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Identifying Toxic Content Can Be a First Step To Addressing It:
Trolls, haters, flamers and other ugly characters are, unfortunately, a fact of life across much of the internet. Their ugliness ruins social media networks and sites like Reddit and Wikipedia.
But toxic content looks different depending on the venue, and identifying online toxicity is a first step to getting rid of it.
[...] To better understand what toxicity looked like in the open-source community, the team first gathered toxic content. They used a toxicity and politeness detector developed for another platform to scan nearly 28 million posts on GitHub made between March and May 2020. The team also searched these posts for "code of conduct" — a phrase often invoked when reacting to toxic content — and looked for locked or deleted issues, which can also be a sign of toxicity.
[...] "Toxicity is different in open-source communities," Miller said. "It is more contextual, entitled, subtle and passive-aggressive."
Only about half the toxic posts the team identified contained obscenities. Others were from demanding users of the software. Some came from users who post a lot of issues on GitHub but contribute little else. Comments that started about a software's code turned personal. None of the posts helped make the open-source software or the community better.
"Worst. App. Ever. Please make it not the worst app ever. Thanks," wrote one user in a post included in the dataset.
[...] "We've been hearing from developers and community members for a really long time about the unfortunate and almost ingrained toxicity in open-source," Miller said. "Open-source communities are a little rough around the edges. They often have horrible diversity and retention, and it's important that we start to address and deal with the toxicity there to make it a more inclusive and better place."
Paper pre-print and video of the talk.
Journal Reference:
Courtney Miller, Sophie Cohen, Daniel Klug, et al., "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions, 44th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2022), Pittsburgh, PA, 2022.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Bethany.Saint on Sunday July 03 2022, @01:26PM (8 children)
You using an aggressive tone in your reply to make a point? Can't you can use a neutral or even welcoming tone just as easily? It's just a matter of word choice. What does it say if you find it natural to respond to others with hostility when it's equally easy not to?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Sunday July 03 2022, @01:58PM (7 children)
Of course I could tell people nicely that they're dolts. Dunno what purpose this would serve, it doesn't make them any less of a dolt.
I usually don't go out of my way to insult people. But I also don't really see the need to sugarcoat it. Language is a medium of communication. I prefer to use it for that instead of tapdancing around the issue. All that usually serves is that the recipient doesn't get the message.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bethany.Saint on Sunday July 03 2022, @02:21PM (2 children)
You don't need to sugarcoat your responses. Just as you don't need to use aggressive insulting language. You can convey the exact same message in the exact same time without the hostile tone. It's a zero effort choice which tone you use ... unless it's intrinsic at this point.
>>All that usually serves is that the recipient doesn't get the message.
Or that your message is wrong even though you truly believe it's correct.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday July 03 2022, @03:34PM (1 child)
I would disagree. There are messages that clearly are best served with a dose of anger and an f-bomb or two. Sometimes by sugarcoating it you don't relay the entire message -- be it that they they are idiots, they should stfu and stop bothering you. By telling them that straight and in as few words (or as many as needed) possible you convey that feeling of anger or annoyance in a manner that they have apparently previously missed. Also perhaps worth noting is that sometimes in text various social ques are clearly lost, or lost to some people. So it's not so much that one should go out of once way to fill every response with as much profanity as possible but clearly sometimes it's just the best and most succinct way to do it instead of dancing around the issue. Not to mention that cursing and swearing have proven to a stress relief in some people and making them feel better; how the recipient feels is secondary in that regard.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Sunday July 03 2022, @10:07PM
Insulting replies to a post will more likely than not trigger a defensive response in the poster, making them less likely to openly consider your points. That's particularly true if the post simply reads "You're an idiot and you're wrong".
A well-reasoned, neutral response is far more likely to be read and considered by the OP. An insult will be ignored or defended against without necessarily taking on board any feedback (other than how to refute it).
Going back to Opportunist's original question of what's the point of being polite? It depends, is your objective to inform and change the opinion of others, or is it just to tell everyone that you're right?
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 03 2022, @02:39PM (1 child)
That exactly.
Much of the world today spends their time worrying about feelz. If someone needs their feelz stroked, they should visit their psychologist, or make the effort to find that special other who genuinely cares about their feelz. Don't go to a developer's site or forum, expecting that developer to stroke your feelz.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 04 2022, @02:16PM
I don't care about some feelz. Yes, I'll laude a good design or post a "works, awesome" or something like that, but if you want a medal for your work, join the military.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by http on Monday July 04 2022, @12:39AM (1 child)
Sure there's no need to sugarcoat it. But there's also no need to be a jerk about it. If you're regularly a jerk about it, it sends a clear message to the actual human beings on the other end of the ones and zeros. I mean, you do know there's actual people on the other end, don't you?
Anyways, that message is, you're a shit human being who practices being offensive. It may or may not be true, but it's the message those people get.
If you're not aware that that's the message you're sending out, maybe you're not as good at communicating as you think you are - and so should really not be in tech (if you must be, please stay away from documentation and any public-facing role). If you are aware, then you're as shit as you seem and shouldn't be in anything.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Monday July 04 2022, @01:48PM
I am not the most social person you'll find in the world. True. But I'm not here to socialize, I'm here to get shit done. I need documentation to explain the schematics. I don't need it to feel good. If I want to feel good, I get some fuzzy bathrobes and go to my sauna. I don't work there, though.