Re: Maintainers and contributors

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 10/22/2015 02:55 PM, Artur Malabarba wrote:
>
>> The problem is that too often these conversations rotate around the
>> same point without going anywhere. This message would be a way to
>> make sure the conversation is progressing, and not an attempt to put
>> a full stop on it (I see the previous version didn't communicate this
>> well).  Note that this would only be done if the same point has
>> already gone back and forth twice.
>
> I don't think number 4 would have helped in the latest incident. If
> the submitter is dead-set on an idea and doesn't want to heed, "we all
> agree on disagreeing with you" would probably spark the same reactions
> that we've already seen. The reviewers are tyrants, the mailing list
> has problems and needs a psychologist.
>
> So I rather also put a nice list of rules somewhere that makes it
> clear that at some point you listen to the reviewers, or go
> away. Maybe with a nice of explanation of why that's important.

Again, this is somewhat complicated by the reviewers not having a
formally different standing from the submitter.  Commit access is a
technical detail, not a ranking.  So in the end it will always boil down
to the ability of working towards a consensus, and part of the consensus
forming does rely on established relations of trust in others'
competence established over longer amounts of time.

So yes, newcomers tend to have a harder stand.  I don't see that as
being specific to Emacs.  Even if Emacs has a comparatively large number
of "ancient" developers that were there from before the beginning of
kernel and are still somewhat active as well as several at least around
for decades.

Several other old projects "suffer" from only a single person of
significant authority and thus may appear to have a smaller barrier of
entry.

I'm not sure whether it would have helped to let Taylan shout it out
with Eli alone.  Maybe it would have helped if Eli had handed off the
discussion completely to someone else at a point of time when it became
obvious that things were going nowhere.

It might have better conveyed it emotionally that this is not about
"winning" anything but getting a contribution in the shape and form that
we keep Emacs in.

> The amount of time wasted on that recent thread has been staggering.

You bet.

-- 
David Kastrup