday party creates an echo chamber.
|
| Note that it doesn't matter whether or not these people are
| factually correct or not about the etymology of 'dig' for this
| to be the right conclusion for Julia to draw.
| [deleted]
| master-lincoln wrote:
| Given the headline, I was expecting this to be about tips for
| when writing a text in a public space, not for dealing with
| comments on texts you publicized.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| In fairness, anyone getting enraged over articles about tcpdump
| online has way too much time on their hands.
| wrp wrote:
| Summary of her rules for defensive posting: 1.
| Talk about facts 2. Tell stories 3. Ask technical
| questions 4. Fix mistakes 5. Ask for examples, not
| opinions 6. Start with a little context 7. Avoid
| flamebait triggers 8. Preempt common suggestions 9.
| Ignore people who challenge your viewpoint (my interpretation)
| 10. Don't pursue arguments 11. Pay attention to critical
| feedback
|
| Number 9 is I think not as defensible as the rest. These are
| pretty much the rules I've adopted for posting on HN.
| zer8k wrote:
| Up/down vote systems, especially ones that punish the poster
| quickly by rendering their post unreadable, create a hivemind
| of people who agree. HN posters LOVE to point out the fact it's
| "not like Reddit" when, in fact, it is. If you say something
| factual but disagreeable with the current zeitgeist of HN
| (usually mid-to-far-left social policy) you will be met with
| downvotes. Even a small amount begins to add up until
| eventually your account is auto-dead (shadowbanned). This is
| especially bad because each downvote is not required to have a
| retort. Since the downvoter is not subject to the same rules it
| can happen freely and without consequence. New accounts are
| most susceptible to this. It's often better to post extremely
| agreeable, astroturfed, opinions just to collect enough
| internet points to protect you from driveby downvoting later.
|
| The result is a hivemind no different than Reddit. People here
| are just as afraid to post their opinions on
| language/framework/policy as they are on Reddit. None of these
| rules matter because the assailant (downvoter) can do what they
| do best _without consequence_. At least in a meatspace debate
| /talk/whatever the disagreeing party must reveal themselves to
| make a case.
| lapcat wrote:
| > the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social
| policy)
|
| HN has no zeitgeist, and "mid-to-far-left social policy" is
| not even close to my experience.
|
| A lot of commenters seem to think that HN has some kind of
| consensus, but it doesn't, as dang himself (the HN moderator)
| can testify. A number of different factions coexist
| (uneasily) here.
|
| My experience is that upvotes and downvotes are... pretty
| random, sometimes inexplicable. It really depends on who
| happens to see your comment at the moment in time.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| I'm going to have to disagree with you, on both points. I,
| like the person you're responding to, have experienced the
| zeitgeist of HN and have come to the same conclusion of a
| prevailing mid-to-far-left social policy. Again I agree
| with GP on the points they make about voting, in fact I
| think we should get rid of votes altogether. The fact is,
| for most people a vote is a reflection of who they are, not
| the comment they're voting on.
|
| Like I've said before, a comment can be downvoted by every
| single user on HN and still be accurate and true. The truth
| is the only thing that matters. Unfortunately, we're each
| responsible for our own reactions to the feelings we have,
| and that often means, despite a commenter's best effort,
| they're still going to offend some and please others. Since
| we can't please everyone, the best way to do the most good
| with your words is to use them to spread the truth. The
| truth is always going to be hard to deal with for some, but
| they'll be better off with that awareness than with
| (perhaps blissful) ignorance because the choice of whether
| to stay ignorant is put into their own hands.
|
| Side note: This also reduces the total amount of suffering
| in the world by reducing the number of people who end up
| having to pay for the consequences of their actions without
| any awareness of the existence of the consequences (such as
| breaking a law you were unaware of and being put in jail
| for something you didn't know was illegal)
| spencerflem wrote:
| fwiw, as someone who identifies as mid to far left,
| hackernews is _not_. I like the place for its tech news
| but not the politics.
|
| and, while I don't know your viewpoints, i promise you I
| think mine are True and Important as well
| lapcat wrote:
| > I, like the person you're responding to, have
| experienced the zeitgeist of HN
|
| I'm sure you have. And I've experienced the opposite.
| There's a natural tendency to pay more attention to
| criticism of one's own views and to come to believe that
| only one's own views are persecuted, based on one's
| anecdotal experience, but that view isn't empirically
| accurate in the aggregate. Again, dang, who has observed
| countless these kind of complaints on HN, has written
| about the phenomenon many times. He could probably cite a
| bunch of examples.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| While I hear what you're saying, it's bordering on an
| appeal to authority. Dang is just one person and has his
| own set of biases
| lapcat wrote:
| > While I hear what you're saying, it's bordering on an
| appeal to authority. Dang is just one person and has his
| own set of biases
|
| My point about dang is that (1) dang has seen more HN
| comments that literally anyone else in the world and thus
| has more knowledge about this topic than anyone else in
| the world; (2) dang specifically sees the posts and
| comments that have been flagged, because of his job as
| moderator; (3) dang has seen (and can probably cite) the
| comments from all ideological standpoints complaining
| that that the opposite viewpoint is dominant on HN and
| that their views have been censored.
|
| It's an appeal to vast experience and knowledge.
| [deleted]
| spencerflem wrote:
| Completely agreed.
|
| I guess there's no one zeitgeist but I feel like the
| combination of groups collectively forms one.
|
| If someone mentions Mozilla for example, I already know
| what the thread will be like for example
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| HN is a forum attached to a venture capitalist company. The
| idea that it is in _any_ way left-leaning is farcical.
| tayo42 wrote:
| how did you come up with number 9 from this post?
|
| fwiw, all the people who dont read the articles, 9 isnt in
| there.
|
| its actually "set some boundaries"
| wrp wrote:
| Fair criticism. I should have been more clear.
| viknesh wrote:
| I think the "shock" at an old man page is pretty silly to begin
| with, but I think a better phrasing for #9 would be to ignore
| the trolls.
|
| The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended to
| be bad, but that viewed with today's (American) social context,
| the phrase would likely be taken to be distasteful. Therefore,
| I think the issue with the commenters isn't that they
| "challenge" the viewpoint. At a minimum these commenters have
| failed to grasp the concept and more likely they are simply not
| responding in good faith.
|
| I do think there's a separate discussion to be had about the
| role of political correctness/word policing in modern
| discourse, but in the author's version of events, the blocked
| commenters aren't trying to make that argument.
| ant6n wrote:
| "The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended
| to be bad"
|
| That's because many people in tech used to think that tech
| bro culture wasn't bad. Tech also used to be much very
| excluding. Back then, if you were not part of the tech bro
| culture, you already knew it was distasteful, and that you
| were being excluded.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| Nah. In this case it _genuinely_ wasn 't intended to be bad
| (almost certainly). We can tell because the sexual meaning
| of _grope_ makes absolutely no sense in the context of
| `dig`, while the non-sexual meaning does. We can exonerate
| the original authors. It 's still good that it's been
| changed since.
| tristor wrote:
| Number 9 isn't there, and in my personal interactions right
| here on HN, Julie doesn't ignore people who challenge her
| viewpoint. She says "Set Some Boundaries" and in fact doing so
| is not only necessary, it's healthy. Setting boundaries, even
| blocking people, is not the same as ignoring people who
| challenge your viewpoint. You can be challenged without the
| challenger being an asshole, there's no point in engaging with
| assholes and you should absolutely block them.
| hirundo wrote:
| It's a Russell Conjugation: "I'm setting boundaries, you're
| ignoring people who challenge your viewpoint, they're denying
| my existence."
| n4r9 wrote:
| I think you're being a little unfair about #9. Setting
| boundaries is different to ignoring challenges. If I made a
| comment about politics and someone demanded that I present a
| solid case that black people have ever been mistreated,
| obviously it's fine to ignore. It's tangential and agenda-
| driven, just like the example in OP.
|
| Some conflicts are simply not worth pursuing. Even Bertrand
| Russell refused to debate Oswald Mosley.
| wrp wrote:
| I did editorialize on #9 because I wanted to draw attention
| to it and get some discussion. My feeling is that her take is
| not entirely healthy.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's more than healthy; it's mandatory.
|
| In the Internet, we have built an unlimited stream of
| information. You could quit your job and do nothing but
| post and reply full-time, and you'd never get near being
| able to respond to every commenter if everyone who read
| what you wrote chose to comment.
|
| Filtering signal from noise is a vital skill in the online
| era. And sure, if your filter is over-tight you'll end up
| in an echo chamber... But as there's no penalty for being
| wrong on the Internet, a healthy filter is downsampling a
| _lot_ of information these days.
| tayo42 wrote:
| "preempt common suggestions" is good advice for getting things
| done in a work environment too. avoid getting bogged down in all
| the distracting nonsense the same way internet people get
| distracted
| mjb wrote:
| This is really great, actionable, sensible, advice for folks who
| write on the internet. It agrees with my experiences, too.
|
| On the other hand, it's sad that the culture we have built on the
| internet forces talented people like Julia to censor themselves
| and narrow the scope of their writing.
|
| > So I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention
| if I don't want to start the same discussion about that thing for
| the 50th time.
|
| Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and
| even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be
| acceptable in other social settings. The exact flavors of that on
| HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core
| issue is the same everywhere.
| tptacek wrote:
| Steering persuasive and technical writing away from topics like
| Emacs vs. Vim isn't censorship, it's just good writing.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable,
| and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be
| acceptable in other social settings.
|
| I don't think we've "built" the culture per se. I think it's
| more like humans evolved over millions of years for small, in-
| person groups, and we're not "built" (by nature) to handle the
| endless sea of online strangers. On the internet, the personal
| familiarity is gone, the proximity is gone, the facial
| expressions and tone are gone, and indeed the fear of
| repercussions is mostly gone.
| globalreset wrote:
| > fear of repercussions is mostly gone.
|
| Is it? Because AFAICT people censorship themselves online all
| the time for the fear of repercussion. It's like being on
| tape 27/7 where anyone that doesn't like you can watch your
| old tapes and loook for problems.
| supazek wrote:
| People are incredibly masked online, that is true. They run
| their posts before the "upvotable" heuristic before
| submitting. But in a small familial community you can't
| just be technically correct while also being an ass in how
| you make your point. Most of the smarmy self-righteous
| posts you find on Reddit would be met with an open-palm
| smack, or worse, if delivered in the same way to a tribal
| leader 10,000 years ago. All of the human connection is
| gone in this form of communication. It is a system filled
| with ideologically mind broken serfs who all jockey for a
| small bit of clout in order to break free of their
| perceived chains. The things said here are as true as the
| statement "that is wet" when looking at a beautiful
| waterfall.
| lapcat wrote:
| For obscure people, especially anonymous randos, there are
| practically no consequences. When I hear people complain
| about "repercussions" from online speech, they usually just
| mean criticism. And that's all the article author seems to
| mean too. "I realize this section makes me sound like a
| Perfectly Logical Person who does not get upset by negative
| public criticism, I promise this is not at all the case and
| I have 100000 feelings about everything that happens on the
| internet and get upset all the time."
|
| Of course famous people can get into some trouble for what
| they said in the past, but they usually bounce back and
| then find a new crowd of followers with a different
| ideological cast than their previous crowd of followers.
| schneems wrote:
| I agree with you that we're in the infancy of context free
| communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn't
| built (or couldn't be changed, my extended interpretation)
|
| There are wildly different experiences with communities
| online. Communities are also a thing that can be built
| intentionally.
|
| We can also learn from prior works. Lessig (1999) identifies
| four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms,
| markets, and technology
|
| - *Code/architecture* - the physical or technical constraints
| on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the
| Internet)
|
| - *Market* - economic forces
|
| - *Law* - explicit mandates that can be enforced by the
| government
|
| - *Norms* - social conventions that one often feels compelled
| to follow
| lapcat wrote:
| I think the biggest factor is actually moderation. Smaller
| communities can be effectively moderated. This may fall
| under "Norms", but the difference is that (non-government)
| moderators will enforce the social conventions regardless
| of whether you feel compelled to follow them. But perhaps
| familiarity is still a factor in smaller online
| communities, because the participants often get to know
| each other.
|
| Unfortunately, larger communities are effectively beyond
| moderation IMO. I don't think that the one or two
| moderators are enough on Hacker News, and of course the
| social media platforms are even worse. In the "real world",
| the non-online world, a significant portion of the
| population will flout the laws, regardless of government
| enforcement, and a significant portion will flout the
| social conventions. That will also occur in the online
| world.
|
| To put it another way, all you need is one bad reply to
| ruin your day. :-)
| schneems wrote:
| I'm a mod on /r/ruby and it's got 80,000 subscribers. I
| like to think it's not "beyond moderation". We have
| fairly aggressive rules (around tone and impact) and very
| high standards and I would say most of the time the
| community meets or exceeds those standards
|
| I think there are limits but I also don't feel that most
| platforms have hit them or really even tried. Most
| platforms that would benefit from a stronger sense of
| community typically do the bare minimum to not run afoul
| of laws (in terms of paid moderation). Even the ones with
| strong volunteer mods (like Reddit) are known for
| underinvesting in mod tools, that's the source of the
| recent protests.
|
| > one bad reply to ruin your day
|
| On /r/ruby we have two kinds of problems that bubble up
| intentional and unintentional. The majority of slights
| are unintentional and when called out are very apologetic
| and seek to make things right. For the intentional
| abusers, there's the ban.
|
| I think of it less like building a wall and more like
| flattening the curve. If you can stop the cascade of
| frustration (where one pissed off user leads to
| another...) then it pays off dividends, even if you can't
| catch 100% of the cases.
|
| Anyway. Thanks for the opportunity for a chat. I love
| thinking about this stuff.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| > On the internet, the personal familiarity is gone, the
| proximity is gone, the facial expressions and tone are gone,
| and indeed the fear of repercussions is mostly gone.
|
| The idea of writing and sharing thoughts is an ancient one.
| Engaging with that content in an easily publishable and
| shareable way, is.
|
| The quoted sentence above is 100% right. If you replace "On
| the internet" with "In a book," and I think the sentence
| would highlight the differences with the internet a bit
| clearer.
|
| The internet is unique from a book because others can engage
| with it in a real way (beyond a book club). A book club keeps
| that proximity, familiarity, and expressions together for
| better communication. An online forum loses all of these.
| mattlutze wrote:
| >> So I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to
| mention if I don't want to start the same discussion about that
| thing for the 50th time.
|
| > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable,
| and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be
| acceptable in other social settings. The exact flavors of that
| on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the
| core issue is the same everywhere.
|
| People tend to enjoy bikeshedding when presented the
| opportunity to, and it's a good idea to avoid bringing up the
| bikesheds you don't want to debate.
| politician wrote:
| > Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable,
| and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be
| acceptable in other social settings.
|
| It's an unfortunate consequence of the point-based reward
| systems that platforms use to incentivize participation. There
| are certain topics that large groups of people will always
| upvote or always downvote. It's a rational behavior to repeat
| the same comments whenever such a topic comes up if those
| comments can reliably mine rewards by doing so, even if the
| rewards in this case are adjustments to one's own dopamine
| balance.
|
| In offline social settings, the ability to monetize comments is
| somewhat more difficult but not totally absent (popularity,
| elections, etc).
| genewitch wrote:
| As someone who has been on the internet about 3-4 times as
| long as "point systems" on comments/posts/etc i don't see any
| correlation to point systems. People were jerks in AOL
| chatrooms, IRC, myspace, and forums long before the likes of
| reddit and /. gamified being annoying.
|
| edit: change "jerks" and "annoying" to "repeating ad-nauseam
| the prevalent comments to garner points". I misread the
| latter part of your comment, went back and saw where i
| misread, and still like the general premise of my reply.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think it's fair that some people have stronger feelings about
| and more appetite for discussing a topic than I do.
|
| To pick one of her examples, I've done a couple of toy projects
| with Tailwind. I think it's pretty neat, and I don't mind
| saying so! But I accept that people working full time on huge
| Tailwind projects at work probably care way more deeply about
| the topic than I do, are much more impacted by aspects of
| Tailwind that might be trivial to me in my toy use of it, and
| are going to invest an amount of time and passion discussing it
| that would frankly bore me to death. If I were running into
| that repeatedly, I would stop bringing Tailwind into
| discussions that I didn't want to be about Tailwind, and I
| wouldn't feel that bad about it.
| remich wrote:
| You know, that's interesting. I tend to avoid Tailwind
| discussion because I feel like I don't see enough opinions
| from people working full time on huge projects using it. Most
| of the time, it seems like the strongest opinions in favor
| come from folks who have only used it in toy apps, side
| projects, or completely greenfield small-to-medium
| applications.
|
| There's nothing wrong with using it in that way, of course,
| or of thinking it's the best tool for the job in those
| scenarios. But for some reason I rarely see that caveat
| mentioned, and the idea of refactoring a legacy application
| to use it makes me queasy haha.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> But for some reason I rarely see that caveat mentioned,
| and the idea of refactoring a legacy application to use it
| makes me queasy haha._
|
| Easiest way to check is to just add tailwind with PostCSS
| and the `@tailwind` directives and see what happens to your
| app. Unfortunately, if there's substantial CSS it will most
| likely be a disaster because the Tailwind reset will
| clobber the assumptions made by the previous CSS. It can be
| really hard to refactor custom styles when you can't see
| how they were supposed to look without running a separate
| older commit.
|
| You can try disabling the CSS reset tailwind adds but then
| you'll have to chase bugs in the assumptions Tailwind makes
| so it's a bit of a catch 22. If it's a really large project
| with dozens of developers in its history, chances are there
| is already a custom CSS utility framework in place that
| uses the obvious formats like "p-2"/"px-2" for padding
| (with a different scale, yay!) and other naming collisions.
| You can however use the `@apply` directive to inline the
| Tailwind styles in the legacy classes to make it easier.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure, but on the other hand people can learn to read the
| room. I am interested in lots of things, but that doesn't
| stop me from trying to fit the context and the interests of
| the other participants. E.g., I have a lot to say about
| cryptocurrency, but there was a time when it seemed like
| almost any HN discussion ended up with a tenuous
| cryptocurrency tangent. It was annoying and exhausting, and
| I'm glad we've mostly gotten past it.
| remich wrote:
| I wonder if we've reached that point for LLMs/AI/ML yet.
| Sometimes it definitely seems like the discussion on HN is
| very influenced by the VC fad of the day.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr,
| etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere.
|
| I think there are three main factors. Some cases are more one
| than the other.
|
| 1. Anonymity. Many places people know who you really are. Your
| family, friends, and coworkers arent judging you.
|
| 2. Using a mob for cover. As an analogy, its a lot safer to
| throw a Molotov cocktail from a crowd then by yourself.
|
| 3. No empathy for avatars. You aren't talking to a real person,
| who you would empathize a lot more with.
|
| After writing these, they are largely different shades of
| anonymity.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Ah, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: https://www.penny-
| arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| When it's opt-in, it's called editing, not censoring. Nothing
| is forcing them to censor themselves, contrary to what you have
| asserted.
| lbotos wrote:
| I get the pedantic line you are trying to draw here, but
| self-censorship is different than editing.
|
| Editing == adjusting so the point is clearer or more easily
| understood.
|
| Censorship/Self-censorship == avoiding a topic that the
| author wants to talk about due to fear or external forces.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you choose not to discuss something because you know it's
| an unpopular opinion in some circle and may lead to nasty and
| from your perspective unconstructive criticism, it seems
| reasonable to call that self-censorship even if it doesn't
| fit the dictionary definition of censoring (which primarily
| applies to the government or other authority body).
| teddyh wrote:
| Self-censorship is, in fact, a thing:
|
| omoikane wrote:
| > I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention
|
| An optimistic view is that people maintain blacklists of topics
| to avoid, as opposed to whitelists of noncontroversial topics
| that they are allowed to talk about ("Do you know that Newspeak
| is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller
| every year?").
| mecsred wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment that greater freedom of expression
| is a noble goal and society loses something with these soft
| restrictions. Having a catalog of unmentionables is not a new
| thing though, and definitely is not "unacceptable in other
| social settings". It's a basic social skill from long before
| the internet existed. It's been rude to bring up politics and
| devicive issues in conversation for literal centuries.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd use censor in the context of Julia's post. It
| read more like the next thing you quoted. Something's well-trod
| and people have strong opinions but absolutely no one is going
| to change their mind or really make a novel point or learn
| anything new.
|
| I do think there are things that many people self-sensor, e.g.
| opinions that fall outside or on the edges of the orthodoxy of
| some bubble and is just going to trigger emotional
| arguments/stereotyping/downvotes/etc.
| wpietri wrote:
| If you're interested in the ways in which especially women
| receive strident pushback in a way that trains them to self-
| censor, I'd suggest reading Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of
| misogyny". She's an analytic philosophy professor, so it's a
| bit academic in spots. But I think it does a good job
| cataloging the many ways in which women are put "in their
| place", a place that very much includes a lot of self-
| censorship.
| hobomatic wrote:
| [flagged]
| wpietri wrote:
| If your point is that life's hard, or that patriarchy is
| also bad for men, I certainly agree. But neither of those
| prevents me from recognizing the specific ways that
| patriarchy is bad for women. Indeed, you might consider
| that a guy leaping in to a point about misogyny to
| tangentially focus the discussion back on a man's
| feelings is an example of the problem.
| gary_0 wrote:
| What you're talking about is a real thing (I've seen its
| effect on women in my life) but I'd prefer to take Julia's
| post at face value, which shows her as someone with a quiet
| enthusiasm for tech who doesn't enjoy pointless Internet
| arguments. Honestly, we could probably do with more people
| like that.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Imagine, for example, there's a really interesting scientific
| paper someone would love to talk about but it's in the field
| of Climate Science. Everyone knows the comments a blog post
| on it is going to get. And they're (almost) all going to be
| the same no matter what the paper is actually about. Every
| time.
|
| Should someone feel they have to self-censor just to avoid
| this?
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| > Should someone feel they have to self-censor just to
| avoid this?
|
| I'm a little surprised to hear that people don't do this in
| person as well as online. There are numerous topics I avoid
| bringing up because I know nothing productive will result
| from the conversation. It is rarely about politics or
| religion, just topics whose novelty offer a low probability
| of productive insights and will probably require a
| sufficient time investment.
|
| Choose your battles/topics of conversation, you only have
| so many hours in your life.
| ghaff wrote:
| If it seriously challenged the orthodoxy of, say, HN,
| nothing's keeping me from submitting it but, no, I probably
| wouldn't comment even if it made what I think are some
| interesting points, in part because I'm not an expert on
| the area.
|
| There are some topics guaranteed to attract 500+ comments
| that are mostly nothing but rants about big companies,
| Musk, the US, etc. Better to just avoid.
| halfinvested wrote:
| People are going to feel all kinds of things. Asking
| whether or not they should feel them is a dead end in the
| context of public forums, because nobody controls anybody
| else's feelings, or how each individual reacts to a
| feeling.
|
| Sincere, productive conversations are mostly going to take
| place in more private forums like group chat or face to
| face. Public discussion threads are better suited for
| identifying friends and enemies, playing and joking around,
| and signaling status.
| wpietri wrote:
| It's not a dead end, because public forums are not
| natural phenomena. They are things we design, build,
| maintain, and police. Personally, I want experts to be
| able to talk about their work without feeling abused,
| harassed, or threatened. I want it not just for myself,
| but so that we can have a society based on truth, not
| just on who can shout the loudest or who can be the
| biggest jerk.
| teddyh wrote:
| [flagged]
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Nah. There are certain things that one might post that are
| worth saying, because they push back against bullshit, but are
| certainly not worth discussing with peddlers of such bullshit.
| Just think of any conspiracy theory (e.g. anti-vaxers) as
| really obvious examples.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Absolutely. And the specific example here--reminiscent of the
| dongle incident [0]--is definitely one of those.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-
| jokes...
| teddyh wrote:
| So you claim the right to push back but also the right to
| block any responders who push back on your push back? Why the
| asymmetry? Because you're right and they're wrong?
|
| Sounds like people want to both get praise (or upvotes,
| depending on forum) for spouting the prevailing views (or the
| insular views of their bubble, whichever), but _not_ having
| to deal with any inconvenient disagreements. Whatever that
| is, it is _not_ a "conversation".
| noelwelsh wrote:
| There actually are objective facts in this world. Not
| everything is just the "prevailing views". People who want
| to debate objective facts are not worth talking to. It's
| also not worth talking to people who don't engage in good
| faith. Finally, one's time is finite. Internet randoms
| don't have an inalienable right to take up anyone's time.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _People who want to debate objective facts are not
| worth talking to._
|
| Then don't. But that's not a "conversation". That's just
| lecturing.
|
| Also: Who is the arbiter of what is, and isn't
| "objective" truth? Reasonable people sometimes differ.
|
| Also also: The "truth" in this case was " _the word
| 'groper' is always offensive, no matter where it is used_
| ". Which I _certainly_ could see reasonable people
| disagree with. But nope, that obviously merited a
| straight block.
| [deleted]
| lanstin wrote:
| >I mostly try to head this off by trying to be self-aware about
| my knowledge level on a topic, and saying "I'm not sure..." when
| I'm not sure about something.
|
| This excellent tactic for avoiding pointless debate and inviting
| helpful replies is sadly beyond many people in the software
| field. Software folks are used to the past where you could master
| things completely. With the continued growth of knowledge and the
| growth of the worlds complexity, it is quite impossible even for
| one super intelligent person that was present at the dawn of
| creation to keep up; failing to consider disagreement as a
| potentially useful pointer to the situation where you don't have
| as much knowledge as you think is a risk. (edited to add "is a
| risk" so that was a sentence.)
|
| I have seen multiple projects led by extremely smart people fail
| because they didn't listen to key information from less smart
| people that were nonetheless better informed about the particular
| technologies involved.
| gremlinunderway wrote:
| Yeah, there's a really odd all or nothing kind of attitude with
| knowledge, experience or skill, as if "being smart" is like a
| linear growth Pokemon level-thing rather than being more like a
| radar chart of skills and experience.
|
| Which I find so odd and absurd in a profession that's full of
| esoteric knowledge. Being experienced and smart obviously is a
| huge asset, but if you just aren't familiar with library X but
| new guy with no experience has been doing nothing but library
| X, the latter guy is the one to take advice from.
| munificent wrote:
| Software development strongly self-selects for people who
| like black-and-white, all-or-nothing, binary reasoning.
|
| Few people have patience for a tool that will fail to even
| attempt to run a several-million-line program because there
| happens to be a trivial typo in one line in one file. It
| should be no surprise that kind of people for whom behavior
| like that is reasonable are the kind of people to think
| intelligence is all-or-nothing, and that are too happy to
| point out true but irrevelant inaccuracies in a piece of
| writing.
| grog454 wrote:
| Someone who thinks they know more than they do is a lot more
| dangerous than someone who doesn't know much but realizes it.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Julia's writing also just has nice-person energy (without any of
| the forced cutesy-ness that some blogs suffer from) and I think
| she's getting back what she puts out. She's clearly a skilled
| writer who knows how to set a tone.
|
| The default tone people tend to assume on the Internet is more
| brash, and that's the source of a lot of unnecessary problems. On
| the other hand, I don't mind a little snark or old-school
| Torvalds-style feistiness either (forced politeness would be
| boring) but that's going to attract a rowdier crowd. Not everyone
| needs to emulate that style of discourse.
| hyperpape wrote:
| Agreed, Julia's writing has always struck me as great, and I
| have her in my head as a model to aspire to. Despite that, I
| feel like my tone is always much more of a lecture than I wish
| it was.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I have a personal blog where I write about strictly professional
| topics. I have another blog where I write about things under a
| pen name because they are opinions that some people might not
| like. Having a shadow identity gives me the space to be "wrong"
| if I need to be.
| karaterobot wrote:
| My rules for HN:
|
| * Assume the person responding to you hasn't read the article,
| and has only briefly scanned your comment while mentally
| composing their reply.
|
| * Anything abstract is going to get misunderstood; keep it
| concrete but vague.
|
| * There is no consistent relationship between quality of a
| comment and how people respond to it.
|
| * You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and
| that's the best thing to do in most cases.
|
| * When in doubt, collapse the thread and move on.
| mixedmath wrote:
| I agree with these rules. I would add:
|
| * Always assume that no one will reply to a comment. Threads of
| comments are at most loosely based on a theme.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Sometimes it's more disappointing to have nobody reply to a
| comment than for someone to respond negatively.
|
| And yet it's very common to get no replies to any given
| comment. And that fact in itself is a common reason for
| people not to reply. Because it's likely nobody will reply to
| them!
| bachmeier wrote:
| > You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and
| that's the best thing to do in most cases.
|
| Sometimes I do this, but more commonly I will write my comment
| and then just not check that discussion ever again. I only
| check the discussion if it's a situation where I am willing to
| engage if there is a response. My experience has been that
| replies to any comment that's even mildly controversial are
| such that the other party will not bother trying to understand
| what I'm saying. In many cases I might be posting a piece of
| data (with a link to the source) and inevitably someone's going
| be upset because they don't like the data.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| _You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and
| that 's the best thing to do in most cases._
|
| Reminds me of a time I'd written a huge email - can't remember
| now what had got me riled up. I showed it to a colleague to
| proof read and he just said "there's only want way to improve
| this" and promptly hit the delete button...
| Zetice wrote:
| Eh, too cynical for my tastes.
|
| If you need a list like this, I think a more productive thing
| you can do is work on is building up resilience to online
| discourse, usually by reducing ego.
|
| It'll enable you to take more things at face value, which in
| turn will expose you to a wider variety of viewpoints.
|
| HN isn't special, I'm not special, nobody owes me the time it
| would take to craft a quality response, and expecting or
| demanding something from strangers usually ends up in
| disappointment.
| [deleted]
| samwillis wrote:
| This is a good list.
|
| _> _ You can write a reply and then erase it without sending,
| and that 's the best thing to do in most cases.*
|
| I do this maybe as much as 1/4 comments.
|
| I would also add:
|
| - Don't get into a back and fourth with a single other user,
| it's generally boring and goes nowhere.
|
| - Don't rise to it if someone is trying to start an argument.
|
| - Be generous, assume you are misunderstanding an apparent
| negative comment.
|
| - Be complimentary, it makes peoples day.
| hackmiester wrote:
| > I think I didn't mention -n in that post because at the time I
| didn't know why the -n flag was useful (it's useful because it
| turns off this annoying reverse DNS lookup that tcpdump does by
| default so you can see the IP addresses).
|
| Meanwhile, I remove -n from all tcpdump commands, because we use
| hostnames all the time at work, and I can remember them, and I
| can't remember a bunch of numbers.
| tomrod wrote:
| I really enjoy her writing. I hope one day to have an audience
| that keeps me at my computer a few hours after posting!
| [deleted]
| nicbou wrote:
| This is solid advice.
|
| Having dealt with what the author experienced, I'd like to add
| some advice:
|
| - All online conversations are optional. You don't have to finish
| an exchange you don't enjoy. Leave idiots on read.
|
| - You can't win everyone over. Some people are deliberately
| contrarian. Many argue in bad faith. Don't try to turn a
| provocation into a discussion.
|
| - You don't owe your audience anything. They don't pay you.
| renewiltord wrote:
| These seem good. "Experience over opinions" was novel to me. Good
| one.
|
| I didn't like "pre-empt" because it results in tedious prose.
| She's obviously a skillful writer so it's smooth for her, but I
| cannot do it right.
|
| "Don't argue" is good. I fail this one frequently. The trick that
| works for me is to remind myself that I'm training someone for
| free.
|
| I can't say I'm very good at "analyse negative comments". Some
| sort of CBT technique is probably necessary here, but I feel the
| following in order:
|
| - "omg was I wrong?" followed by a quick check
|
| - if yes, good outcome. I can just correct. if no, causes anger
|
| I don't know why but being right and misunderstood is far more
| frustrating than being wrong. The latter triggers the "well,
| damn" dopamine response of discovery. But I'll keep pecking at
| the damned subject if I was right but the other guy refuses to
| understand it. This is my prime motivation for blocking on
| Twitter - and ideally people who misunderstand me frequently
| would block me too so I won't engage.
|
| The others are sensible and it's nice that they're listed, but I
| don't think they are novel (which is obviously fine - presumably
| everyone has a different novel set here).
| guy98238710 wrote:
| Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-consciousness
| and political correctness? Author is self-censoring policy
| suggestions and social/cultural insights, which I personally find
| interesting to write and read about, especially the weirder ones
| that provide transformational experience. And the dig-related
| blocking is just jarring. It makes it look like the author is
| quick on the trigger.
|
| PS: I just noticed that all comments in this thread that are even
| slightly critical are downvoted below zero. My own comment too.
| It's normal to see critical comments ignored (not upvoted) here,
| but downvoting anything remotely critical below zero is unusual
| even by HN standards. I guess a post about self-censorship
| attracts audience that desires this strange new self-conscious
| world where everyone has to nod to everyone else.
| datagram wrote:
| The author is tactically avoiding discussions that she
| considers unproductive and does not want to participate in,
| hence the title of the blog post.
|
| > Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-
| consciousness and political correctness?
|
| Good writers always consider the way their choice of words will
| affect their audience. Are you suggesting that this is a bad
| thing?
| neerajk wrote:
| Embarrassingly, I was today years old when I learnt that dig used
| to be a) an acronym and b) what is stood for
| hk__2 wrote:
| I didn't knew that either, and there's nothing embarrassing
| about it: pretty much every CLI tool that doesn't have a clear
| name is an acronym (grep, cd, pwd, dd, yacc, etc).
| nurbel wrote:
| and ping as well (learnt that from the mastodon thread)!
| medler wrote:
| Ping was originally named after sonar pings. Then later some
| guy came up with a weird acronym for a thing he did not
| invent. We don't have to acknowledge it as a legitimate
| acronym. And as far as I can tell, the backronym is not a
| part of ping man pages, unlike with dig
| ghaff wrote:
| Never knew that although it seems like the acronym was
| contrived after the obvious "ping" (as in sonar) was coined.
| menacepineapple wrote:
| [dead]
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