whodaloo wrote:dezzmont wrote:whodaloo wrote:This is a topic about hostile feedback, not the fucking moral fiber of our coders. Good god.
Related topic. Or at least the perceived lack of fiber ties into a lot of the antagonism, which I personally feel comes down to a highly unprofessional attitude
generally held by the coders.
Many people feel like they hold themselves to no standards, hence most feedback is very personal. If you want people to talk about the issues and not you, you need to not be the issue yourself.
Furthermore this thread wasn't just about hostile feedback, but about policy as well. The opening post is asking a question about re-organizing and making coder-player relations more formal. Pointing out there are very glaring organizational flaws in coderbus is completely relevant to that discussion. Forget about developers vs coders, which is relevant to a feedback meta-discussion. A lot of that is opinion based, I am a designer and I am design biased. Talking about an inability to enforce quality code resulting in systemic mistrust and hostility towards the code team is relevant to feedback forums hostility, and even if the theory I have isn't correct these are problems that need to be adressed.
I disagree with the assertion that the coders are at fault for the attacks on them. I think there's a boogieman mentality on TGstation that's to blame for a lot of the negative feedback on these forums. I agree that coderbus could probably use some ground rules, or at the very least coders could use some people skills, but saying that coders are the 'issue' in question re:Hostility is something I disagree with quite heavily. All you have to do is look back at the topic- on the first page, stuff like
Delicious wrote: So... You can dish it out, but you can't take it.
Malkevian wrote: Hyperbole? Thats literally a paraphrase of a Paprika post.
Aren't problems with the coders in particular, but rather the community's view of coderbus in particular. I think rather than jumping on the codebus's back for perceived moral failings, some sort of zero-tolerance policy for personal attacks should be put in place, at least in regards to feedback threads. I'm sure there are people out there who immediately go >kickin' rad place to be, but I'm not suggesting stomping down on criticism in general. "This change sucks dick, because x y z" is a-okay, "This change sucks dick because pap/aran/whoever made it,
ban he" fucking isn't. This policy would obviously go both ways- the codebus is no stranger to sniping people they think are shitters, but if they can back up their arguments I don't see any reason why their input shouldn't be taken.
tl;dr coders are friends not food
It is such a given that people making baseless personal attacks should be taken seriously. Saying we shouldn't tolerate baseless personal attacks is obvious, but the problem is that many coders take their changes very personally, and in design attacking motivation is an important aspect of discussing changes. The cult change thread for example had people pointing out that the changes were made from a point of extreme ignorance. It got personal, and in some ways was an attack, but was still relevant. Pointing out someone doesn't understand what they are doing and being able to back that up is a very powerful argument. As long as people were not saying "God you are dumb" its kosher. Blatant personal attacks don't seem to even be happening from what I can see scrolling through the first page of feedback. So either you are talking about stuff off the first page or feel like things going on now that are rather benign are personal.
In the PR world, an image problem where you are a boogyman is always your fault. Every time. Doesn't matter if the reputation is deserved or not, you earn a reputation over time.
And I have worked very extensively with coders. I have had to stop personal harassment going on off IRC and off the forums, working in the back end of skype. There are still people here who have told me directly that they dislike the players, think they are idiots, and have no real right to an opinion. Saying anyone is blameless in having an image problem is always always incorrect, but some coders work especially hard to earn it for the group.
Saying we shouldn't tolerate baseless personal attacks is obvious, but the problem is that many coders take their changes very personally, and in design attacking motivation is an important aspect of discussing changes. The cult change thread for example had people pointing out that the changes were made from a point of extreme ignorance. It got personal, and in some ways was an attack, but was still relevant.
Policy issues exasperate personal failings of people. Players don't like how coders historically have talked down to them, and they have talked down to them publicly and in private. And when a coder blatantly shows a lack of personal work ethic by implementing changes that are self admittedly not finished, or by ignoring bugs in a product, it pisses people off against all coders.
I know for a fact things are not as bad as they used to be in my day. It is downright impossible. A lot of my opinions are colored by having to deal with Pinku going on paranoid rants against conspiracybus, or Erro being fundamentally unable to work with Muskets. These people left a legacy that you all have been saddled with and need to overcome.
But I know a lot of coders who are still about who are problematic and not at all good at collaboration, more importantly these people got so problematic because of systemic flaws in coderbus in terms of public relations and orginization.
The TL;DR: is that while coders may be friends, not food, you can't start fixing PR problems within bus until you fix glaring organizational flaws that everyone can see. No one is going to trust you when the system is so easy to abuse and people have been shown willing to abuse it. It isn't saying coders are evil, you guys just have legit problems you need to work out if you want to make your lives better.
cedarbridge wrote:Cheridan wrote:From the very outset you had a "I want to code but I don't want to be a Coder" mentality
When "be(ing) a coder carries its own stigma of being a closed off member of a club that has expressed disinterest in the playerbase and player feedback in the past, I can understand why somebody would take this position. Nobody wants to be "a politician" but many want a direct say in government and want the ability to make changes in the world. Attacking him for not wanting to join your club as though that were some sort of sin is a pretty good example of why many refuse to join the bus or even touch the coding project.
Being a coder is a thing. It has always been a thing, and pretending it is not is disingenuous. Coders treat each other differently, are treated differently by players, and are very certainly treated differently by the admins. They have a large amount of influence on how the game develops, far more than other players even though supposedly they simply code and don't decide on actual changes. They vary in how official they are, in my day every coder got admin as a matter of fact, was on a master list, and had commit, where as now commit was slashed very heavily. Now they are a looser group, but they are a group, it is why they are talked about in in-group out-group terms. You don't need to be an official thing to be a thing. America doesn't have a class system but it totally has a class system for example.
We can talk about the ideal of them being a not-thing, but they are a thing. It is exactly like claiming to 'not be a politician.' It is blatantly false and you can't even make progress on fixing problems if you refuse to believe they are there. If you believe an official coder status is a problem. Which I honestly don't think is a problem save for problems in coderbus.