mike arthur dot co dot you kay

May an interesting topic for a thesis if conflicts, trolls, flamewars, love and hate isn’t just an important part of a community. To have this public just shows what we are; open and free.
Could you imagine how boring the live and a community would be if there would be nothing else then harmony? Teletubbies everywhere. Remember why the first Matrix designed as perfect world failed?
At the end the main question is, what’s made out of such a conflict and I’ve no doubt that the result will be cool.

Comment by Sebastian Sauer — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 07:56

Let me be blunt: you are talking about Dirk’s blog “The Genesis of a Plasma Patch”. I don’t see any other recently published blog that could have prompted your whining.

You say: “When you publicly insult other people it creates tensions in the community between people.” I don’t see Dirk has done anything like that. When I read his blog, I could feel his frustration about the issue he had with Aaron. But did you notice that he didn’t go into any ad-hominem attack? Did you notice that he didn’t even mention *any* developer name? (Unlike I do here)

I enjoyed Dirk’s blog in a way even. Because he succeeded to present the whole issue in a somehow funny, “bitterly humorous” way…

Ask for more love all you want, But don’t whine. Don’t whine because someone points out his problems and frustrations in a blog that is not insulting anyone in a personal way, and instead resolves to some kind of black humor and irony…

Comment by Repre Hendor — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 08:30

@Sebastian Sauer: I agree that it is impossible to go without what you mentioned above but surely you aren’t saying they are good things? All I was saying is that people are likely to get bothered by a blog than an email.

@Repre: I’m not specifically talking about Dirk’s blog although that was one of them. There has at least one other since Dirk’s that prompted this posting. I don’t recognise your name but were you the person whose work Dirk was criticising? If not then I don’t care if you enjoyed it. I didn’t think the tone was so much funny as flippant and disrespectful. He didn’t notice any developers name but to anyone who reads even half the posts on Planet KDE it was blatantly obviously who he was referring to.

I’m a little disappointed I’m accused of “whining”. Whining is when you complain about something without offering a constructive solution. I offered a fair few. Fundamentally I think this is having respect for other peoples work and I don’t think just because we are “open” we should unlearn etiquette from the work place. We need not be constrained by the petty side of workplace behaviours but at the same time we should be respectful, professional and most of all (as Repre says) loving to those others in the community.

Comment by Mike Arthur — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 09:35

> If there is one thing I have learnt in my (short thusfar) career as a software engineer its that the
> most important thing for a team to do is get on well and be polite to one another. If I have a
> serious problem with a coworkers work or behaviour I should privately confront them and explain not
> only the problem but also how it made me feel

I fully agree with you, Mike. Thats why I pointed out that we should be polite to one another and have the possibility to talk to each other. I might not have expressed it in those direct words, though. I didn’t blog about it because we were polite to each other or I had the possibility to resolve the conflict by talking to each other privately.

Comment by Dirk Mueller — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 10:10

That a small cashew shaped thing in one of the corners of our screens can spark such emotions just shows how much KDE means to the developers involved. That involvement is a good thing.
I must say that I’ve seen much worse conflict resolutions than the blog posts in the last few days, and I think in general the KDE developers does an excellent job of resolving conflicts.
I think all the parties involved knows that none of their “opponents” (completely wrong word) means any harm, and that sometimes it’s hard to not get emotional and wanting to blow some steam off. We’re not machines like the ones we are programming, we’re emotional creatures. So let’s not blow this thing out of proportions.

I like my cashews for eating BTW

Comment by Aron Stansvik — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 11:06

I agree with you, Mike. I’m one of the non-contributing readers of Planet KDE, and I was considering recommending a couple of my friends subscribe to it, to show off the amazing speed and quality of KDE development, but decided not to ask them to read it because of the unprofessionalism.

Comment by NJ Hewitt — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 11:11

@Mike: y, I can imagine a few things making more fun Anyway, the result for me was, that Aaron had a nice block about Containments what lead me to debug it last 4 hours and seems panels written in SK are loading now through they still did not got displayed – bah, I miss something stupid there. Anyway, direct effect; I got a bit more into that codebase. So, at least some good results came out

Comment by Sebastian Sauer — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 11:33

Whining or not, appropriate or not, this whole thing is the ‘downside’ of open. Besides the hugging and love that can be felt all around, not all solutions can be reached with that.

Really, the whole discussion, here, on other blogs and on some mailinglists shows one thing: We’re working, and doing it with passion. For the casual readers of PlanetKDE, some posts might be offensive, show unprofessionalism, but isn’t that the price of being open? Do you like it better if all is presented peachy and full of love, or can we just be human from time to time with all the feelings that it involves?

See, PKO would be useless if people would totally restrain from posting their opinions, and sometimes, those opinions are … not so positive. We should make sure that our personal interaction doesn’t suffer from that, but given the people involved (you’re referring to Dirk and Aaron here), I’ve no doubt they’ll be able to sort it out, they’ve been working together for a long time, after all.

If you can’t stand looking at raw meat, then maybe just not look into the kitchen. But there’s no way around having those discussions from time to time, if only to clear the atmosphere and move on freshly afterwards.

As long as we keep in mind that we really are friends, even if we disagree on certain details from time to time, we’re both, a kick-ass Free Software community, but also human beings that do it. And I think that’s also the charme of this Free Software thing, it’s done by humans, it’s not some product-without-a-face.

Comment by Sebastian Kuegler — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 13:02

Two Sebastians in one discussion? Things just got confusing!

@Sebastian Sauer: I’m not trying to say that we should post our opinions if they are negative. Unfortunately the (incorrect) assumption has been that this post was about Dirk’s post. It included Dirks but there has been other posts since and a lot before that have justified my post here.

I think your key point is “We should make sure that our personal interaction doesn’t suffer from that“. My argument is that, for some discussions, things are best handled privately purely because it is the kindest way of dealing with someone.

I think it would be better if we were all “full of love” in our interactions with one another. Being loving doesn’t determine whether you or not you communicate issues but how you communicate them.

My post wasn’t a direct attack on anyone and my genuine apologies if it came across that way and to Dirk in particular. It was more a concerned notice of an increase in a certain type of behaviour that I’ve seen escalate and damage other FOSS projects and I think there is room for all of us to learn and think more about more sensitive yet functional ways of communicating issues to each other.

Comment by Mike Arthur — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 13:25

You know what’s bad for KDE? A logout which needs 5 steps. A less configurable panel, compared to 3.5. A 4.0 release, when actually it is an early beta. Tons of work for a default color-scheme for KDE and then ignoring that and create a completely black panel. Talking for 2 years about extenders and a task-based desktop approach in the media and come up with neither of them.

I understand your point of view and yes, just saying there’s a problem isn’t a solution. But since I’m a non-contributing user I can’t do more than just say what I think is wrong. And the problems are too fundamental to call it bugs.

Really, let people post and say what they think. What they think is what users think and what users think is part of the popularity of KDE.

Comment by morphie — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 14:58

@morphie: I agree, as a user you are perfectly entitled to do so and I’d encourage it as long as you file bug reports also. As developers and doubly as developers on Planet KDE I think things differ slightly and we need to be more aware of how we treat each other.

Comment by Mike Arthur — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 15:11

As a user I think it was interesting to read about problems with the community, without “hanging” one particular person out. This was also towards me as a helper of KDE, and I like reading about “problems” with communication, so we can do better in the future. Nothing is perfect, but KDE is really a greatworking open source project.

We need people like you, and also some people telling others whats working and not…

Comment by Student — Wednesday 5th March, 2008 @ 21:14

[...] Just to clarify some stuff that seemed to cause a fair amount of (predictable) drama in the previous post: [...]

Pingback by Where is the love! (Part 2: First Blood: Strikes Back) - mike arthur dot co dot you kay — Thursday 6th March, 2008 @ 00:10

Conflict resolution software.

How did no one think of that before? We seriously need that! Actually…. we need meritocratic government management software with conflict resolution features. …Who’s up for it? It needs to be done.

Comment by ethana2 — Thursday 6th March, 2008 @ 00:33

One of the greatest cultural learnings in my life was when I started working and was sent to a communication seminar. To the german audience, I want to recommend Friedemann Schulz von Thun’s “Miteinander Reden II”, to the rest what makes a bit CULTURAL difference:

* do not critisize like saying “you always do it wrong”. Better use one example – your discussion partner will block your input psychologically if you attack him personally. Better attack one or two examples WHAT HE DID
* do not critisize like saying “it was wrong”. Better describe the negative impact of what your colleague did, even if it is only subjective ( I perspective: I felt it was … ). You may contradict if one says “This is an insult”, but you cannot if he says “I felt this was an insult”.

Comment by Thorsten Staerk — Thursday 6th March, 2008 @ 14:17

I completely agree with your post Mike. As humans we are clearly far from perfect. It’s inevitable that there will be conflict, but it must be dealt with correctly and maturely.

For those that don’t speak German and therefore can’t read Thorsten’s recommendation, may I recommend the old classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Despite the slightly cheesey title, it’s an incredibly down-to-earth reminder of how treating people with respect will get you much further than giving in to criticism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_win_friends

Comment by Paul Gideon Dann — Thursday 6th March, 2008 @ 17:47

i am gonna show this to my friend, dude

Comment by Matildafp — Monday 24th March, 2008 @ 07:42