

Slipping away from the Perl community - hsmyers
http://perlbuzz.com/2011/04/slipping-away.html

======
iamjustlooking
There's another post about this from a few months ago, I guess he's been
feeling this way for quite a while.

<http://perlbuzz.com/2010/11/think-for-perls-sake.html>

~~~
class_vs_object
I like his emphasis on kindness. Imagine a forum where you could rate a post
on a separate dimension of kindness/ meanness (alongside rating on the usual
vague dimension of "like/ dislike")... with restriction of privileges for
people who are persistently mean. :)

~~~
mkrecny
cool idea

------
fleitz
It's about manners, a please and a thank you will go far further than any
cogent argument.

If people don't like you they won't listen to you even if you're right. Even
in geek circles logos is the last form of rhetoric to be considered.

------
AndyNemmity
Agree with him totally. Really like him a lot from #perl, he's an incredible
human being.

------
scythe
I'm throwing my tantrum all the way to Hacker News! Here's to bitter angst and
indiscreet not-quite finger-pointing.

~~~
pyre
If you accept trolling, flamewars, and abrasive personalities as just the cost
of doing business, then what is any different about tantrums?

~~~
scythe
Hypocrisy.

There's nothing more pathetic and annoying than and "I'm leaving" blog post.
They always take the same format: a bunch of complaints leveled against
nameless individuals (but _they know who they are_ , that sort of thing) and
lip service to the author's pet peeve that nobody else cares about.

I mean, it kind of started off with a big invitation to please roll your eyes:
43? 43 is not that old. You're tired of all "the arguing"? Stop arguing. But
let's start at the end, because that's where the meat of this post is.

"I'm tired of seeing cool new projects and realizing I will never use them,
because I don't want to be associated with key members of the communities
surrounding them."

This is stupid. He's tired of acting like a petulant child, he says.

"I'm tired of those unable or unwilling to see outside their blinkered little
world, and to think that others might think differently, and to think that
their feelings might matter."

So he writes a blog post and put a reddit vote-me-up on the side.

"I'm tired of having to delete comments on Perlbuzz because the commenters
can't manage to make a point without slinging insults at those with whom they
disagree."

You _moderate_ a community. It's not a status position, it's a job. If it's
too much work, you can quit. Nobody will hate you for it. People quit staff
positions in the big communities I'm a part of all the time; they usually stay
in the community and they're just tired of taking care of it. It's fair, and
it doesn't require a rant.

Obviously he's not happy with the state of moderation on perlbuzz, but that's
something best taken up with the rest of the staff "hey $name, we should crack
down on insults more" not the community at large. When moderators do this, it
ends up making the whole community look bad. That shouldn't surprise you,
because "making the community look bad" is _clearly_ the intent of his little
rant here. He's mud-slinging.

"That means less contribution, technical and otherwise, from me, and from the
others who have shared the same concerns with me regarding their own
contributions."

What's funny is this is probably the kind of status game he's complaining
about up above. The people who are the most profane and arrogant in a
community are none-too-rarely the people who estimate highly the value of
their contributions (be they commensurately brilliant a la Gregory House or
otherwise).

I'm sure -- I don't know the guy, but I can give him the benefit of the doubt
-- I'm sure Andy Lester has made some pretty valuable contributions to the
Perl community in the past. So, yes, "Perl loses because of it." This little
ending touch is apparently Mr. Lester's way of totally disclaiming involvement
in the situation; he's absolutely refusing to take responsibility for leaving.
And Perl loses because of it.

Now on to the totally unrelated personal quest that nobody cares about he
tries to make it applicable to the situation.

>I'm tired of hearing that profanity in written communication doesn't matter
because hey, it's just words, man.

This is a curveball. How do you think this little unrelated tidbit made it in
to the post? I mean, what does it have to do with anything?

As far as I can tell, it's clearly a reference to some other argument. It's an
argument he also probably _lost_ , because nobody keeps complaining and
carrying on about the arguments they won. It's lame to bring it up while
complaining about the general attitude of the Perl community towards each
other.

<tangent>

It's also an argument where, if you ask me, he's totally wrong. Profanity -
_fuck_ , _shit_ , _cunt_ , _piss_ , _asshole_ , _cocksucker_ \- the complaint
is leveled against those who say these are "just words", and perhaps "just
words" isn't a very good description. Profanity is more like noise. Its effect
when added to a sentence is to make the rest of the sentence _louder_. It has
no intrinsic kindness or meanness to it. Some of the best parts of life are
"fucking awesome"; the worst are "fucking terrible" or even "fucking shitty".

So it's a part of the English language, and it gets plenty of use in text
because there aren't many ways to make text "loud". It's a natural human
instinct to talk louder when you're angry or excited, and complain as much as
you will that instinct really isn't going anywhere fast. Even those who
abstain from "fuck" and "shit" find other ways to amplify their statements, be
it through an excessive use of formatting (bold formatting is both louder and
more visually offensive than italic formatting), plenty of symbolic annotation
(by surrounding words with -dashes-, \ _asterisks\_ , /slashes/, or
_underscores_), or abuse of grammatical conventions (these are too numerous to
list, but include writing every word on it's own line, Capitalizing Every Word
In The Sentence, putting. a. period. after. everything., or the dreaded
"allcaps").

To me, it's pointless and silly and even elitist in some cases to argue over
_how_ precisely this amplification of textual communication is done. To draw a
distinction between the guy who peppers his sentence with "cunt" and the guy
who murders my linefeed with his Enter key is disingenuous, and to exile those
who don't use whatever a community's "preferred" amplification style is
insular and xenophobic. Profanity ranks quite low on the scale of offenses
here, because it is perhaps the easiest to ignore and I'd rather see it than
most of the alternatives.

</tangent>

A bit of background: I'm not a part of the Perl community; I have scant
knowledge of Perl but as far as I know it's a fine language used and
maintained by plenty of talented individuals and I've heard Moose is really
cool though I can't make head or tail of it.

I do, however, know _pathetic_ when I see it.

EDIT: I hope this isn't too personal. The main point is not "I hate Andy
Lester" -- just please don't ever imitate what he's doing here.

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
I suspect this fails the "say it to his face" test.

~~~
scythe
Who am I to say things to this guy's face? I don't know him. I haven't been
aware of his existence, beyond maybe having used a project or two that he's
worked on, until today. He presumably doesn't want to hear from me.

I'm saying that his behavior is bad for the community, both Perl's and ours.
I'm saying it to "the HN community", because I have nobody else to say it to.

We've seen this before. It was titled "Rails is a ghetto" and whatever change
it inspired didn't cover the drama it caused. Zed himself said he was sorry to
have written it.

~~~
pyre
I haven't read "Rails is a ghetto," but I do know that Zed Shaw's writing
style is a lot more abrasive than this article. The basic premise here seems
to be, "Why can't people just be civil to each other?" On the other hand, most
of Zed Shaw's writing is of the form, "I'm right, and these people are wrong.
They are so wrong that it physically pains me, and I should probably sue them
for that." The only link that they would seem to have is that they are both,
"I'm leaving X community, and here is why" blog posts.

------
jrockway
Ah yes, Andy Lester: the only person who has ever banned me from contributing
to his open source projects. What a role model for civil interactions.

~~~
nkurz
I know neither you nor Andy in person. But from reading Andy online, I get the
impression that he is bright, talented, and kind. From reading you, I get the
impression of someone bright, talented, and immature. I value your technical
contributions here, but at times fear your overall impact on the site.

Banning you from a project is not hypocritical on his part -- it's exactly
what he's talking about. He feels, rightly or wrongly, that it's better to
remove the source of incivility than to put up with it. You've got a lot of
obvious talent and knowledge, but yes, Andy might be a good role model for
civil interactions.

~~~
jrockway
_but at times fear your overall impact on the site_

Why? Because I don't like iPads?

~~~
nkurz
No, I don't care for iPads either. My fear is that HN is a wonderful but
fragile community. You offer a mix of knowledge and irreverence (I'm pretty
sure I vote you up here more than I vote you down), but those who see you
winning attention for snide but insightful comments are more likely to copy
the snideness than the insight. I like that civil public discussion is still
possible here, and want to keep it that way.

~~~
jrockway
Fair enough. I should think a little more before hitting reply.

~~~
stevan_little
BULLSHIT! You are jrockway, shooting from the hip is your trademark. As for
context to this comment, tl;dr.

------
groovy2shoes
"And it makes me sad that Perl loses because of it."

Perl loses for lots of other reasons than profanity and verbal abuse.

~~~
rjbond3rd
Oh the irony.

------
BasDirks
This guy says _tired_ a lot.

If you're tired, take a nap. When you wake back up, the world won't seem such
a horrid place, and you'll be able to get back to making cool software again
instead of lamenting.

~~~
pyre
He's basically experiencing burn-out with respect to the Perl community. I'm
confident that if "taking more naps" was a cure-all for burn-out, then burn-
out wouldn't be such an issue.

Aside: I don't think that he was being literal in his use of the word 'tired.'
I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you're response comes off a bit
like this:

    
    
      person 1: I'm sick and tired of dealing with these
                issues!
      person 2: If you're sick, then you should see a doctor!

~~~
BasDirks
I meant to say that when shit starts getting to you, it can help to get away
from it for a bit.

------
guelo
It must be a tough world out there for the overly-sensitive.

~~~
guelo
Wow, it seems I've gotten about a -11 karma for this comment so far, I guess
pg must have removed the -4 limit.

So apparently people believe that the world is just great for the overly-
sensitive. Weird.

Anyway, here's your chance to downvote me a second time!

~~~
socillion
My perception is that people downvoted you because your comment was a mean
spirited shot which contributed absolutely nothing to the discussion, not
because they disagreed with you.

