Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 15:01 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by malor
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

You (and others) keep bringing up a false dichotomy. Behaving decently is not incompatible with producing an excellent kernel.

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Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 15:09 UTC (Wed) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (4 responses)

We're not, though, in the sense that you're explicitly prioritizing people's feelings over every other consideration.

We can all feel wonderful about ourselves, and put out a worthless project.

The code comes first. If it doesn't, there's no point to writing it. There's nothing wrong with being polite, but by your loudly stated goals, it would be best to wreck the code if that resulted in more civil behavior.

That would be an extraordinarily bad idea. Design correctness and code quality are what matter most, and developers should be as polite as possible within that constraint.

Honestly, it's probably not that severe a constraint. But the code comes first. It has to. Your stated priorities are more than a little scary.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 16:50 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> We can all feel wonderful about ourselves, and put out a worthless project.

You can keep repeating that to yourself louder and louder but it still isn't true, being an a**hole to people does not bring the best work from people, or attract the most competent people, what brings quality is competent people who are invested in a goal, projects with a**holes operate in spite the productivity drain, drama and distraction from the goal they cause and not because of it. It is in fact possible to be highly critical and demand quality without either being an a**hole or being crippled with an inability to give feedback due to fear of other peoples egos, it's not being an a**hole to reject a patch due to it not meeting the quality standards or pointing out the problems with a design.

> But the code comes first. It has to.

You act as if there is some absolute quantifiable rank that every other consideration is subservient to, but that is not how anything in life works, there are always multiple competing factors and trade-offs to be made between them, and every priority is only the "first" priority to a point.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 18:00 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

No, I am not "explicitly prioritizing people's feelings over every other consideration". I cannot for the life of me see how you've read that into anything I'm saying. I did say that people are more important than code and I stand by that.

We can all feel wonderful about ourselves, and put out a worthless project.

Once again, the logical fallacy of false dichotomy. This is really getting tiresome. Using "the code must come first!" as an excuse for disgusting behavior is lame. It's simply a distraction scheme to get people to stop thinking about the pervasiveness of aggression and rudeness in some open-source development projects.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 23:15 UTC (Wed) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]

> The code comes first. If it doesn't, there's no point to writing it. There's nothing wrong with being polite, but by your loudly stated goals, it would be best to wreck the code if that resulted in more civil behavior.

I've reviewed plenty of code that might be, in the words of some people, excrement of some sort. This includes a lot of code that I really don't want to see in the kernel as is. If I review code that I don't want to see in the kernel, I often speak up.

Nonetheless, I've tried to do my best not to personally insult the people who write such code. Some of them are great contributors who add a lot of direct value to the community and to the code base. All of them, without exception, are human beings who ought to be entitled to better treatment than being shat on, whether on a mailing list or otherwise. [1]

It's more than possible that I've still said things that I probably shouldn't have said. Once or twice, I've typed a nasty email, but I think I've done a pretty good job of letting those nasty emails languish in my drafts folder.

So, yes, code reviewers should speak up, but speaking up does not require opining that a piece of code was written by an [insert derogatory term here] or came out of some orifice or other.

[1] There's actually a robot that sends me patches on occasion. They tend to be of remarkably high quality, and the people who feed said robot should be commended. Nonetheless, if the robot were to send me a bad patch, I would try to avoid insulting its parents.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 19:04 UTC (Thu) by PaulMcKenney (✭ supporter ✭, #9624) [Link]

> The code comes first.

Instead of attempting to prioritize people against code, I suggest prioritizing groups of people against other groups of people. In the case of the Linux kernel, this might mean prioritizing the needs of the users of the code against those of the developers of that code.

This is not a simple tradeoff, and different communities are going to choose differently. For the tiny piece of the Linux kernel that I maintain, I try to meet the needs of both groups. Being human, I don't always succeed. But if someone forces me to make a choice, I must prioritize the needs of the users over those of the developers. Naturally, I expect to increasingly favor the users over the developers as the Linux kernel sees increasing usage in safety-critical systems. After all, although I don't feel good when my interactions with other developers falls short, I suspect that I would feel far worse if my code ended up killing someone.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 15:10 UTC (Wed) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (32 responses)

Also possibly worth pointing out: you're the one banging the drum about politeness, and then calling people sociopaths in the next breath.

You may not be the best spokesperson for the issue.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 16:57 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

Pointing out the truth, the comments by jack represented an anti-social worldview, is not impolite, but your comment represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what politeness means for people with conflicting ideas, politeness doesn't demand subservience to the loudest talker in a room just to avoid conflict.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 17:09 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> politeness doesn't demand subservience to the loudest talker in a room just to avoid conflict.

It may not require it, but that's the typical outcome nonetheless.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 18:01 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (29 responses)

I very politely called someone who prioritizes his or her own selfish interests above all other considerations a sociopath/psychopath. I believe I was merely repeating the dictionary definition.

Don't try to deflect the argument, please.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 22:04 UTC (Wed) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (28 responses)

> I very politely called someone [for reasons] a sociopath/psychopath.

Yeah, okay, whatever. I think you've just disqualified yourself from the discussion.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 22:39 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (26 responses)

Please don't bring selective edits to LWN. That's an awful way to discuss things.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 7, 2015 23:03 UTC (Wed) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (25 responses)

Eliding the dependent clause to highlight the main part of the sentence seems quite reasonable to me. I suppose I could have used HTML highlighting, but the original text is right there, and it's not exactly a long comment.

The upshot is that if you're calling someone a sociopath, particularly in a thread about politeness, you are way off the reservation. And failing to back down when it's pointed out, instead doubling down on the rudeness, strikes me as a total disqualifier from this particular conversation. If you cannot recognize the behavior in yourself, you shouldn't be throwing stones at others.

It's also, perhaps, worth pointing out that the target of the sociopath comment was expressing one of the most fundamental values of the free software community: he wants to scratch his own itch.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 2:00 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (21 responses)

The very definition of a sociopath or psychopath embraces someone who puts his or her own goals ahead of everything else and sublimates or ignores or indeed cannot even sense other people's feelings. That's what the person I was replying to was talking about.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 3:17 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

So, in other words, it's perfectly okay to call someone a sociopath, as long as you're really sure you're right?

You do realize that your exact argument applies to most of the negative interactions that you claim to hate so fervently? You are doing precisely, exactly what you say is bad behavior, but gosh, Wally, it's okay for me, because I'm right.

That's probably what's going through the mind of everyone being insulting online.... if they're even aware it's an insult, well, it's justified, because they're correct about how terrible a coder their target is, or how awful a behavior that was, or what a pile of wreckage their ethical standards must be.

It seems to me that if you're going to try to impose a code of behavior on others, the very first step needs to be holding yourself to at least that strict a standard, and preferably one much stricter.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 12:37 UTC (Thu) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (19 responses)

"That's what the person I was replying to was talking about."

"ahead of everything else ... ignores ... cannot sense ..."
No, you're exaggerating in order to silence him with some armchair psychiatry.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 13:06 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (18 responses)

So, it's okay to call people sociopaths when you don't agree with them?

In threads about civility??

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 13:09 UTC (Thu) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (1 responses)

(Sorry, that was a misthreaded reply to dskoll.)

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 13:20 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

Ah, okay, that makes more sense.

Yeah, it's easy to get lost in the narrow indendation in LWN threads, but it makes them a lot more readable most of the time, so the occasional bit of confusion is probably worth it.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 13:51 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (15 responses)

What I wrote was this:

Showing such disregard for people's feelings in relation to some selfish goal is something I'd expect from a sociopath or a psychopath

and I stand by it.

Next, your creative little editing of my quote was the equivalent of this:

Original: "People who murder for fun and profit are evil."

Creatively quoted: "People who [do something] are evil."

So yeah... I stand by what I said and I think you are being disingenuous.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 13:59 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (14 responses)

Well, okay, you've tripled down on your abusive behavior, so I'll just leave it to the readers to judge.

This, folks, is the world he's championing: he gets to be abusive, because he's right, you see.... but other people don't.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 15:07 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (12 responses)

...he gets to be abusive, because he's right, you see.... but other people don't.

She, not he.

And no, I am not being abusive. You are simply being over-sensitive. I doubt jackb really is sociopathic. I'm sure he's a really nice person in real life as are most people who get involved in online discussions.

I was merely pointing out the logical consequences of the belief that only the code matters and that everything else should be subservient to code quality.

I'm done with this particular subthread because I doubt we'll ever see each other's point of view. Have a good day.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 17:14 UTC (Thu) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (4 responses)

"She, not he. "

Is it relevant to the discussion at hand ?

"You are simply being over-sensitive."

Is that a joke ? If it was the other way around you would be screaming bloody-murder, denouncing a 'blaming the victim' situation.

"I doubt we'll ever see each other's point of view"
Oh but we see it, do not worry.. you seems to be impervious to the fact that your position is asymmetric.
Everything you reproach to Linus, your are doing and more.. but of course in your case it is different.. because _you_ are right!

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 18:01 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

Is it (she vs. he) relevant to the discussion at hand ?

Not particularly, but I do strive for accuracy.

Is that a joke ? If it was the other way around you would be screaming bloody-murder, denouncing a 'blaming the victim' situation.

Congrats; you got it. It wasn't specifically a joke, but it was a pointed comment to make malor understand a little better.

Everything you reproach to Linus,

The remarks to which malor so strenuously objected were not aimed at Linus. I was simply saying that pursuing one's selfish interest above all others' feelings is the mark of a sociopath. I don't believe Linus does this nor actually anyone else on the LKML. I was just trying to point out the logical consequence of believing that the only thing that matters is code quality. I'm attacking that idea, not any specific person. I'm sorry if that hasn't been clear during this discussion.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 23:04 UTC (Thu) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (2 responses)

"Not particularly, but I do strive for accuracy. "
you strive for accuracy over irrelevant details ?
Beside this is the internet, for all I know you could be one of these reviled 'ex-young-geek-now-white-middle-man', or an 80 years old grandma from Indonesia, or a teenage transgender from Cameroon. The good news is that none of it matter nor has any bearing on the validity or lack there-thereof of your argument. But it beg the question... why do you feel compelled to insist on irrelevant alleged trivia ?

"Congrats; you got it."

no, do not get me wrong. Me pointing out that you should at the very least hold yourself to the standard that you aim to impose on others, does not in any way, shape or form imply that I accept such 'standard' as valid.
I find the whole 'right not be offended' meme whereas the lowest common denominator of all readers or imagined readers is the unimpeachable standard of what is 'acceptable', idiotic and impossible to apply.. as your foray in sociopatic behavior definition illustrated pointedly.

"The remarks to which malor so strenuously objected were not aimed at Linus"
of course it was not... When I said 'everything you reproach to Linux' I was referring to your style of discourse, and the justification for it is exactly the style you reproach to Linus - albeit with a more passive-aggressive tone, and contrary to Linux you do not own-up your discourse.

I do not care if you resort to name-calling, I bet malor does not really either..
What I care about, in this instance, is the hypocrisy, the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do attitude.... whereas Linus is not allowed to chose the tone he wants, and need to account for all sort of potentially offended peoples.. but _you_ are dispensed of such considerations.

I'll give you a US political analogy:

you can have whatever sexual lifestyle as you want, I do not care
you can preach all day long that some of these styles are a road to hell according to your favorite imaginary friend.. I do not care -- well, as long as you do not try to coerce me into sharing your delusions.
but when you do both at the same time... you will get called on it, even by people that do not care about either.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 23:34 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Wow, I guess you get offended really easily.

> why do you feel compelled to insist on irrelevant alleged trivia?

To correct a pronoun, obviously.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 12:11 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

why do you feel compelled to insist on irrelevant alleged trivia

OK, ma'am. I'll stop. shmget shows her focus on the topic by not caring which pronoun is used to refer to her.

Anyway, this really is going nowhere. You can't accept that I'm criticizing a philosophy, not a particular person. So we're done.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 17:14 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]

> And no, I am not being abusive. You are simply being over-sensitive.

The point malor is making (I believe) is, that's exactly the same argument being made by many of the people defending the status quo on LKML.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 2:15 UTC (Fri) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (5 responses)

And no, I am not being abusive. You are simply being over-sensitive.

Are you even reading yourself?

I mean, you could be on LKML right now. You sound exactly like the people you profess to dislike. You're jumping up and down about protecting people's feelings, and then you post things like that.

Something seems quite amiss here. Are you trolling?

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 5:13 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> You sound exactly like the people you profess to dislike.

Are you gaslighting or putting on a performance for the crowd of some schoolyard taunt, "I know you are but what am I", like a culture warrior behind a paper shield of false "both sides doitism". Maybe you have such cripplingly sensitive feelings as to make you incapable of engaging in an honest and open conversation about this topic, to the point where you consider dskoll's mild tone and criticisms to be abusive. I think I understand your point enough that I can't take your stated position that dskoll has abused you very seriously, it seems more likely that you in fact are trolling than the other way around.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 12:13 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

*sigh*. I guess no-one really got my "you are over-senstive" comment. Of course I was being ironic. Sheesh.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 18:30 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (2 responses)

I will remind you that your whole argument depends on selective editing. The sentence you've been harping on for ages (in its original form, obviously) might be overly harsh, but it isn't terribly offensive. It's certainly not worth all the effort you've put in.

If you're wondering who's trolling here, well, it might be you.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 20:23 UTC (Fri) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (1 responses)

"The sentence you've been harping on for ages (in its original form, obviously) might be overly harsh, but it isn't terribly offensive."

But the argument of dskull and few others is that you or anyone else is not allowed to determine _what_ is offensive.. if you do, you are accused of 'blaming the victim'. In their world, whomever complain is de facto right to complain, the complain is, ipso facto, proof positive that there _is_ a 'problem'... denying the premises make you part of _the_ problem and not part of _the_ solution (to the alleged problem)... and of course they have 'the solution' ready. And dare you not challenge it you sexist-middle-age-white-chauvinistic-privileged-sociopathic-pig....

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 21:02 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Please show me an actual person offended by dskoll's actual statement?

Gotta say, this has turned into a weird conversation. I disliked her statement, but I also dislike how you two have boiled up a sea of hypotheticals and implications around it. I don't get it. Probably time for me to tune out.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 17:18 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I don't see how this can be considered abusive, unless you consider any challenge to your ideas to be abuse. If you want to be in an environment where no one ever questions your thoughts then maybe LWN isn't the place you want to be?

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 2:02 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

he wants to scratch his own itch

What? No. He wants others to scratch his itch for him, no matter how badly they're treated. You are completely taking things out of context. Please go back and read the article that elicited my initial response.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 3:27 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link] (1 responses)

>What? No. He wants others to scratch his itch for him, no matter how badly they're treated. You are completely taking things out of context. Please go back and read the article that elicited my initial response.

Well, the specific quote that you pulled out, and called him a sociopath for, was this:

>If you're unable or unwilling to do this, then you'll have to work on achieving your preferences without my help, and possibly while I am helping people who are trying to achieve an opposite preference because they did make a convincing case.

What he's saying is this: he wants good quality code. That's his itch. If you convince him that your approach results in better code, he'll lend whatever help he has to offer. (he will help you scratch your itch because it helps him scratch his.) If someone else convinces him that their approach will produce better code, he'll help that person. (he'll scratch their itch because it helps him scratch his.)

This is one of the most fundamental parts of open source. People see a problem and want to solve it, and team up with other people who want to achieve similar goals. If he's a sociopath, then most of open source is, as well.

As far as I can see, not only are you way out of bounds on polite behavior, but also incorrect in your accusation. All he's saying is: "I want a good product. I'll support whoever convinces me their approach does that better."

And instead of trying to convince him, which is what he's asking you to do, you call him a sociopath.

In a thread about toxic behavior, no less.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 16:58 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> And instead of trying to convince him, which is what he's asking you to do, you call him a sociopath.

OK, so did I miss something? He was never called a sociopath. This seems to be the quote this whole thread spawned from:

> Showing such disregard for people's feelings in relation to some selfish goal is something I'd expect from a sociopath or a psychopath.

There's nothing here about a *person* being a sociopath, but *behaviors* being sociopathic in nature. One may have behaviors which indicate all kinds of mental afflictions or other problems without actually having the problem itself (e.g., nervous ticks can be *indicators* of OCD, but are not a diagnosis[1]).

Is there some other comment I missed here?

[1]Actual OCD can be *debilitating* whereas what is called OCD in common terms is usually nothing of the sort. Dislike of light switches not being "all the same way" is not the same as severe anxiety attacks about them not having been turned off "right" while you're out shopping.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 17:10 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> > I very politely called someone [for reasons] a sociopath/psychopath.

> Yeah, okay, whatever. I think you've just disqualified yourself from the discussion.

Excluding someone for telling a truth (however unpleasant) rather disqualifies the discussion from having a point, don't you think?

There are polite and nasty ways of saying things, but I think dskoll was putting it politely. And if you can't accept unpleasant facts, politely put, then you shouldn't be discussing that sort of thing ...

Cheers,
Wol