This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah it's great for that. You can ask really detailed specific questions, supply lots of context and then ask follow up questions, in real time. Whereas on a forum you're waiting and waiting...
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/07/10/welcome-wagon-classifying-comments-on-stack-overflow/
To be fair, most humans answering questions on stack overflow are unpaid volunteers. (Sure, a few are Godharding their own score for professional reasons, but the most efficient way of doing this is to plagiarize answers from other people to similar questions.)
Giving advice to people who are advise-resistant can be very frustrating even when you are getting paid for it. Sometimes it emerges that the advice-seeker is planning to do the equivalent of adding helium balloons to a tank to build an air superiority platform, and after a lengthy discussion your only impact is that he is now planning to use hydrogen instead to counter your argument about helium prices.
For me, 99% of the value of stack overflow is that a google search redirects me to a question someone has asked years ago. While it sometimes happen that I try to communicate on IRC, github, SO or the like with random strangers to solve a problem I am having, that is basically an admission of defeat, and I tend not to surrender easily.
The tone on SO should reflect that >90% of the value provided by the site is to passive readers. If you ask a new, interesting, relevant question that is providing a tremendous service to the readers, same as answering such a question. If you are asking a question which was already answered five times because you did not bother to google first, you are wasting everyone's time. If your code or design is shit, then anyone pointing that out is providing a valuable service to the community, given that the question will mainly be read by people with a similar knowledge level.
With IRC (or discord?), this calculation is different, because IRC logs are typically not google-indexed. (Or at least I can not remember finding the answer to a technical question in an IRC log not explicitly generated by a human, ever.) There is not really an audience who is the main beneficiary of the interaction.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link