[bphogan]

You got feedback from a frustrated user, and I'm sure you didn't just dismiss it internally, so why did you dismiss it externally?

Listen, I'd love to be able to write what I want, teach what I want, and do what I want without getting sarcastic reviews. But unfortunately people get frustrated and that's how they respond. "Oh, a tmux book? Who needs that?"

"You suck" is very, very different from "the thing you built sucks."

Customer service 101: Go punch a punching bag, have a cry, have a scream, have a drink, whatever. then reply with

"Thank you for your detailed feedback. It's most welcome. We've already started taking appropriate steps to build better guides and tutorials. We'll roll your feedback into those. We're always working on improving Ember's documentation and every bit of feedback helps."

And then go do those things you want to do for a while.

No disrespect, but this guy gave some pretty valuable feedback that I love to get when I'm working on a book. He told you exactly where the holes are, and those are so easy to miss when you're too close to the subject matter.

[trek]

In any other venue, I would 100% agree and would not have responded this way. Delvarworld's tone is totally mild and in keeping with typical internet culture.

But Discourse's goal is to raise the bar. Significantly. They blog rather eloquently about it http://blog.discourse.org/2013/03/the-universal-rules-of-civ...

And new topic posters are asked to keep that high standard in mind when posting. I'm sure his sarcasm was meant lightly, but it still deviates from the high quality of discussion I'd like to have, and rather than simply ignore a discussion where I was specifically invited, I opted to publicly explain why I wouldn't be participating.

What I failed to do, and this shows my failing to keep that high bar, is explain what we could change to make the discussion civil.

[tomku]

I can't help but feel that you're doing an excellent job of proving that a single short, civil post can do more damage to the community than any amount of slight sarcasm. If "absolute civility at all costs" is the basis for Discourse, I'd much rather try to have high quality discussions elsewhere.

Edit: The link you provided has "responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content" as part of a list of things to avoid.

[FireBeyond]

That rule/principle seems a quick route to Wikipedia's meta-drama. Where things are not about what is true, but what is verifiable, and what is verifiable is about someone's arbitrary standards. Where an argument can be "rebutted" with "WP:NOT WP:SOMETHING WP:NORLY".

Demanding that other people (ahem) discourse with you in a way espoused by the philosophy of your forum software seems, at best, counterproductive, and at worst, openly hostile.

One wonders, would the result have been the same if such "sarcasm" had been used in praise of the library? Would it have been ignored due to "tone", and "not meeting Discourse's goal"?

Speaking of which, what? If I sign up for a support forum, I'm signing up for that. If FormumSoft 1.1's backend engine and developers are all about 'increasing awareness of mung beans', am I somehow at fault because OtherSoftwareDeveloperCo decides to use their engine, whilst I personally have disdain for mung beans?

[trek]

Which is why I opted to say "I'm sorry, I cannot respond".

[jaggederest]

Can't you see that that, in itself, is a response?

To not respond would be to not post at all.

Edit: After reading the FAQ you linked elsewhere, your response is explicitly tone-based and unhelpful. I believe that violates the polite discourse rule more than anything the original poster said.

[trek]

As the saying goes: "You can't not communicate."

Not responding is also communication. So I responded.

Privately, to the poster, with a long explanation of the kind of conversation on this topic I'd love to share, and publicly explaining why I wasn't going to chime in after having been asked to.

Most people are assuming my only response to him is the one they can see. They're mistaken.

[anigbrowl]

I'm sorry to be blunt, but You're Doing It Wrong. You are not the arbiter of how to have a good conversation, but the nominal go-to person for Ember.js documentation. From a cold reading (ie not being an Ember.js user and not knowing any of the participants in the discussion), my reading of Delvarworld's commentary is that s/he worked to soften the blow of his/her criticisms by couching them in gentle humor, and describing systematically the thought process and frustration encoutnered in trying to get to grips with this tool. A lot of people would have just said 'this sucks/is stupid' or something worse.

Slapping the poster down in public without any attempt at a substantive response, and then sending a long private explanation of how you should be communicated is a major dick move.* You are arbitrarily setting yourself up as a superior being and deflecting wholly valid criticism by making such public pronouncements. Following up with a private message is not much better, because it prevents the recipient from having the issue out with you without breaking the implicit confidentiality of email.

* Since you referred upthread to 'dickitide' I am presuming the term 'dick move' is not going to be offensive to you.

Your role as a community member is not to lecture other people in how they may address you (within reason, there's no reason you should have to tolerate outright abuse), but to exemplify the standards you wish to propagate. If you use community standards as a shield to deflect substantive criticisms of your work, voluntary or not, then you are undermining those very standards by using them for exclusionary purposes. The fact that you are in a distinct minority in this discussion and are defending your position by arguing that dickitude is the norm and you are the exception ought to serve as a red flag for you.

My advice is to apologize to the original poster (ie Delvarworld) for your dismissive reaction and then engage with that poster's substantive criticisms. If you truly feel unable to engage with someone who is engaged in the mildest kind of personal expression, then perhaps being in a liaison position is not for you.

In the meantime, I urge you to revisit the Discourse blog article you linked to (where you cited the 'don't be a dick' principle) and keep reading to (at least) the section titled 'Be reasonable, even when you disagree,' which includes a plea to avoid 'responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.'

[nacs]

I'm one of those people that has found Ember intriguing and have also found the getting started/documentation lacking and can understand people's frustrations in the original thread and in this HN thread.

It's strange to me that you're trying so hard and making so many posts to basically fight and counter anyone and everyone in this thread (including the original forum post)..

Try being a little more positive and view the feedback not as an attack against you but as suggestions for improvement from people who are legitimately trying to help. Spend your energy saying less "no one understands me, he was rude to me in the forum post, you guys are all misunderstanding me, etc" and more "I/We will get this done".

Look at wycats' post about what documentation is available and how he is looking to improve it as opposed to your posts. His post is helpful and constructive and makes me want to one day give Ember another go (when documentation improves). Your posts are all "No no no. He doesn't speak like a perfect gentleman when addressing me and I wish to challenge him to a duel".

[tomku]

You chose to respond to the tone of the post while ignoring the content, while simultaneously claiming that you aren't actually responding. That's both annoyingly passive-aggressive and exactly the opposite of what the Discourse guidelines encourage.

[kenko]

And yet of course you could have responded. You could in fact have simultaneously pointed out that you find the tone of the original post unfortunate and then also addressed the substantive issues raised therein. "I can't respond" is ludicrous bad faith. Nothing is stopping you.

[marbletiles]

So what you're basically attempting is the Discourse equivalent of a StackOverflow "This question is offtopic" thread-close. Good job.

What you're attempting is amateur anger management. It doesn't work like that. Your approach is almost classically designed to escalate tensions, not defuse them.

[trek]

It's probably relevant to note that we haven't heard from delvarworld, who I reached out to personally explaining in greater detail why I was opting not to reply and what we could do to create a discussion we'd both want to participate in.

You're only seeing the brief, public acknowledgement that I wouldn't participate despite being called out with an @ reply.

The tension only escalated when people from HN decided to chime in.

[anigbrowl]

It's entirely possible that you haven't heard from delvarworld because that person felt hurt and humiliated by your public response, which may also have colored the impression made by your follow-up private communication.

It's also disingenuous to say you were called out; a third party (locks) mentioned that you were the appropriate point of contact for suggestions like this. In no way could this be construed as a challenge or mockery of you personally.

I don't wish to belabor the point so I will not comment further about it. I just urge you to take a step back and try to consider the whole conversation from the perspective of a neutral third party.

[kenko]

"I'm sure his sarcasm was meant lightly, but it still deviates from the high quality of discussion I'd like to have"

Sarcasm and quality of discussion are orthogonal. It's very easy to have 100% "civil" discourse that is of absolutely no quality, and the only difficulty in having high-quality sarcastic discourse is the difficulty inherent in having high-quality discourse sans phrase.

Civility is a purely formal virtue (the virtue, in fact, of specious op-ed pages, where the only discursive sin is an uncivil tone), and it's far too common (one sees this in political discourse especially) for "lack of civility" or "uncivil tone" to be used to exclude people who are, often justifiably, frustrated or passionate about the topic at hand. It is of course possible for someone to be so relentlessly rude that there's no point in further (nb further!) engagement with them, but that clearly isn't the case here. It looks, to be honest, as if you're indulging in the first plausible excuse to avoid engaging with the problem the poster raised---and, what's worse, pretending, as you do so, that your hands are tied.

There is really no reason why all complaints or issues raised should be couched in a hands-off, disinterested tone. (Or rather, the only reason that all complaints or issues should be so couched is that normatively bad but instrumentally unfortunately good reason that otherwise people will take your tone as an excuse not to engage.) You're doing yourself no favors by getting on this particular high horse.

[JohnHaugeland]

> But Discourse's goal is to raise the bar. Significantly.

Well then it's probably not the right place for ember, because programmers don't behave that way, and your response has been to lock down all forms of criticism, even things you find to be in keeping with internet and programmer culture.

That's criticism you need - criticism you say is in keeping with the culture, and that you say you've been actively soliciting.

.

> "[the sarcasm] still deviates from the high quality of discussion I'd like to have"

I think what you might be missing is that nobody else is reading it that way except you. Most of us are trying to tell you "guy, you're being way over-sensitive, and you aren't rising on your own to the standards you set for others."

.

> "I opted to publicly explain why I wouldn't be participating."

And the response you got was "you're lowering the bar; stop it."

And you have dug your heels in to insist you're doing the right thing.

We disagree.

.

> "What I failed to do, and this shows my failing to keep that high bar, is explain what we could change to make the discussion civil."

What you could have done is responded to the actual legitimate criticism, which you pay lip service to being appropriate in typical internet culture.

Dancing around it then shutting the topic off is not a form of keeping a high bar, sir. It is my opinion that this phrasing is self congratulatory, so that you don't have to face the nature of what you're actually doing.

Have you considered that your behavior here is doing serious damage to the reputation of the ember community?

It doesn't really matter if you agree with yourself; the rest of us don't. Repeating yourself, "clarifying" yourself; these things don't matter.

In reality, someone joked around, told you what they needed; you paniced, and yelled at them for giving you what you pretend you want. Then you told everyone "oh this is totally appropriate, but Discourse wants something else."

Except Discourse didn't do this. You did.

Please understand, sir, that to the rest of us, you just appear to be back-pedalling and blame shifting.

To the rest of us, it looks like you barked at someone because you didn't want to know that your role as documentation maintainer had not been well fulfilled.

And "explaining" won't change that that's how this is being interpreted, because if that's what really was going on, someone would respond by "explaining."

Civil discussion doesn't mean discussion you like, and it doesn't actually exclude sarcasm, either. What civil discussion is is factually based discussion which does not make personal attacks.

He didn't make personal attacks. You did, extensively, in three places that I'm aware of.

If you find him to be uncivil, get a mirror.

[Jgrubb]

Thank you for that Tmux book. I found it very helpful.

[bphogan]

You're most welcome. I'm glad it helped.

[re_todd]

Thank you for your Web Design book. As a programmer, it gave me the confidence to explore the design world.

[bphogan]

That's really, really cool to hear. Thank you so much.

[Uchikoma]

Thanks for the Tmux book from here too.

[bphogan]

Thank you as well.