Re: [PATCH 0/4] remote-hg: more improvements

From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
Date: May 14, 2014, 13:51 UTC
Message-ID: <87a9aktqms.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAGK7Mr6XTxpeJLSqL8PZMS8w+YCqxLrC5wX-dg4BdEaW3QAYTA@mail.gmail.com>

Philippe Vaucher <philippe.vaucher@gmail.com> writes:

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> I'm sorry that my words aren't clear enough for you to infer the point
> I'm trying to make. Let's try something simpler: what I was saying is
> that bad behavior will get you into trouble when contributing (and
> thus it's important to behave nicely), where Felipe usualy says bad
> behavior is irrelevant because only truth/quality is important.

Do you feel Felipe is in control of what you label bad behavior? Do you feel you are in control over how you react to his behavior?

> Yes it's unfortunate. The amount of talent in our societies that is
> wasted because of communication problems is probably quite high. I
> didn't find a way around "being social" in any human based community
> yet, but if you have an idea please share.

"being social" as an isolated feat is self-contradictory. The question is how to function in a particular social context. Stock answers apply to stock behaviors and are obviously most efficient to apply.

Yesterday my girl friend bought back a mare she had sold two years ago because its owner did not manage to get along with it. It's a temperamental animal that learns and performs amazingly well for its comparatively compact build. But it's highest in rank "or else", and so in the end it got locked up in its stable box most of the time in order to avoid injuries to other horses. Now it's back here at the riding school, and there is little question that there will be some injuries before things settle down again even though most of the horses here know it already.

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> The only way I can see working is that for someone to act as a
> mediator between the grumpy contributor and the community, but the
> role of this person is not very pleasant. That or maybe have merges
> done by some kind of robot with some AI about patch quality, but I
> doubt it is technically feasible yet.

Well, humans are more complex. There are no sure-fire recipes even for working with horses: some of them here have their separate paddocks because things would not settle down, some of them have standard conflicts, there are occasional injuries. The most important "standard recipe" is to make sure that the areas accessible to multiple horses do not have dead ends small enough for one horse to be able to corner another. That's not really fabulous but still pretty essential. Also enough room all around, obviously.

Now humans are often held in conditions that are not species-appropriate and lead to a buildup of tension. Try finding an undisturbed spot in a typical city suitable for devouring a bread roll you hunted down without getting other predators eyeing your prey. Almost impossible.

It may be that distributed version control systems offer more possibilities for organizing cooperation in a manner leaving graceful escape paths when things don't work out. It's not what one want to have to rely on permanently but it may be worth thinking about ways to make consequences from difficulties less "inevitable" and/or grave.

-- 
David Kastrup