Re: Community hostility [Was Recent spam increase]
On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 09:45 -0500, T.J. Duchene wrote:
>
> Nothing on these lists is a personal attack, and it gets so tiresome to
> see all this hostility all the time. Honestly, that's one of the
> greatest problems with Debian or any other list. You make a comment,
> and the next thing you get is a "flame war". My comments weren't
> intended to be condescending. I was merely trying to say I have some
> experience in the area in question.
>
Anyone remember FidoNET?
> I'm going to delibrately make a few comments now, and if everyone gets
> upset, so be it.
>
That's not really helping anything. Ego is an unpredictable and
unfortunate variable in the human equation. Once you realize its
inflamed and in play .. there's little to do about it other than let it
go, (your own ego permitting).
> I've seen a lot of arguing on the Debian lists over the last year or
> two, to the point where we have even lost some very good people who have
> contributed greatly to Debian for years. I've heard of "f* Ubuntu"
> shirts at Debconf. Some of the developers who have left Debian have
> made, admittedly biased but accurate remarks on public record about the
> community's behaviour.
Someone hoping to get some insight into the best way to build a kernel
recently commented on the lack of ego and overall helpful attitude on
the list. I haven't been active lately due to being occupied in Xen
land, but I still read rather faithfully. It's not *that* bad :)
>
> This isn't the kind of public image we want to present the rest of the
> world.
Neither is aggravated pedantic oversight on a non moderated list.
Probability suggests you'll piss off at least a third of the people you
come in contact with, even if they don't express disparagement... can't
please everyone (would you want to, anyway?)
> While we still have a great deal of respect as a "perfectionist"
> distrib, focused on technical achievement, we have lost a great deal of
> public respect because of fighting amongst ourselves. Now, it is also
> true enough that every single project ever done has this problem. I've
> even seen speculation as to whether or not Debian will survive given
> losses and all of the public disagreements.
Debian will continue as it always does, we are incidental as users or
developers considering new users and developers find it daily. Debian
will continue to Fork as more and more niche uses are found where its
well suited. I'm planning one myself early next year.. well actually
more "based on" than "fork of" Debian. Why re-invent the wheel
needlessly?
> I think the release of Etch might help things, but we need to reassess
> our attitudes a bit.
A minute ago you just said you don't care if everyone gets upset (which
got my attention).. which is it?
I'm jumping in because I just recommended someone go with Debian VS RHEL
on a farm of 200 servers, and pointed them to this list to show the
community support was much better as my reason for recommending it
(among others, of course)
The only way to keep the list free of hostility is not to further
propagate it. Its like the flu, one sneeze and the rest of us get it. If
you find yourself suffering from it, please don't spread it :)
You had a really great point to make .. but (alas) lost it in the same
thing you were trying to combat, hostility. The purpose of my reply is
not to belittle, chastise or otherwise demean your intent, but after
some consideration I felt an observation may be appropriate.
Please take it as such, simply an observation (from someone who isn't
already mad).
Best,
-Tim
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