Re: Metaproblem, part 3

[Phillip Lord]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
>> I've gone back and read what I wrote. I can't see where it is a gripe.
>
> I apologize for using the word "gripe".  Let me rephrase: what is
> missing in the current practices on emacs-devel to make them eligible
> to be called "mentoring", in your opinion?


Oh, well, the idea is that when someone wants to do something they get a
person to talk to, to help them through, away from the main line traffic
of emacs-devel.

What is missing on the current emacs-devel? It's not that anything in
missing, it's more the opposite. Emacs-devel is a high-traffic, complex
mailing list with lots of discussion going on. The discussion can get
heated also, but even when it's not it's somewhat intimidating; partly
this is because of the high level of technical competance of many of the
developers here. Obviously, having skilled developers is an asset to
Emacs, but it can have some occasional consequences.

Now, emacs-devel is not the worse I have seen. Years ago, I submitted a
potential patch once to the cygwin mailing list. I would have been quite
understanding of a "no, it does fit without objectives because of a, b
and c". What I got was "no, and you would have known that it was going
to be no, if you knew anything about it, which you would have, if you'd
read the mailing list for several months before posting".

I have commit rights to ELPA (and I guess therefore Emacs core). I've
used the former, but never the latter, because I am worried about
screwing things up. I never worried about this with cider, or clojure
mode because I committed to my own repo and send a pull request (several
of which were refused, with reasonable explanations as to why).


>> It seems to me to be a positive suggestion.
>
> I didn't perceive it as negative.  I just didn't understand what was
> being suggested in practical terms.  Please elaborate.

I hope that I have.

Probably I talk to much, and don't code enough, so after this I will
take Stefan's advice and do some more of the latter.

Phil