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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Wed Sep 22 19:53:51 CEST 2010

Given that this came out rather unfortunately (even if the end result is the best that could have happened) I would recommend that in the future more attention is paid to "documenting" publicly that someone's being booted out was inevitable, by an exchange of messages on python-dev (or python-committers if we want to limit distribution). And no, I don't think that IRC (where I suspect this happened) is sufficient.

While the community should be informed in public, I think that the actual revocation of privileges should happen in private. People getting such a "blue letter" often react overly negative, and then regret that their response is recorded in the public.

The only downside of this approach is that people may feel that this is a unilateral decision by one committer, then appeal to you (I'm sure you recall cases that went that way :-).

Also, I think it would be better to ask the contributor to step back "on his own" (acknowledging that this isn't really voluntarily), instead of revoking privileges and then informing about that decision.

Regards, Martin

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