RE: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] Maybe it's time to shut this thread down (Was: Re: [ 00/19] 3.10.1-stable review)

Luck, Tony
2013-07-22T21:02:02Z

On 07/18/2013 03:54 PM, Sarah Sharp wrote:
> Let's shift this discussion away from the terms "abuse" and
> "professionalism" to "respect" and "civility".

And Daniel Philips replied:
> Brilliant, and +1 for a session at KS. In the mean time, why don't we
> all try to demonstrate the real meaning of respect and civility, by
> practising it henceforth on LKML

+1 from me too. Using the right terms will help us have a discussion that
focusses on the issues that matter - and avoid getting side-tracked by
things that don't.

Some thoughts on the format of the discussion at KS:

1) Keep it real
We could come up with hypothetical scenarios on what things people *might* say, and
how you *might* react and talk for days. Let's stick to things that actually happened.
(people's feelings/emotions on seeing specific posts count as "actually happened" for
this - even if they didn't post a reply ... perhaps especially if they didn't post).
2) Keep it personal
An extension of keeping it real - none of us represents the thoughts and opinions of
*every* other developer with whom we share some attribute. Sarah doesn't speak
for all young cool programmers any more than I speak for all old uncool ones :-). So stick
to your own stories, or those of specific people that can't be at KS but ask for their
tales to be told. [Not sure how well I expressed this one ... I'm trying to avoid the
issue where someone gets fired up with indignation on behalf of someone else ... who
isn't actually bothered by whatever happened].
3) Don't bring up ancient history
From the discussions on this, it looks like many people believe that things are better
than they were just a few years ago. Unless someone has the desire to do some
month-by-month survey and disproves this perception - let's pretend we have a
one or two year statute of limitations and not keep feuds going for (internet) generations.
4) Perfect is the enemy of good
Or "You can't please all of the people all of the time". No matter what we do there
will still be some unhappy people. Life is like that. But we can almost certainly
make more of the people happier for most of the time. So our goal isn't to solve
every possible problem (we need to save some topics for future KS :-) we just
want to make things better than they are, while still allowing for criticism of code.

-Tony