Sad

[avevale_intelligencer]

On the Uru forums there is a topic entitled "How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People."

It turns out this is the title that a bunch of open source developers have given to a video they've done which is intended to educate prospective workers in open source about good practices.

Objecting to the title, inevitably, gets you called poisonous yourself, if only by implication, which proves the point of the objection. Not believing in poisonous people, not believing that the concept of poisonous people is a good thing, is obviously a sign of being poisonous. Where have we heard that kind of argument before?

Also, open source Uru seems to be as far away as it was at the beginning of the year and is not coming any closer. Must be all us poisonous people hanging around waiting for it. If only we'd all just go away...

Sometimes the human race makes me tired.

Comments

[hurdle1gal.livejournal.com]

Which Uru forum is this?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

mystonline.com.

Have you seen the video?

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

It is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645. I am not a programer but it looks to me to be an excellent guide on how to run an open source project. I don't follow Uru so I cannot say how the concept is being applied over there.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't. I'm sure it's excellent of its kind and would do exactly what it said on the tin, if the tin said something like "How to Run an Open Source Project." What I am specifically objecting to is the title and the divisiveness it embodies. Which, apparently, makes me a bad person.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

An open source project or any other volunteer run project is dependent on people wanting to give their time and effort in the hope that the project will produce something they want. One of the major causes of failure is people who are disruptive, not necessarily deliberately, but who don't fit in with what needs to be done.
Effectively a disruptive person is poisonous because they can cause a project to sicken and die by causing more productive people to misdirect their effort or drop out. Perhaps poisonous is not a tactful description but it is evocative.

[batyatoon]

I would never apply the label of "poisonous" to the people you describe here. "Poisonous" to my mind refers to people who are disruptive very deliberately and with malice.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

And you are at liberty to apply the term however you wish to. The sense the makers of the video used was, in my opinion, if you swallow this into your project it will sicken and might die. I think they could have picked a better word but they didb't.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Good video, and good principles espoused therein. Shame the title chosen is one that lends itself so readily to... shall we call it "intent drift"? =:o\ (i.e. into name-calling). The analogy with people who "poison the well" is appropriate though... Perhaps "poisoners" rather than "poisonous people" (focus on behaviour rather than implying inate identity) would work... but of course it's less catchy. =:o\ Or just "behaviour" for "people".

Perhaps it's a point you (or whoever) need to be making to the makers of the video, Zan, rather than in the Uru forum which is just picking up the title of an existing video. (I say this, of course, having not been a witness to any of the discussion.) OTOH, if people are taking the catch phrase from the title as an excuse for name-calling within the Uru forum, then that's something to address there.

[faxpaladin.livejournal.com]

Saw the subject line, never actually clicked on it to see what they were talking about.

It may not be who they're talking about, but I can certainly think of one fellow who likes to spell his name backwards who fits the description...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, so could I, but as I said in the forum, that's not a game I want to play. He isn't a poisonous person, any more (hopefully) than I am.

[howeird]

Yes, definitely a WTF of a title. It sounds like something for Dilbert.

[batyatoon]

On the contrary; I would take an objection to the title as a demonstration that the objector is considerably more innocent and pure-of-heart than most, and/or has never encountered a truly poisonous person.

I have encountered poisonous people. They inevitably believe in the concept of poisonous people; they just never put themselves in that category.

(I do realize I'm leaving myself wide open here.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'm neither innocent nor pure of heart.

I have met people who have acted poisonously, who have behaved abominably to me and others, while believing they were completely in the right so to do. I'm sure you have too. I've been driven to tears and rage and despair by the actions of people I might have called poisonous. But I've never yet been driven to sticking the skull and crossbones label on them and thereby warning people to have nothing to do with them, and I hope never to do so.

That's not innocence or purity, that's necessity. Because if people can be non-people, or poisonous people, or inferior people, or damned-thing people, or unsaved people or whatever...then that's me, right there. For my own sanity, I have to believe that all people are people, no more and no less, or I can't be a person. I don't expect anyone else to be so handicapped, nor do I judge anyone else on what they believe, see above. This is just the way it works, for me.

[batyatoon]

If you're wrong on any point, Zander, it's in thinking that that's not purity of heart.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that all that means is that the way you use the word is different from the way others use it:

1. full of or containing poison.
2. harmful; destructive.
3. deeply malicious.

Granted that I also saw it and thought "there are no poisonous people, there are only people who have poisonous behaviours (amongst their other behaviours, some of which are non-poisonous", that's a pedantic semantic difference and is the sort of thing which gets /me/ told off for being picky and (if I persist) disruptive and (see meaning #2) destructive to the conversation. It's the sort of thing which gets /me/ told "you know what I mean, you're just beng awkward".

In the original context the term "poisonous people" is being used the same way as "poisonous snakes" (more correctly venomous), it's a a shortcut. Is it a dangerous shortcut? Yes, /I/ think so, the same as saying that a person "is bad" or "is a failure" (see "is of identity"), but in general conversation most people will use the shortcut and will get annoyed by people who correct them (in some cases offended because they are aware that they are using the shortcut). And indeed it does tend to derail the conversation onto what you and I think about the language used instead of the actual behaviour under discussion, which is what that video is about (allegedly; I haven't had time with access to a machine capable of playing it). It isn't about anyone making anyone else a "non-person", it's about a term almost everyone else understands about the behaviour of some people.

(Yes, I did read the thread, or as much of it as I could find in public form via Google, and my comments are based on that and what I saw of the reactions of the posters there.)

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think it is a pedantic semantic difference, though I am sure calling it that makes discussion simpler; just as the phrase "religious people," rather than being understood as "people who have religious behaviours, amongst their other behaviours which are unrelated to religion," is commonly taken in some quarters to mean "brainless zombies who don't believe in reason or science." Is that a pedantic semantic difference? Depends if you're using language to uncover and explain the truth, or as a weapon to promulgate your desired point of view.

There's a reason that legal documents have a preamble in which the meanings of specific terms used in the document are set out in full. These linguistic matters need to be resolved before any meaningful discussion on the matter in hand can be undertaken. Therefore, comments such as I made are not so much derailing the discussion as getting it on to the right track before it leaves the station. Railways don't do shortcuts; it's one of their virtues.

There are many terms that "almost everyone else understands." "Sunrise," for instance. Did it matter that almost everyone else's understanding of the term was dead wrong when Copernicus or whoever advanced his theories? Maybe not. Or maybe--as language is a tool and a misused or damaged tool is worthless--understanding needs to be clarified before the term is adopted into general usage. Those who try to do this may be condemned as "picky" or "disruptive" or "poisonous." I can't help that. It needs doing.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

My point is that if you are going to pick those sorts of nits you need a thick skin. I don't much care if someone thinks I'm a pedantic twit when I pull them up on that sort of point, but if you're going to get hurt when they talk back then -- well, it's your life, I have no right to tell you not to do it, but if I were going to get hurt by it then I might just learn that they don't want to be corrected and not both (or having learnt that they weren't interested not dig any deeper).

Particularly since I suspect that the authors of the video have no idea about your correction, so it isn't even going to the correct people. Most of those who do see your correction will either agree with you (I suspect the majority of the pedantic geeks) or will dismiss it as irrelevant and a distraction from the actual point, which was that any 'open' project attracts people who (for whatever reasons) try to 'poison' the project and discussions and project leaders (and other people in discussions) need to have ways of coping with that.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Did you think the point of this post was to fish for sympathy?

The only qualifications required to point out the misuse of language are the ability to recognise such and the ability to speak or write. Life involves getting hurt; the question is, is one doing it for the right reasons. I really don't think this is a nit, or a matter in which only pedantic geeks should be interested.

The authors of the video would quite rightly dismiss me as an irrelevant outsider. I believe the Uru community, of which I have been an active member and hope to be again, can do without this kind of terminology. I pointed that out, was roundly rebuffed, and vented here. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, but I'm not going to stop doing it for fear of my tender feelings. Language is important. If we learn nothing else from our history, we should learn that language can be the ideal tool for the bigot and the elitist. And if I've learned anything from my life, it is that it is occasionally possible for me to be right even when a lot of people think I'm wrong. That's probably very arrogant of me, but there it is.