On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 02:40:32AM +0000, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> Do you think current frequency/amount of heated discussions is
> acceptable for the Debian project? What would you do to reduce those?
Acceptable? No. Normal? To some extent, yes.
Debian has a history of inflammable mailing lists, and in particular
inflammable -devel. Having been around for a while, I feel that nowadays
mailing list flames are way more bearable in Debian than, say, 5 years
ago. As Marga stated, the main problem of that is that it makes the fun
go away and eventually leads to people taking breaks and, in extreme
cases, resigning due to frustration.
The DPL has no particular power to resolve flames, but it must set a
good example in: not participating in ad hominem discussions, stating
publicly that specific kinds of posts are not acceptable, mailing
privately DDs which post them. Maybe the DPL "hat" can give a bit more
force to those activity, but ultimately only if a significant amount of
people start doing all these we will see a difference.
At the same time, we should think at the next generation of DDs (we have
been around for long enough to imagine being there ten years from now,
right?). As an Application Manager, I've noticed that there is quite
some margin of "coaching" in the NM process, in addition to question /
answers and technical skill checks. That is a point where we might
benefit from introducing some "good lectures" such as the Debian
Community Guidelines (drafter by Enrico Zini), which we've really never
tried. Having applicants read them, discuss them with their AM, and
possibly sign them, will be a small step which we might start benefiting
from a few years from now.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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