From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar_Fuentes?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Becoming an Emacs contributor (was: [PATCH] Add shell-quasiquote.) Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:45:08 +0200 Message-ID: <87io61epbv.fsf_-_@wanadoo.es> References: <87si59wj42.fsf@T420.taylan> <878u6znii9.fsf@T420.taylan> <836123gfh2.fsf@gnu.org> <87r3krm0t3.fsf@T420.taylan> <5624F66F.1030600@yandex.ru> <87io63lzkg.fsf@T420.taylan> <562508B7.3020202@yandex.ru> <876122n5v3.fsf@T420.taylan> <22053.50324.60123.654292@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87d1waknl1.fsf@T420.taylan> <87oafugeia.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1445341564 31005 80.91.229.3 (20 Oct 2015 11:46:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 11:46:04 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 20 13:45:50 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVMT-0003Xw-Hy for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:45:49 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45174 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVMS-0004g0-KP for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 07:45:48 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:50272) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVM9-0004ex-DX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 07:45:35 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVM5-0002d7-2B for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 07:45:29 -0400 Original-Received: from plane.gmane.org ([80.91.229.3]:52430) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVM4-0002d3-NK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 07:45:24 -0400 Original-Received: from list by plane.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZoVM0-00035x-Ra for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:45:21 +0200 Original-Received: from 117.red-83-36-120.dynamicip.rima-tde.net ([83.36.120.117]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:45:20 +0200 Original-Received: from ofv by 117.red-83-36-120.dynamicip.rima-tde.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:45:20 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 87 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 117.red-83-36-120.dynamicip.rima-tde.net User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:uee6c+O01uzc0LAjawPWseVGWsA= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 80.91.229.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:192177 Archived-At: "John Wiegley" writes: >>>>>> David Kastrup writes: > >> You don't need to speak in riddles. I am quite used to seeing my name >> explicitly written in such contexts. > > I've found your contributions to be quite helpful on the whole, David. > > Lately I've heard and read many things about emacs-devel's "culture" and how > it stifles newcomers. This is something to take seriously, but I don't think > the issue should be over-simplified just to find a place to put blame. > > We're a lot of people. We have a lot of experiences. This is no one's full- > time job. We all communicate differently. > > Given those truths: as soon as the number of people involved becomes >large, > any perception you choose to adopt of such a group will generally be true in > some ways, and false in several other ways. > > Some of the concrete problems I've heard about that could be meaningfully > addressed are: > > 1. Some patches die in the bug tracker. They get submitted; the authors > respond to the criticism; but there is no closure. This gives people the > impression that their efforts are being wasted on Emacs development, so > they move elsewhere. > > 2. Sometimes people can be abrasive. This isn't something you can solve by > mandate, or by posting a code of conduct. It requires a willingness on > the part of participants to assume the best of others, and not expect > them to do all the work revealing it. > > There could be things we might do here, like making the list passively > moderated so we can silence egregious posters. But I haven't seen > anything yet to warrant this type of response. > > 3. Newcomers don't understand our culture. If you've grown up in the fast- > paced GitHub world of one button PRs and brief discussions on Twitter, > the culture and pace of emacs-devel may well shock you. Some of us are > OLD, and we like our lawns kid-free a goodly part of the time. > > Now that is no excuse for bad manners, but it does mean we don't just > "hop to it" when a shiny toy comes along. Be patient, give us time. And > maybe, if your patch is withering on the vine, remind someone? > > I think we have good people, who pay attention to meaningful issues. Not > everything we do needs to be instantly appealing to those unfamiliar with our > history of development. But if it's needlessly off-putting, that should be > brought up and remedied too. You forgot *the* problem newcomers face with emacs-devel: bikeshedding. Even the most trivial contribution can bring huge amounts of discussion, mostly improductive. And what is productive, often has little real value. The contributor is overwhelmed by minutia, hypothetical (unspecified) corner cases, requests for extended features "because we should completely cover what the user might need", complains about the code doing too much (at the same time of the previous item.) And misunderstandings, lots of misunderstandings, which is a huge problem because some well-meaned top hackers here are overly argumentative. (See how often emacs-devel or emacs-bugs hosts threads with hundreds of messages.) I've made just a few contributions to Emacs and my experience says that it can be an exasperating process, draining lots of energy. Once you got commit access and you are trusted to not ask for permission for operating on certain areas, things turn to be much better, but even then you confront discussions with other hackers about matters where no clear criteria exists for setting the matter. Emacs would benefit from a process that avoids those repetitive, unproductive discussions that only end when one part resigns by exhaustion, bringing in frustration. I think that Stefan tried to do something about this, by encouraging early inclussion of code, as soon as there was clear that the code is an improvement for Emacs. In lots of cases, it was obvious that the code was far from the optimum solution, but it was a positive trade-off. We could create the figure of mentor, who takes care of a contribution (singular) and advices the contributor until the code is good enough, and then he makes sure it is committed. Other people could chime in on the technical discussion, but the contributor only listens to the mentor. BTW, this has nothing to do with the parent thread, which I haven't followed.