4 ms·

Possibly, but also unhelpful and irrelevant.

seeknotfind 3y ago
Hmm. Well I'm surprised to hear this actually. Figure I'll reply here. I work on a lot of open source projects and have done authorship analysis, and they do tend to follow a power distribution. The thing is, I'm one of those authors that loves to make a bunch of changes. Fix this, fix that. I'll throw up a commit before I'll send an email about it. I love fixing things. I consider myself a programmer through and through. When I entered management, I don't get that "fix" at work, so I might code 9hr on a Saturday building something fun. I've always viewed it as a good thing. An escape, a joy, cathartic, and pleasurable. Perhaps sometimes, it's gone too far. I left a birthday party last summer to go back and code. Though, you see, I'm also trying to build something, to do something. So to see the full blown addiction behavior. It's like looking over the edge of a cliff. I don't think I would go that far, but for me the most important takeaway from the article was this too can be an addiction.
blueflow 3y ago
I'd rather have more talk about maintainer mental health than less.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  Agreed. But whether or not a particular maintainer has a particular mental health issue is not the forum nor topic for such a discussion.
- newswasboring 3y ago
  Random speculation about someone's mental health is not talking about mental health.
wpietri 3y ago
I disagree entirely. If we want to solve problems like "make sure packages have maintainers" we need to think very hard about human impact and human motivation. People can be addicted to work. People can be addicted to anything that provides relief from pain while increasing the likelihood of future pain. This very site has the "noprocrast" feature, something that recognizes we can get hooked on things that can be productive. When somebody goes from doing 6x what anybody else is doing to quitting cold turkey and saying that they're going to lock themselves out and catch up on a year of sleep, that's pretty clearly an unhealthy, unsustainable relationship. If we want to keep this from happening again, seeing what the addiction model can tell us is both helpful and relevant.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  Sure. But surely you can admit that "we need to discuss maintainers mental health" is an entirely different thing than "wpietri is having a mental health episode, let's discuss"
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I don't think that's what seeknotfind did. And I don't think somebody going cold turkey on an addiction is having a mental health episode; if anything, it's the opposite. But even if it were, if the article is "wpietri suddenly quits doing half of all Alpine maintenance, wants to sleep for a year", then yeah, I'd rather people discuss that then not even acknowledge the impact on me.

Hmm. Well I'm surprised to hear this actually. Figure I'll reply here. I work on a lot of open source projects and have done authorship analysis, and they do tend to follow a power distribution. The thing is, I'm one of those authors that loves to make a bunch of changes. Fix this, fix that. I'll throw up a commit before I'll send an email about it. I love fixing things. I consider myself a programmer through and through. When I entered management, I don't get that "fix" at work, so I might code 9hr on a Saturday building something fun. I've always viewed it as a good thing. An escape, a joy, cathartic, and pleasurable. Perhaps sometimes, it's gone too far. I left a birthday party last summer to go back and code. Though, you see, I'm also trying to build something, to do something. So to see the full blown addiction behavior. It's like looking over the edge of a cliff. I don't think I would go that far, but for me the most important takeaway from the article was this too can be an addiction.

blueflow 3y ago

I'd rather have more talk about maintainer mental health than less.

Ensorceled 3y ago
Agreed. But whether or not a particular maintainer has a particular mental health issue is not the forum nor topic for such a discussion.
newswasboring 3y ago
Random speculation about someone's mental health is not talking about mental health.

wpietri 3y ago

I disagree entirely. If we want to solve problems like "make sure packages have maintainers" we need to think very hard about human impact and human motivation. People can be addicted to work. People can be addicted to anything that provides relief from pain while increasing the likelihood of future pain. This very site has the "noprocrast" feature, something that recognizes we can get hooked on things that can be productive. When somebody goes from doing 6x what anybody else is doing to quitting cold turkey and saying that they're going to lock themselves out and catch up on a year of sleep, that's pretty clearly an unhealthy, unsustainable relationship. If we want to keep this from happening again, seeing what the addiction model can tell us is both helpful and relevant.

Ensorceled 3y ago
Sure. But surely you can admit that "we need to discuss maintainers mental health" is an entirely different thing than "wpietri is having a mental health episode, let's discuss"
- wpietri 3y ago
  I don't think that's what seeknotfind did. And I don't think somebody going cold turkey on an addiction is having a mental health episode; if anything, it's the opposite. But even if it were, if the article is "wpietri suddenly quits doing half of all Alpine maintenance, wants to sleep for a year", then yeah, I'd rather people discuss that then not even acknowledge the impact on me.