It is also very upsetting when technical discussions
immediately escalate into insults, distortion of motivation,
accusations of wanting to hurt Debian, or the users, of being hide
bound in pride and stupidity, having agendas that smack of
discrimination, power grabs, or worse -- all the while actively
casting impediments in actually finding a working solution by
drowning the technical discussion in polemics and ad hominems and
casting to apportion blame before looking at the technical issues.
Add to it argument from extremes, bug severity inflation, and
constant little pin pricks that make it impossible to collaborate, I
would think that some times, it is better to reject contributions if
the net contributions decrease due to the presence of one person.
Rubbish. Debian has always been far more than a cold, harsh,
faceless corporate entity with no social presence. Technical
excellence does mitigate a lack of social graces, but there are
limits to how much disruption is to be tolerated. Where you have
social interactions, and you have politics, you have subjective
social politics.
We have, by and large, despite the cat-calls about cabals from
the peanut gallery, managed to make broad decisions rationally. I
don't think we are all in a vast conspiracy to gang up on a fine
contributor without actually looking at the broad picture and the net
results of his presence or absence on a team.