holy mother of pearl, @tinoesroho that’s an amazing jump from where I started, which was asking @codinghorror why design competitiveness into a system designed to produce good answers to technical questions.
Because I am asking in the Community topic for @codinghorror to consider whether designing helpfulness and cooperation into a forum designed to provide good answers to technical, or even hard, questions, now suddenly I’m the nasty, idiot, racist?
#resist
Science is all about peer review, which is other people telling you how you got it wrong. In fact, if you do science right, you want people to tell you how you got it wrong, so you can get it more right next time!
You seem to be maintaining that I am advocating for people to do this by bludgeoning each other to death with weapons, verbal or otherwise. I am not. I am merely pointing out that systems where expressing “you got it wrong” (aka downvoting) is allowed, are not compatible with systems of opinion. That is why there is no downvoting here for example.
I’d also like to point out that in systems of opinion, telling somehow how they got it wrong is going to cause them to entrench and double down on whatever it is they believe. And the science tells me so…
Research from the University of Toronto reinforces our findings: In one study white subjects read a brochure critiquing prejudice toward blacks. When people felt pressure to agree with it, the reading strengthened their bias against blacks. When they felt the choice was theirs, the reading reduced bias.
Systems of data, fact, and science can be civil because they are anchored on data based observations that are not tied to religion, or belief system, or opinion…
Correct to my eyes, and you want to fund a way to encourage people between “you’re doing it wrong” and “you are wrong” which is a lot more personal.
It’s probably best practice to communicate about ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’, as once you bring right and wrong into it, people start hearing good and bad as the concepts, when you’re trying to talk about effective and ineffective.
How nice! It sounds like things haven’t changed too much since I got my MS.
I don’t recall my having said or indicated that. Nor do I believe that. I’m trying to explore the idea of building in that collegiate working-together-to-make-things-better thing using software to promote that sort of community. Is this the wrong thread?
Seriously, if you want to pretend I am blaming you for things I am not blaming you for, or if you want to pretend I am a climate science denier or vaccine refuse-nik, please suit yourself and leave me out of it. I don’t have time for that shit, and as you say, you don’t have to be polite.
Downvoting to express that “you got it wrong” seems appropriate when the “it” in question is in clear defiance of a known physical law, like gravity, or an enormous body of research, like vaccine safety or climate science.
But a lot of times there are various ways to approach a problem or prove a theorem. For example, one of my friends prefers closed form solutions and I like computer intensive solutions. (Please note that if we use two different methods to prove or disprove a thing, we have supported each other’s research. yay cooperation and helpfulness!) Similarly there are lots of wrong ways, but also many right ways, to design an experiment. Or code a solution.
Downvoting something stupidly dangerous like “I can jump out this 20th story window and fly!” seems the very least we can humanely do. Downvoting something that violates an accepted standard practice may be a necessary and appropriate thing to do. Downvoting an approach to a problem simply because someone else has a different approach may be the competitive thing to do, but ultimately may be less helpful.
If we are evolving a solution to a complex math or engineering problem, there likely are many approaches. Maybe some approaches are more appropriate to certain situations, but others will invariably come down to a matter of personal taste.
According to recent research on the topic, systems of data, fact, and science are just as susceptible as systems of opinion. “antagonistic memes transform affect and cultural cognition from consensus-generating, truth-convergent influences on information processing into conflictual, identity-protective ones.” Even when the topic was the Zika virus! not opinion!
How can we use this research to reduce conflictual, identity-protecting influences on information processing? How can we promote consensus-generating, truth-convergent information processing? Surely that would be better for the community!
Kahan, Dan M. and Jamieson, Kathleen Hall and Landrum, Asheley R and Winneg, Kenneth, Culturally Antagonistic Memes and the Zika Virus: An Experimental Test (July 18, 2016). Journal of Risk Research, Forthcoming; Yale Law & Economics Research Paper No. 554; Annenberg Public Policy Center/Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 3. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2811294
This is why multiple answers complete for up votes on Stack Overflow; there are usually a few good ones, and they will all have a reasonable level of community peer review upvotes to reflect that. These answers compete, just like your science will compete to be published in a well known scientific journal, and will be compared to other science also published in other reputable journals. Competition makes sense in a world where things can be, at least to some degree, objectively verified.
Whereas competition around the topic “who is the coolest X-Man character” makes… significantly less sense. Because obviously it is Wolverine. Duh!
You seem to be implying it is some kind of bar room brawl with “only” a mere mandate for civility… have you ever spent any time on the sites in question? If you had, I don’t know how you could hold that opinion. Civility was enforced, with an iron fist, from day zero.
Because every programmer knows the best way to motivate a programmer to solve a hard problem is to tell them another programmer did it better than them?
Which I believe is true of most, if not all, technical fields.
You win. Congrats. I’m tired of trying to ask you for something that you clearly do not want to even discuss.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience in a sample size of one. I’d need to see the specific question to offer any commentary. It’s a strict system by design.
(As an aside, I think programmers expect and understand strictness because they work with the world’s biggest, strictest a-hole all day long: the computer. One single solitary bit or character out of place and everything fails. They grow to think of this as normal, because it is… if you’re a computer.)
In my experience, StackExchange is great for web developers (and has led to a co-operarove, springboard model wherein good answers get replies that when combined become great). If you object to the gamification of replies to questions, stick to dedicated forums. Zetaboards has a good one for their specific product.
I see a lot of answers being offered you, civilly. He can explain it to you, but he cannot understand it for you.
I wonder some of the same things you do, and it’s kept me out of coding somewhat, but I don’t think it’s because coders are bro’s - but because people who spend lots of time in front of a screen can have awfully atrophied social skills. Either gender, but there are far more male coders.
All cultures have subcultures, and maybe there is a friendlier one of those somewhere within the coding communities being discussed? Surely a place for people who can keep a civil tongue when they’re frustrated is what you’re looking to be part of? Maybe that place is out there?
Absolutely, there are. You will probably find that forums directly dedicated to X tend toward collaborative solutions for X. StackExchange tends to produce the best answer for a specific code problem, Quora the best anecdotes, Google+ the best quiet social zone etc.
Nothing will change because the fundamental design cannot be changed without redesigning everything else.
Edit:
I’m an asshole and was needlessly brusque in this post and especially earlier ones. (still a bit sore over November and all the “think pieces” blaming liberals for not coddling racists enough)
The problem with the Stackexchange model, as I’ve experienced it, is that there are a lot of questions that are the equivalent of “Who is the best X-Man?” (Nightcrawler) and that the competitive structure forces unpopular or unorthodox, but still correct, answers to the wayside. In addition, the focus on not repeating questions (“dupe”, “already answered here”, etc…) means that subtle differences in situations, along with users who are perhaps using non-perfect grammar and vocabulary, get ignored in favor of a preferred “canonical” answer.
W R O N G
As a programmer, you work all day long with the world’s biggest pedantic a-hole, the computer. It tends to rub off on you, and … not in a good way.
If you accept that a great detective understands criminals at some deeper level, the best programmers literally identify with the computer. It’s part of what makes you good. But it also comes at some cost to your soul, and you have to take great pains to not carry that mindset forward into interactions with other human beings. People bitch about the comments on hacker news, and they ain’t wrong… but they don’t really understand the occupational hazards, either.
(This is also why I don’t think programming is some great amazeballs job that everyone should have. It actually kind of sucks.)
It was a different story in 2001 when there was zero expectation that every device be perma-connected 24/7, but it’s a hell of a lot more complicated now. Since about ~2010 or so every man woman and child carries a computer in their damn pocket, every computer is connected, and thus every computer is a window into other human beings by design.
So programmers who grew up in the pre-2010 era are going to have skewed perspectives on this. Only programmers who were born in… 2000 or so, and would now be coming of age at 18, have really experienced and have any hope of internalizing this brave new world of always connected, in-everyones-pocket computing.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
