Strike that, the title in the other email is negative and I agree we should go past it.
If people are talked out, then let me give my perspective. It’s great hearing from Andy, Romain, Gurkan, Jon G, Jon F, and Mark. You are all contributing to the strength of the community. We do have more people in the community who have remained silent. This is an opportunity to reinforce the positives you value in the community. I hope the more positive title encourages you. Here are some of the anti-patterns I see and how we can do better. - arguing or agreeing in real-time / slow it down When exchanges go too fast, regardless of if they are positive or negative, you are not providing enough space for others to enter the conversation. Your argument or your mutual decision does not represent the community. 20 exchanges over 3 mediums in about 50 minutes is far too fast. Slow it down: add a one or two hour gap or overnight gap between repeat responses to the same person. - revert-than-review In proper commit-than-review, the commit stands until discussion finishes. In proper review-than-commit, the commit is held until discussion finishes. Revert-than-review is effectively the same as review-than-commit, but unequally applied. We should pick one approach and apply it consistently. - personal attacks & antagonism / appologize & hug-it-out Calling someone arrogant is a personal attack. Giving negative feedback and using a smiley-face emoticon is antagonism. Neither are tolerated. My advice: you should appologize to each and hug it out for this situation to truly be "right." - code-over-community / community-over-code This one can be a squishy topic with unclear lines for some peple. There is a simple way to measure your actions. Let's give a scenario: A person commits code and it is "wrong". Do you a) fix the code or b) fix the person? Chosing A is code-over-community. Even if you put a note on the list explaining why, the person will still feel they got their hand slapped for touching the repo. A positive tone won't help. The person will feel educated and disabled rather than educated and enabled. They will also feel the time the invested is wasted and be less likely to invest more. The end result is the code was given priority over the person. Over time you end up with a lot of code and no people. "Fixing the person" means helping them to solve them problem. Point them in the right direction, give some options, explain the challenges, suggest some revisions. Anything that allows them to fail-forward without taking the problem away from them. You should give the person who made the mistake the chance to fix it. - righteousness & smiting / nurturing & enabling If I had to try and read minds, I'd guess Andy was thinking, "I represent the community, they want this injustice to stop." Romain was likely thinking, "I represent the community, they want the links to work." You both, however, excluded each other from the definition of community. If you had both viewed each other as someone in the community you needed to nurture and protect, the exchange would have gone differently. In my experience when you feel the most righteous, that's the time to walk away from the keyboard. Write your note then sleep on it. The usual outcome of correcting injustices while you are angry is in the process you commit other injustices. To know in the moment if you are attempting to smite someone, ask yourself this simple question: am I investing my time to make the other person wrong, or am I investing my time to make the other person right? - discouraging contributors / encouraging contributors Most people do not have confidence in approaching a community they view as filled with only experts. When they see those experts fight, there is no chance they will enter that community. We will want to be extremely and overtly nice to each other and be on our best behavior. Seeing situations like this handled positively can actually increase the likelyhood of people contributing because they learn "mistakes are ok." With that I’ll say, Mistakes Are Ok. Everyone is being genuinely good and open in this thread and that’s the most important thing.
