Community (A Modest Proposal)

[Stephen Hansen]

On 6/13/10 9:14 AM, rantingrick wrote:
> On Jun 13, 1:50 am, Stephen Hansen <me+list/pyt... at ixokai.io> wrote:
> 
>> You don't argue a position; you don't support it with facts, logic,
>> reason. You start immediately into this emotional rhetoric,
>> pseudo-inspirational nonsense which just comes off as inane. It's like a
>> bad cross between a politician and an self-help speaker, and the crux of
>> your arguments are focused on that emotional charge-- how TCL is impure,
>> gross, and its inclusion makes us "less", makes us the mockery of the
>> language world, how everyone loathes and detests it.
> 
> Could it be that *you* are taking my opinions and suggestions too
> emotionality?

No. Your emotional impact on me has been zero.

However, all you do is spew emotionally charged rhetoric. It doesn't
actually *work*, you don't fire me up, inspire me, convince me that
you've somehow made a point and said something of substance, as I can
recognize you have not. You start from a certain point you want to make,
and instead of making it with an actual argument, you start spewing
emotionally-charged nonsense. This is what politicians do to try to get
around not saying anything of substance or supporting their positions.
They're just better at it.

Do you want quotes? Okay!

--

You: "Insane asylums are filled to the rafters with these people. They walk
around with tin foil wrapped around their heads supposedly because
cell phone towers are "really" mind control devices. Well at least
thats their side of the story ;-). You can also compare this attitude
to a heart transplant recipient who says he doesn't want the heart if
it came from a black, brown, or yellow person. In that case the hatred
is race based but it is exactly the same thing as we have here. Hate
is hate no matter what "form" it takes or "excuse" it makes."

Translation: "I make the vague allusion of an insane asylum, then
include blatant bigotry and ignorance, and make sure to bring up the
'hatred' card and therefore through these utterly irrelevant additions,
I have discredited the opposition and I am therefore right."

--

You: "These people are the ones who cannot change with the times. You know
what they say. """ Change with the times or get left behind""". They
would rather hack together a curses front-end than to drop into a GUI,
yes really. You old timers need to get with the program, GUI is here
to stay until wet-ware interfaces take over. So drag yourself into the
21st century (kicking and screaming if necessary)"

Translation: "I realize there is a significant subset of the community
who believe that GUI's should not be included in the stdlib, and they
have made coherent arguments as to why: since I can not refute them
directly, I shall write them into the position of being an anachronism,
a thing of the past to be moved on from and pitied. Even though they
have not lobbied for a great Return to the Console and abandonment of
the mouse, I shall imply that they have so you can discredit their
opinions as mere fringe fanaticism."

--

You: "Oh Please lets not help user in the age of
"take-over-my-puter--all-my-
data, and-my-freedoms, and-then-force-me-to-be-a-slave-to-you-just-so-
i-can-use-my-data, with-your-permission, master!" era. Yes i have seen
these GUI, HTML, CSS, Javascript freaks of nature and lament them
daily! What a nightmare! Give me a good ole GUI and get the hell outta
my way!"

Translation: "The reality that more then one modern GUI(both QT and the
latest from Microsoft come to mind) systems have incorporated technology
that originated on the web into their application-based user interface
systems (not to be confused with a web user interface) is not lost on
me, but for whatever reason I just object in principle. So, instead of
arguing against such technologies on their merit, I shall distract the
entire point into the realm of hype and web-based applications, and
remind people of the dangers of giving our data over to The Cloud, and
that the Web 2.0 is all about taking control away you."

--

You: "But we sure don't need an embedded TCL interpretor packaged
with Python either *YUCK*!!!"

Translation: "Even though I have absolutely no idea what technological
problems having TCL bundled with Python presents, I'm going to appeal to
your inner purist and fanatic, and say: If its not in Python, its
rubbish! Just cuz."

--

You: "psst, hey Guido, it's time to make your triumphant comeback to
c.l.p. We are waiting..."

Translation: "As part of my ongoing passive-aggressive Tea Party-like
anger towards the Establishment over on python-dev, I shall repeatedly
make references to the abandonment of The Community by Those in Power
(and Guido in particular), and through this shall continue to try to
inspire you my fellow brothers to rise up and take Python back! All the
while attempting to appear to be at least a member of the loyal opposition."

--

You: "... well just keep your negativity to yourself. When you have real
solutions or real ideas that could foster real solutions then for
Pete's sake bring them forth and let them be weighed in the balances
of truth. But i can tell you right now, everyone will have to
sacrifice something to get the perfect GUI for Python. Yes you heard
me correctly, the perfect GUI for Python! Not the perfect GUI for you,
me, or even xah lee!"

Translation: "Although your challenge of my idea or position was purely
technical and fact-based, I will dismiss it as 'negativity' and declare
that you are one of those moochers who don't ever actually contribute,
that way your opinion won't actually mean anything when compared to mine."

I could go on all day. You do it ALL THE TIME. Not only on this thread.

Its tiresome.

> Instead of just simply barking down orders from the top we need to
> have useful discussion on the many topics that concern Python. And not
> just the "core" developers or the "core" protagonist on this list
> should be involved in this discussion. Everyone needs to have a chance
> to speak.

As I said before: The Python community is far, far, far larger then this
mailing list. It has broad and diverse interests.

> My are arguments for Tkinter/Tcl/Tk are all true. However it should be
> a community decision (not my sole decision or yours!) as to whether
> Tkinter stays or not. 

Actually, it is not a community decision.

It is, according to every policy that I'm aware of, pretty much set in
stone that Tkinter stays.

The only way in which it can be removed (or, really, significantly
changed in a backwards-incompatible way) would be for you to write a
PEP, have it fully fleshed out with both pro and con arguments, and try
to build a community consensus around the issue, one way or the other.

If you fail to get a consensus, the status quo almost certainly stands
(though the BDFL can step in and rule one way or the other: he tends to
be pretty conservative on these things unless there's something new made
possible and elegant)

If you succeed to get a consensus, then it probably goes through another
round of debate on python-dev, and then Guido (or, sometimes, a delegate
he appoints) decides one way or the other, taking the 'consensus' under
advisement.

At least, this seems to be how such works out from my outsider's
perspective of watching the threads go along.

> As i have said before i *do* actually use
> Tkinter quite a lot (along with other libraries). But we must make a
> choice, Keep Tkinter and improve it, or dump Tkinter and consider
> something that will scale better for the future. I AM HAPPY EITHER
> WAY!

There is a third choice: The status quo is satisfactory.

-- 

   Stephen Hansen
   ... Also: Ixokai
   ... Mail: me+list/python (AT) ixokai (DOT) io
   ... Blog: http://meh.ixokai.io/

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