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Comment by smashedtoatoms | Hacker News Reader

"We need something to remind us that we should be civil and grateful for FOSS contributions."

You mean like having the legitimate risk that maintainers will take their ball and go home when people are cruel and others stand around and let it happen?

This is everyone's fault who didn't dogpile the people who were being terrible. We all need to be calling out people being horrible, and provide a little emotional support to maintainers. We worry too much about the feelings of people who contribute nothing, and not enough about the people who build the things upon which we rely.

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No, I mean something less remote and which looks less like a random act of God, something that people can read before engaging in discussion and not easily dismiss because "it probably won't happen". We need to raise the level of discourse across the board, not just prevent the most egregious of negativity.

I want people to enter the discussion with the mindset "this is a volunteer effort so I will aim to be productive in my disagreement", rather than "fuck this guy".

Ahh, yes. That would be fantastic.

> "This is everyone's fault who didn't dogpile the people who were being terrible."

That presumes that "dogpiling" would actually stop the behavior, rather than getting people to dig in their heels and further inflame tempers.

Even so, it can serve two purposes: the author feels defended and acknowledged and the author feels relieved as the heat is, at least temporarily, directed at someone else. And this is the worst case scenario.

The author feels defended, but the subject of the dogpiling feels attacked. Maybe that leads to deescalation, but that's far from a foregone conclusion. Bullying bullies often further normalizes the act of bullying in the eyes of the bullied bully, as well as potentially normalizing bullying in the eyes of observers.

There are better ways to handle situations like this.

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