[aur-general] About bullying in our community (Was: TU Application)

[Adam Levy]

> Even if you are 100% correct, there were a lot of other messages, not
> just the linked ones.

First I want to mention that I did in fact read all of the emails, but
presumably someone trying to make a point about bullying in those
emails would have linked to the most contentious ones. So those are
the ones I reviewed prior to writing my first email.

As I recall when I was initially reading that chain, I tended to agree
with the points that Eli was making. I trust his assessment of what
transpired with your bug reports and I agree with his assessment of
your complaints regarding how your AUR packages were handled. Frankly
reputation and standing do matter here. I have seen Eli be very curt
with people in the past and I am not surprised that people have taken
offense. But I haven't ever seen Eli do this without some
justification, normally that the person in question is ignorant of
policies and procedures in a context where they have a responsibility
to be informed. I have also seen Eli admit mistakes when he was wrong.
So when I read what he wrote about how you were reopening bug requests
that had been repeatedly closed I tended to believe him over you. It
is totally reasonable to make a character judgement based on
reputation and social standing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems
that you are saying that Eli was lying or deceitful or
mis-characterizing the situation.

I don't generally agree with Eli's tact but I don't agree that it
crossed a line into bullying. I feel that now you are
mis-characterizing what transpired. But there is some grey area here
and room for interpretation so I'll grant you that. I certainly don't
think calling you a liar is a fair assessment, nor is that at all
productive in nearly any context.

My point about being bullied in the past is that I have a hard time
seeing how anything that was said constitutes bullying. But as I
pointed out, we don't have a well-defined definition of bullying, or
ganging up, or violent emailing. So could we be more specific? Saying
that you are whining is not bullying. In fact if you are repeatedly
trying to complain about something that has already been addressed, or
cannot be changed, or is outside of the scope of a conversation, then
yeah I would agree that is whining. But again, whining is not a
technical term, so I agree Eli took some liberty with that tact. Again
I don't agree with that approach. But again, that's not bullying in my
view.

I'm sorry that this ordeal has caused you distress, to say the least.
However, this community doesn't exist to cater to people's feelings.
We should be considerate of feelings insofar as it helps us all get
along and be more productive, but there will always be times when the
people in charge here will want to do things in a way that some users
disagree with. Sometimes that gets communicated in a way that rubs
people the wrong way and causes some hurt feelings. That's not ideal
but it's not uncommon that after a user hears an explanation they
don't agree with that they start to argue endlessly. I'd rather Eli's
time, and all of the other TU's time, be spent on doing what they are
best at: maintaining Arch. If that means that they spend a little less
time being exceptionally thoughtful about other people's feelings who
are repeatedly trying to argue with him, then I am personally OK with
that.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 6:54 AM Santiago Torres-Arias via aur-general
<aur-general at archlinux.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 01:27:09PM +0100, Baptiste Jonglez wrote:
> > Hi Santiago,
> >
> > Now that the discussion period is over, I am taking time to fully answer
> > this, since it's much more general and important than the TU application
> > itself.
>
> Hi Baptiste.
>
> I read your email, and I do agree with your picture in general. I don't
> intend to "sweep anything under the rug" but rather keep two things
> separate:
>
> 1. A TU application
> 2. A discussion about the way some members of our community approach
>    their peers.*
>
> I personally want to keep both conversations separate, mostly because I
> think the latter could be better handled internally.
>
> Thanks,
> -Santiago.
>
> * I don't say names here because I'm sure this is not the
> only instance of this happening.