Re: Summary of the debian-devel BoF at Debconf9
* MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> [090819 12:43]:
> As I've written before, I think that some of the bigger debian lists
> would be better if *someone* decided when the discussion has gone too
> far or off-topic and acted on it (putting a thread on mod-hold and
> just slowing the discussion, for example). As a project group, we've
> been poor at stopping the email incontinence of some contributors at
> some times.
I'm not opposing any way to have some decision finding on what is too
far and what not. (And in my first post in this thread suggested to
have an extra mailing list to be able to discuss such meta points).
The problem is mixing those kind of meta-discussions with the
discussion at hand.
Another speciality of that that seems to have gained momentum in the
last time (or perhaps I just cannot bear it as much as before), is
people invoking "bikeshadding".
Saying "I think this part makes no difference and there are more
important parts to consider and thus stop this dicussion" is a valid
thing (so if you mean that, why not say that instead).
But trying to escape a discussion by ridiculing people involved in
a way hard to contradict (One gives no facts[1] when one just call
something "bikeshadding", so one cannot be contradicted) makes me
only wish someone had the power to ban the one pulling the thread
off-topic by such behaviour.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
[1] And as you gave no facts and just called names, you are sure you
are not meaning
"I do not understand what you are talking about and cannot assess if it
is something important" instead?
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