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Comment by CPlatypus | Hacker News Reader

...and of course, the professional tone of the blog entry is ruined by the thoroughly unprofessional tone of the accompanying tweet:

"That, @jodastephen, is a fucking announcement by Yammer about Scala." http://twitter.com/coda/status/142047850426146816

Ah, so much better than those "slapfights" we have here at HN, isn't it? Protip: backpedaling and fence-mending don't work if you go right back to the kind of public behavior that got you in trouble in the first place.

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Who do you think you're putting in their place with a comment like this? It's clear Coda could give a shit† what "HN" thinks about him or his messages. Do you think your comment is going to influence him in any way?

Because really the only parties that your comment is going to influence are the subset of HN readers that are actually interested in Yammer's use of Scala, who instead have to watch a pretend trial play out on HN about Coda's "professionalism".

(I'm happy to delete this comment if you delete yours, just for whatever that's worth.)

† Really. I'm not trying to be snippy; I'm just saying it frankly.

I'm not trying to put anyone in their place. In a way, that kind of dominance-hierarchy BS is exactly what I'm objecting to. The point here is that this new response from Coda doesn't even address the technical debate. It doesn't make one new point in that area. It's entirely about smoothing ruffled feathers, so responses about the ruffling and smoothing of feathers are completely fair game.

Furthermore, this kind of "reputation management" (or whatever you want to call it) really does matter, and I think there are important lessons the HN audience can take away from it. Being conciliatory toward one person or group just isn't very convincing if you're almost simultaneously trying just as hard as ever to alienate others. The mixed messages, even though they're supposedly addressed to different people, make even the conciliatory part seem insincere. If I were in Donald's or Martin's position, I'd be wondering how long the constructive tone - and the original letter was very constructive - will last before the inevitable reversion to form. The lesson is that if you want to claim the moral high ground you have to stand on it for a while. Stephen was wrong to publish what should have remained private correspondence, but calling him out like that only ensures that the controversy will continue. The urge to bare teeth and show dominance overwhelmed the rational choice to let this whole thing fade into a natural and well deserved obscurity.

What was called for was de-escalation, and anybody else who finds themselves in a similar situation (many of us have or will BTW) would do well to watch how this one plays out.

I don't think you're following me. You can't correct Coda. He doesn't care. All you can do is take the thread in one direction or another. I think this is a bad direction for our threads to go.

Also: I don't think you can talk about "de-escalation" when you brought the issue up on the thread.

"You can't correct Coda. He doesn't care."

I know that. What I might be able to do, though, is explain why his example might be a bad one to follow. Or maybe it's a good one, for those of the "no publicity is bad publicity" mindset. In any case, I think it's worth it to express my view. These things do affect businesses and livelihoods. Maybe it's too "meta" for some people, but - unlike some - I won't tell people who disagree that they should remain silent.

"I think this is a bad direction for our threads to go"

It's not only a bad direction for "our" threads to go; it's a bad direction for the broader discussion - across here, Twitter, various blogs, etc. - to go. That's my point. HN isn't an island. I've seen quite a few people who disable comments on their blog posts and explicitly direct readers to the corresponding post here for discussion. The real damage to real reputations is being done elsewhere, and condemning those who point it out here seems counterproductive.

"I don't think you can talk about "de-escalation""

Ad hominem, pure and simple. I'm not one of the principals here. I have nothing to do with the companies or communities involved. As a mere commentator, nothing I say affects those relationships one way or another, so de/escalation is an inoperative concept. If you want to disagree with me fine, but please stop finding new ways to tell me I shouldn't even have an opinion.

In that my argument is entirely about calling you out for poisoning the thread, yes, I think it's fair to call it ad hominem.

Why would someone who doesn't give a shit say something like

"I’d rather suck a dog’s nose dry than lend a hand to the nerd slapfights on Hacker News."[1]

That sounds like the attitude of someone who very much does give a shit about HN enough to not like it.

And besides that, while I may agree with what you're saying in principle, in practice it's bad business to go around insulting such a large number of potential clients/employees/partners. It's better to keep your mouth shut if you don't have anything nice to say.

[1] http://codahale.com/the-rest-of-the-story/

Keep telling yourself that. Most of the time these days when people talk about HN like that, it's because they've become accustomed to pointing at it and laughing amongst their friends.

Meanwhile, the rest of your comment: due respect (really), but who cares? He doesn't. What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to convince? Let's definitely keep burning thread space on this dumb metadrama, now that we've started.

I don't plan on losing any sleep about Coda's position about HN. I've got better things to do with my time.

But at the same time, I don't blame people on HN for being a bit angry and venting on the subject. That's what people tend to do when they've been insulted. I was even a bit peeved (albeit for about 2 minutes). Does this serve any practical purpose? Absolutely not. But human beings will be human beings: dumb, dramatic, emotional apes who take offense when people insult them.

> What are you trying to prove?

What are you?

Seems like every comment I see from you the last couple weeks is exceedingly angry rants, and half of them constitute the very metadrama you're calling "dumb". What's going on with you?

This is a forum that can't even talk about putting Scala into production without personalizing it and turning it into drama.

So, trying something new: not being cool about it.

Maybe it won't work out over the long term and I'll relax a bit. I'll figure that out for myself, though.

Well, I don't get that people 'talk about HN like that' and I think it's worth understanding. A conclusion from that may be that you want try and explain the value of HN. It would be a win if someone like Coda Hale would sometimes participate in discussions here.

Yeah, comments like the one rooting this thread sure seem like a great way to get people like Coda conversing on HN.

As you yourself said, it ain't gonna happen anyway. Therefore, this thread isn't "spoiling" anything that would have happened otherwise. At least try to be consistent, instead of trying to silence everyone who doesn't share your opinion of an author you obviously idolize.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998819 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2083997 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2688984 (includes bonus downvote threat against any who disagree)

If I had to guess, you got downvoted to the greys for suggesting that I yell about bcrypt because I like Coda Hale (he is dreamy, though).

Actually, I like bcrypt because tptacek yelled about it.

"nerd slapfights" iirc.

What trouble?

Coda was obviously not thrilled that @jodastephen apparently (from updates written at the top of his post) decided to

(1) widely publish personal correspondence that wasn't meant to be sent to him,

(2) mirrored it when Coda removed his copy from the net,

(3) insinuated it was a public statement by yammer, whereas it was private thoughts from Coda, and

(4) wasn't even classy enough to contact Coda before publishing it.

Maybe I'm particularly sensitive to (3) because an jerk on HN insinuated that my posts here were representative of the company I worked at, but none of those four things are particularly nice on @jodastephen's part. Note also that, depending on your employer, (3) can get you in quite a bit of trouble. @jodastephen claims he found the email on HN or twitter, but that doesn't mean he has to repost it. Just like when you see accidental tits photos sent from someone's phone, you can either close the tab or repost it to spread it to the world.

That said, it's obviously interesting that the build situation for larger projects seems to be a shitshow, but still, an email to Coda before posting wouldn't have hurt.

The context also matters -- as Coda mentioned, this email was only in regards to the negatives with scala and doesn't mention any of the positives.

I understand and agree with everything you said. Coda has every right to be angry with Stephen. He might even have the right to sue Stephen. Nonetheless, swearing in public like that was simply not the way to deal with the situation. Think about it in purely strategic terms. What outcome might Coda or Yammer want from this? Perhaps for it to fade away, perhaps for Stephen to apologize, perhaps something else. Does snarling at Stephen bring any of those outcomes closer? Did the swipe at HN? If Stephen or anybody else - I suppose some might think that includes me - harbored any ill will, wouldn't this just give them even more opportunity to do some damage?

Sometimes the right thing to do when you're wronged is to let it pass, no matter how much it sticks in your craw, for strategic reasons. Sometimes giving in to that moral-outrage addiction simply does more harm than good, no matter how justified the outrage might be. And yes, I've very much been in that position myself. It sucks, but I've learned that it sucks even more to have a self-inflicted wound on top of the one I got from someone else.

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