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> If this atmosphere of harsh personal criticism does yield better results, then it's necessary. That's a pretty big "if." And my personal experience is that,

by chasing 11y ago

> If this atmosphere of harsh personal criticism does yield better results, then it's necessary. That's a pretty big "if." And my personal experience is that, no, working in an "atmosphere of harsh personal criticism" does not yield better results. It makes good people go away. It causes people who don't want to be attacked to just keep their mouths shut and not say anything. It makes people wary of floating ideas that could be interesting but also risk being abusively mocked. It makes people not want to ask questions. It kills social cohesion. Etc.

PeterisP 11y ago
The evidence in large open source projects seems to support that "if" - I mean, if an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism would significantly harm the end result, and a friendlier atmosphere would improve it without undue burden to all the participants (as in, people can leave/not join because of hostile environment but also because of being asked to change their ways), then for any competing or forked project we'd expect to see the friendliest community to win, and that's often not the case. Since many (most?) large high-profile projects seem to have the problem of hostile atmosphere, then it suggests that when all things are taken into account, then policies that allow various contributors/maintainers to be as [un]hostile as they want have outperformed policies that would require them to be civil or leave the project. I mean, we're seeing developers contribute to projects run by assholes instead of saying "well, I'm ready to maintain a fork and not be an asshole" and having everyone jump ship. So no matter what they're saying, in practice they're showing that yes, that they prefer that ugly "leadership" over the alternative - pushing away the person that doesn't want to change.
- chasing 11y ago
  I think you're confusing "a demanding atmosphere" with "an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism." But I'm happy to hear where you're getting this stat that most high-profile projects operate with "an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism." Maybe some high-profile projects are like that, but my experience is that they're the shitty exception, not the rule.

by chasing 11y ago

PeterisP 11y ago

The evidence in large open source projects seems to support that "if" - I mean, if an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism would significantly harm the end result, and a friendlier atmosphere would improve it without undue burden to all the participants (as in, people can leave/not join because of hostile environment but also because of being asked to change their ways), then for any competing or forked project we'd expect to see the friendliest community to win, and that's often not the case. Since many (most?) large high-profile projects seem to have the problem of hostile atmosphere, then it suggests that when all things are taken into account, then policies that allow various contributors/maintainers to be as [un]hostile as they want have outperformed policies that would require them to be civil or leave the project. I mean, we're seeing developers contribute to projects run by assholes instead of saying "well, I'm ready to maintain a fork and not be an asshole" and having everyone jump ship. So no matter what they're saying, in practice they're showing that yes, that they prefer that ugly "leadership" over the alternative - pushing away the person that doesn't want to change.

chasing 11y ago
I think you're confusing "a demanding atmosphere" with "an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism." But I'm happy to hear where you're getting this stat that most high-profile projects operate with "an atmosphere of harsh personal criticism." Maybe some high-profile projects are like that, but my experience is that they're the shitty exception, not the rule.