Re: transcribe notes

[David Kastrup]

Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 07:25:27AM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
>> While I applaud the magnitude of your conscience, I consider your sense
>> of responsibility overblown.  I would have no qualms encouraging people
>> into trying to get involved.
>
> That's because you are an excellent programmer, mathematician, and
> all-round "technical guy" who would have no trouble learning git
> if you didn't know it already.

No, all that has no relevance.

> I am not -- at best I'd say that I'm a good programmer, almost
> competent mathematician, and passable "technical guy".  So I have a
> great deal of empathy for people who have difficulty with those.

I have a great deal of empathy for people who have difficulty learning
the violin.  And even more for their neighbours.

But I still don't want string music to stop.

> More to the point, I have experience mentoring over 20 people for
> lilypond doc work.  I *know* that people find it difficult.

That's because it _is_ difficult.  But there is a difference between
telling people "It will be difficult." and telling them "Don't do it.  I
refuse to take responsibility for your pains."

You spread the impression that you are going to do what it takes from
people even trying.  And for better or worse, you are not responsible
more or less than they themselves are.

In a nutshell, you tell people: "Don't try to improve things: they need
to get improved first."

>> Now if things are as bad as to make 80% give up eventually, it means
>> that 20% eventually manage to contribute.
>
> At the "karma cost" of wasting the time and effort of the 80%.
> I'm not willing to pay that cost -- especially when we could cut
> that in half with 10-20 hours of prep work.

So you tell people "don't try do to that prep work before that prep work
is done."  Who will do that kind of work?  People who care about it.
And you discourage those whose itch it would scratch best to get this
done.  Because then they have a totally valid reason to pester others
for information for hours before bowing out because of a bad conscience.
And exactly the kind of bad conscience you are promoting: "don't waste
people's time unduly".

At some point of time you have to grant people the right to figure out
themselves how they are going to spend their time, whether or not
somebody (TM) has magically prepared their path in a way where they
never need to encounter a single dead end.

> If it was just a general "yeah, only 20% of people survive", then
> I could roll with that.  But "yeah, you only have a 20% chance of
> doing anything, but that could be 60% if I could be bothered to
> spend a week or two preparing stuff" strikes me as immoral.

At some point of time you _have_ to learn as a project manager that you
_have_ to delegate responsibility, and also that you _can't_ let your
bad conscience get in the way of things being done.  Yes, we all would
like to live in an ideal world.  But your conscience is actually making
it _harder_ for this world to come about, by refusing to let anybody
except yourself work under suboptimal conditions, even when the work is
for the sake of improving conditions.

> Or, to put it in a more cold-blooded way: I want to get the reputation
> of treating lilypond volunteers well, since that will encourage more
> people to volunteer.

So that you can discourage more volunteers from even starting?

> By discouraging people from having a hard time now, I'm gambling on a
> long-term benefit in that when the CG is better and we actively
> recruit volunteers, more people will step up.

Guess what: programmers are not an endangered species.  Even under the
daring hypothesis that anybody scared now by LilyPond work going
unsmooth will never come back, new people are born and educated every
year.

-- 
David Kastrup