Re: [Summary] Discourse for Debian
Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org> writes:
> I don't agree with your assessment that there has been hostility against
> Neil. There has been criticism - sometimes strongly worded criticism
> that one might perhaps call hostility - against replacing our
> mailinglists by something that quite a number of people in this thread
> consider worse than the existing situation. Nothing of that has been
> any form of hostility against Neil - you are IMHO assuming an ad-hominem
> where there is none.
This paragraph, through no intention of yours, is an excellent example to
me of why Debian is such a difficult project to participate in, and why
it's so hard to remain motivated to contribute rather than moving to
another community that isn't as hostile.
Hostility and ad hominem are not synonyms. Just because people are not
attacking Neil personally doesn't mean people are not being hostile. An
environment in which people express negativity at nearly every proposed
change, even without personally insulting someone, is still deeply
unpleasant to be in.
My impression is that people are reacting out of fear and anger because
somehow what Neil is doing feels very threatening. I have some empathy
for that, but the way that it's playing out is awful for our community and
is exactly the sort of thing that makes it less likely people will
continue to participate in the project.
People are acting like the shutdown of every mailing list they care about
is imminent and they have to express their objections as strongly as
possible to protest something that's about to happen. This isn't remotely
how any of this works, and it makes productive discussion nearly
impossible. It is also deeply discouraging to anyone who might ever want
to attempt to change something in Debian.
> I (and I suppose everybody else in this thread) very much respect
> Neil's efforts to make Debian better,
I believe that you *want* to respect his efforts, and that you may
internally be feeling respect. However, what people have done on this
thread is not respect. Actions speak louder than words. Saying that you
respect his efforts is not the same thing as respecting his efforts.
Respecting his efforts involves doing things like pausing, realizing that
sending a negative reply to a mailing list is much easier than the work
he's putting in, and deciding to take additional time to rephrase
assertions as questions and rephrase objections as requests. Respecting
his efforts means using phrasing like "here are the things that I think I
would miss from email" or "hm, these features seem contrary to our project
goals; can we disable them?" or "interaction without a web browser is very
important to me; what improvements to the email interface can we
realistically make to make that interaction style work?"
In other words, respect looks like collaboration and partnership. How can
I make this idea better? How can I improve this proposal so that it's
something that I would like? Or if I truly think that's impossible, how
can I listen very deeply and carefully to the goals underlying the
proposal, and what alternatives can I imagine that meet those goals as
well as mine?
Or, if that's impossible, and you believe all movement in this direction
will definitely be bad for Debian (and wow, that's a strong stance that
should require *substantial* justification), it's okay to be confident
there will be a future opportunity to make a *decision* rather than a
*test* (which is what's going on right now), and be silent until then.
Or, if you must, ask a question like "what will the decision process look
like before we create a parallel forum for a mailing list, and how can I
be involved in that decision?"
Respect also means recognizing that some decisions may not affect you and
thus may not be about you. Perhaps Discourse won't be a good solution for
debian-project or debian-vote as Neil was hoping, but perhaps it's the
*perfect* solution for some packaging team of which you are not even a
part, and whose mailing list you never interact with. Maybe they'll move
to Discourse and you'll *never notice*, because it doesn't concern you,
and they'll be very happy. Drowning the project in negativity right now
could prevent that sort of discovery from happening.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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