Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

["Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>]

* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [120430 19:11]:
> I want our technical discussions to be welcoming to anyone who has
> information to share and who can bring additional clarity and insight to
> the discussion.  But once things start getting heated or people start
> throwing around accusations or verge towards personal attacks, there's a
> real psychological difference between people who are contributing to
> Debian and people who aren't.

I'd rather argue that abusive behaviour from contributors is far worse
than from non-contributors. It's easier to ignore people not involved
and people not doing anything are usually not around for long.

There is also nothing keeping anyone with technical arguments out of a
discussion as someone insulting anyone with different opinions and if
running out of insults accusing people as not being contributors.

My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion. I do
not care if you rationalize it as "no need to feed the troll" or if
you understand you left the level of technical discussion and have
little chance to come back to it till the discussion will be over, but
once that point is reached there really is no sense it keeping it up.

        Bernhard R. Link