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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:08 PM

    Like, OK, we've got clean running water now, we've got soap, we've got [checks notes] the forum management equivalent of an orbital ion cannon for dealing with the abuse or harassment of our community in our open forums., and I guess we're on our way to penicillin. We're going to be OK.

    Being trusted to provide the foundations and tooling of that psychological safety to a team of the finest people I have ever worked with, and delivering on that promise, has been the high point of my career.

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:15 PM

    But again, there it's the same story. Matrix is still a _little_ convoluted as far as onboarding is concerned, but it beats the heck out of IRC's "learn a new OS and hope you don't get disconnected" cliffs-of-Dover learning curve, and the numbers again reflected that. Invest in community accessibility, and community safety and tooling ergonomics, and the line goes up.

    Not a line made out of rageclicks, manipulation and misery, just the steady growth of a community worth being a part of.

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:36 PM

    Anyway: the Linux kernel could have that. Any community can have that, really. But the real work is the humility of admitting you might need it.

    And a lot of people - not just proud but _justifiably_ proud, for all their accomplishments and success - can easily find themselves trapped in the kind of blind spot you can only be trapped in by the atrophy of that humility, from a mere failure to welcome and foster enough diversity and dissent.

    Where you can no longer change without failing first.

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 5:00 PM

    Anyway: The worst thing an organization's leaders tolerate is what that organization becomes, and the blast radius of a single toxic contributor is huge and largely invisible. For everyone who speaks up to say this behavior isn't acceptable, there are dozens or hundreds of smart, competent people who peer into your community, see that this is how you live and move along without your ever knowing they exist, on their way to a better life somewhere else.

    We don't have to live like this.

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  • mhoye but seasonally spookymhoye@cosocial.ca
    Oct 15, 2026, 7:59 PM

    A final, selfish addendum to this: I do consulting work around questions of cultural health, process improvement and accessible cultural change. If you'd like to have a conversation about that, let me know.

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  • technomancytechnomancy@hey.hagelb.org
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:29 PM

    @mhoye man, I wish my experience reflected this

    we have IRC and Matrix both as fully endorsed options and the Matrix route has dropped off significantly in the last few years; it's about a third or quarter of IRC at this point

    (they're bridged together and the bridging experience is kinda shit from the IRC side but pretty seamless from the Matrix side)

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  • U+002Ccb@treehouse.systems
    Oct 15, 2026, 7:42 PM

    @technomancy i was in shock about the moderation tools part. going to matrix for moderation tools is like going to the desert for water

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  • Like Mucas :pumpkin_ugh:mwl@io.mwl.io
    Oct 15, 2026, 4:45 PM

    @mhoye

    The more competent you are, the more important humility is.

    Never listen to your own press. Always put yourself in other people's places. Never internalize people's praise of you and your work. Always listen to others' experiences of your work, and of you.

    Yes, you have to decide who to listen to, but still.

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  • slashagreeable_landfall@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 5:03 PM

    @mwl @mhoye

    "Always listen to others' experiences of your work, and of you."

    The very *best* yearly review I ever had was when my boss very directly told me what I was doing that he didn't want, and what he wanted me doing instead. Most reviews are generic, because bosses are uncomfortable with this sort of criticism. Which means neither of us gets better.

    It's ironic that my _worst_ rating was my *best* review.

    This is how we improve, both as employees and as people.

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  • slashagreeable_landfall@mastodon.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 5:23 PM

    @mwl It worked out well. I'm really good at hitting the target, once I'm told what it is. So I immediately pivoted, and did the things he _specifiec_ that he wanted.

    He came back in a month, telling me I was doing exactly what he wanted, and that -- if I kept it up -- we'd do a mid-year to erase my bad review, which would make me eligible for a raise at year-end.

    Until that point, I had no idea a bad review meant NO raises for _two_ years!

    Easily my best boss ever.

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  • Jonathan Corbetcorbet@social.kernel.org
    Oct 16, 2026, 1:18 PM
    @sackofbones @Netzblockierer @torvalds @mhoye Perhaps consider trusting a project (and its leader) that have delivered increasingly capable kernels and a strong development community for 35 years?

    I am not thrilled (to put it lightly) about this rush to LLMs, but I don't think that this sort of attitude makes things better.
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  • mirthmirth@mastodon.sdf.org
    Oct 15, 2026, 6:29 PM

    @mhoye I think the availability of robo-coding also lowers the casual contributor bar for fixing the couple problems they care about in a way sufficient for their own use, while the work to contribute upstream does not. A hostile upstream culture will just mean those changes get orphaned, or more forks or entirely new projects. That is not to say this is good, but the relative costs are shifting in a significant way.

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  • SackOfBones (any/all)sackofbones@kolektiva.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 6:34 PM

    @mirth Well that'll lower the overall quality of software, even if there isn't a hostile upstream culture and ai seen as just a tool*. It may be significant but that doesn't mean it'll last all that long, the titanic was pretty significant...

    * It isn't
    @mhoye

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  • Shae Erissonshapr@recurse.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 7:37 PM

    @mhoye this is also why ignore doesn't work in any community. New people assume the behavior they see is acceptable. You must actively remove people who exhibit unacceptable behavior.

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  • Thomas DepierreDi4na@hachyderm.io
    Oct 16, 2026, 3:09 AM

    @mhoye i work and plead mors on the build tool and compiler and rest of tech tool aspect side of things with the same arguments.

    And I think it is far less important than the one you point out (and probably harder to fix funnily enough).

    So thank you for expressing it <3

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  • rcgj, procrastinator 1°- 4° (at times)rcgj_OxPhys@floss.social
    Oct 15, 2026, 10:32 PM

    @cyberquixote @wronglang @mhoye iirc, that's what Linus thought: smth along the lines of "hey guys, here's a quick hack to use until that microkernel good stuff takes over"

    Edit: Ish. """
    […] in a public newsgroup, Torvalds […] argu[ed] MINIX has inherent design flaws (naming the lack of multithreading as a specific example), while acknowledging that he finds the microkernel kernel design to be superior "from a theoretical and aesthetical" point of view"
    """ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbau

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