Re: Love and Hate on LKML

[Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 06:06:35PM -0400, 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,

your comments make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, I think that
you wasted your time trying to educate this one. Judging by
his/her pathetic blog made up from carefully selected excerpts
from the list, and the fact that he/she has no name to post
with, I think he/she's just a kid waiting for his/her parents
to discover he/she used dad's computer without authorization.

Otherwise, I 100% agree with what you said.

Cheers,
Willy