Thick skins [LWN.net]

Thick skins

Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:03 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (guest, #30636)
In reply to: Thick skins by geofft
Parent article: On kernel mailing list behavior

A thick skin is needed in just about every community. If you spend time working hard on something and someone tells you that you are completely wrong in a blunt fashion, it hurts.

But there is a difference between say, "This approach is completely wrong" and saying "YOU ARE F*CKING STUPID".

The later is being abusive. That's not a question of thick skin, it's a question of willingness to tolerate being abused.

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Thick skins

Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:36 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, there's certainly a difference there.

I've been told, and told people, "This approach is completely wrong" couched inside "I value and appreciate the time you spent on it, and don't think that you are dumb." I've been in productive communities where you don't need a thick skin, because people value each other and their happiness in that community, and out of that, productivity and good technical decisions naturally happen.

When I'm lucky, instead of directly being told "This approach is completely wrong" (or telling people that, conversely), I'm simply asked enough questions to realize that for myself, and nobody is hurt. This approach requires patience and trust, and a general feeling that others in the project value you as well as the project. So it's understandable that in volunteer communities, people don't tend to go for that approach. But it's worth the long-term investment, where possible, and we should acknowledge that we're hurting people when we don't.

Thick skins

Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:05 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

But they killed Socrates, too! :)

Thick skins

Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:37 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

Seconded; you can tell someone in no uncertain terms that they've done something wrong and should make sure it never happens again, and even make it clear that they should have known better, without going on a tirade against them personally. *That's* what it means to keep things professional.