I'm not inclined to allow to you make subjective statements as if they were objective. If you want to say, "I think you're stupid for making a mistake like that," then say it. Then it will be obviously dickish. And I'm also not inclined to let dickish statements, sutble or overt, go unchallenged, because it interferes with one of my goals, which is that novice programmers experience a helpful and supportive community, so that they grow up to be accomplished ones.
That an action is dickish is indeed factual. The guy attempted to make a positive contribution to our collective dialog by offering a story of his mistake. That took bravery and generosity. You admit you made a lazy negative comment, one you now seem to realize wouldn't help him. You were, in the words of Urban Dictionary, being "brash and insensitive", "put[ting] your own interests" first.
Your last paragraph is especially funny. By your own standards, my behavior is apparently fine, but still you complain. If you think it's ok to call somebody's mistakes stupid, surely I can point out your mistakes using negative tone. Funny how you think negativity is wrong when you're on the receiving end of it.
I wouldn't care about your negative tone if 1) you weren't talking about how bad a negative tone is and 2) if you were making any kind of decent argument.
I care about substance. Your comments have none. Thus they are irritating.
You're not inclined to "allow" me to make subjective statements as if they were objective? What do you think you are, the Internet Police? Go away before I laugh at you a second time.
You're the one who brought up "allow", so I can't say what you mean by it. What I mean is that I'm disinclined to let your dickishness go by unchallenged.
Your "OMG hypocrisy" routine is cheap and lazy rhetoric. I'm not saying a negative tone is universally bad. I'm saying that replying dickishly to a positive novice contribution harms the dialog by reducing future novice contributions. Whereas I think negative tone in reply to a dickish comment can help the dialog by reducing future frequency of dickish replies.
If you don't like being irritated by people calling you out to being a dick to noobs, maybe you could try stopping being a dick to noobs. Then we can all be less irritated.
Comments
I'm not inclined to allow to you make subjective statements as if they were objective. If you want to say, "I think you're stupid for making a mistake like that," then say it. Then it will be obviously dickish. And I'm also not inclined to let dickish statements, sutble or overt, go unchallenged, because it interferes with one of my goals, which is that novice programmers experience a helpful and supportive community, so that they grow up to be accomplished ones.
That an action is dickish is indeed factual. The guy attempted to make a positive contribution to our collective dialog by offering a story of his mistake. That took bravery and generosity. You admit you made a lazy negative comment, one you now seem to realize wouldn't help him. You were, in the words of Urban Dictionary, being "brash and insensitive", "put[ting] your own interests" first.
Your last paragraph is especially funny. By your own standards, my behavior is apparently fine, but still you complain. If you think it's ok to call somebody's mistakes stupid, surely I can point out your mistakes using negative tone. Funny how you think negativity is wrong when you're on the receiving end of it.
I wouldn't care about your negative tone if 1) you weren't talking about how bad a negative tone is and 2) if you were making any kind of decent argument.
I care about substance. Your comments have none. Thus they are irritating.
You're not inclined to "allow" me to make subjective statements as if they were objective? What do you think you are, the Internet Police? Go away before I laugh at you a second time.
You're the one who brought up "allow", so I can't say what you mean by it. What I mean is that I'm disinclined to let your dickishness go by unchallenged.
Your "OMG hypocrisy" routine is cheap and lazy rhetoric. I'm not saying a negative tone is universally bad. I'm saying that replying dickishly to a positive novice contribution harms the dialog by reducing future novice contributions. Whereas I think negative tone in reply to a dickish comment can help the dialog by reducing future frequency of dickish replies.
If you don't like being irritated by people calling you out to being a dick to noobs, maybe you could try stopping being a dick to noobs. Then we can all be less irritated.