Re: Love and Hate on LKML

[Scott Lovenberg <scott.lovenberg@gmail.com>]

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.