Hey all, here is something that we agreed to do on this list, multiple times, and it seems we are missing to keep this up as a culture.
We agreed on a “Yes and…”-style of feedback, and it looks like that we are defaulting to a “But…”-style feedback. So, again, the ground rules for discussing anyone’s ideas and suggestions is: 1. Encouragement: ”That’s an interesting point.” 2. Improvement: “Here is how we can make this idea even better.” This isn’t to say all ideas and suggestions are great, and that as a result we should do all sort of not so great things. But(!), if we handle and consider each suggestion and idea in the same respectful manner, we will get more of them proposed by more people and as a result make CouchDB more successful. If, on the other hand, we are assuming most ideas are bad, and that we need a discussion culture that helps us weed all the bad ideas as efficiently as possible, we are not trusting the people that have shown commitment to the CouchDB project. I, for one, trust, that you have all the best interests of the CouchDB project in mind, and that your ideas and suggestions are coming from a place of improvement and progress. We can still agree and disagree on individual issues, but I trust you have the right intentions. Best Jan Lehnardt Vice President of Apache CouchDB and PMC Chair -- > On 12 Sep 2015, at 21:08, Robert Kowalski <r...@kowalski.gd> wrote: > >> While idea is good and clear, I don't believe that we can attract >> enough people to have this ML alive. Suddenly, our active part of >> community is quite small and here question lays in dimension to make >> their life easy and to not loose even them > > That's a good point, sometimes I ask myself if our community is so small > because it is so hard to make proposals and because of the type of feedback > they receive. > > I sometimes get the feeling many proposals with good intentions are not > getting much constructive feedback at some point from a few persons. There > is almost always someone how says something negative that is not helpful > for anyone, like: "that is impossible" or "that does not make sense to me" > or "we don't attract enough people for that". > > It is important to note that there is usually no suggestion included how we > could fix the problem instead. > > Taking a look at my proposals these responses don't help me to continue to > try to make the project better. I am suddenly in the situation where I have > to defend why something is not "impossible". These responses also don't > encourage me to stick to the proposal I submitted. They also cause a lot of > friction for me and make me sad, sometimes angry. > > When I would have read these feedbacks 1-2 years ago when I was very new to > the project they would have made me go away from the project. > > In the future I would be super happy to hear questions or suggestions like > "how can we attract enough people to make a possible design ML a thriving > place for many designers?" instead - if someone thinks that this might be a > problem. > > For proposals that I've written in the past months it would help me to work > further on the proposed idea and motivate me to try to improve CouchDB and > I think it would also apply to others. > > </offtopic> > > I am +1 on the design ML. I am also +1 on every experiment to make it > easier for designers to participate in CouchDB. > > On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 8:04 PM, Alexander Shorin <kxe...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 8:50 PM, Michelle Phung <michel...@apache.org> >> wrote: >>> You didn’t say it like that exactly in irc :P but you did allude to it :) >>> >>> I thought you meant that if I opened a design@ML that people would use >> it sparsely as they used the www@ML sparsely. :) >> >> Then I was not clear (: Sorry. >> >>> We could reuse www@ but its a narrow label for all things design. >>> Although www@ML as a name is not very descriptive as to what is being >> discussed (for new people). >>> >>> I’d like the design@ML to be an umbrella for design discussions. and >> people know right away its about design. >>> It will be like a door for designers to come to couchDB through. >> >> Since our design topics are www-related, it makes hard to decide where >> to start topic about some, let's say, Fauxton feature. On one hand, >> it's www-related, however, without design bits users cannot use it. >> Split discussion over two ML's sounds as overkill. >> >> While idea is good and clear, I don't believe that we can attract >> enough people to have this ML alive. Suddenly, our active part of >> community is quite small and here question lays in dimension to make >> their life easy and to not loose even them. >> >> There is a reason to create a new ML to isolate some specific >> discussions from the others (like erlang talks from frontend). But you >> want to fragmentate fronend topics while existed ML is not much >> active. I'm fine with new ML, but I don't think it's reasonable to >> have it now. >> >> -- >> ,,,^..^,,, >>
