Dear Hoppers,

In our short history we've been on the receiving end of very little
negative feedback.  It's been a very fun experience to help each other out
and the source code in general is very accomodating to doing your own thing
in your own plugin without getting in the way of others.

However, when negative feedback does come on occasion (it does and it will)
we need to be a bit more prepared for it.   As such I would like to have a
developer/community "code of conduct" on our website so that we can help
people to react appropriately to negative feedback.

I believe that in essence any conflict in software or architecture is an
opportunity for improvement.  I would very much like such an attitude to be
the leading principle in this scenario.

Can we come up with a list of advice for recipients of negative feedback?
Or perhaps a checklist?

- Take a deep breath, read the message a few more times.  Do not reply
immediately.
- If you can not give a constructive response, consider not responding at
all or with a question asking for clarification.
- Empathically consider that the person in question is perhaps frustrated /
using a foreign language / stressed out / in a pinch / ...
- If you feel you are bothered by the feedback; can you figure out
why exactly this is?  The tone of the feedback should be disregarded.  Its
actual content should be taken seriously.
- Consider the opportunities for improvement of our software.  A lot of
people take software as is and are not even aware that we can fairly
quickly change a lot of things.
- Consider creating JIRA cases based on the feedback to capture negative
feedback with bug reports, improvements or even taks for architectural
changes.

Anyway, feel free to pile on.
Cheers,
Matt

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