On 30 November 2013 08:41, Ned Deily <nad@acm.org> wrote:
On Nov 29, 2013, at 13:51 , Antoine Pitrou <antoine@python.org> wrote:
On ven., 2013-11-29 at 13:16 -0800, Ned Deily wrote:
Right. We can't change other people's behavior. We can at best encourage change. In this case, I'm doubtful that banning would serve as an encouragement.
Personally, I don't see it as an encouragement, rather a solution. The "temporary" part is in case he actually wants to start behaving better, but I'm not holding my breath.
You can't fix people, but you can prevent them from actually being harmful.
The thing is it's a technical solution to a social problem. I don't the former tend to be all that effective for the latter. And I think reasonable people can disagree about the degree of harmfulness. I personally don't see his behavior, in and of itself, as all that harmful. I *do* see the negative reaction it provokes as being harmful. Clearly, it bothers people and that is disruptive. But it would be a whole lot less disruptive if we didn't let it be, e.g. by just letting it go and ignoring it.
Nonsense. We shouldn't have to put up with Anatoly's constant disrespect for everyone else's time and energy.
I'm very sympathetic to Alex's argument earlier and the link he provided to Karl Fogel's book. I think the case study provided there from the svn project is not all that comparable to the situation here. It's not the case that the mailing list(s) here is/are being swamped by one disruptive person. If we all just agreed to ignore him and try not to feel compelled to respond, I believe we would soon find there is no longer an issue and we wouldn't need to be discussing potentially damaging solutions like formally banning.
Also nonsense. We've tried this for years, and he's still here and still a problem. It *hasn't worked* and it isn't going to magically start working now.
Why is it that we find him so annoying, enough to advocate fairly drastic measures like banning? There have been and will be others who behave similarly. I've only been here since 2006 or so, but I can't remember someone behaving like that on such a frequent and long-lived basis. He does stand out.
I think he stands out in part because we've spotlighted him.
More nonsense. He stands out, because everyone else that has behaved even remotely like him has been around for a few threads, realised people have started ignoring them, and then left again.
Anatoly's passion and persistence initially garnered him positive attention, since that kind of energy is worth trying to channel in positive directions. But that hasn't worked out, and it remains the case that he barges in to areas he doesn't understand and demands that everyone else stop what they are doing until they have explained it in simple enough terms for him to understand (and when he still doesn't get it, that's clearly *their* fault, rather than his).
Comparing his behavior to some of the recent, on-going cases of wildly inappropriate behavior on python-list (not involving Anatoly),
If python-list is a troll magnet, that's a pity, but how is that relevant to the *development community*?
It's relevant because python-list is yet another forum hosted by the PSF via python.org mailing lists and is viewed as part of the broader Python community as a whole. If we propose to ban someone from python-list, along with other lists, that raises the question of what standards are being used. There is, in fact, a published suggested CoC for python-list (http://www.python.org/community/lists/). In the help vampire case, I think most reasonable people would agree that the CoC is reasonable, was clearly being violated, and that banning was a drastic, but ultimately, necessary step as people were not willing to just ignore the misbehavior. If the same CoC were applied to python-dev (and python-ideas et al), I think many people would disagree that the behavior in this case violates a similar CoC seriously enough to warrant a ban.
Anatoly is *absolutely* in violation of the python-ideas CoC:
- Open? Nope - Anatoly is right, and there's no possible way he could ever be wrong
- Considerate? Not once - everything should be the way Anatoly demands, screw the interests of everyone else
- Respectful? Not in the least - nobody else's concerns are relevant, we should revamp everything to be convenient for Anatoly
It's one thing for newcomers to behave that way, since we have to assume they don't know any better, and try to guide them in the direction of more productive collaboration. We've already sunk inordinate amounts of time into trying to help Anatoly, and have almost exactly nothing to show for it (certainly nothing that even remotely justifies the cost in time and emotional energy).
It is a problem. And choosing to not participate is a perfectly rational and legitimate response. But it doesn't necessarily follow that banning someone is a better response. Trying to encourage different behavior can help if someone wants to take on that generally thankless effort. I applaud people like the other Ned who has lately been trying to do so there with some success. But it's not for everyone.
Please, I spent *years* trying to help Anatoly. It didn't work, so it's time to switch to the harm minimisation option and at least get him out of everyone's hair.
We tried to get him to be a productive contributor, it's time to admit we failed, and stop him being a drag on everyone else.
Cheers, Nick.
-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia