Promoting new members

[Phil Bull]

Hi guys,

I think that this discussion is unfairly focussing on Matt. A lot of the
comments made against him specifically seem unjustified to me. Here's my
take on a couple of the problems which were mentioned.

1. Criticism

I think everyone finds criticism difficult to stomach. There have been
plenty of times when my ideas have been criticised and I've taken it
badly. I remember one instance when I got pretty upset by some
criticisms that MPT came up with for something I'd been working on. I
took it personally. As it turned out, I was wrong to do that, and after
thinking about it for a while I realised that his comments were very
constructive. He hadn't meant to upset me, just to offer some helpful
advice, but I misconstrued his intentions.

Likewise, I've upset *plenty* of people by criticising their work in
what I *thought* was a constructive way. What I thought I was saying was
"based on my experience, I think you should make these changes and they
might make your work even better". What they were hearing was "your work
is worthless, you are stupid". Of course, I didn't mean that at all!
Their work was usually great, and I had a high opinion of their
intelligence!

The problem is that criticism necessarily focusses on the negatives -
the best way to improve something is to fix its problems, after all.
People take this criticism badly, think that they're being attacked, or
feel incompetent. This is usually not the case. Matt is not criticising
people's work to be malicious, or because he doesn't like them, or
because he thinks their work is bad. He's just trying to help improve
it.

*** How do we offer the level of constructive criticism required to
produce good documentation while not offending people? ***

2. Membership of the core team

People are vetted before joining the core team because members of that
team can make potentially damaging changes. They could screw up the bzr
branch, delete teams on LP, etc. etc. As such, it's desirable that we
make sure they know what they're doing before giving them access. After
all, only doctors who've passed through medical school should be allowed
to practise on living patients!

This policy isn't in place so that we can cultivate some elite group
within the team. It's there to protect the integrity of the
documentation. Anyone is allowed in as long as they meet the
requirements (which I agree could be made more transparent). There is no
other agenda than to ensure competence.

*** How can we make new contributors feel valued and non-subordinate
while guaranteeing the quality of the documentation? ***

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/people/philbull