On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:43 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435)
In reply to: On the sickness of our community by diederich
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

> This is verbal abuse. Full stop.

Meh, I read it as just a rant about a very stupid design decision... If he had named a particular person and was really calling directly for them to be "retroactively aborted", then it would be different... But, as it is, he's just attacking an unidentified and unknown straw-author, which is really just a way of attacking the design decision itself... Literally every programmer I've ever known, including myself, has gone off on a rant just like that about some stupid design horror or another... You don't know who is really responsible for it, but you hyperbolically wish them to suffer unspeakable punishment in retaliation for their anonymous stupidity... It's not meant seriously, nor is it really aimed at any real person, just the stupid design itself... It's completely different when you know who is responsible, and you call them out by name and say such things directly aimed at them! Then, it's very likely verbal abuse... But, here, I can't really see it as anything other than attacking an anthropomorphism of a stupid design...

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On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 5:04 UTC (Fri) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (3 responses)

It is certainly abuse but I perceive no threat in it. Without threat aspect, Linus's rants tend to be just colorful and amusing. This is all, of course, PR nightmare stuff -- if you want to make the case that Linus is a deranged psychopath, then just collect half dozen of his rants in one post and insinuate some ugly facts about his person, and call it a day.

Linus seems to have said that he believes his use of language is justified and correct, and any problems are at audience's end. This is a point that one can debate. I can not see any general solution to problems of miscommunication -- sometimes the speaker was unclear, sometimes the receiver imposed meaning that was not correct.

This society seems to favor the idea that speaker must always be very careful and if words are misunderstood, it is the speaker's responsibility. It is probably appropriate in mass media situation where there is one speaker and millions of receivers, and such messages must be crafted with care. On the other hand, human social behavior in a mailing list -- while technically viewable to public -- is hardly the sort of public broadcast where utmost care is required.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 5:07 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Generally true but if you are a leader with a community or generally a well known personality, you got to essentially treat your posts as mass media communication. yes, this is a significant burden but that is part of the role you are playing.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 11:12 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

> It is certainly abuse

But, of whom? An anonymous person? I still maintain it's just abuse of a personification of bad code... The target of the attack isn't a real person, but the stupid coding design... I'm not sure I'm worried about code being verbally abused... Lord knows I've cursed out my fair share over the decades!

I see what he said there to be roughly the same as saying, "Who was the moron who thought gets() was a great function to include in the standard library?? I hope whoever they are, they get eaten by wolves!"... It's not really attacking any real person; it's inventing an imaginary person which personifies the bad code in question and attacking that, and doing so in an obviously hyperbolic and non-serious manner...

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:35 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]

Sir, if you believe that a deranged psychopath can be recognized from a handful of cherry-picked mailing-list postings, then I've got a nice bridge to sell to you.

Sheesh. Would a spot of medium-awareness inflame your haemorrhoids?