On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 9:44 PM, wraeth <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not trying to escalate the argument but you seem to have > misinterpreted my initial message. > > On 12/10/15 03:56, Matt Turner wrote: >> On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 1:17 AM, wraeth <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I am one of the users who spoke to idella4 about this, but I wanted >>> to repeat this publicly in order to highlight the point of view of >>> contributing user as opposed to a developer. >>> >>> Firstly I would like to say that I appreciate feedback on my work - >>> it helps me to improve the quality of my work both for Gentoo and > personally. >>> >>> I also agree whole-heartedly to the concept of the Reviewers >>> project, in that highlighting common improvements that could be >>> made would benefit both contributors who participate and Gentoo as >>> a whole. >>> >>> Having said that, however, I do not appreciate the method in which >>> these criticisms were delivered, and believe it extends beyond the >>> idea of the Reviewers project. >>> >>> I feel that it is inappropriate for criticisms of contributor's >>> work to be broadcast on a mailing list that is read not only by the >>> developer community, but by users as well, without their consent. >>> This is not a case where I am particularly embarrassed or upset - >>> if others can learn from my mistakes, then they are mistakes I am >>> happy to make (preferably only once). But doing so publicly, with >>> identifying information, is inappropriate. >> >> Good grief. Seriously? > > Yes, I am being serious. Thanks for asking. > >> Mailing list review is the *norm* in the free software world. > > I am aware of this and that it has been the way for quite > some time. However, while it may be the norm in the wider FOSS > community, it has not been the norm on the gentoo-dev list - certainly > people will post things specifically for review, or may highlight > critical issues; but it has not until recently been a channel for review > of any and all commits that the Reviewers inspect. > > It is not the fact that there is a review or education process, but that > this process was executed with the level of tact and grace becoming of a > flock of ducks flying into the side of a building.
So work with the reviewers to ensure the communication is tactful and graceful. FWIW, I haven't seen any review comments that were impolite or uncivil. Feel free to direct me to them... I've been correcting miscommunications on gentoo-dev this week... > This education process was implemented in a way that indiscriminately > pointed the finger at contributors, developer and user alike, sometimes I think this confirms my belief -- that people are misinterpreting a mistake as a personal failing and are upset by it being addressed in (a new) public forum. > for things that mattered, and other times for things that simply didn't. > What's more, it was implemented without warning and included publishing > who the author of those mistakes was without the contributor knowing > that it would be used so (you know, since the whole commit header was in > this educational message, too). > >> I haven't seen anything noted that should have caused embarrassment. > > Perhaps you missed: >>> This is not a case where I am particularly embarrassed or upset - >>> if others can learn from my mistakes, then they are mistakes I am >>> happy to make (preferably only once). > >> This whole thing, as far as I can see, is about improving the >> quality of Gentoo. I have learned from the reviewers reviewing my >> commits and the commits of others. It's extremely valuable to do this >> in public and the idea that noting an error on a public mailing list >> is somehow bad is simply misguided. > > Perhaps you also missed: >>> Firstly I would like to say that I appreciate feedback on my work >>> - it helps me to improve the quality of my work both for Gentoo >>> and personally. >>> >>> I also agree whole-heartedly to the concept of the Reviewers >>> project, in that highlighting common improvements that could be >>> made would benefit both contributors who participate and Gentoo as >>> a whole. > > I am not saying feedback is bad. I am not saying that learning to do > better is bad. Okay, so it's not about embarrassment or having one's work scrutinized. > What I am saying is that until now contributors to Gentoo have received > feedback on their work in channels that they elected, whether it was > IRC, Bugzilla, Pull Requests or E-Mail; until suddenly their work (or > more accurately, the Reviewers teams issues with their work) were > getting broadcast to anyone who is subscribed to this list, regardless > of if that contributor wanted that kind of public critiquing. > > I hope this clears up this apparent misunderstanding. The problem is that the review is being done in... a different forum that you expect? Or that it's a forum that more people are reading? I don't know -- a lot of the value is precisely that -- because it's in on gentoo-dev@, everyone reading can learning from others' experiences, whereas if the reviews were in private emails or even public bugzilla most people likely wouldn't see them.
