Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Steve Long <slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: Proposal to ease flames
Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:42:00
Message-Id: f974tj$kii$1@sea.gmane.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] Proposal to ease flames by Roy Bamford
1 Roy Bamford wrote:
2 > Steve,
3 >
4 > I've in lined my words of wisdom ... you may not agree with them but
5 > they are mine, after all.
6 >
7 Heh welcome to the first amendment ;) UK, you say? That's the 51st state..
8 /me wanders back on-topic.
9 > On 2007.08.05 02:36, Steve Long wrote:
10 >> I was thinking about the recent discussion re flames and firefighting
11 >> on the dev m-l. One thing that occurred to me, as a user who has been
12 >> on one side of those, is that it would have been better if I had
13 >> never been able to post more than two posts in a day. (I mean this
14 >> for the technical dev m-l, not project.)
15 > That's ok as long as you only want to respond to flames and be off
16 > topic. It would limit the noise a non dev can create. As soon as you
17 > want to use -dev for its intended purpose, it would cramp your style.
18 > This could not be usefully automated
19 >
20 Yeah but this is a mailing list, not IRC. As a non-dev, my input
21 necessarily has less technical weight, since I am unfamiliar with gentoo
22 development processes and policy. In normal circumstances, I usually just
23 read the list, and if i have any questions i try and answer them myself. If
24 i post, it means i haven't got a clear answer from irc, prior ml or
25 bugzilla discussions. Given the timescale on a ml, 2 posts per day is
26 plenty for me to ask about stuff that isn't clear.
27
28 >>
29 >> That's plenty for me to say "I think that's out of order" and to
30 >> answer a response, but it also means I can't get too emotional if I
31 >> get flamed by a stressed-out dev.
32 > Nor can you easily take part in technical discussions, should you want
33 > to :)
34 >
35 See above (not being pedantic; not ignoring this point is all.)
36 >> After all, since the proctors have gone, there's no one to respond in
37 >> anything like mail-list time in the (admittedly unlikely ;) event
38 >> that there is another flamewar on the dev list and more cogently
39 >> no-one to mute a troublesome user (in real time). A dev who is
40 >> consistently anti-social (especially out of the blue when they should
41 >> just ignore the thread) can be dealt with by devrel. (And have been
42 >> in the past.)
43 > After the fallout from the "Bubble thread" that lead directly to the
44 > death of the proctors, -dev appears to have calmed down. I'm not sure
45 > if that's because the proctors got so much publicity over that one
46 > incident that everyone knows of it and reviewed their behavior, or if
47 > they have just gone on summer holidays. I think this list will help
48 > take the pressure of -dev too.
49 Agreed.
50 >>
51 >> If the user is making a valid point, surely others will post in
52 >> support, and in any event they can respond the next day. That would
53 >> minimise the chance that a user unused to the rough-and-tumble of dev
54 >> behaviour would react in a hostile manner, and can in no way be seen
55 >> as censorship of the user community, at least to my mind.
56 > If you are making a valid technical point, your posts don't need to be
57 > throttled. If not, you should not post to -dev at all.
58 >
59 Yes, but for a novice user (in terms of interaction with the dev m-l) it's
60 hard, and people make mistakes. The first time i got flamed I was totally
61 bewildered by it. The three or four times that's happened since, I was
62 still totally blindsided, since I thought I was posting common-sense,
63 typically to try and present the other side of the argument when someone
64 was being misunderstood. (Please don't review all of my mistakes, I am
65 aware they /were/ mistakes.) You then find yourself drawn into a flamewar
66 which you were trying to calm, typically by one of the participants being
67 offensive to you.
68
69 >>
70 >> What do you think?
71 >>
72 > Social problems demand human in the loop control. That's why courts
73 > have (skilled ?) judges for sentencing, not just a look up table of
74 > offence - punishment.
75 >
76 Yeah but this isn't punishment. It's just acknowledging that the list is
77 specifically for technical development, and that devs have more to say in
78 that debate. Since there is a history of misunderstanding with users, it
79 makes sense to me to limit the user posts to two per day. If there is a hot
80 buzzing thread which I have to respond to, it'll still be hot tomorrow (if
81 I can't be bothered to review the threads first.)
82
83 And let's face it, more new users are interested in stuff that belongs
84 on -project (if not help from the user m-l) like "Why are devs so prickly?"
85
86 > A part of Gentoos problem and probably other OS projects, is that most
87 > devs are still learning their social skills. They are school or
88 > university students.
89
90 Heh ok. I'd also support a more proactive devrel in that regard, ie actively
91 monitoring the list, as a quid pro quo for limitation on users. This to me
92 is about helping devs to deal with users, which is part of the process for
93 being a dev in the real world.
94
95 OFC if everyone thinks this is a silly idea, no problem. List seemed
96 quiet.. ;P
97
98
99 --
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