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SubjectRe: Love and Hate on LKML
Chris Snook wrote:
> Love Hate wrote:
>> Dear Developers,
>>
>> At the outset I would like to thank you for your great work - IMHO
>> Linux is the
>> best OS in the Solar System.
>>
>> Unfortunately, your relationships with certain people are not the
>> best. I do not
>> like how some people are treated on LKML. I will publish further episodes
>> of "Love and Hate on LKML" until you change the climate around Linux
>> development.
>>
>> http://loveandhateonlkml.wordpress.com/
>>
>> If your speech is found in some of the episodes, this means that it has
>> been considered very offensive.
>>
>> Kind regards
>
> This is a classic example of a problem-seeking idea. Quite a lot of
> people post to this list with some idea that they think will make a
> large impact on the community at large, certainly far larger than a
> lowly patch in a subsystem it would take weeks to understand. Typically
> the proximal cause is sleep deprivation, a condition that afflicts many
> kernel developers and enthusiasts, with the result being a decreased
> inhibition against ideation of reference and ideation of grandeur. This
> causes the believe that you have "discovered" something which is really
> quite well understood and is being addressed with the priority it is
> due, and that as a result of your discovery you are uniquely qualified
> to guide the community to its resolution.
>
> I don't mean to throw stones here. If you dig through the archives, you
> can find examples of some grandiose ideas I've posted that never
> resulted in a single line of code, or turned out to be impractical
> generalizations of more specific optimizations that have already been
> implemented. Invariably these were posted while sleep-deprived, and
> I've been quite embarrassed by them the next morning, and relieved that
> for the most part they were ignored.
>
> If not for the importance of addressing this issue, I would leave this
> post ignored as well. I have no qualms with the goal of improving
> civility on LKML, but it's not something that's going to be solved by
> anonymously shaming people on a blog. The goal of your blog appears to
> be to chastise kernel developers, which is at best a needless escalation
> of hostilities.
>
> If you want to improve the quality of discourse here, then get involved
> and make good posts. Email makes filtering very easy, so if someone is
> a troll or is posting on technical matters they don't understand, we can
> simply ignore them. If you want to rebuke people for particular conduct,
> do it on the list, so the people who read and post to this list can
> engage in a discussion of what is acceptable here. The only people who
> will read a blog such as yours are malcontents looking for reasons to
> dismiss those who have criticized or ignored them.
>
> My suggestion to you, and to everyone else who wants to improve the
> quality of this community, is to become a part of it. Learn a
> subsystem. Post patches that fix problems people care about. Listen to
> criticism and respond to it constructively. This will make your posts
> relevant to the list, and give you far more influence than a blog about
> a technical mailing list that has no technical objective. Convincing
> other people to be nice is not a technical problem that can be resolved
> by one person analyzing it and implementing a solution in a late-night
> hacking/blogging session. Quite the contrary, late-night
> hacking/blogging sessions tend to be detrimental to this goal.
>
> -- Chris

I'm just a software development major in college who follows kernel
development (it's kind of like following a sport that's played 24/7, and I can
participate in!) fairly closely. But, for what it's worth, Chris, I really
appreciated your comment. It's really refreshing to actually see a positive
outlook with a call to action these days (especially where thousands of
introverts are concerned). Thank you for a humble, well thought out reply to a
slightly hostile post.

I've always wished the list would have a slashdot style moderation system,
because great comments like this probably get skipped over too much.

OK, I'm actually punchy (like I'm the only one who cuts a few hours off of the
nights sleep to get up early and write some code... which, after a good nights
sleep, I'm going to imprint my forehead in my desk and replace with five lines
of good code that actually work correctly... but I digress) and I'm sure that I
didn't word any of this as I would have liked to, but I really do appreciate the
time you took to write up this reply.

I really think I'm going to print it out and keep it around for the next time I
want to light up a troll. Especially when I'm shooting off my mouth on topics I
know nothing about. I'll admit I really appreciated this post because it was a
double-bladed sword to me.


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