The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer • Hacker News Board

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#41

Post by lazyasciiart » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 1:03 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #37

joe_the_user wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. The net has become a medium for everyone, not just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is…

"Being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets." ~Rick, fictional smart a-hole. > Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. You could put it that way, if you wanted to be a patronizing fool. Try to understand that you are evidently one of the people I'm complaining about. You're not disagreeing with me; you're calling me a fool in a pa…

> Certainly I'm not arguing in favor of unbridled assholism

I think you actually are.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#42

Post by carapace » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 1:20 AM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #41

carapace wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets." ~Rick, fictional smart a-hole. > Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. You could put it that way, if you wanted to be a patronizing fool. Try to understand that you are evidently one of the people I'm complaining about. You're not disagreeing with me; you're calling me a fool in a pa…

> Certainly I'm not arguing in favor of unbridled assholism I think you actually are.

If that were true, I would have just said, "Hey, fuck you." :-)

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#43

Post by vacri » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 1:57 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #25

carapace wrote: post #11

One huge problem is that September never ended... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ) What I mean is, there are lots of people who are not as smart as they think they are, and they won't STFU and RTFM, etc... Send not to know at whom the Torvalds curses, he curses at thee. Frankly, I think the author's original position was correct: Emphasize credit for authors of RFCs and you'll get fools authoring R…

Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. The net has become a medium for everyone, not just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is…

> Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion

Can we please drop this trope? Torvalds spent a lot of his time patiently explaining things to people. Yeah, he gets verbal at times, but it's never straight out of the gate.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#44

Post by shoyer » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 2:51 AM UTC

One of my favorite tricks as maintainer for a moderately popular project is asking every user to give themselves credit in the release notes, e.g.,

- Fixed a terrible bug that crashes lots of crashes. By John Smith.

Contributors feel great seeing themselves get credit. New users see all the different contributors listed, giving themselves confidence that the project is well maintained. And finally, contributors are much less likely to forget to update the release notes!

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#45

Post by jancsika » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 3:46 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #34

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. However, maybe the people you do want to interact with--or the people you should interact with in order to advance your project, whether or not you particularly "want" to interact with them--will also go away and leave you alone.

With one side project, I've had people almost leave the project because I was being accomodating to someone who clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were getting frustrated with the constant low quality discussion, and one ended up private messaging me to say that either $IDIOT left or they were going to go. Another probably just dropped of without saying anything. Just showed up less frequently in chat, un…

A lot of times when I start getting frustrated about low quality discussion, I try to reimagine the noisy participant as a kind of "human fuzzer". They have randomly wedged themselves into a corner with some of the unspoken rules of the community. Then it's (usually) sufficient to explicitly and (politely) articulate the expectations for participation and collaboration.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#46

Post by nickpsecurity » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 4:13 AM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #34

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. However, maybe the people you do want to interact with--or the people you should interact with in order to advance your project, whether or not you particularly "want" to interact with them--will also go away and leave you alone.

With one side project, I've had people almost leave the project because I was being accomodating to someone who clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were getting frustrated with the constant low quality discussion, and one ended up private messaging me to say that either $IDIOT left or they were going to go. Another probably just dropped of without saying anything. Just showed up less frequently in chat, un…

That's quite anecdotal. It might be true and work for you. I'd then ask if it's the general rule that maintainers being helpful to people who have more to learn is causing lots of problems. I doubt it given the huge ecosystems with beneficial results that came from software catering to such people.

Now, it might be quite different for those focusing on extra-high quality, reliability, or security. These seem to take a certain minimum amount of skill or determination. People being too nice might bring in people that are purely a drag. You and I both seem to be in that boat a bit. So far, the best path has been filtering out the chaff plus inviting skilled people or mentoring those with aptitude plus desire to learn. I'm sure I could learn more on people side to increase my effectiveness quite a bit. Like you, though, I need a certain baseline to be effective at the levels of success I want with the kinds of people that follow my work. Even if I was nice, the others would tell them off just to prevent damage from being done. Maybe nicely and with tips but the effect is still the same.

The problem when it affects communities with higher focus on narrow tech or high quality is worth further research by people interested in this stuff.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#47

Post by nickpsecurity » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 4:18 AM UTC

carapace wrote: post #37

joe_the_user wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. The net has become a medium for everyone, not just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is…

"Being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets." ~Rick, fictional smart a-hole. > Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. You could put it that way, if you wanted to be a patronizing fool. Try to understand that you are evidently one of the people I'm complaining about. You're not disagreeing with me; you're calling me a fool in a pa…

"Getting software right is important. I estimate that about 9 out of 10 people getting paid to write software today shouldn't be. You do realize that today, in 2017, most of the needful software has already been written don't you? Think about it."

I'm curious if you've read the Richard Gabriel essays. Certainly the two of us have seen something like engineering of software. Anyone looking has seen high-quality software. Yet, most software isn't written with that goal in mind. It's about taking markets, politics, squeezing more money out of existing customers, scratching an itch, etc. It shouldn't surprise you that almost no high-quality software comes out of such abysmal demand for it. After a while, it shouldn't even bother you since it's pointless to worry about what most will do to quality for reasons aside from quality.

The best we can do is convince people who might give a shit, companies that might differentiate on better things, governments that might regulate to a baseline of methods that work, and so on. Plus advocate voting with our wallets for "The Correct Thing." Best advice I can give you after way too much time doing the opposite. ;)

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#48

Post by pacaro » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 5:52 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #6

Contributors volunteer skilled labor that can help a project be even better. The worst thing a maintainer can do is dissuade them from helping. A good rule of thumb is to assume positive intent from contributors. People who are requesting changes are trying to solve problems; rarely are they doing it for personal aggrandizement or to fulfill some philosophical mission. One thing that really upsets me when I propose c…

Everyone should take an improv class.

Improv is about making offers, and responding to offers, and using that structure to build something unexpected

So the aim is to avoid "no" which just closes everything down, "Yes, and…" or "Yes, but…" are powerful tools

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#49

Post by jamesmiller5 » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 6:06 AM UTC

no_protocol wrote: post #9

One thing I wish GitHub made easier is responding to a pull request with a patch rather than encouraging reviewers to type up a bunch of suggestions that the original submitter will have to turn into a patch themselves. If you have a better idea how to accomplish part of a suggested change, you can communicate that more clearly by making a patch and leaving a comment explaining why. GitHub should encourage this and a…

One of the killer features of Gerrit for code review is web-ui editing that can be turned on for the author and other contributors. See a typo? Feel free to click "edit" & fix it, saving everyone time. The edits increment the patch-set number, so no information is lost.

The Gerrit maintainers are also working on the idea of comments that include a proposed fix, letting the author just click "apply" to patch the change in the editing interface.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#50

Post by stinos » Fri, Apr 07, 2017, 6:11 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #6

Contributors volunteer skilled labor that can help a project be even better. The worst thing a maintainer can do is dissuade them from helping. A good rule of thumb is to assume positive intent from contributors. People who are requesting changes are trying to solve problems; rarely are they doing it for personal aggrandizement or to fulfill some philosophical mission. One thing that really upsets me when I propose c…

Contributors volunteer skilled labor

In an ideal yet non-existing world that is true. In reality there are also contributors volunteering not-so-skilled labor resulting in quite some overhead for the maintainer. That doesnt make the other things you sais less of a good advice, but you almost make it sound like it's all flowers and sunshine.