Re: GNOME: lack of strategic roadmap

["Lefty (石鏡 )" <lefty shugendo org>]

On 3/2/10 4:39 PM, "Stormy Peters" <stormy peters gmail com> wrote:
> 
> Philip, I think a lot of people are saying they'd rather not see these
> arguments on the Foundation list.

That's not what I'm seeing. What I'm seeing are personal attacks and loose
rhetoric (e.g. "pissing contest") in response to pretty reasoned attempts to
take issue?once again?with the pronouncements of the FSF as they should
presumably apply to GNOME.

In every instance, no matter how silly or harmful the statement?and I
personally view this claim that Facebook is somehow a front for the CIA to
be both?no actual disagreement is tolerated.

> We've had several threads in the past month that go on and on without being
> productive at all and you are one of the most frequent posters to each of
> them.

I don't know whether they were productive or not, but shutting them down
after the shouts of "troll!" or "pissing contest!" have broken out, and then
castigating the folks getting yelled at, guarantees that nothing productive
will come out of them except yet another disagreement over a pointlessly
provocative statement swept under the rug.

> I believe the way you respond often takes the thread off topic and turns it
> argumentative.

I'd say that the way that a _lot_ of people respond?e.g. the subthread on
the "pvanhoof problem"?is off-topic and argumentative. Please don't single
out Philip here (again). There are at least four other people you should
have spoken to first.

> When I've asked in the past, you've been good about stopping the personal
> insults. Now I'm asking you to seriously consider each post you make to the
> Foundation list and ask yourself whether each part contributes productively to
> the conversation.

Maybe you should ask the same of some others as well.

Once again, if we want to improve things with respect to some of the more
important "communities" outside of our own, the way to do it is to engage
with them in a positive way. Vilification won't do it, repeating unsupported
and tenuous gossip won't do it, calling them names won't do it, insisting
that using their site, service or product is a "harmful practice" won't do
it.

I don't think that sort of thing "contributes productively to the
conversation". Why do we tolerate _that_ so well?