Member of the "oh woe is me brigade"?

[Tracy]

Then honestly.. you have NO business posting in many circumstances on an any site (much less running a site). In MANY cases you ARE going to be confronted by alternative views, and sometimes aggressively. One should simply be adult enough to respond to those posts with reason without whining how you are "being abused".
NO admin site (nor even a site admin) should strive to be "politically correct". There are forums/sites for THAT specific discourse. Generally FACTS should rule and not opinions unless you are of a "chit chat" type site. If you (as an admin) can't deal with your or your users being called out on choices, and in certain cases being called stupid and given facts that support that premise... maybe you are too "delicate" to be running a site? Last I checked, calling someone stupid based upon their behavior that supports that supposition is NOT an attack, simply a statement of fact (something that at least ONE admin site that I know of was too stupid to be able to figure out). Not everyone plays by the political correctness code... some people actually TELL you what they believe. May that butt-hurt you.. very possibly.. but take the time to actually consider the THOUGHT given to you more than the words. It seems that WAY to many in our younger society can't delve that deep into a conversation/comment. They can only deal with it superficially.

Adults are able to deal with confrontation, even if it may be what they consider 'aggressive' and respond appropriately without going and whining on how they are "being abused" when confronted with alternative opinions. It really seems that much of our society has an inability to deal with confrontation and would rather go screaming and crying on how their are "being abused" by the big bad boogey man.
Sorry, there is a phrase for that in my generation, and it's not a nice one. Think rhymes with being a witch. And yes, that's not politically correct either... but whine like one, be compared to one by truthful adults.
I find it rather ironic (as a person almost in my 6th decade) how easily offended todays society is. I guess it is true that the older generation has thicker skin as they had to actually face MORE of life first-hand than current society has. Maybe one day the youth of today can grow thicker skin and actually be able to deal with dissension directly without whining and crying for the "mommy brigade"?

The point of this... when moderating your site.. use good sense and think of ALL positions.. not what is "politically correct" at the moment, whether that be to the left or to the right. Do some research before actually lashing out based upon your personal opinion.

 

[Arantor]

You realise that this post is very much the look you're complaining about, though, right?

 

[Tracy]

You realise that this post is very much the look you're complaining about, though, right?

But I have no issues with discoursing on those alternative views... instead of doing the "whine" that many seem to do.
When one bases ones moderation upon the fact that "they are a script provider and we don't want to offend them", then one will have issues, as not everyone is going to agree with a script providers stance. If they are being addressed with facts, those facts remain just that. Trying to "protect" them because those facts may make them look bad simply shows a bias, and that bias will ultimately run people off.

 

[Arantor]

Yes, by sheer virtue of age, you've got 20 more years on dealing with bad things than me. I've got 20 years more on the people just beginning their adult life. But you know what? You don't have to keep paying it forward. The whole 'political correctness' angle isn't about 'I can't deal with bad words' and your attempt to slander it as such is precisely why the term got phased out and replaced with 'socially acceptable'. Frankly I don't find you socially acceptable - even Matt had to call you out on your language which said an awful lot, I thought. I also suspect that was more the moderation angle at TAZ.

To put this into perspective, I'm 20 years younger than you, and I'm the oldest person in my company - there are people in my company who weren't even *born* when I started doing internet stuff. Which means I get to see a lot of the 'zoomer' culture and these attitudes very up close and personal. And the one thing I realised, it's not about censorship, nor is it about any of the things you're arguing about.

The approach of the current generation - which I'm one step behind on and you're two steps behind on - is an entirely different culture. It's one that runs on a sense of empathy. Foreign concept, I know. But we have meetings where I've held my hand up to admit to the group that I screwed up and it's *never* about blame. It's about 'I screwed up, here's how we make sure we don't do this again'. It's about understanding. There was also an incident where I was snapping at another member of our team and in most companies that would be a talking-to from the boss with a slap on the wrist, but when my boss came to talk to me, his first statement was 'you seem like you're not OK'. It's not about judgement, it's about empathy.

And that's the heart of what political correctness is *meant* to be about. It's people like you that co-opted it to mean 'words that you should just be OK with because I am'. What I find, and keep finding, is that people who complain about wokeness and about political correctness are people who just want to say whatever they want, unfiltered, with zero regard for whether there will be personal consequences, because they don't feel there *should* be consequences for saying 'what you think'.

The reality is that wherever you go, whatever you say has consequences. You can't control how other people react, but you can consider it before saying something. I won't pretend I didn't rewrite this post several times to 1) make the points I wanted to make but also 2) control the tone of how I said them to try and get my point across rather than just aggravating you.

That's really the heart of the problem, isn't it? You don't like the fact that people disagree with you, you don't like it that you're not treated as the centre of wisdom, because other people have different interpretations of the facts and factor in things other than just the facts that you chose to not do (or do differently). But you claim that you're OK with it because you're a big man and you can take it - but I assert again, the fact you're over here making such an emotively charged topic that doesn't rely on all the facts, on how people shouldn't make emotively charged topics that don't rely on all the facts... it's evidence that you're not making the point you hoped you'd make.

 

[Tracy]

And that's the heart of what political correctness is *meant* to be about. It's people like you that co-opted it to mean 'words that you should just be OK with because I am'.

Yes, us older generation had thick skin... words don't usually affect us. And that is where there is a disconnect. Younger generations have a harder time with dealing with things that they "don't like", preferring to live in a sheltered bubble. I saw that directly with 14.5 years of dealing with folks in circumstances most would not prefer, and in fact, that many of the younger generation has no desire to be involved in. To me, PC means not saying things because you may hurt someones feelers. Well, bad news for the bears, but if something smells like crap, it usually is. Matt & Company didn't like their actions being pointed out to them. Classic case I believe you brought up with Sphinx. It worked well in IPS and was fairly easy to set up, having in some cases a better use than ES. They took it out and didn't have anything online to replace it with. Bad business decision that they were roundly and soundly criticized for and were slow to resolve. The action of pulling it out and not having a replacement waiting in line for those that used (and needed) it WAS a crap business decision.

That's really the heart of the problem, isn't it? You don't like the fact that people disagree with you, you don't like it that you're not treated as the centre of wisdom, because other people have different interpretations of the facts and factor in things other than just the facts that you chose to not do (or do differently). But you claim that you're OK with it because you're a big man and you can take it - but I assert again, the fact you're over here making such an emotively charged topic that doesn't rely on all the facts, on how people shouldn't make emotively charged topics that don't rely on all the facts... it's evidence that you're not making the point you hoped you'd make.

Sorry to burst your bubble.... but I have no issues with folks disagreeing with me (in fact, we are doing so right here). My skin is also thick enough that I don't "report posts" that are/were ready attempts at trolling (I only report spam posts). I simply respond to them. You have facts that you can present to offset my statements and they are easily shown as correct then I have no problems with agreeing with those newly presented facts.

And THIS topic applies to ANY site. I have seen this same issue on two other sites recently (and even had a somewhat similar on my own), and it's amazingly ironic that it at least one was over someone saying that the weld job someone did was crap (and it was, looked like a 3 year old did it) when the poster was "bragging" about the professional roll cage they had built. The "welder" got offended and reported the post. Of course, the admins at that site laughed at the complaint - basically because ANY welder would have called the weld job crap. How do I know this? I happen to help out with the system admin of their OS... and as such I'm included in staff conversations.

And yes, when someone is talking crap (I try not to use the "s" word) I'll call them out on it. Even if they are IPS developers. Can YOU or ANY developer actually claim that a week of "testing" in a closed environment is adequate software testing time even with 20 developers "testing" it? Maybe for an alpha release of something, but not for a full release. The statement that 1 week is adequate IS crap for a paid software testing period. You don't even have time to get the software out for a LIVE BETA test in that short of a period, and THAT is where you are going to usually find your bugs, not in a closed environment testing. IPS has had (as long as I was with them) a habit of rushing stuff out and not doing adequate testing on it.... and then being slow to fix in a release, relying more on fixing it on a site as it cropped up.

Even on my site I had a user report a comment that commented to him on some issues he was having with his capture processes. What did he find offensive? He had been told that the edge of his stars looked like deer poop. It was what the commenter was familiar with to compare to as he's also an avid hunter. And when you actually went and looked at photos of deer poop, guess what... they were very similar to the stars that were commented on. Not round nor smooth. That commenter used a comparison point that he was familiar with.

complain about wokeness and about political correctness are people who just want to say whatever they want, unfiltered, with zero regard for whether there will be personal consequences

And why should one HAVE to worry about speaking plainly or "relearning" to speak. THAT is an issue that we have today.... people want to "talk around" something and worry excessively if they may say something "offensive" to another.... and they don't like certain words that have been in use by past generations as a "normal" point of discourse, but they have NO issues with using their "modern slang" that frequently is the same type of behavior that they complain about. Heck, even today we have certain words that are perfectly acceptable for use by some, but the "gasps of horror" come out when used by others. As far as I'm concerned... if the word is offensive for use by one, it's offensive for use by all.
I also believe this stuff about "Woke" is crap. People use it as a rallying cry to try to draw people to them.

There is a Florida politician that has taken the "war cry of Woke" to its extreme. If one is offended by the word "crap" then one has bigger issues in their life than spending time on a forum that they need to address. The world is not a "safe zone" for people.
I've been referred to as a "redneck"... guess what, that's an "offensive term" in society.... but I proudly wear it because in MY area, a "redneck" is a country boy that can do multiple jobs and do them well. Hell, I've even called myself a "redneck".
Words only give power to them if you allow it.

I probably should have used "A site".... in my case, I did specifically reference some issues that I had. Thanks for pointing that out and I'll correct it to reflect more accurately.

<edit> Oh snap...I DID actually comment about it happening on other sites in the initial post.... seems like someone keyed in on one word and then tried to spin up a position upon that word.

 

[Arantor]

Younger generations have a harder time with dealing with things that they "don't like", preferring to live in a sheltered bubble.

I wonder who taught them that. Or, perhaps, traumatised them to the point that that's their preferred coping strategy.

Now is as good a time as any to discuss participation trophies. A uniquely backhanded slap from your generation to mine and beyond - and you wonder why we have a thinner skin: it's because that's the way you lot raised us, we were all taught that we were all equal for participating and that winning didn't matter.

Ditto why my generation is having much more difficulty with rent than yours did - y'all pulled the ladder up behind you. Same reason that millennials are the first generation in history not to broadly lean to the right as they age out - because their wealth hasn't risen in line with age the way previous generations did.

And you wonder why they're rebelling against your way of thinking? Your ethos and mentality have roundly disadvantaged them - and they have rejected your philosophies as inadequate and inappropriate.

To me, PC means not saying things because you may hurt someones feelers.

It's a shame that that's not what the term actually means, then, isn't it? It's about remembering that words have meaning and that it's entirely possible to use language that doesn't just flat out insult people before we start the conversation. But you have the life advantage of being in every single category that doesn't have language targeted and coded against you by default. It's very easy to dismiss the concerns of others because you personally aren't offended.

Your nearly 15 years of seeing bad stuff appears to have traumatised you as well. It's also an appeal to authority fallacy, while you're at it.

Can YOU or ANY developer actually claim that a week of "testing" in a closed environment is adequate software testing time even with 20 developers "testing" it?

You have no idea what the real world looks like. A week of testing for a month's development looks like luxury to me. The reality is that I've spent the last decade amongst varying sized teams of people shipping software that is legitimately business critical, where I've had to push the client to do *any* testing.

I've literally had to tell clients that I won't release updates to their literal business website where they take their primary income from customers and everything without testing being done. Very often I've had customers up to and including C-suite level telling me to ship it to production, without anyone in their entire business testing it, purely because I tested it on my machine and if I was happy with it, that was good enough. And I point out: we're talking their literal client-facing business site that takes *their entire income* - businesses with a 7-figure turnover, I might add. These are also people working at organisations you've heard of that pull stunts like this - trusting *my say-so* as good enough for any amount of testing. Which is legitimately terrifying to me, but that's the world we live in.

The whole 'testing in production' meme is so much more real than you'd ever want it to be.

Even on my site I had a user report a comment that commented to him on some issues he was having with his capture processes.

People don't like being told that what they did looks like crap - even if that's a point of reference comparison. Who knew that comparing someone's output to crap would lead to bad feeling? It doesn't matter if it's familiar subject matter to the commenter; it's just another example of speaking without consideration.

And why should one HAVE to worry about speaking plainly or "relearning" to speak.

Because if you don't, you get woe is me topics like this. Woe is you for being reminded to consider that everyone else has feelings, that everyone else has struggles you know nothing about and that maybe, just maybe, you should park your ego in the parking lot, because it's not about you.

Heck, even today we have certain words that are perfectly acceptable for use by some

Yes, there are people who think that racial slurs are fine. Yes, there are people who think using religious slurs are fine too. Are they? Are they *really*? If they're not OK, why are other words OK?

Now, I'll grant you there are cases that even I think are way beyond the pale; the fact that YouTubers are encouraged to say 'unalived' instead of 'dead' for fear of upsetting their advertisers is egregious. But I refuse to believe that people would think about the term unalived and not have the same emotional reaction about death if they've been exposed to the term enough. Language changes.

But we're still back to words having consequences. Just because some words are acceptable does not mean they are acceptable for everyone, and does not mean you can go around saying what you want without consequence. Freedom of speech is not, and never has been, freedom from consequence.

I believe it was one of your countrymen who noted that it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. There's that consequence again.

Usage of language changes. What was acceptable 50 years ago isn't acceptable now. Times change. So must we. What is socially acceptable changes.

A generation or two before yours firmly and completely believed it was entirely acceptable to keep people as slaves, to refer to them as property. Do you agree with that? Even if you don't, your literal argument here is 'because a thing was this before, we must always accept it be called that now' without respect or regard for the people that it might affect.

And that's the problem: you can't have it both ways. Either you have it for all cases - that language can't evolve and things must never move on, or we accept that things have to move on, and that we don't get to pick and choose which terms we're comfortable with or not. Spoiler: the generation downstream from us accepts this in totality in practice. They don't pick and choose which set of terms they find objectionable, they just absorb the information and move on with their day.

I wonder who taught them that. That one I don't think was us - or you.

The "welder" got offended and reported the post.

And the age and demographic of this person is? You're insinuating this is common behaviour to 'the young'uns' but my experience tends to suggest it's not nearly as simple as that. Seen plenty of cases of people older than me flip the proverbial table in anger at being told no.

If one is offended by the word "crap" then one has bigger issues in their life than spending time on a forum that they need to address. The world is not a "safe zone" for people.

No, it's not, because people like you insist on that the world 'mustn't' be safe. You and your ilk continue to assert that the world's problems are caused by the fact we should just take all the safety rails off and let nature take its course, without understanding how or why those safety rails are there.

But I often continue to think the reason they're putting those buffers in is to protect them - from you. And vice versa.

 

[Tyrsson]

Can YOU or ANY developer actually claim that a week of "testing" in a closed environment is adequate software testing time even with 20 developers "testing" it?

That totally depends on the application and the tools/standards/CI/CD/devops setup the team has in place. If the application is TDD built in the first place with good code coverage then its A LOT easier to test overall.

 

[Tracy]

it's because that's the way you lot raised us, we were all taught that we were all equal for participating and that winning didn't matter.

Mayhap some... but my children were NOT raised in that way. They were taught they had to work for whatever they wanted. It's one reason that we didn't "give" allowances. There were chores that the children were paid for. And when they did whine about "not getting acknowledgement" for simple participation, they were told that accolades were earned for effort, not simple participation and not everyone had the same abilities, that in life, there are winners and losers. They were taught to say please and thank you, hold the door (for our boy) for females and that physical violence was rarely called for (and sorry, there ARE times that violence has to be used).
And yes, I have to agree, latch-key children are the bane of society. They then carried that parenting style forward and in many ways extended it to allow even more bad behavior. In many ways, Dr. Spock can be thanked for that. And sorry if you feel it's a accusation towards the younger generations... it's simply a repeated behavioral pattern. I see it regularly at a clinic I do free work for. The older employees do their jobs. The younger ones tend to want to spend "spare work time" browsing the internet, playing on their phone (frequently on games) and such and not pursue advancing their skill set when there are resources set aside for them to do exactly that in their "spare time" while on the clock, and they they don't see anything "abnormal" about it. Heck, in just the last 2 months they had to fire 4 new hires (18-23 YOA) that couldn't seem to be able to show up to work on time (and they get paid $15-18 an hour as office help) and when they WERE at work were shopping on the clock. Seems that those 30+ year old employees have no problem showing up on time and don't pursue those behaviors. Sadly, that clinic is looking at only hiring based now upon previous work experience in the field of at least 1 year. They have a few that are between 19-23 years of age that have no issues, but at least one of them I know their parents and they taught responsibility to them, so it's not all of the younger generation, but a noticeable segment of them.

And the age and demographic of this person is? You're insinuating this is common behaviour to 'the young'uns' but my experience tends to suggest it's not nearly as simple as that. Seen plenty of cases of people older than me flip the proverbial table in anger at being told no.

From his profile, he was born in 1997, and lived in the DFW metromess. The person that made the comment to him was someone that had been welding professionally for about 23 years, both on land and under water on pipelines. Pretty sure he was qualified to call the weld quality what he saw.

You and your ilk continue to assert that the world's problems are caused by the fact we should just take all the safety rails off and let nature take its course, without understanding how or why those safety rails are there.

Again, nope... my "ilk" simply says that the youth of today can't deal with confrontation of any noticeable sort. Conflict is unavoidable in life, that is a simple and well shown fact. Parents have waved teaching children how to deal with it to the wayside. Heck I see parents avoid telling their children "no" because "it might make them mad" out in public now constantly. Behavior that would have gotten my "ilk" a dose of corporal punishment is ignored.... and that type of "parenting" does those children no good.

Heck, that's shown regularly. My "ilk" when we were growing up in school had fights (physical) with each other and a day later were back to being friends. We didn't feel like we had to go grab a gun or knife to "get back" or "protect ourselves". Just look at the multitude of cases in the past several years of high school "sports" players assaulting referees or coaches because they were called out about something. In my entire school career (and the associated following 14.5 years in law enforcement shortly after getting out of school) I cannot ever remember a case where I worked or in the media of such behavior. Were there maybe cases of this happening... yep, but they were few and far between. This really started becoming an issue around 2002.

Spoiler: the generation downstream from us accepts this in totality in practice. They don't pick and choose which set of terms they find objectionable, they just absorb the information and move on with their day.

Bull... I'd give you a list of several words that are OK for one segment to use but the "gasps" come out in full force if others do but I can hear the screaming and the crying now if I did so.
If that word is offensive, it's offensive for ANY use, no matter who you are. If the word is a pejorative for one, it should be for all.
That's like telling someone that what they did was "stupid". My "ilk", if it turned out to be stupid simply acknowledges it was We don't get offended by it. We've ALL done stupid things and been told it was stupid afterwards. We don't believe in the philosophy of "trigger words". And yes, it's because we are a different generation, but the majority of us do exactly what you say.

Explain to me the difference between an eggplant emoji and mouth combined and actually saying "suck me"? Seems like the emoji process is accepted when the actual words are not? Or how about the egg plant and peach combined? Granted, it was originally in sexting between folks.. but it's "eeking" it's way into general communications. The simple matter is the images are "funny"...but the same words are offensive?

You have no idea what the real world looks like. A week of testing for a month's development looks like luxury to me. The reality is that I've spent the last decade amongst varying sized teams of people shipping software that is legitimately business critical, where I've had to push the client to do *any* testing.

Sorry to once again burst your bubble... but from an end user stand point (as the person that has to administer the software, report issues and deal with the fact those issues are NOT resolved in a timely manner), I know EXACTLY what shitty testing involves.... see another post about ECW (which costs WELL more than ANY forum script) and the crap they continue to distribute, and the likely future cost it's going to impact the clinic I do free work for.

But, this it taking us way outside the original topic area.

 

[Tracy]

That totally depends on the application and the tools/standards/CI/CD/devops setup the team has in place. If the application is TDD built in the first place with good code coverage then its A LOT easier to test overall.

I never said it wasn't easier.... what I refer to is that testing in a closed environment rarely equates to real world use, and a simple week of testing (especially of a major feature) rarely is adequate. ECW (a medical EMR) is a classic case of this. They "fix" one bug but introduce others by their "fix" implementation. It's a non-stop game of "whack-a-mole" with them, and I'm sure their developer environment fairly large.

 

[Tyrsson]

TDD means that the feature is built by writing the test for that feature before you actually write the feature (based on the purposed API(s)), technically speaking. The question then becomes, is the integration testing (testing how that feature integrates into the application itself) up to par and is the code coverage adequate? Many times the answer to those questions comes down to how well the components to be integrated with can be mocked. Historically speaking developers should not do functionality testing. They know how it is supposed to work and that foreknowledge skews the result. Just my two cents.

I would also say, that if they have a history of releasing with a large number of bugs... It tends to make me think that they are not doing enough testing at the code level and too much in a browser.

 

[Tracy]

I would also say, that if they have a history of releasing with a large number of bugs... It tends to make me think that they are not doing enough testing at the code level and too much in a browser.

It's an almost continuous cycle with them... and for the cost of their EMR software, you would expect better. Heck, right now they STILL haven't fixed the software to enable the installation of EKG software that they used to support (and still show to do so) and was able to install through their devices panel. And the issue is a simple matter to fix.... they make a call to their FTP site to download the modified for ECW EKG software.... and that FTP call fails from their installation routine. You CAN reach it when using an FTP program, so it's not a connectivity issue. I reported that bug to them over 9 months ago. They will remote into the desktop having issues and their "solution" is to manually download the application and then manually install it.
It's honestly so bad that the clinic is seriously looking at another EMR, and at a cost of around $80K to migrate over to.

 

[Tyrsson]

they make a call to their FTP site to download the modified for ECW EKG software

In my example this would have been covered in previous test. The integration testing should have caught this as it would have failed when mocked and the test for the new feature ran

After reading your post again... Not sure if testing in a browser really applies to the software in question, but my point still stands. It appears that there are holes in their CI/CD pipeline.

 

[Tracy]

After reading your post again... Not sure if testing in a browser really applies to the software in question, but my point still stands. It appears that there are holes in their CI/CD pipeline.

ECW, also known as eClinicalWorks... one of the major providers of medical EMR software in the world. They charge the "low" fee of about $7200 a year per provider for their software (includes billing, which has many issues that are the majority of the bugs we deal with).
Pretty sure with 6000 employees and such a limited target audience, they aren't exactly a small business.
The clinic is actually looking at moving over to EPIC (10K + employees)...which is what I recommended originally when they were looking at moving from Welford.
But even your statement reinforces what I said... unless you have VERY stringent standards and testing procedures, 1 week in inadequate. I'm pretty sure that even using your provided standards, introducing "new features" resulted in bugs that were not anticipated since they weren't tested against in real world environments (which many testing environments can't recreate, only being able to test under "perfect" conditions).

 

[Arantor]

Best laugh I had all morning, thanks Tracy!

 

[Tracy]

Best laugh I had all morning, thanks Tracy!

You are very welcome... I always try to entertain... now back to gathering my flats before the sun rises to high.