The Cult of the Hacks has a number of strong principles that are held to be self-evident.
The Cult of the Hacks also has a number of principles that are held not to be self-evident. However, since they're not self-evident, it's very difficult to agree on what they actually are. Being a reasonably flexible cult, our members can choose which of the non-self-evident principles to follow. This is fortunate, since some of them may be contradictory.
Misconceptions
There are a few commonplace misconceptions about what principles hacks hold. While freedom of thought means that some of our members may in fact hold these principles, they are not commonplace, and certainly not among the self-evident principles.
Pedantry
There is a common misconception that hacks are ultra-pedantic and habitually argue over technicalities. This is untrue, however there are a number of related behaviours that sometimes give this impression.
- Rule drafting: Hacks like rules to have the minimum number of possible interpretations (ideally only one). Therefore we spend a lot of time making sure that the drafting is correct and consistent. This does tend to involve at least one discussion of commas per rules draft, admittedly. For the same reason, we tend to be very thorough in checking other people's rules chages.
- Social pedantry: A number of us are pedants in our spare time. We tend to keep it out of our work, though.
There are a number of people who seem to take perverse interpretations of documents to extremes, and the Cult has collected a list of words and phrases to avoid in documents based on this behaviour. Regardless of popular prejudice, it wasn't us. We were sitting there wondering how normally sensible people could be arguing over the exact meaning of 'feasible' too.
Anti-collegiate behaviour
This misconception is very Durham-specific, there don't seem to be parallel misconceptions elsewhere. Nevertheless it gets believed that we are in some way 'out to get' the colleges. We're not. Some hacks may not like their own college, some hacks may not like the behaviour of certain prominent individuals within colleges, but there is no anti-college line or plot.
- A large proportion of hacks have held college positions (including Exec positions, including President) in addition to (or instead of) DSU positions.
- Most hacks believe that the college system has a large role in the strength of involvement in Durham.
- Most hacks also believe that there are flaws in the college system, as there are in DSU, but we don't believe in either case that removing the system is the way to fix the problems.