[HN Gopher] Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays
___________________________________________________________________
Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays
Author : O__________O
Score : 1276 points
Date : 2022-12-23 11:43 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ycombinator.com)
| tmountain wrote:
| Dang, thanks for helping make my most oft visited website stay
| true to its values. I really appreciate the work you do.
| champagnepapi wrote:
| Agreed. Thanks a lot Dang!
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You run a good ship. Thanks for the well managed forum. Happy
| hols.
| yvsong wrote:
| Dang! Another year flied away.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Political activist moderators ftw
| Extigy wrote:
| Thanks Dang! Appreciate all the work you put in!
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| Thank you Dang! Happy holidays!
| nathell wrote:
| Thank you to everyone participating in HN. pg, dang, but also
| everyone posting and commenting: you're the part of what makes it
| a unique place.
|
| I've learned a lot from HN. It's been a source of distraction
| feeding my ADHD, but it's also made my knowledge a lot more vast
| and thorough and my thinking sharper. I'm grateful, and I'm sure
| I'll continue revisiting it almost every day.
|
| May everyone's holiday bring you all that you cherish in this
| period.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| HN is ~~probably~~ the best online forum I've found since
| Slashdot in its original glory (/r/AskHistorians is pretty good
| too). Kudos to dang and anyone else who does the moderating (and
| to the users who post, of course.)
|
| edit: not "probably"
| wutheringh wrote:
| I troll this site so much and he warns and bans me on all my
| accounts but I still appreciate his attitude, there's no
| inconsistency to it and all his arguments for why he enforces
| rules are always well-reasoned.
| soVeryTired wrote:
| Why though? You're just making his job harder and the forum a
| worse place.
| wutheringh wrote:
| I get bored and lonely sometimes and I don't always have the
| energy for intelligent discussion, I usually save that for
| work. Tbh I probably suffer from ASPD.
| striking wrote:
| Instead of making dang's life harder and making HN a worse
| place, have you tried therapy? It might cost money, but it
| at least has a chance at treating the underlying cause or
| of teaching you better coping mechanisms.
| wutheringh wrote:
| The scientific consensus is that therapy doesn't really
| help much for sufferers of ASPD and resources are better
| diverted toward the people they hurt. I donate to a
| homeless shelter in my area and give money to homeless
| people to make up for the havoc I wreak here.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Chaos can cause happy accidents, as well as unhappy ones.
|
| I sometimes throw out comments i _know_ will catch flamewars,
| because (a) I think i can say something funny, at the least,
| and (b) if I catch a flamewar, then the rest of the thread
| will hopefully be less polluted with char, smut and smoke.
| [deleted]
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| Happy holidays! Thanks for almost single-handedly keeping this
| place from devolving.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| From one Dan G. to another (?), thanks.
| tomcam wrote:
| Dude is a beast. Very grateful for this site.
| brushfoot wrote:
| To think I've been pronouncing it like the minced oath all these
| years.
|
| Maybe it is, but now my head's going to insist on "Danjee,"
| rhymes with Angie.
|
| Hacker News, a.k.a. DanG's List. ;)
|
| Sincerely, thanks, Dan, for all you do here. HN has some of the
| most polite and thought-provoking online discussions I know of
| thanks in no small part to your work, and I come back year after
| year for it. You've helped make this place a hugely valuable
| resource and just a genuinely nice hangout spot. Thanks again and
| Happy Holidays to you and yours.
| marak830 wrote:
| You just made me realise I've been pronouncing in as in dangle,
| I know it's Dan G but for some reason my mind refuses that when
| reading it XD
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767267
| anyfactor wrote:
| Has Dang ever done any AMA? Would love to know how he doesn't get
| burnt out.
|
| I once emailed him about a very minor thing, he replied at the
| same day and was very accomodating. I was very happy about that
| but at the same time was very confused. I bet he is getting
| hundreds of email like that but how does he manage the time for
| them?
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| While I really dislike the track of moderation policy on HN
| over the last 5+ years, I do have a lot of respect for dang
| being willing to engage in earnest discussion about moderation
| when prompted.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I emailed him with something and silly as wondering why I
| didn't have downvote powers and he replied saying I was 1 off
| and he upvoted a comment of mine to push me over the threshold.
| Such a small thing but doing small things for everybody must be
| a lot of work.
| tantalor wrote:
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
| asim wrote:
| Thank you Dan, for your efforts but also for the time and help
| you have given me.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| The internet sucks, HN sucks less than most and its in no small
| part due to Dang - thanks Dang.
| soVeryTired wrote:
| The CmdrTaco of the modern age. Thanks for your hard work.
| h2odragon wrote:
| OOff i dunno if that's the compliment you meant it to be :)
|
| Gene Spafford, maybe?
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Brings back memories ;)
|
| https://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/
|
| Thanks, dang! Closest analogy is probably The Wells' Tom
| Mandel:
|
| _What Tom Mandel knew, and what many companies and
| individuals still refuse to learn, is that on- line is not
| about selling something to someone or bringing information to
| the starving masses. What it is about is people wanting to
| connect, in a real and genuine way, to other people free of
| the filters of older media; to establish, no matter how
| ephemerally, communities of like minded souls who are not
| separated by the facts of geography; to create a place where
| it really is the content of one 's character that is the
| first and foremost thing people see_
|
| https://americandigest.org/mt-archives/005663.php
|
| Also, Tom Mandel was the first man to stream his dying live
| on the internet, so there is that to live up to!
| soVeryTired wrote:
| Did Taco get himself cancelled or something? Way back when,
| slashdot was every bit as central to tech culture as HN is
| today.
| h2odragon wrote:
| CmdrTaco was/is a good person [1], but as a moderator he
| had biases and faults like many others.
|
| Before Slashdot, there was Usenet, and Mr Spafford was one
| of several there who helped explore what "online community"
| might mean.
|
| There's a few BBS sysops I could list too but they're not
| as widely famous and in some cases were always pseudonyms
| anyway.
|
| [1] insofar as a vi user can be
| bryan0 wrote:
| Anyone else think dang would make a great guest on Lex Fridman's
| podcast??
| evandale wrote:
| Happy holidays and thanks for making this such a great space
| dang! Hacker News is my new favourite site for news in 2022.
| attilaberczik wrote:
| merry xmas!
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This place is a refuge for me in the modern world of online
| discourse. I'm deeply indebted to those who made it and keep it
| running.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Happy Holidays Dang!
| erdevs wrote:
| Happy holidays, dang! Thank you for all the effort you pour into
| making HN as useful and vibrant a forum as it can be. You help
| set the bar for productive online discourse, and that means
| something and is more and more important in the world.
| 93po wrote:
| Thanks for dealing with my bullshit dang, and the bullshit of
| everyone else that doesn't all-that-strictly follow the
| guidelines every single time
| cm_silva wrote:
| HN is not perfect but it's Pretty Damn Good, and in no small part
| thanks to Dan.
|
| Happy Hollidays, everybody ;-)
| donpott wrote:
| All of my interactions with dang have been extremely positive. He
| is one of the main reasons why HN is the community it is. Thank
| you for all you do and happy holidays!!!
| pomian wrote:
| Merry Christmas! And thanks.
| harabat wrote:
| Dang, you're a model for my own communication style, a source of
| indirect advice for a project that I'm building (one day I'll be
| ready to reach out to you for direct advice), and someone I see
| as an example of a good human. Thank you!
| ChewFarceSkunk wrote:
| Screenshotting this thread as a valueable appendix to my thesis
| on Stockholm syndrome.
| aliswe wrote:
| dang worship!
| kushan2020 wrote:
| We want to build our heroes and feel good about ourselves at
| the end of the day.
| roflyear wrote:
| I think dang is genuinely a good person, or even great person.
| How could he not be?
|
| I do also think the moderation guidelines on HN are pretty hot
| garbage and almost impossible to follow without losing almost
| all substance.
| tgv wrote:
| Thanks, indeed. With the increasing traffic, and the spikes in
| polarization, it must get harder to keep up every year.
| ariarad0089 wrote:
| Dang, I believe, and again this is my belief alone, is like
| moderators of other social media, an FBI (or US Nation security
| state) insider. He has shown ruthlessness anytime someone
| criticized FBI in this site. Given the recent development, how
| much power FBI has on content moderation in ALL social media and
| how they go out of their way to PAY moderators, this is hardly
| surprising. And in fact, in a dystopian universe, dang would
| probably have to resign as a moderator and bow to FBI claims if
| he did not do what he frequently does.
|
| So no I don't thank dang but I am grateful for this site to
| exist.
| dang wrote:
| I realize that replies like this run the risk of making things
| worse, but I'll try.
|
| We're not in contact, let alone cahoots, with FBI or any other
| government agencies, or really any other organization at all. I
| think there have been a handful of subpoeanas (maybe 3?) over
| the years, related to ongoing investigations, but nothing
| memorable.
| raverbashing wrote:
| As much as I have my share of beefs with the site, I know that
| Dan.G has a thankless and Sisyphean task
|
| Happy Holidays and try to relax a bit (I don't even know when
| does he manage to get some sleep, for real)
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Certainly not thankless. I am thankful. We are thankful.
| newbieuser wrote:
| I really respect people who think this is a really good
| moderation on this site. Your belief that something that does not
| exist exists is truly astonishing.
| civopsec wrote:
| No appreciation from me.
| mherrmann wrote:
| Your work really positively impacts this community. Thank you,
| dang.
| agolio wrote:
| Thank you dang! I often see your comments while browsing and
| always find them informative and reasonable. Good quality
| moderation.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Occasionally I peruse dang's comments just for fun:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
| fragmede wrote:
| Jeeze what care he shows by patiently asking trolls not to
| post flamebait.
| O__________O wrote:
| Dang, thank you for everything you do - Happy Holidays!!
|
| For the unfamiliar, here's more information on Dang:
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
| defrost wrote:
| and an obligatory NewYorker alt link:
|
| https://archive.ph/DfXFL
|
| Best wishes to all.
| olivermuty wrote:
| Up until this moment I assumed Dang was a last name and
| visualized an asian person whenever the name popped up.
|
| Cool article :)
| memling wrote:
| I had always thought it was just what he said every single
| time he had to moderate.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Some more Daniel Gackle appreciation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225775
| Tepix wrote:
| Happy Holidays! What is Bell's username?
| O__________O wrote:
| Here's Scott's HN username:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sctb
|
| Though per Dang, since sometime in late 2019, he's no longer
| a HN mod:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115
|
| * Might be wrong, but my understanding is that Dang is now
| the only official moderator, but others do help out
| unofficially.
| j1elo wrote:
| Thanks to this comment, I found out about the twitter account
| @shit_hn_says, and what a finding.
| fragmede wrote:
| And the related discussion of said link:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040
|
| There's a real wealth of thoughts from dang about this site
| buried in there! Also definitions for MOT (Major Ongoing Topic)
| and SNI (Specific New Information) which I'd not seen before.
| O__________O wrote:
| Direct link to Dang's comment covering topics of "Major
| Ongoing Topic" and "Specific New Information" mentioned
| above:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490
| agolio wrote:
| > In an Emacs file, Gackle collects ...
|
| I would love to see this "Emacs file" :D
|
| Jokes aside, a nice article
| theCrowing wrote:
| I hope everything levels out next year and we are not all in a
| constant state of infighting and can start to work on something
| better than the tyranny of "Breaking News". thx dang for keeping
| it civil in the last years.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Dang this is the best place on the internet and for as long as it
| lasts, I appreciate your hard work and commitment!
| Gigachad wrote:
| Merry Christmas
| walljm wrote:
| Thanks dang! It can be a difficult job, and you do it well. Merry
| Christmas and Happy Holidays!
| willcipriano wrote:
| Thanks and uh, sorry for any headaches, I know I'm a
| unconventional guy with some ideas that particularly recently
| aren't the easiest to defend. I never intend to create a
| moderation burden but I fear it may have happened on some
| occasions this year.
|
| Also I believe that it may be more than Dang behind the scenes so
| thanks to the rest of the team as well.
| bachmeier wrote:
| It's gonna be a big loss for HN when Elon Musk signs him to
| moderate Twitter.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| I suspect that HN users are uniquely moderateable in a way the
| general public isn't.
|
| I'd be very curious if Dang would agree that we're more
| rational and more prone to accept course correction than
| normies, or conversely that we think we're so smart that we're
| harder to moderate than anybody else.
| sph wrote:
| Not before Musk builds CloneX to make a couple dang clones to
| manage the whole of Twitter. But I reckon he'd want to rewrite
| the whole thing in Arc :)
| paul7986 wrote:
| He'd have to moderate Trump oops I mean Musk and Musk isn't
| one to be moderated.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Just train ChatGPT on his mod history and off you go ;)
| xoa wrote:
| Many a long time forum has come and gone, degraded in culture,
| succumbed to featuritis or any of the many possible ends such
| gatherings online can face as the years slip by. It really is
| special how HN has stayed on balance a place one can discover
| fascinating new things and people who stimulate the mind.
| Moderation plays a huge role in tending that spirit, and I too am
| truly grateful for the work you do here.
|
| Happy holidays to the whole of HN as well. Moderation tends
| things, but the great people far more knowledgeable and from far
| different backgrounds from me who submit and discuss are the meat
| on the bones! Thanks to all of you, you've helped me through
| quite a few challenges!
| eastbound wrote:
| Thank you @pg and @dang for maintaining this forum, because
| you've been my MBA.
|
| See, I'm an engineer, a moderately good one, passionate with
| business but unable to get the connections to start one, let
| alone _know_ how to start one.
|
| Thanks to countless essays, from Paul Graham's to Kalzumeus or
| Joel on Software, and countless comments, bouncing ideas, and
| books (Founders at Work), etc., when I started my company, I
| knew exactly what to do, how to react to catastrophic events,
| how to notice a pivot, etc. It led me to hiring 3 employees and
| having the money to hire 5-10 more, bootstrapped and always
| spending wisely. Thank you HN.
|
| I wonder whether there's now a place to learn how to go from 3
| employees to 30. We hear very few stories of managers on HN, as
| opposed to stories of founders.
|
| Lots of my friends call me talented, and treat my 10-year
| business with respect.
|
| Well, I have a little secret.
|
| It's always been you, HN.
|
| PS: Maybe I should apply to YCombinator in the end, to give you
| the 7% of my business I owe you ;)
| marktani wrote:
| best moderator, thanks dang!!
| yrgulation wrote:
| Thanks for putting up for those of us whom are too rebellious!
| Promise changes in the coming year. Happy holidays!!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Are there other moderators? I only know of Dang, who does great
| work, but don't want to omit anyone else.
| dang wrote:
| There are, but I'm the only public one.
| O__________O wrote:
| Might be wrong, but my understanding is that Dang is now the
| only official moderator, but others do help out unofficially.
| bamboozled wrote:
| You da man Dang, thanks !!
| revskill wrote:
| How about integrate AI to automate comment moderation ? So you
| can retire now ?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Nice to see some humor thrown around in this thread :)
| endymi0n wrote:
| Getting one of my comments banned by dang in his calm and
| substantiated manner was a wakeup moment for me. I like my
| discussions hot, but this was the time where I realized that
| keeping a discussion valuable and on point is probably more
| important than winning it in the grand scheme of things.
|
| Incidentally, it also gradually managed to cure me from free-
| speech absolutism. (By now, I think almost all Xisms and extremes
| are nonsense, but that's a different hot discussion to be had).
|
| This forum wouldn't be the same without him.
|
| Thanks dang.
| corobo wrote:
| Similar, when I went a bit overboard feeding a troll I got a
| calmly worded request to not do it again and to refresh on the
| guidelines -- which I did. It seemed like a fair request.
|
| I've tried to keep it in mind since too. I also set my delay
| setting to 10 minutes so that I can self-mod anything that
| reads back a bit too snarky. That's handy.
|
| Something else was swapping out HN replies by email to HN
| replies by RSS. Can't get caught up in a flamewar if I only
| check once a day :)
|
| The moderation style here (light handed on first infraction,
| and ideally paid for the work) will be kept in mind if I'm ever
| running a community of some sort.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > it also gradually managed to cure me from free-speech
| absolutism
|
| It's entirely unsurprising that people who appreciate current
| moderator behavior also have zero philosophical backbone.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| "isms in my opinion, are not good.". --ferris Beuller
|
| I find it interesting that you like to resolve conflict using
| passionate discussion. Some of my best friends are this way. I
| have always preferred to calmly put forward supporting
| evidence, taking turns like a card game. I always felt like
| allowing myself to become emotional when debating something
| meant I had lost. That is what my debate teachers said. But my
| friends felt if I wasn't passionate, I must not be invested in
| the conversation and had thus lost. It took a bit for us to
| understand each other. Particularly because I _wasn 't_ really
| invested in winning, just finding out which position was
| correct.
| scarface74 wrote:
| At my last job, I was brought in by the then new CTO to make
| their company "cloud native" as they were both trying to
| bring development in house and pivot toward selling access to
| our micro services to large health care providers. We
| aggregated publicly available (non PII) provider data from
| all 50 states and national databases.
|
| I never had a formal interview. We met for lunch through a
| recruiter that was helping him hire. We just talked like
| adults. I had no real non theoretical AWS experience at the
| time. But I had led projects before.
|
| He took a chance on me. After a couple of months and we got
| to know each other. I told him that neither one of us had
| time for "shit sandwiches". We have a lot to do and we need
| to be able to be honest with each other.
|
| After a while, when we were just talking alone he would just
| be blunt. He once asked me "why are you coming to me with
| this shit. You have admin access to everything. Come up with
| a solution and let me know how much it will cost". I would
| also tell him "you know in your heart that's a dumb move and
| isn't going to turn out well".
|
| We had passionate technical disagreements. But if the
| argument was well made, either one of us would "disagree and
| commit" or change our opinions.
|
| We got a lot of shit done. Two years later, I ended up at AWS
| in ProServe almost exclusively because he pushed me to be
| better, more articulate, stretch myself, etc and the company
| had an exit for 10x revenue (small company - $30 million
| exit). I probably would have gotten about $50K - $70K if I
| had stayed or about $30K if I had exercised my options - not
| life changing money. But my two year sign on bonus was more
| than that at AWS.
|
| I still talk to him sometimes and he said one of the major
| motivating factors for the acquisition is how well my designs
| stood up to the growth and increase in traffic right after
| Covid and they could point at their cloud maturity -
| scalability, redundancy, etc.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are saying. Do you mean that calmly
| stating my position and reasons could perceived as a
| dishonest "shit sandwich"? If so, that is what my friends
| and I came to in the end. If they didn't give me reasoned
| argument, I would ignore them regardless of their passion,
| and if I wasn't sure enough of my opinion to act upset that
| it was being challenged, they would ignore me as well. I
| say act but it is more me allowing myself to become
| emotionally attached to my position for the purpose of
| truth finding. With maybe a few expletives added
| strategically if I know they value them. So a bit of acting
| too.
| scarface74 wrote:
| A shit sandwich is
|
| 1. Spend time saying something positive
|
| 2. "This is why you suck"
|
| 3. Spend time saying something positive.
|
| Let's just get to #2. Don't waste time trying to protect
| my feelings. Most of the time even for #2 you waste time
| trying not to be too "hurtful".
|
| Only discussing #2 avoids wasting time and helped me
| improve and get to a solution.
|
| I can be diplomatic when necessary. But it's like when
| you are learning a foreign language and translating
| everything in your head.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| Yes, agreed.
|
| One argument for spending time on 1 and 3: Step 2 alone
| can ignite fight-or-flight responses in people's limbic
| systems. If that happens, rationality goes out the
| window. (Even more than usual, I mean!)
|
| If this picture is correct, then I think it's worth some
| "overhead" to try to get a conversation between calm,
| rational beings going. A shouting match between two
| werewolves may not be valuable even if they get right to
| the point.
|
| Not dismissing what you're saying. Just adding another
| picture.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I agree completely. You have to know who you are dealing
| with and you have to have already established a
| relationship with the person.
| 2devnull wrote:
| On jeopardy you phrase your answer in the form of a
| question. It adds a minor layer of complexity, similar to
| what you call a shit sandwich. It's the longest running
| game show on tv, maybe one of the longest running show of
| any type other than the news. Sometimes people forget to
| phrase their answers in the form of a question. Alex
| would say, "oh, I'm sorry but you have to phrase your
| answer as a question." Dan reminds me of Alex Tribeck in
| that way. The winners on hn, those with the most karma,
| never seem to make that mistake. It's a fairly low
| barrier, but for some of us quite a challenge.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yeah, it is a problem for sure. I have said plenty of
| inappropriate stuff on this site I think, and been
| moderated for it, but I don't have anything against the
| site or the users. It is just difficult or impossible to
| really obey the HN guidelines, and if you step out of
| line just a few times you basically get silenced in a big
| way (if you post a single "fuck you" here, you're in
| trouble!)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Do you normally use "fuck you" in conversations in
| anything other than a light-hearted way? I just read the
| guidelines and they describe my preferred communication
| pattern. I said my friends express emotions in their
| argument, and now I've learned to, but personal attacks
| and assuming bad faith are going to just cause me to
| block someone, as I don't see how the conversation could
| be productive at that point. The couple times I tried to
| escalate to match that sort of argument it did go well
| though. I guess that is just the communication style of
| some? I don't like it, makes want to hit people. Only
| done that once at work, and luckily they tried first so
| they weren't safe to report it.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I do and unlike hn, nobody gently corrects. You just end
| up with fewer friends. Karma, as much as I hate the term,
| or people "hearting" tweets, or downvoting posts, has
| made me a better person in the real world. But the
| important thing is to only submit yourself to good
| algorithms and good social feedback. There are places in
| the net where the prevailing wisdom, manifest as
| upvotes/downvotes will make you a worse person. Clearly,
| of all the internet, HN is the best in this regard.
| Largely thanks to Dan's moderate moderation and the
| smart, curious and diverse user base.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I wouldn't go that far. There is a huge difference
| between "your idea is dumb" and "you are dumb"
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Exactly! Never go full Linus. Not even Linus does that
| anymore. Even gentle mockery about breaking the pipeline
| gets overreacted to, and that is annoying. I try to say
| the idea won't work rather than it is dumb, but I may try
| it the other way with one of my mentees, I think they
| might respond better.
| spockz wrote:
| Agreed, but there is still possibility for nuance in step
| 2. Something can be merely a bad idea, or it can be a
| disaster waiting to happen. Sometimes when people stop 1
| and 3 they also lose the nuance in step 2.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Oh, yeah, I agree that tact is simply a form of
| dishonesty. I just don't really care if I am wrong or
| right, and I project that on to others. Since they don't
| care if they are right, they won't mind me calmly telling
| them all the reasons they are wrong. If they get upset at
| that when defending their position then my instinct is to
| assume they are irrational. But what my friends taught me
| is that passionate arguments, like most instincts can be
| used as a shortcut to bypass work. So becoming
| impassioned as I tell them all the reasons they are
| wrong, can help my argument.
| dahart wrote:
| > tact is simply a form of dishonesty.
|
| I see what you're saying, and I like the gist of your
| point for multiple comments in this thread, but for some
| reason this phrasing rubs me completely the wrong way. It
| will tend to be inflammatory and escalatory in a bad way
| in a debate or discussion to think of people who are well
| intentioned and trying not to hurt feelings as liars. I'm
| not sure that's fair or accurate either. Like why,
| exactly, does a compliment next to a criticism irritate
| you? What if the compliment is true and the criticism is
| true, then where's the dishonesty? Maybe what you mean is
| that the indirectness wastes your time or lacks clarity?
|
| Does tact necessarily mean spending time giving
| compliments next to criticism? You can be tactful in the
| very wording of a direct criticism without being indirect
| or giving useless compliments, right? And it's very very
| possible to be direct and tactless. Isn't tactlessness
| sometimes a function of ignorance, not necessarily lack
| of compassion?
|
| Some people make a distinction between critique and
| criticism, and this distinction may come down to tact?
| The critique is viewed as constructive criticism, how to
| improve, while criticizing is stating destructive
| negatives, "you're doing it wrong and you suck." The more
| tactful one of those actually happens to be the more
| useful one too...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Depending on what is comsidered tact my statement could
| be hyperbolic. It is important to encourage others and
| stating the good as well as the bad is important. Though
| negative reinforcement must be unflagging to be
| effective, and positive reinforcement _must_ be irregular
| to be most effective. At least that is what cogsci taught
| a couple decades ago.
|
| But phrasing criticism unemotionally and directing it
| toward the decision or product instead of a person, isn't
| what I'd call tact, it is just standard politeness. It
| isn't manipulative so much as precise. The decision is
| what you want to change.
|
| On the other hand, saying nice things to spare feelings
| without any actual intent to encourage specific behavior
| is dishonest and manipulative even if well intentioned.
| In extreme cases it can even turn into gaslighting where
| you gloss over problems and they think they are doing
| fine when they aren't. That sort of tact is toxic.
| dahart wrote:
| Good stuff in there, but instead of doubling down on
| "dishonest", and escalating to gas-lighting and toxicity,
| how about we just acknowledge that some people aren't the
| best communicators in the world and are afraid of hurting
| feelings and starting fights and being confrontational?
| What's potentially toxic is presuming someone else's
| motivation. You're setting up a mental framework for
| making assumptions and jumping to conclusions that people
| are being actively malicious when they simply try to
| soften their critique. This will infect your responses in
| a negative and destructive way, at least it has mine when
| I've made this mistake. If compliments or critique-
| softening bother you, how about just directly asking your
| conversant to get straight to the point?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| My whole point was that unfounded praise and assurances
| don't rely on any specific motivation to be harmful or
| yes, dishonest. I have been guilty of gaslighting before,
| mostly out of indifference. I let bad behavior slide and
| said it was fine because I truly didn't care or think it
| was a big deal. But that simply made the individual think
| they were crazy when they did get called out for it. So
| indifference, conflict avoidance, excessive compassion,
| none of the reasons matter if it harms people.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I disagree pretty strongly that tact is a form of
| dishonesty. Being tactful does not mean dancing around
| the issue or feeding someone a line of bullshit. It
| simply means communicating in a way that's less likely to
| make someone defensive. Tact is orthogonal to clarity or
| directness. The fact that people may dance around
| difficult conversations because they already know how it
| will be received is neither here nor there.
|
| WRT to using passion and emotion to win an argument, I'm
| not so sure. I tend towards the passionate side, and
| while it served me well in startups and smaller groups
| where I had a strong reputation for competence and
| putting in the work. But as I moved into more senior
| rolls at bigger tech companies, where I need to
| collaborate with a broader set of people who I don't know
| closely, I had to tone it down to be effective. What
| style is most effective? Essentially it boils down to one
| thing: know your audience.
| jason_pomerleau wrote:
| Some people will respond well to this - I'm one of them -
| but many (most?) won't.
|
| > tact is simply a form of dishonesty
|
| Maybe it is, but our primate brains tend to get very
| attached to our ideas and opinions. People aren't
| rational. Tactfulness is one way to get the other side to
| see your argument without making them feel threatened. Is
| it manipulative? Sure. But in many cases it's the only
| path that will get results.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Yeah, I hate playing that game. I kind of like playing
| the one where you lead someone to an answer instead of
| just telling them, so that it is their idea. It can be
| seen as teaching instead of manipulation.
| roflyear wrote:
| You had a rare person there with that CTO. Most people
| avoid conflict at all costs, so as soon as the conversation
| becomes heated for whatever reason, they shut it down.
|
| My current CTO is like that, and it's an awful working
| environment.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If it wasn't a severe conflict of interest, I would love
| to work with him again as an independent contractor on
| the side.
|
| I wouldn't work for him at his new company only because
| while he is having some similar challenges that we have
| worked together before to solve, I am not a good long
| term employee at any company these days except where I
| work now.
|
| I enjoy seeing a problem, helping to solve the problem,
| train the organization and moving on. I need to
| constantly be "putting myself out of a job".
| roflyear wrote:
| It's OK to have passionate discussions with people, though? I
| don't think it is right or wrong, just OK.
|
| It's OK to have dispassionate discussions, too. But I agree
| with your friends, they just aren't fun!
| feet wrote:
| Emotion is an important part of cognition and while we
| shouldn't let it take over we also shouldn't write it off
| entirely. Life is all about balance
| rapind wrote:
| > I always felt like allowing myself to become emotional when
| debating something meant I had lost.
|
| Nope, the new meta is just whoever is more obstinate and has
| the bigger microphone. You want to land zingers while
| ignoring context. Nuance is for the weak. After all it's not
| like anyone is trying to change minds anymore, just get them
| points.
| sph wrote:
| That's always been the meta. Go watch any historical leader
| giving a rousing speech or a politician before the
| elections.
|
| The Xi Jinpings or Winston Churchills calmly announcing
| their plans are the exceptions to the rule.
| eru wrote:
| I also had pleasant interactions with dang. Thanks!
|
| > Incidentally, it also gradually managed to cure me from free-
| speech absolutism. (By now, I think almost all Xisms and
| extremes are nonsense, but that's a different hot discussion to
| be had).
|
| Just out of curiosity, were you in favour of absolute free-
| speech on a private forum like HN, or that there shouldn't be
| laws banning specific speech acts?
| endymi0n wrote:
| It was more of a philosophical than a political support of
| free speech, minted by the same forces of the early internet
| (in a time of true single-channel mainstream media) that a
| lot of us older hackers experienced.
|
| It's just that over time I realized that in such a situation
| not the most accurate and consistent voice would win, just
| the most obnoxious, manipulating and brazenly lying.
|
| There seems to be a tipping point lurking behind ,,pretty
| free speech".
|
| Counter-intuitively, I've seen deeper, way more meaningful,
| effective and vulnerable conversation happening in places
| with very high amounts of moderation (EO Gestalt language
| protocol, Chatham House rules).
|
| Count me in as a fan of well done moderation these days.
| eru wrote:
| Thanks for explaining. Sounds very reasonable.
| roflyear wrote:
| I guess. I have very mixed feelings about HN moderation, but
| not dang.
|
| I think dang does an awesome job. I feel like he does such a
| good job, that I hope he has a really good support network, and
| a great therapist, too! That's not an insult. Just that I can't
| imagine how hard it must be for him.
|
| However, HN guidelines are so ridiculous they feel like laws
| (especially in the US): you're probably breaking one of them
| with almost all of your comments. For example, here is one of
| the guidelines:
|
| > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to
| emphasize a word or phrase, put _asterisks_ around it and it
| will get italicized.
|
| What? Hahaha. The level of policing here (and how much it is up
| to interpretation) makes them impossible to follow!
|
| Again, dang is awesome. I wish him the best. I don't think
| anyone else could do that job.
| whatshisface wrote:
| They're guidelines, that means they're not rules.
| switch007 wrote:
| They may be de facto rules if you get banned or chastised
| for breaking them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Yeah, but nobody's getting BANNED for using capital
| letters to express verbal emphasis in text. It's just a
| little annoying, and comes across too strong.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| The guidelines are (I assume intentionally) vague enough that
| moderation can selectively object to basically anything,
| claim it's on the basis of tone/personal attack/flamewar
| risk/etc, link to the guidelines with no further explanation,
| and call it a day.
| jamesbfb wrote:
| Long time lurker, seldom poster, thanks Dan G! As a mod for one
| of the bigger tech subreddits, I take queues from your moderating
| style. Peace! And happy holidays!
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