Re: [gentoo-project] Hiding problems, breach of Gentoo Social Contract

[Rich Freeman]

On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 5:20 PM, William L. Thomson Jr.
<wlt-ml@××××××.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, December 3, 2016 9:34:07 PM EST Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
>>
>> imho, only proves that some people are even resistant to that (learning
>> "social skills").
>
> Specific to me, while many question my social skills. One fact that remains is
> I have represented Gentoo as its public face at very large conventions, Linux
> World Expo. Which to my knowledge is the largest event that Gentoo has ever
> been represented at. I helped man the Gentoo booth 2 years in a row. It would
> have been a 3rd, the final year of LWE, but Gentoo failed to obtain a booth.
> Any Gentoo Developer and other that has met me, I think would hold a different
> perception of my social skills.
>

While you used an example of yourself I'm going to try to use it a bit
but the below isn't directed at you in particular...

Social skills are more than being able to speak without stammering.
It is also about how you treat others.  Indeed, being able to speak
well in public isn't very important for a distro that does almost all
its communications online.  On the other hand, being able to deal with
conflict in a mature way and while respecting the CoC/etc certainly is
important.

And this is precisely the sort of interaction people have on
lists/etc.  If somebody throws out personal insults/etc in list
discussions then they're a potential liability even if they are great
in a crowd, because list discussions are how we tend to work.

And if somebody just doesn't like interacting with others much at all
but they're reasonably polite/etc when they need to, that is behavior
that would actually work just fine.  We have plenty of developers who
rarely participate on lists, but they generally make positive
contributions and follow QA policies and such.  If there is a conflict
they'd need to be able to follow the rules for dealing with it, but
their ability to write long emails/etc and win over large numbers
really isn't a concern.  A lot of the contributions to Gentoo get made
without a lot of fanfare, and are really the backbone of our distro.

> saying someone lacks social skills in a form of judgment, not to mention an insult. I think a better way to phrase such would be not right, or not fit for the culture.

While I wouldn't quite go this far I do agree with the general
sentiment here.  "Social skills" isn't some indivisible quality where
you can rate somebody against a scale.  There are many forms of social
skills, and certain ones matter more than others.  Fit for culture is
a good way to look at it.  I'm pretty sure this was how Jorge's
comment was meant in any case.

-- 
Rich