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Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

This is a classic example of a publicity stunt based on the awful premise that people should be happy that Stack Overflow isn't more toxic. After all, on some places on the internet people openly talk about raping or killing people, so what's a little mean spirit and oppression on a tech help site?

What's more, the author has defined "toxic" in a way that guarantees a negotiation process after results are offered. They can simply sink the discussion by demanding that, "diversity of thought means I need a new Nazi and a hyper conservative anti-lgbt religious person on my panel. Surprise surprise, no one can agree on anything."

I seldom reach for this categorization off the bat, but given that this is a classic anti-debate tactic that I see all the time, I'm going to call it. This entire effort is disingenuous bullshit, and I flagged it hoping to avoid having to see more of this kind of bad logic and bad posting on the Hacker News main page.

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"11. An independent panel that both you and I agree upon will define what it means to be “toxic”."

I mean, that's about as fair as you can get when it comes to negotiating an agreement on something as subjective as "toxicity".

Having a panel whose members are open and that you could judge before comitting hours of work: that would be fair.

Instead you have to come with evidence and then negotiate the panel allowing a potentially disingenuous actor to counter pick your evidence. The way the author worded this challenge demands we consider them an antagonist. Their definition of unacceptable is rape and death threats. Given this fact, we must assume they'd demand judges with similar views.

To engage in this challenge genuinely, we are forced to accept the author's absurdly high threshold (10%?! That's a wildfire!) and their absurdly permissive definition of harmless toxicity. I will do neither.

I agree that having the panel decided in advance would be better, but I don't think that discredits the overall challenge, or the goal. It doesn't say you have to decide the panel make up after you start, so there is no reason to assume you couldn't negotiate that up front. If the author is making unreasonable demands during that negotiation, you've lost at worst an hour or two of time emailing back and forth, and you can write your own article fully discrediting this challenge.

I guess my point is that potential for unreasonable demands, doesn't make this challenge any less (or more) valid. Regardless, I appreciate your perspective on this, and your willingness to engage in a discussion of it.

I've listed at least 3 things that individually are problematic (predisposition, process, and the arbitrarily high threshold). Putting them together, I see no reason why we SHOULD extend a principle of charity.

Again this needs correcting. I am offering money. Why should I go out of my way to make it easy for you. Try to build a case on your own if you think its worthwhile (which you won't).

You seem hung up on the definition of toxicity being defined as rape and death threats. Your reading comprehension skills are atrocious. Where did I mention this?

You finally understand something, that the 10% threshold is high. I don't want to lose my money. But you do realize that many people actually believe it to be extremely high. YouTube comments might actually exceed that threshold.

No one wants your paltry prize money, Ted. What they want are environments with less toxicity.

> You finally understand something, that the 10% threshold is high. I don't want to lose my money.

In one fell swoop you've admitted you have set an unreasonably high goal post, that you don't expect it to be attainable, and that this was not actually about the inquiry.

But sure, Ted, we should all be grateful to you for offering up money you don' expect to pay. Why stop at 10%? I'm sure you can pay someone on a bus somewhere to say 25%, and then you can peg it there. That wouldn't be substantially less disingenuous than what you've done so far, so I say: live your best life.

> an unreasonably high goal post

I wouldn't say unreasonably high for 10% for a single man offering that much money. I would even say that it is rather very risky.

Besides, claiming a platform is "a toxic wasteland" puts that platform on par with the ones like 4chan, and that does seem to require 20% toxicity to me, maybe even higher. For it to get more strict like 3-5%, the claim should be lighter, something like "slightly toxic". It is nice of him to empathise and assume that the claims are probably exaggerated, and to set the threshold to something in between.

> No one wants your paltry prize money, Ted.

Lastly, I definitely would enjoy an extra 10K, but I don't really think I can beat that requirement, since I don't think Stack Overflow is even slightly toxic.

It stuns me that you write this, in a public forum, and don't expect people to conclude your entire effort was a self-centering publicity stunt.

Your goal is to discredit anyone who suggests your favorite crowdsourcing website has any toxicity at all. So you set absurdly high thresholds and put into place unfair processes to make sure the prize money can't be claimed.

I think SO has gotten what I would call more rules bound. When I started participating in 09 and there were fun code golf challenges some open discussions etc. Now its very strict questions must be directly answerable no discussion no challenges.

I don't understand what people find toxic about it. It just seems to be vague. Maybe I'm not getting something. Its fundamentally a site where people help you for internet points that seems on its basis to be the definition of non toxic.

I don't think it's so cut and dry. Reddit could be described as the same charter and I think we all have to agree that place got pretty toxic.

Maybe. I just assume any forum will have its bad actors. I don't know when that crosses the line to a toxic place.

A few things need correcting.

I did not claim that people should feel happy on Stack Overflow. My claim is that it is not a toxic wasteland. That is it. I understand people have bad experiences on the site and I hope I can offer some good suggestions to SO on how to improve.

Building a straw man around "raping or killing" isn't going to work. Toxicity has a lower threshold and nowhere did I insinuate this was where the threshold was.

If "raping and killing" were not your threshold why did you bring it up?

I believe it is just a manner of speech to talk about the extremes to claim the innocence of your defendant. Without such examples, declaring Stack Overflow as a saint would sound dull.

Having seen this exact line of reasoning used to reject varying levels of harassment in a variety of settings, I do not believe this.

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