Merging Allwinner support

I think people are too eager to criticise others when many are (or have been) in the same boat. Furthermore, the climate of discussion around many projects does lead people to be confrontational instead of conciliatory, so many people perceive that the best approach is to just demand or assert things rather than to gently tease out advice and opinions and to gradually persuade and encourage people to agree on the right course of action. In this particular case, the perceived urgency of the situation didn't encourage the apparently necessary tiptoeing around, and the usual "when it's done" responses are probably hard to stomach when an opportunity seems about to be lost.

With regard to reputations, I've dealt with people that no-one else wants to deal with, and although such people can exhibit annoying patterns of behaviour, one does come away with the impression that such people are genuinely trying to improve things and are not just playing some "trolling" game for the fun of it. Sadly, a lot of established contributors to projects seem to have the impression that every newcomer or outsider is by default only there to see some of the glamour rub off on them, and thus they treat newcomers with suspicion rather than take advantage of the opportunity of someone showing up with enthusiasm for that project. Such enthusiasm can drain away pretty quickly, after all.

I'm sure that a lot of people don't regard such matters as a problem, but I've also seen sentiments expressed in favour of blocking or censoring "difficult" people in a community, so I don't think anyone should be complacent about this kind of thing at all.