How Open Source Communities Survive Poisonous People

[TrevorBradley]

How Open Source Communities Survive Poisonous People (And You Can Too) (apologies if this URL is messed)

I was going to post this in just the dev forums, but it's so awesome and applicable here in general that I felt I had to share. It's a 2007 Google Tech Talk by the makers of subversion on how coding communities can be distracted by people and what to do about it.

It's about 45 minutes long, but well worth the time (IMO) if you do an open source coding, or participate or maintain any communities.

 

[craigix]

This is an excellent video. Very enjoyable. Thanks for posting it.

 

[gruso]

Just came to post the same thing. I'm only halfway through, I'll have to watch the rest tomorrow.

 

[bzar]

This is an excellent video. Very enjoyable. Thanks for posting it.

+1

 

[Zeno Arrow]

Very good video. Thanks for posting.

 

[Clean3d]

This is an excellent video. Very enjoyable. Thanks for posting it.

+1

 

[Svartalf]

This is an excellent video. Very enjoyable. Thanks for posting it.

+1...

 

[fireball87]

I've seen this when a I tried to watch every google techtalk straight through (I'm a failure, but I got something out of it anyway). It wasn't my favorite of the talks but it was pretty good.

 

[Trip]

Excellent vid TB, cheers for the link.
I normally find these talks quite dry but I had no problem watching that one the whole way through

 

[senquack]

Wow, parts of this really strike a chord with Material Defender's idiotic X86-instead-of-ARM thread..

 

[gruso]

I found it ringing numerous bells but I don't think I'll list them.

 

[plopperz]

Wow, parts of this really strike a chord with Material Defender's idiotic X86-instead-of-ARM thread..

Also the endless keyboard layout discussion <_<

 

[Zeno Arrow]

Wow, parts of this really strike a chord with Material Defender's idiotic X86-instead-of-ARM thread..

Also the endless keyboard layout discussion <_<


At least we now know a recognised term for that kind of discussion: bikeshedding!

 

[cosurgi]

A very nice talk, indeed! I watched it all except the Q&A part at the end, because I didn't have any questions to ask

I'm subscribed to SVN mailing list, and they are one of the busiest MLs that I know - about 1000 posts per month. Only boost's ML is more busy.

 

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

thank you for this excellent video
I've just experienced one situation like that in a project of my own lately. Sometimes you simply have to follow your instincts and know what's best for the project.

 

[PoisonedV]

A very nice talk, indeed! I watched it all except the Q&A part at the end, because I didn't have any questions to ask

I'm subscribed to SVN mailing list, and they are one of the busiest MLs that I know - about 1000 posts per month. Only boost's ML is more busy.

Why don't people just use a forum or something

 

[DasFool]

I enjoyed listening to this as well. Thank you for posting it.

 

[Zeno Arrow]

A very nice talk, indeed! I watched it all except the Q&A part at the end, because I didn't have any questions to ask

I'm subscribed to SVN mailing list, and they are one of the busiest MLs that I know - about 1000 posts per month. Only boost's ML is more busy.

Why don't people just use a forum or something


I've wondered about this before as well. Possibly because it's easier to read up on all progress in one chunk of text rather than having to select forum topics for each one (would be easier to ignore info if in forum format, as a dev you might need a better grasp of all goings on in the code). Personally I think there are bound to be better ways of organising collaborative coding projects than mailing lists, think it's a throwback to the glory days of Usenet.

 

[cosurgi]

A very nice talk, indeed! I watched it all except the Q&A part at the end, because I didn't have any questions to ask

I'm subscribed to SVN mailing list, and they are one of the busiest MLs that I know - about 1000 posts per month. Only boost's ML is more busy.

Why don't people just use a forum or something

I don't like forums... because they don't end up in my inbox Claws-mail is my personal database, very comfortable to use. Every piece of information has its own place there. If some information does not land there - it is forgotten. It is easy to grep locally and find something (grepping is built into claws). It is easy to find some pieces of very old (think 10 years old) information which suddenly became important, etc.

Maybe there are some people who like mailing lists for similar reasons? Just because then end up in their inbox.

 

[WizardStan]

I don't like forums... because they don't end up in my inbox

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