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

[Adam Levy]

Apologies for my mis-formatted email. You may need to expand the
quoted text to read it. I think I goofed it.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2018 at 7:52 AM Adam Levy
<theadamlevy+archlinux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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.