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Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?)
From: |
Richard Frith-Macdonald |
Subject: |
Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?) |
Date: |
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 09:07:38 +0100 |
On 2005-10-26 04:58:54 +0100 Andrew Ruder <address@hidden> wrote:
> 1. Email the list.
> 2. Get some decent replies, including some sensible ones from core
> developers and the like.
> 3. Crap ensues. Cover your head, it is coming down fast now!
> 4. Anybody with any say over the original proposal stops reading because
> the entire thread has become a flaming pile of poo. (And not that I
> necessarily blame them)
> 5. The end.
I recognize that scenario. Where is the incentive for people to enter a
discussion if the response they get is to have someone twist their words or
insult them, rather than politely tell them why they think they are wrong.
> See the problem? Anytime something becomes controversial, there is no
> final say. Alex is merely saying that all it would take is a leader to
> take a Linux-Torvalds-Dictator-Like-Approach and say either:
>
> That's a dumb idea, it isn't going to fly. <end of discussion>
>
> or:
>
> Quit your whining, this has some merits, I have questions about this
> and this. <discussion moves towards an end>
Unfortunately, it's not that simple ... the vast majority of proposals have
*some* merit, so you can't dismiss them out of hand ... and that means you want
to discuss them in a civilised manner.
This is hard to achieve ·.. it requires a decent chairperson for the
discussion, and it really needs a moderated list, so that flame bait or
off-topic emails can be filtered out before anyone sees them and is tempted to
respond. This slows things down and leaves the moderator open to accusations
of censorship and other unpleasant personal attacks.
I've always preferred the option (though perhaps it's unrealistic) of asking
people not to flame or post flame bait, but perhaps slowing things down using a
moderated list would actually be beneficial ... it takes time for a good
understanding of a discussion to form.
> Maybe nothing needs to be quite this extreme, but right now GNUstep is
> not majority rule, it is minority rule. You get a few people to raise a
> stink about anything that might benefit GNUstep and the thread gets
> ignored for eternity by anybody that matters.
I think that's partially true ... we have a chronic lack of manpower, so things
move slowly, but what actually happens is that people quietly note the better
points of a discussion, and try to incorporate them when they have time. This
is far from ideal (some stuff inevitably gets lost amidst the argument/flaming)
and is not good for producing an impression of aim/direction, but it does mean
that the better (if not too time consuming) ideas raised in discussions usually
get done.
Generally, any improvements anyone cares to make are happily accepted too ...
as long as they are done in a self contained manner or are small/incremental.
Certainly, I happily apply decent patches ... and even go to the extent of
trying to fix bugs and/or reformat to match existing codign standards/style
rather than just send them back to the contributer asking them to do better.
IMO the problem (apart from lack of resources/contributors of course) lies
where we have far-reaching ideas such that the effort and/or potential period
of inconvenience/instability for users of implementing them is not clearly
outweighed by percieved advantages. In this case few individuals would be
willing to take them on, and we need a group decision. We can't have a single
leader deciding, because the people actually doing the work would need to buy
in to the decision.
So for these case we *need* a calm, rational discussion, and we need to take
enough time to think about the issues in some depth.
Perhaps what it would take is for someone at some point to say 'end of open
discussion ...let's summarise the arguments and move this to another mailing
list for discussion by the people who would actually be involved in
implementing it'.
Perhaps we should use the developers list for this (or a new list if the
developers list is too large) ... something like the idea of a 'steering
comittee' I've seen proposed. While it's good for initial discussions to
contain all viewpoints, there certainly there comes a point where
practical/technical details are the issue, and the input of people who aren't
going to do the work themselves starts to do more harm than good. Also, there
is little point in a discussion continuing if nobody is prepared to do the
actual work.
- Re: why do we need change?, (continued)
- Re: why do we need change?, Dennis Leeuw, 2005/10/24
- Re: why do we need change?, Nicolas Roard, 2005/10/24
- Re: why do we need change?, Gregory John Casamento, 2005/10/25
- Re: why do we need change?, Dennis Leeuw, 2005/10/25
- Re: why do we need change?, Adrian Robert, 2005/10/25
- Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Alex Perez, 2005/10/25
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Gregory John Casamento, 2005/10/25
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Nicola Pero, 2005/10/25
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Alex Perez, 2005/10/25
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Andrew Ruder, 2005/10/25
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?),
Richard Frith-Macdonald <=
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Nicola Pero, 2005/10/26
- Re: gnustep-make roadmap, Jeremy Bettis, 2005/10/26
- Re: gnustep-make roadmap, Nicola Pero, 2005/10/26
- Re: gnustep-make roadmap, Jeremy Bettis, 2005/10/27
- Re: gnustep-make roadmap, Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2005/10/26
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Sašo Kiselkov, 2005/10/26
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Dennis Leeuw, 2005/10/26
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2005/10/26
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Dennis Leeuw, 2005/10/26
- Re: Why Unanimous Consent Doesn't Work (Was: Re: why do we need change?), Richard Frith-Macdonald, 2005/10/26