Of abusive behavior in programming communities
rjbs.manxome.org
rjbs.manxome.org
^ (IV) | (I)
| People | People everyone
| everyone | wants to work
n | feels bad | with
i | for |
c | |
e +---------------+----------------
n | (III) | (II)
e | Get off | People everyone
s | my lawn | just tolerates
s | people |
| |
| |
+------------------------------->
talentWithin limits, the more talent you have, the less niceness you can get away with. In other words, the line between (I) and (II) slopes down.
The line between (IV) and (I) (and between (II) and (III), for that matter) might also slope down, but that's complicated by the talent threshold being more important, I believe.
This misreads the situation a little, I think. The more talented you are, the more likely you are to recognize the value of “niceness” (in its current meaning (“kind”) and its older meaning (“careful and particular”)). That's why someone whose code is well-commented and carefully designed has shown more talent than the arrogant trickster whose 2k-line functions full of 1-letter variable names “comment themselves”.
those two are that good because a bunch of really smart people keep clashing with each other.
what about x.org? there was something about keith packard getting his commit access to x11r6 revoked after not properly following release freeze procedures.
if you want to get some entertainment you should probably grab a bag of popcorn and watch the discussions on mplayer or another commit list. peoples commits with get ripped apart and spit on. and what's the result? a project that has it's code running on tens/hundreds of million devices without a proper release structure.
now for real life examples, i only distinctly remember, but if i remember correctly a lot of the so called innovators in the 19th-20th weren't really the biggest friends. they still insulted one another, they just had other words. we all know tesla and edison weren't the best friends(although edison wasn't really an innovator, but anyway)
what about the physics community? whenever someone comes out with something revolutionary new he will get ripped apart.
oh and how about economics where theres a bunch of different groups constantly at fight with each other. but no real solution coming out because the predominant neoliberalism party suppresses the others? <-- see these guys have a real problem precisely because there is not enough people that just say what they want and still get heard, because what they say is right. although the internet again changes the dynamics a little bit.
i could go on like that bunny in the duracell commercial, but i think i'll leave it at those.
you think conflicts are bad? think again. what happens when you freeze a cola bottle? it usually explodes.
Some creative sorts thrive on strife, it's true; and these sorts look for people who operate the same way so they can thrust themselves at one another, grow heated, and still get work done. That is not the only way things get done, it is not an inescapable approach (many people use that as an excuse to avoid acting like grown-ups), and, most importantly, there is a time and a place for that and it's not at the center of an open community.
Look, the idea of open source is this glorious idea that when people work together they can achieve things which no one person would have thought of on their own. My favorite open source works are the result of somebody having a crazy idea, getting support from various open source projects, and making something they'd have never made on their own. Having the sorts of misanthropic terrors that this guy's writing about in positions where they can alienate other participants undermines one of the clearest values of open source work.
What's more, the Internet SUCKS at strife. Arguing is one thing where you can see and hear and intuit the person you're arguing with. You stay in lockstep with them, even if you're fighting them bitterly. Arguments on the Internet are much more commonly the result of people simply not understanding tone, or even who the shit's on the other side. They are rarely productive in the way you mean. When you've got an issue OF community bullying, they are practically never productive. If one person feels the need to start fight with masses of people, even if it's because they don't "understand" him, that person is pretty much in the wrong, and ruining things for those other people.
To be honest it makes me sad that programmers and computer geeks, who are both smart enough and used enough to being ostracized and belittled, so often decide that the problem with their former persecution was simply that they weren't the ones getting to do the persecuting. And the strain of celebrity-worship that leads to other coders excusing the worst behavior simply because it comes from a well-known name is equally disappointing. We're not as different from mainstream culture as it's fun to pretend.
so imho having the same issues, decoupled from social issues is a major step forwards.
People keep working, in a freelance world (and more and more of today’s world is freelance) because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don’t even need all three. Two out of three is fine.
People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They’ll forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.
[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/neil-gaiman-commenc...
That said, I have some qualms with the proposed solution. In my experience, "patience, correction, explanation, and an outpouring of civilly-worded disapproval" are often not enough. Frequently, these methods do nothing more than increase stress and waste time.
After reading Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism[1], I am convinced that banning is vastly underused. Many of us are professionals. Our time is valuable; our communities, even more-so. There are so many fools with so many maladaptive behaviors. Considering what else we could be working on, correcting them all simply isn't worthwhile. The opportunity cost is too high.
I wish this problem could be solved in a less forceful manner. Sadly, banning is the most effective solution I've found.
1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
Those same people, ignored or hugged will often just find harassing your channel boring and move on.
One of the reasons I love Freenode is because they have good banning tools. For example, /mode #channel_under_attack +r will prevent people from joining if they aren't identified with nickserv. Once the attacker gets bored, you can remove the restriction.
I wonder if an "invisible ban" would work with trolls? What I mean is that their messages appear to them, butr not to any other user. So the troll isn't aware they've been banned. Has anyone used this?
Trolls will eventually forget to use a proxy and will immediately find themselves autobanned again. And all the IPs they used are added to the blacklist.
It's pretty funny. My forum would've been unmanageable without this.
A few thousand members log in every day and I've rarely had a problem.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ranit8
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3903705Try turning "showdead" on (in your profile) - you'll start to see a few people who have been hellbanned. Some of those people know that but continue posting anyway. Some of those people just made a mistake and got hellbanned and could probably be unbanned.
Let's take it a step further. I don't think any of us would object to paying a nominal fee (say, $2/month) to obtain voting/posting privileges on HN. Although this would drastically reduce the amount of activity on the site, it would undoubtedly increase the quality of whatever activity remained. Not because a lot of people wouldn't be able to afford it, but because a troll wouldn't enter his credit card information and other personal details just to obtain the ability to flame someone on the internet.
Patently incorrect. People have been paying for the privilege of abusing others at least since the days of Ultima Online (just to name one example). So-called "griefers" have a presence in every online community, even the paying ones.
Though I agree with the spirit of what you're proposing - erect a barrier to entry to make people decide how serious they are - in all likelihood it will only deter a few trolls and will almost certainly keep out future valuable contributors.
IMHO, I think the best way to keep trolls out is to not respond to them, and to continue writing quality HN contributions. At times I've been discouraged over the last year that "HN was on the decline". Each time, I've been encouraged by the fact that the elders of the community seem to come back and raise the tone again.
I think if you stick around long enough and learn to use your karma score as a barometer for what type of discourse is valuable and which is not, you can eventually become a good contributing member.
By charging trolls, you are essentially validating their behaviour - "I'm paying for this, so I'm your customer! The customer is always right!"
Even worse, you warp the social structure into one where those willing to pay get to make the rules, removing the sense of community and pushing people away.
Finishing the story: when the nursery stopped fining parents, the behaviour didn't improve. The parents saw this as a paid service that became free.
As others have duly stated, there are many people who are more than willing to pay for the privilege of trolling. It might not even start that way: I paid $40/mo to play a particular online game, and maintained my subscription as my play dwindled and my forum trolling increased. I eventually cancelled, but that was not an altruistic action: I simply needed to stop posting, and to stop paying for a game I didn't enjoy anymore. If someone has a similar experience with HN, you're relying on their self-control to end their own privileges.
Quite frankly, no one knows how to police a community perfectly. This is why religion was invented, after all, why politics exists. And see how that turned out, a few thousand years later. We're struggling damn hard, despite all the progress.
You never know what people will do. Every action, every ban, every harsh or kind word, every (pay)wall around the garden, every disincentive, carrot, stick, every reputation system, every voting system... you're going off your gut, at the end of the day, because there is no unified theory of sociology you can tap to actually justify it.
But I would agree that the meta anguish[1] that some forums go through is often driven by people who just don't know any better and who probably shouldn't be given any power.
[1] they start small and really good; they get popular; someone decides that something must be done; there are long and bitter threads about moderation; mods get appointed; and then there's a slew of stickied threads and rules and closed threads and bizarre restriction.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, folks, always ready to cite Kamina-sama on matters of sociopolitical philosophy.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beli...
(Being a civil moderator is important because it sets an example — you won't overreact over some tiny irritant. And of course, recreational trolls want you to overrespond; that's their entire game.)
If you do encounter truly disruptive people, then aggressively removing them from the forum is important, like you'd remove a harasser from a meeting.
I like this case study of how a feminist forum had to deal with conflicting internal forces keeping them from maintaining a useful forum. (http://inkido.indiana.edu/research/onlinemanu/papers/herring...)
The net is full of people who subscribe to ideologies that hold:
1) It's always ok to f^ck with people
2) If they're not cool with it, they are wrong/evil/inferior
After reading Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism[1], I am convinced that banning is vastly underused.
I think the "blue pill" tactic is more economical. It is often possible to put the trollers with the trollers and make the trollers effectively invisible to the civil members. In the long run, I think that is cheaper than playing whack-a-mole with banned trolls coming back.
It doesn't always work. Some People Are Just Assholes.
It's sad that this is often what it takes to get an answer out of jaded people with experience - it's even more sad that the scorn is integral to the experience.
Nowadays community leaders refuse to tolerate assholes (<http://jacobian.org/writing/assholes/>) – back then they more often than not acted like those. I wouldn’t have thought back then that we’d come ever so far.
Not that we arrived yet…
(http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/VestedContributor)
and Dissuade Reputation
(http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/DissuadeReputation)
and most of the troublesome characters category on meatball wiki.
There is certainly overlap between thick-skinned and abusive individuals but the sets are not identical. There are many abusive individuals who are covering for their own insecurities, and many quiet, confident people who have thick skins but don't abuse others. Additionally there's a difference between taking offence to abusive behavior and taking offence where none was intended.
I am of the opinion that it is worth expecting members of the community to be thick-skinned, professional, courteous, and respectful. If you have the latter three down well, then telling someone that no offence was meant but that you stick by your original point, that has a great deal more credibility.
Thick skins are good. But expecting them doesn't have to mean tolerating abuse.
Another point to make is that this is a stronger expectation than simply: don't be an asshole, and that acceptance criteria that don't match the emotional reality of most people (for example, if “thick skin” means you're not allowed to feel bad after being treated harshly) will ghettoise a community.
To sum up my point, if you don't tolerate abuse and everyone knows this, then saying "What so-and-so said wasn't really out of line. Please be more professional when taking criticism" is credible. When you personal attacks and trolling, it isn't.
the moment you start strangulating it, it will lose it's value.
this is from a person who's wished for a remote electroshocker.
On the other hand, user moderated communities like Hacker News and Reddit seem to cut back on this a lot. Only funny or informative abusive comments are shown.
Labelling someone "troll" is the same as labelling them wrong and that should not be taken lightly: http://sivers.org/ss
We are not even close to free software's most wretched hive of scum and villainy.
? My guess would be the Ruby "community".
Seriously, every community has a few bad apples, it's totally unfair to judge the whole by the behaviour of a very few. You'd probably object if you heard someone judging an entire ethnic group by the actions of a couple of extremists - how is this any different?
/rails dev frustrated by the seemingly bad image of the community despite 99.99% of it being actually really nice
I just got back from the Red Dot Ruby conference in Singapore and it was nothing but wall to wall nice people. This attention seeking nonsense you cite may as well be light years away. We are all just focussed on sharing knowledge, growing the community, and developing good software.
It's 2012. Rails is far and away the best choice for developing pretty much any normal web app. Trying to tar the entire community with some old blog posts is pretty lame at best. Oh, and for what it's worth, there were quite a few women at the conference, and high school students too. Thank god you weren't there to spread this bullshit.
As for Rail being "far and away the best choice for developing pretty much any normal web app", that may be true if one define a normal Web app as being a CRUD application with a REST architecture, that covers lots of ground, but still far from universal.
I'm always shocked at how stereotypically asinine and snarky the responses to legitimate questions are. Yes it's IRC, yet somehow I expect it not to live up to its reputation - yet it does every time.
What do you see as the problem with the demographic?
While I know historically Rails had a heavy conceited, dickhead user base (in Seattle particularly), the demographic has expanded so much that it doesn't seem to be the case overall anymore.
I can't really comment on the actual community at large, but in places where people go to get help, such as the irc channel, there are increasingly a lot of people looking for easy answers who don't seem willing to work things out for themselves. More so than in a lot of other languages. I couldn't attribute this to any specific group of people, but I think it has to do with rails increasingly becoming a "workhorse" tool amongst shall we say, less hackerish web devs.
It's basically a sign that rails is being used more for workaday things, perhaps at the expense of .net or PHP. This is surely a good thing. It isn't the same as the mythic internecine rivalries in the rails/ruby development community everyone always talks about, which I've never thought were that important.
I try to be the most open I can and learn the most from people that I feel are smarter than me. But it seems that it is not the norm, even with "non-tech" people.