Re: Formatting Curmudgeons WAS: MMAP Buffers

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 7:18 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Ah ha!  Now we're getting somewhere.  As was doubtless obvious from my
> previous responses, I don't agree that the process is as broken as I
> felt you were suggesting, and I think we've made a lot of
> improvements.  However, I am in complete agreement with you on this
> point.  Unfortunately, people often come into our community with
> incorrect assumptions about how it works, including:
>
> - someone's in charge
> - there's one right answer
> - it's our job to fix your problem
>
> Now if you read a few hundred emails (which is not that much calendar
> time, if you read them all) it's not too hard to figure out what the
> real dynamic is, and I think that real dynamic is increasingly
> positive (with some unfortunate exceptions).  But if the first thing
> you do is post (no doubt about some large or controversial change),
> yeah, serious culture shock.

Honestly it's not even that clear. It took me years to realize that
when Tom says "There's problems x, y, z" he doesn't mean "give up now
there are all these fatal flaws" but rather "think about these things
and maybe they're problems and maybe they're not, but we need to
figure that out".

To be fair that's true for everyone on th4 list depending on the
audience. We have a tendency to state general concerns as pretty
black-and-white statements that would read to a newbie as fatal flaws
that aren't worth investigating.

--
greg