RE: Ann: let’s create better norms for ensuring all important libraries have several active maintainers

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Carter,

I’d like to salute you for a very gracious and balanced email below, after a difficult week.    It has already led to  some equally gracious responses.  This is how we move forward together, in a positive spiral, instead of a negative one.  Thank you for leading us on this.
In terms of what i like and appreciate about this community, I would like to challenge us all to think about how we can turn frustration into concrete and positively actionable feedback that supports each other in a good faith positive way. I feel that we all failed collectively, and that’s fine, but i hope we can learn to engage in this differently.
perhaps most importantly, i think its GENUINELY important to strive to support and enable every project to have a genuinely diverse maintainer set for all of our important libraries, both in terms of age, creed and whatever. Haskell has failed to do a good job of that in the past, and i challenge us all to work to address that starting with our core going forward
I agree very much with both of these thoughts.  Asynchronous communication, through email and bug trackers, is a deeply fragile medium and can easily spiral into a bad place.    But with humility and grace we can recover, and perhaps go forward in genuine and respectful partnership.
Your suggestion of multiple (and diverse) maintainers for every important library is an excellent one. Any single maintainer can be unavoidable absent; cannot (by definition) reflect a diverse range of judgements; and (because important libraries are, well, important) can feel pressurised.   Diversity is strength here.
Thank you for the many contributions you have made and continue to make.  And get well!
Simon


From: Libraries <libraries-bounces at haskell.org> On Behalf Of Carter Schonwald
Sent: 05 June 2020 16:55
To: Mathieu Boespflug <m at tweag.io>
Cc: Haskell Libraries <libraries at haskell.org>
Subject: Ann: let’s create better norms for ensuring all important libraries have several active maintainers

I’m very happy that we now agree to have several active comaintainers for all core/systematically .  (though the specifics of how it was done this week i view as anthetical to what our community represents and values.)

There’s ways of doing that can be done in a good faith way.  I’m definitely not perfect.  I also have spent much of the past five years trying to learn to manage my somewhat aggressive and personal flavor of generalized anxiety disorder (certain flavors of anxiety or depression in men present as aggressive behavior ).  Some of my approaches on tickets that people find frustrating are my attempt to avoid getting fixated on getting into Interpersonal conflicts rather than trying to shut those voices down. Also I find it hard to have those dialogues in that communication format.

For asynchronous conversations in different time zones I fully welcome discord or what’s app or signal or freenode irc.  Conversations with emotional dimensions are challenging in email.  Let alone with issue trackers!

In the past month I was working with Simon Jakobi and Andrew lelechenko as a sort of pilot for a new Haskell action team (HAT) with them as the initial leadership for 2020, to have some folks we all recognize to have excellent taste and engineering to help support and triage all maintainers and efforts. We spent a bit of time helping out on bytestring and I think that was a success. and I hoping they and other members of  HAT can make a big difference across all the important libraries we have. I look forward to support HAT via my role as CLC.

More broadly, I was also privately in discussion with some folks before this week's tornado about how to move to make it the norm for all core / important libraries have 3-5 variously active and diversely different comaintainers. What happened this week is not how id have liked it to be rolled out, and I’m in the best of head spaces at the moment, but I think it is VERY good that we collectively agree there should be a norm of actively making sure there are several diverse co maintainers for every such library.

how it was handled this week is not how it should have been handled, i pray that no one ever views this as grounds for similar treatment of people inour community who have been trying to be in their own way, good caretakers of important community resources

In terms of what i like and appreciate about this community, I would like to challenge us all to think about how we can turn frustration into concrete and positively actionable feedback that supports each other in a good faith positive way. I feel that we all failed colectively, and thats fine, but i hope we can learn to engage in this differently.

perhaps most importantly, i think its GENUINELY important to strive to support and enable every project to have a genuinely diverse maintainer set for all of our important libraries, both in terms of age, creed and whatever. Haskell has failed to do a good job of that in the past, and i challenge us all to work to address that starting with our core going forward

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 8:32 AM Mathieu Boespflug <m at tweag.io<mailto:m at tweag.io>> wrote:
Zemyla,

I would expect more charitable reception of anything said by anyone, but especially when the original author stated clearly in the very same message that they are not a native English speaker. And even if the words are to be taken on face value, do note that no one has called anyone a tyrant. Calling out specific behaviour (that predates the current pandemic) as "tyrannous" (or "tyrannical") and naming someone a tyrant is simply not the same thing.


On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 13:06:20, Zemyla <zemyla at gmail.com<mailto:zemyla at gmail.com>> wrote:
So you're saying that the fact that there's basically a civil war and pandemic going on is no excuse to respond to e-mails. And you're calling his behavior "tyrannous" when there are literal tyrants shooting tear gas at civilians.

I gotta admit, this makes me disinclined to believe you're acting in good faith. Sometimes shit happens to good people, and someone who can't show a little compassion in these (pardon the cliche) unprecedented times is not someone I want anywhere involved in package management.

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