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Re^2: Additions to the FAQ and a Community Statement (speak)

by tye (Sage)
on Apr 16, 2013 at 20:17 UTC ( [id://1029002]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re: Additions to the FAQ and a Community Statement
in thread Additions to the FAQ and a Community Statement

First, I will admit that it took me no small number of attempts before I was able to find an actual non-trivial proposal in this posting. Here is what matters to me:

The request is that you, as PerlMonks, don't ignore the personal attacks when you see them. That you use your standing as a member of the PerlMonks community to show that such things are not the way that we, as members of the larger Perl community expect things to be done. Speak out, or simply downvote the posts that don't match your understanding of how things should go.

I think that is excellent advice when dealing with people face-to-face or even verbally (or even just professionally). In an on-line, text-only forum, I think those are both pretty bad ideas.

The most widely recognized problem with those ideas is the existence of "trolls". Feeding trolls is a bad idea. I'll assume that those who don't already know why can do some quick research.

But even if somebody has not gone all of the way down the continuum to the "troll" mark where they intentionally post provocative text for the sole purpose of provoking responses, feeding text-only responses to people who are upset and being rude is very likely to back-fire and so isn't something I widely encourage.

For me, the fact that the rudeness ended up being done "by both sides" makes for a good example of how easily and completely the idea of "intervention" can fail. Even the textually stuffing of people into buckets rather far down stereo-typed ranges ended up being done by some of those who started out complaining about a perceived textually stuffing of people into extreme stereo-typed buckets.

Those trying to be part of the solution quickly became part of the problem. And that is completely understandable... and predictable.

I saw a couple of replies that did a reasonable job of sticking to just trying to advocate for civil tone and avoiding getting into a heated argument over the perceived insults (or even claims of things that had potential to be insulting). And I think that is fine if the person replying has an unusual level of eloquence on the subject and has unusual clarity of judgement as to the likelihood of getting a positive reaction.

But, for example, chromatic was unusually eloquent in Re^3: How many man-hours would you estimate you have invested in learning Perl? and I don't think he was replying to a troll. But I also don't think he and Jenda would come very close to agreeing what "help the situation" should mean. And he got a relatively healthy dose of downvotes for his efforts. So I'm unsure how much positive over-all impact his efforts obtained.

So I give chromatic praise for not, as far as I can tell, significantly worsening the situation with that reply. But I don't think it ended up helping much and I see how easily it could have made things worse.

So I really don't think calling for everybody to pile on in defense is good advice.

I can empathize with a desire to "improve things". I actually thought that this particular flame fest was relatively minor compared to many. It would have been even less extreme had people remembered to seriously consider whether or not they might be feeding a troll.

Less involvement in the thread would have been better for everybody, IMHO. And that is not because I condone or encourage creating a hostile environment for women. The majority of the thread beyond the initial pointing out of how it could be taken as hostile served to make the thread more hostile, as far as I can tell. Encouraging people to add to that doesn't help, IME, even when the people adding to it have the main purpose of trying to reduce the problem of perceived hostility.

The key to progress here is more about listening than about asking everybody to speak up. And I can't force people to listen.

- tye        

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Additions to the FAQ and a Community Statement (speak)
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 17, 2013 at 01:48 UTC

    So I give chromatic praise for not, as far as I can tell, significantly worsening the situation with that reply. But I don't think it ended up helping much and I see how easily it could have made things worse.

    This is the comment chromatic lead with

    What does chromatic deserve again?

      I believe that is the original version of the other reply from chromatic in that thread. I was very careful to not mention it (like I didn't mention any of the many other bad examples in that thread). Plenty of bad ideas in evidence over there. But thanks for spreading some small part of it around so we can experience the badness all over again.

      I only picked out one example so I could show how even the best of that thread was not really that helpful (from what I could tell) and came so close to being unhelpful.

      There were only two replies that struck me as fairly positive in what I scanned of that thread (which was probably most of it). I didn't remember the author of the other one and didn't feel like mucking through it again searching. When I saw that even chromatic had decided that his other reply was too ugly to stand, I double checked that I had been very specific about just the one reply.

      But, yeah, even the authors who managed to post something somewhat reasonable mostly also ended up stooping rather low as well. More evidence that piling on to respond to insults just doesn't work out very well in practice in this medium / environment.

      - tye        

        My point is that they lead with it, they goes to -11 at first sign of disagreement, first mention of their unreasonableness
      What does chromatic deserve again?

      I posted it on purpose and I deleted it on purpose and I stand by both of those purposes.

      Unlike almost everything from Anonymonk, it's tied to my professional identity. Reasonable people will interpret it as something intended as satire and unreasonable people—well, there's no reasoning with them, by definition. If I'd thought for one moment that Ratazong would have taken it as a personal attack, I wouldn't have posted it.

      Reasonable people may very well disagree whether it made its point well or at all, but that's a debate that bores me. I care a lot more about the silly false equivalences in that thread and this one, or about the idea that "don't feed the trolls" is a stronger guiding principle than "all that is required for incivility to stand is for civil people to say nothing".

        "all that is required for incivility to stand is for civil people to say nothing"

        And yet...

        If I'd thought for one moment that Ratazong would have taken it as a personal attack, I wouldn't have posted it.

        Civil people saying something can be regrettably uncivil, it seems.

        I am not advocating that uncivil behavior be completely ignored and not dealt with. "Speaking up" (in a text-only public forum) isn't a particularly successful strategy, even for you, even based on your own assessment. But it certainly can make one feel better about having "tried to help".

        I think it quite useful to evaluate guiding principles based on whether or not they actually yield benefits and how much harm they cause. Though that might not be particularly satisfying from a philosophical or moral judgement perspective. Some might even find it "boring" to consider such things.

        I guess it depends on whether one cares more about actually making things better or about stroking one's moral self image.

        I haven't been talking (here, now) about the things that I think one can do to help that I find more likely to be successful. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

        - tye        

        Reasonable people may very well disagree whether it made its point well or at all, but that's a debate that bores me.
        After all, honesty and accountability are for the little people.

        EDIT: I should quote the whole message, since he may change it later...

        What does chromatic deserve again?
        I posted it on purpose and I deleted it on purpose and I stand by both of those purposes.

        Unlike almost everything from Anonymonk, it's tied to my professional identity. Reasonable people will interpret it as something intended as satire and unreasonable people—well, there's no reasoning with them, by definition. If I'd thought for one moment that Ratazong would have taken it as a personal attack, I wouldn't have posted it.

        Reasonable people may very well disagree whether it made its point well or at all, but that's a debate that bores me. I care a lot more about the silly false equivalences in that thread and this one, or about the idea that "don't feed the trolls" is a stronger guiding principle than "all that is required for incivility to stand is for civil people to say nothing".

        Just another Perler interested in Algol Programming.

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