> > for trying to make people talk to each other in a more respectful and > > professional way > > This is a statement about your intentions behind making your post. My > statement is about your post itself. The thread's about documentation. Did > your post concern documentation? Your intentions were to encourage more > professional speech. Was your post itself an example of professional speech? > Did more professional speech occur as a result of your post?
More broadly, the thread's about driving Nim adoption, and there, it sounds like a lack of general kindness and professionalism does seem to be a thing that drives people away, as well. Even if you are trying to get someone to write posts that better fit the standard you expect, note that, while you might think I sound like a "protagonist", your posts, at least to me, come off as a stern adult talking down a child. Even if you were scolding someone who deserved it by every objective measure, you should expect that style of communication to drive others away. > > How do you defend your post? "I wasn't even thinking of @jrfondren." > > ... you need more than good intentions to make a good post. I think the very > first thing you need is a bare awareness that other people can also have good > intentions even when they're not speaking like a protagonist in a movie. The > imaginary "anti-docs" faction in this thread are all well-intentioned. The > rude people were not shills, paid by another language's OpenCollective fund, > to come here and discourage a potential Nim contributor. And there's > certainly nothing like this: This strawman argument doesn't reflect what I said, nor do I suspect many people hold the opinion. Again, I don't think there are people who would be unhappy with more docs. I personally think people don't find it to be a priority, because _they_ don't need more docs, and don't see it as a priority. If they did see it as a priority, I'd expect people would be jumping to recruit for some of the suggestions above. Many languages DO have an official doc team. But nobody is asking for volunteers. 3rd party docs DO exist that are valuable that aren't easy to find; but nobody's encouraging that, either. It's not that people don't want it, it's just differing senses of what's important. > > I have the impression people here feel superior for using or creating Nim > > and look at others as not worth having them in the boat. > > I get it. I think Araq's slightly too mean on occasion, too. I actually don't take too much issue with Araq's interaction style. Yes, he's direct, but it's also been clear from what I've read that he does listen, and consider other viewpoints even after he's stated a deeply held opinion, and even change his mind. I also haven't seen him going out of his way to be rude, either. To what I've seen so far, when he jumps into a discussion he's not been pulled into somehow, he seems to be trying to be helpful, even if he may not see how his directness might be taken as rudeness. Yes, that could be better, but that's an acceptable style in this industry, for good reasons. I'll say that I could be wrong here, but that's my take so far. > You can point that out when you observe it (this has happened), or you can > use your disapproval as motivation to reply in a more helpful way to the > person in question. You definitely shouldn't let these feelings simmer for a > long time and then abruptly dump them on random people - very "superior" > users of Nim, every single poster in the discussion - who were just talking > about documentation. Your advice to him is interesting to me, specifically because it feels like you're letting your fatigue on "can you write me X doc" type question simmer over, and are abruptly dumping them on random people. Maybe you're not. I'm not inside your head, and will give you the benefit of the doubt, because you have, at points, contributed to the topic, instead of the meta-topic. But I do think in the broader issue I was trying to get at is, "what can better drive adoption of Nim". I think of that as, "how can I give good developers an excellent onboarding experience", or "what's their first 30 days like?" Perhaps documentation is a part of it, but I'd say that people need a forum to go and ask questions, even if long-timers think they are uninteresting and/or repetitive. That typically happens in every community I've seen, and over time the veteran members of the community just ignore the new-to-the-community stuff, and they can do that, because new people come in that are a few steps ahead, that start filling in the gap. On the discord, for instance, I've been there a little while now, and I'm answering more questions than I ask. Over time, I will ask 0 questions, and if it's too much of a drag, I expect there will be other people there to take my place. Frankly, if adoption is a goal at all, this message board needs to be tolerant of questions or discussion that people who have been here a while might think is redundant, misguided or uninteresting. It needs to be socially unacceptable to answer such people with anything that has any tinge of negative feelings in it. Maybe you _won 't_ see things in a new way, or learn anything from the new people. But you really should treat them with aa sense that you're lucky enough to have those people coming to your community, and that you want to do right by them. To that end, I will re-iterate do appreciate your willingness to engage on the topic! I won't hold one bad mutual interaction against you in the future.
