Slashdot Mirror
Please Die2: Raising Creative Jerks
This issue of a hostile communications style, an assaultive online environment, transcends any particularly website or Net sub-culture, having its roots in the earliest days of the Net. Hostility tends to go hand-in-hand with online media - a fact of life, like noise near an airport. There's always been an angry streak in the subculture of geeks, hackers, nerds, teenagers and academics who patched together computers and computer networks and built the first bulletin boards, mailing lists and conferencing systems.
In fact, hostility is closely tied to computing communications, the Net and the Web, to many high-tech industries. There's not a great deal of mystery about the source: it's generated largely by young men, the branch of the species that has the highest testosterone levels.
Older people abandon websites like this with almost visceral disgust: "I'm a retired engineer," Jim wrote me several weeks ago, "and I would never post a message on your website. It's complicated and it's just too hostile. I don't have an appetite for that."
Perhaps more than any other single group, women report endemic problems posting on sites like this (check the Natalie Portman postings on almost any Thread), an extension of the trouble some have encountered working in computing and technology companies.
For the second time in four months, Juno Online Services is facing a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former employee, a Harvard-educated software engineer who claims she was pressured to date a company executive, was paid less than her male colleagues, and worked in an environment where sexism and locker-room behavior were rampant.
In recent years, countless numbers of women have complained about the techno-workplace and the probably-related problems they face participating in sites like this one.
While the Net and the Web were conceived and constructed by men -- who dominated the technical, defense, academic and engineering professions of the 1950's and 1960's -- that's starting to change. Industry surveys show that as many women as men are buying computers now, and women are working in almost every element of the computing industry. But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female. Men start most topics, dominate most conversations.
And identity - perhaps the single most elemental ingredient of community - is almost eroded when anonymous posters dominate all discussions. Women seeking community often turn to all-female mailing lists, conferences and websites, a sad evolution of a medium with so much promise to be free and open. At its geeky core, the Net still feels like a clubhouse - male, white, narrow.
E-mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with anonymous public postings, can breed hostility and raise unresolved questions. There's little tradition of taking responsibility for one's words, which can be instantly hurled all over the world in seconds.
Yet this idea of taking responsibility, of being held accountable for what one says, is also closely linked to the quality and value of communication.
The nature of e-mail and posts has evolved tremendously in the past decade, according to scholars studying e-communities. "When e-mail took root in organizations in the late l970's and early 1980's two things occurred regularly and predictably," writes Mark Stefik of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in "Internet Dreams," published in 1996.
"One was that e-mail users spontaneously organized their own discussion groups on topics of interest: the second was a kind of organizational flattening as people developed e-mail cross-links that did not necessarily follow hierarchical lines of management."
The trend in e-mail, writes Stefik, has been towards greater connectivity, and e-mail has soared past company, university, and other boundaries. Now, says Stefik, the original rationale for e-mail has disappeared, and people largely use it for social purposes, not functionality.
And sadly, public posting areas haven't evolved much at all, apart from the fact that most websites forbid anonymity and restrict the nature of personal messages.
The evolution of e-mail and the growth of the Web has brought distinctive e-communities into increasing contact with outsiders. "From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions. The social problem is analogous to the problem of assimilation when natural disasters or wars lead to mass movements of people to new lands. When the rate of immigration exceeds a certain amount, the resulting chaos and need for adjustment in the host country can evoke resentment and backlash from the resident population."
In my own experience, Stefik's observations ring especially true. As a non-geek who usually (for a variety of work reasons) writes in Microsoft Word, some members of this community have been trying to drive me off the site ever since I arrived. Often, their attacks have little to do with what I think or write, mostly to do with the fact that I'm different, an outsider, a non-programmer who made different technology choices.
I've gotten plenty of praise and support too, but my own experience underscores the moral challenge facing people who run websites like this: people who attack others are celebrated. Only certain groups are really free; everybody else has the appearance of freedom but if their views diverge from the norm they are assaulted, harassed, driven off.
It's an inverted kind of tyranny in which the most hostile people are truly the freest. Most people who aren't paid columnists will go elsewhere.
As an e-community grows, so does the small group of people likely to send or post hostile or bizarre messages. The flamers are never required to take responsibility for any of the things they say, nor are there any consequences. They aren't embarrassed to be vicious or inaccurate, since they don't ever meet the people reading their messages. One might even argue they're rewarded for shutting down free speech.
Behavioral psychologists like Robert Coles and James Wilson describe the evolution of human behavior and conscience this way: the young are praised for good behavior, punished for bad. In this way, through a complex system of cues, rewards and signals, they learn to differentiate acceptable from unacceptable behavior. If you insult a kid down the block, he belts you. If you slug your sister, you get sent to your room. If you taunt your teacher, you stay after school.
But online, this process of learning how to behave is oddly inverted. You might be rewarded for being creative and technologically-skilled, but not for being civil or tolerant. Perhaps more significantly, you never suffer for being hostile. Frequently -- through your ability to post public messages, to attack others and disrupt conversations --- you are actually rewarded.
In the real world, people learn to hold or moderate speech. If you're smart, you don't yell at the cop who's pulled you over, and you resist the urge to tell your boss he's a jerk. Online, there is no moderating impulse. Some websites are actually installing "reply delay" software to force posters to mull their words for a minute or two.
In virtual communities, especially those that guarantee anonymity, there aren't even such mild social pressures as disapproving glances or cold stares. The targets can't simply walk away, although that's increasingly the goal of some moderated systems. Even though electronic communities have demonstrated many of the same traits as real-world communities, older, veteran or more experienced members have no tradition of coaching or mentoring their aberrant peers. The result is a curious new kind of sub-culture in which a small group can experience unbounded freedom and creativity, yet never have to develop empathetic or communal social skills. The results are on display every day: the Net is breeding some of the brightest jerks on the planet.
The result is that flaming and hostile environments become a political as well as technological question, especially for those who are assaulted or excluded. Hard-core geeks embrace as a political ideology the idea that all communications should be free. Yet hostility and cultural bigotry to outsiders and newcomers usually only ends when it becomes a consensus political issue - in this case, when website leaders, lurkers, veterans and other people with influence move to challenge hostility, and to curb non-productive and personal verbal abuse.
As e-communities evolve, so do their politics. Although it makes perfect sense that websites will find ways to preserve even the most raucous freedom, the preservation of hostile environments make no sense at all - technologically, politically or commercially.
Tomorrow: In hostile environments, how to talk about technology?
So I tend to view the internet as not a solution or a problem, but like one of those fun house mirrors. It still shows you what was there all along, but sometimes in a really warped and twisted fashion. You never know until you look.
Just moderate the jerks!
That will show them!
We're not breeding more jerks -- it's part of human nature.
I remember back in 1988 with BBS's when it was pure geek culture the same thing was going on then. Flame wars burnned like wildfires around message boards over nothing -- no topical arguments, just pure "You suck" issues.
Nothing has changed for better or worse. The way I look at it, flames can be pretty funny if you take a step back and try not to get involved, and the less people that get involved, the less meaningless messages will fill up disscusion boards because flaming is realy just about the need for attention.. *sigh*
I remember one guy on this BBS actualy got a brick through his window as the result of flaming another guy on a board...But remaining annoymous was a little more difficult back then.
"..Just because you put a flag on the moon doesn't make it yours, it just puts a hole in the moon..."
...will meet the same end they do in the real world: intelligent people will ignore most of them. The way people deal with other people don't change because the communications medium changes.
Although the rules of the online "society" are still in their infancy; I have no doubt that people who learn to get along with others in a constructive way will do better online than those who don't. Just like real life.
Perhaps I'm reading out of context, but I certainly wouldn't call the Natalie Portman trolls indicative of a bias against women in tech fields in general. Certainly such a bias seems to exists, but I doubt that it is perpetuated at the hands of script kiddies and first posters.
Sarcasm On
:)
Hey, JERK, Flames are not needed for attention. This just proves how stupid you are, you obnoxious jerk. YOU Suck.
Sarcasm Off
Well, just because some one might not respond nicely to a Jon Katz article does not mean that they are a jerk.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
I tip my virtual hat to whoever it was (on Slashdot) who said something like this: The trouble with Linux is that 98% of users make the other 2% look bad.
Whenever I go on abUsenet to ask a technical question, I pretty much expect to be confronted, if I get an answer at all, with off-point jabs. That is, if I ask a question that reveals that I'm, yes, using (alert alert!) *Windows* for anything at all, then a vocal subset of Linux geeks won't answer my Linux questions, but will instead excoriate me for not going 100% Windows-free. Dumb stuff like that.
It's not a new phenomenon. I used to read one of the "net.religion" newsgroups about 15 years ago, and the attacks between people who disagreed on theological issues were vicious. They're pretty much the same now, though I gave up wading through the chaff looking for grains of wheat about a decade ago. I think that is the type of "old days" on line discussion that set the tone, too often, for many of today's online communities.
I do however subscribe to some mailing lists where users get rather hostile to those who breach norms of civility, and where a list owner can if necessary dump a jerk off the list. That's a more pleasant environment. And I think web site moderators should *moderate* aggressively. (Slash is a pretty good medium for this; it filters out some of the flames for me, though of course they hang around at 0 or 1 before a moderator sees them.)
The AC's are validating Mr. Katz's point of view in this very discussion. I usually ride with my threshold set low - I think some AC posts are quite good, but the gross anonymous flaming is just chickencrap. Too noisy, crank it back up...
jon, i don't want you to die, but you've got to stop stating your opinions as "the truth". when you get them wrong, people get incensed. obviously. your article (as usual) implies geeks and flamers are all men. *brrrrring!* i don't know how many times i have to make this point (but i'm getting bored) but you are waaaay over-generalising, i know lots of females in the technology industry who've never faced any of the problems you described and enough female "geeks". maybe its because its a problem inherent in america, i don't know - i'd be speculating -- as you are, and speculating ain't fact.
and you Smell Funny too..
YOU ALL SMELL FUNNY!!!!!....
@#%@ Even i Smell Funny??? guess i need another shower...
I will finish my FLaiming runt after i get out of the shower you lamos!!!
To err is human, to really screw things up, you need a robot.
I took a whole of 5 seconds to skim through this article (the hokey blurb forewarned me), so take this with a grain of salt.
/free/ so say what they mean. Perhaps it's this freedom that seems hostile. A freedom in which your thoughts, no matter how politically correct or mannered, are nevertheless naked and open to critique or dismissal. I think this is healthy. Perhaps people /should/ be forced to think it through before letting it out their mouth and into criticism.
Look at it a different way. What if we are not really creating jerks, but actually enabling communications so transparently, effortlessly, and safely, that people feel
The paradox of a truly "free" society is that it will not tolerate any form of captivity...the paradox being that by making that requirement it is in fact no longer truly "free" (you are not "free" to impinge on freedom - isn't this reminiscent of the GPL-BSD war?). So too with free speech and free minds. Perhaps what you consider "being jerks" is a symptom of a culture which forces you to have concrete support for your views. Baptism by fire. Perhaps it is a Zen thing...you can only succeed by not trying...you can only be accepted by not trying...
Then again, I just pulled this out of thin air...
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Katz, you're on crack :) The people who post Elian Gonzalez Naked And Petrified posts aren't stifling free speech, they are in fact its most oppressed practicioners.
The first amendment (contrary to apparently popular belief) doesn't say a damn thing about intimidation, or your own willingness to speak. If you say something, and someone else says you're wrong (and maybe even mocks you for it), free speech has not been violated, it has in fact worked perfectly.
I'm sick and fscking tired of these Politically Correct morons wanting to use the first amendment to censor anyone who doesn't agree with them. "But they're *scaring* me!" or "That's *sooo* offensive." doesn't quite work as an argument. There are pre-existing legal guidelines for harassment, online or off.
Free speech means exactly that, it does *not* mean "nice speech." It does not mean speech that's been pre-approved by the standards of a snobby elite few seeking to control our methods of expression. And while I personally agree that well thought out, nicely articulated pieces are leagues more effective than a crude flame, I will defend to the death the right of the 14 year old 5cr1p7 k1dd13 to flame a newbie. They're 1's and 0's people. They don't hurt people.
Anthony
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
This is actually quite true. When I'm online I do not like to use my own name because it easily reveals to people not only my sex but ethnic background. I have even found hostility on "seemingly" professions mailing lists for programming languages.
I attribute this behavior to men, particularly white men, thinking that nobody else knows anything but them and they are out to prove it!
I don't know how the situation can be remedied but to use false names, even on professional lists, where even though you may be female, you present yourself as a male. But, even then, you have to put up with the abusive language and attacks they might use. My best advice to the guys is to learn how to behave yourselves, and be polite, no matter whoever it may be you're responding, too.
IMHO, all that's really changed is that we can no longer hide under the covers and pretend that it's the "arrogance of youth", "teenage tantrums", or (the classic) "somebody else's problem". The Internet brings home the reality that, no, it isn't "somebody else's problem". It's EVERYBODY'S problem. And unless everybody wakes up to that reality, nothing's going to change, except maybe for the worse.
There's no difference, in terms of what's involved, between hotwiring a car & joyriding, or breaking into a server containing company secrets and using it to surf prawnography sites, deleting stuff when the disk gets full.
Well, maybe there's one. If it's a car on your street (but not your own), you're likely to breath a sigh of relief, and brush it off. If it's a server on your network, even if it's not your own, you're likely to demand action. Now. Because it affects you.
THAT is the key difference the Internet has made. Not in attitudes, not in scale, but in who it involves. Who it affects. It's no longer a safe distance, an entire TV screen away, somewhere in another city. It's no longer a drama on TV with two kids screaming at each other, or the neighbor's kid who's had "too much to drink".
You can't pass the buck any further, and so it's left with you. You have to get out of your cozy denial, your "happy, shiny" world, and see reality for what it is, grime, muck and all. And every day nobody cleans it up, saying "it'll get better", "it's meant to be that way", or "it's someone else's job", it'll just get worse. Muck won't clean itself off, no matter how much you ignore it. If you don't do something, anything, then nothing will get done at all.
Welcome to the Rust Bucket. Enjoy your Slime Mold.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I was going to read it, but then I spilled hot grits down my pants.
Leaving aside the geek tendency for raccous
talk (a rough edge does not a flamer make),
there's another trend that will cause flaming to recede.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
But everyone knows if you're a flamer, and
an attention worthy net persona is a good
asset even (or especially) if it's pseudonymous
(or insecurely semipseudonymous).
grepping -v for Natalie Portman,
Katz, one minute you're defending geeks as an oppressed class, now you're generalizing them as offensive online posters. Well Katz, which gross generalization are you going with?
Some of the reason we have so many aggressive geeks is that in this world they can be something. If they say they have a plonker as thick as their wrist then we have no way of verifying it! We measure their size by their personality. Just think, if we see a 5ft weed walking towards us we don't act in the same way as if there was a 7ft monster walking our way. In cyber space it doen't matter how big or small you are because other users just don't know.
There will, of course, be a big temptation to take out a lot of frustrations on people in chat rooms etc. when you could do it in real life. Think how sweet revenge must be if you get to drive people out of a discussion through insult alone when thats what happens to you every day in the real world. There is no real way to solve this without some sort of system of accountability in place to reward good behavior and punish bad. Slashdot is an amazing step in that direction. I suppose, with a little work, it could be used all over the place to include aspects like being considerate, polite and all that.
JERK HUMOR HERE ;-)
Slashdot is not an extreme example, but is certainly _an_ example, to a limited extent, of just such a hostile community. Watch the flames come pouring in...
...
Windows95 rulez! Command line interfaces suk! I'd rather pop a kernel than patch it
I am, therefore you think.
I mean, just look at the pixels here! They're like 90% white! Sure, blacks have some representation, but even green seems to be doing better.
I don't know about "narrow", though. Sure, I can shrink my browser down to 640x480 and have Slashdot fit sometimes, but what about when stupid ACs create a thread nested 25 deep? Then Slashdot becomes one of the broadest sites on the web. Site width is definitely a more complicated issue than color.
I've been following these articles closely. It seems to me that the whole thing could be put down to a lack of manners. Sure the speed and facility of online communications makes it more immediate, but if you got a letter that was just as rude as some of the flames around here, you'd be on the phone to the postal inspectors. Geeks, IMNSHO, have lacked manners not because they weren't taught them (although that's possible, manners haven't been a very high priority in our society lately,) but because their tendancy to be shunned by "normal" society, combined with their tendancy to want to cut through societal bullshit, tends to make communication abrupt. (It might have something to do with conserving bandwidth too, for the more network-oriented among us :-)> ) If the same manners and social conventions were used online that were used in RL, I think a lot of this would clear up. Being (potentially) anonymous does _not_ relieve you of the responsibility of proper public behavior.
We're through being cool! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! -Devo
The real problem with online communication (e-mail, /., etc.) is that it is too quick. It's pretty easy to fire off an e-mail instead of print off a memo or go and talk to someone. The "thinking time" is removed. If you have to get up and go somewhere to complete your communication, you have time to think, and you usually tone down your message. Typing a message and clicking "send" removes the "thinking time".
I've been in a company where we went from having no e-mail to having e-mail. There was a period where e-mail was flooded with knee jerk responses and offers for free kittens. After the learning curve, people got the idea, and e-mail because usefull, not just a buch of junk. I think the internet, given the huge number of people, will need a great deal of time for the signal to noise ratio to settle down. There will always be newbies and downright rotten people to mess things up, but there is hope for the newbies.
We were all newbies once. We got better.
Remember, this whole internet thing has been around for just a short time. It took many years for societies to develop. This internet society needs to have its growing pains also. Things will get better, but given the vast number of people involved, it is going to take a few decades for things to settle out.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Years ago, when I was still reading and posting on usenet as a newbie, I came to realize that hosility is expected if you present an opinion that any random person doesn't like.
The first time I got flamed, I responded rationally, and pointed out that about seven new people had likely seen the previous message, and decided never to post.
Unfortunately, the attitude prevails - be prpared to put up with crap if you involve yourself in discussion online - and trust me, oftentimes, the women in thier women only enclaves are no better.
Sure. We may be breeding jerks. Likely. But as someone who live action roleplays with quite a few of the bright, skilled jerks, I have come to see that in actual social situations, the jerks either have to adapt and become reasonable, or leave, because no one will listen to them, or put up with them.
Carrying your HS persecution like a cross on your back gets to be tiresome after awhile.
-Noiz,
Who got off the cross cause someone needed the wood. Two snaps up.
---------
---------
I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Real geeks don't need to prove their geekiness (?) via overt displays of media-hyped characteristics. Only nouveau nerds feel this need. And by their misdirected attempts may you easily identify them.
I thought that usually one tries to support the argument by a progressive series of facts supporting the initial propisition. The bit about an E-commerce business having a problem with sexual harassment seems to be un-related to the issue of being rude via email?
As for the topic itself... being flamed has been a time honored portion of the net since the earliest days (oh - I was around in 1985 on usenet and have seen some amazying flames.) I'd say the biggest differences are that back then, it wasn't anonymous and was done with some wit.
Yet it's always been here.
As per normal, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. When people send email it doesn't involve ANY of the normal queues used in human communication. The subtlety of facial expressions, voice inflection, etc. aren't available. Also the restrictions of offending the other person that is present in a face-to-face discussion are removed. Note - most people are much more willing to yell and argue with someone on a phone too. Seems to me to be the same thing. The guy you arguing with can't reach out and clobber you!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
How sad
It's interesting, the responses this article is drawing. I suspect that the anonymous Cowards posting them think they are being "cool" or something. Ah well, I refuse to be driven away from this site because many of its readers are hopped up on testosterone. And they wonder why women don't give them a second glance.... JonKatz, keep up the good work, it's inspiring, informative, and interesting. Don't let them get you down. Sakhmet
"When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95."
Ban the Nukes! Save the Whales! Screw it. Nuke the Whales!
There once was a boy named Jon
He picked the dumbest topics to write on
He pretended to be a Geek
But we could all take a peek
And see that he simply was a moron
You seem to be saying that almost all the people in the computer industry are smart, young, and skilled, but most of them are jerks, too.
Jon, think about your audience, for Christ's sake! Whether you intended it or not, this is an insult. It's like going in front of all the Southern Baptists in the country and calling them backwards hicks-- they're probably gonna call you a few names back, Jon!
The funny part of this is, you wrote articles *against* shit like this in your Hellmouth series. Don't automatically assume geeks are killers just because some of the killers are geeks. But substitute "flamer" for "killer", and you have the main thrust of the entire article! Goddamn hypocrite!
You've earned every single flame that comes from this article, and I have absolutely no sympathy for you this time. Your arrogance and pompous attitude have completely shown through in this article, and your total disregard for the feelings of your audience leave us with little sympathy towards your feelings about getting flamed. In other words, big boy, you asked for it-- so don't bitch about it when this comes back to bite you in the ass.
So what's coming up next week? You gonna complain about that dog that bit you after you kicked it?
Being online for almost ten years (Five on the internet itself, five more if you could small local BBS's popular in my teenage years) I've found most online communities to be quite closed and unaccepting. Not because of race, gender, creed, anything - just, closed and unaccepting in general. Possibly because of the ability for random people to find a random chatroom, or random people to find a random messageboard. The instinct is to assume that these people will 1. not remember who said what or 2. never return again. So there is nothing to hold a person back from being rude. There isn't the permanance of faces to remember - and, most people change their screennames (I *loathe* the term screennames, by the by.) - on a regular basis. Its hard to keep track of who is who - unless you've known someone online for a good long time. And by the time you know someone well, you probably like them well enough to not be rude to them. Unfortunalty, this means that one of the best things about the internet discussion groups, chatrooms, etc - anonyminity - is also causing those same groups to tend toward flames, rude behavior and automatical dislike of 'newbies' `Frito (Yes, I KNOW I need a /. account. Yes, I'm lazy. Deal.)
So there are jerks on the internet that like to flame. Heck, I remember being on a newsgroup that got attacked by alt.bigfoot. The entire purpose of alt.bigfoot was to go and harass other newsgroups into submission. It got them off I guess.
But did it harm me? No. Did getting flamed online mean anything to anyone? No. If an Anonymous Coward tells someone something offensive it is nothing more than meaningless drivel.
So why should we care? People that get offended will find somewhere else to go play. If they are serious about a topic they'll form a moderated group with members only. If someone joins and abuses it, they get booted.
I don't buy into the idea that the net has to be this perfect ideal society. It is just like any other technology and can be used for good or bad and will likely be used for both.
Still, I really want to know what is the point of these articles?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Remember, folks, Jon Katz isn't a geek wannabe. He's "a non-programmer who made different technology choices."
Maybe you don't care for Jon Katz articles, fine. You can exclude them from your sight if you wish.
But your anonymous post of simply katz is a jerk! only serves to support the very article you've posted that in followup to.
I support anonymous posting, but do please think out a post before posting it. Posts like the one above only give those who have legitimate need of anonymity a bad name. Surely if Mr. Katz is a jerk you could easily make that case, and much more powerfully, by refuting the claims in the article.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
I think the big problem is the fact that on the web we make it far too easy to be rude (obscene, in fact) and get away with it. I've always thought that /. would be _much_ better if there were no such thing as an anonymous post. _Nothing_ worth posting has any reason to be anonymous. In daily life you can't get away with saying much of what is posted on /. without getting at a minimum decked, or in some cases sued into poverty or jailed for defamation, slander, etc. Why should the net cater to the people who everywhere else are considered criminal? What's wrong is wrong, and it doesn't matter where it happens!
Only the idiots guilty of what I said will moderate me down (mostly losers who will probably still live in their parents' basement when they hit 50; they have no skills beyond playing Quake well), while anyone intelligent enough to see the damage the others cause will moderate me up.
A flamer opens himself to incredible scrutiny. It is appropropriate to nitpick about gramar in a flame, or minor factual detail, or even level of language skill in a way that no one (except a flamer) would point out in a more constrained message. Between this and the tendancy for flames to be ignored, there are restraining social conventions on flames and over-agressiveness.
On the other hand, there is not as much a control over intentional (or otherwise) posting of poorly considered and extremely controversial commentary, typically targeting the demographic of the community to which it is posted, usually known as a troll. Much like this article.
Until now, I had some respect for Katz as a columnist. Not always deeply incisive, but usually willing to take a stand. But this pair of articles just seems to be designed as a troll if nothing else. Why not come out and suggest that the Slashdot moderation system promotes a selection of techno-savvy jerks?
In short, John Katz is a big dumb-head.
Thank you.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
LINE 1: Online, hostile environments are driving almost every social group other than techno-savvy young white men away from coherent public discussion of technology.
Not true. The other social groups just don't discuss it on the online, hostile environments you describe. Take my non-technical friends: They discuss it down the pub. ...and yes, they do it coherently!
LINE 2: These men are invariably smart and skilled, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference.
On what EVIDENCE is this sweeping statement based? I would guess that it is your perception. You are not, by your own admission, qualified to do this.
I stopped reading after this!
I agree with most of your point Jon.. but not with one thing: getting rude at times is necessary, even more so in the organic world. I have stopped being nice when it doesn't serve me, and I have found that the best way to get your point across is to go ver people's head. Something not to your liking in a shop, bank or organization? go to the boss. immediately. They are usually not the most knowledgeable, but tend to get so annoyed they give you just about anything you want. Being an annoying bastard works, even in the real world.
Ofcourse.. being a little too rude may cause them not to take you very serious, so make it an intelligent insult, preferably so they don't notice you insulted them until you're out the door.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
i've just recently started reading slashdot (i've been told to read it by both a man and a woman), and it took me, oh, i don't know, 10 minutes to notice that the vast majority of posts seems to come from men. from men who are pretty positive that they are if not the only ones on the planet, then the only ones who read slashdot and post accordingly. i saw an old article--a "dating guide" for geeks--that was in the funny section that was totally sexist not only in its presuming that all geeks were male, but also made a bunch of other sexist comments and assumption. i might get blasted as a rabid feminist with no sense of humor, but i assure you, when humor is part of a culture that is often hostile to anyone not white, male, straight, etc., it's hard to find it funny.
in other words, many people here might think that they're not contributing to biases just because they're not posting _complete_ sexist crap, but acting as if men are the only ones around here adds up to some pretty strong sexism--consciously or unconsciously, it renders women invisible.
Granted, there are many giant clumps of jerks on the internet... but do you really think any of them are doing much breeding?
"I'm a retired engineer," Jim wrote me several weeks ago, "and I would never post a message on your website. It's complicated and it's just too hostile. I don't have an appetite for that."
What was this guy engineering? Rubber bands? Stacking blocks for three-year-olds? Maybe an aerodynamic Mr. Potato Head?
News flash! Engineer's free speech is quashed by complicated web submission form!
Is that why you never post, Jon? I'm sure Hemos will help if you ask.
I really don't like either this article or the previous one. I think that Jon is doing nothing more than writing paragraphs of drivel whining about being flamed by some AC. I know I can't wait to see part three. (I wonder what percentage of the people who see this comment actually read Jon's article in its entirety.)
Yes, I can filter him out, and no, I don't want to. The comments on his articles are usually a good read. Barring, of course, the 200 comment religious flamewar on his last -real- article. (Re: God hates fags, or does he?)
In part one, he took issue with some anonymous person asking him to "Please Die". Well, I'm not anonymous, and this may only be my opinion, but Jon... If this is the best you can do, -please- go away, find a corner, and curl up in it. If you choose to die at this time, press 1. If you choose to live, press 2. You must be using a true touch tone phone. Thank you for calling the talking yellow pages.
(Posted with my +1 for the hell of it.)
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Not intended as flamebait... but
doesn't say a damn thing about intimidation
Doesn't it? Such speech can be considered "in extremely poor taste" and as such is exempted from the freedom of speech. Have you actually read the bill of rights, or just learned the big ones secondhand?
> In the real world, people learn to hold or moderate speech. If
> you're smart, you don't yell at the cop who's pulled you over,
> and you resist the urge to tell your boss he's a jerk. Online,
> there is no moderating impulse.
I have to disagree. True, there is no direct feedback for one's actions.
But I have been a postmaster for 4 years and every single time someone
ignorant abuses my systems, or sends me spam, I take the time to write
that person and tell him/her that it's not appreciated. In all cases,
the reply is the same. "Gosh -- I didn't know. I'm very, very sorry".
I'm not seeing myself as a good samaritan, cop, vigilante or leader, all
I'm saying is there are plenty people who take the time to point out
someone's unwanted behaviour. It is a very real part of someone becoming
familiar with the Internet. I'm sure you've had e-mails from friendly
postmasters yourself in the past.
Needless to say I don't try to educate spammers or abusers myself. But
they can be educated, corrected if you will, too, by upstream providers
cancelling their accounts or BlackHole'ing their networks. I hope, and
am almost sure, that as the Internet grows, more people will educate
their newbie peers.
It's a shame that there are people who have a lot to contribute to Slashdot don't feel that they can handle it here.
However, I think if posters would lurk for a few weeks, and learn there place in the community, they would rarely be flamed.
I've been online and participating in USENET discussions since 1993. I can count the number of times that I've been flamed without reason (I'm not counting my trolling) on one hand.
I've spent most of my online time in rec.music.gdead. I got into the Dead in 1987, as they were riding a tidal wave of popularity, you can even call me a touchhead, I'm amused by that name.
When I first showed up in rec.music.gdead, did I start spouting off that I was the voice of the Deadheads, by virtue of seeing 6 concerts and being able to write? Hell no, I would have been flamed to a crisp, and would have fled r.m.gd, posting a few whines about the unkind folks that resided there.
Instead I lurked, and I lurked, and I lurked. I saw that there were other people that could write, that had seen far more shows than I, hundreds, even thousands. There were people that were on a first name basis with the band members There were people that first saw them when they were playing a pizza parlor in 1965.
Then, I contributed. Mostly small funny pieces, sometimes a personal anecdote, but always conscience that what I said should be relevant, and shouldn't have been said before. I got into a many long discussions that usually ended in me appreciating someone else's viewpoint, and they appreciating mine. I made many net.friends, and even some real ones. I got tapes, lots and lots of tapes, and CDs. Very rarely did I get flamed.
Now, onto to Slashdot. I'm fairly geeky, though not an ubergeek. Weeks go by without me coding, and when I do it's most likely PostScript, a shell script, or html. I haven't coded C in years, never C++, or Python, or HTK, or any other of those newer languages. I've never chatted on IRC or with ICQ (firewalls at work, too busy at home). I've never built my own kernel, or downloaded my own distribution. About the only Open Source software that I consider myself skilled in is Samba. I wasn't really tormented in high school.
Now, look at where I post. Do I post long imflammatory posts about the leading figures in the Linux community? No, I barely know who they are.
Do I engage in flaming discussions about Gnome vs KDE? Nope, I barely use them, most of my Linux and FreeBSD work is using them as a server.
When I post, it's about Lego, writing, girls and music, things that I know a bit about.
In short, I try to post about things I know, and about things that I have experience in. Do I ever get flamed? Not very often.
Jon, I feel bad that you get such vitriolic flames, but I think it's unavoidable for a few reasons. One, you stick out like a lightening rod, and create a lot of flash and noise, for which Andover should be thanking you for.
Second, I think that a lot of Slashdotter's resent you trying to become their spokesperson. A lot of Slashdotter's have their own self image tied up in their geekiness, they may not get dates, they may get picked on in high school, but they make up for that by exulting in their geekhood. Perhaps they feel that you don't have the empathy for what they've gone through, you've never paid your dues, and they feel you are acting like the rich society person volunteering a few hours in the soup kitchen, and grabbing the microphone from the real geeks.
I have to admit, I would like to the comments on Slashdot become fewer, and better. The trolls are fun a first, but the same joke told 20 times a day wears thin, please vary your material.
Oh yeah, thanks Slashdot for allowing me to revel in my Geekness.
George
CmdrTaco
.oO0Oo.
Hemos
Cliff
Roblimo
Justin
JonKat
michael
jamie
CowboyNeal
nathan
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
But those that I *have* participated in have tended to be smaller communities, which had a greater sense of community to them. Three years ago, I was a regular on #linpeople. Now I rarely visit. The same can be said of slashdot, alt.os.linux, and any other discussion forum I've become interested in. The main reason this happened is because with numbers came a low SNR (signal to noise ratio). When I started participating in #linpeople, I could barely turn away, because something of use to me was mentioned every minute or so. Towards the end (about 18 months ago) I found myself responding aggressively to people who were dominating the channel with chit-chat because the were (a) flaming newbies (b) hijacking help-session with trivia and chitchat or (c) not giving people a chance to get help, which was the purpose of the channel. Most of the better people from that channel now go to #debian, because that still keeps the quality level high.
The same can be said of Slashdot over the past 18 months. Moderation has meant that most people can follow a thread now without reading 400 comments, but moderation shouldn't be necessary. As Abe Lincoln once said, "Better to be believed an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt" (sic). If people have nothing, or very little, to contribute, restraint should be expected.
The problem is that with numbers comes a degree of anonymity. If someone flamed in the old days, the response was typically "How could you? We trusted you...". Now, it seems like in large fora, flaming is suffered as a necessary evil. There is no acceptance, or apportioning, of responsibility. Little electronic words don't mean anything. "And who cares if a newbie can't get help, or I'm hurting someone's feelings, or driving people who don't have time to read my crap away - they shouldn't take it so seriously. And goddammit, it's my right!"
Maybe it's your right, but if you excercised rights like that with me anywhere near you in a street, I'd be going to jail for assault. That's no way to treat people. Just because we're on-line doesn't make us inhuman.
Dave Neary.
I stopped reading when I came to the phrase "techno-savvy", my BS detector cut in. Did anyone else get past this ?
Why take your hat off when you come inside? Two reasons. You don't need to wear it ( in most cases ) and because it's considered polite to remove it.
-- Some people say they can tell the time by looking at the Sun, but I have trouble seeing the numbers.
I can't belive that we are back on this topic already. We usually get a least a one day respite in between these trite ramblings.
I think that this is one of the worst yet. It goes from people feeling threatened to women being sexually intimidated....which is why I am choosing to commnet.
One again you grossly over generalize the "geek subculture". This "angry streak" that you talk about is akin to saying that all geeks can't get dates. It isn't true. Just like saying all black men go to jail. Complete and utter crap. Every "subculture" as it is referred to is going to have it's good and bad. THAT IS LIFE.
As a woman reader of this site I'm curious to know whether or not you even talked to any women about this or if you just decided that we should be offended by it and therefore we are? I personally find it amusing. And if someone finds it offensive then read at a higher threshold. Bottom line. I think that one point people tend to forget is that most geeks have a good sense of humor and alot of the flammage and troll posts are funny! Admittedly some aren't but you've got to take the good with the bad. I think this series of articles is lost on this group. Most don't seem to mind flames and if they do, they take the necessary steps to avoid it.....
"Most of my heros won't appear on no stamps..." Chuck D from Fight the Power
If people can't take criticism and hostility they shouldn't be online. In fact, they shouldn't be engaging in any sort of social encounters. This is a part of life.
As to veterans not helping new users, I believe this to be good. Three years ago I knew nothing of the Internet, Web, IRC, Hotline or anything else Net-related, or for that matter computer-related. Nobody would volunteer any help, so instead of giving up like a loser, I just learned by myself. Today I'm a programmer on the MacOS platform. I run a server and a website (http://www.soth.zoneit.com) on it. I spend large amounts of time online, and I don't think that hostility in the Internet community is really a problem. It's much the same everywhere. You're respected for different things on the Net, though: Your skill with the English language, your computer skills, general IT knowledge...and so on.
As for women, I can understand perfectly why they don't care to post on male-dominated sites such as Slashdot. Their interests are most propably in different fields, and they prefer discussions with people that share their hobbies (i.e. most propably other women). It's no different than in real life.
By the way, Jon, I'm wondering, what is an MS-Word using non-geek doing on Slashdot? You always write these long, dramatic articles about human suffering and sociological problems that you blow completely out of proportions.
Where there are people, there are jerks. Online is no different than any other place.
There aren't more jerks: it's just easier for them to be heard.
Before the net, if someone wanted to be a jerk to the masses in general they'd have to write a letter to the editor or spraypaint the water tower.
The net has extended the reach of all communications. Unfortunately, in the line of 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease', the jerks often get more than their fair share of online attention.
What's the answer? DON'T PLAY. What would happen if a jerk posted something vitriolic and no-one answered? Bet they'd get bored and go back to pulling the wings off of flies.
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Many forms of communication have an implied context about them. This is often nothing more than a convention that would be generally accepted by the majority of the participants. The context would determine what kind of speech is appropriate for that medium.
A Slashdot discussion would have a context that has some basic properties, which define things like "First Posts" to be inappropriate. Things that are offtopic may also be out of context. They might be well reasoned arguments, but if they don't apply to the topic of discussion, they may not be appropriate.
Hostility is not always and everywhere a bad thing, and I don't believe Jon Katz was advocating such a position. I do think however that it is not appropriate in certain contexts. I occasionally like a good flame war on topics I'm interested and passionate about. Arguing with someone in a "no holds barred" fashion can be useful. Often it helps by making you reason out your own position as well as the opposing one. This can help refine my ideas, or expose that they have problems or are just plain wrong. This is a good thing.
The problem, as I see it, comes when people use hostility out of context, or as their entire argument. The "Please Die" kind of response is a good example, though probably not the worst. Hostility can push you to resolve your viewpoint, it's not a subsitute for thought.
Communities must eventually moderate in some way, or they lose the context that makes them what they are. Slashdot would likely eventually become nothing but a forum for idiots and script kiddies with too much free time and not enough restraint it there weren't measures to protect the context that makes it what it is. Maybe the system isn't perfect, and it likely never will be, but it *is* important. And the fact that it is, and will hopefully remain, a user controlled system means that the context of Slashdot will continue to reflect that of the participants (i.e. us).
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
One of the reasons that Slashdot and its ilk brings out the jerk in some of us is anonymity.
Not only the "Nobody knows who I am" variety, but the anonymity brought about by being part of a pack. Rather than expressing distinct, well thought out opinions and facts as part of a cogent argument, people find it easier to engage in simple contradiction and personal attacks.
I know the geek community to be liberal, egalitarian and open to logical discussion.
But when you look at it in a forum such as slashdot, it doesn't look like that at all.
As a non-geek who usually (for a variety of work reasons) writes in Microsoft Word, some members of this community have been trying to drive me off the site ever since I arrived.
...As a non-geek... and the subtitle of Slashdot (News for Nerds) when listening to the complaints in this essay about being treated as "an outsider". By definition, he is an outsider.
No one should attack anyone for the software they use. (Politely mention that better alternatives exist, yes, attack, no.) However, it is instructive to mull over the phrase
Of course, the way some people here treat outsiders here is near criminal, but that doesn't change the original point. Most people come here because they want to read stories about electrodes in cat-eyeballs, or the latest release of SCSI drivers, not because they want to read old-media stories that would be as in-place in Time, Newsweek or Salon.
It would be no different if this were a party full of Unix engineers and a lone journalist walked in. Would he feel the outsider? Well, yeah... Is it possible that some obnoxious drunk might start making fun of the guy who doesn't know his emacs from his vi? Yes again. There are always jerks.
Now make that party the size of slashdot's readership, and you'll get a lot of jerks. And as we all know, obnoxious jerks are usually very loud. But that doesn't mean that it is anything "new".
There is some merit to the article. It is likely true that all of these "Natalie Portman" posts make it a less comfortable place for women. However, I think that Katz is a little late in this observation because the problem was much worse a few years ago. Not so much in the volume of infantile posts, but in conferencing system efforts to fix the problem (Here:moderation) and in the realization among posters that these posts are no more worthy of notice than a bad word scrawled on the wall.
I participate in other conferencing systems that have a much more even sex ratio. The paucity of women here is likely not due to "natalie portman" posts here. It is "geeks" tend to be male. (And the reason for that has everything to do with how kids are raised and nothing to do with what gets said here.) And as we all know, when guys get together in large concentrations, infantile behavior tends to pop up. In other words, the paucity of women is not caused by "natalie portman" posts. "Natalie Portman" posts are caused by the paucity of women.
(And the reasons for that are far more worthy of concern than infantile behavior in public, IMHO.)
The cake is a pie
a => b does not imply that b => a
its a fundamental law, but my brother didn't get it when he was 7 ("some people have big ears, some people are Welsh, so Welsh people have big ears" ... he saw the error of his ways later on)
we are racist just becase white people like technology. how about government grants for minorities to get online? social programs? where will it stop. this is america not socialist europe.
The now famous cartoon about nobody knowing one is a dog holds also for age, and gender, and almost anything else one wishes not to reveal if one is careful.
Almost anything. There is a glaring exception that shines through every time. The exception is maturity
Maturity will show every time, as those lacking it simply haven't the control to required to fake it. A mature post or comment or action can come from a 13 year old girl, or 97 year old man. Both can hide gender or age if they so choose, by making the effort. Perhaps online discussion forums are revealing that maturity is a lot less common than many of us would like it be. Of course, the immature posts and comments tend to stand out, as out of place, so maybe they just get more notice, like a brat yelling his (or her) lungs out it only takes a one or maybe a few to make life miserable for those around them.
Slashdot is at least trying to deal with the 'brats' by moderation. It is an imperfect system, as shown by the need for meta-moderation, but is at least an attempt to deal with the problem. I've seen other web-board sites (gross oversimplifation of /. isn't it?) close rather than work at the problem. I prefer the /. take: acknowledg the problem and at least try to fix it.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
A lot of folks go into tech/engineering profession s because they're better w/ machines than people anyway - and will stick up for their version of 'truth' at the expense of other people's feelings. I think a lot of professionals, particularly in the fast growing computer field, have run into may 'posers', faux authorities, self-appointed ex-purts who needed a job and all the little mistakes they make just pisses them off.
For instance, one fellow at work was giving his view of uP history to a small audience and stated that the Apple II used a Z80 - now I could have either 1) just let it go, or 2) embarass him and stand up to make a correction. One who is a stickler for 'the trvth' often steps on toes and creates bad feelings which often creates a counter attack of some kind. Maybe this is why a lot of 'people oriented' people just like to talk in vague meaningless new-age psychobabble that's not right/wrong or provable one way or other, just a way of sharing feelings.
My friends call it 'intellectual arrogance' that alienates, nobody likes a wise guy, those people who think they know everything are particularly annoying to those of us who do.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yup, I'm a white male.
Which, of course, means that I do everything wrong. Even Katz agrees - I've been responsible for turning a potentially free and open medium into a boy's club. Despite my attitude of being honest, fair, and unprejudiced, to give everybody at honest chance to prove themselves and their skills/intellect *before* I make any judgement about them, in reality all those actions have simply contributed to pushing out women and minorities from the online communities that I visit.
I'm glad I'm in part of a demographic that can be so easily lumped into a single category of "evil." It makes things so much easier for me now. Instead of trying to distinguish myself, instead of being a person with individualistic thoughts and feelings and attitudes, I can simply say, "Hi, I'm Colin. I'm a racist, sexist white male who would like nothing more than to oppress you."
Thanks, Katz, for pointing out that all white men are exactly alike, and for implicitly criminalizing white males as a whole for yet another ill in society.
[grumble grumble]
I knwe someone must have stolen your lifeforce yesterday and replaced it with a little common sense. Now the good old, whacked out, Jon is back.
Have you (or any of your other babbling social justice bretheren) ever left your bedroom and looked at the real world? Didn't think so.
When a non-liberal arts person shows up and attempts to speak with artsy types, guess what? The get the same crap you are talking about. When an artsy flowery guy shows up in a group of business guys, or athletic guys or (fill it in with something besides artsy) they get the same crap too. Well, you get the crap if you try to impose your views on others right away.
THAT IS THE WAY PEOPLE ARE. Cross cultural, cross sexual, that is the way they are.
Here is an experiment, show up at some activity with one of these "oppressed" groups, like a NOW meeting or a lesbian happy hour, or something sponsored for one race, and just try to speak in terms of equality (true equality). See if you can hang around longer than it takes for that group to surround you like antibodies crushing Raquel Welch in "Fantastic Voyage".
Katz, your own biases are not facts, get out from your bubble and see the real world for what it is, biased.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I just happen to be black, when you generalize about geeks you're just as guilty as those on the outside.
LK
PS, why is it that I dread it every time I see Katz's name on a story?
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If u think being abusive in ur speech has no consequences then I feel sorry for your kids.
.oO0Oo.
When you are trying to discuss something serious the other person saying something like It's not your money fuckhead (a quote from a recent discussion I was having) has a negative impact on the conversation. One of the things it does is bring the discussion down to a pointlessly personal shifting the focus from the issues. It's the bully's tactic. It does cause pain.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
For the mostpart the Internet is a medium where everybody online has an equally loud voice. Unfortunately, for the uninitiated, the power to have their thoughts heard by an entire community means that they will post their thoughts to the enitre community. Worse, for the mostpart the uninitated with their underdeveloped sense of netiquette, will post exactly what is on their mind -- whether the entire community cares or not.
People do learn netiquette. If not punished, they are made aware of their abberant behaviour. Try posting HTML to a mailing list, or post to usenet using ALL CAPS. You will be made quite aware that you are breaking the rules.
When I was younger I strongly resented being lumped into this category. I would like to believe that the source is inexperience. People make mistakes.
With the flood of "immigrants", and the stereotypical loud-mouthed youth there will always be an abundance of the uninitiated. As the net grows, the problem will only get worse. For BBSers, or members of any failed online community this is not news.
A long time ago I went from using an internet account at school to checking out Prodigy. I was amazed at the following thread in a "Linux Help" group:
:(
Question:"I accidentally created a file called '-p' but I'm having problems deleting it"
Answer#1:"That's a huge problem, you need to back up all the data you have, recreate the partition, and restore your backup"
Answer#2:"That would work, but you should also just be able to rm -rf the directory it's in and just restore that one directory"
Answer#3:"Those are both great ideas, I ended up moving all the other files to another directory, did a rm -rf of the original directory and renamed my temporary directory to the original name"
At the time I remember thinking, "When is someone going to give the correct answer and flame all the people giving bad advice so they don't give uneducated answers." It never happened! I actually did post a nicer solution, but have never been too good at flaming...
Neither do 1's and 0's. It's people who use them irresponsibly that cause harm.
Free speach is not about the right to say any thing one pleases, it's about being able to voice an opinion. There are such things as pointless spewing, and the line between worthwhile and worthless is fine and fuzzy.
While I agree that too many people tend to over-react to what is only words (sexual harassment is real hard to quantify for example), I disagree that words don't hurt. Words mean whatever we want them to, but some words have very specific conotations of which we are all well aware.
Did you ever get bullied as a kid? Did it hurt?
Words from an anonymous stranger online may be easier to shrug off, but people are usually not able to just tune out their emotions. Those that can are often seen a clinically dysfunctional, since emotional reaction is a normal human trait.
And for another slant on the argument, the words of a judge are just words, but they do carry consequences.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
First spelling flame! MEEPT!
People have been commenting on the death of civility long before the Internet phenomenon (since the end of the Victorian age, at least). Each generation bemoans the brashness of the one that follows.
The phenomena Katz notes aren't restricted to online, and are hardly related to anonymity. Remember "Talk Radio?" "Trash TV?" People on Jerry Springer are hardly anonymous, but that probably makes them less rather than more civil. The fact is that some people are mean and/or crude, and always have been. Technology just widens our view so we see more of what's been there all along.
I think Katz is seeing differences where none exist. Bullies have always gotten the "reward" of hollow respect from their peers. Anonymity actually makes them easier, not harder, to ignore--they're just annoying noise, not some menancing presence threatening physical violence.
Katz obviously has some issues with various social behaviors, and some insights (and I would argue misconceptions) concerning them. But when he tries to show some technological connection, he rarely hits the mark. He still belongs here, since his stuff certainly qualifies as "news for nerds." But he should back off from these failed attempts at techno-hipness and focus on the more general issues in his in-group/out-group social commentary.
There is a vast gap between verbal abuse and physical violation of children!!! If people can't take verbal abuse, then something is seriously wrong with them.
In a public forum like Slashdot, I belive that EVERYONE has the right to post EVERYTHING he wants. And I'm not FORCED to read it, I visit Slashdot of my own free will. If you can't take a little verbal abuse or foul language you don't belong in a free spech forum.
I never read the rating 0 posts anyway....=)
Of course, then there's the other side of the coin that Jon never mentions. Sometimes people are unbelievably boneheaded and idiotic. After umpteen attempts at "civilized" discussion with them, they finally cease their diatribe as a flaming skewer is violently inserted into their rectal cavity. Isn't the Internet great?
Do not implicitly assume the problem is only with the testosterone laden male- he's simple the most visible (and least well liked) symbol. _Everything_ offends somebody. If you can't handle being offended, is the problem in the offender? Or is the problem in the offended- who either has been so sheltered that they've never encountered serious offense before, or who are attempting a passive-aggressive strategy for not _allowing_ dissenting viewpoints to be heard.
As a member of the white, male, oppressive class, what the heck do I know about harrassment, including sexual harrasment? Have I ever experienced it? Yeah, I have. I called it high school. Did I let it drive me into a snivelling ball, unable or unwilling to deal with others of my race who offend me? Heck no. I coped. So can you.
And yes, there are discussions I absent myself from. I rarely read slashdot comments with less than a threshold of 4. Not because I simply can't deal with them, but because I have better things to do with my time. Not everyone can participate in all discussions- and that's OK too.
Pardon me for not being PC. Pardon me for not being warm&fuzzy. Pardon me if I've offended you. Pardon me if I don't give a flying fuck if I've offended you. If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
I used to read one of the "net.religion" newsgroups about 15 years ago, and the attacks between people who disagreed on theological issues were vicious.
From a lot of the posts I've read here on /. it seems like some (not all by any means) of the people here have adopted Linux and Open Source as their religion, although I'm sure it wouldn't occur to them to think of it in those terms. The same things we see today from Christian fundamentalists that annoy us are occuring here in parts of the Linux community. I've lost count of the number of topics I've seen which has nothing to do with Linux where X number of people post "but it'd be much better if it was open source" / "I won't touch it because it's not open source" / "Linux is the One True Way and everything else is evil". I always browse at -1 since that way I do get all opinions, including the ones that have been moderated down because the moderator disagreed with them.
I feel that the hostility which you find in many discussion groups is a direct result of a lack of fear from physical harm.
/. source.
As human animals deep down inside we still have the tooth and claw instincts which keep us from telling that cop that he's an idiot, from telling our bosses where they can shove their latest software requirement, from letting CmdrTaco know how much of an "ass" he was to make his public statements recently (very hostile I might add) regarding the
I'm as guilty as the next (probably more so) of being hostile in online discussion groups but I feel that it's a good thing. Without the threat of tooth and claw reprisals we can get this hostility out of our systems fairly effectivley.
I for one am amle to see through hostility for the most part to see that the person is really just very excited about the point they are trying to make and being animals as we are see it as a natural form of expression given the environment.
As for the women, you cannot compare men's convos with women's convos... Yes some are geeks but as human animals they still have the "leather and makeup" syndrom which is bred in their genes. and we still have the "club them and drag them by the hair back to the cave" syndrom which is in bred in our genes.
We cannot stop being human animals overnight. The human race has come a long way and slowly the animal in us is dissapearing but it's still there... cowering in the dark, sharpening it's claws and grinding it's teeth to deadly sharpness.
And all the while in my mind I see the frenchman atop the tower shouting "I fart in your general direction"
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
...I can't stand.
Creativity.
./ that makes wading thru all the garbage worthwhile - so thanks to the person who wrote "I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize" :))
Some people just need to get asbestos retinas - but there isn't a day I don't find some neat expression or turn of phrase on
The Scarlet Pimpernel
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yeah...so? That's how most of society works. People tend to divide and group. Women turn to all-female groups. Similar for men. Technical geeks turn to male-white-narrow-dominated groups. Bookworms turn to book clubs. Academics hang out at universities. Automotive hobbyists go to car shows. It's just what people do.
Industry surveys show that as many women as men are buying computers now, and women are working in almost every element of the computing industry. But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female.
Surprising? Really? In the history of technology, men have usually been the ones who gab about tech just because they enjoy it. Women, on the other hand, tend to be much more practical: tech gizmos are merely tools to be used for other purposes; they tend to not gather great pleasure from the essense of the tool itself.
E-mail is convenient, visceral and democratic, but it, along with anonymous public postings, can breed hostility and raise unresolved questions.
Even in non-anonymous settings, people can breed hostility and raise unresolved questions. Actually, e-mail is _less_ hostile: we may yell at each other, but nobody gets hurt...as opposed to the ancient historical precident of people bashing in the heads of their conceptual opponents.
"From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions."
And what happened? People moved on. The early smart-and-friendly banter on Usenet has moved on to the smart-and-friendly banter on various web boards. That's how groups have worked for millenia: a group is formed, if it's successful enough other people - of high and low quality - join in, the original "feel" is lost, and some move out to create new groups.
Often, their attacks have little to do with what I think or write, mostly to do with the fact that I'm different, an outsider, a non-programmer who made different technology choices.
Gee...human nature strikes again! When an "outsider" joins a group and thrusts himself into an influential, high-visibility position and spouts pontifications that are outside the nature of the group, group members become hostile. Duh! People resent being represented by someone who is not "one of them". It's just like Hillary Clinton wanting to represent New York State before even living there...she's an outsider trying to control & drive a group that she is really not a part of; is there any surprise that many New Yorkers resent that and express a viceral hatred of her? Likewise, is there any surprise that a self-described "outsider and non-programmer" gets bashed when he tries to speak for a passionate group of "insider programmers"?
Katz, go study history for a while. You'll find that most of your new amazing sociological discoveries are really just people doing what billions of people have done for thousands of years. It's nice to hope that new tech will somehow change human nature; don't be surprised when it doesn't.
Thank you Jon Katz. We're now one step closer to a solution.
It is interesting to note that one of the oldest, most respected conferencing systems ever was mostly populated by non-technical baby-boomers.
The cake is a pie
Two different posts that have the same message, but say them with different styles will get different responses from the community. Harshly worded, assertive, slightly trolling types of posts get a response. Not all negative either - there's always someone out there to defend you, interestingly enough. Posts that start out with "... this is only my opinion", or "I've been following this discussion closely and I think..." are seen as weak. Weak writing will kill your posts.
What we need is a posting class - "How to post for reaction". On Slashdot, the title could be modified to "How to Post for Karma", because that's what karma is - quantified posting ability.
It doesn't matter what your underlying idea is, how you express it is everything. Exaggeration, trolling, a bit of flame all help a post get attention.
Some would say this is so because it's male dominated and this is all a male-way of doing things. This might very well be true. It might also be true that the males will always want (need?) a place of their own away from females, and this type of behavior is designed to create the exclusion. I don'[t find that hard to believe at all. How harmful this aspect of males is is another question. I would say there's a reason males need such a place without women, and they should be allowed to have it.
The whole reason for these essays of his are so that people can consider the issue he raises and agree/disagree on it. You don't really know what his opinion on the matter is from the essay - it's just something to provoke discussion.
The Scarlet Pimpernel
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
First off, I am female. I work in the tech industry as a ISP tech. I have been sidelined by my boss as he encourages my mail coworkers to take over more networking responsibilities. I have been told not to expect my job to change because I'm so good at holding our customers hands.
I went in for a job interview for an Assistant Unix Admin. I was forced to take a typing test and told that a Receptionist job was open and that might suit me better. I'm not whining. I just want to demonstrate that women in this industry have to do everything better, faster and smarter than their male counterparts. It's a challenge, but it sure beats working as some pointy haired bosses secretary.
To the women out there, just be better.
To the men, remember that while someone who looks like Natalie Portman may be nice now, Beauty fades. Wouldn't it be really cool to have a SO that likes grokking Linux and doesn't begrudge you the money you spent on that new Palm?
Really? And how do you know what color people are on the Net?
How many people on Slashdot aren't male caucasians?
Great Windows SFTP Server!
I think that the reason people feel free to say what they want is because the communications are not transparent. The veil of anonymity rarely, if ever, gets lifted. Most people go by pseudonyms, meaning that even those who don't post as A.Coward are nevertheless effectively invisible. If you don't have to stand by your opinions, it always makes it that much easier to give all the thoughts and emotions that others would find offensive (probably because they are offensive) a voice.
I think there's an audience effect here too. Slashdot's Karma is an extreme example, but in general, individuals are aware that a very large number of people could potentially read their message, and the arguments therefore often degenerate into point scoring. All too often you find someone making a really good point, and people trying to get kudos by following up on it with meaningless precisions and additional bits of technical trivia that are irrelevant to the point the original poster was trying to make.
All that does is make the original poster look semi-ignorant because someone followed-up with a short message correcting some irrelevant details. You see this all the time, and you have to wonder why people avoid the main point of the argument and post a useless correction - I believe it's this point scoring ethos: "If I can contradict or correct someone who's written such a good post, then people will think I'm cooler than they are."
Ok, so I'm exagerrating a little, but it's the general emotion the poster is feeling that I'm referring to, not the specific dialog.
Salocin.com
Please bear in mind that the 1st Amendment guarantees you the right to free speech. It does NOT under ANY circumstances guarantee you the right that anyone will listen to what you have to say. The beauty of the Internet is that nobody is backing you into a corner and screaming their vile views at you, like they can in real life. The concept of "Internet Harassment" is grossly over done, especially in light of neato tools like procmail...
People take things too seriously! There is a time and a place to prosecute inappropriate or dangerous behavior, but the publicity and fear-mongering that the Net intimidates people and everyone has an angry streak and is out for blood is part of the reason why there's a stigma attached to getting involved! If you don't like what people have to say, you have NO obligation to listen. Exercise THAT right, why don't we?
(Oops... sorry. Did I sound too angry when I said that? ;)
Notice: Your mouse has been moved. Windows will now restart so this change can take effect.
Here is the reason why there is some much violent male communication on the net--men don't know how to express themselves. Have you ever noticed the voluminous amount of email and chat discussions men are engaged in. And, it used to be said that women are chatterboxes. No more! And, the net has shown this. But it has also shown that the only way men know how to communicate or express themselves is through violence. This is something that needs to be corrected.
on the net, reputation captial is important. yes, talent is rewarded on the net. that's how it should be. the irony is katz attempting to label the people with this talent as a certain race, gender, or political affiliation. he doesn't seem to get it. THESE THINGS DON'T FUCKING MATTER ON THE NET. what you know does.
communities grow around those with similar interests. what is the problem with women turning to women's communities to talk about women's issues? honestly jon, on one hand you recognize the net as a place of freedom and diversity, then on the other hand you suggest that it should be dumbed down to include those you can't even operate a mouse. what gives?
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
Some people, on the other hand, revel in making others feel like they're worthless. These are the people who have nothing better (or more fun, in their opinion, maybe) to do than annoy others. They're people who don't think and/or don't care how their actions affect others. Included in this group of people are some serial killers, dictators and just plain everyday-idiots.
Why must some people be this way? I don't know. I do know, however, that we need to attempt to cut down on the amount of flaming that occurs on most online sites/email where people can post their views. We CANNOT resort to censorship - that can (and probably would) be taken way too far. What we really need to do is be aware of those who flame (though I think we all are aware of these peoples' existance), and to do several things: I like the idea of anonymous posting - it allows people to say things that they may not otherwise say. This is both good and bad. Good, because it allows people to voice their opinions (many times, valid, well-reasoned opinions) that could be unpopular. It also allows those people who have less self-esteem/confidence in themselves to make a useful addition to a thread that they would not normally post to (for fear of their opinions being attacked). However, anonymous posting is bad because it allows flamers to post annoying and often offensive comments without having to worry about consequences.
I belong to several mailing-lists, which recieve little or no flames, due to the fact that the people on those lists react to flamers by what I consider is the right way. The moderator of the list either bounces their posts, or the list-members respond to the flamer politely and privately, instead of posting an inflammatory response to the list. Of course, the 2nd won't work on
So, what can we do about flames? Basically, ignore the ones that get posted, take care to not post flames ourselves, and keep posting useful comments/opinions that make the Internet what it was conceived to be - a place where people can go to get and give useful information and converse with others of similar interests/opinions.
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
Women online:
.ru programmer to stop wagging his penis on news:comp.multimedia, and had an *interesting* 24-hours of follow-ups. However, there are only so many hours in a day, and most women, like myself, do actually have *lives* off-net. I'm highly unlikely to spend hours flaming or responding to flames when what I need to do online is find an internal SCSI Zip drive or an Open GL driver for the new board going into my Linux box.
;-)
/., we have the luxury of setting our level to 2 and leaving at least the unskilled flamers in the dust.
;-)
/. audience, he is a reasonable interface between our geek heaven and the real world of technophobic politicans, media outlets, and parental units {like my mom who still can't comprehend the metric system). I expect to disagree with him -- but I can't see the point in condemning him for expressing what he sees.
;-)
As a woman (yes, one of the few, the proud, the mighty), I have to corroborate Katz's note that I'm more likely to post to women-only or moderated groups and lists than to flame-fora.
That said, it's not because I can't flame; I once told a
Angry young men:
Who, if you could run a demographic study on repeat flamers, would constitute nearly the entirety of the flaming population. Remember that these guys are victims of the same schooling as the rest of us. Plus testosterone
Flaming is a relatively harmless outlet for their aggravation; I'd vastly prefer that they post flames than actively try to avenge themselves upon the wider society, don't you?
Katz may not have noticed that flamers aren't rewarded as well as they'd like to be; but I doubt that Jon is used to the phrase, "Welcome to my killfile, sucker!" On
I rather doubt that your garden-variety flamer finds being ignored "rewarding".
I'm surprised at the premise that flamers somehow "inhibit" free speech. While that may be true in fora where the signal-to-noise ratio makes finding useful material impossible (many news:alt.* groups, for instance), in subject-matter areas like moderated groups, mailing lists and weblogs, flamers have a tendency to be treated like spam -- deleted or skipped past without further ado. They may take up *physical* space on screen and HD, but if you don't click on them or read them, they can't possibly waste your time.
Which is why many flames seem harmless to their creators -- they know that the only people who could possibly be affected by their posts are precisely the audience they'd like to aggravate. It's going to be rather difficult to remediate bad behavior when the only people who notice or care are the ones the perpetrator already detests
Katz and Technology:
Well, I first read [about] JonKatz at Suck, and then read his work at Netizen. So I have *some* sense of history, which I suspect that many of his more virulent flamers lack.
Katz is not a Linux programmer. Neither am I (there being less $ interest in multimedia under the various Unices than under Windows or MacOS). He's a journalist and commentator *and* technophile -- while he may not be as technically adept as most of his
If you want to rag on him for occasionally leaving in weird artifact characters courtesy of MS Word for Windoze, well, I'm totally with you there
[postscript]
My website is out-of-date, and the drive where I edit it from is currently toast (Mac OS 4G multi-partition whose partition block bit the dust while I was playing CivII). So I am no longer in need of a personal slave, the one I obtained takes up all of my free time already.
> My comment can be quoted whenever, wherever, so long as you bloody well provide attribution! >
Has anybody thought that the online hostility may be a direct result of the pent up frustrations and aggressions most geeks have had to endure growing up?
When someone is repeatedly beaten up or degraded for the simple infraction of being smart, it tends to breed hostility. This hostility can't be expressed in the outside world due to the physical repercussions, but online, these feelings can be worked out and expressed.
The same things happens in RL. A parent beats their child. The child beats up on those weaker than them because that's the heirarchy they've been taught. Prey on the weak. Only, in the case of most geeks, society is the teacher, and it teaches us to be subservient unless we know we can get away with it.
Online, were the most severe repercussion of a flame war is being ejected from a thread, you can effectively "get away with it".
I think this aspect of the 'Net was accepted early because of the common backgrounds of everybody involved, but with the increasing popularity of the Web, and the proliferation of "mundanes", it is becoming an issue as these people are not used to people being able to talk back at someone and get away with it.
In Jon's article, he speculated about the flattening of organizational heirarchies. Well, this flattening isn't just occuring in corporations. It's happening in the society heirarchy as well. The former kings and queens that we all had to pay homage to in school are now the outsiders, the people who are new, who are different, who don't "fit in". And they pay the price for being different just like we did growing up.
The tables are turning, and it's pissing people off. That's the reason for legislation for controlling the internet. The powers that be are afraid of this change, because it undermines their power bases and communications channels.
The problem is the physical world can being physical threats. The online world is just words. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but we'll see in the long run if this translates to the bit is mightier than the fist.
These are just my opinions. Ignore them if you want.
-NYFreddie
Barbie of Borg - She doesn't just Assimilate, She Accessorizes too!
This article is not about the 'net, it's about slashdot. Every time Jon posts something, we relentlessly dig into him, pointing out his deficiencies as an 'unbiased' journalist, or exposing some flaw in his reasoning, without the sugar-coating that he's used to in a 'professional' environment.
:)
We've gone and wounded Jon's inner child, and this is his well-mannered way of getting back at us. He's calling us rude, but hasn't the backbone (or bad manners, if you prefer) to just say so.
What he is in fact saying is "You're all a very bright bunch of assholes, but I'm telling you this in a way you can't interpret for yourself."
AC - to protect my Karma stash.
Thanks Jon. Sometimes I disagree with your opinions and find your reasoning a bit muddy. Sometimes I even post responses, either logged in at home, or anon at work. But watching you and the rest of the /. crew take flame after flame after flame, I have come to admire the will it must take to get up and go to work...tho' I am sure there are BIG rewards too ;^) We, as a community just like any other online community have to start taking responsibility for our words. Our words do NOT disappear into a vacuum. There are people, living breathing people at the other end of that submit button. I was reading another thread here, and there was a large number of people SOOOO sure that the only reason for the auctioning of a M$ "thank you" check was to get another 15 minutes of fame. Many were soooo sure that he was using the charity to get fame (rather than the other way around). I also cruise some other discussion sites. It is not much different than here. I fear the dehumanizing tendency of technology (for a good read, read Weber or Heidegger...the concept here would technological darkening, disenchancement of the world). I am not a fan of civility - for - civility's - sake, but wish we could learn to navigate our digital selves in a more graceful way.
...an ubertechnosavvyeqsue geek.
I think it happens here on /. too. People with there bad language, dumb insults and petty remarks (my f*** system is better than your f*** system, so f**** you!). I haven't been bothered so much in the last couple of months: perhaps moderation is finally helping, or I've become better at skimming over such articles.
Some forums are worse than others: I played Q2 on heat.net for a while - the stupid ignorant comments in the live discussion lobby there was sickening. Is the average person in the world so dumb and ignorant? When people would start making bigotted or rude or stupid remarks during a game, we discovered intelligent (and clean) responses soon drove them away as they couldn't reply without making themselves look more foolish. Devil's advocacy, satire and irony (and maybe a touch of gentle sarcasm) are hard for people to deal with when they're dumb.
People online seem to use language that they would not use in front of strangers in real the non-online world. Perhaps the instantness and anonymity of the medium allows somebody to fire off a response that would never field in an a face to face discussion. I for one have realised that you really need to spend more time thinking about a response online. I also spend more time considering whether I need to respond. If I haven't got anything constructive to say (+ve or -ve), then I try to not say anything. Stooping to somebody else's level, or rising to somebody else's bait (whether they meant it intentionally or not) is not going impress anybody or make me feel good about myself
i didn't say such behavior causes women to be threatened (although some might be)--i did say it makes me, for instance, feel, as if people were trying to exclude me, as a woman. here are a couple of reasons why you might not feel the same way if the situation were "reversed", as you say:
1. you would still be a man--part of the dominating system. such a comment does not upset your status quo in any way. with women, such comments emphasize the status quo.
2. you wouldn't necessarily associate yourself with brad pitt. generally, when misogynist jerks post their crap, they (consciously or unconsciously) pick one image of a woman to represent all women. and even if they didn't do it, consider that: a) they're doing it in a mostly male, and, more importantly, mostly pro-male environment and b) generally, when one member of a minority is threatened, it threatens the entire minority (ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?). so, the effect is still the same.
you want your politcally correct world? good luck!
Society isn't politically correct, people will be offended, things will be said, people may get their feelings hurt by various strings of 1 and 0's.
Women say they feel sexually harrassed on the web, i say i'm offended when i'm forced to suffer through a "Lifetime Original Movie" when i want to spend time with my wife. I feel offended when I see that our television stations have to have a Black Entertainment Television. Not because I find these degrading toward myself being a 'German-American' (hey, we can hyphinate everything else, i'm gonna hyphinate the fact that my family is originally from germany and be proud of it too). What offends me is that we fuck up our society by trying to make everyone happy and protecting everything.
With freedom comes responisbility, without responsibility we will lose our freedoms. Accept what you cannot change, and change what you cannot accept
Lets stop praying for someone to save us and start saving ourselves -- KMFDM
I'm getting tired with people complaining that things aren't they way they want them, so everyone else should change.
...
Yes, there is plenty of rudeness and flamefests online. Yes, most people find it unpleasant. And yes, it will deter people who don't think the information is worth sifting through the unpleasantness.
But others (the disparaged young white males) find the information very valuable, worth the sifting. And they may be less sensitive to unpleasantness as their wives have been trying to "fix" for years.
So USENET survives in spite of flamefests, trolls, and many other ills like spam, clueless posters who don't check DejaNews, and incorrect answers. When in Rome
I'm frankly disappointed that people who pretend to be diversity- and culture-conscious don't respect the USENET culture, and try to meddle with it.
-- Robert
I admit I found your first article about the subculture of geeks somewhat interesting and thought provoking. Likewise with some of your previous articles.
While some of the 'slashdotters' will take all your words as a rant about personal (even though it's electronic and may have not been meant as a personal attack, it still is personal if the 'attackee' takes it personally) attacks against you, I can see that it is more of an anology to the net at large, and a clue into the minds of people (or at least I hope that is your intent, and I'm not looking too much into it)
As an admitted non-geek, you have undoubtedly faced many of the 'leet' linux dewds who feel you should turn around and never even look in their general directions - due to something as simple as some difficulty during installing linux or using a product made by microsoft. Heck, as a geek I myself have faced them and have been disgusted by their actions.
But on to my point (yes, there is one I wanted to say) - you seem to be embracing the mass media created stereotypes too much. I had the same problem with my ex-girlfriend. She didn't think I should get a pickup truck because 'only country folks' drive pickup trucks. You seem to be clumping geeks and computer lovers into a general description pulled out of magazines, news articles, and the jargon file. While that may fit some of 'us', maybe even a majority, it is by no means accurate depiction of the whole of us.
As for my thoughts on your recent article... I think that (as undoubtedly pointed out by others even though I formed this opinion even before reading the comments) that electronic communication represents the 'true' self opinion - not covered up by civil overtones and gracious words. People, even ones who seem kind and nice, are vicous animals. We are very aggressive at times, and a lot of us don't even recognize this aggressiveness. It manifests itselfs in the physical (as opposed to electronic-ie, the web) world in subtle ways, something as simple as looking at someone who offends you in some way, or talking louder than everyone else. Or bashing someone because they are not (admitidly) a geek yet they try to be part of our culture.
In the electronic world, this aggression is less hidden. There is no threat or fear of feasible physical violence to hold us back. No permanant reputation to stain. Even I have, usually only when very stressed or angry, attacked others in usenet. I am usually a mellow guy. Everyone thinks I am on drugs because of my mellowness. In the physical world, it takes a lot of effort to push me into anger. Only once have I ever physically hit someone, and I instantly hated myself for it. But, on the internet, I have struck out several times and have not regret it nearly as much.
Still, some of us are able to maintain some civility and make some usefullness out of it, instead of just attacking everything that comes into sight.
I don't think we are raising or training people to be vicous.
We already are.
We always have been.
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
If you talk rubbish someone will flame you.
.oO0Oo.
If you talk sense someone will flame you.
"You suck" postings do seem pretty frequent and women are conspicuous by their frequent absence.
Like your RL social circles the only thing you can do to change it is be civil and encouraging.
Live by example. Empathy works.
Maybe the geek world needs more magic mushrooms!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Why is it that whenever somebody criticizes how we speak, somebody else will cry 'censorship?' Just because people have the right to do something, doesn't mean that people ought to do something. In this country, we all have the (frequently exercised) right to call each other morons, idiots, jerks, and Communistic Nazis. But that doesn't mean we should. There are laws protecting our RIGHT to flame people because having a law keeping us from flaming people is a path to disaster, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't think before we flame. I think the original author was pointing out that our environment can be 'hostile' towards women, and we should think about whether we want that -- whether being a jerk is part and parcel of what we are, or unintended baggage.
Machiavelli said that a main strength of a republic is the virtue of its citizens, gained from having power and thus responsibility. The question isn't whether we want to take away peoples' power to say things, it's whether we, as individuals, want to start taking up some of our responsibility -- to exercise restraint and to encourage each other to do the same.
Online, hostile environments are driving almost every social group other than techno-savvy young white men away from coherent public discussion of technology. These men are invariably smart and skilled, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference. Are we breeding communities of impulsive and creative jerks?
So what you're saying, JK, is that only technosavvy white men are assholes on the Internet.
What's more, with yellow-journalistic statements like this one, you're stating "facts" without ANY relevant supporting statistics. Perhaps you should just go away.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
I've been a target of flamers once or twice in that time. But I thought it was just funny. It's so easy to ignore (one Usenet Kook even forged a posting from me - I was honored).
On the other hand, I suppose if you continue say stupid things, people will get fed up and flame...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Anecdotes, random email messages and gut feelings are not evidence. How did Mr. Katz determine the demographics of the slashdot community? Was it intuitively obvious to him that user X was a testosterone poisoned, 16-year old white male member of the ruling class?
Mr. Katz assumes that his personal experience with Slashdot is representative of the average Internet user, neatly avoiding the need for research.
I'm sure the oppressed women and minorities on Slashdot are going to be appropriately grateful that Mr. Katz has appointed himself their spokesman.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
How is #2 different from when misanthropes (as opposed to misogynists) pick one image of a 'technologically savvy white male' or 'Slashdot poster' to represent all Slashdot posters or Internet users? Katz may be right in that there are a handful of very hostile young, affluent, white males who like to cause trouble. Until he provides some sort of evidence for it, I'll just assume that he's picking on his favorite whipping-boy. If it's wrong to stereotype women or minorities, shouldn't it be wrong to stereotype people in general?
(ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?)
Because some thoughts should be illegal? (note the bitter sarcasm)
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
What can I say? Interesting piece and many parts are spot-on from your POV.
/. no one is twisting their arm to read. (This applies to Howard Stern too. A good many people listen to him in the morning because they expect him to say something to tick them off.)
Just a few points I'd like to make though:
Most of us geeks are fairly thick skinned from spending way too much time in this environment. After a while it's 2nd nature to tune out the noise. Sure, this behavior spills over into meatspace. I blame that on parents, teachers and IRL peer groups (you'll see me blame them again in a few sentences.) This behavior doesn't start on the net, it's just magnified here. It serves to cull the herd. Evolution in action, unless you're in Kansas.
All web sites can't be everything to everyone. If someone doesn't like the stuff on
Sexual Harrasment: oh yeah, I've been there. It happens. There are also places where it doesn't happen. While I've noticed that occasionaly some guys on here will make a derogatory comment aimed at someone's gender, I won't blame that on being geeks. You can blame parents, teachers and IRL peer groups before you ever get to geek society. They have their influence before most people get on the net.
While I agree that most of the people that built the internet are guys, women have been involved in computers since day one. I won't do the usual rant here but do some research if you haven't already heard the names. We aren't all just now getting interested in computers. I've been a geek since I got my first machine back in the '80s and stayed up all night long writing my first assembler programs in 6502 by doing pokes in BASIC before I could acquire an assembler.
I guess it takes a certain kind of stubborness to keep writing and posting your POV in the face of brutal flames. More power to you. When you get criticism from someone who actually thought about what you said and worked on a reply other than "You suck!" then accept the success that points to: at least you made someone think. Everyone is never going to agree 100% with you.
-chaosgrrl
When you can't find your jello don't come screaming at me to remove the weasle from your headgear.
I'm surprised Jon hasn't made the parallel between on-line behaviour and behavior driving cars; I suppose it doesn't fit the thesis.
I see a perfect parallel. Both on-line communication and cars put up barriers to normal inter-personal communication which uses non-verbal cues. Both cases make the person on the other side seem less human, thus less deserving of civility.
As well, the physical distance and the "leveling" of both situations (in a car, I can injure you just as easily as you can injure me; in an on-line exchange, I can insult you just as easily as you can insult me) seems to bring out more agressive behaviour.
Thus we see flame wars and road rage. Same phenomenon in my eyes.
[disclaimer: the following is written by an actual honest-to-god *female*. take it as you will.]
/.'s mean old discussion boards. Ooh, look there, a one and a zero are slapped up against eachother! oh *no*! I THINK THE ELECTRONS ARE TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK!
In response to all the people 'afraid' of discussion boards, to all the sexual harassment certain hahh-vahhd educated persons receive...
GROW A SPINE ALREADY!
Let's start with the people who're 'afraid' of
The net is rough. Get an asbestos suit. Just because some 3137 hax0r d00d said that you fsck Fluffy, your wife's cat, every night before you turn in, does NOT mean that the net should be screened or filtered at the source. That's censorship. Isn't that one of the reasons those backwater hicks in those overseas British colonies picked up their muskets and started lobbing lead balls at the Redcoats in the first place?
And this one goes out to all the ladies out there...
Most men are not assholes. Some are. Most male engineers usually don't notice what gender a person is when they're at work. Some do. A few of those try to use positions of power to get a piece of tail out of their underlings.
If you want respect out of a coworker or boss, you have to earn it just like everyone else. You're going to have to prove yourself, regardless of race or gender or creed, etc. It's the flip side of the whole Equal Opportunities thing. If you really want the same opportunities as Joe White-Guy working at the terminal at the end of the cubicle farm, you're gonna have to come down off of your pedestal and get your hands dirty just like him.
And to the sexual harassment? You're a software engineer. This means you can probably get an $80k/yr job just about anywhere these days. Slap your supervisor, tell him to go to hell, report him, then pick up and find a job where that sort of thing isn't tolerated.
(and just to disclaim the above, some women can be assholes, too.)
--t, who should prolly stop foaming at the mouth now
I don't dress this way to be scary. I dress like this because it's easier to sort my laundry. "...black...black...blac
I too have been noticing this disturbing trend. I am an avid game player and I frequent a number of regular and forum style game sites. If anyone shows any lack of skill or ability, the player is labeled as a newbie or a llama and, in most cases, torn a new one. Sometimes this occurs just because the person asks a game-play type question. I read a series of posts that were pulled off of USENET and the gist of the threads were that a new player was asking how a player in a game made a longer than average jump. He got answers in the form of simple explanations and a lot of bashing. He then replied by stating that he didn't understand, and that he really thinks that this guy was cheating. More abuse with no straight answer. He finally got fed-up, posted his dismay once more only to receive a barrage of profanity so foul that his mother (the original poster was a very young boy) replied to the group very angrily and told them that she was going to write a tyrade to the webmaster at dejanews. I applaud this woman for her stand-upedness(?) however misguided and useless it may be. I can only hope that this type of abuse becomes a thing of the past in these forums. I think if the mediation in sites improved and people are warned and/or booted for useless profanity or just plain abuse, that the trend would be swayed in the opposite direction. People who post (I can only speak for 'young', caucasian males) like to hear themselves speak. If they keep getting booted for what they say, they will eventually tone it down or stop posting altogether.
(Close-up of Neo - Look of agog on his face - Said in a half-whisper)"Whoa!"
I think that Jon made some very good points with his first article. But this second one was largely pointless. Mostly he posted some complaints from other people and made overly sweeping generalizations this time.
Sexual harassment is hardly unique to the tech sector. Female fire fighters and construction workers are just as likely to fall victim to it as female Perl hackers or C programmers. Either way, I have seen female flamers that are just as vicious as male ones on Usenet, so I don't believe that it is just a matter of angry, white males taunting women. Idiots come in all shapes, sizes, and genders.
Slashdot aleady has some of the most sophisticated filtering and moderation tools you are likely to see in a web forum; so a lot of the problems that Jon complains about can simply be remedied by browsing at a higher threshold.
It's too bad about all the hate mail he keeps getting. But how much of it is self-inflicted? I have noticed that in the past that a lot of Jon's posts have been riddled with with stray characters like ?,&,=, and so forth. Most of his recent stories do not contain garbage characters. On the contrary, they are quite nicely formatted complete with horizontal rules for better readability. Isn't it at all possible that some of the taunts hurled at Jon for the fomatting of his previous posts might have encouraged him to improve his posting habits? I'm not trying to justify gratuitious flames, I'm just suggesting that not all criticism, even harsh criticism, is destructive.
By the way, I happen to be an Hispanic male. I don't usually feel the need to point that out but Jon's riffing on the white males in this article kind of bugged me.
Does this
*scans through responses* *applauds*
/. is validated. Yes, validated.
Folks, after reading several of the responses so far (and yes, I actually *read* them), I have to say that I feel Katz's presence on
I didn't say he was good (although I thought the Hellmouth articles were quite excellent and thought-provoking), but there's a definite reason for an admitted non-geek columnist being on a geek-heavy website. Really, would this discussion have ever come up otherwise? I'm glad to see some intellectual discussion of a touchy subject. It's something that we all need to sit down and share our viewpoints on once in a while, if only just to get our heads around the topic. Like any other delicate subject, we're not going to learn from our mistakes if we don't discuss them and share our views. It's what everything from Open Source to the current political siutation is about, sharing ideas and making things better.
I'm glad to see topics like this one raised in an open forum, and I applaud Katz for having the cojones to bring it up. And if you don't like it, there's a button on the front page to change your Preferences; just click his box to OFF. It's really quite easy... any geek can do it.
Talk about having you point proven... He talks about people being uncivil online, and everyone thinks he's repressing "freedom of speech" and go ballistic.
You do not have the freedom to be mean.
Women would make better geeks because of their maturity, but they have no desire to for the same reason. They do not want to join the immature, impatient, close minded mass. It is disgusting.
If you can still stomach using Usenet, more power to you. Personally, I find that slashdot is starting to degenerate into the same sort of crapola that drove me away from usenet in the first place.
I don't want to deal with flamers and spammers and people who think they have a license to behave like complete jackasses. That's why I almost never use usenet anymore.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I see what Katz is saying here in regards to online communities. Back when I had no life and plenty of spare time as an undergrad, I wasted a couple of hundred hours on a MUD, and a couple of thousand on IRC. Flamers and newbies often got noticed by being outrageous and obnoxious. But experienced people could not only control the flamers, but tame the reactions of net.regulars. I led some pretty decent flamewarz when I first got on the net, then spent 2-3 years trying to stop them in a couple of forums.
Online communities are evolving to handle the new users. (See every other thread on the planet that has "Imminent Death of UseNET/IRC/Internet Predicted".) The AOL flood, the spam flood, now the WebTV flood - they bring in 10 people who flame and fade away, and leave 1 person who really gives a crap.
But to my point: Katz tries to extrapolate out that we're all java-writing code punks who sit amongst year-old pizza boxes and empty bags of Cheetos, flaming away at him instead of playing Duke Nukem. (This reply puts aside the journalistic and scientifically poor decision to write about his own personal experiences...) Ok, so I know people like that, too. I think we all do, or we've seen them in places other than movies. But while some of my friends had that life for a while, they discovered the business side of the web. You remember - the dot.com revolution? The key: There are rewards for civility!
Those people quickly discovered that being a sloth and coding may produce great work, but it does not impress a client. Those who would rather be eccentric, angry artists have been fired by clients who just don't put up with that crap. The mainstream of business still wants the blue suits and respect. Look at the recent Apple Computer press conferences... While suits may be a little extreme for most coders, but I've seen some of the new techo-elite in the coffeehouses, and it's their wardrobe.
So, I'll leave Katz's complaints to the invisible hand of the market. Slowly, those flamers will need jobs and will be compelled to learn civility. Otherwise they will be forced to give up their access due to unemployment, or because the men with the white coats are taking them away.
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
Like Jon Katz?
If someone objects to people being rude or obnoxious --- as Katz has --- it's striking how quickly many people move immediately to hand-waving about Political Correctness, Truth, the First Amendment or Human Nature. They don't seem to be able to tell the difference between real free speech issues and the everyday desire to be treated with some respect and avoid being yelled at. It's probably true that people routinely feel more strongly about things than is socially acceptable to express. But there's a reason why there are social norms about that sort of thing, especially in conversation between peers: take the norms and sanctions away and you don't get more truth, or more free speech, or "real" discussion. You get less.
Reading a thread under these conditions ends up feeling like someone shouting in your ear. Even if there's good stuff in a discussion, there's often not much incentive to stick around or participate. Why risk sparking off some obnoxious response, with all the wasted energy that entails? As Katz says, the jerk-behavior threshold is much lower than in real life. And most people just have better things to do than deal with people who tell them to please die, so they leave it to those with a taste for that sort of thing. People opt out, and so --- contrary to those who scream about their right to be jerks --- you end up with a good deal less free speech and discussion than you'd otherwise have had.
Yes, today. Check out Transmeta's website.
There will be a webcast anouncement this morning at 9 (PST) and a website update at Noon
While it is true that this "society" is still young, as societies go, it is still a subset, or more likely a combination, of existing societies, each of which has similar rules about how one is to treat others.
If we are to take the "growing pains" argument to RL, however, we find that it loses some validity. When I join (or form) a group of people that meet to do similar things, such as a book club, if one or two of the members start berating or browbeating the other members, I'm not going to call that "growing pains." I'm going to point out that those people are being rude, and probably ask them to leave.
The real problem, as Katz points out (but does not expand on) is that there is no responsibility taken by flamers for their actions. Even in the case where the flamer is asked to leave, assuming they do, they can always come back under a different name, or email address, or even IP (assuming they know about those).
More than likely, though, since they percieve no threat or danger from their behavior, they'll just continue, probably even getting worse. We've all seen it.
So, the real trick is not only to point out when people flame, but to try to explain to them how useless and hurtful and counterproductive it is. I know that 14-yr-olds sometimes have problems understanding, but even if you can bring one flamer to the light side, you've succeeded, and we're all a little better off.
-ristoril
the bible then you have basically defined GOD. A creative impulsive jerk. Who curbs GOD ? Maybe we should hire ODEN to knock some sense into the Christian Diety.
On a more serious nature. Flames can be basically ignored. I do not post very often because I have other things to do in my life than spending 8 hours a day reading /. . The young who have internet access are the only ones who could spend the time needed to review a message and its subsequent postings in full. This gives them a decided edge when it comes to discussions because they may have read everything up to the point that they post. I would not limit the youngsters because no one actually gets a bloody nose in chats so they can work out their differences verbally and get a few rough edges ground down. Replying to flames is pointless but not replying to valid questions is also just as bad. Columnists and authors of books are not used to the level of instant critisism that the internet can bring to bear on them. This can cause them to turtle and not respond to valid points that are raised about their writing. Perhaps some of the more talented programmers can develope a filter for Authors and Columnists that can be installed. This filter would change certain sayings but retain the basic meaning. A short list of such changes could be.
WTF => Huh
You Fsking idiot => I totally diagree with you.
*ssh*le => I beg to differ
You get the idea. I know some people who use certain words in their day to day speach that I would never use. They are not malicious about it. We may be dealing with more of a cultural language problem than with an open hostility problem.
What do you think?
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
...but I couldn't get more than halfway through your article before your broad generalizations and flawed thinking overwhelmed me.
Take, for instance, the statement from your first paragraph:
Do you have any idea how offensive this is? And how far off base? I've been online for over a decade, Katz, and would like to think that I've had wide exposure to the average white-male-techie netizen...and have come to the diametrically opposite conclusion on what these people are like. They (we?) are usually very well spoken and civil, quite open minded and willing to consider (in many case, they actively seek out) alternate viewpoints on even some of their most cherished ideals. The only things I've seen that are met almost universally with scorn from this group of people are displays of willful ignorance (such as the one perpetrated by this article) and intolerance. In short, they tend to seek viewpoints that challenge their own in hopes of expanding their knowledge and only take offense when someone with alternate views proves unwilling to hear them out or shows themself to be ignorant and unwilling to expand their horizons -- things that we should (as individuals and as a society) take offense at!The people you label as hostile are merely guilty of treasuring knowledge and questing for it, with that quest often taking the form of spirited debate which those less inclined to the quest just might take for hostile intent. Is it a hostile act to challenge someone's beliefs to see how well they hold up when tested by logic? Only the close-minded would think so.
Of course, there are a few bad seeds out there who delight in tweeking people's noses and stirring up trouble, but they are very much a minority (though at times they might appear otherwise). You use /.'s own Natalie Portman poster as an example, passing him off as the norm for /. when these posts are sent by one or two individuals out of a readership of thousands? That's like labelling all Americans racist because twenty guys got together and burned a cross in Georgia. It's gross generalizations like these that cause racism to begin with; when people like you paint entire populations with one stroke of the brush, you perpetrate the same flawed thinking that has in the past led to atrocities such as racial lynchings in the American South, the gassing of Jews during WWII, and the holy wars against the Turks throughout the Middle Ages. It was generalizations such as yours, Katz, that paved the road for the hatred that fueled these past horrors, and the reason for my hostility toward you now. You should be ashamed, but I know you won't be (you seem to have too much in common with the ilk behind the NP posts -- you appear to get off on stirring controversy, albeit on a more cerebral level).
Seek enlightenment, Katz. You need it.
-- WhiskeyJack
he bands over that statue bitch and ... bam - bam. trying to appeal to my better sense just failed miserably. katz has as much of a half-assed opinions as most flamers.
The whole idea of "politically correct" is absurd. While on a buisiness and governmental level, I should always afford everyone I meet with respect, on a personal level, saying I have to treat you nicely because you're a woman or you're black is like saying a woman has to date me because I want her to do so. Everyone get this straight, no one personally owes you anything, including respect. If they want to hurl racial slurs or sexist coments at you, so long as they aren't preventing you from doing something legally, they aren't on your property, you have no right to tell them they can't, just because it makes you feel bad. If you don't like someone's joke, suing them for sexual harassment is akin to me sending you to prison because you won't go down on me. You don't owe me sexual favors, and I don't owe you respect. Don't get me wrong, society wouldn't exist if no one ever granted another person respect. I don't go around hurling insults left and right, and I generally treat everyone I meet well until I have a reason to treat them badly. But the idea that someone can tell me to call them "vertically challenged" because they're a short midget is ignorant. You aren't allowed to police my thoughts, just my actions. And only those actions that invade on your rights. You do not have a right to a "nice" environment where everyone treats you like some kind of royalty. At work, you have the right to be treated in a buisiness-like manner, nothing more and nothing less. When recieving government services, you have the same right. The government and buisinesses can't have "personal" views. People can. If I want to tell my daughter not to date black men, that may make me a biggot, and you may not respect me for it, but you can't tell me I don't have the right to do it, because I do(I don't have a daughter). If I want to yell as some fat lady to get her big ass accross the road, she has the right to be angry. She has the right to insult me right back. She does not have the right to go to the police and ask they arrest me. Now there's going to be some big headed lawyer who'll tell me there's lotsa case law out there that gives some old lady who burned her crotch with hot coffee because she's a moron the right to sue me for calling her a moron on a public forum like this. All I have to say is that its people like you who destroy the constitution, free thought and speech, and the ability for a utopia like state where people don't insult eachother. Your attempts to control my personal behavior which does not hamper your inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the *pursuit* of happiness will in the end turn this country and the world into thought police state of mindless ant-like drones, with little electrical ships in our heads to shock us into submission whenever we have an "inappropriate" thought. Fuck you. I will never surrender my right to think as I wish. If I want to think about killing someone, that's my right. I just don't have the right to do it.
At least Talisman hasn't bothered to respond to this discussion. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that he's reading it, though, despite what he said yesterday.
I was a bit surprised that he outed himself here in public. It says a lot about his social frame of reference, which appears to be quite different from my own.
I tend to agree with most of what Mr. Katz has said in this essay. I've witnessed the formation of several "specialized" (i.e. women-only, etc.) discussion groups, and the conditions which forced their creation weren't pretty. And the participants on both sides of the fence were the poorer for their separation. I wish I could see a good solution to this problem, but sadly, I haven't yet.
I wonder if the change in the pace of society over the decades might be a contributing factor. If one visits less developed countries, one can't help but notice the more phlegmatic philosophy of agarian workers, compared with the more frenetic pace of say day-traders. I would be very interested to find out if there have been any studies done on the neurophysiological effects of being exposed to increasing information sources. One can't help but notice the increasing demand for mental health services (admitted it may be because science has been so successful in treating normal diseases) and the levels of stress related phenomena (lower fertility rates, etc). Are there links between higher/faster/creative brain activity (which mastering complex systems requires) and impulsive, almost neurotic behaviour. Perhaps the claim that genius is the other coin of madness has some truth in the higher degrees of eccentricity and egoism (heck it takes some balls and belief in yourself to aspire to be CEO of multibillion companies). Uh. oh, time to drug the water supply again :-).
On the other hand it could be no more than improper socialisation. Historically there has been vertical social accretion through multiple generations of families living together with grandparents infusing values to younger kin and horizontal socialisation through civic functions (community, school, neighbourhood interaction). With increasing mobility, especially in the IT industry and greater fragmentation of the social fabric, these influences are being reduced, requiring a need for self identity which consumerism and brands claim to offer. While we haven't got to the stage of a Nike athelete or a Revon lady, the recent publicity of the success of the IT industry and glorification of the "hacker" stereotype might convince some to adopt the superficial behaviours without really examining the mores. One can see similar reactions between shift from niche inside group to mass marketing fad. E.g. professional cyclists look upon newbies who buy top-line sepcialised equipment as "all the gear but no idea" as they don't really have the training to properly utilise the stuff. Similar with gentrification when a low-cost region with "hip" and "cool" characters are invaded by yuppies who want to experience the bohemien lifestyle but their high-priced entry drives the exodus leaving commodification of a cultural shell without the diversity and vibrancy the drives culture. Witness the increasing difficulty of independent film-makers and Hollywood have noticed the profits of indie films and have absorbed their financial benefits into mainstream by buying out the successfull chains/distributors. This is only big problem with a mass medium (objoke medium cause it's neither rare nor well done). As others have pointed out, now that IT is mainstream (and profitable like law and medicine) with well-established practices, perhaps the real hacker mentality (the joy of being in an exciting area where everything is new) will shift to another sphere.
So where is the mystery when 15-year olds know about kernel hacking, the challenge when you can book ascents to Mt. Everest, or cultural exploration when you can tune in to the fantasy channel (sanitised of course) of your desire du jour? When we are so set in our ways that we assume that everything should follow a preset mould. When religion has shifted from the choice of your church to the sign on your shoe or the OS on your computer. Isn't it like arguing that red is better than blue? The world is big enough to accomodate everyone's preferences without turning it into the personal reflection of your moral stance whatever -ism that catches your fancy. or imposing your lifestyle choices on others as a validation of self-esteem (pack identity). I think humans still have a lot of learning in adapting ingrained biological imperatives and seeing ourselves of a member of a subgroup (family, clan, club, state, nation, multinational or whatever) to a society that encompasses 6 billion people.
LL
Katz asserts that the early days of the net were the breeding ground for a class of people who were inherently and overtly hostile to these non-white, non-male newcomers. Although the demographics of many of the early net users are generally white and generally male, this does not prove the point. For instance, I am both white and male and I am not hostile to people who are neither.
Katz asserts that a preexisting angry streak in the geek subculture has permeated the culture of the net, adding that he believes that is generated by the demographics of the net-- his angry young men. Again, Katz uses the proof by assertion method. As a young man I was hostile toward many things. In fact, my wife accuses me of being hostile to other drivers even today. However, somehow I was able to keep from adopting this hostility in written or spoken communication (well, there were a few instances, but beer was involved).
Katz asserts that harassment of a sexual nature is endemic in the technical workplace, and uses a complaint at Juno to back up his claim. However, he fails to note that sexual harassment claims are filed in every industry and that most of the truly notable cases are not in the technical industry. The number of women who function as CEOs and officers of technology companies stands in stark contrast to Katz' assertion that the technical workplace and cyberspace are replete with harassment.
One of the arguments that Katz returns to over and over again is that the difficulty that people have posting to or using /. is inherently a part of the hostility that is often seen on the site. Of course, it couldn't be that the site is difficult to use (it is, especially for newer web users) or that the content, generally of a more technical nature, is difficult for those not versed in both technology and open source issues to understand. These are significant barriers to participation for some. However, this is a good thing in that it helps (along with moderation) to keep the noise level down somewhat. When these people understand the content and the mechanism, they will be ready to join the discussion.
The assertion that there is some sort of "broad geek conspiracy" to keep women, non-whites, and other "undesirables" off of the net or in their own "content ghettos" is an example of the worst kind of hysteria, and deserves no place in a /. feature. While it IS appropriate to challenge the participants on /. to make /. and the web a better place, there is no reason for the type of mindless stereotyping of geeks that Katz has so proudly rejected in the past.
Katz tries to tie all of this together with some developmental psychology theory, using this to assert that the ability to "act" in a hostile manner online will lead to adults that are inherently hostile due to the fact that they never learned how to behave. Last time I checked, the same people who are online also exist in the offline world, where they shop, interact with others, go to restaurants, and engage in a variety of day-to-day activities that expose them to a different environment where they likely are less hostile than online. I also imagine that within each hostile poster's own community there is less of this hostility- I bet that they can get along.
Finally, the tendency of Katz to insert his own experiences as a validation of poorly-thought-out assertions is self-serving and insulting. Katz seems surprised that on one of the most pro-open source web sites on the net that the reaction to his use of Word was negative in some quarters. That Katz would be surprised by this is baffling. The use of these examples from his own experience gives a tone of self-justification and self-imposed martyrdom that makes the skin crawl as one reads it. The effect is to insult the reader, which makes me a little hostile.
Well, technically I'm not an engineer, but I think most men would notice if someone is male or female. I'd imagine most female engineers would be able to tell as well :-P
Now, whether they let that affect the manner in which they deal with that person is a completely different manner.
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
Seiously, what a bunch of self serving piece of fucking hogwash. Go stick your head up your ass, katz. And Jim the Engineer is an old fucking fart who *never* had the beans. Really, this is just sad. I remember the USENET in 1988 being quite full of flames. As I said yesterday, YOU HAVE TO FLAME THESE MORONS TO SHAME THEM INTO SHUTTING THE HELL UP< OR AT LEAST TO FIX THE CAPSLOCK!
I think I'm gonna go listen to my Strawberry Shortcake records and see if I can recover from the trauma of this hostility.
I have never had a problem with being a woman online, I`ve never felt sidelined because I am a woman.
The only time I`ve ever been pissed off is when men try to speak for what women want or when discussion forums like this are used to discuss the animal that is woman (i.e. geek dating advice).
Little sister
"The future masters of technology must be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the
I have once received, with others, a compliment for having an actual debate. The subject was of an esoteric nature, but after 20-30 posts none of the participants had resorted to flaming. In fact we were still listing our references and suggesting sources for the other participants. Somebody read our thread and was impressed enough with our conduct that s/he posted a compliment reguarding our behavior, saying that s/he had never seen a debate, that was as reasoned and respectful, online before. I have only seen this once unfortunately.
It is simply amazing to me that Jon is unable to comprehend that intelligent people tend to be free thinkers, i.e. able to speak their mind. It is equally amazing to me that people of the type of rhetoric exposed by Jon do not comprehend that good things come from those allowed to speak their mind freely. I think it is fine to be sensitive. I equally think it is rediculous to tell someone to not discuss relevant topics and intelligent thought processes simply because they do not agree with something you might agree with. Jon, get over it. If you are too sensitive to read slashdot comments, then don't. On the same note, stop wasting peoples time with this "mean people suck" attitude. Stupid people waste everyones time. If I make a stupid comment, I am sure I will be flamed for it. Now, perhaps I will learn something from the response. Perhaps not. The point is, as I have the right to voice a stupid comment, others have a right to point out the stupidity. I cannot tell you how many times I have been on a list group that has forward momentum only to have a group of x winblows users "invade" it and state "hey we are the majority and you guys are too mean". Result, everyone who was carrying the tource left the group. End result, the group turned into a chat room. You, sir, benefit from the fruits of those hard to get along with technogeeks. When will people with your point of view (remember "mean people suck") understand that to get ideas to move freely, one must occasionally endure differing personalities, and a global environment. To sum it up: If you enter a techno geek group and say "gosh, why can't you guys tell me how to once again re-invent the wheel", expect to perish if not donning asbestos. Mean people suck - indeed! Stupid people are a drain on the free flow of ideas, the forward movement toward a common goal, and basic economics. Free your mind - your a** will follow...
Remember that whistle-blowers provide an useful service to the community. Anonymity is necessary; if way more people abuse it than actually need it, well, nothing is free my friend. Remember that you can be sued into poverty even if you are right, particularly if your opponent is a corporation that has money to burn.
And Jon: You REALLY don't get it, do you. I think the intemperance shown in the Net comes from the background of its creators: in the technical world, two plus two equals four, even if it hurts your feelings. Just imagine: an objective reality where you are demonstrably(not arguably) either right or wrong. After a while it begins to seep into your character and then we have these holy wars about editors or OSes or whatever you have. I believe that the most important part, though, is that no one is required or asked to be part of these communities: if you want to create a Politically Correct community of geeks, well... good luck.
And what is this 'white' obsession? Do you think people get flamed more if they're not white?
I have an idea why we see so many jerks posting these days. Two reasons combine for the effect:
/because/ it has a strong impact; it gets noticed more. Hostile posts tend to use strong language.
1) More than one person can speak at once, meaning noise cannot displace signal. No one has to be recognized or "given the floor" in order to be heard, so there's no logistical reason to do anything about flambait. So, the signal/noise ratio decreases.
2) Strong language is strong
The second point is human nature, and we can't change that. The first point is just a de facto circumstance of usenet, perhaps complicated by the fact that the standard mechanism to get rid of unpleasant people (besides moderated groups) is "ignore them and they'll go away".
I do think "ignore them and they'll go away" works - and the real kicker is that modern technology has killfiles, so we can force it to work even if the pissant doesn't go away. A big part of this problem, IMO, is that new users aren't given software with decent and user-friendly killfile and filtering features.
Katz does it again. A brain-dead peice where he draws poor conclusions from poor data, gives his opinion as fact, and spouts prejudice. I'm against censorship, but stop rewarding this dolt for his bad behaviour.
Although many geeks tend to seem hostile, it is really just a manifestation of their passion for technology and the degradation of technology as more newbies believe themselves to be experts. Economics majors who have learned to use Visual Basic and Access are not qualified to develop software. Just like people who cook are not gourmet chefs and playing the game 'operation' does not make you a doctor.
If you don't have passion for technology (if it is just a job) do me a favor and find a new career. I am tired of having to explain myself to people like you. (yes that is hostile and I won't apologize for it.)
If someone says something nasty about you on a public forum, it doesn't force you to take them seriously. You still have the freedom to continue posting. If you choose not to exercise that freedom then that is your own choice but the freedom has not been taken away from you.
The problem has two sides. One is the group of people who don't have the social skills to moderate their own speech. The other problem is the group of people who don't have the social skills required for reading unmoderated discussions.
// filter is godsend to offense (and noise)
:) ). That is why I reside in the "virtual communication" world and not the real world.If you had watched "Lain: Serial Experiments", I am Lain, though I am not god. :)
:) Nano-robotics, I want it now!)
On-line provides greater technology to develop protection against inherent offensiveness in ALL communication, if so desired.
On-line, one can write scripts (Perl or otherwise) to automatically filter out much of offensive or noisy communication. In non-virtual communication, there is no off button to the jerk who cuts you off the freeway and flips you the finger.
Spam got so bad that I code auto email filters based on sender, based on subject heading keywords, based on text context keywords, and slot them into various folders (some of them also auto delete
There is no automation nor filters in the real world. Imagine how wonderful life can be if you can code filters for RL. Not to say all the programs and scripts I can code to automate organize my desk and office. And "garbage collection."
// noise worse than offensiveness
The biggest problem with ALL communication (on- and off-line) is not offensiveness. It is low signal to noise ratio. Completely demonstrative of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This is easier detected (and thus filtered) on-line because you can -grep "hot grits".
Inverse grep is antidote from noise.
// Filter principles applied in RL for greater signal ratio
In RL, you have to resort to the primitive algorithm of "friends" (data ID'ed by source sender) to filter. And when your "friends" are unreliable in their signal ratio, you are out of luck.
The more "emotionally gifted" individuals can adapt to a more optimal refinement algorithm over source to also "state" of source (i.e., whether "friends" will be rambling, or "friends" will be informative). Unfortunately, we cannot download such optimal filters from these gifted individuals.
In on-line world, we can GPL such filters.
// conclusion
Isn't the on-line world so much better than RL? I need an exit!
Most people reading slashdot are trying to avoid this kind of all-form and no content stuff. "techno-savvy"? give me a break.
Today, ladies & gentlemen, I present to you ... JonKatz's thought processes!
.... let's see, everyone's sick of Columbine, I can't write much about Gates 'cos he's resigned now, no real issues to discuss ........
"Hmmmm
.....yet I feel a need to post something inane. Hey, I know! I'll just *make up an issue*! Something technological... hey, my Aunt May once ran across a nasty script kiddie on IRC, maybe I'll blow that all out of proportion! Yeah!"
Now to hit JonKatz with a large, spiky clue-stick: YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO! (sorry for shouting, he deserved it). If you don't want to be part of a group of introverted, hostile, misogynistic rejects, don't read their messages, and don't reply to them. Simple, no?
It's an inverted kind of tyranny in which the most hostile people are truly the freest.
I don't know about that, Jon. We're all about equally free online, bandwidth aside. The fact that newbies are more easily intimidated or bamboozled is not specific to online. There's just a lot of focus on online now, and nothing in history has allowed as many people to interact as immediately. Naturally there's friction.
I think friction is a good thing. How do you know where to polish if you don't know what sticks? Say something ignorant, get flamed, think about why, become (maybe) less ignorant. Given a choice between free expression and orderly tranquillity I'll take expression any day.
It is important to remember that the right to free speech does not include the right not to be offended. Being easily intimidated or offended are symptoms of being sheltered, sensitive, or having the proverbial chip, and while sensitivity is a useful virtue for a poet, if we're to make online become the new agora we have to not let anything distract us from our arguments. That's why we're doing this, right? To argue our views and establish truth through the fire of scrutiny. As anyone in (traditional) public life will tell you, a thick skin is essential if you want to get anything done.
I've been sitting here reading /. for a couple of months now. I read most of the articles, less of the comments, and keep my threshold at 1, because "first post" and other troll material doesn't interest me.
./ResponderX can say "hey, that's not what I like!", develop and send a response or email, and forget about it in seconds. posterY, on the other hand, now has to deal with hordes of incoming email, up to all of which may be irrelevant "You suck" messages. And folks, I don't care if you think words mean nothing - read 'em long or often enough, and it *will* start to bother you!
What I notice here, with the responses to this article (and, indeed, any like it) are that (wow!) some people agree, some people disagree, and others couldn't care less.
Gee, that sounds like society as a whole, doncha think?
What bothers me are not flames, or offtopic posts, as those are easily avoided. What bothers me, as a reader and someone who might like to comment on occasion, are inappropriate flames.
Some (made up, names mean nothing) samples:
PosterX: I'm a windows user, and have always liked....
/.ResponderY: WINDOZE sUcKs! LiNuX RuleZ! Trash that system and go CLI!
PosterW: I'm not sure I agree. If I want to change memory settings like shared memory, I need to recompile, and that's too much work...
/.ResponderZ: If you can't recompile the kernel, get out of the kitchen!
News article: CompanyQ releases new Windows software for....
./ResponderR: Why do we care? X-program does that already on Linux. Post something we care about!
I can VERY MUCH understand anyone not wanting to post here. If I, as generic PosterX, dare to post anything here that doesn't directly affect Linux/open source in a positive manner, I'm going to get my nuts verbally chopped off. Lord forbid I should question the GPL, or suggest that ANY project is not suitable for an open-source solution!
As many other commenters have noted here, the problem is (IMO) with the speed of response, and the lack of judgement.
Anyways, I feel like I'm done blabbing on for now. The point?
Kneejerk responses aren't necessarily appropriate. Free speech is - but please think first. Maybe there's a reason other people think in different ways - and have different opinions. Try to respect that.
Regards,
Strauss
Trifle not with Dragons, for you are crunchy - and go well with catsup.
Yes, and many of them write long-winded, alarmist articles.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
Online gaming for motivated, sportsmanlike players: www.steelmaelstrom.org.
The evolution of e-mail and the growth of the Web has brought distinctive e-communities into increasing contact with outsiders. "From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions. The social problem is analogous to the problem of assimilation when natural disasters or wars lead to mass movements of people to new lands. When the rate of immigration exceeds a certain amount, the resulting chaos and need for adjustment in the host country can evoke resentment and backlash from the resident population."
.sig) where broader advertise wouldn't be (Green Card Lawyers). But when spam is either off-topic or drowns out the content of the channel, it destroys the very community that it was intended to leverage. This explains the resistance to even on-topic advertising. It is not that commercial use per se is abhorrent to everyone, but we cherish the communities and don't want to risk their loss.
This plays off of something in the first article in this series rather well. You pointed out that there is a tendency to have a filtered view of the Internet. Each person has his own mental model of it. Those of us who do more than shop online, who actually participate in online communities, believe that the places we visit have residents in a sense and a community identity.
The instincts that lead us to protect a community from being changed beyond recognition are in direct conflict however with the Net's lack of place. Slashdot, is not closer nor farther away from comp.lang.c++ than it is from denask-l (I won't put the exact address here to keep it away from spammers). And all three of these are as easily accessible to people with the technology from anywhere.
There is a tendency to view all of the communities we encounter through the filters of our experience. Old-timers know what the community has been. Newbies believe it to be something different. The old-timers are there because it offers them something they want or need. They are going to resist losing that. And the newbies are seeking something. Where those conflict, there will be friction.
And the point I am driving toward is that this friction is good. We now have the ability to build communities around shared interests that completely transcend place. I have participated in one of these for years that doesn't even have a single fixed location on the net, the online community of Esperantists. You will find us in several newsgroups, mailing lists and web sites. Such communities must resist undermining the central defining characteristics of the community. To the extent that they can succeed in that, the Internet is no longer a homogenizing force. Instead, it allows small, widely dispersed groups to form communities. But to police community identity requires people who are willing to escalate to abrasiveness in order to exclude people who insist on using a forum in ways that will undermine its central purpose.
This resistance to seeing a community destroyed by off-topic use is perhaps the most persuasive argument against spam. Individual people or companies selling online may be able to argue that they are selling to the right groups. Unlike broadcast media, even if they are right, there is no authority, no owner, enforcing a ratio of on-topic content versus advertising. Self-regulation might be tolerated easily (advertising a web site with product information in a
Biology resorts to game theory in some cases to explain the balance achieved between the different strategies pursued by various members of a species. It applies here as well. A community composed entirely of abrasive, aggressive curmugdeons each tenaciously defending it against his own view of what the community should be is no more viable than a community with no one but an army. And yet both virtual and physical communities need their defenders. Such people must be unyielding on certain important points.
For the net to allow communities to form and survive at all will require a certain amount of conflict. It is unavoidable, and desirable. It is part of community identity.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
What a bunch of pre-chordate (spineless) whining.
What would Internet life be like without being exposed to GeHoWa (Geek Holy War)?
The Internet wolrd isn't Teletubbie Nirvana, after all.
What's the next instalment? Post-modern feminist analysis of the Internet?
"E=mail. Think of the inherent sexism in this. It means 'E-male', showing a inherent and deliberate gender exclusion and thus creating a hostile online environment to womyn...."
Check out this strip of Space Moose to get a reality check.
I find that in some Usenet communities, roasting newcomers is sort of an initiation rite. For example, newcomers to the newsgroup comp.lang.c are rated on the maturity level of their response to being roasted, which indicates whether they fit in or not.
Participating in this process or observing can be highly entertaining.
Note that by newcomers I don't mean newbies asking questions, but those who want to participate in discussions and provide answers. Also, the roasting tends to be in reasonable proportion to arrogance or ignorance; it starts as polite correction, but escalates if the subject proves to be stubborn, or have a childish reaction.
Once you are in the group of ``regulars'' then you don't get the flaming anymore, unless for some reason you turn into a complete ass.
In technical newsgroups, particularly the programming language related ones, what is most valued is correctness and general enlightenment (by which I don't mean that cheesy, overblown window manager).
People who yap without having a clue get trashed. This cleanses the newsgroup of misinformation, protecting impressionable newbies from confusion. It's the newbies we ultimately care about; they are the future of the programming species.
What is highly valued is an apology from someone who posts incorrect information, and a willigness to improve. Once you have a track record of giving correct answers, and making reasonable contributions to discusssion, you then fit in. That's how it works. If you have a clue to begin with, then you can skip the roasting ritual. It has nothing to do with being a young white male (for God's sake, Katz!) Remember, on the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog!
There is a kind of intolerance of difference, but it's well founded. Being different by way of being deliberatly, stubbornly ignorant is not a meaningful way of being different.
Certain newcomer attitudes particularly irritate the regulars, like people who barge in and start giving advice based on the assumption that every computer has an 80x86 processor, or that certain DOS, Windows or UNIX library functions are standard everywhere and so on.
Example: newbie asks (without specifying their compiler, OS or anything) how to discard unread bytes from standard input. Then some lurking idiot invariably jumps in ``I know, use fflush(stdin)!'' which is an incorrect answer (the construct invokes undefined behavior). How can that be anything but irritating, particularly if you have seen it umpteen times? Never mind that this topic it's thoroughly treated in the FAQ. It's somewhat forgivable that the newbie asking the question hasn't read the FAQ, but it's not tolerable that someone who wants to give *answers* has not read it! Hostility is more than justifiable in cases like this.
So what? Beeing PC until you have to vomit? If they can't stand the heat, they shouldn't go near the fire. I will never work in a Kindergarden, simply because no one would even think about changing the environment to suit my taste. I will never work in a perfume shop, or in a barber shop, simply because this is not my style.
If someone can't life with a certain culture in a certain kind of jobs, or on a certain type of web site, her or she should better stay out. I am sick and tired of all this complaints. "Buhuuuuu, all the people are so bad, so I can't code." He or she is free to start an own, all fluffy and plush, computer high-tech company or web site.
Why the hell is all that this people want to do about destroying things? They don't have to like it, but instead of staying away they cry "buhaaaaa I am so weak" and try to destroy cultures and climate they don't like.
It's not necessarily the weirdos that betray the "He-Men Wimmin-Haters Club" mentality here. It's the underlying assumptions - even in a polite back-and-forth, look at how many Slashdot readers take it for granted that the person they're speaking to is male.
It's the subtle exclusionary behaviors that are the real problem.
What drags us all back to places like Slashdot and work environments like "locker rooms" is that in these chaotic hostile environments, good ideas are kept and bad ideas are discarded. Just like a kitchen, these environments are where all of the cooking and real action is happening. We post our thoughts for public peer review and accept the consequences of posting these thoughts. We flame weeds, we don't nuture them, that's counter productive. Deal with it.
If you are flamed by an anonymous entity you learn to write that off and ignore it. When you are flamed, or crticized harshly in public by a more knowledgeable entity, you either learn to think BEFORE you speak or you develop a certain mental toughness that lets you ignore what others have to say. It's a common fallacy that just because someone has something to say that it is worth listening to.
So it's not civil? So what! There's no time for niceties in the digital medium, especially when talking about meat and potatoes like code or science or politics. Niceties are for the leisure class, expediency is for those who have to get things done and don't have time for garbage clogging up the pipes.
By the way, since when did the color of a person's skin, or their sex, mean anything in terms of the 'net? If being black or hispanic (etc...), male or female affects ones ability to participate in online communities it is because of outside cultural influences.
It stands to reason that people from predominantly underclass cultural backgrounds would not have the necessary resources - personal, environmental, or otherwise - to gain knowledge of these areas that are dominated by the young white male. To imply that this resultant is a function of virtual communities is ridiculous, this is a result of meatspace socio-political boundries. On here, you are all colors and no colors (mmm mmm cliched metaphors, yum! :-), so get over it Katz.
In the immortal words of the Human Torch: "Flame on!"
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
JonKatz, you post reactionary stuff like this on /. and you wonder why all these /.ers are flaming you all the time?
But seriously, and on topic, now. The gender skew of discussion sites has, I think, little to do with it being online and everything to do with how society in general treats women and men in discussion settings. Of course, I have the greatest experience with American society, but from what I've seen (e.g., Japanese, French, Egyptian, Italian), this is not a particularly American phenomenon. In a mixed gender crowd, men typically dominate the conversation. To pursue a stereotype we all know and love/hate, women are raised to listen and men are raised to take initiative.
As I recall, there've been studies to this effect, showing that, despite their assertions to the contrary, teachers called on boys in class more than girls. Girls are socialized around relationships and nurturing, while boys are socialized around competition. I'm trying to cope with this raising my own daughter, so that she can grow up to be strong and secure, but everything around me fights this.
(Before we get into some sort of nature/nurture debate, let's just nip that in the bud and say "it's probably a little of both, and arguing it is a waste.")
In short, Mr. Katz, all you've done is recognize that men, as a category, are the same assholes online as they are off. Sit in a meeting (ugh) and you'll see that - the men interrupt each other constantly, while the women stand by and listen. Generalizations, all of this, to be sure, but so's Katz's spiel.
How's that (off-color) joke go? Oh yeah....
Q: What's PMS?
A: A time once a month where women act the way men do all the time.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Apologies to OT.
/. doesn't run A LOT of of OT news on:
:(
:)
Yup, it is funny geek generalization is white and white. I am female. And Asian.
// minority rant
I dread every time *any* minority or clique is a subject of *any* article.
Just be glad
1. Why are there so few blacks in technology?
2. How can we get more blacks in technology?
3. Blacks are fundamentally different from "normal people geeks" and need to "have a special way to present technology to them" so more of them will be here.
4. How can we date those blacks in technology? I have "some great insights" on how to make blacks dig me, let me share.
5. Blacks have some "fundamental understanding" on themselves on how to get "all blacks exactly like them" interested in technology.
6. Black people's brains are different / smaller. They are better at this and worse at that. That is why blacks are inherently less suited for math, tech, and computers.
7. One black man can speak for ALL the black men on what they like, what they don't like, and what is offensive to them.
8. Whoa! I am black! I know a little bit of computers or tech! I play computer games! I am so special! (After all, everybody knows blacks can't code and chew gum at the same time! If a black man can play computer games, that is a major achievement!) Let me appear in a magazine! You should all think I am cool and I rock because I am black and use computers!
9. You are black and you are good math and computer stuff. I don't think you are really black. You must be a white guy pretending to be black. Or you really suck, not like real white geeks who don't suck.
10. Man, I am black and I hate you. You think you are so special because you are good at math and computers. Well, I am just as special, but in a "different" "black" "non-anal-left-brain" way. Let me keep bugging you to prove to you why I am not inferior to you.
// sorry
1. Didn't mean to be offensive to you or blacks, just ranting.
2. Just be glad you are not black and female at the same time.
OT your sig
:)
No.
Erotica costs more.
Porn is cheaper.
Or.
I think Arthur Miller wrote this.
Nude is deception.
Naked is honesty.
P.S. Is it me or is Porn better looking than Eroitica? i.e., Penthouse Pet better looking than Playboy Bunny. (and it goes on from there)
P.P.S. If anyone thinks I (or any other woman)speak for all women (== >0.5 of world population), he must believe strongly in telepathy.
First of all, how does Katz know that Slashdot is primarily white and male? I haven't seen any surveys that indicate that fact. Oh, he "just knows"... hmmm. Sounds like racial stereotyping to me.
But my main point is that he's making the assumption that Slashdot is somehow at the top of pyramid, and other groups are somehow excluded. He goes on to say that many females join female mailing lists.
Slashdot has a certain culture. These "female mailing lists" (whatever they are) are a different culture. I don't choose to involve myself in these mailing lists, because I don't find them appealing. Will Katz write an editorial saying that the female mailing lists must stop all talk of feminine deoderant because it makes the males uncomfortable?
If someone doesn't prefer Slashdot culture, SO WHAT? Why does every group have to be palatable to every other group?
The arrogance of Katz is presuming that Slashdot is so important to the modern world that anyone who is excluded must be at some devastating societal disadvantage. Well, with all due respect to Slashdot, it's just not that important. It's only one among a lot of sources of information, with many different cultures.
P.S. This is not excuse rudeness on Slashdot. There is rarely an excuse for rudeness, but I happen to like the open honesty.
---
Whoever posted that message is so wrong. I am a very very private kind of person IRL. I have maybe two or three people IRL I care about. 2 Months ago when my wife died I could not even stand to hear anyones voice or be near other people.. I was in denial I sat at home for over a month pretending life would be okay. One day a package was delivered for her.. Stuff from the accident(a drunk hit us) And it floored me. I was unable to move for a long time. I made it to bed and did not move for a long time. I was so hurt and embarassed I could not face my only real friends I had left.. I turned to people online. Sure its all just text And its just a bunch of 1's and 0's. But the people who write and read it DO HAVE feelings. When people read hurtful things they feel genuine HURT and PAIN. And dont ever EVER believe otherwise. I spent a lot of time talking on the phone And.. Lifes still rough and its really rocky. But some of the best help and friends in my life can be (by whoever posted thats thinking) just a bunch of 1's and 0's? I think not. Its always going to be more than that. I am a person. Just because you cannot see me does not mean I do not get my feelings hurt if you send me a rude email. Just because its 1's and 0's does NOT mean anything. For that matter you can record your voice and turn it into 1's and 0's on your computer. But its still there and when you hear it it still makes you feel. *sigh* I read your post and it made me feel. When you write something you do so with the intent to either Inform someone or cause someone to feel a certain way. I gotta go.. I could cry about this all day.
But it's unusual to see one posting on sites like this - a surprising reality given that half of the people online are now female. Men start most topics, dominate most conversations.
no offense, but most of the time men STILL have to make the first move. Mostly run by culture, but also run by the fact that *MOST* women still seem to think that the guy should make the first move...
Society is changing. Once upon a time, the nerd was kept in his place by the threat of physical violence from those less cerebral and more 'physical' than themselves.
Physical violence relies on proximity, unless you are a nation-state or something similar. The net has removed the proximity, so 'nerds' are now more free to express themselves without fear of exacting physical oppression.
And doesn't it just make you laugh when the oppressors get on-line. You can smell the testosterone dripping from their misspelt upper case scratchings !
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
In general, men are so domineering. Since they've lost all control of hearth and home they've taken their frustrations to the net. But, let me tell you, once we women take control of the net, these guys will be reduced to the pathetic weenies that they are! They'll be no more fun and games and smut talk out of them!
But considering the topic of conversation, I think it is appropriate here.
This isn't exacltly profound or anything, but isn't the objective here NOT to flame? You do make a good point, this is true. However, better chosen words would have had a better impact, had you stated your opinion, without sarcasm, and hatefulness(?). As it stands, two things have now happened: One, I have replied to your rudeness, rather than your thoughtful, and articulate opinion, and two, you have increased the noise to the point that your thoughts (the signal) cannot be discerned readily.
Fish
Let's face it, if I said some things that I've seen in flames about a public figure in a real world public forum, I'd likely to sued for libel. Also, I can't incite people to riot, yell "fire" in a crowded movie house, etc. If I called someone a racial epithet to their face, I might get punched (and deservedly so). In the real world, you have to be responsible for your deeds and words. Online, you do not. That's OK, but if people were more responsible and reasonable online, it would be a more enlightened place for everyone.
I'm not saying that you have to agree with everyone.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't point out fallacious statements.
I am saying that if we put aside petty bickering and abusive behavior we can accomplish much more than we are doing right now. So before you send that nasty flame, calm down, think about it a bit more and decide whether it is really warranted or not!
This article is a prime example of one of the more aggravating effects of flaming. Katz is, in essence, picking on flamers, because they're easy targets, thus making him look better.
Too often people pick the most inane and profane responses to their content to reply to, thus creating the illusion of active response to their critics, while not actually providing good responses to their reasonable, intelligent critics. Jon might use words like "often" or "most", but he conveniently ignores those critics who just might actually have a good reason for not wanting him to post, or for disagreeing with him. Not in public, at least. I've written relatively courteous replies of dissent to Jon in the past and gotten back decent responses. But you wouldn't know it from the content of his articles. Katz points out that most flamers, when engaged in direct one-on-one confrontation will back down and be more polite, while in public being rude and profane. But how does this differ from the practice of only publicly responding to flame mail?
Jon Katz is hardly the only person to practice this and hardly the worst offender, but this kind of writing gets old quickly. Yeah, you get flames, so does everyone else who posts in a public forum. And yet, somehow, most people seem quite capable of dealing with this without producing article upon article of self-centered garbage.
The funny thing is that the "common knowledge" seems to state that flamers are crying for attention, and if you ignore them, they'll stop or go elsewhere. Yet Jon Katz goes so far as not only to respond, but to write a 3-piece article about it. For someone whose gimmick appears to be having his finger on the pulse of the Net, so to speak, it's pretty amazing how unaware of common netiquette Jon Katz appears to be.
--
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
Kevin Doherty
kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
First let me preface that I am posting as AC because I am too lazy to create an account (I will post my email address at the bottom). Second my spelling is horendous agian because I am lazy.
That said this article is completely off in its views. It tries to blame a given common social phenomenom on the openess of internet communication. This is ludicrous. Its true that yes there are some unnecessarily harsh comments on boards such as this one and those comments may turn some people away. But how many of us remember sitting on a porch in colledge yelling and screaming at each other over some insignifgant technical (or political) ideal. This has nothing to do with internet "breeding" people to be like this. Remember all teenagers have an a-hole mentality. This is nothing new its been that way forever. Just because now we are thrust in open forums with all levels of maturity doesn't mean that unsocial behavior thrives. In fact just the oppisite is true. I don't know how many flame wars were shown to be publically "silly" by some cool minded lurker steping in and commenting. Believe me the immature take notice when they are made to look stupid. I would bet they learn more social skills than they would have without this medium. The argument of aminimity is raised all the time in context of online worlds (muds, UO, EQ, AC) as well as this article. And despite a social order of pretty much pure anarchy, there definatly arises a set of norms. Breaking these social laws useually results in bad reputation. Hell I still here stories about how good-minded players banded togeather in UO to hunt the "Pkers". In EQ I can tell you that you do suffer for having a bad reputation. The problems with theses worlds is that the rules of them usually unintentionally place the most power in the hands of those that spend the most time in said world. Obviously the older and for the most part more mature residents have less time as a whole than the less mature residents (in terms of RL). Of course this breeds a disparity when power structures are organized this way. What would you expect. The imature children of the world do get older, smarter and wiser even when in enviornments where the are surrounded by nothing but other imature people. The only difference now is that mature people and immature people are spending more time in the same enviornment, this actually has the affect of maturing the immature not the oppisite. Bahh I have rambled enough. Matt matt@itribe.net
We're just farting in the wind when we debate what the First Amendment "really" means. Fortunately, a cable TV show answers our questions. (Freedom of Assembly comments follow summary of the show.)
The History of the Nazi Party in America provides a hard, historical overview of what Freedom of Speech means in the US over a 60-year period. A 1940(or so) rally in Madison Square Garden, complete with swastikas and a huge portrait of George Washington, is acceptable. So are the hecklers in the audience.
A post-war Nazi party is acceptable... and the guy who murdered the leader for claiming that paler whites were superior to darker-hued whites was still charged with murder.
A 70's era Nazi march through a Chicago suburb with a large death camp survivor population is acceptable... but everyone agreed that public safety would be better served by moving the parade into another suburb. The Nazis even agreed, after they won a surprising Supreme Court victory. (These Nazis were later immortalized in the Blues Brothers.)
A 80's era neo-Nazi group that robs banks to fund the revolution, and murders radio talk show hosts who mock them, is not acceptable. All of the members are serving life sentences or killed during capture.
I doubt anyone here would argue that *anything* posted to Slashdot is a fraction as offensive as acts which have been held to be constitutionally protected for years. Arguing about Free Speech, in capitalized letters, is a red herring.
On the other hand, Freedom of Assembly does not mean that every assembly (such as slashdot) must accept every Juan, Dick and Cheri that comes along and demands entry. Groups may restrict access to people with a common interest -- and expel the jerk who tries to sell life insurance in a knitting circle.
Ignoring the non-trivial fact that Slashdot, as a private organization, is not subject to Constitutional restrictions... I believe that Slashdot moderation and metamoderation fall under the "assembly" umbrella, not the "speech" umbrella, in the same manner that nobody cries out "Freedom of Speech!" when stiffled by Robert's Rules of Order.
Katz's observations are not an attempt to impose censorship, but rather a plea that Slashdot act more like a drunken college frat party than a drunken high school lockerroom brawl.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
"Just check the nat portman posts on any thread.." Katz
.. cock.
In the interest of all those females that had to put up with nat portman posts:
-= Brad Pit! =-= Nekked =-= and Petrified =-
I see his shlong..
it is so long and hard.
It is petrified.
I feel his rock
It brings me joy and pleasure.
Thank god for KY.
Nat portman? no way...
I need something more i say.
Brad pit, petrified.
My main objection is this: In most Katz articles, the primary topic is Katz himself. Sometimes there's a secondary topic, but once you strip out all the self-congratulation, Katz says very little of substance about that topic. As Rogers Cadenhead said in this March 1999 essay:
So now, since Katz has been flamed, he's writing a three-part series about flaming. There have been other Slashdot discussions of this topic, e.g., Thoughts from the Furnace. What does Katz have to say on this topic that's both "news for nerds" and "stuff that matters"?--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Subtle exclusionary behaviors are very easily (a) ignored, (b) unnoticed (because they're so subtle), and (c) gotten over.
I've never felt slighted by male-centered language such as 'guys' or the use of 'he,' much less excluded. Ascribing intentionality to a person's use of language ("he said 'he' to exclude me because I'm female! Waaah!") without examining the context of the statement ("anyone is welcome to say whatever he wants.") is silly Deconstructionist cant. If people say something, accept it at face value without poking around in their phrasing for subtle insult that isn't intended.
gomi
I am actually not too surprised about the message boards and everyting.
:) ).
I started ou in the "Fishtank" called CompuServe back in 1991. At that time it was way better there, because people at least knew how to handle the technology.
I don't blame newbies on the Net, everybody has to start, but I don't think that AOL or CompuServe today are a good breeding ground. In fact I think the opposite is true. It is like giving a 16 year old a 1200cc Motorcylce and no speed limit. Chances are he is going to kill himself.
In the end we have to live with newbies, but we also have to hope that people educate themselves better before they are left on the "Highway".
So in that regards, a flame is not that bad, maybe it corrects some peoples thoughts on how to behave.... Until then though I have my settings on 2 (yes, that even eliminates myself
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I think this article might sum things up better than Katz, without the political overtones.
True egolatrism nonetheless...
Mr. Katz portrays himself as an outcast (This in a public forum where most participants describe themeselves as outcasts) because he uses a mainstream application. If he thinks the amount of bad rep he has been getting of late comes from using MS Word, then try Lotus WordPro or Corel WordPerfect and see what happens...
It's not a matter of not being in the "in" crowd, is a matter of articulation. You can't expect a 100% approval rate when you voice your opinions out loud even if you're qualified as an expert. But what worries me is the fact that even though I don't usually agree with his points of view I sit back and think about it... Perhaps life taught me to look at criticism as a constructive thing no matter how much bile is thrown in it, but I can see that Mr. Katz has no regard whatsoever about other people's opinions.
So a guy told you to go fsck and die? Good for him, he's the one making an ass of itself, he could turn off reading your articles, but he choose not to and he shouldn't complain. But I find amusing that you try to grab some of the spotlight by making the "threat" public and write a series of articles about it... not very convincing IMHO.
The world doesn't revolve around your ego John (Thank goodness) but this public forum has been doing it on a regular basis. I've never wrote anything about your articles but sheesh, this time it looks more like a desperate call for airtime than a sincere attempt to discuss your problems.
If you need inspiration to write an article then take a stroll on the park or voice a worthy cause, don't take a cheap shot to cover a deadline. There are better subjects to discuss than a 1337 h4x0r d00d telling you to go away...
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
From the perspective of veterans," writes Stefik, "hordes of new users have invaded their
discussions over the past few years, using bad etiquette and asking dumb questions.
There is something to this, except it's not new. This happened every fall. they were called freshmen. They would get net access, do something stupid, get flamed. Eventually they would learn the basic lesson that when they wanted to do something that they did not now much about - read the faq, man page whatever. Sometimes the computer itself "flames" them. The guy that learns about rm -rf by trying it instead of reading the man page first gets what they deserve.
The problem is twofold. 1) the new newbies have
been coming faster than the old ones can be civilised ever since The September That Never Ended (AOL) and 2) The AOL's just dump users in the deep end and give them no guidance. These users also typically lack the student mindset completely - they have no desire to learn. I'm sorry. I completely can't relate to people who truly honestly don't want to learn anything new. Best for all concerened if I just flame them early so they think I'm a twerp and avoid me.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
The worst case of this I saw was shortly after the Matthew Shepard killing. An anti-gay religious coalition had started a "ex-gay" ad campaign shortly before the murder, and a few pro-gay groups were criticising the social effects of the campaign as contributing to the culture of hate that lead to the murder (they never said the campaign contributed to that murder, just that the group was contributing to more of the same by demonising gays.)
One of the newsgroups that I was reading that was pretty neutral on the gay issue had posts accusing the pro-gay group of censorship. The gay groups hadn't called for the ads to be banned, just said that they were bad and could lead to greater homophobia and problems for gays. But the censorship criers said that just the criticism "could lead to such things being banned in the future" and was thus unacceptable censoring speech.
I found it pretty disturbing that these people thought that speech that encorages us to think about a segment of our population as diseased and sinful is ok, speech that may lead to people losing legal protections, being further harrassed or thrown out of their homes is ok, but speech that may someday lead to limiting of other speech is dangerous and wrong. When did we get to the point where freedom of speech was not just a right, but the right to be defended above all others? I'd like to think that this was a outlier, but I don't.
Just because people have the right to do something, doesn't mean that people ought to do something.
hear, hear. Its odd that this group had such a universal response to "frivolous" lawsuits encouraging "taking responsibility for your own actions" and "don't sue just because you can sue" with the assumption that your legal rights should not be the end of your personal responsibility. Yet in discussions of moderation and having a good conversation online, the first amendment is viewed as not just the beginning, but the end of the conversation. You don't have the constitutional right not to be offended, therefore we won't take any actions to make our forum less offensive and encourage more use. Congress can't stop you from ruining the discussion with static and noise, so we won't.
What if we started a conversation about what kind of forums we wanted on line and how different ones would be best crafted, and deal with "free speech" as it comes up, instead of starting with complete irresponsibility and fighting tooth and nail against attempts to bring out some signal?
...will work for Chick tracts...
On that whole porn v. erotica thing:
Erotica demands a higher level of cerebration than porn, which speaks more directly to the critter-brain (Og see sex! MMM, Og like sex!). Erotica usually tries to be artsy and include a plot and characters. Interacting with fiction, whether text or video, requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, identification with characters, and empathy, and these are all tasks that take CPU cycles away from from the hindbrain, which wants to go "Og see NAUGHTY BITZ! MMM!!"
And of course, a lot of modern erotica, like a lot of modern art, is Bad Art (self-involved delusional wanking) and hence inherently difficult to get aroused to/appreciate anyway.
Porn, on the other hand, is simple, visceral, and (in a good way) brutal. There's no tricky sauce, just aroused people doing what aroused people do with the intent to get the porn-observer aroused.
gomi
Let's try something a little different:
At the gym, hostile environments are driving almost every social group other than roid raging white men away from resistance training. These men are invariably buff, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference. Are we breeding communities of impulsive and athletic jerks?
The junior high environment is driving almost every social group other than over-allowanced, undersupervised adolescent girls from coherent public discussion of what is cool. These girls are invariably knowledgeable and energetic, but almost unable to communicate civilly or tolerate disagreement or difference. Are we breeding communities of impulsive and overindulged jerks?
Pretty much any group of people -- random, social, task oriented, etc -- is going to offer a complete spectrum of behaviors within the group and in interaction to outsiders. This is not restricted to technology, and while obvious territorial examples are more obvious in male-specific groups, having strong opinions and working for or against the rules is not gender restricted.
Online discussion groups, mailing lists, newsgroups and web discussions -- plus chats, ircs and muds -- all develop their own mores, rules and other social determinants, all based on the participants as well as how public they are just like in the real world. If you're in a mall talking to a close friend, you're less likely to spill your guts than if you're talking to him at home or on the phone. If you're talking to a stranger, face to face, you're not going to be as rude as you might be with an anonymous call. The technology enables behaviors that were already there, but there are plenty of avenues to allow civilized discussions and an open airing of opinions.
And for good reason. They have les bugs in their code. Nature built us men with raging hormones and fierce tempers for good reason.. however, those reasons are rapidly becoming moot. No longer must we hunt our food, defend our families, and beat wild grizzzlies to death with our bare hands. Unfortunately natural selection and evolution are rather long processes which do not respond quickly to changes in environment.
But change does occur. All those brutal males will slowly die off, their main form of procreation is rape, and I will kill them if they try this method. The rest will probably prey on the insecure, and lonely. But majority rules, and as society continues to progress, anger and violence and natural animal male behavior will become increasingly unfit.
So you horny young males full of spit and piss, when your sitting there in front of your monitor yanking your chod to some online pr0n, wondering when you'll ever get a peice of some real ass that isnt a farm animal, reflect back upon that grunting face reflected before you, and the person that lies within. For soon, you too may become extinct.
I find this puzzling... on most of the web design (not backend -- visual design) lists I subscribe to, the population is split equally well between male and females. If anything, females have a slight margin over males. Regardless, everyone's thoughts are respected and the only flames come when someone quotes the freakin' digest when posting.
Actually the only person on these lists who was absolutely merciless to newbies, stupid questions, etc. was a woman.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
The rampant anti-social element on the internet is obviously nutrured by the anonymity of the medium. As more "social" people become part of the community, the anti-social behavior will become relegated to some cyber ghetto, much like in the real world, and can safely be ignored and eventually shunned. The buttheads will always be with us. This what kill filters were made for.
Well I never thought I would say this, but I agree (to a point). An to re-emphasize what Mr. Katz said yesterday, there is a level of reflection to the off line world. Yesterday's article (which I mercilessly flamed - go figure) seemed too much like a knee jerk reaction from Katz. The flip side (not forgetting all of the already existing social problems of hostility) is just the sheer amount of wasted time someone can spend filetering it, however, funny flames cannot be denied.
This is where responsible moderation comes into play. A funny flame, by no means, should not be jilted, by the same token, the moderator(s) need to have some sort of established set of practices about moderation that is publically available. This way, a site can be tuned after a fashion for a specific audience.
To say that a site is just for men or just for women or - to be frank - just for assholes - is fine, as long as people know what they might be getting into.
Well great, that still does not solve the social problems in the offline world, but maybe it could help.
" -- ow my brain hurts again -- "
Well, its not surprizing that the good people of Comp.lang.c would need to lash out at new commers. I mean, You fucking loosers have so little to hang on to. You C programers are the ones holding back the rest of sociaty, with your backwards 1980's technology. I hope you all die a horrible and painfull death.
Jon, I just love your TV show that whole "it stinks it stinks it stinks" thing cracks me up everytime. And I was really impressed to find out you wrote the yellow pages -- Oh wait, that's Jon Lovitz, and your Jon Katz -- uh -- please die
Katz, wtf does this supposed to imply? I assume you are trying to impress me with her skills. Doesn't mean !@#$ to me. UC Berkeley, University of Washington, and MIT are real computer engineering schools. Harvard is fine for churning out liberal arts majors, but where did Unix, PINE, robotics, etc come from? Not Harvard.
Claiming that the problem with discussion forums is white male jerks is the most absurd things Katz has ever claimed. First, since most anonymous cowards are anonymous its difficult to know their sex or race (has Katz been tracking these users behind our backs)?
My boards are very contentions and I have had no problem getting women to post in them -- in fact sometimes the women are just as likely to hurl off some idiotic flame as the men are. I've received plenty of email flames from women filled with expletives.
This article reminded me of those articles on women and computer games which goes on about creating more relationship-oriented games for women, ignoring the fact that a lot of female gamers (such as my wife for one) like to kick butt on Quake and cause mass destruction in AOE2. Not only does this article play to stereotypes about aggressive men, but also to stereotypes about passive women.
You know who Katz reminds me more and more of -- Douglas Rushkoff. He's a newbie poser trying to act like he "gets" it when he still doesn't have a clue about what's going on online.
Me want to suk his stone dick
Well, I'm not white. I still think hate crimes laws are stupid. I understand that motive matters, however, If your going to murder someone (1st degree) you're obviously going to hate them. Why should it matter what your political belives are?
Sorry for the lack of spell checking here...
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Whoever posted that message is so wrong. I am a very very private kind of person IRL. I have maybe two or three people IRL I care about. 2 Months ago when my wife died I could not even stand to hear anyones voice or be near other people.. I was in denial I sat at home for over a month pretending life would be okay. One day a package was delivered for her.. Stuff from the accident(a drunk hit us) And it floored me. I was unable to move for a long time. I made it to bed and did not move for a long time. I was so hurt and embarassed I could not face my only real friends I had left.. I turned to people online. Sure its all just text And its just a bunch of 1's and 0's. But the people who write and read it DO HAVE feelings. When people read hurtful things they feel genuine HURT and PAIN. And dont ever EVER believe otherwise. I spent a lot of time talking on the phone And.. Lifes still rough and its really rocky. But some of the best help and friends in my life can be (by whoever posted thats thinking) just a bunch of 1's and 0's? I think not. Its always going to be more than that. I am a person. Just because you cannot see me does not mean I do not get my feelings hurt if you send me a rude email. Just because its 1's and 0's does NOT mean anything. For that matter you can record your voice and turn it into 1's and 0's on your computer. But its still there and when you hear it it still makes you feel. *sigh* I read your post and it made me feel. When you write something you do so with the intent to either Inform someone or cause someone to feel a certain way. I gotta go.. I could cry about this all day.
p.s. I posted this on the main thread earlier sorry.
This is an excellent well presented analysis. I concur.
I haven't noticed much of John's stuff around here before, so this 'series' is my first 'exposure' really. I thought his first part yesterday was quite well done, as someone noted it looked like he had spent a lot more time thinking this time around.
But today's part sure shows me just why he has so much 'opposition'. The first two paragraphs are *utter* and total blanket statements, with which he labels ALL techies as 'hostile'. The next 4 or more paragraphs are spurilous, as if he had only personally experienced (or heard of) a couple things in his life, and suddenly decided that "that's the way it is *everywhere*".
Now there are people using 'freedom of speech' and all that stuff to 'applaud' his "contribution" here. But if his contribution is no different than a satanist having a column in a church bulletin, or no different than a Troll in a newsgroup....?
I mean, I'm all for views and articles of thought that make us think, that make us challenge our thoughts and expand our minds. But that's not what John is doing. He's trolling. He may 'have his own column', but he's still a troll as far as I'm concerned.
We don't give just *anybody* a column in the Times, or in Newsweek, or a show on CNN, or a slot on CBC Radio. Especially if it's someone with deductive, expressive, and logical powers as weak as John's. There's a reason for that. The same reason I don't think John Katz should have a 'column' at Slashdot.
Don't give me any bull about 'freedom of speech'. He's free to do and say whatever he wants elsewhere in the world on any other website, whether he has a 'column' here, or not.
What status quo? I don't see this so called domination. Maybe the top ten big shots in my company enjoy these so called benefits of being male, but I sure don't. Just because 1 or 2% of the men control everything doesn't mean the other 99% have any 'domination'. We're getting screwed just like you.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Go suck Jesus's Cock, fundi-boy. You know you want to.
Hehe, I'm not posting from home now IP ban away!!
I started driving after I was part of the online world for a few years. I immediatly did not like driving. Bear in mind I live in large crowded city, and I'm sure people are much nicer in other areas. People are rude and mean on the highway. People will drive right up behind an old lady because she is going too slow, sometimes even when they can go around her. They will do things that they would never do person to person. That is what I think is the main problem with online life. However civilized we think we are, when it comes down to it, person to person, when you're on line at McDonald's, you don't start pushing up behind someone who is talking slow because there is a chance somebody will take offense and beat the crap out of you. Not to say this is the only reason people remain civilized in person. For some, they wish to be perceived as nice, they want to have friends, etc. But there are a lot of closet brutes out there who only come out of their shell under anonimity. Perhaps I'm over sensitive, but I sometimes think about installing message lights on the back of my car that say "Thank you" or "You're mean" or a programmable markee. I sometimes wish NYC had a reputation system where drivers could use a computer on their dashboard to issue up to 3 negative or positive reputation points to other drivers. If you received a certain amount, you would be unable to drive for some duration. I'm guessing most people would not mind this type of system because it limits driving, and affects safety. This would not work online because it would violate freedom of speech, and it is easy for many to create multiple accounts from which to vote from. People can run their sites like this, however. Slashdot has a good system, much of it due to the fact they have active and dedicated staff. Not ever site can have this, and I suppose one can argue sites that don't usually aren't worth posting on anyway. But usenet and other systems could be run like this. If some idiot just wants to vent anger in a post, without making any sense or saying anything of use to anyone, users could vote on him and he could not post. But he could just make another alias. There are also many that do not fall into the 'raving angry lunatic' category. There seems to be many many people out there who are self proclaimed experts on one thing or another. I find these mostly in social chat rooms/boards where someone tries to be the authority of the room, belittles certain people. Usually they try to show off some kind of intellect, one of the most popluar methods is to pick out spelling/grammatical errors while criticizing the over idea of someone's post. Usually, their intellect is second rate, and if you ever stop for a minute to compare conversations you've had with people you respect in person, the online conversation pales tremendously. In all, I think it's a sad sign of the anarchical system of the internet. It is hard to use the internet as a reliable discussion forum. Not everyone is trained to debate with purpose. Even a noticable amount of posts on slashdot, one of the best forums, are just flames. Usually I only read the cover story, roughtly half the time I follow the link to read more, I find useless messages written only to provoke others or written in anger. Provoking others to think is one thing, provoking others to piss them off is another that is rarely productive.
When people would start making bigotted or rude or stupid remarks during a game, we discovered intelligent (and clean) responses soon drove them away as they couldn't reply without making themselves look more foolish.
What you just described is the *ultimate secret* of dealing with flames. Don't tell anyone. If people find out and act accordingly, they might actually start enjoying themselves, and then they'd have fewer things to complain about, and JKatz would have fewer things to write alarmist navel-gazing articles about.
Then where would we be?
**>>BELCH
Here's what I wrote Jon, thought it could just as well go here.
After reading Please Die 2 a second time, I began seeing a pattern. I, too, see the endless streams of uneducated, unknowing, ignorant and intolerant newbies the Net has received in the last few years with disgust. When I approach a newbie that has made a "mistake", like writing in all caps or cross-posting the same off-topic thing twenty times in a row on Usenet, I try to be gentle and help them along, explaining the fundamentals and why the thing they did is "wrong". I hope they'll learn the rest on their own, or at least get on the right track and discover what the Net is all about. I'd never be hostile. Or wait, maybe I'd be hostile, but not in an offending way, and only if the newbie is really clueless.
I think the more knowledge someone has, the more hostile will his reactions to ignorant people be. Hey, you learned it the hard way, why shouldn't the newbie fall flat on his face too?
We had a techie like that where I work. It was about four years ago, when I first heard about Linux. At that time, this guy was the Linux/UNIX guru there. When I asked him how to do something (forgot what it was) on the Linux web server, all he said was "man". Not even knowing that you could use that box remotely via Telnet, let alone know about bash, I wasn't all that happy with his answer. I asked what he meant, and he just pointed at a SuSE manual.
Somehow I learned, but I didn't have to bug him anymore. Meanwhile I also learned PHP, Perl, ColdFusion, SQL and JavaScript the same way. I'm not saying that it's a huge accomplishment to go read a book or bring yourself up to date online, but learning things this way instead of asking others for help makes it easier for me to learn new stuff today. That's one of the elements a typical newbie is missing.
If I go back even further, to the time when there were no ISPs in this country, I see the same pattern. Before even thinking about buying a modem, I invested the same amount in magazines. Not specifically mags about the Net, but about computing in general. Most of them had little sections devoted to the Net, where they explained Archie, Gopher, the Netiquette, web browsers, Telnet, IRC, Usenet and all things Net-ish. When the nation's first commercial ISP finally opened for service, I immediately bought a speedy 14.4 modem and got my account - for $60 a month.
When I run into someone who signed up with a free ISP like Freesurf or Sunrise and can barely use their web browser, it's only logical that I feel offended by their ignorance. I don't value their opinion on technical discussion boards either. If they post things like "THIS CARD SUXX I WANT MONEY BACK!!!!" in the Guillemot user forum, I will most likely flame them. That's where my patience ends. I'll also tell them to upgrade from their copy of DirectX 3.0, so that they'll see it's not the card's fault. Maybe I'll point them to the part of the Netiquette that talks about caps, too
I'm like a grumpy old man when I switch to elitist mode. They get along pretty well with people of the same age, but just don't understand how stupid today's youth is. Think of a 75 year old retired mechanic. He knows how old engines work, he knows how new engines work. From that knowledge, he can derive whatever information he needs to work on an engine he's never seen before. If his 17 year old grandson asked him how to repair that great new TDI engine, his answer might be "It's just an engine, it can't be that hard now, can it? Just look at it for a while, for chrissakes! Geez, do I really need to take care of EVERYTHING around here?"
Yeah, I know. Bad analogy. But the 60 or so years of experience this guy has in his field are equivalent to two or three years of knowledge in IT or computing. Coupled with the high testosterone levels Jon mentions, it's no surprise there are flames everywhere, with lots of these metaphoric 75 year old retired mechanics posting at Slashdot =)
So in the end, I think Jon is right. We are breeding some of the "brightest jerks on the planet". If we manage to get our act together and be a bit more friendly to newbies, maybe those newbies turn out to be pretty bright themselves, once we put em through the Netiquette drill and show them that there's more than just the Web. To accomplish this, we should be nicer to _each other_ though, and lay off that "I'm better than you are" attitude.
Do you really believe that all linux gurus have a mission to destroy windows
No, the guy was trolling. Relax. Read trolltalk quite entertaining.
"Subtle Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Have older/younger siblings? Watch them on the phone. They're like little polititions, but they don't have access to ICBMs.
Or, watch some kids (helps to BE a kid on this one) at school, or playing games, or whatever. They are freaking, well, I can't think of the proper word. Just something freaking.
Humans, particularily teen/preeteen males are just plain cruel. It's not just 'young white geek males' or something. And not online.
See the sun out that window? The green trees? In THAT imaginary world, people actually almost totally mimic our world. Be carefull to grab some 'sunscreen' before you go, though. Evil Mr. Daystar hurts.
I could go on, repeating what I said in virtually 10 differant languages and wordings, but why bother? Just re-read this post 10 times.
[S]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Intel Inside: The worlds most commonly used warning label.
// unfair to male, unfair to white
:) ) to rearrange variables and multiplications ... more white males appreciate this stuff.
:)
It *is* unfair to *both* *male* and *white* to generalize that online (male?) geek community is *more* hostile than all female one.
I have (and still am) mostly only involved in all male technology on-line circles.
My most informative, favorite group of off- and on-line friends are ALL male, ALL white, ALL geek,(ALL 3D game engine coders).
Sure they are smart. Sure they are informative.
They are also the nicest, friendliest, sweetest (and non-phony) people I know.
// hostile women groups
The worst flames I got were not from all white male tech communities.
They are "anti-code god" rants from women.
// code god respect
If I or someone else post some great hack, or some really cool code, or some useful math answers, to all white male geek communities, one gets profuse and genuine respect/thanks.
It is not a short curt "oh, thanks, it works."
More a "Wow! This is great. This is a brilliant idea. This is a great hack. I like this. I don't like this. This can be better this way. This is really cool. I didn't think of this. You are a code god!"
A great hack gets its praises sung for days on end with white male geek communities.
If you post the same code to a woman group, you get a cold curt "yeah, it works, thanks, whatever."
Not a single dissection on how brilliant the code is, or how great the hack is.
There is a lot more proper and profuse respect, aspiration to (and sometimes worship) to code god hood in white male communities.
We in the "white male geek community" does a lot of appreciation, dissection, and criticism of each other's work.
Many all-female communities don't do it as much.
// males appreciate more than all-women-groups
More white males are more appreciative and eager newbies than most women and girls I get to encounter.
A guy cares about the quality of my code, all the effort I sit there to rearrange instructions, all the time I scribble on the paper (or fire up Mathematica to cheat
It is not a short "Oh, great it works."
It's like "man, I had some time this weekend and I dig into your code, and man I love this, I love that, and I love this."
// respect from men, respect from women
Gaining respect from white male geeks are easier and make a lot more sense than from women.
All I have to do with the guys is to write good code, is to keep learning and get better.
From women, if I do that, they don't really give a crap how good I am, or whether I am good.
For guys, they care a lot how good I am, and whether I am good. All I have to do is be good, and guys will respect me.
For a lot of women, I can be 10 times smarter than I am now, they wouldn't care less.
If I told my white male geek friends I added volumetric lighting in one hour, they'd be super appreicative and supportive.
If I told all female communities, even computer-literate ones, I did that. They would be like, whatever. They couldn't care less. I couldn't earn kudos points for doing amazing things with all female communities.
So, again, white male geek communities have been more supportive.
P.S. Heh, and if you know of a "woman tech group" that is not only high tech information ratio, but has a "great math, great code, intelligence worshiping trend to it", let me know. I went to a few, and there is way too little appreciation of brilliant math, code, hack, than in their all male counterparts.
P.P.S. Please don't resp. post or flame that "these are not all-male communities" since you are in it. Fine, they are all male white communities + Corrinne. Are you happy now?
Which of course is why etiquette is dead. "it's polite because it's polite." That's what we call arbitrary. Now some would say that going on green and stopping on red are arbitrary too, so let me just nip that in the bud before this gets out of hand. Theres a difference between needing a standard and picking one arbitrarily (if people choose which side of the road to drive on based on however they feel, we'll have more accidents, so lets pick a side and stick with it) and imposing an arbitrary custom because it's custom (take off your hat because you take off your hat.)
I prefer politeness to etiquette. That means being respectful to people and trying to make life easier. Etiquetee says that men open doors for women. So if there's two doors close together, the man rushes by the woman to get the second and slows tham both down. Politeness says that the person who gets to the door first should hold it for someone who is reasonably close behind them, who may then return the favor at the next door. A woman may offer the open seat on the bus to a man who has been standing longer or is carrying more. Whoever makes an invitation should make a good faith effort to pay for their date, and accept it with good grace if the date doesn't want to be paid for. Nice simple stuff like that, which becomes obvious in most situations if you just apply consideration and think. No emily post book required.
It's basically the same as my preference for ethics over morals.
...will work for Chick tracts...
I'm a 20 year old female, and I like reading and posting on Slashdot, and I won't allow a few sexist comments to drive me away. (And speaking as a 20 year old female with a strong affinity for geek guys, I don't see anything wrong with the fact that Slashdot is dominated by geek guys. )
I know where my capabilities begin and end as far as computers go, and I'm not going to draw insult by pretending to know more than I do.
I'm also not going to let anyone assume that my female-status means that I need the "Start" button pointed out to me.
Of course, this goes along with one of my basic philosophies about dealing with jerks... suck it up. The jerks aren't going to go away, so you have to deal with them... or retreat.
If you can't handle the Natalie Portman posts and the girls-can't-code posts and the if-you-don't-use-my-favourite-software-you-suck posts, then by all means, go elsewhere.
If you want to enjoy Slashdot for everything it has to offer, then accept the good with the bad and stop being so sensitive about every lame post.
I'd much rather put up with a few offensive comments every now and again on Slashdot than suffer the boredom of some "womyn"-only animated-teddy-bear-gifs discussion group. Most of the people I encounter on Slashdot are NOT jerks.
"On the other hand, the early worm gets eaten."
I read /. comments because it is interesting to read the aggressively stated and often inflamitory statements of other /.ers. The last thing I want to read is some milk-toast writer who timidly states what he is completely sure he has read someone else say before. I want fringe opinion - people who know everything about a specific subject and step all over those who don't.
How many of us know tons about supercolliders? A few. Microprocessor architecture? More. C? Plenty. I want to hear the unvarnished insight and opinions right from the proverbial horse, and I don't want the writer to hesitate for a second before putting down what he thinks. I will decide if I think those statements do more harm than good.
Posting on /. is like swimming with sharks, but safer. And I wouldn't want it any other way. Flame on.
That would be me. I have to say that Jon's assessment of women on the internet doesn't apply to me. I've tried going to those female websites and discussion lists and frankly, they bore me. They're okay every now and then, especially when I'm looking for something specific, but other than that, no. And I wouldn't say that I'm 100% a geek, but I do like tinkering around with my various OS's (I've even installed an older version of Slackware on an older PC) and knowing what is going on under the hood.
:)
I'd have to say I'm more of an information junkie than anything. Slashdot is about the best place to get a variety of techy news and read the discussions (at +2). I don't usually post, not because I'm a woman or that I feel the environment is too hostile, but because I'm here to soak up all the information I can. Usually the discussion is about something I don't know a lot about or have a lot of experience with.
Just thought I should give my $.02 on being a female Slashdot member.
Yes, but this isn't true of all online chat groups. This is a function of the group that allows anonymous postings.
I have discussed things in discussion groups that did not have anonymity as a shield, and that really doesn't change political discussion much. In fact, there is a benefit, because it forces people to maintain civility, which is rarely bad. In fact, in some ways it's rather beneficial: it exposes the fools for what they really are, and allows you to ignore everything they say (just like the real world). Just because you can't swear doesn't mean you can't express yourself.
"The result is that flaming and hostile environments become a political as well as technological question, especially for those who are assaulted or excluded. Hard-core geeks embrace as a political ideology the idea that all communications should be free. Yet hostility and cultural bigotry to outsiders and newcomers usually only ends when it becomes a consensus political issue - in this case, when website leaders, lurkers, veterans and other people with influence move to challenge hostility, and to curb non-productive and personal verbal abuse."
I'm not so sure that is what 'hardcore geeks' want. I think most of us want free speech and selective hearing. Otherwise, spam wouldn't tick us off so much.
People can't just gripe about a bad situation and expect it to change on it's own. You have to take action to stop bad situations. Anyone who disagrees with that should observe the history of how civil liberties were awarded to people with different skin colors.
That really is the best arrangement, though. For more then just the educational reasons. While the jury is still out on whether censorship is wrong, preemptive censorship is generally always regarded as wrong.
It also excells in finding the differences between to very similar things. I think this is what leads to the disharmony between things that are 99.99 % the same. The differences in the two positions seem glaring, even if they are tiny. I've always thought this might explain some of the conflicts between the religious, and most of the conflicts between geeks and their ideas.
coyo
--------------------------------------------------
Although I believe that Jon has accurately described the condition of public Internet forums such as the newsgroups, I dispute his conclusion that the Internet is becoming a more hostile place. Rather, we have lost our mechanism for selecting the participants in these areas.
In my earliest experiences with on-line communications in the dial-up bulletin board systems, the gatekeeper was the System Operator. He could (and did) grant or deny access to the system, and anyone sufficiently annoying to the Sysop or the his community tended to disappear rather rapidly. Later, on the academic Internet you had to employ a certain amount of social skills to convince someone to give you access, and the clueless and the obnoxious tended to generate sufficient social pressure in that environment that they either reformed or lost their access.
Today the commercial and public Internet has lost it's gatekeepers. You can walk into most public libraries and colleges and obtain access to the Internet anonymously and at no cost. You can have access from the comfort of your own home at a very modest cost.
The cost to the 'net of this enourmous influx of people who haven't had to "earn" their access has been the near-destruction of those forums on the net that lack gatekeepers who can enforce a code of social conduct. Lacking gatekeepers, only the thick-skinned or the totally oblivious tend to survive. The rest of us seek out those locations with gatekeepers who enforce an effective code of conduct.
Concurrently with the near-death of Usenet we have seen an explosive growth of private Mailing List. (CNet News alludes to this in their article today about the Excite@Home UDP)
I do not believe that the Internet is in any danger of being destroyed by bad behavior. Instead, the 'net is simply growing defense mechanisms against bad behavior that makes it more difficult to discover the majority who are extremely well-behaved and who decline to participate in the rough-and-tumble of the uncontrolled commercial Internet.
The situation reminds me a bit of my days at the University of Arizona: On a public area of campus there was an area designated as a "Speaker's Corner." Anyone (and I do mean ANYONE) was free to stand in this area and say anything that crossed their mind. It was frequently populated by the religious fanatics and the political extremists. Few people took either seriously. Quality discussions took place on campus in the areas of philosophy and political science, but participation in those were limited to people who met certain community standards. If you stood next to Speaker's corner, it would be easy to claim that the University was a hostile, angry place populated by idiots.
My reaction to JonKatz's article is that he has spent a little too much time at the Internet's Speaker's Corner.
Even worse, he has an irrepressible urge to speak for subgroups to which he has no possible claim whatsoever: teenagers, techies, women, minorities, people whose minds have been taken over by Disney, the marginally employed, or what have you. Is it just that he thinks we're more interesting/salable than true episodes from the life of a white middle-aged Jewish male writer from the Jersey burbs? Or is it that, deep down, he thinks we exist merely to provide an opportunity for his heroic white northern liberal bleeding heart protection? That makes us merely the objects of his ideas, not the subjects of our own.
Pity is also a way of feeling superior to the person being pitied. Jon Katz, if you're listening: I reject your efforts on my behalf. This particular Asian-American female doesn't need any white male to speak for her or define her or explain her to others or feel sorry for her or protect her. You need to check the construction of your own house before you start throwing bricks at other peoples'.
Most of us that hang out in on-line communities are part of some communities that are partly or mostly real world too. Like casual aliases and BBS's at work. Or real world community lists... And the risks of hostility and tendencies towards flames are initially just as great in those communities as they are in the pure virtual worlds.
But the consequences of being an ass are much greater in the real world communities.
So I tend to play more in those communities that are tied in with the rest of my like, places where the contact is not merely through on-line, written words. Its more satisfying, more relevant to me. These are ultimately safer and more satisfying communities.
I've been spending a lot of time here recently in large part because I'm in the midst of changing and reinvigorating my programming career. There is a lot to learn here, and a lot of insights to be gained from many stellar peers.
So I put up with the angry, uncivil testosterone cases and the Church of Open Source knaves. I have the ego and temperment to get beyond these malignancies. I'm not one who is 'at risk' from flames and aggression. Besides, the gems here have doubtlessly helped me as I crawl out from under my professional rock and dive into today's geek labor market. Thanks all!
But I don't see any effective ways to really curb the deleterious flaming here. Too much youth. Too much testosterone. Too much religious evangelism. And not enough person to person, direct interaction to educate the fools. Hopefully that education will happen via other communities over time. But this, as an unbridled, open forum with no real world, tangible presence in our lives, will likely remain too hostile for a whole lot of folks -- much to the detriment of /. Tant pis. This place has so much to offer.
Now, here's the funny part. I was having that sort of conversation once, when someone else at the table mentioned that we seemed to be grossing out the people at a table near us. Now what do you suppose I did? Did I say "well if they're that easily bothered they should just stay home!"? Did I make stupid sarcatic remarks like "Oh no! the sound wave sounds like a doggie poop, I'm gonna ralf!"? Did I complain that I wouldn't mind if they talked about poop at dinner, so why should I alter my conversation habits?
Well, no. I said "oops." And we moved on to a conversation that wasn't imposing on other people in a public place. When adults find out that something they're doing is disturbing to others and making other less capable of enjoying a public resource (especially if you completely understand that its disturbing to them even though it isn't to you) then those adults adjust their behaviour to make the public resource more enjoyable to all. What mature adults don't do, is say "well it doesn't bother me, so you must be inferior to me and I'm glad you're driven away." You're like a smoker puffing away in the office and saying "Well, I don't have athsma, so you can just quit your job, give up your golden handcuffs, not pay the rent for a month or so, because if I'm not bothered by it, it can't be legitamate to control my actions.
[disclaimer: the following is written by an actual honest-to-god *female*. take it as you will.]
I already knew women could be just as childish and selfish as men, but thanks.
...will work for Chick tracts...
I think your perception about growing hostility on the
Internet isn't an accurate one. I think that the
percentage of hostile individuals have remained the
same for decades. The _number_ of hostile, illiterate,
fucking morons have certainly increased and we can blame
that problem on AOL and WebTV. (And there is a
growing percentage of Internet users which refuse to
talk with AOLers and WebTVers.)
We had this problem in FidoNet, too. Back in 1982, there
were very few Type-A personailities in FidoNet and those
few which came along over the next two years were easily
ignored. But as the FidoNet grew, the _percentage_ of
Type-A's stayed the same but due to their numbers, were
harder to filter, ignore, or otherwise successfully miss.
The real problem lies with people that have been taught to cringe in terror at the thought of verbal conflict. These people simply aren't mature enough to deal with a public forum. Apparently, JonKatz would a good example :)
I happen to be a 21 year old Asian male college student, and I have to say I was pretty miffed at Mr. Katz making the sweeping generalization that technology-oriented discussion is limited mostly to young white males (who may or may not be angry).
/. could do a voluntary poll of registered users as to what ethnic group, age, and sex they are...the results could be interesting, to say the least. I'm inclined to say that a large percentage of the geek crowd is not young white males, and while maybe not the majority, they are underrepresented online simply because they have better things to do with their time.
If the geek crowd was the Republican Party, I think an appropriate analogy would be to compare the angry young men to the hardcore conservatives (Christian Coalition etc.). Not only do they wield disproportionate influence within their own group, but outsiders (Jon Katz springs to mind) tend to identify them as the group (i.e. geek = angry white young male) itself. This is a wrongful perception that definitely needs to be fought.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I have been reading and participating in online discussions ever since I aquired my first modem in the mid 80's. I was quite young, and rough around the edges. I had not yet learned the value of listening to other peoples opinions. At times I found joy in the occasional flame. I realized that eventually the original poster would get around to reading my reply, and would get angry.
;). I feel that allot of anger is the result of misinterpretation of written statements.
I think that some of this arises from the inability to convey emotion with your thoughts on paper. The verbal inflections that convey sarcasm are impossible to convey on paper. This led to the emoticons
I have also experienced this with people who haven't developed keen social skills. I sure everyone has met someone who was not good at speaking. Thier tone of voice when attempting innocent ribbing can be mistaken for a personal attack, when it is not intended that way.
Another possibility is that when confronted with someone who has a great deal of debating experience, the "defender" is not prepared to have all his arguments systematically shot down. This goes was back to the Ford vs. Chevy, PC vs. Mac, and now the Linux vs. Microsoft debates. These are all emotional feelings about a product that people can feel very strongly about. I work in the technology industry, and have had many confrontations on the Linux vs. MS front. These stem from some loyalty and comfort that has developed between the user and the product, and they run deep.
It seems strange that in this age people want change, but are still apprehensive about it. We all need to remember to respect others opinions!
Eagles soar, but Weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
That one's really funny, the spelling in particular. By the way, what do you think the majority of today's applications is written in. John Carmack doesn't program in Perl, for Pete's sake...
It's almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.
I guess I don't figure that people on the net are any more intelligent or creative than those who aren't. I knew plenty of people in college who sat in computer labs all day but had no sense at all.
More unfair to male and unfair to white people.
On-line hostility has been invariably shown from experience that:
Hostility = 1 / ( knowledge * ability * contribution )
Hostility = F ( gender ), where F is a Merseine Twister.
(yes, the corollary is knowledge == 0 ability == 0 contribution == 0 people are infinitely hostile.)
There is much greater correspondence to stupidity and inability to hostility than gender. ( or Gender and hostility are orthogonal variables )
The smartest most capable coders are all very sharing and very humble.
The "knowing only a little is a dangerous thing" (I guess it is dangerous since when their knowledge is min-float-representation their hostility reaches NAN with insufficient precision) people are the most hostile people.
One can invariable guess the smartness of a coder by his lack of arrogant hostility towards others.
Q.E.D. Katz's generalization that geek (== knowledge, intelligence ) == hostile is false.
When geeks achieve true geekhood and guruhood, that increased knowledge and ability oversweeps their arrogance and turned them into warm fuzzy long-haired bearded "math or physics or computer science pioneers" who are quirky and friendly (this has been observed in their natural habitat).
It is that tadpole stage of temporary ignorance before the metamorphosis in which geeks demonstrate temporary hostility and arrogance to over-compensate for not being a true guru.
They are angry because they are teething.
I think it's just you. Maybe it's just that I find "porn" distasteful (I don't really need to see cumshots, etc.), but I seem to see, on average, much more beautiful people doing erotica than doing porn. To me, erotica == beautiful women (or men) showing off what they have, while porn == whatever decent-looking woman they can get to suck guys off and get reamed all day paired with whatever man is good at getting wood and producing "money shots" (I've been reading this book called Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man which has articles about men in the porn industry. Quite an interesting read, IMO). As always, though, it's a matter of personal preferance. I suggest moving this thread off /., as it is most definitely OT. E-mail me if you want to (my address is listed in my user prefs).
--
No, I'm talking about an all-pervasive mindset.
I've never felt slighted by male-centered language such as 'guys' or the use of 'he,' much less excluded. Ascribing intentionality to a person's use of language ("he said 'he' to exclude me because I'm female! Waaah!") without examining the context of the statement ("anyone is welcome to say whatever he wants.") is silly Deconstructionist cant. If people say something, accept it at face value without poking around in their phrasing for subtle insult that isn't intended. That's not what I said... 'round these parts, "guys" isn't a gender-specific term, and when I come up with a non-silly alternative to the generic "he," I'll let the world know.
No, I'm talking about underlying assumptions. Look at the first article, where someone dismisses ACs as people who were too shy to ask a girl to dance in high school. That's a little more than a grammatical nit. Trivial in one instance, but it accumulates.
Yeah, I've never felt slighted (or if I did, I got over it many years ago), but then again, obviously I'm posting here, so that doesn't prove anything... it's fairly obvious that I'm one of the exceptions. Just because some women aren't intimidated by the good ole boy network doesn't mean that everything's okay.
Ironically, a call for courteous discussion and critical thinking is itself a meme that can retard the spread of others. This is especially true when those other memes require the suspension of disbelief or unquestioning acceptance of dogma. To propagate, memes with these characteristics must "defeat," if you will, the memes that attempt to keep the environment pleasant. The Muslim meme which promises salvation as a reward for spreading the faith via the sword is a good example.
Take a step back from a rant, raves, or flame on this site or elsewhere and you'll see not a person trying to hurt a person but a meme trying to spread. Its goal: to defeat contradictory memes, and propagate, at all costs. In this process, civility has often proven to be less important than silencing alternative ideas and quelling skepticism. (That's the reason why religions -- which are themselves complex bundles of memes -- invented the sin or crime of heresy.) The people who are hurt or driven away are, in a very real sense, innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.
--Brett Glass
No, Jon, I'm afraid that these attacks often have much to do with what you think and write. The trouble is, you won't even entertain the idea, so instead you have to demonize people who (every so often) are trying to help you.
People were going nuts trying to get you help to use Linux, and you played with a storebought computer, let your dog play with the motherboard, and have then ignored it completely.
People were going nuts trying to get you to stop using _corrupted_ ASCII encodings (you see, Microsoft has changed the encodings for ISO/Latin in such a way that when you use Word and smartquotes it produces false characters when decoded with normal ASCII). You basically ignored this, and now that you seem to be doing it properly you've formed the opinion that people are mad at you over what brand of word processor you use (and not, instead, mad because of your going along with an embrace-and-extend tactic and bringing it even here to Slashdot and then behaving like it's insignificant).
People tried to make sense of your crusade to sneak minors into dirty movies. I saw responsible parents expressing their shock and outrage that you'd seek to overrule the parenting they wanted their own kids to have. Where are your words acknowledging the harm your misguided notions could do them? Where is the humility to let you admit that you are not the ranking parent of everyone else's children?
Lastly, I myself made all too much sense of your courting Hollywood- in an era where multinational corporations are (as you yourself argue!) gaining all too much power, in an era where Big Media (as you yourself argue!) has too much control and is rapidly gaining more under a smaller and smaller set of controlling players, you, Jon, chose to seek their approval all of a sudden, and I have some suspicion that by leveraging your 'street cred' at Slashdot and Rolling Stone, you may even get your movie, and then it will literally be true that you will be in the pay of Big Media. Choke that down if you can swallow nothing else I'm saying- it is the truth, and it is the essence of what you are really seeking for yourself.
And then you have to point out that you are a paid columnist! "Most people who aren't paid columnists will go elsewhere." Do tell, really? Is this the reason you stick around? As a matter of fact, I had a Slashdot column all to myself, and I can tell you that _I_ didn't get paid, nor did I ask to. I wrote an essay on levels of interface. Some people actually said things like 'brilliant' about this essay. Some people flamed it like crazy. Some people pointedly found fault with some of my ideas. And I LEARNED from the criticism.
I don't actually know if your 'paid columnist' remark means you're paid by Slashdot. It could be read that way, or it could be typically disjointed bluster to make you look like a professional (which is rather a stretch!) If this is true, then I can only say that I would very nearly pay you _not_ to post articles to Slashdot. It does honestly bug me that you are allowed free rein to bluster on, that you resent showing even the minor courtesy of using proper ASCII, language and spelling, that in effect you seem to have formed the opinion that you have a _right_ to be 'published' at Slashdot. There is no such right, and I still don't know what Rob Malda sees in you that he continues to put up with your unpleasant and touchy attitude towards Slashdot's readership.
The traditional journalism is dead here, Jon. If you cannot summon up the humility to exist in a context _with_ your own readers and suffer them to reply to you even when they aren't saying things you want to hear, then you're going to be left by the wayside in favor of people who can handle that more turbulent dynamic, thrive on it, and grow from it. There is no soapbox for you to stand on. You are no better than us.
-chris johnson
- marijuana is very illegal, you can go to jail and serve a lot of time
- puritanical, if a woman exposes her breasts in public she will go to jail. Funny that the U.S. has the highest teenage pregnancy rate out of all industrialized nations , I see the link.
- overrun by meda misinformation, sensationalist beliefs in God and country.
- believe many want to make it illegal to burn the US flag
Sure the US is not Russia but that alone does not a free country make.
you know, you may want that to be true. You may wish it was true. It may even be that if everyone was just as cool as you it would be true. But here in the real world where I live, it just isn't true, and no amount of lying is gonna make it that way.
The scarey thing is that I can't just dismiss you as one random asshole. Somebody moderated the lie up. Someone was looking at that and said "word up, man! why I got "Straightbashed" just the other day for holding hands with my opposite sex partner on the escalater out of the subway. Buncha guys chased us three blocks shouting "breeder" and "hetero"! Happens every day." and gave you a moderation point for pure counter-factual bullshit.
Can't say my opinion of Slashdot goes up with that.
...will work for Chick tracts...
In yet anoter article Jon Katz pleads to the world to dumb themselves down.
Here we hear Katz plead that we censore our thoughts so that we can all get along more to his image of utopia.
more of the same from JoKe
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
I was trying to explain this to the guys in soc.men (a newsgroup created by members of soc.women who were tired of men taking over therein. But the couldn't get it. Or wouldn't get it. And now, more than 10 years later, nothing much has changed. Do those posting here who liked Katz's geek defense articles believe that if the harrasment of geeks was merely verbal it would be free speech and if they couldn't take it it's their own fault? Empathy skills and coding skills seem to rarely inhabit the same individuals. It explains the out of proportion number of libertarians who inhabit usenet. We are all the same, in some object oriented view that renders our private data non-existant since it isn't accessible by the available methods. Those who don't get it just won't and I'm not talking to them anyway. This is for those who think no one reading these replies gets it so they will feel less alone. The others think feeling alone is a chemical imbalance or a weakness to get over. Silicon based conscious would never feel intimidated and that's the way we'd all be if we were perfect.
Just because some women aren't intimidated by the good ole boy network doesn't mean that everything's okay.
. It works for you and I; our responsibility doesn't extend any further than that. I'll raise my children to get over this sort of silly thing, and I expect other folks to do the same. The attitude/society that produces these sorts of things is already dying; it's nice and socially conscious of you to want to help it along with a few kicks, but it's not strictly necessary.
One of my mom's favorite proverbs is "El que se mete a Redentor muere crucificado," which translates to "Trying to be a Redeemer gets you crucified." Only took a few nasty experiences trying to help some Extremely Broken People to realize the truth behind that: the world fundamentally resents attempts to help or save it, and in general would rather be left alone.
These days, I keep my generous, charitable, and compassionate impulses for the people I love, my close friends and family. And I expect other people to turn to their close friends and family for help when they need it, and not to me.
gomi
I tip my virtual hat to whoever it was (on Slashdot) who said something like this: The trouble with Linux is that 98% of users make the other 2% look bad.
[...] 98% seems a little high. Surely it's the other way around? I.e., that 2% of Linux users make the other 98% look bad.
I'm not sure what the original context was, but I assume it was an intentional reversal. The "2% of [X] make the other 98% look bad" expression, while insightful, is old to the point of triteness. This quote seems to be reversing it, in order to cynically argue that, while we'd like to believe that the kiddies and flamers are only a small but vocal minority among a predominantly intelligent and thoughtful group, the truth is that they comprise a larger percentage of us than we'd like to admit, and/or that, in all honesty, most of us are not so much better. (Though surely it's an exaggeration to put the intelligent ones at a vanishingly small 98:2 minority.)
This effectively invokes the old sentiment, only to deny that it applies to the case at hand. Other examples of this device that come to mind would be: "beating ploughshares into swords", "99% inspiration and 1% perspiration", "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", "Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?", etc.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I think that this is *exactly* the point that Jon Katz is trying to make. If the Anonymous Coward would like to criticise Jon's article he/she/it should do it constructively. Why does Jon Katz suck? What does he suck? What should he do to make his articles less "sucky"? Why are his articles crap? They seem to raise a valid point which people may disagree with. IMHO Jon does tend to exaggerate but surely that is not a ground to "ban" him from Slashdot. The reason that I like Slashdot is that it reflects a real diversity of views and news....unlike AOL, CNN or other mass media organisations which are severely criticised on Slashdot. From time to time we may read something we disagree...by all means voice that disagreement but do so in a way that adds value to the discussion.
>
But it wasn't. Even if it was, the question becomes if it was slanderous/libelious or not. If so then it is illegal. If not then it is just free speech.
>
Those evil libertarians who believe in concepts like freedom!!! They must be stopped!!! They must secretly hate women and minorities since they keep on wanting to put people back in control of their own lives, and restrict government so that it treats everyone equally. Anybody who doesn't believe that straight white males are the spawn of Satan that must be enslaved must be stopped.
Do those posting here who liked Katz's geek defense articles believe that if the harrasment of geeks was merely verbal it would be free speech and if they couldn't take it it's their own fault?
But it wasn't. Even if it was, the question becomes if it was slanderous/libelious or not. If so then it is illegal. If not then it is just free speech.
Empathy skills and coding skills seem to rarely inhabit the same individuals. It explains the out of proportion number of libertarians who inhabit usenet.
Those evil libertarians who believe in concepts like freedom!!! They must be stopped!!! They must secretly hate women and minorities since they keep on wanting to put people back in control of their own lives, and restrict government so that it treats everyone equally. Anybody who doesn't believe that straight white males are the spawn of Satan that must be enslaved must be stopped.
--
This is an issue and does need to be addressed in all workplaces, not just tech. But before people get their torches and pitchforks to the Internet companies, there is one point that seemed to have been left out of the article.
Premise 1: Men, on average in the US, are earlier adopters of technology, often translating to more men at a company with experience with the specific technologies of the Internet used in the position, and possibly with the company. Premise 2: Pay is commensurate with experience.
Claims of unequal pay need to have careful attention to stratify their comparisons based on experience, rather than to simply state "I am paid less than my males collegues" and expect a settlement.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Ummm.... Get a life dork
What's your problem with perl?
Actually the crazy AC Natalie Portman and other assorted weirdness is some of the best stuff I've seen on SlashDot. Most of the time this place is as serious as a heart attack, arguing over licenses and IP. By comparison some of those crazy AC posts are real poetry.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
This discussion isn't about C being a good or bad language. The building blocks that make up the technology you used to post your message are based on stuff a hell of a lot earlier than the 1980s. You sound, to me, like a thwarted Visual basic programmer who could not come to terms with low level programming (not that C is low level: its a 3GL). However your point was very well made, with reference to the topic of this thread: you made an obnoxious, offensive reply to somebody's polite opinion. So while you missed the point, you demonstrated the premiies on which the original article is based. well done.
VoodooBïrd
ok, here's a theory:
up till now, and probably in the near future, geeks are stereotypically (which means: on the average) oppressed individuals. this is specifically the case during growing up, when many of them can be pestered/bullied due to their nature. even if not, they are usually not very successful in a social context - both in gaining a high place in the pecking order and in, well, a sexual context. when they grow this should lessen - and being a computer geek can actually get you a lot of professional success nowdays - but even if you manage to come out of the teenage problem, much of your personality was formed then - so you still carry the baggage...
now, to complete this theory - what happens when you give this oppressed person (so to speak) a means to be safely violent and aggressive:
let the flames begin...
if this theory is correct, I'd expect that the internet would grow out of it since being geeky is becoming more acceptable with the rising importance of computers, thus lessening the teenage geek problem. the older geeks would just have to mature some more and outgrow it.
other reasons could ofcourse apply to the maturation of the net, but what do you think about this...
this comment seems pretty obvious to me, but I posted it because I didn't see anyone else do it - hope it's not redundant.
yours truly, the AC
That's kind of sad, really.
The attitude/society that produces these sorts of things is already dying; it's nice and socially conscious of you to want to help it along with a few kicks, but it's not strictly necessary.
Oh boy, I wish you were right. Golly, I guess all those civil rights marches in the 60's weren't strictly necessary either.
You are the one who is supposed to be aware of the psychology and mindframe of your audience this way you can deliver a proper writing to that group of people. Let me tell you something. 90% of slashdot is Compromised of Rational thinking people. Which probably Make up a total of 5% of the population! Do you see what this does? It gathers a HUGE amount of rational's and These are people proud of engineering work they do and wanting to show it off. Guard it and show people its the greatest. You better believe these people are gonna flame you.
The "threat" (no less a "flame") shut down our high school for the last two days of the 1999 school year. Columbine High School students have been transferring to other schools for the next semester ... to Chatfield HS and other local high schools. In Littleton, CO, none of us consider "threats" (aka personalized "flames") to be trivial.
The FBI found "Soup81" ... they can also find any "Anonymous Coward"! All they need is a warrant to /.org.
Haven't registered (so I'm an "AC") ... just been watching /. for quite a while. Some of the "AC" posts sicken me. Many others are quite insightful. (I beg for better moderation!)
Only been a Linux user since 1995 ... guess I'm a novice, huh?
8^)
---------
[The above posted on the assumption that the previous poster shares some common experience with this one. If the response is "WTF" rather than a chuckle, go here for enlightenment. (Sheesh, gotta explain everything nowadays.)]
Men dominate weak women. That's all there is to it. If you had a spine, we'd respect you, but obviously you don't.
>:-(
Imagine there are two "races," whites and blacks, in a city, and the whites outnumber the blacks seven to one; there are seven hundred thousand whites and one hundred thousand blacks. Imagine also that in any given year a certain percentage of those whites, let's say one in a thousand, decide, for whatever twisted reason racists make the decisions, to commit a racially motivated crime against a black person chosen at random; and conversely one out of a thousand of the blacks decide to commit a racially motivated crime against a randomly selected white person. These are, of course, entirely made-up numbers which I have pulled out of thin air for the sake of this hypothetical discussion.
Keep in mind that while individuals are so various that it is virtually impossible to predict what any specific person is going to do, nevertheless it is a fact that large bodies of people behave according to regular tatistical laws. This fact was Durkheim's seminal discovery in his book "Suicide," and it lies at the base of the science of sociology.
Well, this is slashdot so at least here I assume the readers can handle arithmetic, thank heaven. The majority whites will commit a total of 700,000 x (1 / 1000) = 700 race crimes a year against a target population of 100,000, and the minority blacks will commit 100,000 x (1 / 1000) = 100 race crimes against a target population of 700,000 whites. This means that the likelihood of any individual black being a victim is 700 / 100,000 per year whereas the victimization rate amongst whites will be 100 / 700,000 per year. That means that the blacks who are outnumbered 7 to 1 are victimized at a ratio of 49 to 1; in other words, of being a minority makes you vulnerable not by the ratio of minority by by that ratio squared. Most people here are educated well enough that they can work it out with x and y rather than these arbitrary numbers I made up for this example and they'll see the same effect.
And that's why, until that far-off happy day arrives, centuries from now, when we in the U.S.A. have all intermarried so much that everyone's beige in color and racism - in fact, the whole inane concept of "race" - is an incomprehensible mystery existing only in the pages of history books, until then, justice demands that members of visible minorities shall get extra protection against hostile subgroups of the majority, and therefore "hate crime" laws are necessary.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I, for one, don't care if people act like children and flame eachother in a public forum. I think this is because I learned one important lesson in kindergarden that Katz and kadre seem to have missed:
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.
The main problem with the internet today is not the flaming jerks, but the haughty, condescending jerks who seek to lord over everyone they encounter and tell them how to behave. The blissful BBS days of yesteryear where people could speak their minds are gone, the thought police have come and cast us out of eden, from where we will never return.
You may think that's absurd and funny, but how do you think the U.S.A. got electric power and telephone out of the built-up cities and into the rural countryside? It sure wasn't as a result of any "free-market" capitalist initiative. It took big-government effort on a national scale to achieve that goal. (And it's worth noting that, while the private power companies, in their typically petty-minded manner, fought rural electrification tooth and nail, they together with the rest of big business ended up making a nice profit as a result of it.) Go read a history of the Tennessee Valley Authority, or of the Rural Elctrification Administration. Robert Caro has a couple of interesting chapters on the REA in his biography of Lyndon Johnson.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
The fact that you don't need the Jon Katzs of this world to "protect" you, doesn't mean that numerous other (to use an Australianism) "non blokey" geeks couldn't benefit from a less abrasive net.
I know lots of people (especially, but not exclusively, girls) who have dropped out of Computer Science and Engineering courses because of the intolerant attitudes of other students.
Criticising people for being "bleeding hearted liberals" when they try to talk about this problem is, IMNSHO, singularly unhelpful.
Fixing copyright
You got this part dead wrong. Katz was trying to get some kids into a movie that their parents wanted them to be able to see. But the movie theatre wouldn't let them unless the parent attended with the child (even though the mother was right there at the ticket booth buying the tickets for them, giving her blessing for her children to watch the movie without her.)
Now, I'm not asking you to agree with Katz's actions in this, but I am asking that if you are going to deride someone that you deride them for their actual actions, not some strawman effigy of their actions. This was certainly not about Katz trying to sneak kids into movies against the parent's permission as you stated. It was about the fact that the ratings systems overrode the parent's own wishes.
I agree mostly with the notion that Katz really doesn't get it, and should stop trying to pretend he represents us. There's nothing wrong with not being a techno-geek - but there is something wrong with pretending you represent them when you don't. But I also believe quite strongly that when you criticize someone you need to be very careful to criticize their actual position and not a made-up postition that you falsely attribute to them.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I am a male in my second year as a computer engineering student at Rochester Institute of Technology. My entire school has a population of probably 70%/30% guys/girls. In fields like computer engineering, its probably more like 95%/5%. It creates a certain inhospitable atmosphere for females, especially if they are attractive, they are likely to have guys swarming them. I have made a point to never "hit on" a girl who I don't know well at this school. They are either completely promiscuous or they are constantly and unwelcomely bombarded by horny guys who can't get a date. This activity doesn't end at college. The same ratios are found in the workplace afterwards, for obvious reasons.
Its frustrating to me, as a guy who tries as much as possible to be unlike the "typical college guy", because females are so abused by so many males that they choose not to enter fields where males dominate. Its very dissapointing that all of my female friends are from majors like english or psychology. I think most girls now know that the traditional, men are better at science is bullshit, but it doesn't change the field they choose. Even though there are as many girls as guys who are capable of handling a technical major, they DON'T choose it for the reasons above. They would rather be in a situation were they feel more accepted, one with a more even ratio of girls and guys. I can't say I blame them. Its almost enough to make me want to quit this and go be a professional chef or something.
The problem is, how do we make things change? It's such powerful self sustaining cycle. I am encouraged, because fields like Information Technology (which is considered the "easy" technical major) are beginning to approach that even ratio of 50%/50% girls/guys. Hopefully as years pass this effect will "trickle up" into more involved mathematics and engineering based majors like CS, computer engineering, microelectronics, electrical engineering, etc... But it will be too late for me to see it. The best I can say to fellow slashdot readers is, please do your part. Encourage female friends to be different, take a chance, make a stand in this male dominated field, and most of all, don't be a bigot yourself. Accept people for their skills, and don't deride them for their differences. I see this entirely too often, and its disgusting and utterly disenhearting.
Spyky
You have a homepage. You're a woman, and said so on /. Your homepage will soon be /.ed into oblivion =)
I'm just waiting for ArchieBunker to go berserk on this thread.
I don't know, I didn't come away with the same impression as you did, ronfar, Lord Kane, Corinne, et al. I think he only used the geek communnity as an example because he is writing this piece for a geek community. The point he was making is that the anonymity has a big drawback in that it allows you to post things you would never say in a face-to-face conversation (this is also one of the greatest strengths of course, if done in moderation).
Then he goes on to point out the greatest offenders, which arguably are young men. This he explains by raging testesterone-levels, which may or may not be the main reason. He didn't say that women or older men can't be hostile, just that they don't dominate the discussions with hostile remarks. I see the same trends in data about who dominates the classrooms at school, boys generally answer more questions and dominate discussions.
And way to go Mr. Katz for persevering in the face of so much hostility. The fact that so many people post is a tribute to an interest in the questions raised.
Perl is a good language for text processing and for quick one-time hacks. Unfortunately, perl's negative points are so severe (and many) that I have stopped using perl entirely in this past year.
Perl is not completely garbage, but it is seriously flawed. I have been much happier since I swore it off.
Seriously. Why do people feel the need to call themselves "geeks" or whatever? This culture is slowly becoming lame. It seems to me that no matter what you may think, when you classify yourself as anything you're severely limiting your potentials. People who were good in science and math used to be called "smart" and "scientists", now they like the term "geek" (well, not everyone who is proficient in math/science is like that, but that notion is dominant at this site).
As John Lennon would say "I don't believe in the Beatles, I just believe in me.". Think about it folks.
It seems as if most of the posters on this particular article are not rebuking the author, Mr. Katz, for his brashness. It seems to me as if Mr. Katz has simply had enough of tolerating the admittedly useless cludge of the internet which are known as flame wars.
I have perpetuated more than one flame war. All of my flame wars have been kept internal (to a select group of people), and intelligent. At least I believed they were intelligent until I was proven wrong. Such things can be done.
Keep in mind that anger is a passion, as well as hatred. The hate response is typically invoked when something a person holds dear, or loves, is assaulted. In this growing culture of information it isn't strikingly uncommon to see people holding certain ideas very dear. Examples can be any of the Holy Wars we see when a person mentions FreeBSD in #linux, or even better, Windows in #macintosh. (This applies to any IRC network, by the way)
I tend to agree that flaming is pointless and wastes my bandwidth, but who's to say that fragments of gold cannot be found in the most tarnished ore? An english professor of mine once expressed her thoughts that email might bring back the lost art of writing letters. Perhaps flaming is just a new way to bring back passion.
--
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You know you have played too much quake when the only solution to a argument is pulling out your railgun and tapping that Ass.. :) -BlahSnarto
When I hung out on alt.atheism, we got tons of dumb comments and questions. Not just "I know this and you don't so I'll insult you" sort of dumb that some people apparently feel the need to flame for, but repeditive, unoriginal attacks on us as atheists. Some folks waited for them and tried to find creative ways of flaming them. Others of us didn't want to give them the satisfaction of no response, but didn't want to waste the energy explaining for the hundreth time why pascals wager doesn't work.
So one regular started a really simple and subtlely nasty way of dealing with the "not quite a trolls." She FAQed them. Just posted a response plus a message to their address with just the word "FAQed" and a url to the alt-atheism frequently asked questions. It got to be the expected response, to the point where people would just post replies saying "Where's Natelie, this guy needs FAQed." There were still people who would flame them, but overall it was nicer and helped give the feeling that we had better things to talk about than rehashing the same old trolls.
Now if something like that can happen in a group that attracts trolls like a magnet, I really find it hard to believe that the only way a mature programmer can deal with a newbie is by flaming.
heh heh, speaking of dweebs "wanting help with their homework" we had one guy asking us for a really specific discussion of one CS Lewis book. We started talking about other books we found more interesting by him, and the guy broke in again to say that he wanted to see discussion about this book. People made some jokes about when his paper was due, but it sparked an OK discussion in spite of himself.
...will work for Chick tracts...
It isn't that they intentionally wish to keep me in the dark. They just want to be able to talk without having to explain every step in their thought processes. This is quite understandable, but it means that there is a linguistic barrier when we speak, making complete comprehension on my part almost impossible.
I'm attempting to catch up on the years of training, hacking, and general information they have on me, but it is quite the learning curve I'm working with here. Presently, I tend to just observe during techno-geek conversations, absorbing information and trying to think of semi-intelligent questions to ask.
I think that it is partly frustration with ignorance that leads to hostility. I know that I was getting rather hostile when hearing people go on and on about how the world was going to end due to Y2k. It was just the knee-jerk "stupid people must either be culled or taken from my presence" reaction, but it was still rather strong. The same thing happens in any discipline, however. A friend of mine is a bio-geek and she gets quite angry and bitter when she sees postings on this otherwise-intelligent site saying things which are not only untrue, but also illogical and almost impossible and delivered with the confidence and surity of a medical professional.
Basically, what it all comes down to is a "why can't we all just get along" argument. The reason why we can't is that human beings are just generally intolerant of ignorance and stupidity, no matter the excuse. It frustrates us to see people being obtuse. It annoys us to watch as those around us blindly walk off a cliff. As well, there is the fact that we don't like it when people disagree with us. We all want to be right. True, hostility won't prove your point, but it might force the arguing party to form a cohesive argument. This, in turn, makes you rethink your position in relation to theirs and form counter-arguments. In this way, the hostility of the internet is a valuable tool. It allows thoughts to be developed at a faster pace, and it requires that each person be responsible for what they believe, instead of being able to just make blanket statements and wait for others to bask in their genius. It challenges us to think.
The discussions in the newsletter are hardly scholarly studies. I maintain that on the net, nobody knows that you are a dog (unless you want them to---and even then they may not believe you). To debunk something requires more than merely saying the equivalent of ``it's not true, so there''.
I found most of that newsletter to be just the same old starchy, pseudo-intellectual feminist clap-trap. Though the one about vibrators was interesting and funny.
Disguising your identity on Usenet is as easy as setting up your variables any way you want. I can invent an identity that is only traceable to my news server and posting machine. That identity could have an arbitrary reply-to address, full name and organization field.
Anyway, it's the young males that are often the *targets* of the said roasting, due to being boastful, stubborn and ignorant. If anything, they should be hiding their identities, for they make big asses of themselves.
At worst, the hostility may at times create an atmosphere that is perhaps discouraging to the lurkers---who are themselves not the target of the hostility. Very little is known about these lurkers, unfortunately.
In the technical newsgroups I frequent, I haven very rarely seen evidence of hostility that is specifically aimed at women or non-whites. When it did happen, I recall everyone reacted by roasting the originator.
Of course, newsgroups are very diverse. There is no comparison between comp.unix.programmer and, say, alt.tasteless.jokes.
There is all kinds of crud in all kinds of groups. Depending on what you look at, you may get a completely different impression.
I'm not actually aware of a single language which even has a true Masculine tense. It's almost amusing in the way that people confuse syllables with words just to pick a fight. Being anti-social, I have a hard time communicating with people so I pay attention to words more than most. 'Guys' is a slang term, really. It's hard to tell what it means without context clues.
In any species I am aware of, females and males have uniquely different behaviors almost all of the time. I did have Liberated mice once, but they ate all the baby mice so I had to remove them. The only problem I have with this is that I'm being told that I should have a problem with an empiracly demonstrable fact.
None of the women I know in this field who I respect for their skills have problems with the generic pronoun he, the high male concentration in engineering fields, or anything concerning a 'glass cieling.' Many of them report that they have more trouble with female superiors.
Admiral Coeyman
You don't need eyes to see, you need vision.
Respect...
JIM.
Over the past few years, at Wired and now Slashdot, I've tried repeatedly to understand Mr. Katz's point of views. Unfortunately, I've finally concluded that Mr. Katz is actually the "Angry Geek" he describes in this, the last of his articles that I'll waste my time on. His anger and frustration have been directed at everything imagineable, from the Moviehouse Ticket Booth salesperson to those who "trample on free speach" because they don't like the idea of Hustler magazine sitting beside the Sports Illustated in the magazine rack of the local 7-11.
His sophomoric, repetitious "America does not have true free speach!" themes are particularly annoying. It's an issue that deserves discussion, but all too often Mr. Katz's eschews discussion and consideration of various aspects of an issue, preferring instead to use the Slashdot forum to rant and rave in a single-minded, uninformative, tirade.
Hasn't Mr. Katz's Wired credentials carried him far enough? Aren't folks tired of his brand of "button pushing"? Surely there are many Techie journalists who'd love the chance to actually present new and interesting ideas about Internet issues in a non-inflammatory manner? I say give them a chance, and then Mr. Katz can go rant on Usenet like everyone else.
Unfortunately, this is the downside which Jon has celebrated elsewhere - the Net has liberated the geek, but it's not all for the good.
As Jon pointed out in his series on geek culture, geeks in school often can't fit in and are hassled by the mainstream. They can't fight back, because they're often not strong; even if they are, they're outnumbered. All they can use to fight back with are words, and geeks are often articulate.
So on-line culture has liberated many geeks, putting them in touch with each other and letting them communicate with like-minded people - but these are like-minded people in a word-based environment who are used to using words as weapons, and for whom verbal aggression is a substitute for, or response to, physical aggression.
This is of course on top of the issues of anonymity, not having to meet the target of your flames, etc. I don't think there's much to do about it except existing techniques such as moderated fora, etc. This is the Yang of the Net, alongside, and inseparable from, the Yin of cooperation and increased communication.
After reading the first paragraph, I quickly decided reading Part 2 wasn't worth my time. Even the first sentence is utterly paradoxial and partial racistic. How can hostile environments drive people away from coherent discussions? Surely, they exclude each other. Rational people who seek answers without hassle will stay with forums where they don't get spammed, flamed or advertised to daily. Slashdot is one of these forums, especially filtered through Cut-The-Crap.
All techno-savvy people on the Internet are not white males, although they are in the majority in the West. This is more for social reasons, ie immigration and social repression of minority groups and so forth. The deciding factors in this area are very complex and variable, so I will not even attempt to dive into that matter.
The author completely disregards what Internet is all about. He seem to think it is social community all by itself. But that perspective makes no broader sense. Internet is an extension of our local community, creating a virtual global community. It then follows that all the problems we are facing on Internet has its roots in us as people and community in real life. We may create electronic forums to stimulate development to more mature discussions and mutual respect. But in the end, it is the individual human being that will have to change as part of a solution. The Internet is _accelerating_ this process. As we are communication more, ugly fluff isn't hidden under the carpet as much as before.
All in all, this post is trying to label people and sort them out in clean little bins. This is always wrong, and statistics have been misinterpreted and misused this way for way too long.
- Steeltoe (white male in case someone wondered)
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
the tech industry IS hostile to women, probably 'cuz it's run by a bunch of socially inept, sexually frustrated geeks.
Sorry, but the overall composition of the computer industry doesn't back this up. Geeks are a minority in management and that includes the tech industries.
My own experience is that the majority of managerial positions are held by people with a background in either law or sales. They promote a ruthless attitude to ones fellow employees ( male or female ) simply in order to squeeze the maximum amount of work out of people.
So while I'm not completely unsympathetic to your point of view and while I freely admit that sexism is still unfortunately common in the developed nations, I think you are missing the point very badly.
The problem isn't geek's as such - it's the whole mentality of our current corporate system that screws people for everything that it can get out of them and which basically treats people as cattle - as a totally disposable asset.
It has to be said - most net users are male. Also, just about all crime is perpetrated by males. You`d expect, therefore, less agression on the net as the years roll by, as more and more females get onto it.
However attractive it may seem, the notion that a marketplace of ideas stifled by loud obnoxious voices requires an antitrust law to keep things clean is dangerous. Civility is something to which we all should aspire, but it it not something to be enforced. Only self-regulation, and the tenor of a community, not moderators and censors, should dictate the tone of discourse.
I don't disagree that communications with confrontational tones seem more common on the net than elsewhere, but I will add that, IMHO, so too are the number of discussions of substance.
In meat-based fora, individuals tend to clump in groups who agree on basic principles, or whose disagreements are so minor in comparison that they only clash when forced to commit to policies or to resolve legal disputes. Individuals also do not tend to stay together when there are major differences, tending to clique up in communities of "common views."
The only counter-example I have experienced occurred while in graduate schools. There, the debate was often hot and heavy, in many cases downright fierce. Yet all the parties left smiling, even those who were decimated, because no person there ever won, or lost, the argument -- the goal was to seek the truth.
I suppose that what I am saying is that truth-seeking is kind of messy. The clash of genuine ideas, while it need not lead to incivility, will necessarily lead to the kind of conflict not ordinarily associated with "gentile" lives. Unfortunately, not all of us, and particularly the youngest of us, has sufficient experience to understand the difference, and this leads to the frequent ad hominem attacks with which we are too often familiar.
My view is that the clash is great, to be honored and beloved. It is a FEATURE of the net, and not a bug. More ideas get more deeply discussed, and I have learned more therefrom, than in any other medium or forum in which I participate.
The "bad acting" stuff needs to be regulated by pressing fairly hard on those who care about their netrep, or by simply ignoring the dweebs who can't tell the difference between a truly great and inspired debate and a backbar brawl.
Truth-seeking *IS* messy. Once you understand that, you learn to forgive and enjoy the ride. Its worth it. For those who don't engage, but merely shed more heat than light, they will eventually get bored and go away when the rest of us learn to ignore them.
The grave danger is that the attempts to regulate the fools and idiots simply permits the worst of us to wrap themselves in the flag, giving those who previously didn't have a decent idea a righteous cause.
Okay, here's my interpretation of this series of articles. Katz, who adamantly states that he is far too thick-skinned from his years of journalism to take insult from a flame, is reaching a subconscious boiling point after actually trying to provide earnest replies to a deluge of email with clever suggestions like "Please die." Katz subconsiously comes to believe (based on personal experience) that 95% of the e-mail that gets sent on the internet is hate-based. Maintaining his stoic, professional facade, Katz's id is forced to vent itself into his writings, and he gets his shot to get back at his attackers while consciously maintaining the belief that it's really just an analysis of an emergent internet sociological trend.
Or die!
It's the subtle exclusionary behaviors that are the real problem.
Problem? For whom is it a problem? Why, exactly, should I care?
Suppose my speech behavior does not include you, putatively because you are (presumably) a woman. Suppose I do not write, think, or act in a manner which makes you comfortable. Am I obliged to make you comfortable, and to include you in my social context? I really don't think so.
It is likely true that all of these "Natalie Portman" posts make it a less comfortable place for women
Again, so what? I suggest you either don't go there, or adapt. Learn to enjoy pouring hot grits down your pants, or just don't do it, but please don't demand that I care either way.
Why on earth should anyone posting give any thought to your egocentric puling victimhood?
You're free! Build your own space: make it wimmin friendly, exclude me and have fun doing it, but if I prefer to inhabit a harder edged space please don't expect me to scatter conversational chintz cushions around just to soften it up to your tastes.
Alles klar, Herr (or Madame) Kommisar?
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
People should learn to stand on their own feet. They only get tougher by learning stuff on their own.
As for women, I think you will find that the interests society encourages are the ones that a GREAT majority will pursue. Women generally do like gossip, dolls(when children), sentimental movies...and men generally like action movies, sports, automobiles, mechanisms and...finally computers. I'm not saying every woman fits the stereotype, but all too often they do.
As for what a MacOS geek is doing on Slashdot, your MacOS geek happens to be a LinuxPPC user. I merely find MacOS a more fruitful platform to develop for (no offence to you Linux fanatics out there).
Please explain how this says what you thought it said. I realise it sounds like I was making a strawman, but read this quote from "Ticket Booth Tyranny, Part 2". I'm sorry, but Katz is not as responsible as you thought he was. You're confusing him with some of the legitimate gripes of parents who responded to the thread. Katz is the one who said, "Find a smart 13-year-old who wants to see something off-limits and take him to a movie" and "go to a nearby movie theater and help kids trying to get in". Then he suggests helping kids that you know "too".
I might be caught getting irate and making strawmen sometimes. Not this time. This time I derided Katz, uniformly, for his actual actions.
"Hostility = 1 / ( knowledge * ability * contribution ) "
;) so you'll understand when I suggest that the proof is incomplete.
:)
Perhaps I need proper definitions here but is it safe to assume that (K)knowledge, (A)ability, and (C)contribution are mutually independent qualities?
I know that proportionality does not indicate proof of a cause-effect relationship. It indicates the potential for this or a common link (a master cause, for example).
Assuming that they are indeed independent of each other (for the sake of argument), how does (H)hostility relate to combinations of large and small values for K, A, and C?
You're a math person (ok, math genius...but that's merely my opinion
You state that when K, A, and C are all sufficient (large) that H should be proportionally small.
You also state that K->0, A->0, and C->0 indicates H->inf.
So you picked a function, tested it to the constraints and it passed. (Physics logic of "Guess a method, if it works, use it!")
But, ('=' signifies proportionality)
H = 1/(K+A+C), assuming K,A,C >=0
also matches the claimed constraints provided.
I guess my non-mathematical way of asking the question is, will hostility still be high if the person only sucks in 1(or 2) of the three attributes? (Is that even possible?)
Admittedly, the proportionality isn't perfect, there'll always a few people that like to throw off the statistics.
I also know that my math skills are occasionally lacking so feel free to correct me on anything wrong I have stated.
-Veldrane
It's not like you haven't got any free time on your hands.
IN my experience, computer people *LIKE* the way computers are - they do just what you tell them, albeit in precise detail. They do not mislead you, or do what they think you'd like. Ambiguity is not found with (digital) computers, and that makes them safe.
Hey, who would have assumed that Katz would carry on like that? I only wish I hadn't read it either :)
Gee, make us chicks look like a bunch of whiners, Mr. Katz. Most of the hostility I've seen in the tech workplace (and on the net) is not of the "women vs. men" sort but "geek vs.norm"...99.5% (it floats!) of geeks in today's world are men. In my experience, the lines of communication don't seem to break down across gender, but between those who once owned an Amiga and those who thought that an Amiga was a compact car sold in Venezuela [1]. I am no stranger to flames/flaming myself (which anyone who has ever been served my meatloaf can attest to [2] ). This "women are scared of technology and the Internet because there are MEAN BOYS there" line is a bucket o' bat guano.
:P
[1] which, not surprisingly, lacks cupholders, air conditioning, or door handles. But, dammit, you can play "Lemmings" in it.
[2] C'mon, a little carbon never hurt anyone.
When this technology began there was not much available for the curious and hungry. As young who did not fit in with the jocks, the preps, druggies or any of the popular groups in school we gravitated towards the sciences. We were considered outsiders and ostracised by the general populace. Back then the word geek had an extremely negative connotation as opposed to the current favorable light that is now cast on being a nerd. When computers came to us from the mists of time and presented a way for us to express our views and feeling without being beaten up for our words we flocked to it in droves. We hid ourselves away in our rooms, closets or grouped together with our friends to share a computer. BBS's grew out of our need to express ourselves and give resources to others in the community that needed them. Those that needed the resources already had the computers and the knowledge to use the resources. They just needed a certain few of us to be a repository of the newest software, patches and FAQs. It was not easy for us, the young, to glean information and develop our BBS communities. The biggest barrier was the money required to amass the necessary components to run the boards. We fought and scraped for what we had. We furiously protected our knowledge and only allowed those that we deemed worthy to share in the inner circle of knowledge. Those who we considered from outside were viscously thwarted and ostracised as we had been from the cliques that existed in our material worlds at school and the world at large. The cyber world was ours, and we defended it. Being young and not having mature, patient mentors to guide us in our pursuits we ended up like the kids from the island in "Lord of the Flies". The timid and meek ones hung in the background while the energetic ones blazed ahead to forge new innovations. The energy, seen as hostile, is the energy of those who have a strong belief in themselves and have become tired of being contradicted by those who do not understand. Not only did our peers not accept us but our families and the older community as a whole was completely clueless to what we were and what we did. They tried to label us so that we could fit into their sense of reality. We were reshaping the reality that they had known through computer technology. Without patient mentoring from mature computer users (who were mostly professors or scientest far from our reach) and being pushed, labeled and ostracised from all sides we developed into extremely hostile individuals on the playing field which allowed us to express our superiority. Newbies were fresh meat. Some lived through the fire to become one of those within the inner circle. Many did not. I agree that the time has come to calm down and quell the hostility on the net as a whole. It is not only making the newsgroups, and discusion forums unbearable for outsiders but also any place that people can congregate via the net. I used to play MUDS. Then I moved to the graphical games that game along (Ultima Online, EverQuest and Asherons Call). I finally quit because the community as a whole in these games was far too popluated by insensitve, hostile and immature individuals without any moral fibre represented by their actions. I joined those games looking to share and experience a virtual world of myth and magic but was greeted by aggressive, greedy, expoitive, power playing A**HOLES! People most definitely need to take custody of their behaviour and actions. Not only in the cyber world but the real world. The mature need to nurture and empower the young with positive virtues not abandon them to fight for themselves and become hostile, wounded jerks. This problem is not only in the discussion groups that you illustrate but is much more broad than that. It pervades our society as a whole. Nobody wants to listen to anybody else or teach others what they know. It is not cool to be a mentor or a teacher. It is cool to be a jerk and retire early.