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Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

I already wrote this in reply to another comment within this thread, but I'd like to reiterate my main point.

Hypatia found some serious problems with a security product that a company I worked for released. She contacted us and I got to work with her for awhile. Hypatia could have blogged and gotten rather famous because we were all over the Canadian news then. Instead, she erred on the side of extreme professionalism, came to us, and responsibly disclosed her concerns.

Based on that experience, I will always argue that Hypatia is not only freakishly intelligent, but she manages to stay reasonable. Moreover, she was always interesting and fun to deal with.

Knowing how good she is, I take her criticism quite seriously and I urge everyone reading this to be kind towards her.

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What do you think her criticism is, that should be taken seriously?

As far as I can tell it boils down to "The kernel people are abusive, Linus in particular is abusive, and this document doesn't change my mind about that".

When I have edited people's writing, at times I have been too scathing and when I was in my twenties, a few writers even called me abusive. When I am stressed out and faced with what I consider incompetence, I don't always do a good job of controlling what I will write. I have deeply insulted people in my time, including people who were doing things for me for free. Heck, go through my comment history. A few days ago, I was so scathing on a Show HN that I am scared I actually destroyed an entrepreneur's confidence.

I'm only sharing this because I'm not particularly qualified to answer this question. Personally, I don't find LT all that bad, but that might be because at various points, I have been worse.

Had situations been reversed a decade ago, I would have been much more difficult for Hypatia to deal with than she was for me. Again, she was reasonable, she was 100% correct, and she had cause to roast me and the company I worked for over the coals. Despite this, she was kind and helpful. Heck, my boss yelled at me every time she emailed me, yet I have enjoyed and learned from every single interaction I have ever had with her.

In light of how she behaved in contrast with how I would have, I trust that she is better qualified to make statements like this. Not only is she more talented than I am, but she is far better at communicating through difficult times than I am. It is unfortunate that Twitter confines you to 140 character bursts because 140 does not give much space to be constructive. I hope we get to hear how Hypatia would change that document because personally, I would learn from that.

Better qualified to make statements like what? She hasn't said anything about the document except to pretend to misread part of it, and call it bad grammar. The rest is insulting Linus and the kernel devteam.

The twitter thread does contain some actual criticisms: "it’s uselessly vague, blames the victims of abuse rather than the perpetrators, and lays out no actual process for violations"; "the 1st graf def sets up some apologist precedents" - but Hypatia is not the one making them. (I don't think I agree with these criticisms, but they're better than insults.)

I'm sure she has behaved admirably in other situations. In this situation, she is not behaving admirably. She is not communicating well through difficult times. I don't buy the "not much space" argument, because she's not even trying to be constructive in the 140 characters that she has. (I'm not saying she's morally obligated to provide constructive criticism, I'm saying that if she wanted to do so, she could be a lot more constructive than this.)

I'm not saying anything about Hypatia in general. Maybe she's having a bad day. If I encounter her in another situation, I'll try not to judge her based on this incident. The fact remains that in this particular twitter thread, she is behaving poorly.

Perhaps. And, so you know, again I'm sorry for arguing with you like this. My argument approaches non sequitur because my only point is that we should listen because I respect her. Yet seriously, why would you respect me or give an iota of a crap about something that happened to me???? I deeply apologize and swear I am not trying to offend you or be disrespectful.

The problem with disagreeing with a code like this is that arguments stink until you put them into practice. Saying a code is too vague is like saying that a design needs to pop - in the end, it means nothing until it is accompanied by an "I would have written it like this" statement with an example.

I don't think you have anything to apologize for. You haven't said anything that comes close to being offensive or disrespectful, as far as I can tell.

It's exactly that sort of insensitivity that makes the Open Source culture so toxic. You don't even preemptively apologize for comments that might be offensive in a way that you didn't intend because of your innate privilege. Take yourself down a few pegs and try to imagine what the world is like for everyone else who didn't have the world handed to them.

Oh wait, that was an ill reasoned, assumptive, and unhelpful response made without basis or provocation. Besides not being a part of your conversation, I had no right to scold you, especially not for any of my personal beliefs, and I won't be dismissive, sarcastic, dig my heels in, or behave like a demagogue just to bolster my platform if you respond.

Totes my mistake, carry on.

That's not how Twitter works. If you're acquainted with her explanations and what she's linked to, this tweet's background should be clear. (Or at least you know where to dig more deeply.)

Looking for a nuanced argument in this particular tweet in isolation is disingenuous. When I want to know what someone means, I investigate deeper.

If you've learned something interesting by investigating deeper, feel free to share.

I promise I'm not being deliberately disingenuous, but I'm honestly not sure what you think I've done wrong. I've read the article she linked about how Linus isn't a nice guy. I've read the entire thread. I've now looked at her main feed, outside of the thread.

I maintain that she is not criticizing the document, she's insulting the people involved. Do you think that I should be elaborating on the particular forms of insults that she's using? It doesn't seem relevant to me that her insults take the form of accusations of abuse, but that's honestly the only thing I can think of, that you might think I'm being dishonest about.

It occurs to me that my other reply avoids answering your question while simultaneously making me less employable, so I apologize.

To respond directly, I don't know. I can't find anything in her Twitter feed to answer your question and personally, I am fine with the code of conduct as written. My argument is that I have been involved in a situation where she rightfully criticized something that I was working on. She was reasonable, highly intelligent and absolutely always constructive. Therefore, I would prefer to wait to see if she comes out with edits, or if she explains herself further before I take either side. I know there is no logic for that other than my own experience and as such, this is all nearly non sequitur. I don't mean to insult, but I have nothing of substance...other than my respect for Hypatia.

The distinction that is important in my mind is:

* This code is bad; vs. * You are [A named person is] a worthless person.

The first is fine and a healthy part of software development. In a casual environment like open source development on the internet, it can be said with humour, with venom, with fervour, with sarcasm, or with hyperbole. Don't take it personally, even if happens to be code that you wrote. It's not a personal flaw of yours if everything that comes out of your keyboard is not instantly the best code ever written. Calm your ego. Use it to become better, stronger.

The second is a personal attack and is not acceptable.

Some people don't seem to be able to tell the difference, and treat the first as the second. Furthermore, since they can't tell the difference, they often react by doing the second (e.g. "Linus is a shithead for saying that and should go die in a fire"). I find that offensive.

As you already iterated, the non sequitur is that you can be right at one thing and still be wrong about another one. Which means that this argument doesn't really support the position. It is exactly the same position that you are not allowed to critique the writing style of Theo de Raadt, Linus Torvals or Ulrich Drepper because they are all excellent engineers, which is the major contention point and the reason for the documents existence in the first place.

She is right in that the sentence does have some ambiguity, if you twist your brain enough, you can grasp what she is seeing. But I also think that the context firmly states the intention. If your cognitive position is that someone is an asshole, then you will eventually see everything written as being purposefully malicious I guess.

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