[Python-Dev] Goodbye (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed Sep 22 13:07:22 CEST 2010

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 8:47 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

Simply, situations like the above (Mark closing a bug just because nobody would answer his message on a short delay) have happened multiple times - despite people opposing, obviously -, and we decided that it was better to remove his tracker privileges since his contribution has not really been productive for us.

There was a whole python-dev thread some time (weeks? months?) ago where several of us already tried to suggest more fruitful ways of contributing, suggestions which weren't received very welcomingly AFAIR. Now I understand that opinions over this may vary and involve multiple factors, but I would suggest that at least a bit of mentoring is needed if we want to give privileges early on. (and the amount of mentoring needed can vary wildly from one person to another)

I still prefer the "trust but monitor" approach over excessively high barriers to entry, but we do need to recognise that one consequence of that approach is that we will get into situations where we need to tell people "thank you for your contributions, but we think, on balance, we will be better off if you don't contribute in this way any more".

Mark did do quite a bit of good in his time with tracker privileges. A number of lingering issues that would have otherwise continued lingering did indeed get closed. That work is still appreciated, even if it was ultimately deemed by the other tracker admins not to be sufficient to balance out the hassles created by his aggressive stance towards closing older issues (which, while unloved, are not automatically invalid).

If this had happened without the prior discussion regarding more appropriate handling of tracker issues, then I would have an issue with it. However, given that the first reaction was to provide additional mentoring, with revocation of privileges only happening when the problems continued, that seems to me like the way this process is meant to work.

Regards, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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