Re: Apologies to gnome-gui if I ever said you guys were flamers...

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

Dan Effugas Kaminsky wrote:

> [John doesn't understand my shock at the gnome dev response]

No no no...  I understand that part fine.  You were shocked that people didn't
take your ideas as seriously as you thought they should be taken.  From what I
recall of the Slashdot response, you got a lot of positive responses, and a lot
of negative responses.  You seemed to focus only on the negative ones.

My confusion, rather, referred to the quoted line immediately above my response,
which looked like this:

> On the up side, I know view any and all discussion this place has come up
> with as merely "spirited".

And my response was:

"I have absolutely no idea what you mean.  Perhaps state it again
with more concreteness and less extended metaphor?"

What do you mean about the discussion here being "merely 'spirited'"?  Do you
mean that you don't think it's had any substance, that it's mostly tail-wagging
and flagellating?  And by "here" do you mean gnome-gui, or IRC, or Slashdot, or
GNOME in general?  That's what I was asking clarification on.

If you have a suggestion about how to improve the process here, come out and say
it.  If you're frustrated about how things get done here, fair enough, but at
least try to correct the situation.

> None of the coders had any substantive responses against cluehunting.  It
> was just total character assassination.

I don't think it was quite that.  I think you have built up quite a reputation
here for being a frustratingly stubborn debator with a strong penchant for
hyperbole.  IMHO, you've earned that reputation fair & square.  If you want to
be heard on an equal level with other contributors (this seems to be your main
gripe), you need to start trying to earn back some of the respect you've lost
with all your bandstanding & off-topic agendas.

This is a meritocracy, plain and simple.  The weight of your opinions are
directly proportional to the concrete work you've put into the project.
Proposals are one thing, but implementation is completely another.

You also seem very concerned about not getting your proposals onto the official
web site.  Well, that has to do with meritocracy too.  If your proposals had
code behind them, rather than being purely hypothetical/vaporous, you'd have a
much better chance of getting them there.  Don't just keep pumping out proposal
after proposal, trying to get each one of them adopted into GNOME.  Take the
time to research & develop them properly, perhaps learning how to lay them out
in an ultra-simple program.  That alone would do more for your proposals than
trying to forcibly convince the list members how great _all_ your ideas are.

It's really a simple concept.  You have to earn respect here.  The more respect
you have, the more people listen to you.

John