Re: Pledge To Killfile a person

[Rich Walker <rw@shadow.org.uk>]

Before reading the rest of this, please note:
1. I'm not a DD.
2. I *have* followed all the public part of these threads
3. I have the utmost respect for the technical competence of all
   involved. Even former project secretaries, Ubuntu developers, people
   who have written X installers, Nethack players and Debian Legal
   contributors.

Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 12, 2005 at 11:43:16AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
>> Your approach seemed much more likely to annoy and
>> mislead people than to help identify where they agree or disagree.
>
> I disagree, and you have done nothing to show otherwise.
>
>> But I give up.
>
> That says it all really. I've rebutted every one of your claims and
> you gave up.
>
> Anybody else think they can prove their accusations?
>

I'm not sure the issue of the accusations is the useful issue to
resolve. I'm not going to debate the particulars of whether or not
accusations have been made or might or might not be valid, because I
*really* don't think that's the question at issue, strangely.

As someone who reads a lot of these mailing lists, I suggest the
following perspective on this matter:

  Is it possible that an in-appropriate conversational style used by
  developers causes people who might be valuable contributors to Debian
  to reject Debian as a place to make their contributions?

  If so, does it not behoove Debian developers to use a conversational
  style that promotes the gathering of competent developers?


Again, I state these things as an outsider.

As long as "brutal-put-down" is accepted as the public face of Debian,
Debian self-limits its community to argumentative m'f's and
masochists. I have nothing against either of these population
groups - but is it essential that DD's come only from these two small
pools of the wider competent population?

cheers, Rich.



-- 
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