Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 23, 2025 18:45 UTC (Tue) by Trou.fr (subscriber, #26289)
In reply to: Some comments are just… beyond comment by lunaryorn
Parent article: An unstable Debian stable update

I think some of the replies and comments may stem from frustration with bluca's previous behaviour regarding problems with systemd. It's definitely not the first time that systems have been rendered unable to boot following some changes in Debian's packaging of systemd. bluca has made it clear that he did not feel it was part of his responsibility to ensure that systems are bootable, which, as Otte's comment underlines, does not seem in line with the potential consequences of failure...

Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 23, 2025 20:51 UTC (Tue) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link] (3 responses)

I can't comment on that; I don't follow Debian and don't know about the history of systemd maintenance in Debian.

I just clicked the link to the bug report in the article, as an outsider, and more or less immediately stumbled over really bad messages. While frustration can explain some of these to some degree, I believe it's no excuse for most of these messages and the behaviour exhibited by them.

On second thought, I guess what sort of shocked me really is that this tone and this way of communicating appears to be absolutely normal to all participants (except for the maintainer). There's no opposition, let alone moderation, and even the worst messages go absolutely unchallenged.

I wouldn't want to work in an environment as toxic as what I've seen in that bug thread, and I'm sort of in awe that there are actually people who volunteer their time to deal with that. And I can't help but believe that a certain amount of dismissive behaviour on the side of the maintainer is simply an acquired defence against such an environment. What goes around comes around as they say.

Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 24, 2025 11:54 UTC (Wed) by jhe (subscriber, #164815) [Link] (2 responses)

> And I can't help but believe that a certain amount of dismissive behaviour on the side of the maintainer is simply an acquired defence against such an environment. What goes around comes around as they say.

The systemd developer got Baratt's mail wrong, wrote an inflammatory dismissal and set the precedent for the toxic tone themselves. The thread was fine before that.

Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 24, 2025 17:08 UTC (Wed) by lunaryorn (subscriber, #111088) [Link] (1 responses)

This last remark wasn't about this thread in particular, but about the general communication pattern I extrapolate from the specific thread: all of those messages went unchallenged and no moderation stepped in, so I can only assume that this sort of interaction is normal in Debian's channels. That sets the tone of the environment, and naturally affects how either side learns to communicate over time.

I can only guess that it's not the first time the package maintainer had to deal with stuff like this, so I totally understand (understand, not excuse, mind you) a certain dismissive attitude acquired from having gone through many such unpleasant interactions.

Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 25, 2025 13:09 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

This really feels like a "but they started it" argument. Perhaps we should instead hope that someone notice this cycle and…not perpetuate it perhaps? I mean, sure, Reddit and similar corners of the Internet visit issue trackers sometimes, but it may be best to just break the cycle[1].

[1] https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/-/issues/27145

Some comments are just… beyond comment

Posted Sep 24, 2025 0:05 UTC (Wed) by koverstreet (✭ supporter ✭, #4296) [Link]

I've seen stories like that on quite a few occasions.

When you see things as heated as this, there's always a backstory, and it's often well worth it to follow that backstory and ask why things got to that point.

When people in a position of responsibility are checked out, heedless of the consequences of poor decisionmaking, and ignoring all feedback - things deteriorate fast.