Tag proposal: conflicts
53 points by Student
53 points by Student
Given that we’ve recently been flooded with posts about conflicts in relation to Ruby Central, DHH, Omarchy, Rust in Linux, and now Freedesktop, can we have a tag for this kind of thing? I accept that it’s important and on topic but I’d like to be able to take a break.
I believe they should just be deleted outright (and not just quarantined like vibecoding).
I think this is a coherent position to take.
Personally, I'm closer to the opinion that it might be healthier for the community if these are stated to be explicitly on-topic, and not given a tag so that they cannot be filtered out. Though, I recognize that might be a bit uncommon of a belief.
Can I ask a clarifying question for understanding where the “bright line” would be? Do you think topics/posts about Omarchy, say, should be on-topic and allowed, but not posts talking about how Omarchy's creator (who benefits from its use/adoption) has some problematic behavior/views/habits? How much meta/political/conflict content is required in a link before it should be off-topic?
Meta discussions are chances for the community to assess and adjust its own social contract / overton window of sorts. Clearly, right now, these stories are being posted and are not being deleted outright, so the moderators don't see that as the current desire of the community. That doesn't mean they're correct, but it does mean you're advocating for a change. I would appreciate some substantiation for why this is a better course of action than the one @Student proposed with a new tag (or, at least, better than the Status Quo).
All the best,
-HG
Personally, I'm closer to the opinion that it might be healthier for the community if these are stated to be explicitly on-topic, and not given a tag so that they cannot be filtered out.
Personally, lobste.rs is an escape for me from massive, angry comment threads the orange site tends to run rampant with. The people that participate in these threads have valid reasons to do so, but it's not always healthy for me to follow it. But I can't help myself, so I do.
Sometimes I want to tune into this type of discussion, other times I don't. Having a filter would allow others to dial it accordingly as well. On the contrary, I think it's healthier to give the community a choice especially for categories that become more frequent.
I want to be entirely clear that I am glad that lobsters is something of a safe space for you. But, to be a bit blunt, you are new. The world is pretty turbulent right now, and lobsters is a part of that world. It is impractical for you to imagine it as a viable place you can escape to; and anything done to enforce it as one will inevitably destroy anything of value here.
All the best,
New account, have read lobsters daily for over two years. But I get what you mean. And filters at least work with guests, so I’ve been able to use them previously.
Sometimes I want to tune into this type of discussion, other times I don't.
The hide button on stories is helpful for that. Yes, you have to click on it for every story you want to filter out, but I believe it's better than introducing an ill-defined tag that might be abused.
posts talking about how Omarchy's creator (who benefits from its use/adoption) has some problematic behavior/views/habits
How does that relate to computing? The rules are clear:
somethings that are off-topic ... "I wanted to see what this site's amazing users think about this off-topic thing", and defining the single morally correct economic and political system for the entire world
Technical problems are social/people problems in most cases so understanding healthy community dynamics is important too (in interviews, I ask how we can deal with this better) but actively litigating how bad so and so is, hurts our community and focus, turning it into the rest of the internet, which we shelter from here. (There is mild-benefit in understanding the so and so organization wastes effort on abuse instead of its core work, so we don't tether ourselves to something about to collapse - but again, we see that everywhere else.)
It relates because if you’re choosing between learning Omarchi and learning Arch the fact that Omarchi may be boycotted by people to the left of DHH is relevant to deciding if it has a future or not. Steve Kalabnik had a post about why he chose Rust years ago and is choosing jj now and one of the criteria is how likely the community is to be productive.
I am confused, because it seems like you just restated half of my 2nd paragraph and didn't address the other half:
but actively litigating how bad so and so is, hurts our community and focus, turning it into the rest of the internet, which we shelter from here ... so we don't tether ourselves to something about to collapse - but again we see that everywhere else
To be clear, every other space is constantly litigating these things, a big draw of our community is that it doesn't.
If someone shared the status/expected survival of the various communities supporting technologies with the goal of informing long-lived decisions, that would be lovely. But I have seen precious little actionable discussion in this direction, but a lot actively smearing stuff. You may hate so and so and I may hate so and so, but this isn't the place to bond over our shared hate just as it's not the place to bond over shared recipes and music.
If we wanted to fight or spectate, we could go to HN, Reddit or outside, this is a rare refuge.
I think this is the critical point: the fact that something should be discussed does not necessarily entail that it should be discussed here. Removing stories is not a statement about their importance, it's just a statement about whether they are topical for this specific website.
I never go to Reddit or HN. If you want to be on Lobsters but not see drama, they should add a drama tag, so you can filter it out. I shouldn’t have to go to other sites to see things that are programming related and important to making technology decisions.
We already have a rant tag for similar reasons.
How does that relate to computing? The rules are clear
well it's clear the posts about that are still up, just folded into one submission. we've had that discussion about topicality there, no need to relitigate.
Hmm. I'm quite a bit more skeptical that we're “focus[ing]” on “how bad so and so is.” I don't think that's what's happening.
In fact, I think the relevant part of the rules to this discussion is instead under Climate:
Abuse and bigotry are unwelcome.
Yes, a lot of technical problems are actually social problems; that means sweeping social problems under the rug allows them to fester (because muting is an insufficient technical work-around to a social problem).
All the best,
Don't envy the admins. Personally, I'm not sure sweeping things under the rug has practical utility. We are faced with a violent upending of our understanding of our place in the industry. Repressing this discourse might make matters worse; letting it happen with the same moderation as usual is optimal.
A tag would be fine. I recommend not calling it "conflicts" though!
Why not conflicts?
for me personally it's too broad. almost all of politics is conflicts. you can lump anything people-related into it no matter if it's a petty feud in a random matrix channel or an academic paper about community dynamics. I know you don't intend to capture all of that in the tag but it's not been formalized.
Knowing about drama makes you a better programmer (the Lobsters submission guideline) because if you are about to start a project with X but X has a lot of drama, X might not be as well supported next year.
The submitting guidelines say this:
If no tags clearly apply to the story you are submitting, chances are it does not belong here.
I worry that a conflict tag would encourage more conflict content
Not only that: if a tag's only purpose is to be used mostly as a filter, it is useless, because people will not use it, and moderators will have to tag it, which is not much different than a shadow ban on certain topics.
If anything, an opt-in, automatic filter of "controversial" posts* that people can activate from their settings page would be a better approach.
And I don't like this idea myself, because I guess the tools are already there: if I'm not interested in a particular submission, I can simply hide it.
* I leave the choice of what could be considered "controversial" to those who like the idea.
Edit (because I don't want to spam y'all with random ideas)
Just a quick note on just this part of your comment:
if a tag's only purpose is to be used mostly as a filter, it is useless
From the about page:
To propose a tag, post a meta thread with the name and description. Explain the scope, list existing stories that should have been tagged, make a case for why people would want to specifically filter it out, and justify the increased complexity for submitters and mods.
This seems to imply that tags are primarily meant to be used as filters.
Here's a thread where someone told me the same thing 3 years ago: https://lobste.rs/c/3tqchh
Thanks for pointing it out. I understand that I am wrong if we stick to the book.
I would add that tagging because an existing category is disproportionally shadowed by a related topic is, to me, not the same thing as tagging simply because it makes for a better curation experience.
E.g., imagine the "web" tag didn't exist, so submissions were tagged as "networking" instead. "web" serves as much as an indicator as it serves as a filter. Imagine you see that on the front page:
^ Mxyzptlk 10.0 released [networking]
vs
^ Mxyzptlk 10.0 released [web]
The tag adds extra information.
Now, imagine this:
^ Why are we forking Mxyzptlk [web]
vs
^ Why are we forking Mxyzptlk [web] [drama]
I have two things to point out here:
Yeah, tags both define topicality and serve to fine-tune that topicality for users.
For example, both 'programming' and 'zig' are topical for this site, but someone who it generally interested in programming might not be interested in the minutiae of the Zig language, and might choose to filter that out. Another user might be very interested in everything Zig and will use the tag to create an RSS feed or email alert[1].
I don't filter anything personally. I resort to hiding submissions when the discussion becomes overwhelming in the /comments section (I had to do that for a recent Jujitsu submission the other day)
[1] tbh I don't know if that functionality exists.
The community can suggest tags
Did my opinion contradict that in any sense? Expressing why do I believe this particular tag suggestion is not good is entirely different to saying that it should not have been suggested.
Sorry I think we’re talking at cross purposes. When someone makes a post on lobsters, other users can suggest title changes and tag changes. So, posts fairly frequently end up with tags and titles that were not put there by the original poster of the item.
Oh, OK, my bad. I can’t see how it improves the situation, though. If a tag carries any sort of negative connotation, the effect would be the same.
Although I can see personal utility in such a tag, I don’t think the net effect on this community would be positive. A terrible analogy would be asking for a “politics” tag because I want a break from any slight hint of it but, if it gets approved, a hypothetical group of moderators or a sizable gathering of community members could use it for purposes other than allowing well-intentioned people like yourself to take a personal break off the subject.
I see a similar meta post every few months (and now every few weeks lately) and it seems that the opinion I see on the comments is that users want to see tech with the people working on it removed out of the equation; interest for tech with disgust for people involved. I see people react more virulently to calling out of sexual harassers, racists and otherwise distasteful people than to people posting literal ads.
I understand why the moderation is the way it is, and I certainly don't envy the moderators either, but the way those subjects are handled certainly brings bad vibes. I'm not of the opinion that this should be a regular subject, but it is sadly a part of how technology, software, and especially open-source works; this feels like expecting corporate behaviour out of groups of volunteers, never to talk about the systemic issues and to instead have the users and moderation play the role of HR in hiding it from outside eyes.
I hope that we don't conflate following interpersonal conflicts with systemic analysis, and trying to not stare into the abyss 24/7 with completely disengaging from the people aspect. That goes for how the "conflicts" tag is applied but also for comments like this one.
When does a post deserve this tag? The distinction for the 'culture' tag is basically when a post is about how a community runs itself rather than the work of the project it's doing. Every post about what they value or how they manage their work is a disagreement with other projects or internal proposals for change. If the distinction is that responses are likely to get heated, what keeps this from creating a heckler's veto?
You really don’t think the current spate of posts about how so and so person or group is doing wrong to another person or group are recognizably different from other community and person posts?
If you want to see it, an articulable standard clearer than "a mod knows it when they see it" is a huge benefit. I'm not quite saying it's a requirement, but the bar for adding contentious judgment calls is higher. Can you write a tag description? Would a submitter know when to use it? Would even the participants in the events would agree a story should be tagged 'conflict', knowing that it's going to get filtered out and they all want visibility?
My proposed tag description: for posts otherwise on topic for the person or community tag discussing allegations of misfeasance, harassment, abuse, or controversial changes in control. Not necessary for posts on how to productively handle conflict which would be better under community or practices. If this is the only tag that fits or the community in question is not notable in the field of technology then the post is probably not a fit for lobsters. -0.25 hotness mod
Posts that consist of political or interpersonal accusations are not really in keeping with the spirit of our topicality rules, which bear repeating:
Will this improve the reader's next program? Will it deepen their understanding of their last program? Will it be more interesting in five or ten years?
Posts about organizing a computing community in the general sense are already covered by the culture tag and are barely topical, provided they are constructive. The counterarguments against narrow topicality tend to fall into one of two categories:
Lobsters is, on the whole, a constructive community and a refuge from brigading, which has the prevailing mode of most other social media, and is also explicitly off-topic here. Internal conflicts are fraught enough. Adjudicating external conflicts would be a misadventure.
Computing is a political act, therefore posts that are primarily about politics and secondarily about computing are topical. This is a slippery slope rhetorical fallacy made from the starting assumption that every community must take sides in every conflict. We do not.
This is also a slippery slope fallacy because it assumes every single user of Lobsters will be forced to engage with such posts and take sides, which is far from being true.
Nor is Lobsters a trial in which jurists have the option to abstain.
Except it does: admins don’t create specific tag for it, and also don’t ban the subject altogether. Each user decides by themselves whether the submission is relevant to them or not.
What posts about conflicts have been treated as off topic? TBH I agree that events and controversies that affect significant technical communities matter and should be on topic. I just want to take a break when they’re coming thick and fast.
meta-meta: we have the same discussion at any attempt to introduce a new tag. somebody wants a new tag, always to filter out something, somebody else counterproposes and wants the content to not be submitted in the first place, sometimes arguing that the presence of a tag encourages content being submitted. in the end nothing is done and a lot of energy is spent arguing over a "correct" taxonomy of all content ever, which completely misses the purpose of filtering.
And this should be pretty much expected. People asking for a tag for filtering purposes are indirectly asking for someone to curate the content they consume for free, in a way that is very much specific to the flows and tools they use to curate their content, and that may have unintended side effects on the overall community.
More than that, if people asking for a specific tag cannot agree on a trade-off and then delve further into bikeshedding and splitting hairs on why any other tag suggestion would not cover the exact set of entries they would like to filter, this is yet another sign that the original tag suggestion wasn’t well thought out.
asking for someone to curate the content they consume for free
Yes that’s what we’re all doing here together, for each other
... On a volunteer, best effort basis, and moderators get the short end of the stick in our little social contract more often than not.
One more illustration on the subject:
Exhibit 1:
^ I love Rust [programming]
-user 1 minute agomods please add rust tag
Exhibit 2:
^ I love sporks [cutlery]
-user_a 1 minute agomods please add fork tag
-user_b 1 minute agomods please add spoon tag
The mods won’t generally add tags and people don’t usually leave such comments because if enough people suggest the tag it will appear.
You are right, people can suggest tags! You mentioned that in previous posts but I could only understand it now. Oh my, that would make the problem even worse. Mods will have to work even harder because if a brigade suggests a tag that is highly likely to be filtered by others (such as "conflicts"), they can effectively suppress some topics or people. Pretty much like reporting innocent posts under some heinous behavior on other social media platforms.
what is the purpose of tags to you?
As mostly a lurker on Lobsters, none. I only interact with them when I submit new content.
I know I am probably weird on that regard, but I am a middle-aged man that grew up reading newspapers and news magazines and then I can simply turn my brain off and move on to something else when I see stuff I'm not interested in.
We have "person" and "culture"
Right and I want to see person and culture posts that aren’t about how one group is being horrible to another. Not because it’s unimportant but because I’ve had enough now. Those who need to talk about important conflict events should have that space.
I hope I don't sound glib here, because it's an earnest question, but why would you prefer a tag as opposed to clicking hide?
I think there have been a single digit number of these on this site in the past six months or so. And to my eye, at least, all have been easily identifiable from the titles. Spotting the title and clicking "hide" for those who don't want to read/participate currently feels simpler to me than adding another tag to the list. Especially since all of the posts are already covered by one or more other tags, so people will miss the conflict tag.
Needing to click "suggest" and select it yourself, while hoping that someone else also does the same before hiding it just feels like extra steps to me so far.
I count at least 10 in the last 3 weeks on the topics I mentioned.
And as to why a tag - why ever a tag? Between original posters and community suggestions we generally seem to end up with something like the right set of tags on each post.
I don't think adding a "conflicts" tag brings any benefit over those two tags; one or both would cover every one of the cited-but-not-linked threads.
And while there have been a handful of these lately, with the fixes to the hide feature recently, I now think clicking hide is good enough to get people a break from these threads when they do pop up, if desired.
There are plenty of community and person articles that are not about conflicts. I want to avoid reading about the conflicts.
If there's a tag for a subject, it's a sign that such content belongs here. However, I have zero interest in seeing internet drama here, therefore I think such posts should be deleted instead. There are already a ton of different sites where you can post about drama, such as Reddit, X, YouTube, Twitch, etc. I don't see why we need to have it here on Lobsters as well. Let Lobsters be a site for software engineers interested in improving their craftsmanship.
My interest is in software engineering, I have a job and family, my time is limited. It's of course sad that people have conflicts. But I don't have the time or mental capacity to engage myself in an unknown couple's Discord argument. And I also don't see how posting about such a conflict here would help in their conflict resolution.
As a community we’ve already decided this is on topic. People keep posting it, discussing it, and the mods don’t delete it. The only question is whether we try to identify it.
Your thesis is that the recent submissions about Ruby gems, Omarchy etc are because submitters are critical of DHH and want to rile up this community against him. But my reading is that the Ruby gem maintainers drama was initially seen as a potential supply chain attack, and only after discussion was the underlying root cause (DHH acting like a dick) laid bare.
Similarly, I've seen Omarchy first mentioned here in posts by DHH himself (1, 2). Having submissions discussing its qualities is on-topic.
Regarding your other example, a recent submission about inter-personal conflict at Freedesktop.org, I flagged it as off-topic and hid it. That's the correct reaction to submissions you don't like, not adding a new tag.
Your thesis is that the recent submissions about Ruby gems, Omarchy etc are because submitters are critical of DHH and want to rile up this community against him.
Nope. I don’t care why people are submitting it. I just want to be able to take a break.
I’ve had similar feelings recently; perhaps controversy is literally overrated? - It feels unfair to me that topics which are factual, and incredibly interesting (be)get much less (karma) points than highly emotional, light on insight, submissions.
On the one hand, communities are built by fostering robust exchanges of opinions; on the other hand controversy sucks up a lot of attention, and new ideas and discoveries and thoughtful important, but slow things end up sinking in the downdraft.
How about, say, halving any karma point given or earned via a topic that is predominantly controversial in nature?
I guess part of this is that much wider swathe of the user base feels interest in or competence at interpersonal / cultural stuff than in a particular - often relatively obscure - technology?
I am very interested in this topic, as you can see from my several comments. The OP makes very valid points, and I don’t want to sound like his proposal has no merit, but here are my two cents.
Lobsters allows users to suggest tags, which, to my understanding, are applied automatically if enough users propose a given tag. This is important because, from an information‑theoretic perspective, tags should reveal as little as possible about the likelihood of their being filtered by other users. Otherwise, a brigade could easily use “controversial” tags as a mechanism to limit the reach of specific topics or authors.
Of course, we don’t want to go down the rabbit hole and reassess already existing tags. That is not what I am proposing. What I am proposing is that any tag that could be highly controversial, yet applicable to any topic, can be abused for that purpose.
Lobsters is one of my main news sources for computer science and engineering because I trust the admins, moderators, and, most of all, the overall community. I am not insinuating that creating such a tag would cause chaos. I believe, however, that it may create accidental incentives for groups that misuse platform microstructures for personal gain.
As someone already pointed out in another comment chain, lobste.rs doesn't have that kind of adversarial relationship with its users - it is invite-only, and as I understand it, an invitee's actions weigh on the inviter's internal "reputation", making wholesale brigades unlikely
I was not talking about current members of the community, but rather of the incentives it may create and attract people that are very good at gaming systems like these. I really love the way things work here, but I don’t vouch for it being foolproof.
The correct way to take a break from a news feed full of important on-topic entries is to walk away from the computer. We are not at the end of history and things are going to continue to happen.
With all due respect, I usually like a Corbin comment even if I disagree, but this is is a rude way of dismissing the OP without making any kind of argument. Rust news is on-topic, should we remove the Rust tag? Maybe the "correct" way to interact with something is up to the user.
I think that using the word "conflicts" to describe the common thread between the given examples is disingenuous. I also think that the requestor's standard way of responding to top-level posters here is disingenuous. Given that they admit that there's no issue with topicality or importance for these examples, and given that they would like a break from the news, I can't find better advice than to point out that they can put down the newspaper.
If I'm capable of taking a break, then why aren't they?
I think that using the word "conflicts" to describe the common thread between the given examples is disingenuous.
What would your preferred description be?
I also think that the requestor's standard way of responding to top-level posters here is disingenuous
How do you come to understand what other people think if you don’t ask them?
I counterpropose human, as conflicts are only one aspect of human dimension of programming.
social or community seems more narrow alternatives. human can cover coaching, learning, convincing, and leaving.
I’m not trying to widen the scope of what is on topic, nor do I want to avoid all human aspects. I want to avoid the onslaught of posts about how one group of computer people are doing wrong to some other group of computer people.
Aren’t these easy to filter out already? 🤔
Avoiding conflict is like stop breathing. Conflict (in human affairs) is the father and king of all things.