[python-committers] Anatoly (again)

[Nick Coghlan]

On 16 October 2014 06:54, Antoine Pitrou <antoine at python.org> wrote:
>
> Le 15/10/2014 22:49, Ethan Furman a écrit :
>> On 10/15/2014 01:25 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 6:51 AM, Georg Brandl wrote:
>>>> On 10/06/2014 02:56 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>>>>> Why is Anatoly posting to python-dev? I thought he was banned when he was banned
>>>>> from the tracker.
>>>>>
>>>>> I refuse to waste my time trying to reason with him, and I consider the "just
>>>>> ignore him" approach to be unacceptable, as it leaves him free to waste everyone
>>>>> *else's* time trying to break through his parochial lack of empathy.
>>>>
>>>> IIRC he's being moderated?
>>>
>>> Yes. When I have some time to do pydev moderation, I usually only let Anatoly's emails through if they are strictly
>>> content-oriented and carry information. This isn't always easy to discern though, and I imagine other moderators may be
>>> burdened by him imposing extra work.
>>
>> I've been promoted to list-moderator for two other Python lists to help deal with Anatoly's posts -- one more would not
>> be a burden.
>
> If the burden is mostly handling Anatoly's email, perhaps we should stop
> bothering and ban him for good? It doesn't sound right for someone so
> little constructive to eat up so much of our resources.
>
> What do you think?

I know at least in my case, even if the posts get through the mailing
list moderation, they'll just hit my personal delete filter (it's
generally the replies that get my attention, not his own messages).

I only brought it up this time because his initial "yay, well done"
message congratulating David on completing the migration to using
"bytes like object" in error messages was then entirely undone by a
pointless screed complaining that the formal *definition* of a bytes
like object is somewhat complicated (which, while an accurate
complaint, is also not something that can realistically be changed any
time soon).

It's that fundamental inability to do a meaningful cost/benefit
analysis that earned Anatoly a place in my delete filter in the first
place, and I haven't seen any change in that respect over the past
several years. Anatoly can behave reasonably if you're doing what he
asks (or just something he agrees with), but he goes off the deep end
as soon as you tell him "no, that's not worth the hassle", or even
"that might be interesting, how do you plan to make it happen?".

"Those that do the work, make the rules" is one of the fundamental
precepts of the open source development model, and interacting with
him over a long period of time (including a few years where I was
actively attempting to coach him towards contributing productively)
has convinced me that Anatoly doesn't accept that as a legitimate
constraint on his suggestions.

The long history of conflict between him and both the PSF and the
CPython core development team then follows from that as he continues
to try to give orders without providing any incentive or clear
rationale for anyone else to voluntarily contribute the time needed to
do what he suggests.

Continuing to expose contributors (and potential contributors) to an
individual that clearly doesn't place any value whatsoever on their
contributions is something I've objected to for a long time, so it
shouldn't come as any surprise that I'm in favour of just allowing the
list moderators to set his posts to auto-discard, without even reading
them first :)

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia