On Friday, March 29, 2013 13:46:56, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 01:35:59PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote: > > As such, there's an issue of "public perception" that may need > > consideration. > > […] > > > I simultaneously acknowledge the problem of making a "DD expulsion > > list" public; that's not exactly the kind of "trophy" anyone would > > want to obtain. > > I wholeheartedly agree with both your points here. Which, to me, is a > good indication that this is, in general, a complex problem :) > > I think the actual expulsion should, generally, not be publicly > advertised; what I do want to be public is, in general, community > backlash when deplorable social behavior is exhibited in public fora. > Seeing that no one reacts to bad social behavior will give the distinct > impression that the *community* accepts that behavior which is, imho, > even worse than giving the impression that some authoritative "police" > turns a blind eye on it. I wholeheartedly agree. […] On Friday, March 29, 2013 13:59:11, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: > On 03/29/2013 01:46 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > > On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 01:35:59PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote: > >> I'm open to other theories as to the cause. I am, however, a bit > >> surprised that you'd completely dismiss the theory I've proposed so > >> quickly. let you know that I regularly bump into users in Debian IRC > >> channels saying things such as "I need to be involved in another bug > >> report like I need a hole in the head." I take that as a clear signal > >> that there's a problem. > > > > Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply that bug report handling is not > > something we should look into improving. It's the causation relationship > > between that and the decreasing number of bug reports which seems > > unlikely to me. I'll be totally happy to reconsider that and I'm > > generally very open to reconsider my positions. But I do think that we > > need some concrete, scientific evidence, to prove causation in this > > case, and I've yet to see some of it. > > Do we need to scientifically prove causation here? Chris is raising a > good point, and a perception of hostile responses to a bug reports seems > entirely plausible as a contributing factor to a decline in bug reports. It's the best theory I've got so far. I do /want/ a scientific causation if I could /get/ one, so I share Zack's desire for that. Your question of "do we need to prove that" is likewise a good point; lack of respect or other abuses in bug reports is a problem /regardless./ > For that matter, I haven't seen any concrete, scientific evidence to > support zack's suggestion that derivative distributions are siphoning > off our bug reports. While it seems potentially a plausible > contributing factor to me, i could also see an argument that the more > derivative distros we support, the *more* bug reports we should get. > (e.g. because all the downstream devs are upstreaming their reports and > fixes back to debian, like we want them to, right? Ah. Here's an interesting related thought; some of the derivatives (such as Ubuntu) have Codes of Conduct covering developer communications, where Debian doesn't, and thus there's an expectation of civility there that we may lack. Thus, assuming that bugs are reported for to a derivative distribution and not to Debian, the "chilling effect" could theoretically still be a possibility as to part of the cause. > These are not mutually-exclusive explanations, either, and there is no > single, simple cause for outcomes like a decline in the number of bug > reports. I don't think that demanding "concrete, scientific evidence" > is a reasonable bar for just considering what "might be one explanation > for the steady drop in new bug reports" (chris's original words). I likewisie don't expect any of us to be able to come up with a way of figuring out the cause definitively. If we could, we'd do so. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle Chris.Knadle@coredump.us
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