Re: [PATCH] Add shell-quasiquote.

[Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer]

"John Wiegley" <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>>> David Kastrup <address@hidden> 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

For those interested in this topic, please also read my response to
another mail by John on the bug#21702 thread.  I'm afraid there was a
big misunderstanding in, at least, the reasons for my frustration.

I don't know whether the points mentioned above (people being used to
*faster* paced communication than e-d) apply to other cases of
contributor frustration, but I suspect that it's a red herring.

Taylan