Too many people have peed in the pool - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephenfry.com/2016/02/15/peedinthepool/ <comment><USER2> There have been numerous studies showing that outrage is one of the most viral emotions. For whatever reason, seeing something that makes you upset has a very high correlation with people sharing/liking/retweeting. I think this unfortunate fact is what is being born out in social media.

Smithsonian had a good short article on it: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion- go...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-emotion-goes-viral- fastest-180950182/)

Research shows that amazing good news, like a huge leap forward in cancer research, is even more viral. But unfortunately those happen much more rarely up than someone saying something stupid and getting lambasted.

Ryan Holiday's book "Trust me I'm lying" also really opened my eyes to how a lot of this stuff works.

<comment><USER3> I've always wondered whether you could just have a community that banned outrage. Literally: express outrage, get banned. "Signal boost" someone else's outrage, get banned. It's not welcome within the community.

Would this even make sense? Or would this shove so hard against human nature that people would never be able to abide it?

(Of course, sometimes you'd be outraged _at_ the community—or its management—and that'd be sort of an insidious policy in that case. I think it could still work if there was a "side" area—like MetaFilter's MetaTalk—that allowed outrage, but with the strong rule of not linking to the side area _from_ the regular area, so people wouldn't just be having the same viral arguments by link-proxy.)

<comment><USER4> I've been playing Clash Royale on iPad (it's a multiplayer battle game set in the Clash of Clans universe that essentially drops the base building element and concentrates on the strategic combat).

Generally, competitive multiplayer games can be pretty harsh (devolving into toxic) communities. Clash Royale addresses this problem in an interesting way. You're allowed to communicate with your opponent, but only from a fixed vocabulary. There's just no way to be really hostile - the closest it gets is an angry face, which says more "I'm frustrated!" than anything else. There are a few faces and some simple speech -- "Good luck!", "Well played!", etc.

This has a really nice effect - it's actually a pleasant game to play and it's pretty common to get a 'Good game' or 'Well played' at the end, or even during the game when you make a good move. It works well in this situation because it's a 1-vs-1 game -- you aren't coordinating complex actions with teammates, which is where I think something like this would fall down.

Without hostility being in the vocabulary to begin with, you don't really feel like anything is missing and it gets around the whole hurt-feelings problem of 'banning' nicely in this case.

<comment><USER5> I like using the 'Well played!' when my opponent makes a horrendously bad move.

<comment><USER6> Blizzard gave us six inoffensive emotes, and we still find a way to engage in asshole behavior with them. It's kind of inspiring, actually.

<comment><USER7> With open chat in Hearthstone, wars would be fought, friendships would be hopelessly broken and feuds would run eternal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a theory about FB and Twitter -- or maybe more of an observation. Anyway, back in the stone age, people had bumper stickers with little slogans on them. And in the break rooms of various places of work, there was always a bulletin board an on a corner of it there was always some faded-from-to-many- xeroxes bit of humor/racism/sports fandom/sexism/dirty joke or other us- vs.-them thing on it that people would look at and amuse themselves with.

Now thanks to Twitter and FB, these little types of tribal territorial markings are just about all that's left of public discourse.

I see things get passed around and think, 20 years ago this would have been mimeographed and hung on a break room bulletin board, where it might have acted as a crude conversation starter about some aspect of "who are we?". But now people consider sharing and liking these things as their /contribution/ to a conversation.

It's like the way that millennials communicate with emoji, except it's image macros and memes and slogans and "gotchas" and hot takes that we consume, copy, and share. The copying and sharing of all that stuff is what passes for discourse now.

Me, I think that this development is double-plus bad.

<comment><USER9> There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons. It might be derogatory jokes, but this can also include things like spreading urban legends which were debunked four decades ago.

Just like Usenet and countless other online communities, what starts a a small group of fairly privileged and elite eventually degrades in to garbage as the reach increases. This is not so much an overall size issue but a relative one. I saw it happen to very small online communities in the 90s. In some respects, I watched it occur on a community I ran nearly 10 years ago.

Facebook's aggressive censorship along with non-public networks give each user a white washed micro-community. Public forums, such as Twitter and Instagram, do not.

<comment><USER10> > There is no friendly way to say it, the mass market are morons...

I hate this super-condescending attitude.

Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear (which, don't pat yourself on the back yet: there may be things these "morons" know way more about than you do), it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely dismissed...

<comment><USER11> > Even if you do happen to be smarter than the average bear

> it's still asshole-ish to assume that everyone else just be completely > dismissed...

Devil's advocate: If you're above average intelligence, you're smarter than a majority of the populace by definition. Why would you not then dismiss the thoughts and ideas of those less educated?

One person's condescension is another person's logic.

<comment><USER12> The obvious answer: because if you're wise, you realize that raw intelligence is a fairly small part of what makes someone worth listening to on a given question. On most questions of morals or politics, I'd rather listen to someone of average intelligence, but with a humble, good and patient character, than an MIT grad who's convinced they know everything.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. I'm not sure I can relate, though. I'd rather listen to Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins talk about evolution and atheism than someone of average intelligence.

<comment><USER14> Because you really just want reinforcement for ideas you already believe?

<comment><USER13> I didn't say anything about whether I agree with those ideas or not. Stated simply, I'd rather hear any given argument from someone who is intelligent than someone who isn't. Extraneous factors, such as the arguer's humility or tone of delivery, don't enter the picture for me when evaluating the merit of the idea being argued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I left Twitter last year when it looked like the 'professionally offended' were becoming too influential. They didn't affect me as I keep a low profile, but it was like seeing an omen and noticing friends were buying into their hype.

The way Twitter is now pandering to this lot with the recently announced Orwellian-style group, and other odd behaviour suggests that they approve of the current momentum.

I'm just glad to no longer have its weight on my shoulders. Life is great without social media, but it must be difficult for public figures who stick with it for the free promotion.

<comment><USER16> By "professionally offended", I assume you mean mostly marginalized people who are the recipients of torrents of abuse/death threats/rape threats/sexual harrassment/etc nearly every day they are active on twitter.

<comment><USER17> There's a plenty of people turning being offended into a business, see:

[https://www.patreon.com/zoe](https://www.patreon.com/zoe)

[https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl](https://www.patreon.com/freebsdgirl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a bit monomaniacal about this, but the current online culture wars (and the previous offline culture wars) make me wish that secession didn't have such a bad name. It is obvious that large groups of people have irreconcilable differences of opinion on matters of free speech, sexuality, gun ownership and so on.

It is a shame that rather than a firm handshake and friendly wave goodbye, we will end up with a totalitarianism of one ideology or another, violence, or both.

<comment><USER19> I don't know if it will prevail in the end, but I think that Reddit approach by splitting the community in small subgroups/communities has a better chance to last in the long run.

Of course, you'll create feuds between communities but at least it is somewhat confined and not always spilling in the common public space.

Unfortunately it also greatly increases the echo chamber / filter bubble but it seems you can not have a peaceful community without an heavy dose of groupthink.

A long time ago, at the dusk of the XXth century, I used to believe that Internet would usher a new age of Enlightenment since every one would have access to many different opinions and unbiased sources. Arguably that was a pretty naive view, and instead we got new tribes disagreeing on almost everything conceivable.

<comment> Paul-ish I have been waiting a long time for someone to use lessons learned from recommender systems to build a social media site like reddit, but rather than having users group themselves up, they would be shown posts algorithmically, based on how they have voted in the past. For example, if I vote for a lot of pro EFF posts, maybe I will see more posts about free software or something like that.

This also allows the site to treat votes as merely an expression of preference, not a judgment of quality (which is hard to define). Many sites try to enforce a rule that says "Don't downvote things disagree with." This is an impossible battle to win, there will always be people who downvote things they don't agree with. This behavior needs to be accounted for in the platform.

This is more "socially scalable" to me.

<comment><USER20> That sounds horrible. I don't want the internet to become a giant echo chamber. I want to hear differing views from time to time, because I might be wrong.

<comment><USER21> I would imagine you could also similarly find the things you either stay away from or actively dislike. Sort of a topical noise cancellation. Train it to know your preferences, but to occasionally give material outside the comfort zone. I think you'd really need a substantial map of topics to have a good understanding of where contrasts lie, but we're likely on track with the datasets currently being built in public sites like Reddit.

Really, I'm surprised this feature isn't implemented anywhere, since one of the joys of the Internet is being delighted by a new idea you haven't seen before. I certainly would appreciate filtering of the obvious rubbish like Fry is exasperated with, but having quality dissenting opinions available is precious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been accused of being sexist exactly once in my life, by an anonymous male friend of a woman on Twitter because I dared to answer a question she asked. I didn't realize she was asking in jest. Her friend said I should have known that she was a very knowledgeable person (I didn't) and her question was a joke, and because I answered it I was implying that she didn't know the answer and therefore was manspainling and generally being a sexist dick. This person wasn't satisfied and pursued me for several tweets until I apologized. I did apologize, but I've noticed that it kind of soured me on Twitter. I'm proud of my record of working women in tech and raising an independent daughter. I use my real name on Twitter and I don't need some anonymous busybody attacking me in public for dubious reasons. Perhaps if Twitter had a real name policy it would level the playing field. I'm sure a famous person like Stephen Fry is under constant attack from anonymous trolls.

<comment><USER23> >Perhaps if Twitter had a real name policy it would level the playing field

Didn't work at all with youtube comments.

<comment><USER24> We need the _opposite_. The collision of economic incentives to self-promote online under one's real name with _the way the Web works_ has been a disaster, in _many_ ways. We need a _no real names_ policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > 'to turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping.'

I had to look that one up:

Peace, by Rupert Brooke, 1914:

"A paradoxical image, comparing going to war as an act that cleanses the participants, like a dip in a pool or river."

[https://movehimintothesun.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/rupert- br...](https://movehimintothesun.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/rupert-brooke- peace/)

I'm assuming that connection was intentional, because Stephen Fry is smarter than me.

<comment><USER26> Just remember that this vision of war was the prevailing attitude in pre-WW1 Europe (maybe also in America, but what do I know?).

It helped that the (thought) leaders espousing such nonsense rarely fought at the front lines. For them the only things that could be bruised by war were their ego and their wallet.

WW1's reach changed that (and WW2 shook it up some more)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My Facebook newsfeed feels like a cocktail party where the host has surreptitiously arranged for the silent majority to observe a performance wherein the most "unsophisticated" guests squabble with each other over politics. The opinions on the feed, regularly produced by the same small group of people, are rife with dramatization and lacking any substantive argument. Yet hardly any of them come from friends who I know closely on an individual basis.

Facebook seems like a platform that amplifies the voice of a minority on the outskirts of the social graph, distributing its opinions to the silent majority. This seems good in theory, and would hopefully result in some meaningful improvements to civil discourse. However, it remains unclear whether expectation meets reality in that regard.

<comment><USER28> I have found that unfriending/muting people whose contributions to my feed I don't value makes all the difference. Facebook is what you make of it.

<comment><USER29> I totally agree. I have un-followed a few people and now I only friend people that actually want to be friends with. I try to avoid posting political or technical things (mostly). So now, my FB is mostly just sharing pics and events with friends. (Actual friends, that I see IRL.)

(... now if only I could get rid of the ads...)

<comment><USER28> > (... now if only I could get rid of the ads...)

uBlock Origin

<comment><USER29> Oh, hey! That worked like a charm. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sanctimonious indignation is toxic. But to be fair, people post really offensive stuff too, and often it's well-meaning people who don't even seem to realize what they are doing.

The best example I've seen lately is Richard Dawkins, who posted a video I won't link to where an Islamist and a Feminist are singing a song together. The video makes a real point that isn't intrinsically offensive. But the highly caricatured portrayal of these two people is, to me at least, a pretty inflammatory gesture. Also it came out that the feminist caricature is based on a real person who has received death threats for her work.

Humans aren't programmed to live together with people who are really different from them. We evolved to preserve our in groups and unify against out groups. We have huge blind spots about how other people will perceive things. We can absolutely learn, but it takes effort and we'll make mistakes as we go. Twitter is all of this happening in real time.

<comment><USER31> I think you've recognized something important here, which is that offense is generally a subjective matter. In such cases an clear-headed statement of objection may be warranted, but dogpiling and outright bullying is never excusable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's a wonder he lasted as long as he did.

I've joined a number of online forums through the years, and I've always ended up leaving them due to a spiral of "tone gets rough / the good people leave".

I'm still in this one, but I guess we'll see how long it lasts here. Seems different somehow, but they all do in the beginning.

What are some innovations in solving the asshole/quality spiral? There's lots of takes on moderation, but what are some interesting ones?

<comment><USER33> I've been on this one for a pretty long time. A little over 7 years according to my user page.

The quality has not noticeably gone down. There are a lot less technical articles now than I feel like there used to be, but that might very well just be because I've gotten more technical, and now everything seems like an opinion.

I think it's because HN is actually willing to defend itself. We used to have days where everybody would ONLY submit articles about some obscure programming language (although I have forgotten which one it was...not arc, I don't think...scala maybe? I think it started with an S).

We don't seem to do that anymore, but I think the culture is still there. People are willing to tell you to leave if you're not a good member. That's really important.

<comment><USER34> Indeed, I joined 9 days after you (and have within 1% of your karma (!)), and my experience is the same. HN was founded with a keen awareness of how online forums tend to go downhill over time, and there are specific rules to avoid it.

But IMHO, the saving grace is the fact that HN is not built to _grow_. Growth is what ruins every online community. There are still plenty of small communities have have been going fine for years or even decades because they didn't experience explosive growth. As soon as you have something like Twitter with massive investment and market expectations, you know the community is done for. To Twitter's credit though, the mechanic of following individuals does scale much better than a forum though. Subreddits were also a good idea that allows some community while scaling. But in both those cases it works because they create sub-divided communities rather than one massive one which inevitably breaks down.

<comment><USER35> It also doesn't have to live on life support from the advertising industry. That's quite important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm not surprised - I wouldn't be famous for all the money available (not an option anyway, particularly given my lack of talent!) - so many people now think they have a right to you, if they're a fan, or they've bought your work, or they don't like your work, or whatever. Twitter seems to bring those sorts of things much closer (as, of course, does much social media), and I'd think anyone with any opinions on just about anything will end up getting drawn into arguments over just about everything with people they've never met, whose opinions they probably wouldn't care about in any other sphere.

I seriously think there will be a huge backlash against all of this sort of thing in the next few years - people have binged on it ad nauseam, and given the way my two teenage step-kids have reacted (removing themselves almost entirely from most social media, and only using it to talk to people they actually know and like IRL), I'd think there's more to come, in terms of people just leaving such an arena behind.

<comment><USER37> > I'm not surprised - I wouldn't be famous for all the money available (not an > option anyway, particularly given my lack of talent!)

Not sure that's a prerequisite anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been thinking a lot about online communities since I listened to "So you've been publicly shamed" by Jon Ronson [0].

I quite like twitter just now but I don't follow many people and nobody follows me. I often see tweets from indie game devs discussing yet another Twitter storm in a teacup and I'm frustrated by how much stupid stuff escalates.

[0] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly- Shamed/dp/033...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Youve-Been-Publicly- Shamed/dp/0330492292/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1455554372&sr=1-1&keywords=so+you%27ve+been+publicly+shamed)

</comment><comment><USER39> Twitter is powered by an evil feedback loop where making people upset makes twitter more money. Their UX is designed to generate easily-amplified content, and amplify it, and this is the unanticipated consequence. I doubt they can fix the feedback loop without torpedoing engagement.

<comment><USER40> Isn't that like any news site ever? There's a reason why articles in tabloids and on clickbait websites tend to be as inflammatory as possible, because the inevitable flame war in the comments will likely bring the page views (and the links from people attacking it elsewhere will bring the backlinks for SEO purposes).

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Twitter needs to be very careful. I use Facebook to follow my friends. I use Twitter to follow influencers/celebrities. If they start leaving and Twitter is just left with the musings of the average joe they're going to lose and lot of users.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this is a natural consequence of the twitter format. The short message motivates (some) users to win cheap points, offend or simply scream loudly in order to get attention. In my Luddite mind the political conversation is becoming Twitter-fied and now focuses more on short sound bites rather than a sound discourse.

<comment><USER42> _Now?_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)

      [Neil Postman] also repeatedly states that the eighteenth
      century, being the Age of Reason, was the pinnacle for rational
      argument. Only in the printed word, he states, could complicated
      truths be rationally conveyed. Postman gives a striking example:
      Many of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have
      walked down the street without being recognized by the average
      citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their
      written words. However, the reverse is true today. The names of
      presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call
      up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any,
      of their words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively
      consist of carefully chosen soundbites.

<comment><USER43> Soundbites created by speech writers other than themselves, for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Probably worth noting as a bit of context to this that Fry was presenting the BAFTA awards last night, said something offensive about someone who was a friend of his (but the public wouldn't necessarily have known that), and people on social media reacted badly.

<comment><USER45> People on social media reacted stupidly, but then he tried to engage the horde and prove that they were wrong to be offended by retweeting dozens (hundreds?) of people who backed him up. That was a strategy that could not result in anything but defeat and misery. He worked himself up into a rage trying to change the internet's mind, and when he failed, he took his ball and went home. I was and still am a fan of his, but for his own mental health, I'm glad he's not on Twitter any more.

<comment><USER44> I agree with this. I like Stephen Fry too, but I think his public persona of being this loveable gentleman of the people - entertaining, eccentric, erudite - quite often clashes with his tendency to make either silly or spiteful remarks in public; and the difference between Fry and the people who make their living from saying horrible things (eg. comedians in Britain like Jimmy Carr or Frankie Boyle) is that 1) there's an expectation that these people will say horrible things periodically; and 2) they can take the abuse when it's dished back to them.

(I personally very much enjoy James Blunt's approach to Twitter.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My new years resolution was to stop using Twitter actively, and I've basically done that (spare a few offenses). I was intending to pin up a link to a page explaining my reasons, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Public venues like Twitter have devolved into pitchfork-wielding mob battles over extremely stupid, petty nonsense (on _all_ sides of the political spectrum), and I expect this to just continue to happen over and over again as the influentials of the "Twitterati" get better at pushing manipulable people into whatever half-baked agenda they want to use them for.

The "influentials" are the people most rewarded by this system of relentless psuedo-controversy: petty, shrill narcissists that contribute little (or negatively) to anything of genuine value, merit or productivity.

Through a few personal experiences, I've been made a lot more cognizant of the fact that I won't be able to avoid the mobs by staying out of them. I've decided it's best to just not participate at all, and to work to break the systems that enable the mobs in the first place by coming up with better systems.

We need to go back to having sane, civil, intelligent discourses about real issues online, and figuring out the best way to facilitate them. Twitter is never going to work for that, no matter how many lunatics-running-the-asylum tribunals they come up with.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think this is a tricky problem to properly solve. Or rather: An opportunity for Twitter to really mess up attempting to fix this.

A big part of what makes Twitter interesting/worthwhile is the ability to interact with lots of different people you wouldn't have stumbled upon.

But also, especially when you're just starting out on Twitter, people you otherwise wouldn't have been able to get through to.

On Twitter I get to have a conversation with someone famous (in the industry but even bona fide celebrities like the author). People who I could never send an email, letter, call and actually get a response. On Twitter, I have a really good chance someone like Stephen Fry will actually read my tweet and even responding. I'm guessing the odds I'd be able to get him on the phone or have him accept my Facebook friend request are rather low.

If Twitter builds a filter bubble around all famous/verified users, it loses a big chunk of it's a appeal to the nobodies. Which includes both trolls and decent people. And I think Twitter can't do without the civilized nobodies.

<comment><USER48> > I think this is a tricky problem to properly solve

I don't think it is. I think a few simple settings could easily fix this problem; like (enabling/disabling) direct messages from people you don't follow, and customizable opt-in-able blacklists (of either users or words/phrases) that could be shared throughout the community. That way, some would be able to keep saying whatever they want, while others would be able to not feel offended by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Sad to say, but humans have been bred over millennia to be clannish, violent, and prone to witch hunts. Quite literally, all of European history is about taking the peasants off to murder other people, and bringing back only the strongest ones who survived the battle to spread their seed to the next generation. The ones in the aristocracy interbred to the point of serious genetic flaws p [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_intermarriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_intermarriage) ]. So, choose your side: the ones born from the strongest, heartiest fighters, or the ones produced by many generations of selective in-breeding... At least, this is the story for us white folks....

Humans are just irrational, flawed, and prone to freak out. And I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords...

</comment><comment><USER50> I watched the BAFTAs with my girlfriend last night and I have to say, when Stephen made that comment we both said 'woah that's a bit mean' out loud. Of course, being the general public we're not aware of Mr Fry's relationship with the lady who won the award but from an outside perspective it came across as a bit bullying.

I only found out today about the twitter backlash and I don't think it should be lumped in with so called SJW movements, or the anti-anti-offensive movement, it really sounded like a hurtful unnecessary comment that he shouldn't have made without context or clarifying their relationship. It really seemed un-characteristically mean for Mr Fry.

<comment><USER51> This is the problem. He shouldn't have to clarify his relationship, he shouldn't have to explain everything. In essence, that _destroys_ jokes.

It's not our job to know, but as we should assume innocence until proven guilty we should assume friendliness before assuming ridicule.

If Beaven had a problem -- let her handle it. She's a big girl, we're not her collective parents.

<comment><USER50> Without clarifying it it looks like he stood on stage in front of a bunch of rich celebrities and slagged off the winner of an award for not wearing conventional dress to an award show.

I'm all for offensive comedy, but this wasn't a joke, he was basically slagging her off in public, live on television to a room full of people. Without context of their relationship it really looks like bullying. That's completely different to an offensive stand up comedy joke, especially when its so personally targeted. Some context to clarify that it wasn't mean and they're friends would have taken the edge off the 'joke' and nobody would have cared, but it was so off the cuff and mean it just looks like he is bullying her, which is probably what touched a chord with so many people. I'm sure Mr Fry is the last person who would want to be seen as bullying anyone.

<comment><USER52> Take a look at what was actually said:

"Only one of the great cinematic costume designers would come to the awards dressed like a bag lady."

If people weren't so quick to jump on the "blame the white guy" wagon... you'd see that it was actually a pretty clever statement.

<comment><USER50> I mean, I watched the show, I heard what he said, it's whole tone was off compared to the rest of the night. It really stood out and sounded awfully harsh.

Now I'm not going to go to twitter about it, it didn't offend me but it did come across rather mean and crass.

<comment><USER53> >it didn't offend me

Fry's post says that one of the problems is due to people being offended on behalf of other people they have never met.

So they are not offended personally (e.g like most people), but they imagine that it would be offensive to someone else (e.g. a minority) and decide to co- opt this imagined offence.

It's a curious difference in being offended personally, and defending others via imagining the offence of that other. One can see another point of view, but its harder to imagine another changing their point of view.

<comment><USER50> Well I'm actually curious now what the twitter response was, because as I've expressed here, I think his 'joke' missed the mark and came off harsh, which I found hurtful by proxy I suppose. I wouldn't like to be called that live on television. So I'm assuming most of the response was 'that wasn't very nice I think you should apologise for that remark' and Mr Fry's response is to get annoyed that anyone would get offended by his comment and eventually close his twitter account. I'm sure there were much more extreme remarks but this is twitter, you're going to get chaff with the wheat.

I personally think he was out of line and even with the context of they were friends I think it was a mis-judged joke. I'm not going to go on social media to tell him about it but my opinion of him has certainly changed based on this behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wonder is it so hard to build an automatic "insult" detector with all recent progress with deep learning. Quick googling gave quite a couple of older papers:

"Offensive Language Detection Using Multi-level Classification"

[http://www.eiti.uottawa.ca/~diana/publications/Flame_Final.p...](http://www.eiti.uottawa.ca/~diana/publications/Flame_Final.pdf)

"Automatic identification of personal insults on social news sites"

[http://labfs.eecs.northwestern.edu/~sara/Site/Publications_f...](http://labfs.eecs.northwestern.edu/~sara/Site/Publications_files/JASIST_r1.pdf)

<comment><USER55> When this was a topic in University a few years ago, it was still very hard to properly detect humor, especially sarcasm. If I understood this correctly, this whole episode was kicked of by Stephen making a joke about some lady's attire. I don't know what would be worse; the sanctimonious fallout or his tweet being censored by an automatic insult detector in the first place. (actually I do: the second).

<comment><USER54> I was thinking about a tool, not a universal censor :) Something like a special place for notifications: "Hate mail" \- some people with loads of noise replies would definitely appreciate that. Also offensive replies could be shown last when displaying tweet with replies, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> > to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know

Never thought about it like this before. Sounds really strange when you put it this way.

</comment><comment><USER57> And so, the Eternal September strikes again [1].

There's a ton of gold in figuring out how some communities succumb to it, and others don't.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

<comment><USER40> I suspect it's at least partly to do with the subject matter. If the community is united around a common interest, they can (sometimes) put aside their differences elsewhere to talk about that one thing in a moderately civil way.

If it's a free for all about anything and everything, then well, it's like herding cats and a vicious flame war is likely to ensue at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> What's the big deal? If you don't like how a platform works just leave it, I haven't used either Facebook or Twitter ever (I do have accounts, but I think you can count my posts and tweets combined with fingers of one hand) and it hasn't affected my life at all

<comment><USER59> Thats exactly what Stephen is doing. He doesn't like it anymore so he's leaving. What makes it it a big deal is that twitters success is based on prolific twitterers like Stephen Fry using the service and using it well. At the moment people are discussing how twitter is "doomed" for many different reasons this new piece of information just seems to add to the pile of evidence that twitter isn't providing value to the right people and this threatens its future.

<comment><USER58> So then twitter dies and something better takes it's place. I really don't see a way out of this. I mean if random people being mean is the issue what can they do? Other than start monitoring and censoring everything tweeted

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's ironic that social justice warriors have driven one of the most progressive celebrities off Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER61> He should have read: [http://web.mit.edu/marshall/www/papers/CyberBalkans.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/marshall/www/papers/CyberBalkans.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER62> Prediction: A neo-luddite renaissance is on the horizon. The anti-social media sentiment that has only been seen among techhies is going to spread into otherwise-mainstream youth conservatives.

The only thing in the way is that current services have not censored, but they're beginning to, and decentralized alternatives haven't existed.

A maturation of bitcoin over the next year, especially with the fork, will result in bringing novel usages of the blockchain to the average consumer.

</comment><comment><USER63> Up you go!

Best part of not having Twitter and the book of faces is the mysteriousness that you project when attempting to court the opposite sex, either that or just a doushy superiority complex. Either way I want nothing to do with Facebook (twitter is useful for finding out the status of services like Firebase etc). As far as I am concerned in life, distraction is the enemy, and if distraction is the enemy well then that makes Facebook a windmill to my Don Quixote.

</comment><comment><USER64> It was through the angry backlash to a tweet that I discovered Stephen Fry. About eight years ago, Stephen couldn't get a Windows laptop to connect to wifi. His Twitter outburst and the reaction of Windows fans became grist for the tech blogs, which is how I noticed it. I wonder if Stephen is romanticising the early years of Twitter or if those angry reactions have just become more common. (Either way, I don't blame him for leaving.)

</comment><comment><USER65> This is true of almost any internet forum today. Every comment you make is meticulously deconstructed in an effort to find some kind of "gotcha". Well, either that or it's completely ignored.

And god forbid you have an opinion on any subject in which you don't hold a doctorate degree. You can't even tell people "it's alright to eat eggs" without the conversation devolving into a back-and-forth war of citations.

<comment><USER66> My wife does have a doctorate degree and you still get the back-and-forth of citations.

Because she has a PhD in nutrition (really!) I can confirm that, yes, it is okay to eat eggs. (Though I'd shoot for organic and cage-free, personally.)

But I still get arguments/pushback. Guh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Or maybe you just have to go to a pool in a better neighborhood? After all on Twitter you can choose from whom you're getting status updates, can't you?

<comment><USER68> A post the author of ggautoblocker on what is missing from twitter when it comes to dealing with trolls etc: [https://medium.com/@randileeharper/putting- out-the-twitter-t...](https://medium.com/@randileeharper/putting-out-the- twitter-trashfire-3ac6cb1af3e#.gzqv4iktz)

<comment><USER69> This was actually a useful post, moreso than I expected. But in it, you can see shades of Randi's personality:

"That is dumb and you are dumb for suggesting it"

gives me memories of her latest encounter with FreeBSD, in which she tells people they "fucking suck" (this is someone who claims to run an online harassment organization), changed her Twitter name to "Kill All Men", posted pictures of her drinking from a mug with the words "Male Tears" on it, etc.

But yes, many of these suggestions would go a long way to helping people manage their Twitter experience the way they want, which is a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> it says right here in the HN approach to comments that "HN is an experiment. As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening." the question therein is where do we go now, and to which degree can we avoid twitter and other sites beyond their ostensible utility

</comment><comment><USER71> While I agree that much of social media is as he describes, I don't have this problem on Twitter. I follow just over 100 people whose thoughts interest or entertain me. I shut off the screamers, the haters, the high-emotion types. With the result that my experience of Twitter is pleasant. Is there some reason OP couldn't do the same?

</comment><comment><USER72> The way I see it: 1: Really low barriers to entry for each snowflake to express their views.

2: Social networks work as echo chambers, which allow anyone to find dozens that share their views ("If they think like me, it must mean that I am right!!").

3: Misunderstanding of the way the cyberspace works, with people not understanding really that it is encroaching on the "physical" world, and professing extreme opinions they would never have dreamed of voicing if not in front of a screen in the safety and "privacy"(hum) of their home.

4: The powers that be, that is to say the social networks operators have so much at stake that they are walking on eggs, wary of taking any action that could jeopardise their cash cow(actual or potential).

The situation is a mix of all those factors, and the result is I think a bit depressing.

Can you imagine our societies without a police force? Today's social networks are not far from that imho.

</comment><comment><USER73> I bounced back and forth on and off FB until, I bit the bullet and deleted each one of my "friends" one by one. If I didn't do that, then I would be plunged in an infinite loop of deactivation/reactivation hell.

It was interesting to see the reaction of people when I said I had deleted them in order to make it less enticing for me to use my account. They were actually offended for being deleted.

Could it be that the mere perpetual overuse (and/or misuse) of social media breeds hypersensitivity? Hmm...I say yes. Nothing wrong with the occassional indulgence, but there's just more to life. But that's just my worthless 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER74> I think one of the problems about social media is that the experience for the common person is often very different than that of (even moderately) famous people. I hear tech journalists talking about their experiences on twitter and they are so different than mine and I have to think it is because they have thousands of followers and I have around 100. If they do something they get tons of feedback but if I tweet the same thing I would hardly get any. Certainly there are times when things erupt and someone becomes "famous" and is bombarded but for most of us that doesn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm not active on twitter, but from what I've seen, particularly in the aftermath of GamerGate, is that it's a putrid mess of hatred, threats, and bigotry. The problem doesn't so much seem to be that people are _defending_ others, but that they are _attacking_ them.

I never really saw the point, but it in the past few years it has seemed even more pointless. You just can't have a good, nuanced conversation in 140 characters. You can only shout one-liners and threats. It's what the medium seems designed for.

</comment><comment><USER76> In a medium such as Twitter, there is not enough incentive to make users post quality. Morons can post about whatever irrelevant nonsense they want and gain approval from other morons. From inside a filter bubble, PC policing a celebrity can seem incredibly courageous and clever, when in fact it is the opposite. The potential harms of this are real. Richard Dawkins suffered a stroke last week following such an incident, where a random interloper peppered him with a barrage of criticism, taking her gang of followers with her.

</comment><comment><USER77> Everything is evolving all the time, and future iterations are based on, a reaction to, or rejection of what came before.

There are going to be cycles of products, some you love, some you hate, but what won't change is that there are still like-minded people out there, no matter what your tastes or opinions. We will learn from this generation of social media , and future products will solve some of these problems to a large degree, only to evolve into something we detest again - but each time it should get a little better.

</comment><comment><USER78> How about an "untweet". Basically a thumbs down for tweets that smell. Then use collaborative UN-filtering.

Or how about using Word2Vec to usher turds to a remote part of the tweet space. Use sliders to adjust your results. For example "I need a twitter hug. What would happen if I turn down the 'Outrage' and turn up the 'Kittens' \-- awwww, how cute! Ok, now what would happen if I turn up the 'Death Metal' \-- kittens and death metal -- whoooah!

</comment><comment><USER79> The irony here is that the person acting most offended is Stephen Fry himself, who decides to quit in high fashion because, alleges he, some people pissed in the pool.

Twitter is not his pool; it's not even _a_ pool: more like the sea.

Many people -- and all kinds of living things -- piss in the sea and do many other things in it; if you're unhappy with that, well yes it's better if you stay on the shore, but don't go around pretending you're so pure.

You're just afraid of the sea.

</comment><comment><USER80> Assholes, the self righteous,plain evil, or simply stupid kind, are a minority but they have a tremendous impact in any community which does punish or prevent bad behavior. This is why we have to have door locks, police, jails, passwords, etc. Any sufficiently large online community will end up including a bunch of douche bags which, unconstrained by the these old school deterrents, will eventually destroy it.

</comment><comment><USER81> The presence of justice and the absence of tension are not the same thing. I think a lot of people have lived a large part of their lives completely insulated from the tension that has existed in society over social justice issues for centuries. Now that you can go on Twitter and find out exactly how and why everyone is mad, it looks like comity and mutual respect has evaporated. But really what has happened is that the absence of tension engendered by the undemocratic dissemination of information in the pre- Internet age has been revealed to be a lie: people have been angry for a while _and they 're angry for reasons_. Shocking.

Asking someone to shut up is much easier than assuming they're acting in good faith and have reasonable motivations that you can't perceive, because, you know, _it 's the Internet_ and nothing is more ridiculous than a person looking at the Internet and nodding condescendingly while explaining the exact nature of all these human beings they disagree with.

If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them as equals.

<comment><USER82> > _people have been angry for a while and they 're angry for reasons_

The reason they're mad here, evidently, is that Stephen made a joke to his friend. It doesn't seem like it's Stephen who failed to assume good faith.

<comment><USER81> he made a joke to his friend in public. i have friends to whom i could shout "i hope you fucking die, you bloated moist abscess" at, but if i did that on twitter as a famous person without the context of our friendship readily visible, what people ought to think?

once it came to light that he was ribbing his good friend, then people ought to have apologized and moved on. it doesn't make them terrible people for being a little on edge about powerful famous men ribbing less powerful, less famous women. the world isn't in the shitter just because he was misunderstood on twitter.

<comment><USER82> But didn't you just say, "If from the get-go you assume people are acting in bad faith and you demand that they admit that this is the case before you even consider them as reasonable people, you are asking for full surrender instead of treating them as equals"? Isn't failing to do this precisely the source of the outrage? And yet now you seem to be suggesting it was perfectly reasonable for people to assume bad faith and try to tear him down, up until good faith was proven.

<comment><USER81> I think we're using different notions of good and bad faith. My notion of good faith is sincerity and reasonableness in intention, likewise bad faith is insincerity and unreasonableness in intention. All these people got outraged by interpreting Fry's tweet offensively. Are they doing it for kicks? (insincerity) or are they just stupid? (unreasonableness)

I don't think good and bad faith is a quality of their behavior, but of their intent and mental competence as human beings. Someone can get incredibly outraged but be sincere and capable of explaining their feelings reasonably. It doesn't mean that one assumes the best in others, because that is just as spurious as assuming the worst in others. One should just call it like they see it and think it, nothing more, nothing less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I love Stephen Fry, but I'm conflicted. On one hand, he's upset that people are offended and without a hint of irony is obviously very offended by their sensibilities. That said, celebrities (intentional or otherwise) have a very different experience on social media than the lay person.

<comment><USER84> You've never had anyone dig into a comment you've made looking for you to have been the most cynical version of yourself? It's awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> This is not a twitter problem. If you're a famous celebrity with a gigantic megaphone you have to accept the fact that the masses are going to react to what you put out there. I think it's funny when celebrities get all wrinkled over internet outrage but take for granted the fact that they are leveraging the masses (via twitter and other platforms) to boost their own careers. Woops, you said something that some people on the internet disagree with, suddenly you have a deluge of hate mail instead of doting adoration. Well, what did you expect? The masses are not autonomous eye-balls, they are people with disparate ideas and opinions and if you say things that piss some people off, this is the reaction you get.

So, in the face of internet controversy, what does a celebrity do? Retreat to a convenient forum where they explicitly control the discourse so they can publicly broadcast their disdain for the fickle judgment of masses without having to actually listen to them. I suppose the so-called SJWs aren't the only ones that need a "safe space" to speak their minds without fear of criticism.

</comment><comment><USER86> Wonder if Stephen Fry will blog more often now - I noticed ths is his first blog post since May 2015.

</comment><comment><USER87> For me, what's important is not avoiding disagreement, conflict, or rage -- what I want to somehow exclude from my social media existence is just good old craziness. The Internet has been enormously empowering to the stark barking mad.

</comment><comment><USER88> I agree with Stephen. A while ago I came to the conclusion that widespread use of social media such as FB, tumblr and Twitter (especially twitter), has caused a severe degradation in public discourse and conversation.

</comment><comment><USER89> There's tons of crap in real reservoirs. But we filter and chlorinate.

</comment><comment><USER90> In certain forums these types of posts are called Goodbye, Cruel World posts and they are summarily ridiculed. HN takes itself too seriously to give this post the proper treatment.

</comment><comment><USER91> People are blowing this way out of proportion. Stephen Fry made a shitty joke about his friend, people objected, and he got angry at them for not finding it as funny as he did.

He has the right to his opinion as do others. This outrage culture is only slightly more annoying than the people who constantly bemoan it.

</comment><comment><USER92> I always thought it was called _twit_ter for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER93> Now that Twitter has created a committee by which those people are given actual power on the platform, I'd say the pool is now mostly urine with just a bit of chlorine.

</comment><comment><USER94> Should have gone full @Nero, and started tearing them new ones. They can't win against a well spoken gay person who chooses to not give a damn.

</comment><comment><USER95> Might have been spending too much time on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER96> I miss Pownce.

</comment><comment><USER97> Get the ____out and take a piss outside of the pool, assholes.

</comment><comment><USER98> The problem isn't that this is a Twitter problem. It's that this is a cultural problem. People kinda suck. People kinda suck a lot.

I was having a conversation with a friend at lunch, when I started putting ketchup on my hotdog. He looked at me and incredulously questioned, "really? What are you, like, 8 years old?" I had never even heard of the idea that "only children put ketchup on a hotdog." Yet here was someone I had originally thought of as a rational human being elevating it to a serious issue.

A lot of this stuff gets defended as "just a joke", but I don't see anyone laughing. If you're so bad at making jokes, maybe you should just give up the practice and stick to being generally pleasant to be around.

I guess I'm lucky that I'm not famous enough to get any randos following me on Twitter. The people who follow me are interested in my work, they aren't hero- worshipping me. I get to have excellent conversations with people on Twitter. But that is only because--even though it's not 100% in my control--my lack of celebrity allows me to guide and design my Twitter sphere. For a celebrity, they just get inundated with folks they don't want to hear from.

Just read the replies to Notch's tweets sometime. I'm surprised he hasn't become a complete recluse. Almost every single one has some 13 year old complaining about "Minecraft sucks now that you're gone", even though he's been gone longer than they've been playing it.

<comment><USER99> Where are you from? I'm very surprised anyone would even consider eating hotdog without ketchup so it must be a cultural thing.

<comment><USER100> It's a capital crime in Chicago, if you do it in public.

That's where the joking about it comes from; ketchup on hot dogs is one of those things that people take jestingly serious with tongue firmly planted in cheek at all times. Nobody _actually_ cares, nobody's _actually_ going to kill you in Chicago despite my joke, but people interpret the joshing as caring and demeaning because nobody can actually _take_ a joke any more, as evidenced by GP (and which is far more often the problem). And yet here we are, lamenting the downfall of society.

I can't even fathom a world where someone giving a friend crap over lunch for their choice of condiment is enough to start a Serious Conversation about Culture. That's funny in itself, honestly, but I don't want to live in that world. _That 's_ why _I_ eschew social media altogether.

I remember when I was a boy, laughing was something to be celebrated, because sharing something funny with your friends was one of the high points of life. Actually cutting loose and laughing with your friends about the stupidest things is easily one of the best feelings you can experience, but now every time I genuinely laugh at something that I find funny, I often have to look around and be worried about who saw me do it. It's genuinely depressing, the older I get. I don't even have humor any more. Now I just have liquor.

<comment><USER98> See, you're part of the problem. You think you understand my friend's tone better now that I'm relating it to you better than I did at the time that I experienced it. You don't believe my version of the story, even though the only evidence you have is my telling of it. You've treated me as if I'm lying to you, yet you don't just come out and say it. This is the very definition of passive aggressive behavior.

Just because something is post hoc declared as a joke doesn't mean it was a joke. And just because something is styled as a joke, doesn't mean it is funny. I don't have a problem with taking jokes. Most people just suck at humor. It's not an easy thing to tell a joke. And besides, most people are just using "it was a joke" as an excuse to cover up for some serious comment they made that went over like a lead balloon.

<comment><USER100> Actually, I believe your version completely and don't think you're lying at all from your perspective. What makes you think I feel otherwise?

This is an odd, and overly defensive, reaction to something that you've clearly misinterpreted. (That sounds familiar.)

<comment><USER98> How could I have so clearly misinterpreted "GP can't take a joke" to be a refutation of my assertion the guy wasn't joking?

Must be you were also telling a joke and I just don't get jokes.

<comment><USER100> See, you think it's personal and that I've made some kind of determination on your character based on my conclusion. You've totally come off the rails and started attacking me personally at the mere suspicion (not even to you!) that you might have misinterpreted things. I've merely read and worked with the information that was made available; you call this person a friend, for example. You were having lunch with this person. This person felt comfortable enough with you to remark upon your condiment choice. I've observed many, many people remark upon the same choice in a jesting fashion.

Now, which is more likely from my perspective: that a misinterpretation by you is at work (and which is spilling over here, since you clearly don't have closure on this egregious scenario), or that your friend is the one person out of millions who _actually_ cares about ketchup on a hot dog and was ready to fight with you about it? Someone you identify as a friend chose ketchup on a hot dog as his Maginot Line in your relationship and demeaned you over it. Okay, maybe that _did_ happen (in which case you should think long and hard about who you identify as friends), but my point was it's extraordinarily unlikely, and you cannot fault me for concluding that in my own time and with the facts given.

You can't relay a story and then expect everyone to blindly accept your interpretation without reading objectively. That's unfair. I think you very likely misinterpreted things, yes, and I base that on the entire story including believing your perspective entirely. I don't think you're lying at all. That's the entire point, that I think you're telling the truth from your perspective, and your perspective might be a little bit off. It's nothing negative. I don't think less of you. I see misunderstanding like this all the time.

Yet you felt passionately enough about it to go after me personally and call me part of the problem, simply because I didn't subscribe immediately to a half story. I feel I'm exercising the better option: I'm reading objectively and drawing my own conclusions rather than immediately buying into a single- sided narrative. That's what we _should_ do when confronted with unfamiliar situations relayed by people we don't know, because it's the fundamental brick in the foundation of avoiding mobs, rash conclusions, beheading people over blogs, and so on.

And see? Now we're arguing about this. About ketchup on a god damned hot dog. Remember how I didn't want to live in this world?

(Edit: Also, please, please, please tell me you didn't compare your choice of condiment to the plight of minorities in an upthread comment. I _will_ conclude something about your character after reading something like that, if you mean it.)

<comment><USER101> Holy shit you put a lot of thought and care into deconstructing that situation logically and rationally. You would probably make a great super-forecaster. Head over to Slate Star Codex!

Thanks for doing such a thankless job. It made me smile on many levels.

<comment><USER102> But that's just it: it wasn't logical or rational. It was irrational and biased, because he wasn't even present at the event in question. He dismissed the only actual evidence available (the first-hand witness account) and fabricated his own story out of thin air based upon his own life experiences. Then he accused him of misinterpreting and overreacting. Mind-reading is bad enough second-hand, but third-hand?

And this passes for objectivity, logic, and reason? And this makes you smile?

Of course, the joke's really on all of us, because this kind of human interaction/communication/judgment/reasoning failure has been going on since the begnning of time. It's not as if I'm not guilty of it, too. And by the time we overcome it (if anyone ever does), we die, and people who haven't overcome it take our place.

Perhaps the ultimate lesson is to lower our expectations. Haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> "To leave that metaphor, let us grieve at what twitter has become. A stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous who love to second-guess, to leap to conclusions and be offended – worse, to be offended on behalf of others they do not even know. It's as nasty and unwholesome a characteristic as can be imagined. It doesn't matter whether they think they're defending women, men, transgender people, Muslims, humanists … the ghastliness is absolutely the same. It makes sensible people want to take an absolutely opposite point of view. I've heard people shriek their secularism in such a way as to make me want instantly to become an evangelical Christian."

This is a fair description of how Stephen Fry (as much as I love him) acted towards me on Twitter several years ago. (about the time I left twitter for good)

I don't think he's a bad guy, I think there is just an authoritarian streak running thru out culture right now that is so strong that a guy who, at the time, had just played a persecuted gay man in V for Vendetta was advocating for the persecution of people he didn't like! (though I'm sure he didn't realize it/recognize it/intend it.)

I think Stephen is a well intentioned guy who doesn't intend to piss in the pool, but I think propaganda has scared and manipulated him, as it has done so many others over history.</comment>


Ask HN: small projects to network with other programmers - <AUTHOR>

I was having a conversation with someone on Proggit about a system (webapp?) whereby programmers would submit ideas for small projects (1-2 hours) with the specific goal of meeting others by working on those.
I know, of course, that you can work on open source projects (or startups! :P ), but this usually requires a larger investment of time. I also know of:
1) The "Six hour startup" project, for first-world meetups in the Seattle area
2) http://justhackit.slinkset.com/ (which I heard about on HN)
But the first one is a model for real-world meetups only, and the second one doesn't seem to have much momentum, and seems more designed towards one-time projects for which you're seeking a partner or two. I'm more specifically speaking of something which would propose new, small projects rather regularly.
Have you heard of something similar? Here's the thread on Reddit for more details of our ideas:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7shvy/q_is_there_a_good_site_for_complementary_skills/c07a5hg <comment><USER2> Real world meetups for joint hacking are better than online collaboration. If the goal is to learn from other programmers, you learn a lot more by sitting next to them. A lot of it is incidental stuff you would not have thought to ask, like tricks in vi and emacs and etc. Another reason to work with someone is it provides a kind of social discipline, you feel you have to get something done on the project on a semi-regular basis. A weekly hacking session at a coffeehouse or someones apartment provides that regular discipline, and because the hacking sessions inevitably end, physical meetings can keep a side project from growing and taking over the rest of your life.

The "just work on a open-source project" advice isn't that bad, but you should pick something that you would benefit from improving. It is still a good idea to solict others to help you in a physical meeting, however. Find people who would benefit from improvement in the same project.

I think rather than a website or webapp, what you are looking for is a computer club. I go to a weekly meeting in Austin of ALE, a linux users group. We meet 7 pm to 11:30 pm, and we are an "experimental" group, in that we never have presentations or a planned agenda -- people bring computers with problems and we fix them, new people show up asking for help learning linux, etc. There are about 5 people there who come regularly with programming issues, ranging from side-business startup sites that are in php and mysql to hobbiest robots.

If you are really serious about this, find a place (possibly your house or apartment) and have a "Saturday afternoon hack-a-thon" every week or every other week. If you provide food and coffee people will come. Your main problem is likely to be keeping non-programmers from showing up and just talking.

If you have trouble finding a place to do this, see if you can locate a co- working or "jelly" type place in your area. A co-working place might let you use the area during non-business hour such as on weekends, and the jelly people probably know all the good coffeehouses.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I was thinking of online projects has to do with having critical mass for a given technology (say Django) in a given place (say Montreal, where I'm located). In Montreal, for example, Rails seems to enjoy more popularity, and Django seems more isolated (just a feeling). So if I was to organize Django-themed meetups, the circle would be limited (again I'm not sure, but just to illustrate).

You could say I'm being picky here, but why not use the power of the Web which is a known solution for such situations? And btw real-world meetups often happen after online ones.

I don't have anything against real-world meetups, but I just came back from one, and there were presentations, but only a single project and you worked with people you already knew, mostly. So I didn't end up meeting much people, as chatting without a goal in mind isn't, err, my greatest strength. I'd really like something much more goal-oriented. The Six hour startup formula is really good, in that sense.

Thanks for the suggestions, though. I have heard of Free Hacker meetups in my area, for example, and I really should try showing up at one. Yet I think the goal is a bit different.

<comment><USER2> The power of the web is a known solution in such situations, and I can see how you would lean that way. It's a good idea to cast a wide net, to learn things from people so far away that before the internet you would not have had that opportunity.

But it is still harder to learn by reading other people's code and looking at a message board than it is by sitting right next to them. So if there are local interested people, you should find them.

Also consider that as well as you learning from other people, other people can learn from you. If the Montreal community is oriented towards Rails instead of Django right now, would not be a service to expose people to Django ? Isn't it likely that there are a number of people in Montreal who are feeling the same way you are, and would jump at a chance to do some joint learning of Django, but they know of only the Rails groups ?

I'm not against the online collaboration part, and if your idea of group programmer's projects takes off there will need to be a way to find similarly interested programmers, so there will have to be a web site. But if all you do is put up a web site now, I think it will just sit as another abandoned web page on the internet; but if you find people and start interacting with them, the web site will get written by someone in due time.

<comment><AUTHOR> In fact, in my wild dreams concerning this idea, there's also a part for real- world projects: people could indicate an interest in such or such technology, yes, but could also filter by location, or a real-world meetup could be suggested when it makes sense.

And indeed I'd like it to be a way for people unfamiliar with a technology, but curious about its basics, to meet people of complementary/similar skills.

I understand that the location feature wouldn't solve the "sit alone in the dark" problem in and by itself, though. We'll have to come up with ways to market the idea, that's very clear (perhaps by targeting some niches first?). But I believe there's a potential to it, since I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in the situation, as you say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this is an interesting idea.

I decided to throw together a quick-and-dirty webapp for this purpose, inspired by an HN post (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=426127>). I'm taking a little detour & learning Python & Django along the way. I'll submit it here when I have a reasonable prototype ready, maybe in a week or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think we could collaborate on this? I thought about doing this we either Django or Drupal, but as you seem to favor Django, that'd be fine with me! Anyway I wasn't planning on doing this as a startup (ie. profit driven), but rather as a community project.

We could brainstorm a bit about it, perhaps have others join us in doing so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried proposing a nearly identical idea a few months ago on here or the irc channel, and it was generally not favored. People argued that if you just wanted to code, join an open source project.

If anything of sorts gets off the ground, I'd be totally interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you still have the link for the thread (if it was here)?

I might try to develop it if more people show interest. Of course others would be welcome to join in the development :P Btw there's no need for a general consensus: as long as enough people are interested, there's a "market" for it.

It might even be some extension of JustHackIt, since the goal wasn't so far away, but I think Slinkset is a bit limited for the purpose (for structuring contests etc.).

Thanks for your reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> could you give an example of what you mean by a small programming project? Also how would you choose who you work with or would it be like playing yahoo games where you can "sit" and "stand up" from projects? Maybe you could also watch people coding/conversing as an observer? Would there be a web ide or an automatically generated svn repository? Would all the projects be unique/for charity or more on a project euler/code golf level or what?

<comment><AUTHOR> Example of a project: well the TODO list suggested in the other comment makes for a great example: it can be very small. But there could also be more original stuff, things which would not repeat anything out there. Another example would be a small iPhone arcade-like game. There are plenty such ideas, and that's the point :P Project Euler level of questions is precisely what I was thinking of (in terms of length), in fact, since working on some of its questions with a friend is a part of what made me think of the idea.

I really like your idea of Yahoo games style "programming room", but I think it'd be overkill in the beginning. I'm thinking of something more flexible, based on different (existing) technologies to coordinate the work, say simply IRC, SVN, some Wiki page, etc. It doesn't have to be a complex website: the functionality would be more at the level of getting people together and allowing them to comment on each other's work (ratings etc.). Where they go from there is suggested, but up to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We found a great project to test working together was a todo list. There are many questions and paths you could take, and it seems to be a good project to determine if you can get on the same page together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the idea. It's indeed a good example of the scope I was thinking about (as long as you're not trying to write a full-fledged GTD app with all the bells and whistles).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get into the habit of writing comments/docstrings? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, I have a real issue with always forgetting to write proper comments and docstrings in my code, especially on personal projects, and then coming back to them and thinking "what did I mean when I wrote that?"<p>Does anybody have any tips for getting into the habit of writing good comments? <comment><USER2> For docstrings I use pylint to force me to write them.</comment>


Now Then – the hidden systems that've frozen time and stop us changing the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/NO-FUTURE <comment><USER3> Definitely not Adam Curtis' best work.

In particular, his connection between Boole (and Boolean Algebra) and recommendation systems seems weak. The latter are for more probabilistic.

And just when you think the article is going somewhere it ends with a strange detour into the Boole family which doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest.

<comment><USER4> I have no idea where this blogpost is going. I think its more of a stream of consciousness that shouldn't really be published...

Its good for writers to write down their thoughts in this poorly edited form, but it isn't very useful to the readers.

<comment><USER3> Well, I thought, at least, that he was doing to talk about the problem of the 'filter bubble'. Instead he zoomed off into the Boole family and the Voynich Manuscript for no apparent reason.

<comment><USER5> The Voynich manuscript "tie in" I see as just another interesting digression while talking about Ethel's life.

But the Boole family bit ties in thematically in that it provides two people who represents two contradictory possibilities for the future:

The stagnating world described in the first part of the article where nothing changes because we're locked in place by technology, represented by Hinton's view of time as an illusion, where it is just what part of a static four- dimensional landscape we see that changes.

Or a future where things are allowed to change again, represented by Ethel, whose novel inspired a generation of revolutionaries, and who herself continued to believe in change to the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tl;dr recommendation systems, digital records, all combine to highlight inconsistencies between our past behaviour and current behaviour, this forcing us to never change for fear of being labelled a Hypocrite.

This is extrapolating out of technical realm and not passing through culture before making a conclusion. Just as today's 30 year old will be far more forgiving of an employee with photos online of their drunken 20's than pre- Facebook 30 year olds, we will find our cultural norms changing as more and more of us find privacy has vanished.

The issue is not can the technology be used in this way, but will those using it that way be labelled "normal", "annoying moralists" or "unclean and untouchable".

Technology always leads us to new crises - but we should manage them with an eye on the value that can be wrought. Technology that monitors my heartbeat and liver function I like. Technology that monitors my political views I want to be wrapped in social and legal constraints.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't the idea that prediction of the future constrains what can be done and may ultimately lead to stagnation part of the original _Dune_ novels?

<comment><USER6> I preferred the novels where a woman able to perceive alternative futures simply chose the one where if she scratched her left ear and turned round twice, her enemy had a heart attack a week later on a different planet. She was literally the most powerful being alive.

<comment><USER7> Actually, that reminds me (in different ways) of Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_ and Greg Egan's _Quarantine_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you liked that, you'll love 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace'.

[http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120522154154/http://archive.org/details/AdamCurtis- AllWatchedOverByMachinesOfLovingGrace)

<comment><USER9> IMO his best work is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares) is good too. All of it is pretty great, if you don't mind the slightly agitprop-ish style.

EDIT: this definitely isnt his best work though.

<comment><USER10> Agreed that the Century of the Self is very much worth watching.

This parody is spot on, though: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This piece makes little sense to me. There are no "hidden systems" that freeze time or stop anyone from changing their mind. In fact, politicians routinely contradict themselves in public! For hilarious evidence of this, just watch John Stewart's Daily Show.[1]

PS. If you're ever accused of contradicting yourself, just respond with the famous quote often attributed to John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"[2]

\--

[1] [http://thedailyshow.cc.com/](http://thedailyshow.cc.com/)

[2] [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change- mind/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/)

<comment><USER12> Another good quote along those lines is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." Ralph Waldo Emerson. [http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html](http://www.bartleby.com/100/420.47.html)

<comment><USER13> my favorite in the same vein is from Walt Whitman:

        Do I contradict myself?
        Very well then I contradict myself,
        (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This meandering, arty-sounding essay was interesting despite not being very rigorously argued. I'm only surprised the author didn't mention that Geoffrey Hinton, a major figure in neural networks, is a descendant of Boole. Maybe he wasn't aware of the connection.

</comment><comment><USER15> Lots of sound-bytes and flakyisms in that one.

It is, of course, true that large monied interests have an interest in stability (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, _" It'll be too expensive, no one would dare"_, circa 1913 or so).

It's also true that politicians have to be extremely careful of saying stupid things, or things that can be taken out of context, or things that might offend people they don't want to, because of the prevalence of technology and the "Gotcha" approach certain classes of media prefer. Which too is also a hindrance to change.

<comment><USER16> > (I'd like to cue the arguments against having a Great War, "It'll be too > expensive, no one would dare", circa 1913 or so).

Funny... people now say the same thing about the potential of escalating conflict between China and the U.S., among other things.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention conflict with Russia over Ukraine (i.e. Europe needs Russia's natural gas too much and Russians have too much capital tied up in Europe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting, but the inaccurate obsession with Boole needs to go. If anything half the examples they cite as "Boolean" inference are more Bayesian. And what does the Voynich manuscript have to do with a surveillance dystopia? That ending is pretty weak.

<comment><USER18> The thread with Boole was picked up as a long tie-in to get to his daughter.

<comment><USER19> I agree, that's what he did there. But, why the manuscript?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's funny but I associated the title with something completely different than what I read in the article.

When the author starts talking about politics and systems frozen in time I can't help but think about how the real frozen system is our political system.

We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history.

The old satirical images of class hierarchies in the shape of pyramids come to mind.

<comment><USER21> "We get new digital systems almost weekly, that help us do things like monitor peoples activities and map their opinions, but these systems are all being deployed within a political system that has largely remained unchanged for our entire documented history."

In terms of documented history, democracy is still a young experiment - <USER2> outright tribalism, monarchism was the dominant system until a wave of revolutions between the 18th-20th centuries.

Democracy is changing rapidly (in historical terms) - the "digital trackers", Citizens United, creation and repeal of the Voting Rights Act. These will all have far-reaching implications.

A world with a "new political system almost weekly" would be mired in violent localized revolution and tribalism, which is how humanity lived for far longer than they've lived under representative democracy.

<comment><USER20> I never said democracy specifically. I meant in a broader sense the systems where a minority have centralized power over a majority of largely unorganized masses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _In 1987 the growing paranoia finally burst out. The trigger was a BBC > television series called The Secret Society made by an investigative > journalist called Duncan Campbell.

In 6 half-hour films Campbell pulled what had been happening all together - and drew a frightening picture that still haunts the imagination of the liberal left._

Some Americans were already paranoid back in the mid 70's - Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation", with that well known and often mis-parsed phrase - "He'd kill us if he got the chance".

</comment><comment><USER23> It's amazing that people take this seriously. It's random stream of conciousness stuff.

<comment><USER24> You mean IOW a blog?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem with collaborative filtering systems, whether based on personal preferences or on past purchases, is that you end up in a recommendation bubble. Seeing the same items recommended over and over again.

Over time the things I want to buy change. Perhaps because I had a major life event - got married, had a child, turned 50 and had a mid-life crisis, etc. The systems can't predict the timing of those because people don't do them on a schedule.

<comment><USER26> It's an exploration vs exploitation trade-off. They are just predicting the things you are most likely to buy and suggesting those. But you also want to throw in things which you are less likely to look at, but if you do it gives them more information to make better suggestions. And then as you mention, account for the fact people are dynamic and change over time.

This isn't trivial but it can be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _On one hand it 's old politics - digging up the dirt on your opponent. But it is also part of something new - and much bigger than just politics. Throughout the western world new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same._

This is a false conclusion. The goal isn't to stop change. The goal is to embarrass a political opponent. Or intimidate them. Or make them worry enough that they'll be very careful not to say much (i.e. chilling effect). In extreme cases, such a weapon may render a political impotent, or end their career (or prevent their re-election, anyway).

So it really is just political crap, somewhat TMZ style. But to say the purpose is to maintain the status quo just doesn't follow.

On the other hand, it may be a "sunlight" or transparency sort of thing ... if a politician knows the public can / will see everything they say or do, this could lead to positive results. It's all in who does what with the information that gets recorded & archived.

</comment><comment><USER28> Was this written by a computer?

</comment><comment><USER29> Recommendation systems should really have an element of randomness built within them. It is true people will continue to like movies, music, books or products similar to those they have liked before, however occasional randomness would enable some diversification.

</comment><comment><USER30> As we're on this, it's worth watching The Loving Trap, a funny Adam Curtis parody.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

</comment><comment><USER31> The nugget buried at the end is very interesting - Boole (of Boolean Logic) was related to Voynich who found what is perhaps one of the most cryptic documents of all time.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Now then" \- also a grammatically curious greeting in Yorkshire.

</comment><comment><USER33> to wit, "In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash Installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content"</comment>


An Introduction to Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types - <AUTHOR> https://lars.hupel.info/topics/crdt/01-intro.html <comment><USER2> Xi editor, featured here before [1][2], used CRDTs as a core part of the initial design. In a retrospective [3] the author found -- paraphrasing -- that the kinds of answers given by CRDTs don't map well onto the problems of making a text editor.

That makes me wonder, if not text editing (fair enough) what are CRDTs _good_ at representing? It seems this free online web course (?!) is trying to teach the abstractions, maybe that would shed some light.

More generally, the key problem seems to be something like you need to preserve the lower level behavior (merging rules) in the semantics of the abstraction (CRDT behavior). That process seems to be an unsolved problem, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's related to other unsolved/unsolvable problems like the halting problem. Any interesting reads?

[1]: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=xi%20editor](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=xi%20editor)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23663878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23663878)

[3]: [https://github.com/xi-editor/xi- editor/issues/1187#issuecomm...](https://github.com/xi-editor/xi- editor/issues/1187#issuecomment-491473599)

<comment><USER3> After studying [3], I came to the conclusion that the specific CRDTs they attempted to use for Xi editor might be too low level to be useful in building a text editor directly, but that this is not an intrinsic shortcoming of CRDTs. Rather, the kind of automerging behavior of the CRDTs they used didn't match the design needs of the editor.

(btw, check out chronofold, designed for text: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09511v4](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09511v4) )

Anyhow, I've come to see CRDTs as very low level primitives that can assist in creating decentralized applications. Their strength is not that they automagically solve the inherently subjective problem of merging asynchronously edited, divergent data. That problem is more of a design problem that needs to be solved on a case by case basis. The strength of CRDTs is in that they have extremely well defined behavior and aren't fundamentally reliant on a central coordinator or leader. Of course you can design in a leader if you want, or multiple leaders. But that has nothing to do with CRDTs. So I imagine them being more useful in composing higher level data structures and smooth interfaces for users to make inherently difficult decisions about merge conflicts themselves.

My favorite kind of CRDTs are "delta state CRDTs". They're very cool. I wish the paper about them was easier to understand.

<comment><USER4> That's actually a reasonable position. We solved some problems, and had ideas for others (for example, overloading "priority" to position the cursor after things like inserting whitespace for indentation), but had a list of other things we wanted to do, including "soft spans" (issue #244 in the repo) that we never quite figured out how to do.

Ultimately, I'm not very smart, and someone who is could probably figure out how to map all these other code editing problems to CRDT data structures. Once that's done, the result should be compelling, because CRDT lets you take advantage of low-latency local connections rather than requiring everything to get serialized on a central server. It's research I would love to see being carried forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In this context, I've enjoyed a series of papers on CRTDs and Operational Transformation. The differences and similarities. The similarities might be greater than most are aware, and the differences more specific. This is the latest paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.01518.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.01518.pdf)

 _Real Differences between OT and CRDT under a General Transformation Framework for Consistency Maintenance in Co-Editors_ – Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2020 – Chengzheng Sun, David Sun, Agustina Ng, Weiwei Cai, Bryden Cho

It's an evolutionary series, here's the rest I believe: [https://arxiv.org/search/cs?query=Sun%2C+Chengzheng&searchty...](https://arxiv.org/search/cs?query=Sun%2C+Chengzheng&searchtype=author&abstracts=show&order=-announced_date_first&size=50)</comment>