[arch-general] Proposal: add "--disable-modern-top" to procps-ng configure flags

[Saul Reynolds-Haertle]

Apologies if this is misformatted, and I hope it works; I didn't
expect to be responding and am working in the system optimized for
readability over composition.

I subscribed to this list just last night in hopes of gaining better
visibility into the tools that I use. I have, and I think that I
should report my findings. This thread has convinced me to, first,
unsubscribe from this list immediately, because the information isn't
worth exposure to this kind of toxicity, and second, start moving away
from Arch, because I can't trust it to ship good code.

The immediate response and a good bit of the followup was acutely
hostile to both the reporting user and to the ability of this
community to build good software. It argues to me that I cannot trust
Arch to comprehend a world outside its little bubble, think about its
users, acknowledge possible bugs that aren't instantly obvious to the
Arch staff, cause issues to be upstreamed, or maintain a climate of
discussion that is conducive to discussing problems and fixing
them. Evaporative cooling of group beliefs ensures that
honesty-brutality culture inevitably spirals into a festering
close-minded pit that cannot accept outside contributions or think of
the bigger picture. Maintaining the free flow of information is
important, but it must be done in the context of the larger community
- a tiny walled-off group can communicate as freely as it wants inside
itself, but if nothing goes over the wall there might as well be no
free flow at all.

Even if the original report was not flawless, even if it was a repeat,
even if it was sent to the right people, hostile repression was not
the correct response. If nothing else, the fact that it's a repeat
should be demonstrated and more deeply evaluated. This time it ended
up working out, but if this is representative of the Arch community I
can't trust it to handle other bugs. How many more severe issues are
hiding in Arch, or in upstream packages, because the original reporter
was already having a bad day and just gave up? Because people aren't
emotionless robots and a horrible thread like this stressed someone
out enough to cause an error? Because someone jumped to an incorrect
conclusion and shut down discussion prematurely?

Answer: Too many for my liking.

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Saul Reynolds-Haertle