Rant regarding code review issues

[Andrew Jeffery]

Hi Wilfred,

On Sat, 14 Sep 2019, at 08:46, Wilfred Smith wrote:
> Please, everyone, again my sincere apologies for upsetting anyone. I 
> was frustrated and sought commiseration.

An immediate problem I have with your approach is that you're ranting at
the people that you're seeking commiseration from. I don't understand
how you expect that to work unless you're trying to exploit cracks in the
community.

> 
> I will endeavor to push content that addresses my concerns; hopefully 
> that will serve the community better.

That would be appreciated. Please be aware that the outcome *may*
be along the lines of "thanks for your concern, however we can't
support your proposal for reasons X, Y and Z". There may be paths to
resolve X, Y and Z, and if so, please try to work constructively with the
people that raise them.

> 
> I do welcome these comments and will take them to heart. This is my 
> first venture into open source IP. I think your patience will 
> eventually be a worthwhile investment.

People come and go in open-source communities with many timings and
for many reasons. There's no stability in an open source community beyond
what individuals put in. In general we can't expect that anyone is going to
be present and working on ideas from one day to the next. The consequence
is that it's a personal choice for each community member as to how much
they invest in supporting other members of the community.

How you engage with the community will determine how quickly and
completely its existing members build trust in you - we can only make
judgement on that by how you interact on the mailing list, IRC and through
code review. You build my trust in you by rocking up consistently over time,
with interesting patches, are responsive to reviews and are willing to iterate
in response to reasonable requests. Your goal should be to achieve rough
consensus on a patch and get it merged, especially when you are new to the
community and even if some reviews seem unreasonable (though feel free to
ask for justification). Over time as trust builds in you, if you disagree with
particulars of how the community runs then you can start proposing that the
community change to meet your needs, but be aware that there might be
competing needs that drove the existence of the current conditions.

In summary, it's down to each individual in the community to choose
whether they have patience, whether and how much they want to invest, and
how quickly you're progressing along their worthwhile-investment trajectory.
Try to do things that will keep you on track for everyone in the community,
especially in the early days of your participation here.

Cheers,

Andrew