Re: Question for candidates: the d-i conflict

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 02:10:32PM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to ask Anthony and Steve what they think of how they handled
> the conflict between Frans Pop and Sven Luther, and other candidates how
> they would have handled this conflict.
> 
> To everyone: how would you avoid such situations to become this
> problematic in the future?

I would try to mediate. This is exactly what our current DPL and others
have tried; however, in this particular case these mediation attempts
did not produce a result that was satisfactory for all parties involved.

Whether this is the fault of the mediator, of Sven, or of Frans, is not
something I wish to comment on, simply because I was not deeply involved
in either of the two mediation attempts that I'm aware of.

That being said, I do think mediation is not something which is easy,
and which can be done by just about everyone. To be able to mediate, a
mediator needs to put effort in understanding both parties involved, and
needs to actively help in finding a compromise. What a mediator must not
do at any time, is to judge; when he does, all chances of success of the
mediation attempt will have failed.

Note, again, that I'm not saying that the previous mediation attempts
have failed because of anything was not done as I just outlined above;
I'm only outlining what I think is necessary for a mediation attempt to
succeed.

Finally, it's important to realize that mediation isn't always possible,
and that they can fail for various reasons. Sometimes people just don't
want to compromise; sometimes both parties' positions are so widely
apart that a compromise would be impossible. Just look at the middle
east for an example -- people have been fighting, killing, and hating
there for decennia, and the end is still not near, despite several
mediation attempts.

At least Debian Developers won't start killing eachother any time soon
:)

-- 
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
  -- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22