How to Drive Away a Contributor

In my perception you went too far in trying to prove that rgs way of dealing with the job he accepted was wrong.

I don't understand this. What have I written that suggests that I am trying to prove that anyone is doing a bad job?

I like Rafael. I respect Rafael. I believe Rafael and the other pumpkings deserve far more respect and appreciation than they get.

I believe the Perl 5 development process is unsustainable, that it hurts the further development of Perl 5, and that it burns out volunteers while discouraging new developers. I don't like that. I have concerns about the future of Perl (and not just Perl 5). I want to see the language and the community succeed, and I invest my time and resources and, yes, even my code to those ends.

I'll take my lumps for saying stupid things and for saying wrong things and for losing my cool sometimes and saying mean, sarcastic, and hurtful things. Tell me what they are and I'll apologize for them. I'll take that blame.

In return, I get told to shut up and go away. I get told to write code instead of talking. I get called a liar and a conspirator. I get labeled deaf and hysterical. I get accused of libel, of trolling, of marketing (?), and of deliberate sabotage. I get threatened with having certain existing accepted patches forcibly removed. I get called dangerously naïve, someone with stupid, crappy ideas only inexperienced novices could possibly believe. I get accused of having hidden agendas, including trying to destroy someone's volunteer work by chasing him away. I get told I should be pleased because I made someone quit working on something he and I both work on and want to see succeed.

I refuse to take that blame.

(If you really want to drive someone away from a project, I believe it's more effective to attack them personally rather than discussing technical decisions and goals and priorities. That's why I try so very often never to attack people.)

Update: Added "deaf", "hysterical", "crappy", and "stupid".

Comment on How to Drive Away a Contributor

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Re: How to Drive Away a Contributor by tilly (Archbishop) on Jul 08, 2009 at 22:54 UTC
I think you're running afoul of something that I was trying to explain at What you refuse to see, is your worst trap. Which is that if someone puts a lot of themselves into anything, there is a tendency to become emotionally invested in it, at which point they are likely to take technical criticism very personally. This is true no matter how obscure the technical point is. And no, I don't know of a solution. However being aware of the possibility of this failure mode helps me recognize when it is happening, and can sometimes help when I encounter it. For instance you strongly present your view that Perl 5 should release more often. The people who have done the pain of releasing are likely to hear that as, "You're doing a crappy job." When you talk about how well your projects do on this and how much Perl 5 sucks at it, they are likely to hear, "You're not putting enough effort in." After that point it doesn't matter how much energy you put into pointing out that you're talking about process, not people. Because once people's egos have been hurt, they tend not to read clearly. And they tend to lash back emotionally. As much as we all might wish it were different, this is a natural human reaction. As a result I strongly disagree with your belief that personal attacks are a more effective way of driving people away from projects than discussing technical decisions and goals and priorities. The most effective way of driving people away is to say things that they take personally. In many cases pointed criticism of someone's technical decisions gets taken more personally than obvious attempts at personal attacks. In those cases technical criticism is much more likely to result in problems than personal attacks. (I've experienced this from both sides, and watched others go through it as well. It is not fun from any perspective.) It is a very strange phenomenon which made no sense to me for years. But when you review this incident later, I'd suggest focusing on how many times you made technical points and got emotional responses. The solution to that isn't to try to make the technical point more clearly. It is to try to understand where the emotion is coming from, and address the emotional point. Update: erix pointed out that the singular of phenomena is phenomenon. Fixed.	[reply]
Re: How to Drive Away a Contributor by shmem (Chancellor) on Jul 07, 2009 at 22:31 UTC
Looks like there's an annoying bug at the grounds of this communication over ostensibly technical matters. It is a common place that intentions can come across otherwise, and neither sender nor recipient are to be blamed. In the referenced document, you write Now how do we make the job of a pumpking easier? Good question. Answers, anyone? I see no comment to that post of yours. -- Rafael was doing his job with inherited proceedings, and it looks like your criticism of organizational matters (as I would put it from what I read, not having digged through all of that) was perceived by him as criticism of his pumpking performance. Or something like that. Anyways, this is - on both sides - a story of implicit assumptions. How I wish you and Rafael fixed that bug! Best wishes, --shmem	[reply]