Request #2 [LWN.net]

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 20:50 UTC (Tue) by spacemachine (guest, #124210)
In reply to: Request #2 by corbet
Parent article: Who controls glibc?

Separate question, why am I being asked to stop when it's other people that keep responding to me and ignoring my points? Why does it matter how many comments there are?

to post comments

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 21:14 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

It is my wish for everybody to stop this particular back-and-forth, not just you. But, of the 111 comments on this article (as of this writing) 22 — a full 20% — were written by you. That suggests that you're the one driving this particular cycle; if you stop, I suspect that most others will as well. Though somebody will inevitably respond to one of your comments; I hope you'll be able to let that slide.

"Number of comments" is not necessarily a problem, but large numbers of repetitive comments can only drown out the signal in the conversation overall.

Calling supporters of this change "malicious" is also heading into personal attack territory, which is not something we want here.

You are not unique in any of the above, but you stood out enough to make you an obvious intervention point when I wanted to calm things down in general. I appreciate your willingness to respect that request.

(Incidentally, I almost didn't write this article at all out of fear for what the comment stream could be. It has not come even close to what we had imagined; for that we are grateful to everybody involved.)

Request #2

Posted May 8, 2018 22:19 UTC (Tue) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

> (Incidentally, I almost didn't write this article at all out of fear for what the comment stream could be. It has not come even close to what we had imagined; for that we are grateful to everybody involved.)

I think that's a complicating factor. But I still appreciate the article. Sometimes I wonder if this kind of article couldn't stand having comments disabled. Or at least rate-limited to one an hour or such.

Request #2

Posted Nov 8, 2018 17:03 UTC (Thu) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

Jonathan, I think the topic touches an interesting phenomenon that runs deep in our society.

There are people who abhor the increasing influence that political correctness has on the freedom of expression, and so are extremely sensitive on any infringement -- in a way that is not entirely dissymmetric with how the people representing the political correctness side feel.

This is a profound issue, there is no mistake. And while I appreciate that formally the topic of the article is elsewhere, I'm sure we'll be back to discuss it again and again. I don't think it's really useful to try fighting the wind in this case..

That said, this is your forum, Jonathan, and I appreciate all the work you have put into it over the years!