Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread [LWN.net]

Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread

Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:58 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465)
In reply to: Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread by dlang
Parent article: On kernel mailing list behavior

An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.

None of that requires flaming people to a crisp.

Code, sure; people, no. Even if you need to call someone out on a pattern of bad code to stop more from happening in the future, that still doesn't require flaming them.

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Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread

Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:07 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.

It's also unnecessarily stressful. I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me?

Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread

Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:05 UTC (Fri) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

"It's also unnecessarily stressful."

So is the 100% PC-US-Coprporate-style, all-day, every day, crap.

"I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me? "

I for one could not possibly participate in a 'every opinion is valid' kumbaya development process, how many others are there like me? (yes me too can make an Appeal to the masses argument)

Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread

Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:38 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

>> An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.

> It's also unnecessarily stressful. I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me?

"Intentionally adversarial" here just means the same as it does in "adversarial legal system": one in which different people argue different ideas or points of view, and those ideas or points of view may get argued against as appropriate, necessitating active advocacy, support, and defense.

Every time a patch submitter is required to say not just what they've changed but *why*, or a reviewer asks for benchmarks proving that the patch helps, or a reviewer says the code isn't clean enough and offers a list of proposed changes, that's what I mean by "adversarial". It doesn't mean the interactions need to be uncivil; it just means ideas are not automatically accepted and untouchable by others. It's OK to say "this is not acceptable".

By contrast, if you completely disallow negative feedback, how can you reject patches to preserve the quality of the project you're maintaining?