Re: [PATCH] Add shell-quasiquote.

["John Wiegley" <johnw@newartisans.com>]

>>>>> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> 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.

John