Comment by evanelias
13 hours ago
> All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public
No, they're not. Unlike a conversation, a public announcement is a one-way, one-to-many communication.
> A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.
In a social setting, with a limited number of participants, sure. But in an internet forum, with an unlimited number of participants, people fail to make reasonable attempts to respond to the entirety of others' comments on a fairly regular basis. And there is absolutely no widespread social obligation otherwise.
But this is all entirely irrelevant anyway, because a software project is not the same thing as a conversation in the first place:
> the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.
Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
> respond to the entirety of others' comments
You are mischaracterizing what I wrote. I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
> Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation I described in the second paragraph here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310060>.
> I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
OK, but that's still clearly not the widespread social norm in internet forums. For better or worse, it's quite common for commenters to not make any reasonable attempt to respond to sub-threads.
> Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation
I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
> I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
Do you mean to say that you think that it would be completely socially acceptable for a maintainer to act as in my hypothetical exaggerated hyperbolic situation? Would you respect anyone who actually did that? Would you remain friends with anyone who did that? Really?
2 replies →