On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 9, 2014 23:59 UTC (Thu) by samth (guest, #1290)
In reply to: On the sickness of our community by corbet
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

You could have said what other people such as Lennart and Sarah Sharp have said, which is the the repeated abusive behavior by leading members of the Linux kernel community, starting with Linus, is a problem. That you didn't do this, and instead defended Linus, is what disappointed me and others.

More generally, I think the attitude embodied in: "A common response to such a person would be to flame them to a crisp in the hope that they simply go away." is a serious issue. The idea that "flam[ing] to a crisp" is an acceptable and normal way to treat people is the root of the problem here. I realize that this is very much a part of the heritage that the free-software community comes from. But that doesn't make it not a problem, and one that we need to fix. And it's a problem that can't be addressed as long as people like Linus (or many others) continue to behave the way they do.

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On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 3:56 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (5 responses)

> The idea that "flam[ing] to a crisp" is an acceptable and normal way to treat people is the root of the problem here.

This may just be a cultural and generational shift as the younger generation have different social norms than the older one, norms which don't include flaming people on mailing lists.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:20 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

There is also the fact the internet is a lot less U.S centric and male dominated than it used to be and part of being inclusive is to treat people with more courtesy and assume goodwill. Flaming people in public in LKML can cause serious repercussions in one's job as a kernel contributor in some places for instance. Onlookers who might be thinking about contributing are less likely to do in such an environment as well.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:32 UTC (Fri) by samth (guest, #1290) [Link] (3 responses)

I used to be the sort of person who enjoyed flaming people on the internet -- it can be both cathartic and fun. But it's not a good thing to do, and it actively excludes people from our communities. So I don't do it anymore. People can change their behavior.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 8:51 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link] (2 responses)

I love writing flames, but I (almost) never post them. It's rather cathartic.

Whenever I see something I find really stupid, I write a long rant about it, then proof-read it, then finally discard my reply.

After that I write (or not, depending on whether I have any input that actually hasn't been repeated 100x already) my real reply and submit that instead.

Works surprisingly well.

Imagine how much calmer mailing list discussion and online forums would be if there was a "Please wait 5 minutes, re-read your post (and the post you reply to), wait 5 minutes more to have the send button activate" policy...

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 10, 2014 18:30 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

I tend to find those "wait to send your reply" controls make me annoyed, and if already annoyed make me more annoyed. So I suspect the results would be mixed.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 11, 2014 5:26 UTC (Sat) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

I do this too. Even LWN's "Preview Comment" requirement with no timer at all is sufficient for me to reconsider what I wrote. Probably 90% of my posts here I decide aren't sufficiently original or non-obvious (or polite :P) to be worth sending.

And I always wonder whether the editors can see posts that were previewed but not posted..