Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

[Miles Fidelman <[e-mail]>]

Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Tim Bray wrote:
>> The below from Tom Petch captures my opinion.  I have sympathy with 
>> more or less all the notes from all the factions in this discussion, 
>> which instantly stops when they say or imply “… and that’s why it’s 
>> OK to be rude.”  I just don’t think that’s ever OK in the context of 
>> an open-to-all mailing list representing the public face of something 
>> that claims to be a standards organization.  That includes when 
>> discouraging a dumb idea that is being proposed for the seventeenth time.
>> On Wed, Jun 22, 2022 at 1:32 AM tom petch <[e-mail] 
>> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>>
>>     I think that that exemplifies a universal truth that is often
>>     missed and
>>     is perhaps the core of this discussion.
>>
>>     First, criticise the behaviour never the person.
>>     Second, own it; not 'that is stupid' but 'I think that ...'
>>     ideally with
>>     logical reasons, never with emotional ones.
>>
>>     It took me a long time to realise how much nicer the world is when I
>>     remember this and, even now, I sometimes need to remind myself
>>     (as in
>>     opposing the adoption of an I-D which I am about to do). I would
>>     sacrifice all the spell-checkers in the world for a reasonableness
>>     checker along these lines.
>>
>
It does occur to me, though, that some places - like Quora - are just 
full of people who ask really dumb questions (including homework 
questions, without context).  We're starting to see things like that on 
LinkedIn, and they've long been the bane of various tech support email 
lists (along with developer lists).

Maybe it takes the periodic "RTFM," "go do your homework," and "how to 
ask good questions" ("come back when you can provide some details on 
what you tried") - to cut down on such stuff.  You know, backpressure.

Not to excuse obnoxious behavior, but sometimes it takes a modicum of 
brusqueness and/or snark to tamp down on the noise level.

Just a thought.

Miles


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In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown