Re: Revitalizing the Urban Center of GNOME

[Seth Nickell <snickell gmail com>]

To give a very graphic illustration of this.... based on a search of
the archives, Havoc's last post to desktop-devel was over a year ago.
Now it is true that he's been a bit snowed for time what with managing
us punks, but Havoc has always been a mailing list warrior, posting
fiercely posting often. Back in the day he was something of a terror
on mailing lists. The terror of gnome-hackers. "Arrrrrrrrr!" he would
growl and the weak of heart would scream and faint, which was the
fashion back then, because heart surgery wasn't quite as good. and.
um. I'm off track. See how old I'm getting?

But what's the point? Havoc's a busy guy. He's weekend hacking
something fierce to finish off DBus 1.0. Lots of people are starting
to hack on random DBus communicating things, which is very cool. ...
And there's been no discussion of it here (by Havoc or others). We
need to bring that sort of stuff back!

-Seth


On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:09:09 -0500, Seth Nickell <snickell redhat com> wrote:
> >You have every right to ask for an off-topic discussion to go off
> list,
> > but you have no right to recommend people not reply to him, and you have
> > no right to say the way he wants to make a proposal is "useless". Its
> > his time to use as he pleases.
> >
> > If he puts forth something that looks like "dogs breakfast", then you
> > can dismiss it on more valid grounds than that you personally don't like
> > his methodology. Some people work differently than you Jeff. You should
> > find more constructive ways of deal with them then telling them to shove
> > off.
> 
> Jeff was certainly curt, and perhaps should have been gentler in making
> the point, but he's probably right too. In his judgment (and mine too,
> fwiw) that thread was doomed to produce very little impact, a lot of
> noise.
> 
> Something GNOME enthusiasts on this list often seem to forget is that
> its *not* just their time. When you send a message to a mailing list,
> you are asking for everyone to spend some time on it. When you start a
> thread that will draw lots of replies, you are, unwittingly or not,
> asking for everyone on the list (including hackers) to spend lots of
> time.
> 
> I define the GNOME enthusiast community as: those who are actively
> involved with and interested in GNOME but have NOT contributed large
> quantities of code, translation or documentation (there are several
> exceptional cases, for example Jeff himself, but not a lot). We need
> enthusiasts and should value them! It provides a source of excitement,
> sociability, feedback on how we're doing in different areas, and
> sometimes even new ideas.
> 
> But right now, the lists have become driven by the enthusiast community
> to the extent that hackers have gone into hiding. A good thread on
> desktop-devel-list *should* be predominantly (75% or more, say, as a
> totally arbitrary number) posts by core GNOME hackers related to that
> area. Look at a thread now.... probably 90% of the posts are by
> enthusiasts. That's taking "being in touch with the community" a little
> too far to the point that its hard to get work done ;-)
> 
> For example, most of the people actually writing code that will be in
> the next GNOME release have probably been actively deleting every
> message to this theme thread! Its not because they don't care, its
> because they don't want to take the time away from working on gnome to
> wade through all the noise. And they shouldn't have to.
> 
> Compared to its peak as a lively discourse among the hackers doing core
> contributions to the gnome codebase, desktop-devel-list is almost a dead
> list in terms of "useful things accomplished". Part of the problem is a
> *very* high noise level, and also very annoying persistent threads of
> the bike shed variety.
> 
> Something people only relatively recently involved in GNOME (last couple
> years) wonder is about the relative silence / non-responsiveness of core
> hackers. It seems like desktop-devel-list, despite all the traffic, has
> very few people who are getting something done (see usability gnome org
> for an even worse example of this that is even more my fault). That the
> lists we (core hackers) used to haunt have become a tangle of weeds is
> one of the major factors driving this.
> 
> As community leaders in GNOME, one of our jobs is to shepherd the lists
> so they do not become exceedingly noisy (and scare away important hacker
> to hacker traffic). But we have largely abdicated this responsibility in
> the last couple years. markmc tried to fight the tide about a year ago,
> but eventually gave up. Its hard *because* we're actually very nice
> people, and thus none of us want to be the list nazi. But its also very
> important to have this sort of pruning to be a healthy community.
> 
> We've been talking about this a lot lately in s33kret cabal discussions.
> That we feel the need to have these private circles is part of the
> problem! Nobody, even those of us involved in the cabal (and especially
> not Jeff who is an outspoken supporter of openness and inclusion), want
> this sort of private exclusionary construct.
> 
> So what's the point?
> 
> 1) Desktop-devel-list, #gnome-hackers, etc have been drowned by a deluge
> of well meaning (and healthy, when found in moderation) enthusiast
> involvement.
> 2) The loss of effective communication channels has had a major negative
> impact on the amount and pace of GNOME development. Esp. development
> across the whole desktop (as opposed to in-module development where
> there's a relevant specialized list).
> 3) If the enthusiast community wants to help GNOME, they need to be
> understanding as we try curtail (primarily socially, by asking people to
> show restraint) how freely they post / chat on IRC about whatever comes
> to their head. We *do* want community input, but with such a torrent, we
> end up shutting our ears, not hearing any of it, not hearing eachother,
> stop hacking, and gnome dies.
> 
> I know it will be painful: some of you who are accustomed to posting a
> few (or even more) times a day and that has to change. Please understand
> this is for the health of GNOME: If you are quieter, hackers will be
> louder. I am very apologetic we haven't been good at reinforcing this as
> a community norm all along. Its always more painful to have to go
> through a transition, esp. one in which your voice gets quieter, than to
> integrate with an existing set of social norms. But do not fear, we WILL
> hear the enthusiast community voice, in fact, we will hear it better
> when we aren't stopping up our ears because its so loud. ;-)
> 
> No disrespect intended,
> 
> -Seth
> 
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