[gmemstr]

This seems to be slowly clearing up.

Regardless, can we talk about the conduct in this GitHub thread? I know every community is different but is it common to have memes and jokes posted this quickly and often in a GitHub issue? It makes it really hard to follow and discourages genuinely useful discussion of workarounds or progress.

[lm28469]

Some people getting in the workforce in the last few years have troubles making the distinction between work and play contexts. It's extremely visible on github, slack, &c. which are more and more looking like discord / reddit (gifs, memes, random jokes in the middle of serious discussions)

[allendoerfer]

Like everything else, Eternal September also got reimplemented in JavaScript.

[edoceo]

History:

Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993, the month that Internet service provider America Online began offering Usenet access to its many users, overwhelming the existing culture for online forums. -- Wikipedia

[OrderlyTiamat]

The irony of this comment is palpable.

[allendoerfer]

Resistance is futile. Just give in.

[jtdev]

In my observation, this demographic is most densely concentrated in the JavaScript community. Not sure what that says about the language itself, but there’s definitely a glut of unprofessional JS devs out there.

[leetrout]

I really think it’s just because it is the most popular and accessible language to the masses we get a larger sample of the population.

[nicoburns]

I think there's also more demand for JavaScript devs than other languages, and consequently there are more junior developers writing JavaScript.

[xtracto]

Ooh back in my coding days it was PHP. And before that in my undergrad years was Vb6 ... which provided me and several other programmers with lots of frustration and consulting hours to fix the mess the owners' kid made while "programming" their new CRUD system.

There will always be a "cool new" language attracting newcomers and kids.

[matsemann]

You say it like it's a bad thing? It's possible to be both professional and have some fun (not talking about the linked GH).

[hans1729]

Having fun is not whats discouraged.

Rather: if I'm looking for the solution for some problem, I don't want to scroll through memes, because I want to be productive, getting things done. Spam/fog in the resolution-thread obviously doesn't help with that; the opposite is the case.

[mikehollinger]

Basic moderation in some form would be useful there. It’s interesting - there’s not (that I’ve seen anyway) a tremendous amount of spam or for the most part off topic conversations in in github issues. I’ve seen phishing attempts (I think) that seem to be “hey just go download and run curl ____.sh | bash” and you’ll be good to go occasionally but that sort of banter isn’t typical (at least in the circles I run in).

[easytiger]

I mean there is a difference between having fun and conducting yourself in a professional manner where appropriate.

With the increase in adoption of certain technologies (node etc) I have noticed a relationship with the people employed to work with them and their poor level of professionalism in the workplace with regard to their work and how they deal with other people (in the UK) and even how they dress. Similar age groups in other areas don't display these traits.

A number of these people work as contractors as well, so at least it was easy to get rid of them.

Go post memes on the LKML and see what happens

[Shacklz]

> [..] and even how they dress.

While there are many points in your post that I agree with, we really should stop worrying about how people dress.

If it's a developer sitting behind a computer screen all day long with zero customer contact whatsoever, he really shouldn't be forced to wear a certain dress code just to satisfy someone's standard of professionalism. Such feelings are in similar spirit as "woman should not wear trousers" a few decades ago - there is just no rationale behind it other than conditioning by society.

[scoutt]

> conditioning by society.

There is a limit. I'm sure you have one too if you really think about it. Is it tattoos all over the face? What about sandals? Or shorts? Or going bare-feet around the office.

I don't know... It's about people giving me money for work. I don't feel like I can go to work dressed like any given Sunday.

[ElFitz]

> I don't feel like I can go to work dressed like any given Sunday.

And why not? As you said: they are giving us money... for work. Not for playing dressing up.

If they expect otherwise, they should be clear about it up front and give a good reason to give up on that freedom while we work for them.

[wolco]

Tattoos, someone's skin color or moles on people's facing at work doesn't bother me. Someone complaining about it would.

Sandals/shorts/barefeet? It's winter here but in those brief moments of summer please do that. Wearing a three piece suit means you won't be able to work as hard during the heat wave.

[dwild]

> It's about people giving me money for work.

Work is the key word here. Is you work is about dressing yourself up? Then why makes it about this?

Do what you are paid for, working.

[Blaiz0r]

In addition to the first reply to your post, you may find it strange but having dress codes actually help promote diversity in workplaces.

[gruez]

How?

[matsemann]

I'm not saying I want memes everywhere, but since I'm spending 1/3 of my life at work I'd rather it be a good time.

> Go post memes on the LKML and see what happens

I think the seriousness (almost angry tone) in certain communities also is a disservice to attract new members. If I make my first PR in some project, it's easy too feel attacked when the reply is a negative one, albeit strictly professional. If it however has a more light-hearted tone and a bit more sandwiched fun-serious-fun one feels more welcome.

[seabird]

The serious tone is a huge draw to the LKML and that way of working. They really do care about not having left-pad type meltdowns. They really do care about being able to find information easily, even years after the fact.

There's a big difference between shooting the shit in your private communications and cluttering up places where people are looking for solutions.

[pdimitar]

Contrasting an opinion you don't like with the other extreme is usually called a strawman and is not a good way to argue.

As others have said, I too am not against a light-hearted tone. But when you have a legitimate problem that might be blocking you from doing your work and your only source of information is a GitHub issue then it should go without saying that the information should be dense and compressed and it should absolutely lack memes, yes.

[raxxorrax]

I work badly with people that pronounce professionalism as a form of conduct too much to be honest. That said, my professional conduct on the technical side is always to vendor that shit if the project is of a nature that allows doing so (mostly restricted to proprietary software). Even for builds. There are harsh disadvantages with doing that if maintenance is disregarded, but these are problems you can tackle yourself instead of being dependent on third party tools working.

The sheer numbers of users of NPM says that this can happen from time to time and the stability they are providing is nothing other than exceptional.

Otherwise professional conduct mainly comes down to creating an atmosphere of noncommittal distance to deal with difficult personalities. I think being subjected to it for too long should disintegrate any personality, because it is completely unnatural. Hard to imagine people longing for more of that.

[vsareto]

It should get quarantined into a different channel or server. If not, and you don't like a bunch of shitty meme spam, it's difficult to filter out while keeping your coworkers unblocked.

[scoutt]

I think it's fine to joke, but even if I try, I really have to make an effort to not get angry when someone at work or an external replies with something written like this:

"yeah, u know, i could do it better, lol".

Edit: to add that I agree with the idea there is a problem with people making a distinction between work and play contexts.

[lidHanteyk]

The problem, specifically, is that folks use humor to mask the fact that they don't know or understand what's going on.

[kingludite]

Do the jokes count towards the 10X ?

[MattRix]

This is the first time I've seen "&c" used instead of "etc", I had to look it up. Interesting abbreviation!

[Finnucane]

It’s a typographic convention that goes back to the early days of printing.

[Hamuko]

Why would anyone use "&c" considering that it doesn't actually save any key presses?

[Symbiote]

Keypresses is a pretty poor metric to base communication upon. It annoys me to see "w/" and "w/o" anywhere except Twitter. The meaning isn't clear to many non-native speakers, and it's jarring — we recognise the most common words by the shape of the whole word, so it's easier to read "with" and "without".

"&" is a ligature for the letters "et". A traditional way to handwrite it, other than as &, is a "crossed epsilon", something like Ɛ̸, which looks more like "et". There's a Unicode character closer to this form: 🙲. I have no preference between 🙲, &, etc. and et cetera — none is common enough that I would recognize it by shape while reading prose.

[MivLives]

The Unicode character you suggest is closer doesn't seem to render on my Mac. & and Ɛ̸ do though.

[Hamuko]

Keypresses is a pretty good metric when doing abbreviations.

[ilikepi]

How about as a stylistic choice? There are lots of little choices like that one makes when writing that together form a person's individual writing style.

[inopinatus]

Not sure what you mean - “et cetera” is nine keystrokes.

Nonetheless, Tiro would approve. ⁊c.

[rebane2001]

Probαbly the sαme reαson some people use αlpha instead of 'a' in their comments

[blackandblue]

i would! for the succinctness of it.

[drfuchs]

It’s very old-school; check out newspapers and books printed a century or two ago.

[twsted]

I think he means "& Co.", "and company".

[Frost1x]

You can also blame current corporate practices and culture in the development industry for encouraging this sort of behavior and tailoring environments to attract fresh grads.

It's certainly acceptable to blow off steam but there are times and places for that. The official issue thread is not one of them. It looked like a Reddit post more so than the official NPM repo. I have nothing against Reddit just pointing out it's a reasonable venue for this sort of commentary (or even HN).

The thread looked like folks celebrating like the power went out and they'll be going home from school for the day instead of "oh crap, this is my job and I have to fix this issue or my livelihood is at risk because I decided to have no backup plans in place for such a situation where NPM is down."

[avereveard]

there's also quite some personal contributors in github, for these it's not a work context to begin with

[danShumway]

Agreed. Github isn't a purely professional tool, and NPM isn't a purely professional tool, and Javascript isn't a purely professional tool.

I'm seeing comments on here that some of these people are acting like high school kids. Some of them probably are high school kids.

And that's fine. One of the biggest goals of Open Source in the first place is that software shouldn't only be developed and used by professionals. If you want that reality, you have to tolerate that unprofessional people are sometimes going to be part of the surrounding conversation for some projects.

In short, if the NPM maintainers hate this, they can modify community rules or remove spammy posts. And if they don't hate it, then I don't really get what the big deal is about allowing people to be unprofessional when talking about code -- other than maybe arguing that Github should have better filtering tools for readers.

[Sharlin]

Indeed, Github intrinsically caters for both hobbyist coders (some of whom may be quite young) and professional devs. Some degree of culture shock is inevitable.

[andreareina]

It's not about employment status. Injecting noise into a channel that is currently being used to diagnose a severe bug affecting many people disrespects the time of those working to fix the issue. Other, more appropriate venues are available for people who want to blow off some steam.

[dspillett]

Yep, noticed this on our local Teams groups too. The deluge of animations can be incredibly distracting and fill space making it more faf to go back and check details from earlier in the discussion.

</old-man-moaning>

[adonese]

In GH in particular, I’m not sure why images are allowed to be rendered in comments at all. They are almost always harmful. External links can be used instead

[tehbeard]

UX of seeing the screenshots for a bug inline outweighs it being used for the occasional meme.

And it's consistent with the rest of GH's markdown parsing for README, issues, etc.

[saagarjha]

Issue screenshots? I work on a video player and almost every issue has a screenshot in it, without which we would be very lost.

[Symbiote]

I find them very useful when working with software with images (e.g. maps), and when users supply screenshots with their issue reports.

[ccmcarey]

It's disappointing. I commented saying as such - https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/836#issuecomment-586990343

> Posting memes/jokes in an issue wastes the time of people who actually need to be able to read through the issue.

> Stop it. Use emoji reacts if you feel the need.

In two minutes I have 24 dislikes and 13 likes. I think the introduction of emoji reactions was a bad idea, it gamifies the issues system.

[vhakulinen]

> I think the introduction of emoji reactions was a bad idea, it gamifies the issues system.

It depends on the community. I've seen many where the reactions are genuine and actually serves a purpose. From what I've seen, its almost always a popular js/node project that attracts this kind if behaviour like seen in this thread (based on my own observations).

Last example is vscode's santa hat[1]. It seems that that thread is mostly empty now but I remember there was huge meme thread going on in that issue or in reddit/hn when that thing was happening.

1: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/87268

[Sharlin]

JS/Node is the entry-level programming environment of the current era, like PHP used to be, and the community norms (or lack thereof) reflect that.

[vhakulinen]

Your comparison of today's js/node to PHP from 20 years ago is interesting.

I wonder if javascript will be in similar place in 10-20 years that PHP is today (e.g. "its not like it used to be and things a actually quite good now")? The language it self (javascript) might be there already, but is the community anywhere close yet? SQL injections used to be the thing PHP was known for in the past but not so much these days (the community is more experienced?). Meanwhile, problems with NPM and the whole packaging situation is what javascript is known for these days, but will the be so on 20 years?

[wbl]

Javascript is a far better designed language than PHP. The identifiers don't have lengths picked because the maintainer used length as a hash function to name one notorious feature.

[vhakulinen]

Thats just one data point, and for which you could argue that javascript has not one, but two null values: null and undefined.

PHP got (or is getting?) type hinting, while javascript doesn't have such thing (typescript or flow doesn't count). Javascript is event loop based, while PHP is (afaik) request->response based. These days, javascript usually is compiled for web, while PHP just sits there on the server and you can swap out the source files when you upgrade. You could go on and on.

[aosaigh]

I actually noticed your comments as a voice of reason and upvoted. I have a feeling that the issue in question was probably linked from some Discord/Slack/subreddit and everyone just jumped on the bandwagon.

[aequitas]

The countless +1 and "Same here" comments without additonal info are a huge problem as well on Github. A simple click on a +1 button would suffice instead of a full comment. It's especially irritating when you follow a lot of issues hoping to get notified when there is a resolution but instead you get spammed by people making these pointless comments.

[nonbirithm]

It's a social problem rather than a technical one at this point. When Github had no emojis people had no choice but to leave '+1' comments. Now even with that choice some communities still comment in this way for some reason. Commenting is open-ended and moderation would be needed to filter out the repetition. People can also post GIFs, but they can also use the same image upload functionality to post screenshots of bug repros. It hinges on what the user believes is the better choice for getting the point across.

About all you can do is change the mindset of the community making the comments, which is hard as they're numerous.

[RL_Quine]

It makes it impossible to actually follow critical threads, as the notifications are completely worthless.

[bartread]

Not related to GitHub but the same issue is a pet peeve of mine in Whatsapp and Facebook messenger groups as well. Everything's a message so you end up getting notifications for people sending thumbs up or what have you[1].

It really clutters the conversation so when you're trying to find, e.g., the flight information, or the link to $IMPORTANT_THING, that somebody posted a few days ago you end up scrolling through screens and screens of total guff.

I wish there was a quick way to collapse messages that aren't relevant or useful, and that goes for GitHub issues as well.

[1] Apart from the fact this is distracting, and potentially a nuisance if you're working, driving, whatever, it also drains your phone's battery.

[zaphar]

I think this is partly a result of two things.

1. GitHub presents an interface that encourages Reddit style behaviour.

2. NPM outages are essentially a meme in themselves at this point.

Both of them together create a perfect storm.

[bovermyer]

I have no comment on #2, as I don't play in that sandbox.

However, regarding #1... the interface allows people to post images in their comments on issues. This has a valid, useful reason - for showing screenshots of bugs, for example.

The problem is not the interface. The problem is the people using the interface.

[danShumway]

Eh... I think 90% of the complaints people have here are related to the interface.

1. When I sign up for updates I get spammed with notifications -- you should be able to listen only to updates from the project maintainers.

2. I can't find the official status -- again, this is a problem because the official status is buried inside a conversation thread. This could be pretty easily solved by allowing maintainers to pin comments, or by (again) allowing filtering comments by project maintainers.

3. Replies to comments get lost in the memes -- because Github issues don't support threading, and (again) there's no filter by replies or mentions.

Or...

4. Memes just make me mad because they're unprofessional -- and okay, this one is the community. But I just can't muster the energy to care about this, or to feel sympathy for the people who care about it. If we were talking about abuse, or 3rd-party unwanted advertisements, maybe I could get on board. But a gif is not a real problem.

The fact that Github has literally no searching at all on issue threads is the fault of the tool, not the community. The fact that NPM doesn't have an official status page is the fault of NPM, not the community.

[bovermyer]

That's... a really well written counter. Consider my opinion changed.

[avinassh]

I don't work with JS or related ecosystems, but how common are NPM outages?

[christophilus]

It’s been super reliable, in my experience, and given their traffic volume, I’m pretty impressed with that.

[wolco]

The other day I needed to use it for the first time in a year. A package that is used in many other packages host by npm was returning a 404. Slowly stackoverflow started to fill up with similiar questions.

Apppearly 4 important packages were unavailable in my region because they were deleted by accident. Some people were vpning into Europe, I found an Italian mirror.

Not sure if things are always that crazy but I don't have a reliable feel.

[rebane2001]

Hackernews presents an interface very similar to Reddit - it's more about the community than the interface

[dajonker]

From the outside, it seems like Javascript developers are all in high school, participating in a popularity contest, feel the need to sprinkle emoji everywhere and communicate solely with memes and gifs.

[LandR]

>> participating in a popularity contest

This almost entirely explains the entirety of the javascript ecosystem and the seemingly ever increasing number of, and frequently changing popularity of, the various frontends frameworks. It seems a hype driven ecosystem, so it's not surprising it's also full of people posting memes and such.

[foo101]

> From the outside, it seems like Javascript developers are all in high school

I wonder what the reason is for this kind of behavior to exist only in the Javascript community? Could it be that a vast majority of Javascript developers are really in high school? Are there any good stats sources for it?

[seemslegit]

well...

[aosaigh]

It's embarrasing. I think posting memes like this is an easy way for people to feel creative and edgy while being nothing of the sort.

[bangboombang]

Idk, it wasn't much more annoying than the 400th person chiming in with a "me too" before that. I already might have completely missed a comment explaining the situation between all these.

Actually those animated gifs might have been better than all those "me too", since a text-only post informing about the situation would have stuck out much better.

[swalsh]

Most companies try to stay professional, and many people carry that behavior into github. However I have worked at a major tech company that trended closer to "millenial" in age. There memes were an everyday part of the corporate culture. Professional emails quite often would have a meme included. I can see someone coming from a corporate culture like that thinking it would be perfectly normal to carry this behavior into a public github issue like this.

[crmrc114]

I was at Amazon and meme wars were common. I get that it may seem absurd but when done at the right time, humor can help people defuse a tense situation.

I am honestly surprised about the number of very upset people in this thread and the trashing of millennials. Yeah the ass of every workplace generational joke- most millennials have kids going to college now.

If you think millennials like memes Wait until you work with some zoomers. A lot of people screaming get off my lawn right now.

[wolco]

Memes are a lazy person's attempt at humour. I can't wait to see what post-millennials come up with to replace these placeholders for humour.

[jeltz]

I do not get this. My first job was at a company which had very unprofessional communication internally (for good and bad) but we always made a clear distinction between internal and external communication. There is a time and place for everything.

[swalsh]

Perhaps our business is a part of it, we were a B2C company, and our communications with customers attempted to tend towards "cool and fun".

*FYI, I did not work at GrubHub, which probably fails the most at pretending to be cool and fun.

[bengale]

> company that trended closer to "millenial" in age

25-40?

[mFixman]

Is this a new thing though? Bug threads about important issues were full of animated GIFs for the decade I've been following them.

[aesyondu]

I would say it is a reminder that there are humans on the other side of the screen, instead of GitHub bots. :)

[Yessing]

I think it's just that writing is seen as the primary mean of communication.

if something goes bad at work, someone (orally) always makes a joke to defuse the situation. This is the same thing happening here.

[tokai]

>It [...] discourages genuinely useful discussion of workarounds or progress.

Does it though? Sounds like an opinion.

[gmemstr]

Sure, it's an opinion, but I've been keeping an eye on this issue since very early on, and I have seen some mentions of workarounds. Best of luck finding them, however, as they're buried somewhere in the middle.

[jamil7]

> Does it though? Sounds like an opinion.

Given that the comments in question add absolutely no value to the issue and instead insert a bunch of visual noise and fog then I'd argue it's not an opinion.

[tokai]

>absolutely no value

This is the opinion part.