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Comment by freetime2

7 years ago

Usage of the word "toxic" is quickly becoming a pet peeve of mine. I see it used all over the place recently to describe groups of people who, while they may exhibit some unfortunate traits, will not actually cause you to get sick or die. More often than not calling people toxic feels more like a way to write off people with whom you disagree or who you simply dislike.

This isn't to say that people in e.g. the open source software community don't behave badly. They absolutely do behave badly. But rather than just labeling someone toxic and assuming that everyone agrees and shares your definition of "toxic" - I feel that everyone's interests would be better served by actually describing 1) what exactly the problematic behavior is, 2) why it is bad, and 3) how to behave better.

TL;DR I find usage of the word "toxic" to be toxic. :)

6 comments

freetime2

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pdimitar  7 years ago

Or maybe you simply disagree with the author of the article and are seeking a way to undermine her opinion and overwrite it with... your opinion? :)

That's how your comment came across to me.

  • freetime2  7 years ago

    I did not offer any opinion other than I don't like using the word toxic to describe people. But since you bring it up, my opinion on the article is that the author is in no way obligated to contribute code to open source communities that she doesn't like dealing with. In other words, I agree with her. I'll even go a step further and say that I support codes of conduct for online communities if they encourage civil discourse and encourage more people to participate.

    As for my motivations - my comment was actually more inspired by the comments here than the original article (61 occurrences of the word toxic at the time I write this). Are you now going to suggest that my intent is to undermine everyone who used the word toxic here and replace their opinions with my own? Or are you willing to accept my plea to stop referring to people as toxic at face value?