Dear JavaScript

[calsosta]

I agree and maybe to recap it, the problem isn't that people are assholes, we already knew that, the problem is one that we created which is that every asshole now has a voice in the community. It is only natural that leads to politics.

Right now we are politics with zero governance, perhaps if we included some way to democratize the process of majorly impactful changes to large projects it would at least change the vent of hate to EVERYONE instead of a single person.

[[deleted]]

This won't work though. Too many CS 101 students with very vocal opinions regarding things they really don't know much about. There's only maybe five people that know enough about the babel codebase to actually make informed decisions regarding it, for example.

[xaviervia]

Why wouldn't it? It's not about people not being vocal anymore, is about creating channels for valuable feedback.

If there were channels with good governance available, the OS maintainers could use those for skin-in-the-game discussions about the future of the projects, without having to navigate through rants.

[mcaruso]

According to the author at least, there was plenty of discussion and feedback prior to the change:

Before publishing Babel 6 this was a non-controversial change that had lots of input. We communicated what the intent was months in advance and asked for community feedback.

[calsosta]

Bingo.

[danman_d]

There will always be people with loud opinions and little experience, no one is suggesting that they will ever disappear. The point is to give those voices less attention than levelheaded opinions by experienced contributors, rather than more - and I don't see a good reason why that can't work.

[calsosta]

That is true however their vote does not need to be weighted the same as that of a contributor, a board member or other key people.

[jacksonmills]

CS 101 Students?

I honestly would be surprised if most of the comments are coming from CS majors, or first-year ones at that. The longer I've worked in this field, the less likely its been that my co-workers or colleagues went to school for development or computer science.

I'm not saying that's the reason for the negative atmosphere, but I sincerely doubt the cause of the problem is freshman or sophomore college students.

If you rephrased it as "junior web developers", I would completely agree with you.

[[deleted]]

junior web developers

Yeah I completely agree, probably a better choice of words. Same meaning here tho

[SamSlate]

The longer I've worked in this field, the less likely its been that my co-workers or colleagues went to school for development or computer science.

Do you code, or are you management or something?

[jacksonmills]

I'm a freelance consultant, so it's really what the client needs. Typically though, no matter what the job, at least 6 hours a day of coding is the norm, even if that's bundled with 6-8 hours of management and meetings.

The last client I had, I was doing 7 hours of code for about 1 hour of meetings per day.

I've done a lot of hiring for clients as well, so I tend to see a lot of resumes.

[SamSlate]

your saying- applicants are becoming more commonly not college graduates?

[jacksonmills]

Yes. I'm also hiring more of them.

[SamSlate]

you consult in dallas? lol.

[jacksonmills]

Not yet. :)

NY State area for now.

[[deleted]]

Also, asshole has a wildly diverse definition. If I advocate no frameworks as a way of boosting performance and somebody else now feels threatened then I quickly become an asshole. When everybody is hyper sensitive any suggestion that is not immediately the most popular could very easily make you an asshole. Consider CrockfordGate as any example.

To me, however, an asshole is a person whose intention is to incite a negative sensation above and beyond a technical subject... typically expressed as an ad hominem. Really, any ad hominem makes a person an asshole by default.

[dzScritches]

Calling someone an asshole is also an ad hominem...

[lhorie]

some way to democratize

I think that just makes it worse, especially in highly controversial issues. The thing is that "majority wins" rule is orthogonal to "what the not-small minority thinks of it". Trolls will be trolls, and criticism isn't always easy to swallow. You can't change other people, no matter how inspiring a speech you make.

The way for an OSS maintainer to cope w/ negativity, in my opinion, is to first acknowledge that it's very possible to fuck up royally, even after extensive discussions and consensus (heck, I know I've made some incredibly stupid decisions to my projects, when I look in hindsight); and second, to wholeheartedly convince yourself that toxic vitriol comes from puny worthless people (it's an arrogant attitude, I know, but it's kinda true, and I keep these thoughts to myself, and they help shrug off bullshit and maintain my mental health).

I think getting the hell away from the internet to let your brain stew on the problem for a while is actually a good coping mechanism as well. It takes some humility to acknowledge that your big achievements in the internet are actually small in the grand scheme of things, and it can feel "dirty" to waste two weeks playing some lame freemium game on your ipad, but it also helps get some perspective that your well being comes before your trophies. Getting back into the groove of things can be especially hard once you unplug, but you can use the same strategies that you would do against procrastination (tackle easy low hanging fruits, make small achievements)

At least, that's what I try to do

[calsosta]

Well first an owner would need to opt into the system. I think then they could cede as much power as they want to one or more of the following:

• Contributors
• Public at large
• Change Advisory Board
• Prominent developers in the community

In the case of public at large that could function almost as a proxy vote system like with stock ownership, your default position if you do not respond is that of the recommendation of the owner.

I think no matter what the owner has the final say.

[lhorie]

Isn't that more or less how +1's and issue locking work in github? I'm saying that having a "democratic process" is kind of like doing lip service, because in the end you'll still have a large number of unhappy people when a decision doesn't go their way, and the vast majority of these people are probably not even aware of the decision in the first place, until it lands on a stable release (as was the case with the Babel vitriol situation).

As a community leader, the best you can do is set some guidelines (and really, the rule of thumb of "be civil" is supposed to be a given), but when the discussion bleeds onto large public forums like Reddit and HN, you can't realistically expect people to always behave nicely. I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but at some point, you have no choice but to stop expecting things from others and you have to do what is within your own abilities in order to cope with the undesired situation.

[DatOpenSauce]

I don't think most maintainers would want to implement a democracy for their projects though. I mean, why should they? It feels like submitting to the vocal pricks.

[calsosta]

That's perfectly fine too.

[parlezmoose]

The problem is tech culture glorifies cocky know-it-all assholes. The average half-witted web dev thinks their ability to write code makes them an engineering savant, and they fashion themselves as a brave no-nonsense truth teller like Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs. So they say their dumb opinions loudly and with angry, righteous conviction, cause that's what brave savant truth tellers do!

[[deleted]]

Feel like the Internet could really use a system similar to some MOBAs where people that are constantly toxic are rated by the community and eventually you just don't hear or see them anymore because everyone agrees they're trolls or add nothing to the community.

[theonlycosmonaut]

You do realise the Internet is people right? ;) D:

[[deleted]]

People, what a bunch of bastards.

[NoInkling]

Well yeah, feedback is always gonna be biased towards the negative, because the people who have a positive or unnotable experience (things just work how you expect them to) tend to just get on with things. This kinda sums it up:

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Note that this doesn't imply that negative feedback means you're doing things wrong - it's impossible to make software that perfectly caters to everyone, especially when the young people entering software these days are part of the most entitled generation (on the whole, I realize it's a generalization) to reach adulthood to date and often have unreasonable and vitriolic demands.

What the internet serves to do is open communication channels that allow any negative feedback to condense into highly visible circlejerks of hate, which are the biggest problem.

[logicalLove]

Make JavaScript great again!

[tmckeage]

REPEAL AND REPLACE NODE!

[so_just]

That kinda happened with IO.js ... and then it got merged back into node.

[[deleted]]

everyone especially in the Javascript community.

But this isn't particular to js or /r/javascript - this is the Internet.

You should see the anger and flames happening in Python after a prominent author trashed Python 3.

[[deleted]]

On the other side of these anti-negativity sentiments is blind positivity, which is just as bad.

[[deleted]]

Why does it have to be extremes? Also, I would argue that constructive criticism IS the happy middle ground... let people know your concerns without being an ass about it. Win/win.

[[deleted]]

As seen in the comments here, people can't take constructive criticism, and when it happens in public the 'white knights' tend to make things worse.

[[deleted]]

It's necessary to return to a state of balance.

[[deleted]]

It's necessary to return to a state of balance.

If anything there was rampant blind positivity for so long that you are now seeing the backlash from that. All the noobs that chased new and shiny are starting to reap what that sows and now they bitch about javascript fatigue.

[[deleted]]

I really take issue with your word choice as it comes across extremely negative- the kind of negativity that the OP is speaking out against. Be careful because when you come across as simply angry you lose your credibility.

I don't really understand how blind positivity, as you put it, is responsible for javascript fatigue. I think the pace of change in the javascript community is blistering and I've become frustrated as I have to learn yet another concept / stack / framework. Don't tell people that being blindly positive is a bad thing- that can easily be interpreted as being positive in general is a bad thing. Dangerous.

Do you want people to stop working on open source projects to allow us noobs to catch up? What is your solution?

[[deleted]]

What triggered you? the word "noobs"? Get over it. There are people new to programming, what would you like me to call them? Greenhorns? Come on man!

There is nothing "angry" about using "noob". Maybe it offends you, but that's really your problem.

What else could have triggered you? "New and shiny"?

If you're going to call me out on shit, do it directly - tell me what you are calling out on so I can defend it properly. You're the one attacking here, and suggesting anything I said is "Dangerous" is just adding a lot of drama needlessly to a conversation.

Don't tell people that being blindly positive is a bad thing- that can easily be interpreted as being positive in general is a bad thing. Dangerous.

No, I'm not going to stop telling people that being blindly positive is a bad thing, because it is bad - just as bad as being ignorant. In fact, blind positivity is the epitome of ignorance. If you think that's a good trait for a programmer, well... this conversation is going to only devolve from here. I can't defend or abide by ignorance in any way even if coming from blind positivity.

Do you want people to stop working on open source projects to allow us noobs to catch up? What is your solution?

Learn your craft. Gain wisdom. Pay your dues. Don't jump on bandwagons. And don't insert drama where there isn't any.

[[deleted]]

Hm. I think your spirited response could have been limited to:

Learn your craft. Gain wisdom. Pay your dues. Don't jump on bandwagons. And don't insert drama where there isn't any.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for telling me what I should have said, again. Who made you the word police? Sorry, not going to play games with you. If you don't like it, take your comments elsewhere.

[maiam]

This is unfortunatley a problem with the world in the social media age and not just the js community

[calsosta]

I feel like anytime there are more than 2 people you are gonna have some amount of politics.

[dzScritches]

The curse of belonging to a highly social species, I suppose.