Some tactics for writing in public

https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/08/07/tactics-for-writing-in-public/

by hasheddan • 3 years ago

566 177 3 years ago

jvns.ca

neerajk• 3 years ago

Embarrassingly, I was today years old when I learnt that dig used to be a) an acronym and b) what is stood for

nurbel• 3 years ago

and ping as well (learnt that from the mastodon thread)!

ghaff4• 3 years ago

Never knew that although it seems like the acronym was contrived after the obvious "ping" (as in sonar) was coined.

medler• 3 years ago

Ping was originally named after sonar pings. Then later some guy came up with a weird acronym for a thing he did not invent. We don’t have to acknowledge it as a legitimate acronym. And as far as I can tell, the backronym is not a part of ping man pages, unlike with dig

hk__2• 3 years ago

I didn’t knew that either, and there’s nothing embarrassing about it: pretty much every CLI tool that doesn’t have a clear name is an acronym (grep, cd, pwd, dd, yacc, etc).

mjb• 3 years ago

This is really great, actionable, sensible, advice for folks who write on the internet. It agrees with my experiences, too.

On the other hand, it's sad that the culture we have built on the internet forces talented people like Julia to censor themselves and narrow the scope of their writing.

So I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention if I don’t want to start the same discussion about that thing for the 50th time.

Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings. The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere.

ghaff4• 3 years ago

I'm not sure I'd use censor in the context of Julia's post. It read more like the next thing you quoted. Something's well-trod and people have strong opinions but absolutely no one is going to change their mind or really make a novel point or learn anything new.

I do think there are things that many people self-sensor, e.g. opinions that fall outside or on the edges of the orthodoxy of some bubble and is just going to trigger emotional arguments/stereotyping/downvotes/etc.

ChrisSD• 3 years ago

Imagine, for example, there's a really interesting scientific paper someone would love to talk about but it's in the field of Climate Science. Everyone knows the comments a blog post on it is going to get. And they're (almost) all going to be the same no matter what the paper is actually about. Every time.

Should someone feel they have to self-censor just to avoid this?

wpietri13• 3 years ago

If you're interested in the ways in which especially women receive strident pushback in a way that trains them to self-censor, I'd suggest reading Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of misogyny". She's an analytic philosophy professor, so it's a bit academic in spots. But I think it does a good job cataloging the many ways in which women are put "in their place", a place that very much includes a lot of self-censorship.

dkarl• 3 years ago

I think it's fair that some people have stronger feelings about and more appetite for discussing a topic than I do.

To pick one of her examples, I've done a couple of toy projects with Tailwind. I think it's pretty neat, and I don't mind saying so! But I accept that people working full time on huge Tailwind projects at work probably care way more deeply about the topic than I do, are much more impacted by aspects of Tailwind that might be trivial to me in my toy use of it, and are going to invest an amount of time and passion discussing it that would frankly bore me to death. If I were running into that repeatedly, I would stop bringing Tailwind into discussions that I didn't want to be about Tailwind, and I wouldn't feel that bad about it.

wpietri13• 3 years ago

Sure, but on the other hand people can learn to read the room. I am interested in lots of things, but that doesn't stop me from trying to fit the context and the interests of the other participants. E.g., I have a lot to say about cryptocurrency, but there was a time when it seemed like almost any HN discussion ended up with a tenuous cryptocurrency tangent. It was annoying and exhausting, and I'm glad we've mostly gotten past it.

remich2• 3 years ago

You know, that's interesting. I tend to avoid Tailwind discussion because I feel like I don't see enough opinions from people working full time on huge projects using it. Most of the time, it seems like the strongest opinions in favor come from folks who have only used it in toy apps, side projects, or completely greenfield small-to-medium applications.

There's nothing wrong with using it in that way, of course, or of thinking it's the best tool for the job in those scenarios. But for some reason I rarely see that caveat mentioned, and the idea of refactoring a legacy application to use it makes me queasy haha.

sneak• 3 years ago

When it's opt-in, it's called editing, not censoring. Nothing is forcing them to censor themselves, contrary to what you have asserted.

teddyh• 3 years ago

Self-censorship is, in fact, a thing: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Self-censorship&o...>

lbotos• 3 years ago

I get the pedantic line you are trying to draw here, but self-censorship is different than editing.

Editing == adjusting so the point is clearer or more easily understood.

Censorship/Self-censorship == avoiding a topic that the author wants to talk about due to fear or external forces.

ghaff4• 3 years ago

If you choose not to discuss something because you know it's an unpopular opinion in some circle and may lead to nasty and from your perspective unconstructive criticism, it seems reasonable to call that self-censorship even if it doesn't fit the dictionary definition of censoring (which primarily applies to the government or other authority body).

mattlutze• 3 years ago

> So I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention if I don’t want to start the same discussion about that thing for the 50th time.
Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings. The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere.

People tend to enjoy bikeshedding when presented the opportunity to, and it's a good idea to avoid bringing up the bikesheds you don't want to debate.

lapcat14• 3 years ago

Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings.

I don't think we've "built" the culture per se. I think it's more like humans evolved over millions of years for small, in-person groups, and we're not "built" (by nature) to handle the endless sea of online strangers. On the internet, the personal familiarity is gone, the proximity is gone, the facial expressions and tone are gone, and indeed the fear of repercussions is mostly gone.

globalreset• 3 years ago

fear of repercussions is mostly gone.

Is it? Because AFAICT people censorship themselves online all the time for the fear of repercussion. It's like being on tape 27/7 where anyone that doesn't like you can watch your old tapes and loook for problems.

ssgodderidge• 3 years ago

On the internet, the personal familiarity is gone, the proximity is gone, the facial expressions and tone are gone, and indeed the fear of repercussions is mostly gone.

The idea of writing and sharing thoughts is an ancient one. Engaging with that content in an easily publishable and shareable way, is.

The quoted sentence above is 100% right. If you replace "On the internet" with "In a book," and I think the sentence would highlight the differences with the internet a bit clearer.

The internet is unique from a book because others can engage with it in a real way (beyond a book club). A book club keeps that proximity, familiarity, and expressions together for better communication. An online forum loses all of these.

schneems3• 3 years ago

I agree with you that we’re in the infancy of context free communication (text only posts). But disagree that it wasn’t built (or couldn’t be changed, my extended interpretation)

There are wildly different experiences with communities online. Communities are also a thing that can be built intentionally.

We can also learn from prior works. Lessig (1999) identifies four elements that regulate behavior online: Laws, norms, markets, and technology

- *Code/architecture* – the physical or technical constraints on activities (e.g. locks on doors or firewalls on the Internet)

- *Market* – economic forces

- *Law* – explicit mandates that can be enforced by the government

- *Norms* – social conventions that one often feels compelled to follow

mecsred• 3 years ago

I agree with the sentiment that greater freedom of expression is a noble goal and society loses something with these soft restrictions. Having a catalog of unmentionables is not a new thing though, and definitely is not "unacceptable in other social settings". It's a basic social skill from long before the internet existed. It's been rude to bring up politics and devicive issues in conversation for literal centuries.

tptacek• 3 years ago

Steering persuasive and technical writing away from topics like Emacs vs. Vim isn't censorship, it's just good writing.

politician• 3 years ago

Somehow we've built a culture where its socially acceptable, and even rewarded, to behave online in ways that would never be acceptable in other social settings.

It's an unfortunate consequence of the point-based reward systems that platforms use to incentivize participation. There are certain topics that large groups of people will always upvote or always downvote. It's a rational behavior to repeat the same comments whenever such a topic comes up if those comments can reliably mine rewards by doing so, even if the rewards in this case are adjustments to one's own dopamine balance.

In offline social settings, the ability to monetize comments is somewhat more difficult but not totally absent (popularity, elections, etc).

genewitch• 3 years ago

As someone who has been on the internet about 3-4 times as long as "point systems" on comments/posts/etc i don't see any correlation to point systems. People were jerks in AOL chatrooms, IRC, myspace, and forums long before the likes of reddit and /. gamified being annoying.

edit: change "jerks" and "annoying" to "repeating ad-nauseam the prevalent comments to garner points". I misread the latter part of your comment, went back and saw where i misread, and still like the general premise of my reply.

omoikane• 3 years ago

I have a weird catalog in my head of things not to mention

An optimistic view is that people maintain blacklists of topics to avoid, as opposed to whitelists of noncontroversial topics that they are allowed to talk about ("Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?").

nonethewiser• 3 years ago

The exact flavors of that on HN, Slashdot, Twitter, Tumblr, etc are different, but the core issue is the same everywhere.

I think there are three main factors. Some cases are more one than the other.

1. Anonymity. Many places people know who you really are. Your family, friends, and coworkers arent judging you.

2. Using a mob for cover. As an analogy, its a lot safer to throw a Molotov cocktail from a crowd then by yourself.

3. No empathy for avatars. You aren’t talking to a real person, who you would empathize a lot more with.

After writing these, they are largely different shades of anonymity.

verve_rat• 3 years ago

Ah, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...

tomrod• 3 years ago

I really enjoy her writing. I hope one day to have an audience that keeps me at my computer a few hours after posting!

wrp3• 3 years ago

Summary of her rules for defensive posting:

  1. Talk about facts
  2. Tell stories
  3. Ask technical questions
  4. Fix mistakes
  5. Ask for examples, not opinions
  6. Start with a little context
  7. Avoid flamebait triggers
  8. Preempt common suggestions
  9. Ignore people who challenge your viewpoint (my interpretation)
  10. Don't pursue arguments
  11. Pay attention to critical feedback

Number 9 is I think not as defensible as the rest. These are pretty much the rules I've adopted for posting on HN.

tayo422• 3 years ago

how did you come up with number 9 from this post?

fwiw, all the people who dont read the articles, 9 isnt in there.

its actually "set some boundaries"

wrp3• 3 years ago

Fair criticism. I should have been more clear.

tristor• 3 years ago

Number 9 isn't there, and in my personal interactions right here on HN, Julie doesn't ignore people who challenge her viewpoint. She says "Set Some Boundaries" and in fact doing so is not only necessary, it's healthy. Setting boundaries, even blocking people, is not the same as ignoring people who challenge your viewpoint. You can be challenged without the challenger being an asshole, there's no point in engaging with assholes and you should absolutely block them.

hirundo• 3 years ago

It's a Russell Conjugation: "I'm setting boundaries, you're ignoring people who challenge your viewpoint, they're denying my existence."

n4r92• 3 years ago

I think you're being a little unfair about #9. Setting boundaries is different to ignoring challenges. If I made a comment about politics and someone demanded that I present a solid case that black people have ever been mistreated, obviously it's fine to ignore. It's tangential and agenda-driven, just like the example in OP.

Some conflicts are simply not worth pursuing. Even Bertrand Russell refused to debate Oswald Mosley.

wrp3• 3 years ago

I did editorialize on #9 because I wanted to draw attention to it and get some discussion. My feeling is that her take is not entirely healthy.

zer8k• 3 years ago

Up/down vote systems, especially ones that punish the poster quickly by rendering their post unreadable, create a hivemind of people who agree. HN posters LOVE to point out the fact it's "not like Reddit" when, in fact, it is. If you say something factual but disagreeable with the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social policy) you will be met with downvotes. Even a small amount begins to add up until eventually your account is auto-dead (shadowbanned). This is especially bad because each downvote is not required to have a retort. Since the downvoter is not subject to the same rules it can happen freely and without consequence. New accounts are most susceptible to this. It's often better to post extremely agreeable, astroturfed, opinions just to collect enough internet points to protect you from driveby downvoting later.

The result is a hivemind no different than Reddit. People here are just as afraid to post their opinions on language/framework/policy as they are on Reddit. None of these rules matter because the assailant (downvoter) can do what they do best without consequence. At least in a meatspace debate/talk/whatever the disagreeing party must reveal themselves to make a case.

lapcat14• 3 years ago

the current zeitgeist of HN (usually mid-to-far-left social policy)

HN has no zeitgeist, and "mid-to-far-left social policy" is not even close to my experience.

A lot of commenters seem to think that HN has some kind of consensus, but it doesn't, as dang himself (the HN moderator) can testify. A number of different factions coexist (uneasily) here.

My experience is that upvotes and downvotes are... pretty random, sometimes inexplicable. It really depends on who happens to see your comment at the moment in time.

TRiG_Ireland3• 3 years ago

HN is a forum attached to a venture capitalist company. The idea that it is in any way left-leaning is farcical.

viknesh• 3 years ago

I think the "shock" at an old man page is pretty silly to begin with, but I think a better phrasing for #9 would be to ignore the trolls.

The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended to be bad, but that viewed with today's (American) social context, the phrase would likely be taken to be distasteful. Therefore, I think the issue with the commenters isn't that they "challenge" the viewpoint. At a minimum these commenters have failed to grasp the concept and more likely they are simply not responding in good faith.

I do think there's a separate discussion to be had about the role of political correctness/word policing in modern discourse, but in the author's version of events, the blocked commenters aren't trying to make that argument.

ant6n• 3 years ago

"The problem with the dig acronym isn't that it was intended to be bad"

That's because many people in tech used to think that tech bro culture wasn't bad. Tech also used to be much very excluding. Back then, if you were not part of the tech bro culture, you already knew it was distasteful, and that you were being excluded.

tayo422• 3 years ago

"preempt common suggestions" is good advice for getting things done in a work environment too. avoid getting bogged down in all the distracting nonsense the same way internet people get distracted

hackmiester• 3 years ago

I think I didn’t mention -n in that post because at the time I didn’t know why the -n flag was useful (it’s useful because it turns off this annoying reverse DNS lookup that tcpdump does by default so you can see the IP addresses).

Meanwhile, I remove -n from all tcpdump commands, because we use hostnames all the time at work, and I can remember them, and I can't remember a bunch of numbers.

OJFord3• 3 years ago

Recently on Mastodon I complained about some gross terminology that I’d just noticed in the dig man page. A few dudes in the replies asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive (which of course is besides [sic] the point) or tried to explain to me why it actually wasn’t a problem.
So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:

Of course I understand no responsibility to 'prove' anything and can guess the comments weren't written well - but I think there may be a genuine misunderstanding and miscommunication here, or maybe it's even a BrE/AmE thing, because 'to grope' around for something (often blindly in the dark or similar) isn't at all sexual, typically not even an animate thing you'd be groping for (e.g. a light switch) - and I'm fairly certain that that usage isn't by analogy to sexual assault.

Or am I just repeating what's 'besides the point'? I don't think it is, words can have multiple meanings, be used in foul ways, but still be usable fairly and legitimately. 'I coloured in a picture' isn't 'gross'? My 'garden hoe' is fine?

wpietri13• 3 years ago

"Groping for a light switch" would be a valid phrase in American English as well. But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper

I think that would be especially true for women, who, being the common targets of sexual groping, are going to be more aware of it. So even if it weren't my first association, I would still think it a reasonable association for women to make.

As she says, original intent doesn't matter a ton. If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it. Because what I care about is getting my point across. When I see instead strident defense of language that's bothersome to a historically marginalized group, I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change. A change I'll note the dig maintainers made back in 2017, so it's not like they care.

deadbeeves9• 3 years ago

I have to wonder about the resistance to mild change

That's easy to wonder when you're the one asking for the change. It's awfully convenient that "intent doesn't matter", as that puts the burden of action on the speaker/writer. If intent did matter, then the listener/reader would need to consider what the other person is trying to say and adjust their interpretation of the words accordingly. But since it doesn't, all that matters is that someone took offense at a particular word, and so it is the writer who needs to correct themselves.

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

If I write something that's accidentally a problem for part of my audience, I'll change it.

If original intent doesn’t matter, your audience shouldn’t differentiate between writing which is intentionally offensive and accidentally so. That is, they may as well assume you are malicious. That’s not the world I want to live in.

It’s also not the world we do live in. English is the most widely spoken language on the planet, and its speakers come from all sorts of cultural and educational backgrounds. They don’t have the time or the privilege of knowing about every term which can potentially be offensive.

My point isn’t that we shouldn’t change “groper” to something more inclusive. My point is that in practical terms intent does matter.

johnnyworker• 3 years ago

But a "groper" on its own is going to have sexual connotations. E.g.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/groper

The first (and the only non-slang one) definition of that is "a person or thing that gropes".

Context matters, as in "groping $person" versus "groping $object". You cannot sexually touch domain information, so that couldn't possibly be the meaning.

lucideer3• 3 years ago

I think the sexual interpretation is pretty strong (at least today) - "groping" and "groper" have slightly different vibes - that warrants removal today imo. But yeah, I'm not sure if that was the case in the 80s.

--- Edit: as pointed out below I hadn't noticed when I wrote this that the offending mastodon replies were apparently deleted so the 3 replies I mention here aren't actually relevant ---

I did click through to the Mastodon link from the OP and had a look at the "dudes in the replies demanding that i prove [...]" - the replies were largely supportive, apart from 2 "dudes" saying they hadn't considered the sexual-assault meaning before now & weren't sure if that was intended BUT still strongly agreeing that it should be removed, and 1 other dude (possibly non-native English speaker?) surprised that such a sexual-assault-related interpretation existed and asking for further context (not "demanding proof"). That's all followed by a lot of extremely confrontational replies from the OP assuming bad faith in every case.

Julia is a fantastic tech writer, & I'm sure I'll continue to read her blog regularly, but... this isn't a great look. Asking for the manpage to be changed is perfectly reasonable but the ad hominem really wasn't needed here.

0cf8612b2e1e• 3 years ago

Said the posts were deleted.

A few dudes in the replies (who I think by now have all deleted their posts) asked me to prove that the original author intended it to be offensive…

metadat• 3 years ago

Kinda harsh that Julia chose to block people for what boiled down to asking genuine questions without intent to offend.

Shrug, it's her choice and a valid move. But by employing the approach of "block-o-matic for all dissenters" strategy, the author has lost some credibility with me.

I also found it odd that the author cherry-picked a dictionary site which only contained the definition she found offensive. If you put "define: grope" into Google, the non-offensive definition is the first one listed:

Grope (verb) 1. to feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands.

Which was why I latched onto this aspect in the first place - sexual groping has always been the minor definition in American English for at least the past 30 years. It's at least somewhat disingenuous to completely ignore this fact and focus only on the maximally offensive possibility.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+grope

xyzzy_plugh• 3 years ago

Language evolves. I definitely associate "grope" more with sexual assault than trying to find a glass of water in the dark. It's understandable that the document could evoke discomfort.

The "they're just words" argument/defense is certainly never an acceptable response. It's one thing to go on a witch hunt and extrude connotation where there is none, but that's not what this is. Instead, use this as an opportunity to understand others better and learn to be more empathetic.

jlawson• 3 years ago

Indulging someone's hypersensitivities is not helping them, it's harming them.

stronglikedan• 3 years ago

I agree with you, and chalk it up to people projecting their own warped views onto otherwise innocuous things.

xwdv• 3 years ago

I don’t think it’s worth worrying about or changing your writing style. I’m tired of these people who blanche in the face when you write something in a way that isn’t how they expect and where they are haunted by the possibility of a double meaning in what you said. “Smoking a fag” for instance is a perfectly British phrase that will have an uncultured American clutching their pearls and groping around for any kind of downvote or report button.

If you’re scared, don’t read anything. Reading is scary and dangerous.

lambda• 3 years ago

Grope has the same meaning in American English, and used in that context could be fine ("grope around").

But I have never heard "groper" used for anything other than some engaging in sexual assault. The benign sense of "grope around" isn't a sufficient part of an identity to ever use the word "groper", while he sexual assault sense is, so "groper" implies the sexual assault meaning.

It's entirely likely that the original author of this phrasing was thinking about it in the benign sense, but didn't realize that the phrasing would make many readers interpret it in the sexual assault sense.

OJFord3• 3 years ago

I don't think I've heard 'groper' to describe the actor when it's a human assailant either though?

And 'dig' is a tool that searches (or 'digs') for certain information - one (and only one) of the meanings fits!

I'm not really interested in an argument about it, and I'm certainly not holding anything against or taking Evans to task over it, as I said initially it just seems like a misunderstanding or that the commenters were rude about it to me.

I thought TFA was otherwise excellent and I've enjoyed (& learnt from) her writing on many occasions.

ctrlp• 3 years ago

It's extremely common for programmers especially to add -er endings to common verbs to describe functions or objects that do that thing. Even if you want to exclude the playful neologisms that use this -er ending (Googler, Redditer) you have only to dig into the archives of classic code to find plenty of examples of this and it usually means "one who X's", in this case, "one who gropes". The scrupulosity brigade being on high alert for any ambiguity notwithstanding.

haswell5• 3 years ago

So I blocked a few people and wrote a quick post:

When I read the Mastodon thread, this jumped out at me as well. A couple of the guys who raised the point clarified that they fully agreed that the removal of “groping” was a good thing, but by that point, the author wouldn’t be able to see the clarification.

I’m really torn on this. I fully support people’s choices to set boundaries and block abusive behavior. At the same time, “I disagree with you so I’m going to insta-block you and not even give you a chance to clarify” seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse.

But having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger.

I don’t know what the right balance is, and it’s likely very personal and contextual, but I’ve personally started to only engage with conversations if I’m willing to deal with all of the likely categories of response (barring obvious abuse). Disagree=block seems to increase polarization and seems counterproductive in the long run. It also seems like a good way to reinforce my own blind spots, even if it turns out that I’m “right” some of the time.

wpietri13• 3 years ago

insta-block [...] seems at the heart of the brokenness of online discourse.
having seen what some of the women in my life go through re: abusive behavior online, I also understand the hair trigger

Even from your own words, it sounds like the heart is not in the reaction, but what people are reacting to.

I am moderately mouthy on social media. I get a much, much smaller level of pushback than similar women do. When I do, the level of respect is higher, and I almost never get my credentials questioned. But I regularly see women with much stronger credentials get those inspected and/or dismissed. Just yesterday I saw a woman with a relevant PhD getting talked down to by some random guy. And then when she made a separate post about her frustration with reply guys and how she was thinking about leaving Mastodon, some different random dude told her to "get a live".

Historically, we spent thousands of years keeping women in "their place". That was partly legal, but mostly social. We've solved the legal stuff in the US, but only recently. (E.g., states only started to outlaw marital rape in the 1970s, and it wasn't fully outlawed until 1992.) It should be no surprise to anybody that the social mechanisms did not magically evaporate the moment we passed some laws. And I think one of those social mechanisms is the disproportionate negativity women get from men when they are not in "their place". When they have the audacity to act like they know things and have valid opinions just like men do.

If you want to read more on this, Manne's "Down Girl: the logic of misogyny" is a very careful examination of the mechanisms and their effects. If you're looking for "the heart", I think that's a good place to continue your search.

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

There's a lot more interesting things in Julia's post than relitigating this specific example.

OJFord3• 3 years ago

That's why it stuck out to me I suppose - the rest seemed like solid advice, and this a misunderstanding that was treated not really in the spirit of some of the other points.

0xfae• 3 years ago

There is a difference between:

- What I meant to say.

- The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of).

- The impact of the words I use.

Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on.

Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings.

In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.

haswell5• 3 years ago

I fully agree that there are often clear distinctions between intent and impact, and that people should become more aware of this distinction and of the impact of their words.

In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.

I’d be more careful with this though. Ideally, this needs to look more like mutual respect/trust, and both parties are ideally:

1. Considering the impact of what they’re saying

2. Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when something doesn’t sound right, and talking about it when things seem misaligned

Caring about impact is important. There’s also a failure mode here that results in complete communication breakdown as one party tries not to upset the other.

Communication is intrinsically a shared experience, and both parties bear some responsibility for how things are interpreted. As long as both parties engage in good faith and communicate about confusion, everyone learns/grows and it’s a self solving problem.

TRiG_Ireland3• 3 years ago

The non-sexual meaning was almost certainly the intended one (because the sexual meaning makes no sense at all in that context). I think we can give the original developers a full pass and assign no blame. It may still be a good idea to change it (and, indeed, they have done so; it's just that Apple retains an older version for licensing reasons).

master-lincoln• 3 years ago

Given the headline, I was expecting this to be about tips for when writing a text in a public space, not for dealing with comments on texts you publicized.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

My rules for HN:

* Assume the person responding to you hasn't read the article, and has only briefly scanned your comment while mentally composing their reply.

* Anything abstract is going to get misunderstood; keep it concrete but vague.

* There is no consistent relationship between quality of a comment and how people respond to it.

* You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and that's the best thing to do in most cases.

* When in doubt, collapse the thread and move on.

mixedmath• 3 years ago

I agree with these rules. I would add:

* Always assume that no one will reply to a comment. Threads of comments are at most loosely based on a theme.

justin_oaks2• 3 years ago

Sometimes it's more disappointing to have nobody reply to a comment than for someone to respond negatively.

And yet it's very common to get no replies to any given comment. And that fact in itself is a common reason for people not to reply. Because it's likely nobody will reply to them!

iamflimflam1• 3 years ago

You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and that's the best thing to do in most cases.

Reminds me of a time I’d written a huge email - can’t remember now what had got me riled up. I showed it to a colleague to proof read and he just said “there’s only want way to improve this” and promptly hit the delete button…

samwillis• 3 years ago

This is a good list.

You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and that's the best thing to do in most cases.*

I do this maybe as much as 1/4 comments.

I would also add:

- Don't get into a back and fourth with a single other user, it's generally boring and goes nowhere.

- Don't rise to it if someone is trying to start an argument.

- Be generous, assume you are misunderstanding an apparent negative comment.

- Be complimentary, it makes peoples day.

bachmeier• 3 years ago

You can write a reply and then erase it without sending, and that's the best thing to do in most cases.

Sometimes I do this, but more commonly I will write my comment and then just not check that discussion ever again. I only check the discussion if it's a situation where I am willing to engage if there is a response. My experience has been that replies to any comment that's even mildly controversial are such that the other party will not bother trying to understand what I'm saying. In many cases I might be posting a piece of data (with a link to the source) and inevitably someone's going be upset because they don't like the data.

Zetice• 3 years ago

Eh, too cynical for my tastes.

If you need a list like this, I think a more productive thing you can do is work on is building up resilience to online discourse, usually by reducing ego.

It’ll enable you to take more things at face value, which in turn will expose you to a wider variety of viewpoints.

HN isn’t special, I’m not special, nobody owes me the time it would take to craft a quality response, and expecting or demanding something from strangers usually ends up in disappointment.

lanstin• 3 years ago

I mostly try to head this off by trying to be self-aware about my knowledge level on a topic, and saying “I’m not sure…” when I’m not sure about something.

This excellent tactic for avoiding pointless debate and inviting helpful replies is sadly beyond many people in the software field. Software folks are used to the past where you could master things completely. With the continued growth of knowledge and the growth of the worlds complexity, it is quite impossible even for one super intelligent person that was present at the dawn of creation to keep up; failing to consider disagreement as a potentially useful pointer to the situation where you don't have as much knowledge as you think is a risk. (edited to add "is a risk" so that was a sentence.)

I have seen multiple projects led by extremely smart people fail because they didn't listen to key information from less smart people that were nonetheless better informed about the particular technologies involved.

grog454• 3 years ago

Someone who thinks they know more than they do is a lot more dangerous than someone who doesn't know much but realizes it.

MichaelZuo• 3 years ago

It's quite common for someone to be just smart enough to be very dangerous but not smart enough to be very useful. Especially when it comes to sophisticated technology.

gremlinunderway• 3 years ago

Yeah, there's a really odd all or nothing kind of attitude with knowledge, experience or skill, as if "being smart" is like a linear growth Pokemon level-thing rather than being more like a radar chart of skills and experience.

Which I find so odd and absurd in a profession that's full of esoteric knowledge. Being experienced and smart obviously is a huge asset, but if you just aren't familiar with library X but new guy with no experience has been doing nothing but library X, the latter guy is the one to take advice from.

munificent• 3 years ago

Software development strongly self-selects for people who like black-and-white, all-or-nothing, binary reasoning.

Few people have patience for a tool that will fail to even attempt to run a several-million-line program because there happens to be a trivial typo in one line in one file. It should be no surprise that kind of people for whom behavior like that is reasonable are the kind of people to think intelligence is all-or-nothing, and that are too happy to point out true but irrevelant inaccuracies in a piece of writing.

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

These people may have decent raw intelligence, but they're NOT smart!

Actually smart people know what they know and don't know, constantly test their understanding, and are HAPPY when proven wrong, since that means they learned something new.

MonaroVXR• 3 years ago

I'm always waiting to be corrected and it's difficult since I correct myself and others don't know it.

kirso• 3 years ago

It just takes an incredible level of self-awareness and vulnerability.

Everyone thinks that the way to convince people to trust them or acknowledge them is to be know-it-all, but the truth is just being authentic and help will come.

nicbou• 3 years ago

This is solid advice.

Having dealt with what the author experienced, I'd like to add some advice:

- All online conversations are optional. You don't have to finish an exchange you don't enjoy. Leave idiots on read.

- You can't win everyone over. Some people are deliberately contrarian. Many argue in bad faith. Don't try to turn a provocation into a discussion.

- You don't owe your audience anything. They don't pay you.

Simon_O_Rourke• 3 years ago

In fairness, anyone getting enraged over articles about tcpdump online has way too much time on their hands.

gary_02• 3 years ago

Julia's writing also just has nice-person energy (without any of the forced cutesy-ness that some blogs suffer from) and I think she's getting back what she puts out. She's clearly a skilled writer who knows how to set a tone.

The default tone people tend to assume on the Internet is more brash, and that's the source of a lot of unnecessary problems. On the other hand, I don't mind a little snark or old-school Torvalds-style feistiness either (forced politeness would be boring) but that's going to attract a rowdier crowd. Not everyone needs to emulate that style of discourse.

hyperpape• 3 years ago

Agreed, Julia's writing has always struck me as great, and I have her in my head as a model to aspire to. Despite that, I feel like my tone is always much more of a lecture than I wish it was.

javajosh5• 3 years ago

Great post, as usual. Lots of good advice for me.

However it makes me sad that she blocked people for defending the author's meaning of "dig". Ignoring seems like a better path. I've often heard grope used in a non-sexual way, as in "groping in the dark" for something. This kind of over-reaction to language is a sore spot for me; like the Stanford language guidelines, telling people not to use the word "field" because it implies slavery. In the same way, she assumes someone defending the word is in favor of sexual assault. This is wrong and harmful, both to others and herself. To others because now they can't follow her posts; to herself because she's cut herself off from people who take the risk to argue something unpopular in good faith. This is how echo chambers form.

justin_oaks2• 3 years ago

What you say makes a lot of sense. It would do us all well to seek to ask more questions and seek to understand before reaching for the block button.

On the other hand, we all have limited time and patience for those who are likely arguing in bad faith. I won't fault someone for taking the quick route to defend their time and sanity.

Even if the others may be arguing in good faith, this isn't a court of law here. We don't have to assume EVERYONE is innocent, especially if they're mixed in a crowd of hecklers. Each person has the option of using the block functionality as an automatic way to ignore sets of people, even if it catches the innocent.

javajosh5• 3 years ago

I won't fault someone for taking the quick route to defend their time and sanity.

Nor would I. But there has to be a better solution than blocking, which is ostracism. It concerns me how easily we ostracize, how it cheapens people. This is especially true for someone internet famous like Julia Evans - she has so many followers, what does it matter to her? But I guarantee it mattered to the ones she blocked. It probably really hurt them, even if they wouldn't admit it.

hathchip4• 3 years ago

Julia Evans has written some of the best articles and zines about UNIX/networking and about how to learn technical topics in general. The people she blocked are not arguing in good faith, they are vexatious commenters who have no interest in discussing all the other things she has written about, but just want to pursue a very specific identity politics debate over and over again.

Not having those people in the discussion isn't an 'echo chamber', any more than asking a belligerent drunk gatecrasher to leave your birthday party creates an echo chamber.

Note that it doesn't matter whether or not these people are factually correct or not about the etymology of 'dig' for this to be the right conclusion for Julia to draw.

andai2• 3 years ago

The people she blocked are not arguing in good faith

You speak on their behalf?

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

Of all the good advice you say you read, why do you dwell on this one thing you don't like?

renewiltord• 3 years ago

These seem good. "Experience over opinions" was novel to me. Good one.

I didn't like "pre-empt" because it results in tedious prose. She's obviously a skillful writer so it's smooth for her, but I cannot do it right.

"Don't argue" is good. I fail this one frequently. The trick that works for me is to remind myself that I'm training someone for free.

I can't say I'm very good at "analyse negative comments". Some sort of CBT technique is probably necessary here, but I feel the following in order:

- "omg was I wrong?" followed by a quick check

- if yes, good outcome. I can just correct. if no, causes anger

I don't know why but being right and misunderstood is far more frustrating than being wrong. The latter triggers the "well, damn" dopamine response of discovery. But I'll keep pecking at the damned subject if I was right but the other guy refuses to understand it. This is my prime motivation for blocking on Twitter - and ideally people who misunderstand me frequently would block me too so I won't engage.

The others are sensible and it's nice that they're listed, but I don't think they are novel (which is obviously fine - presumably everyone has a different novel set here).

janalsncm2• 3 years ago

I have a personal blog where I write about strictly professional topics. I have another blog where I write about things under a pen name because they are opinions that some people might not like. Having a shadow identity gives me the space to be “wrong” if I need to be.

guy982387102• 3 years ago

Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-consciousness and political correctness? Author is self-censoring policy suggestions and social/cultural insights, which I personally find interesting to write and read about, especially the weirder ones that provide transformational experience. And the dig-related blocking is just jarring. It makes it look like the author is quick on the trigger.

PS: I just noticed that all comments in this thread that are even slightly critical are downvoted below zero. My own comment too. It's normal to see critical comments ignored (not upvoted) here, but downvoting anything remotely critical below zero is unusual even by HN standards. I guess a post about self-censorship attracts audience that desires this strange new self-conscious world where everyone has to nod to everyone else.

datagram• 3 years ago

The author is tactically avoiding discussions that she considers unproductive and does not want to participate in, hence the title of the blog post.

Is it just me or is this post screaming with self-consciousness and political correctness?

Good writers always consider the way their choice of words will affect their audience. Are you suggesting that this is a bad thing?

guy982387102• 3 years ago

Good writers always consider the way their choice of words will affect their audience.

It's not the choice of words. It's the choice of topics.

The author is tactically avoiding discussions that she considers unproductive

The author is not avoiding certain topics because they are unproductive but rather because she fears backlash on social media.

wilde• 3 years ago

The author is saying that they want to write things that generate discussion threads of interest to them. You have different interests.

Quick on the trigger is exactly the point of the dig example. The author is reminding you that you have control over what you see and you should use it. Most people have a set of topics they can’t constructively engage in debate over. That’s fine. I’d rather they conserve their energy and keep posting on topics where they can.

—

Upvote means I agree. Downvote means I disagree. You might have other opinions about what they should represent but the nature of voting systems is that they trend towards this. Like how I wish people would rate things 3/5 by default rather than 5/5. Sadly only IMDB ended up like this.

oporquinho94• 3 years ago

Stories are definitely the best way to get something across - also the content i enjoy the most reading since it's usually high quality and personal writing. Much more interesting than clickbait thought pieces.

andai2• 3 years ago

Wait until she hears about finger...

Some tactics for writing in public

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