Two related bits: Google staff and OSFeels [LWN.net]

Two related bits: Google staff and OSFeels

Posted Oct 7, 2015 17:26 UTC (Wed) by graydon (guest, #5009)
In reply to: Two related bits: Google staff and OSFeels by fuhchee
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

I think FOSS communities have frequently been epicentres of setting norms for online discourse. They interact with several other online cultures (gamers, infosec people, chans, bloggers), and of course silicon valley libertarian culture. Possibly these days reddit is the biggest epicentre; but its norms grow from the same roots, and there's substantial cross-pollination.

The connecting thread is a sort of radical-honesty / tough-love idea, that by sufficient amounts of transparency, "honest competition", argument and conflict, one will arrive at a good/just/true/ideal outcome. That freedom to speak one's mind is the #1 most important priority in all circumstances, and that any suggestion to the contrary -- that one speak carefully, choose words in a way that's aware of consequences, consider other people's feelings, etc. -- is equivalent to being rounded up and sent to a prison camp by the thought police. That it obscures truth and harms progress.

What actually happens when this weird social-darwinist "virtue through conflict" norm governs a group is that weaker and more vulnerable people feel too hurt, exhausted and attacked to participate, and even those who have the energy to participate waste a lot of it in defensive status-arguments over non-issues, and the meanest, loudest, most persistent or merely most verbose people eventually come to dominate discourse. It produces very distorted goods, very approximate truths, very non-ideal outcomes.

I'm writing this as an honest attempt to answer the question. This is the only response I'm going to post. I've discussed this sort of thing with you enough in the past to be wary, but it's been a while and maybe, just maybe, this time it'll be heard and not turn into a sealioning session where you demand evidence and try to argue me out of it. This is the impression I have. I've been in the community 20 years. I stay on the edges because of this. If you want to not believe it, it'll be better for you to just chalk it up to me having a morbid and defeatist personality than engaging in further argument.

to post comments

Two related bits: Google staff and OSFeels

Posted Oct 9, 2015 5:45 UTC (Fri) by da4089 (subscriber, #1195) [Link] (1 responses)

Let's assume there's a substantial number of the potential FOSS developer pool who feel that the dominant cultures of FOSS projects are overly hostile.

Is there something preventing these like minded, technically capable people from building their own communities? Or is it that any such nascent community becomes infected by those with a more aggressive communication style? Is it just too draining to constantly try to tame (or eject) those individuals who do disrupt?

I ask, because if this was a technical issue, the solution would be to fork. But having forked, I guess it takes a bunch of work to maintain the distinction?

Two related bits: Google staff and OSFeels

Posted Oct 9, 2015 15:56 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I think this is a real danger: "any such nascent community becomes infected by those with a more aggressive communication style."

I think the reason that people don't generally go on rants in corporate environments is that you're usually face-to-face with your coworkers. Even people who telecommute occasionally have face-to-face interaction and more often phone or video conferences.

It's a lot harder to be an asshole to someone in person. In a development environment where most people hardly ever see any of their collaborators, the weakness of email as a communication mechanism really hurts: You can't see people's body language and fights tend to escalate instead of being damped down by conciliatory body language or natural inhibition when one sees one is upsetting someone else.