Around a month ago we (i.e., the community) got into a fairly lengthy discussion on IRC about how the cabal treats patches.[1] Currently, the basic system is you run around IRC endlessly until someone commits the patch (or at least this is what I've been told to do by some members of the cabal, other members of the cabal have told me to shut up in IRC and stop asking for a patch to be committed, which leads on to another issue): this is a massive waste of time for whoever is spending their time asking for the patch to be committed. Is there any reason why those who have power in the project cannot watch the bug tracker (either via manually reloading it endlessly or via the mailing list), which is surely less of a waste of time, as it merely requires those with commit access to keep up with bugs which I hope they would anyway, as I hope they care about the quality of what they ship.
Going back to the other issue, there is a massive disconnect within the cabal: I have frequently been told that to do something I must do x, and then been told by someone else I absolutely must not do x. Why should I contribute when I get told off for doing what I am told? Also, there are times when I have had patches refused by one member of the cabal on purely subjective reasons, yet without them noting any objection in the bug tracker, and then someone else picking up the patch off there and committing it. What has the person who refused it gained, and what are valid reasons for rejecting a patch? I'd at least like a good documented objective reason why a patch has been refused to be given on the bug tracker, which certainly doesn't always happen. Then there's the tone that the cabal uses, when the cabal is meant to be setting an example (according to some members, at least…). I've been told numerous times to "fuck off", which doesn't seem like a good way to build a community whatsoever. It further perpetuates my view of the cabal as a cronyism (i.e., appointments by friends) and not a meritocracy as it claims (take a look at how much some members of the cabal have contributed, for example, and compare it with me: I post a lot more than some of the cabal of the mailing list, and I write a lot more code than some of the cabal). What items of "merit" some members of the cabal have done is beyond me. The cabal needs to take a good look at itself: Why should there be any community around Habari? Do you make people welcome? Why is there seemingly less of a community than a year ago? Why is there almost no diversity of opinions within the cabal? Why does it treat some long standing members of the community as it does? Why is the cabal so disorganized? If I had greater amounts of free-time, I'd see no reason to put up with a self-selecting group who tell me to do one thing then tell me not to do it, tell me to fuck off, and continually make me feel unwelcome, and would have left Habari a long time ago and just written my own blogging software. Habari is continually making the same mistakes with regards to age-old standards that blogging software has done for year: to quote Mark Pilgrim, "same shit, different year". -- Geoffrey Sneddon <http://gsnedders.com/> [1]: http://drunkenmonkey.org/irc/habari/2009-03-01#T20-14-38 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-dev -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
