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Private vs public

Private vs public

Posted Oct 11, 2015 20:55 UTC (Sun) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
In reply to: Private vs public by lsl
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

> ...where it's obvious that they didn't even bother to read the relevant docs....

It is *never* obvious what someone else has or hasn't done in private. "They didn't read the relevant docs" may be the simplest explanation that you can think of given your perspective and values.
But people are different and complex. And they change from moment to moment.

Maybe they didn't ready, maybe they read but misunderstood. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they were hasty and careless. Maybe they are having a bad day and they pushed the wrong branch.

That is why attacking the person is such a bad idea. What you are really attacking is your mental model of the person, which is probably quite different in many details to the actual person. You may know what they did publicly,. You never know for certain why. So only attach the actions (i.e the code) not the person.

> If you don't even get the most basic stuff right and send one broken patch after another, there's no point in criticizing the individual patches.

There certainly comes a point where criticizing the patches doesn't seem worth while. But that does not justify attacking the person.

"I'm sorry but I won't be reviewing your patches any more because doing so doesn't appear to help. If you stop posting patches here for at least one month I may then look at future patches you post. If they appear to address my previous review comments, then I may proceed with them"

This talks about what "I" will do, how I see the patches, and specific public actions that you may or may not perform. This is all safe territory. It does not say anything about "you" or the reasons for "your" behaviour. It just identifies the problem and outlines the rules for engagement.

> So telling those submitters to stop until they change their approach to programming

Make that "stop until their patches address the identified issues" and I'll agree with you.


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Private vs public

Posted Oct 11, 2015 21:50 UTC (Sun) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

Just a quick addendum...
Modern technological cultures like ours claim to value science over superstition.

Science is about that which is observable and measurable.
Superstition is about whatever we suppose to be the case - untested by measurement.

I'm just suggestion that we should be scientific, not superstitious, in our responses to each other.


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