Re: [gentoo-project] Cross Post due to technical component - Thanks for all the fish

[Kent Fredric]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:35:12 +0000
Craig Inches <craig@×××××.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have decided to stop involvement with the Project as a proxied
> maintainer, and to stop pursuing becoming a developer. Two main
> reasons for this, one the community is at times openly hostile on the
> mailing lists and IRC, of which I have asked people on IRC about whom
> have responded this is the norm(once in awhile vents is fine it
> happens but this has been consistently visible) this is ignoring
> cultural differences that may cause misunderstanding; Secondly the
> community is very insular and unwelcoming to new comers.
>
> In twelve months of working with people only 2 have actively
> encouraged involvement (shout out to Idella4 and pacho for this), some
> projects didn't respond, or if they did they provided no details or
> feedback to those of us who where new and trying to contribute.

I'm sorry you got this impression of us collectively. :).

Its too difficult keeping a group of people motivated, tension free,
and productive in opensource ( Though I do get the distinct impression,
talking about the problem simply exacerbates the symptoms, so much energy
wasted this week on talk of CoC that could have easily be spent on something
useful :/ )

> don't want to mention names about the negatives because I don't blame
> the individuals; it too me seems to be systemic within the community.
> I have a few comments about how I think you could improve things, but
> feel free to ignore they are offered in the spirit of constructive
> criticism:
>
> Review your CoC, its open to abuse as pointed out on another thread.

I'm not sure our CoC is being "abused" as such. Though I do dislike CoC's in
general.

> Enforcement of rules should be consistent.

Acting as a moderator for any group of people is an entirely unenviable task,
sadly.

I agree consistency is key, and having clear guidelines for what is, and what
isn't "in bounds" is really helpful, but it always tends to fall the way of
good intentions, two people seldom see things the same way, and even groups
of people are subject to invisible cognitive biases and motivated reasoning.

On the one hand, clear and consistent rules give the "good users" a good
framework for expectations and helps them behave in ways that make the
community prosper, but rigid rules also end up with louts "rule-gaming",
where they find ways of being obnoxiously annoying and making everything
horrible for everyone despite it not being definitively "in the wrong"

Hence, a degree of liberal interpretation is pretty much necessary.

And pretty much anyone who acts as a moderator will find themselves hated
by a few who find them too harsh, I see this far too often :/.

But that's to be expected, the moderator is a custodian of the sort
of tone and styles of conversation that we aught to have in the community.

Certain people may fall outside this tone, and this is simply
a regretful acknowledgement that this persons conversational approaches
are unwanted in that community, and that perhaps, they could find
a community more suited to their styles. Hopefully, people
will be happier if they gravitate towards communities that suit them,
instead of expecting communities to bend to suit them.

> Review your recruitment strategies, and framework for contribution.

I agree, recruitment is probably more difficult than it should be,
but we're gradually making inroads, (Kicking and screaming?)

> https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ might be of interest to some
> posters! construct a well reason argument - but be prepared to
> reconsider!
> Finally encourage Active involvement from all Developers in Gentoo
> matters not just in their packages, apathy is your worst enemy

Agreed. Though I've gotten the overall impression from a lot of communities,
that the regular need to be steeped in heavily emotional open-source office
politics greatly fuels peoples apathy, the social disconnect and inability
to reason with each other in mutually beneificial ways leads to field
narrowing and self-isolation.

~~ "Affhyj, the mailinglist drama, screw this, I'm just gonna put my
head down and get stuff done instead and hope I don't make things worse"

> I have updated one outstanding ticket for bugzilla from last week that
> was assigned to me as maintainer wanted, and will shortly put through
> a pull request on github which updates the meta data for bugzilla and
> displaycal removing me as a maintainer.
>
> To end on a positive note, I was a user for many years and will
> continue for the short term at the very least as I think the concept
> of gentoo is great.

Thanks for honest and neutral feedback :)