> Sometimes you should be free to call a spade a spade.

"Sometimes" is the key word here. But people tend to take it too far - they start thinking if you yell "this is a fucking spade!!!" loud enough, that magically makes everything into a spade. Most of the times it's not. You can afford being blunt if you're genius, but if you want to emulate a rude genius, don't start with rudeness. Start with developing a new OS and making it worldwide success, then you can proceed to rudeness. Though I would rather you didn't, but after the OS part who cares what I think. But please don't start with the rudeness part. Actually, it would be nice if rude geniuses would be a bit less rude too, just to provide an example. But OK, nobody's perfect. I just feel there's a lot of rudeness out there in open source world, and after years of doing it - it starts to get old.

What I'm seeing is that 99.9% percent of people "calling spade a spade" do not contribute much by it and scare off people. And in open source people is the only capital the project has, so it's pretty much like business owner making a daily cash bonfire in the backyard. Yes, people make dumb suggestions, especially people that are new to the area. But it's not hard to treat them respectfully - or if one doesn't have time for it, just not respond and let others who have more time do it. Maybe the geniuses should get themselves a good PR person? :)

The point is in 99.9% of cases rudeness carries no value (most frequently negative value). The content of rude answer may carry one, but that would be preserved without the rudeness. Of course, in case of geniuses, their positive value is so immense that the negative part is completely overwhelmed by the positive one. But it still is a negative.

It's perhaps worth noting that it's not calling a spade a spade though. A moron is literally a person who is mentally retarded, though it's use in science is now limited since it's considered offensive.

It's one thing to say "Your idea is a bad one", "What you say doesn't make sense", "Your reasoning is flawed"....etc. It's lazy and offensive to just dismiss someone by suggesting they are disabled in some way.

I also don't understand why people feel the need to take these conversations into the realm of absolutes.

If someone stands up and suggests "Hey maybe we shouldn't call eachother morons and try to be nicer in our conversations"...all of a sudden they're a pitchfork-wielding PC crusader?

This is just a reminder. A suggestion.

(almost) Nobody is saying:

"Linus is a horrible person because he made an off the cuff remark that perhaps was slightly misguided"

"Let's destroy anyone who uses the word 'moron'"

"Hey we're all such better people than Linus right?"

"If someone called me a moron, I wouldn't know what to do...I'd just cry and break down like a baby...it'd be the end of the world"

Humans are fickle and changing creatures. Every now and then we need to take personal inventory as individuals and as a culture. Every now and then we need to say "Hey, maybe we should be nicer to each other"; especially when we are starting to develop a culture of being offensive, rude, and unproductive.

There's no excuse for calling someone a moron as far as I'm concerned. It will always be a lazy and wrong thing; it's just a question of to what extent. Being lazy and wrong is a part of being human, so yes...there are many situations where I saw one person calling another a moron I would be understanding and wouldn't make a big deal out of it. That doesn't mean it's not something that shouldn't have happened...

We as programmers should have an intuitive understanding that when something goes wrong you don't start pointing fingers, assigning blame, and insulting eachother.... No, we talk about what happened; why it happened and how we can try to make it not happen again.

Here we have one person calling another a moron. This is something that, ideally, should never happen ever. It's also something that is occurring in our community often enough that we as a community could use some talking about it to start trying to work our way back towards the ideal, regardless of whether we will ever reach it or not.

I think that xkcd was about overreacting to someone being wrong on the internet, and was making fun of the people who (all of us at times) start flaming with extreme prejudice when they see it.

I am proud that I still feel a bit of shame when I catch myself doing that, and glad that I haven't been able to rationalize it as a excess that I deserve because I am so awesome.

Instead, I try not to talk to idiots, unless they're in my way or about to get in my way, and then I sprinkle sugar all over what I'm about to say as if I was talking to a child. It's important for me to remember that I'm trying to advance my own goals, rather than make someone feel stupid. This applies even when I am speaking to the stupid.

"Nope, they were not fortunate. If you think that's luck, you should spend your time playing lottery."

Everybody who succeeds is fortunate. They were fortunate to be born into a well-to-do family(if they were) in, perhaps, a developed country, or at the very least fortunate not to have starved in an undeveloped one, fortunate to attend school and be educated, most of all, fortunate enough to be endowed with a highly intelligent brain that was shaped and molded and cultivated by the people around them. If you think you did anything alone in your entire life, you are sorely mistaken.

Nobody succeeds alone. Everybody around you deserves respect because they co-authored your life

I was going to take your argument a lot more seriously, but then I came to this part:

fortunate enough to be endowed with a highly intelligent brain

That's just taking it too far. By that same logic they were fortunate that, about 2 billion years, certain bacteria and algae began to appear and thus we have life on Earth today.

If you think did anything alone in your entire life, you are sorely mistaken.

We're all standing on the shoulders of the giants. That doesn't mean we should spend our time looking down and exclaiming "Wow, these guys sure are tall!" We should be aware of where we are, grateful that we're there and make the best of it. And that means look forward and up, not down.

Everybody around you deserves respect because they are the co-authors of your life.

That's where you're wrong. It's true that everything in my life factors into my personality and my measure of success. That doesn't automatically mean that everything and everyone around me deserves my respect.

Like it or not, certain levels of respect have to be earned. Likewise, respect can be easily squandered.

But considering that 90% of the organisms that have ever lived on Earth have died without reproducing, and therefore you are the end result of a line of organisms every single one of which lived to reproduce, then yes, I'd say we are lucky to have been born at the end of this 4 billion year long process and to have a human brain instead of say, that of a slug. But slugs are lucky too.

I agree that you can grade respect based on how much people have earned it. What I'm criticizing here isn't levels of respect but disrespect.

Do we really want to stand on the shoulders of giants looking down, flipping people off?

As long as we're having fun with the analogy: Whoever pelts me with mud is going to be lucky if I just flip them off.

But even people who don't "succeed" by the standards of the modern society are fortunate. Many "failures" live in developed countries, or in countries where the standard of living has improved dramatically over the last 100 years. They are fortunate not to have been killed when they were young. They have many things to be grateful for.

Why should the "successful" people be grateful any more?

And, furthermore, what if you define success in a different way? Perhaps all that Linus has forever wished in his live was for a specific girl to love him, and he just wasn't that "fortunate"?

I agree. Each person has his own measurement of success, depending on the circumstances in which he lives.

>Nobody succeeds alone. Everybody around you deserves respect because they are the co-authors of your life.

While "nobody succeeds alone" is true, the conclusion you draw is not.

Some of those "co-authors of your life" write the _bad_ chapters.

Also, that nobody succeeds alone, does not mean that you succeed BECAUSE OF everyone of the other people. Some people you succeed DESPITE OF (and even despite their best efforts to bring you down).

You can argue with the reasoning here, but you can't argue with the conclusion unless you're advocating not respecting somebody. It's a nasty position to take.

Even if somebody writes a bad chapter in your life, it doesn't mean you should be out to write bad chapters in theirs.

Everybody deserves at least a basic level of respect. It's a fundamental component to being moral.

>Even if somebody writes a bad chapter in your life, it doesn't mean you should be out to write bad chapters in theirs.

You'd be surprised. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I say. And eye for an eyelid. I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee...

/s

The BIG difference is that Linus says something (or some action) was stupid. He doesn't say you are stupid. He doesn't call people morons.

Besides which, he's just about always right. That helps. So often the insulter merely doesn't understand the insultee's question or position or perspective.

I disagree. Well, I agreed with what Linus did but not the general idea of your post. If too many people in the group actively push against new people then the group suffers. It may appear no harm lost in telling the guy that made a suggestion that's already been made several times to go away because he's whatever the current popular insult happens to be, but it does cause harm such as reputation. The guy making the suggestion most likely does not know he was not the first to do so. Being nice about it may encourage him to try another suggestion he may have in the future and possibly benefit the group. If you just insult him then you're just telling him not to bother again, which is detrimental to the group.

"Sometimes you should be free to call a spade a spade."

Could you not say "black" instead? I think "spade" carries unnecessarily derogatory baggage.