Re: Contributors and maintainers

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 09:29:13 +0200
> 
> I provided clarification several times.  It was ignored.

No, it was not ignored.  It was disagreed with, which is something
entirely different.

> One person got it and also repeated it in their words:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2015-10/msg01464.html

After which I pushed a change that took care of the missing
information.

> And me again on the bug discussion:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2015-10/msg00676.html
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-emacs/2015-10/msg00698.html
> 
> That makes at least 7 times in which I repeated the same thing, and it
> was ignored every time.

No, it was not ignored.  It was repeatedly read, considered, and
_disagreed_ with.

> Some of those mails contain very detailed, careful explanations of the
> issue, which I spent a lot of time on.  At least 2 or 3 are of that
> nature.

And it took me a similarly considerable amount of time to re-read the
same explanations over and over again, and then provide a polite
response.  All that because you completely refused to accept a simple
comment that required you to make a change in a single line of code,
so that your package will use a standard Emacs API.

> I hope this makes it clear why I'm outraged.  When I say something like
> "I repeated myself a dozen times and was ignored every time," the
> "dozen" in that sentence is, by now, actually literal.  That's absurd.

You were NOT ignored.

> What I gather from being persistently ignored is that I'm receiving
> absolutely *no* respect *at all* from most people here.  That is the one
> and only reason I would start losing respect towards others.  The
> detailed and polite explanations of my problem listed above hopefully
> give a hint on which way the lack of respect primarily goes.

There's no disrespect, there never was.  Respecting an opinion does
not mean it must be accepted.  Rejecting an opinion or a patch doesn't
mean disrespect, it just means disagreement, in this case on purely
technical grounds.

> The lack of respect I'm receiving is *not* of the kind where someone is
> being actively nasty, insulting, etc.  It's a kind where a person's very
> voice is being denied, not even countered.  That's pretty grave.

We should be allowed to disagree and reject patches even if there are
no insults or obnoxious behavior on the part of the person who offers
an opinion or a patch.  Patches and opinions can be rejected on purely
technical grounds, not only on the grounds of nasty conduct.

IOW, we are not obliged to automatically accept patches just because
their submitter is well behaved.  We actually try to ignore his/her
behavior as best as we can, and consider the patches only on technical
merits.

> I doubt most people who come to contribute code have much motivation to
> work out basic social issues.  My feedback is probably the best you will
> get, and I'm not saying it's good at all.

You are wrong.  People do provide useful feedback here about these
issues.  Just yesterday we had such feedback from Óscar Fuentes.

> Most others will just leave the place immediately, or not even try
> because they already saw in the archive or heard from others enough
> horrible things about emacs-devel.

From whom did you hear horrible things about emacs-devel?  What
horrible things?