On 13 January 2016 at 13:05, Regina Obe <lr@pcorp.us> wrote:
>> Perhaps you could add something about valuing contributions from and making allowances for those with less
expertise.
>
> I agree it's hard to even talk about just technical without hurting someone's feelings,
I don't believe that it is: it just involves a little empathy.
Remember how you felt the first time you posted a patch to a system
you didn't know, or remember that people can easily misunderstand how
stuff works, especially in a codebase as complex and large as this
one, and that they're giving up the few hours a week that they can
spare from their busy lives and aren't being paid to do it. Start out
by (maybe just quietly, in your head) thanking that person for their
efforts, before you explain gently how the work they've generously
submitted can be improved. Just putting yourself in that frame of mind
makes it more likely that you won't stomp over someone's feelings
because their 30 line patch that they spent 2 months building doesn't
take into account that some mechanism they've never heard of and isn't
referenced anywhere in the code they've modified relies on the
specific way the code worked before.
> because then they'd expect preferential treatment because they don't know C and be constantly badgering everybody for
help.
Someone coming on to the mailing lists and asking for help with newbie
stuff so they can spend their own free time improving the product? How
dare they! :p
Geoff