[python-committers] Anatoly Techtonik's contribution

[R. David Murray]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:20:06 +0200, Ezio Melotti <ezio.melotti at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Łukasz Langa <lukasz at langa.pl> wrote:
> > I don't want to spell out names but I've had more than one discussion at
> > conferences this year with people _afraid_ to get involved with core
> > development on the base of having to deal with behaviour like this. In one
> > case the comment was simply "I don't have time to deal with [people] like
> > him."
> 
> This is somewhat surprising to me.  Why would they have to deal with him?
> If the "people like him" were the core developers I could understand the
> problem, but he is just one of the many contributors.

Because, to put it in new age-y terms, his bad vibrations are poisoning
the environment.

That is perhaps a graphic way to put it, but it is a matter of community
tone and nurturing a joyful and creative environment in which all are
welcome and feel encouraged to contribute.

Anatoly works against that, almost constantly.  Encouraging him to
support the community would be *much* better than banning him...but
we've tried that.

> > The other case was sadder though: "Looks like you core devs have trouble
> > dealing with criticism, as shown by Anatoly."
> >
> I'm not sure I understand this.  ISTM that the problem here is with core
> devs, that are unable to deal with criticism (and have to resort to bans ;)
> rather than with him.

By "not understand", I presume you mean the "sadder" comment.

It is not that we are *unable* to deal with criticism.  We have dealt
reasonably with every criticism he has leveled, I think.  But his comments
create the *perception* that we are not dealing well with criticism,
because he is not but casts the aspersion onto us, while we do that much
less frequently to him, but do occasionally lapse into returning tit
for tat.  Since we are perceived as the ones in the position of power,
we get castigated for our actions and reactions much more than Anatoly,
the one perceived to be powerless in the situation, ever will be.

Let me repeat that bit, it is important.  We are perceived as being the
ones in the position of power, and he the powerless.  That perception
(and the reality behind it) will color every conversation that the wider
community has about this issue.  That is why I stress that our position
and our actions have to come from well articulated principles, otherwise
they will be perceived as caprice.

Which, I think, is more or less why you are arguing we should not
take action.

However, dealing reasonably with him gets harder and harder over time.
It is a failing in me as a person, but every time I see a message from
Anatoly, my gut clenches up and I go into a defensive mode, and want to
prove him wrong.  So I have to master myself and try to speak reasonably,
and try to not give back to him what he gives to us.  I hope I'm getting
better at that, but...

Take issue 16781 as a recent example.  I wanted to prove him wrong,
both because of his past actions and because of my perception (probably
colored by those past actions) of his choice of title for the issue
("execfile/exec messes up...")  But there is a real (documentation)
issue there.  I managed to moderate my tone...almost.  I still failed:
I said "the fact that the print works should be a clue", implying that
he should have seen it himself, But if I were dealing with anyone else,
I would have said, "The fact that the print works is a clue..."

This difference is *subtle*.  But those subtleties are *important* in
determining the tone of a community, the supportiveness of a community,
the openness of a community, the inclusiveness of a community.  Someone
reading my comment on that bug without knowing Anatoly's history would
think that the Python community is very stuck up.  It is so easy to
forget that our words to Anatoly are not read just by him, but by many
many other people.

Anatoly spreads negativity almost (but not every!) time he opens his
mouth, negativity which is then compounded by our natural human reactions
to his tone.  Yes it would be great if we could all master ourselves
and always speak to him reasonably no matter the provocation, and yes
we absolutely should strive very hard for that goal.  It should be one
of our guiding principles as a community.

But is that enough?

Remember, the issue isn't just *us*, the issue is also the effect on
people with whom we never interact directly, people who may flee the
community, or not join it, because of the negativity produced by both
sides.

Full disclosure: despite arguing here for *doing something* about Anatoly,
I am in fact somewhat ambivalent about what.  I have no problem with
banning him for specific actions (such as a ban from the tracker for
repeatedly reopening an issue).  But what, if any, other actions should
be taken I am not clear on.

> > We strive to be a welcoming bunch and I'm convinced that a part of this is
> > to call out anti-social behaviour and stop it. Otherwise our playground
> > stops looking like a fun and safe place to contribute.
>
> And a side effect of being welcoming is that you get every kind of people.
> Different people have different behaviors and skills.  I don't think his
> lack of social skills is worse than e.g. the lack of English skills of some
> of the contributors.  In both cases the intentions are not bad, but the
> message might be difficult to understand and thus can be misunderstood.
> These people shouldn't be marginalized just because of their lack of skills.
> As an example, I recently found out that one contributor on the tracker
> that sounded somewhat annoying actually was a ~10 years old kid.  From that
> point of view his contributions went from somewhat annoying to quite
> impressive (and I think some of his patches have been committed too).
> Of course if people have an intentionally destructive behavior they can be
> stopped.

As Nick pointed out, the problem isn't who he was coming in to the Python
community.  The problem is that he hasn't learned to support the community
instead of tear it down, after *years* of effort on the community's part.

> > This is not elitism nor censorship but a simple manner of respecting each
> > other. Think: out of respect for Guido's (or other senior devs') time
> 
> I heard this argument several time, but I'm not sure it's a really strong
> one.  No one is forced to spend his time in any specific way.  Granted, as
> a contributor you end up spending some of your time for this kind of things
> as well, but that also includes skimming through mails/comments that you
> don't care about, tell people that they wrote to wrong ML, that the issue
> they reported is invalid and so on.
> If people spend time reading his messages and responding to him, I assume
> they have reasons to do it.  If this turns out to be ineffective they
> should stop.

The problem, again, is not the individual posts, but the effect on the
community as a whole.  If we don't deal with Anatoly in one way or another
such that he is not having a bad effect on our community, then there are
many many people whose lives will be worse off (including ours) because
the community is *less* welcoming because of Anatoly's actions within it.

(Note that this argument may apply in different degrees to different
forums.)

Please be clear that I am not saying his *criticisms* should be silenced.
Far from it:  if he treated our community with respect I think he
would be a valuable contributor!

> > we should put an end to this. Judging from the YouTube view count,
> > humanity has spent over 3000 years watching Gangnam Style. How much time
> > did humanity spend on this thread and all other non-constructive
> > threads/issues fired by Anatoly?
>
> This is not necessarily non-constructive.  We have identified a problem and
> we are discussing about the possible ways it can be solved, while learning
> how to deal with similar problem should they occur again in the future.

Yes, this is a conversation that it a good thing to have, regardless of
Anatoly.  It is a discussion about who we as a community want to be in
the world.  A very valuable discussion, and one that should not and
can not be confined just to this list.

As Brian said, this is a long conversation.  It is one that should
never stop.  But even this first part, getting clear on who we want to
be right now, is not going to conclude in the next few days, or weeks,
or even months.  It actually started some time back, at least as long
ago as the diversity list, and continuing through the CoC discussion.

This is really just the next step in that process.

--David