There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems [LWN.net]

There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems

Posted Dec 20, 2024 1:26 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems by geofft
Parent article: FESCo provenpackager sanction causes problems

> I think that if you have a social community where the most effective people are also the rudest and hardest to work with, you should rethink your community structure and how it got to be that way.

This is not a Fedora-exclusive problem. Basically every internet community where "effective" has any sort of meaningful definition has exactly the same issue. There is nearly always "that one guy who rubs everyone the wrong way, but does good work too." (In my experience, the person does usually identify as male, but I'm sure female etc. examples can be found if you look hard enough. I use male pronouns for simplicity.)

The most common resolutions are:

1. Ban "that guy" from the community, and then argue over whether he should have been banned.
2. Don't ban "that guy," and then argue over the same.
3. "That guy" takes a hint and mellows out.

Most communities enter a holding pattern where (2) is the default answer right up until "that guy" manages to do something obnoxious enough to tip the moderators (or whatever they call themselves) over to doing (1) instead (frustratingly, this last straw often looks innocuous in isolation, which is why people continue to argue after the banhammer comes down). (3) is rare but probably does happen from time to time.

One other thing: Since I have no experience working with Fedora, I have no idea if Mr. Robinson really is "that guy," or if he just rubbed one or two people the wrong way once or twice (you are not "that guy" unless it's a long-term pattern of behavior and affects a lot of people). I do not want the above comment to be interpreted as a condemnation of him in particular - I'm just trying to describe a general trend I have observed in internet communities.

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There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems

Posted Dec 20, 2024 12:51 UTC (Fri) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]

Valorising 'technically effective' over 'socially effective', which is sometimes hidden behind ideas of meritocracy, is a real pain when trying to manage people and coalesce teams to be perform greater than the sum of the parts. The '10x individual' idea is a heinous part of this, too, because it puts lower responsibility to be (or reward for being) a good colleague and team mate on someone who's not good at that, while binding everyone impacted by this individual's choices to a status level where they have to deal with working code now and little-to-no documentation or discussion.

I understand that those things have rare excellent projects started -- but sustained requires collaboration from people co-laboring with you.

One idea with Merge Requests is to set the expectation that a MR which passes the test suite ought to be approved, but you present the changes to the team as a teaching session documenting why you chose the approach and made the MR's design decisions. Because people get better at what they practice doing, you get gains in technical communication ... by practising technical communication.

K3n.

There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems

Posted Dec 20, 2024 18:00 UTC (Fri) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (1 responses)

> I have no idea if Mr. Robinson really is "that guy,"

absolutely not

There are, indeed, technical solutions to social problems

Posted Dec 21, 2024 13:07 UTC (Sat) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I agree, and I apologize that my sentence about Peter has blown up about it. I was trying to be clear that I know he can be rough around the edges and it got away from me.