On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 6:21 PM, John Benediktsson <mrjbq7@gmail.com> wrote:
IMO he has a negative effect on the Python community. When he asks a question, he doesn't try to understand how Python is designed and let people think that the Python design just sucks (which is wrong, Python design is great! Python is the best language!).
Out of curiousity, I googled Anatoly and python-ideas and this thread[1] seems a useful example. His suggestions seem intended to help, he provided some code examples, and made only a handful of posts in support of his idea (receiving a few negative responses). At times his English was rough, but without going into the merits of his ideas - would an approach where you encourage him to publish his ideas on PyPI or Github give him an outlet for his energy?
He's actually fairly active in Python-related open source as far as I've seen. I've come across his name as a contributor to several projects, so I don't think we need to offer him any outlets.
It seems to me his philosophy clashes with that of python-dev, perhaps his batteries are a different size than those included in Python, but I'd like to see this community be inclusive rather than exclusive, even at the expense of a few added mail filters by the core team.
It would be great to include him or leave him included, but I have the feeling that we're beyond this. I don't buy it that the problem is his English knowledge or that he doesn't know that there was a problem. Sure, he trips up on some English language skills, but those of us who have talked back to him have done so in what are pretty clear negative tones. He has reacted to said negativity with snark, so he gets it.
His philosophy, back when I still read his emails, was that he is correct and to think otherwise is foolish (see his repeated attempts to get us to restructure the entire development process for him). We can ban him, we can keep him - whatever. My email filters will remain.