People on the Internet had behind anonymity to post their hatred, strong beliefs, emotional problems and more. You cannot "wish" this problem to go away. It is human nature. This is precisely why Mark Zuckerberg (and other tech billionaires), and their naive view of the world, have contributed to the divisiveness, instability , destabilization and hateful speech in our world. The more people are fighting and hating each other, the more conflict there is, the more people will click and the more money these companies make.
People blame this on "corporate greed" but this greed occurs because of investors, for the most part, who demand more and more profits. On the Internet people post anything and the more conflict there is, the more money tech providers make.
It takes a lot of courage and determination to run a tech site where "goodness" and "doing the right thing" ranks above profit and greed. There is a very old saying in English, which goes something like this:
Quote:
"It is very expensive to stand on your principles."
I am paraphrasing, but standing for what is good and what is right in the world, is not profitable, generally speaking.
We have a long standing culture here (unix.com) that no one can bully others and I founded these forums on that principle and it will never change. I have zero respect for people who bully others; and I have seen this over and over with people of all walks of life. If someone cannot "win" on the merits of the facts, attack the person. This will never happen here. Facts matter. Bullies are considered "low life" and will be banned.
On "discussion culture", I have been planning to revise the rules for 2020, and I hope to put a stop to this habit by some people here of writing code for people who put zero effort into their own solution and do not post their system details or what problem whey wish to solve (in words and code). It used to be that when someone asked a question and did not give any details, our leadership teams here tried to have more of a discussion, asked the poster what system they were using, the details of the problem they are trying to solve, etc. Over the past few years, I see some people just write some line of code without encouraging any discussion, getting the poster to discuss their actual requirements, system details, etc.
Anyway, I have plans to revive the rules later this year to try to encourage more discussion and less "here is your code candy" , something like (have not really thought about this because have been busy on other projects):
Quote:
"UNIX.com exists to teach people about how to solve their own problems. You must post your system details and write in words and in code what you are trying to accomplish. Questions will be answered in code unless posters provide the system details and what they are trying to actually accomplish". (Have not really thought about this yet)
Today, I often seem people post code in response to terse questions without any real discussion or encouraging users to discuss what they are trying to do.
For me, "Discussion Culture" means we should be encouraging people to discuss their problems and learn to solve their small tech issues themselves not just writing a few lines of code for them. However, I am not really encouraged over what I have seen lately, where a number of people over the last few years seem to cut off discussion by posting code solutions before a poster has even shared any system details or discussed what they are trying to "really" do.
That's about all I have to say on this for now, as I'm just busy with myriad other projects, so I have not addressed this. However, I do believe our long standing rules need to be updated for 2020.
PS: People are getting very sophisticated in posting homework as "work related". This is one reason we want people to discuss what systems they are working on and what real-world problems they are facing.
