[python-committers] Anatoly Techtonik's contribution

[Brian Curtin]

On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 6:21 PM, John Benediktsson <mrjbq7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> IMO he has a negative effect on the Python community. When he asks a
>> question, he doesn't try to understand how Python is designed and let people
>> think that the Python design just sucks (which is wrong, Python design is
>> great! Python is the best language!).
>
>
> Out of curiousity, I googled Anatoly and python-ideas and this thread[1]
> seems a useful example.  His suggestions seem intended to help, he provided
> some code examples, and made only a handful of posts in support of his idea
> (receiving a few negative responses).  At times his English was rough, but
> without going into the merits of his ideas - would an approach where you
> encourage him to publish his ideas on PyPI or Github give him an outlet for
> his energy?

He's actually fairly active in Python-related open source as far as
I've seen. I've come across his name as a contributor to several
projects, so I don't think we need to offer him any outlets.

> It seems to me his philosophy clashes with that of python-dev, perhaps his
> batteries are a different size than those included in Python, but I'd like
> to see this community be inclusive rather than exclusive, even at the
> expense of a few added mail filters by the core team.

It would be great to include him or leave him included, but I have the
feeling that we're beyond this. I don't buy it that the problem is his
English knowledge or that he doesn't know that there was a problem.
Sure, he trips up on some English language skills, but those of us who
have talked back to him have done so in what are pretty clear negative
tones. He has reacted to said negativity with snark, so he gets it.

His philosophy, back when I still read his emails, was that he is
correct and to think otherwise is foolish (see his repeated attempts
to get us to restructure the entire development process for him). We
can ban him, we can keep him - whatever. My email filters will remain.