You feel the original advice, in essence, serves to perpetuate the immoral, current standard of behavior and is, therefore, invalid.
(Whereas I, on the other hand, am saying that the advice narrowly serves the OP's immediate, pragmatic interests and is, therefore, valid.)
Is that a fair distillation?
The comment is not written that way at all and it's not implied from context, especially because the comment talks about it as advice heard in a corporate setting, which begs the interpretation of a generic corporate policy or something "team players" will do, etc.
It is specifically because the parent comment was written that way (a generic heuristic for corporate settings) that I felt it was useful to offer a disagreeing perspective and highlight that it could be quite harmful to encourage adopting such a thing as a generic "corporate setting" rule of thumb.
In that case, as I said, I see your point, and I think we merely disagree on fundamentals, which is fine.
> If the parent comment that I disagreed with had come with huge disclaimers that it was only intended as a technique to be applied precisely in the OP's use case
At the risk of breaking the HN taboo of bringing up voting as well as potentially sparking another meta-discussion, I'll say this:
The consistent downvoting combined with the lengthy sub-thread with the OC insisting, in essence, that the context was sufficient to convey intent (and subsequently confirming original intent), in the absence of disclaimers, suggests that your position here may be tending toward the unreasonable.
This isn't to say that you're categorically wrong and that nobody else could possibly intepret it differently, just that it might be beyond a "reasonable person" standard of interpretation. Personally, I prefer being required to exert extra effort to gain context, so as to have writing be more succinct and free of disclaimers.
Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis. It probably still does for some readers, and I find that unfortunate for HN, as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all.
I'll have to disagree strongly on that one. Hacker News is a place where the voting is extremely tribalistic. People downvote what they don't like, regardless of its merits or worthwhileness. Hacker News exhibits this just as much as any online community I've ever seen, and it's pure bias that so many of us believe we're exempt and use votes efficiently. Voting on HN is very often about popularity or trying to downvote what you don't like, rather than reserving downvotes for types of discourse that truly fall outside the guidelines or scope.
> "Perhaps most importantly, though, your belaboring of this point had, at least for me, distracted from your main thesis."
I agree, and felt saddened that I was pushed into a corner where I felt it was clearly necessary to belabor it.
> "as diversity of thought is something that I believe helps us all."
Yes indeed, but there truly are many topics for which HN is just another echo chamber and downvotes are just expressions of loyalty to ideological sides of an issue.
Well, yes and no. I certainly agree with your point about tribalism and being like other online communities, but I don't agree with the "just as much" part, at least not within the bounds of certain topics or sub-threads. It takes an effort to see just that HN.
My own experience is that my comments receive few votes one way or the other (and very rarely fall negative), but I believe that's because I make a concerted effort to avoid topics where discussion appear to yield nothing but further controversy. I'll even just hit the "[-]" on the whole sub-thread after reading a few levels and detecting the pattern.
I also self-censor (and let go of things and not take bait). Frequently. How much of a loss this is, to others, is unknown, but I do know I ultimately feel worse when I am the character in the xkcd cartoon who won't leave the computer because "someone is wrong on the Internet".
> rather than reserving downvotes for types of discourse that truly fall outside the guidelines or scope.
I'd say that this reservation (certainly the more severe guidelines violations) is appropriate for flagging, not (just) downvoting.
> I was pushed into a corner where I felt it was clearly necessary to belabor it.
To hang on to one shred of on-topic material :) ...
Considering there was only one other participant in the long chain, that's a strange characterization. More importantly, though, in light of your subsequent remarks regarding guidelines, you may want to take a hard look at whether your initial response, that sparked it all, fully complied with their spirit.
In particular, the one that ends "Assume good faith" (suggesting disclaimers are unneeded), and the one regarding ideology (which I know does not specifically what happened here, but there may be echoes).
Just something to think about in the whole pragmatism vs. morality in advice tension.
> People downvote what they don't like, regardless of its merits or worthwhileness.
I'll personally tend to downvote comments that bring ideology into what had previously been a practical discussion, since, as you may have guessed from my original distillation of our positions, I'm a pragmatist. Of course, this is also idealogical (a position on worthwhileness).
All that said, I recognize your username (which means you comment on topics of interest to me) and generally find myself upvoting your comments.
Our experiences just seem to differ on this. When I’m reading other comments or threads on HN, I see it all the time, in many threads per day, spanning a huge range of topics.
> “but I do know I ultimately feel worse when I am the character in the xkcd cartoon who won't leave the computer because "someone is wrong on the Internet".”
For me, I think that the criticism of that XKCD comic is very shallow when people use it to denigrate someone who just happens to be interested in disagreement and the resolution of it. In an Aumann’s Agreement Theorem sense, as you become closer to the approximation of a rational agent, you might expect to stick it out even in minor disagreements more and more, realizing that “agree to disagree” should be saved for an escape valve when the conversation turns uncivil... but that prior to that, extended disagreement is actually a good thing.
It’s lazy and sloppy IMO to use the line “someone is wrong on the internet” as a glib criticism towards somebody that actually cares about sticking out a disagreement with civil conversation.
In that sense, because I take great pains to be civil even if I am attacked during a disagreement, I would never feel like I am a model of that XKCD cartoon, and in fact would find it thoughtless and lazy if someone else projected that onto me or anyone who is intellectually sincere about enjoying disagreement discussions online.
> “I'd say that this reservation (certainly the more severe guidelines violations) is appropriate for flagging, not (just) downvoting.”
I disagree but I doubt we can find a specific resolution in the guidelines. I view flagging as being reserved for comments that are uncivil, bullying or harmful, and never ever for anything else. Moderation does a good enough job that flagging for off-topic is generally unnecessary and usually is revealed quickly in comments anyway.
When a comment is expressing a disagreeable attitude, it would rarely be good to downvote it. Downvoting is more to downweight purely political comments, comments that are obviously just self-promotional or intended to influence readers towards a certain product, inappropriate jokes or non sequiturs that would distract, and sometimes uncivil comments (though flagging is better).
I don’t actually mind that much that people on HN use votes to push agendas about what to talk about. I just think HN users vote for popularity or downvote what they don’t like just as much as anywhere else. They don’t take any type of “more enlightened” stance on it than other communities. This isn’t a judgmental comment, just an observation.
> “Considering there was only one other participant in the long chain, that's a strange characterization.“
Why is it strange? What does the number of participants have to do with it?
> “In particular, the one that ends "Assume good faith" (suggesting disclaimers are unneeded)”
It says to assume the strongest plausible interpretation, which I believe that I did, even after going back and re-reading the parent comments. Sometimes somebody unambiguously says X, you respond disagreeing with X, and then they backtrack and claim they really meant Y. That’s not what the guidelines are talking about. They are talking about that first interpretation of X and being charitable. I absolutely think I met that criteria based on the original comment.
> “I'll personally tend to downvote comments that bring ideology into what had previously been a practical discussion”
This is a slippery slope though, because from my point of view my whole line of discussion is meant to be totally about pragmatism. The original advice of cultivating a general culture where complaints are discouraged if they don’t come with proposed solutions is not pragmatic advice, because of the danger that such a policy institutionalizes procedure for continuing to harm or marginalize certain groups. This could take the form of making a team member feel his or her voice is not heard in simple team meetings, or could take the form of discouraging harassment claims, and many things in between.
Just because a discussion might take into account some dimension of a desired moral outcome, that does not mean it “brings ideology into it” any more so than how practically any claim of any type ultimately relies on some type of ideology about economic assumptions, utilitarianism, rationality, reductionism, moral philosophy, population ethics, sovereignty, etc. etc.
Applying a “don’t bring ideology into this” criticism to my comments here seems totally unfair, as if to bend that part of the guideline to pick and choose disagreements you merely don’t happen to like, and use the guideline to argue it’s ok to downvote or flag them. You could practically argue that anything beyond the most ultraspecific comments can be said to bring some type of ideology into it, if you wanted. But clearly the guideline is about cases when comments try to steer the discussion into territory that’s only about the ideological debate.
I do suspect you're conflating pragmatism with principle, whereas they're often considered to be at odds. Perhaps, consider, instead, "expediency" as a synonym for pragmatism in this context.
For better or for worse, the advice sought here not likely to have been the kind involving a substantial moral (or idealogical or principled or fairness what have you) component nor strenuous repetition thereof.
> Applying a “don’t bring ideology into this” criticism to my comments here seems totally unfair
It was merely a gentle suggestion for self-examination through a particular critical lens, given the, apparently strong, negative reaction from the community. Clearly, that backfired, and I apologize.
I was hoping I could help reveal maybe a slightly different angle of looking at the whole thing, but I realize that's difficult when one feels particularly strongly. (Nobody else is likely ever to see these writings given the age of the post and depth of the subthread anyway).
I’m only trying to talk about how we perceive people bringing complaints. I think you misunderstood and it’s my fault for choosing a needlessly complicated example to include.
I’m saying it should not matter whether a complaint is big, small, formal, or informal (that’s why I listed a range of possible situations when someone might have to bring a complaint). Across all those cases, the social norm of treating the person as if their complaint deserves to be considered should not be predicated on whether they offer a solution at the same time. (Which is different than any legal requirement or other non-norm aspect.)
In other words, your point about asking for specific types of relief in a legal complaint is not addressing whether people believe the party bringing the complaint is just being a whiner or something, which is all I ever wrote about.
Granted though, maybe I should have chosen a non-legal example, like complaining to a referee in a sports competition, to get the point across about the variety of situations without dragging in possible confusion over red herring legal specifics. Or maybe an example with an arbiter determining the relief, if any, in an employment dispute or something.
> “Remember, the OP is asking about how best to challenge trends.”
I was never responding to the OP, only the parent comment above mine that talked about using a rule of thumb of not bringing complaints, only solutions, and specifically mentioned it was heard in a corporate context. That combination of details seems appropriate for counterpoints that if a corporate environment codifies a culture that dissuades complaints by pressuring people to first have solutions in hand, it’s a very bad thing that will hurt marginalized people (and in a corporate setting that might even be the intended effect). Whether a local rule of thumb making the shy person feel unwelcome to point out a deficiency in some work artifact during a team meeting, or making someone feel they can’t talk about rude behavior of their desk neighbor because they don’t have a seating change proposal or they really like their seat already. The situations where people need to feel free to complain without proposing a solution are constant, pervasive, all around us, and often involve people we don’t consider or see because of biases or other blind spots.
> “Such a moral position doesn't invalidate the advice.”
I believe that is actually does explicitly invalidate the advice.
Obviously, others are free to agree or disagree with the moral point of view behind my comment (e.g. that policies which might discourage suffering people from expressing their suffering are wrong), and then choose for themselves which part of the advice they prefer. That’s why we’re discussing it in comments.
But that doesn’t invalidate my original disagreement of the parent comment, nor have any affect on the usefulness of me writing up counterpoint comments that express dissent to that proposed rule of thumb.