Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: community

  • On Saying No

    On Saying No

    We are, for the most part, accustomed to getting our way. We have a problem, we contact support, they fix it.

    Once in a while, however, support says ‘No.’

    I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Dave.

    There are technical limits to all products. Due to our own failures of imagination, we cannot foresee every possible iteration of usage for the things we build. These failures are, of course, not the fault of anything but our own lack of omniciense. We cannot know all things. We cannot predict all things.

    In this way, we have learned to expect limitations over time. We know that there is a line drawn in what the computer can do. If we have not programmed the computer to do a thing, it cannot know to do the thing. The reason for the limitation is just that the code’s author didn’t wish to write a thing. Why? Many reasons, none of which matter.

    We can, however, accept that systems and software are written by humans. Humans are fettered with limited vision. Computers are shackled by the humans who create them.

    When a program says it cannot do a thing, it cannot do the thing.

    I’m sorry, the system’s a bit limited.

    The problem with our shackles is that the one who has to tell a customer that the computer cannot do a thing is a person, not a computer.

    We cannot delete user accounts on WordPress.org for a number of reasons. If the site was just a blog, or a BuddyPress network, it would be a simple matter. Instead we integrated a wiki, multiple bbPress 1.x instances, a BuddyPress network, a multisite, theme SVN, plugin SVN, and core SVN.

    So no. We no longer have the technical ability to remove a user ID. Not even in the case where you accidentally used your gmail address as your username and are now ipstenugmailcom … It says username, but people do what they do. And no, we can’t rename users either. Same reason.

    We coded ourselves into a situation where we are technically limited. We cannot do the thing because we didn’t develop a way to do the thing.

    I’m sorry, but it’s against policy

    Then there’s a different kind of reason that someone tells you no. Like when someone asks for an embarrassing post or comment be deleted. Obviously this can be done. Comments and forum replies can always be deleted. That’s how they work. You may have your own site and you’ve deleted spam.

    But every site has a comment policy. They have the right to moderate their site however they want. Some delete things right away. Some moderate and manually approve all comments. Others let things run until the shit hits the fan and then spend hours and weeks and months cleaning up. However they choose to moderate and maintain their site is their business and their choice. You don’t have to stick around if you don’t like it.

    A large issue occurs when you don’t realize until after the fact that one of the policies is, perhaps, not removing posts. That’s when things get really messy, because now you’re being told no and not only is it by a human, but it’s a human who makes the choice.

    Your rights are subjective

    The rights you have on someone else’s website are subjective.

    The rights you have when you use a product are as well.

    If you download Microsoft Office, you agree to a lot of terms and conditions. Whether or not you read them, you agreed to them. Same with Apple’s iCloud terms and conditions.

    You give up some of your freedoms in exchange for their convenience. Your rights are subject to the agreements you make when you chose to use software, comment on a site, join a community, sign a contract, etc. etc.

    Be gracious in victory and defeat

    Once in a great while, someone will make an exception for you. Most of the time you really don’t want it.

    Perhaps you think it proves that all policies are mutable, but the reality is not. You see, that exception means it’s worth more to them to shut you up than it is to abide by policy.

    Of course a post can be deleted. Of course someone can lock your account for you. Of course you can be granted an extended warranty. But, for the most part, in order to get that far and get that level of ‘reward,’ you will have had to become the person no one wants to talk with.

    An example. A user asked for his account to be deleted and was informed of the technical impossibility of the request. He then asked for his posts to be removed and was informed of the policy prohibiting such a request. He finally asked for his account to be made inactive and to ban him from the site. He was told (after confirming that these requests were all to calm his paranoia and not that he was being harassed or stalked by someone) that the site was not his parents, and if he wanted to leave, the answer was to log off and walk away.

    Instead he began to post nothing but vulgarities.

    His account was locked and he was banned.

    He will likely never be welcome again.

    He might think he ‘won’ the argument, but all that happened was he showed his deplorable behavior, in public, in a way that Google captured. He tainted his reputation. He tarred and feathered himself. He burned his bridges. And he bragged about it.

    Support are people too

    When you are told ‘no,’ try to understand why. Accept the fact that you cannot get what you want all the time. Sometimes it’s just impossible. It’s understandable to be upset and angry. But the people tasks with enforcing policy or educating you to as to limitations, they are people just like you.

  • Representation of Code

    Representation of Code

    There’s a great many things to be learned from the drama of the recent Code of Conduct proposal. A great many people have demonstrated why one is needed, why ‘Just act professional’ is not a tenable long term solution, and why some people are exactly the sort of person who will fall afoul of the new guidelines.

    After all, who would really argue that these guidelines are ‘bad’:

    Examples of unacceptable behaviour by participants include:

    • The use of sexualized language or imagery
    • Personal attacks
    • Trolling or insulting/derogatory comments
    • Public or private harassment
    • Publishing other’s private information, such as physical or electronic addresses, without explicit permission
    • Other unethical or unprofessional conduct

    But that isn’t what it brought to my mind. The needs of a Code of Conduct are myriad, and the phrasing is complicated. It should be, at once, easy to understand and abide by, while being comprehensive and difficult to abuse. It should prevent rules-lawyers from gaming the system and min-maxing the hell out of their abhorrent behavior, while still permitting people to speak their mind. Anyone who’s played a table-top game with ‘that guy’ knows that pain.

    As I tweeted:

    Today PHP is learning that individuals bear the weight of representation of their groups.

    This is something everyone in a minority group has known for a long time. Not to throw politics into the mix, but compare the different reactions to the Baltimore protests of 2015 and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation of 2016. Consider the way some people are painted as ‘he should have known better’ and others are just ‘misunderstood.’

    One of the things I hate about WordPress is that I am now and forever representing it. Yes, forever. If WordPress is still around in 30 or 40 years, I will be representing it. If I leave it or say “Well I hate X” about it, I will reflect back on WordPress and my words will likely be taken and twisted around and contorted to mean something.

    Now and forever, I represent things that I am and things that I do. If I act like an ass online, it reflects on my company. A coworker of mine told a joke on Twitter and was subjected to attacks from someone who found it offensive. Whether or not the joke was tasteless, it reflected on him and our company. It doesn’t matter if the company endorsed it or not, nor does it really matter what our CEO may or may not have said regarding the situation. It matters that we represent myriad aspects of our life all the time.

    To give you a short list, I represent women, lesbians, LGBT as a whole, married people, childless families, Jews, Californians, Chicagoans, Canadians, Americans, caucasians, and please double the list and add ‘in tech’ to that. We haven’t even touched on things I work on and participate in the community like WordPress, Wikipedia, MediaWiki, Ada Camp, Hugo, Jekyll, PHP, ZenPhoto, etc etc and so on and so forth. Oh and DreamHost, the bank I used to work for, and possibly the guys I worked for before that. Then there are the games I play (D&D, Pern, WoD, etc).

    I don’t get to ‘stop’ being those things. Even though I’ve not played a MUSH in almost a decade, to some people I will forever be known as a MUSHer. And some people may change their opinions on me just hearing that. But also some people will say “Oh, she acts like that because she grew up on a MUSH.” And worse, “If she acts like that, then all MUSHers are assholes.”

    Look. We know it’s stupid. We all know that a person isn’t the sole representation of a thing, and yet we spend our lives looking over our shoulders because we will now and forever be what we are identified as being.

    It was hard for Leonard Nimoy to be Spock.

    Nimoy is so synonymous with his half-Vulcan alter ego that fans revolted upon seeing the title of his first memoir, “I Am Not Spock,” despite Nimoy’s insistence that behind the name was merely a nuanced explanation of the distinctions between himself and his character.

    When we think of him, we think of Spock, the role that made him famous. And it took him years to come to grips with understanding that he was now and always will be Spock to many of us. It’s a hard thing to accept, that you will forever represent yourself, a job you had for three years and a handful of movies, and that no matter what, whatever you say will reflect back on that.

    WordPress, PHP, those are our Star Treks and we are Spock.

    Live long and prosper.

  • OpEd: Community, Community, Community

    OpEd: Community, Community, Community

    Lately there have been a lot of talk about the issues within various communities. It might be the shit storm over in Reddit land, it might be the drama in WP World. It doesn’t actually matter for the purposes of this post.

    Poisoned Well

    As my friend Helen asked recently:

    Do you ever feel like the entire internet has been taken over by trolls because I feel like I’m drinking from a poisoned well right now.

    I do.

    All the time. Always have. People have always used the internet as a way to let out what they’re feeling without filtering it through their humanity first. They hide behind anonymity, or the simple shield that they can’t see the faces of the people they bully and humiliate. They see it as ‘just good fun’ or ‘just letting things out.’

    My friends know I feel that way too. But I always ask them “Can I be unfiltered? I need a rant.”

    The Internet Is Broken

    What we’re facing is the endemic brokenness of communities as a whole and their sewage spewage.

    As my friend JJJ remarked (specifically about a subject but it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this post):

    … I’m waiting for a “things are broken” post …

    J-trip, I know I’m not the person you’re asking for the post from but, yes, things are broken. Things are badly broken. Things have always been broken. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Things are broken because we, as humans, are broken. The online communities we tout as being fundamental to the growth of software development and that bind us together, closer, as humans, is broken because humans suck.

    What’s broken isn’t PHP or Reddit or WordPress.

    What’s broken is us.

    And we remain broken because we don’t fix things.

    Let’s Fix It

    Fixing isn’t easy though.

    Unlike your ‘in person’ community, an online one is incredibly diverse.

    At the same time, we need to stop giving it a free pass simply because it’s online. Treat it with the care and love you would treat the people who come together to shoot arrows or sew or watch a baseball game. This is a community and we need to treat it like that.

    Remember that what we do in public, and yes the Internet is totally public, reflects on who we are because it is who we are. Behave with integrity and honesty and be yourself. If that self reveals itself to be a bad person who does mean things and doesn’t care about the outcomes, then deal with the outcomes.

    Stop pretending that there are no repercussions just because you’re online. Stop thinking that you can get away with being mean just because it makes you feel better. Start caring about people as people, online and offline.

    And then there’s the hard thing. Stop letting people get away with it. We all fear the cry of censorship, but there will come a time when we have to stop killing ourselves. It’s our choice to keep the hatemongers among us, and it’s our choice to tell them to change or leave.

    Make the right choice.

  • Detoxify Your Website

    Detoxify Your Website

    The following are my speaker notes for WordCamp Minneapolis 2015. The slides are up at https://helf.us/wcmsp2015/:

    There Are Many Kinds of Toxic People

    • The hater
    • The know-it-all
    • The concern troll
    • The Pilkunnussija

    When your site gets popular, you get a diverse group of regulars. Not all are created equal. There’s the hater who hates you all, the one who knows everything, the one who CLAIMS to want to help but really derails you on small things, and then… Well you can google that last one, but the short version is the one who says “you spelled it T E H” in the middle of a passionate discussion about the next season of Sherlock, and Oh my GOD did that really matter?

    You Dread Your Own Site

    Where Did The Fun Go?

    You used to love your site, seeing the comments, checking out what the new people had to say. And now, thanks to those other people, those toxic people, you hate your own site and you’re pretty sure the community is going dark and twisted and you know what it’s time for?

    Cleanse Your Colon

    Keep your Community Healthy

    It’s time to give things a scrub. There are only four steps to being able to survive a successful blog cleanse. If you’ve ever tried those cleanse drinks, you’ll know that it’s not easy to make it through, but you can do this. Just … don’t Google Image search ‘colon cleanse’ please. I regret that.

    Step One

    Forget the First Amendment

    You know the one. The one people always throw out at you, that they have the “right” to say what they want? They don’t. They just don’t. They can shut up now. The site is yours, you bought the domain, you pay for the hosting. The First Amendment has never had any bearing on our blogs so don’t be afraid to delete comments.

    Step Two

    Be Consistent

    If you’re going to clean your site and make sure it’s what you want to be and do and work on, then you need to make your rules and stick by them. If a rule is “no talking about George Clooney’s personal life” then you have to be strict. Keep it solid and don’t waver, not even for yourself.

    Step Three

    Arm Yourself

    WordPress has some built in tools that most people use when thinking about spam, but what if I told you to use Comment Moderation on their key phrases. What if you took the people who slammed you and attacked you and put their emails in the block list? Done. Get them out of your life.

    Step Four

    Trust Yourself

    If you get that feeling, that gut feeling that says “This is about to go wrong” then you need to believe yourself. Trust yourself. Have faith that you know the vibe of the site you’ve been working on all this time.

    WordPress Tips

    • Use the Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist
    • Use plugins like Comment Probation to monitor new people
    • Watch their IPs

    Outside WordPress

    • Block them from your email
    • Use Twitter and Facebook’s block functions

    Don’t Give Up

    I’ve been wrangling communities online for a long time. I’ve faced burnout and exhaustion and pain. But I’m not alone. I have the other communities like mine to lean on. I have fellow forum mods to ask for backup. I have friends who tell me I’m going too far.

    Don’t give up. You’re not alone.