[openstack-dev] [all][tc] Lets keep our community open, lets fight for it

Clint Byrum clint at fewbar.com
Tue Feb 17 19:43:03 UTC 2015


Excerpts from Ed Leafe's message of 2015-02-17 10:11:01 -0800:
> On Feb 17, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Clint Byrum <clint at fewbar.com> wrote:
> 
> > Shaming a person is a last resort, when that person may not listen to
> > reason. It's sometimes necessary to bring shame to a practice, but even
> > then, those who are participating are now draped in shame as well and
> > will have a hard time saving face.
> 
> Why must pointing out that someone is doing something incorrectly necessarily "shaming"? Those of us who review code do that all the time; telling someone that there is a better way to code something is certainly not shaming, since we all benefit from those suggestions.
> 

Funny you should bring that up, that may be an entirely new branch of this
thread which is how harmful some of our review practices are to overall
community harmony. I definitely think there's a small amount of unhealthy
shaming in reviews, and a not small amount of non-constructive criticism.

Saying "This code is not covered by tests." or "You could make this less
complex by using a generator." is constructive criticism that has as
little shaming effect as possible without beating around the bush. This
is the very definition of _educating_.

However, being entirely subjective and attacking stylistic issues
(please know that I'm not claiming innocence at all here) does damage to
the relationship between coder and review team. Of course, a discussion
of style has a place, but I believe that place is in a private
conversation, not out in the open where it will almost certainly bring
shame to the submitter.

> Sure, you can also be a jerk about how you tell someone they can improve, but that's certainly not the norm in this community.
> 

I agree that the subjective stylistic nit picking comes in a polite way.
I think that only softens the blow to someone's ego and still conveys a
level of disrespect that will eventually erode the level of trust
between the submitter and the project as a whole.

So, somewhat ironically, I think the right place to make subjective
observations about someone's work is in a private message.

Unfortunately, I think humans are quite subjective themselves, and so
what might be too harsh and shameful to one ego, might be just the right
thing to educate the next. Calibration of one's criticism practices is
one of those things I'm sure most of us geeks would like to think we
don't have to worry about. However, I think it is worthwhile to consider
it before making any critique, especially when one doesn't know the
recipient of the critique extremely well.



More information about the OpenStack-dev mailing list