Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 12:52:47 +0100 From: Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: OT: silence as an answer? (was: how to test out cron.c changes?) Message-ID: <20010102125247.U253@speedy.gsinet> In-Reply-To: <3A513799.75EAB470@FreeBSD.org>; from DougB@FreeBSD.org on Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 06:06:17PM -0800 References: <200011191816.KAA81473@freefall.freebsd.org> <20001119214008.Z27042@speedy.gsinet> <20001120143658.B4415@netmode.ece.ntua.gr> <20001120193326.C27042@speedy.gsinet> <20001205225656.Z27042@speedy.gsinet> <20001220211548.T253@speedy.gsinet> <3A513799.75EAB470@FreeBSD.org>
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[ this message is no personal affront against you, Doug, but an
expression of what feeling this kind of behaviour causes for
those who want to share and find themselves ignored ]
On Mon, Jan 01, 2001 at 18:06 -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> Gerhard Sittig wrote:
> >
> > [ ... reminder after two weeks of silence ... ]
>
> Two weeks of silence is generally enough to let you know that
> no one is interested in this modification. If someone was,
> they'd generally have said something by now.
Well, I don't come to the same conclusion here as you do and I'm
not so sure about it as you are. :) Silence as I see it is just
a sign for "nobody answered", without a reason to see why. It
could be work load or being offline or getting side tracked or
whatever as well as being not interested or disagreeing. And
finally I want to take the lack of disagreement (or the absence
of its statement) as a sign for "it's not completely wrong what I
want to do here". It could even be that the method of searching
for contact or the way the proposal was presented has been wrong
(in the past I had to learn that Jordan is more of a programmer
and obviously is better at reading source than prose, so citing
few lines of code had been more clear than one sentence "'cvs
diff ... ' moved the test upwards and solved the panic":). At
the moment I would like to believe that I just made a mistake in
my proposal and that there is some kind of interest or serious
rejection.
BTW is rejection much more the kind of reaction I had expected in
the case you describe (nobody wants it). This would have been at
least *some* reaction. Getting ignored is definitely a fine way
of discouraging future contributions. Some "we don't like the
approach, since ..." or a simple "Nope" or even a serious
"PLONK!" would have been great and as much appreciated as an
"yes, we like it"! It had saved time and work for _everyone_
involved (me as being the originator as well as those I had to
annoy repeatedly when they could have stopped me right in the
beginning).
The experience will make me think twice next time if I'm in the
mood of spending my resources in the will to help and contribute
just to find myself sitting there ignored. Would I really feel
like having this kind of conversation, I could as well open my
fridge and talk to it ... :-|
> Speaking only for myself, I don't think your proposed changes
> are a good idea, which is why I refrained from offering any
> suggestions on how you can test them.
Well, this has been the very first and most important the only
response. After I offered help in public to solve an "eternal
problem" and spent some effort on it ...
I'll start one more try (the last on this proposal) in a separate
message in the hope that this OT message won't start a new thread
or in case it should the thread would die really soon.
virtually yours 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76
Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net
--
If you don't understand or are scared by any of the above
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