Re: Question for candidate Towns

[Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>]

Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>
> > Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > (I'm not suggesting that the ftp-masters are doing their job
> > > inadequately here,
> > See, that's the thing, you _are_. You can tell, because you had to
> > explicitly refute the idea; it's the same as being able to tell you're
> > being offensive when you feel the need to say "no offense
> > intended".
> No. He had to explicitly refute the idea because you're famous for
> consistently interpreting *any* suggestion that something in our
> organisation might not work optimally and needs improvement as if it
> was a personal attack on whomever is currently responsible for that
> particular something.

I don't believe that's the case. As a counter example, I offer
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/01/msg00671.html

It's quite possible to talk about technical issues without blaming 
people or suggesting they're incompetent or that they ought to be doing 
their job better.

> > And sometime's that's necessary; but it's happening
> > _continually_, which is just tiresome and demotivating.
> What's extremely demotivating is your continued insistence that
> everybody who want to improve something is attacking the people who
> are involved in the something that could be improved.

*shrug* If you'd like to help, you need to stop talking and listen: what 
I've been saying for over a year now is the best thing that could be 
done to improve the groups I know of is to stop the flaming and blaming. 
   If you're not willing to do that, that's fine, but don't act 
surprised when things don't improve, or when you get ignored when you 
ask for information so that you can help. Maybe other people can think 
of better ways of improving things, but to my mind, that one's at least 
an order of magnitude more important than anything else at encouraging 
people to do work and to participate in discussions.

> As in: The first step in improving something is to find out more about
> what the problem is. The way to learn about what the problem is is to
> ask on an appropriate mailing list.

So, there's your answer. Does it make you happy, or does it just annoy you?

> Whenever one asks what the problem
> is, Anthony Towns will immediately reinterpret the question as "being
> offense" and an accusation that the problem is that the current
> delegates are not doing their job properly. This instantly turns the
> initial problem-solving attempt into an unproductive flamewar.

It takes two to have a flamewar. Are you really so invested in comments 
like "You're famous for consistently interpreting *any* suggestion as if 
it was a personal attack" that giving them up isn't even worth considering?

Do you have a better term for the above quote than a personal attack, btw?

> This is probably going to happen no matter who we elect for DPL, but I
> cannot begin to imagine the chilling effect it would have if Anthony
> Towns were also the DPL, who in his campaign have asserted that "being
> offensive" should lead the one asking the question to be "suspended,
> banned, or removed from the project entirely".
> [http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/03/msg00075.html]

I'm pretty confident I can find someone who's not me to enforce that 
policy who doesn't suffer from that level of infamy, and I'm also pretty 
confident that given that policy being actually enforced, that I can 
encourage a bunch of people who currently aren't interested in 
participating in the lists to change their view.

You're, of course, welcome to believe that or not, as you see fit.

And given we just had this _exact_ flamewar a month ago on -project, 
along with similar ones at least every month or so for years now, I 
don't really see any evidence for there being a "chilling effect". But 
hey, YMMV.

Cheers,
aj