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

[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.