I think this was the right thing
I think this was the right thing
Posted Oct 1, 2025 11:01 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465)In reply to: I think this was the right thing by buck
Parent article: Bcachefs removed from the mainline kernel
"ad-hominem" does not apply to the comment you're responding to. It applies when you dismiss someone's argument not because it's false but because of some unrelated property of themselves. It doesn't describe comments on someone's personal issues that are not being used to dismiss someone's arguments. In particular, ad-hominem doesn't typically apply to meta-commentary on someone's argumentative style and raising issues with it. "X is obnoxious behavior that makes it really annoying to try to talk to you" is not typically ad-hominem.
For instance (two entirely made-up examples with intentionally zero subtext):
"Your argument is incorrect because your shirt is wrinkled and therefore you are insufficiently fastidious to be taken seriously about this" is an ad-hominem.
"You have a habit of wringing your shirt with your hands, perhaps because you're nervous, which leads you to go on stage with a wrinkled shirt, and you might want to work on that" is not an ad-hominem. Note in particular that it is not attacking someone's argument by making an unrelated personal observation; it's telling someone that there's a problem they have that is affecting how they come across to others, and suggesting that they fix it.
Posted Oct 2, 2025 2:23 UTC (Thu)
by buck (subscriber, #55985)
[Link] (3 responses)
I was not classically educated and was being a rube, trying to sling some Latin, trying to avoid saying, "personal", but turns out i made a more offensive accusation.
Sorry
Still seems to me some folks were overreacting to Mr. Overstreet's one comment that had been posted (as of the time i wrote anyway), which, prima facie, did not seem like a dig at anybody or their work. Is there some rationale for not addressing his comment on the merits? Maybe i'm just being obtuse, sorry
Posted Oct 2, 2025 11:00 UTC (Thu)
by ferringb (subscriber, #20752)
[Link] (2 responses)
An example of the context you're missing is https://lwn.net/Articles/1035736/ . That includes examples of what you think folks should do, and kernel folk commentary it's long since been doing. LKML ain't exactly the nicest place, for them to level a CoC, let alone someone's entire project being ejected from the kernel, this isn't something that is because of a one off.
When you're going through that thread, I suggest you pay attention to the harassment of the debian dev (*again*). That's deeply unacceptable, and I suspect overstreet- in a year from now after this latest incident- will hope that there isn't someone doing exactly what he's been doing to others.
Posted Oct 2, 2025 12:54 UTC (Thu)
by koverstreet (✭ supporter ✭, #4296)
[Link] (1 responses)
> An example of the context you're missing is https://lwn.net/Articles/1035736/ . That includes examples of what you think folks should do, and kernel folk commentary it's long since been doing. LKML ain't exactly the nicest place, for them to level a CoC, let alone someone's entire project being ejected from the kernel, this isn't something that is because of a one off.
Others have noted that incident was on the whole rather tame, even for what passes on LKML today (I'm reading the news on Phoronix right now, and - oh boy, the level of toxicity really hasn't changed) - and that screwup had pretty far reaching consequences.
And re: Debian, I was talking about issues bcachefs has had with release process, and you're somehow painting that as harassment?
That's pretty unbelievable.
Look, I think the actual harassment going on here is pretty clear, and it crowds out all the actual technical discussions we could be having.
Posted Oct 2, 2025 23:36 UTC (Thu)
by ferringb (subscriber, #20752)
[Link]
If you don't think people should read your flamewars to understand the interaction, don't flamewar.
> And re: Debian, I was talking about issues bcachefs has had with release process, and you're somehow painting that as harassment?
https://lwn.net/Articles/1035890/ (people should read it in full). Also your general justification for taking unrelated, deeply pointless and technically unproductive, potshots/attacks: https://lwn.net/Articles/1035878/
> I think the actual harassment going on here is pretty clear,
Few things that harassment isn't:
This is a good stopping point; as I said, folks should just read https://lwn.net/Articles/1035736/ .
I think this was the right thing
I think this was the right thing
I think this was the right thing
I think this was the right thing
> That's pretty unbelievable.
* People disagreeing with your posts and behavior within a community, and engaging you disagreeing.
* Linking your own posts were you are attacking others
* Suggesting people read your thread interactions and make up their own damn mind (in particular, reading in full rather than just the 2 examples I gave as a synopsis).