Ftrain

Yeah, the open-source project I'm on moved all of our dev communications (†all of them) to discord, several years ago, and gladly left IRC without the dignity of a burial.

† Email and mailing lists were something we forbade from day 1. There are a variety of sociological reasons why they're vile, but I think a lot of it has to do with bikeshedding, via "low-cost involvement" - people who care more about potstirring than actually getting work done have a cheap and easy way to keep tabs on big announcement and pick fights. I've experienced a huge number of people who've earned a 'stake in the discussion' by making some small contribution, and then jumped in on every discussion trying to exercise some informal kind of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto (insofar as such a thing arises naturally from the basic human decency of giving people the benefit of the doubt). What I like about realtime comms - especially ones with nice, logged discussions in multiple, visible rooms, is you don't have to be plugged-in 24/7 to keep up with stuff like you would on IRC (without a bouncer), but at least you have to have some real "skin in the game" of paying attention and being involved - which generally biases towards the folks doing the real work. Decisions get made without the armchair generals; occasionally they'll show up after some big decision got executed on and something was built, with an angry assertion of "Why wasn't I consulted?!?"††, but usually the existence of the…

To play devil's advocate for a moment, we should also remember that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) people do have a choice in what they're offended by, and how they react to those feelings of offence. A lot of the people in this thread aren't even saying that they find it offensive personally, but that they feel that they ought to find it offensive on behalf of other people, which is very much a conscious decision on their part. If you react to the mere fact that some people complain about something without considering whether they might be wrong, you'll self-censor unnecessarily. And that makes it more difficult for others to resist self-censorship later.

The thing is, I don't think 'bro pages' are offensive. More than that, I don't think that they should be offensive. Are we seriously saying that we should attempt to avoid using any words, even in metaphors or puns, that might ever remind someone of a person stereotypically assumed to be annoying? Really? This feels like linguistic bikeshedding from people who, having realised that words have the power to offend, have set out to find offence where not only was none intended but where it could only be found by actively construing the speech as offensive. It's a massive piece of WWIC[1], driven by an attempt to appear more sophisticated and culturally aware, which massively exaggerates the potential harm caused in order to make a case that someone else (but never the critic) should have behaved differently. …

The tferris comment (is it the tferris? It's been very active recently.) is basically what Gabriel pointed out -- an instant inverse reaction to the post's theme.

In our digital isolation, it's natural. We want to scream "They are wrong and I am right! Look at me!" When we see someone else getting attention, we want to divert the stream of eyeballs and admiration to ourselves.

It's exactly "Why wasn't I consulted?" syndrome (http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html). People see words in front of them, and think they are being consulted and prompted to respond. Here's a hint: you don't have to say anything.

People feel ignored when they see an opinion they don't believe getting attention. Nobody likes being ignored. To counteract the feeling of being ignored, let's just be doubly blunt and vitriolic so you give me more attention instead of the existing roving opinion. Fuck your logo and your little dog too! (and your engineering, where you live, and your obtuse hairstyle!) My opinions are clearly superior. I win.

The commenter suddenly assumes the role of CEO and decides to pass judgment on a third party. What the heck? It's simultaneously insane and natural (it must be natural -- see every youtube comment ever).

Humanity needs a firmware upgrade. Until then, act less negatively, don't inject vapid personal opinions ("This is cool!!!" "this is so dumb"), and help people who may not understand get up to speed.

This reminds me of a short story by Paul Ford from a few years back[1]:

We had gone to a baseball game at the beginning of the season. They had played a song on the public address system, and she sang along without permission. They used to factor that into ticket price—they still do if you pay extra or have a season pass—but now other companies handled the followup. And here was the video from that day, one of many tens of thousands simultaneously recorded from gun scanners on the stadium roof. In the video my daughter wore a cap and a blue T-shirt. I sat beside her, my arm over her shoulder, grinning. Her voice was clear and high; the ambient roar of the audience beyond us filtered down to static...

I told my waiting daughter to go ahead and pay the few dollars, just part of the latent cost of a ticket. She tapped and the tablet made its cash-register sound, and the video was irrevocably destroyed so that it could never again be shared.

[1] https://www.ftrain.com/nanolaw

No one is as focused on "shipping it out the door" as a news editor, according to Paul Ford in this essay (http://www.ftrain.com/editors-ship-dammit.html) posted to HN yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891392

Merlin Mann at http://www.43folders.com/ started out writing about David Allen's GTD system, but then turned away from "productivity porn" and started writing more focused essays about creativity.

This isn't necessarily related to shipping products, but I love this Jeff Atwood quote: "If you can’t come up with at least one interesting thing to talk about every day, you’re not trying hard enough! The world is just full of fascinating stuff." from this interview: http://community.devexpress.com/blogs/aspnet/archive/2010/10/24/video-interview-with-jeff-atwood-aka-codinghorror-com.aspx

The comments on this thread are such an embarrassment. Someone's worked hard on something for months, and people go and piss all over it.

If you don't think this is a useful or good app, you don't even have to look at it. Just pass.

At least when someone launches a product, if you don't have anything encouraging or constructive to say, it's best not to say anything.

It seems HN is suffering more and more from the "Why wasn't I consulted?" angst - http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html