On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 12:45:23AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
So, in trying to avoid wasting everyone's time with these things, so
I've sat on this response for a few days.
> On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 02:52:33PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:27:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > > Who do you think should be subscribed to -devel, and what sort of
> > > > discussions do you think should make up the majority of the traffic? If
> > > > reality doesn't match those desires, what, if anything, will you do to
> > > > change that?
> Discussion about technical development topics.[1]
> Ideally, I would see it as my charter as DPL to developer forums and
> mechanisms for getting these sort of concerns addressed before they
> fester up and boil over into the kind of reaction we saw (not just on
> Mr. Juergensmann's part, but in reaction *to* him).
I still don't really understand what this means you think -devel should
look like.
You don't seem to think that Ingo should be criticised due to him being
severely frustrated; does this mean you think -devel is for technical
development discussions and conflict resolution on any issue in cases
of severe frustration? (It's certainly been recommended as a good place
to raise some issues when people get too frustrated with each other to
resolve it themselves) Doesn't this mean that the majority of traffic
will end up being non-technical flamewars, given each of those tend to
produce more traffic, and discourage people from subscribing at all,
let alone posting technical stuff?
Or are you saying you think that you'll be able to develop processes
that will avoid people getting severely frustrated, and resorting to
posting to -devel to try to get them resolved, but that it'll remain
available for the few times each decade the process fails? If so,
for situations that don't involve James, such as [0], [1], [2] or [3],
how do you propose ensuring neither party ends up severely frustrated?
As far as I can see, there aren't any solutions in any of those cases
that would result in both parties being satisfied.
In the case of [0], Enrico certainly doesn't seem to have been satisfied
at the outcome and that frustration seems to be resulting in him
expressing some outrage at communications issues on my behalf [4],
and you seem to have been supportive of Enrico's dissatisfaction [5],
if not the claims themselves. Do you think the outcome was wrong, either
the ifupdown maintainer rejecting the wishlist request, or the BTS admins
considering it reasonable to close rejected wishlist requests and abuse
of the BTS to repeatedly reopen them against the maintainer's wishes,
and should be overridden? If not, what process do you think would have
resulted, or would still result, in Enrico accepting the outcome and
agreeing to disagree?
If you're planning on moving the frustrations to (eg) your request
tracker, why do you think that will be more effective than the tech ctte
or the DPL has been at handling those complaints? For that matter, given
Ingo's post to -devel-announce was already clearly off topic even compared
to posting to -devel and that the DPL had already addressed the initial
complaints on the topic, why do you think a correct location for such
complaints will be effective at limiting -devel to technical discussion?
Or have my guesses completely missed what you're aiming for?
I realise these sound like complaints as much as questions, and I'm
sorry for that. The only new processes I can think of seem incredibly
unlikely to do any good, and that almost certainly shows through in my
questions. You're welcome to surprise me by answering questions like
"How could this insanely impossible situation ever come to pass?" with
"Easily, following this simple and logical chain of events: ...".
For reference, my answer would be that I don't think it's reasonable to
be insulting and critical of someone beyond what they're comfortable
accepting, and I think that after a point, people that continue
to complain or agitate about issues that've already been decided
are probably better off out of the project. Personally, I think both
those philosophies would make it much easier and more pleasant to be
communicative with the project.
I'd also like to note that one of the "Powers" of the DPL is to "Lead
discussions amongst Developers"; while the DPL's not meant to use the
position to promote personal views, I think explaining and justifying
your personal views and opening them to criticism is a good way of
leading discussion, and the project in general.
Cheers,
aj
[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200312/msg01949.html
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2004/debian-project-200401/msg00099.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01885.html
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200403/msg00113.html
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01414.html
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01467.html
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we could.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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