3 ms·

It's been a few years (2008-2009ish), so my memory has faded a little bit. I recall a lot of discussions where no-one would listen to other people (if I recall,

by pbiggar 14y ago

It's been a few years (2008-2009ish), so my memory has faded a little bit. I recall a lot of discussions where no-one would listen to other people (if I recall, the scalar type checking thread from PHP 5.3 was a good example). A lot of hostility to people trying to change or improve things. Quite a lot of hostility towards users or people who complained about PHP (check out the bug tracker - very aggressive). Oh, and a complete disregard for other members of the community by the people in charge-ish.

smsm42 14y ago
I know that there are a lot of discussions - sometimes very long and tiresome - but what you mean by "no one would listen to other people"? I.e. what would happened if things went differently and somebody would listen, say in the thread about 5.3 scalar type checking? I regularly check the bug tracker and I haven't noticed any special aggressiveness - of course, some of the volunteers may sometime be impatient, especially with newbies, or trolls, some of which lately for some reason decided it is appropriate to publish their "php sucks" diatribes on the bugtracker - but I didn't notice any systematic aggressiveness. Some data would be helpful here - demonstrating the problem may be necessary for fixing it. Same for regard for other members of the community. Various members of the community regularly participate in the discussions, and once PHP moved to git they also submit pulls, rfc, etc. Yet still you describe the situation as "complete disregard" - so what you would say should be happening instead?
- pbiggar 14y ago
  When I say "no one would listen" I mean the long and tiresome discussions. I saw people just repeating themselves, without taking on board what other people were saying. I never saw these discussions end well. There was no consensus - the discussions eventually died out without any progress. I think there might be some Stockholm Syndrome there. The volunteers in the PHP bug tracker are dicks! Or were, it's been 3 years so things may have changed. And I'm not talking about responses to trolls, I mean to ordinary users. I mean they disregard the feelings of the other people in the community, not their code. I'm not really talking about how dysfunctional the coding practices were, I mean the actual community dynamics. It felt a lot like trolls feeding trolls.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    There indeed was no consensus on the topic of strict typing and on some other topics - but it's only natural, people have different opinions and sometimes there's just no agreement between them. Especially if you are advocating wide regard for all people in the community, you have to accept that sometimes there would be no way to reach a decision that is agreeable to everyone. In the strict typing case that is what happened, there was no approach that was satisfactory to all, so the decision was to remain with the status quo. I don't think this makes PHP internals somehow hostile or "poisonous" - disagreement is a natural part of the process in such a diverse community, and in case there's no agreement on a new feature the natural way is to remain with the status quo.
    - pbiggar 14y ago
      My point is not that there should be consensus. My point is how the discussion went (and many similar discussions, not just one). Poison comes from how community members treat each other, not whether or not they can agree on something. I've spent major time in 3 open source projects, gcc, Mozilla and PHP. All of them suffered from similar disagreement, from old code, from old decisions they need to move away from. The difference was that Mozilla and gcc manage to do it without being poisonous.
      - smsm42 14y ago
        Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you mean by "poisonous". To me it sounds like "community is poisonous because discussions are held wrong, and the discussions are wrong because community is poisonous". Maybe it's just me but I have hard time understanding what exactly is the problem here except for the fact that you obviously dislike something about PHP community. But if somebody asked me what exactly you dislike and what you'd have fixed if you could - I couldn't really give any meaningful answer.
        pbiggar 14y ago
        To be honest, I think you are trying really hard to pretend my points aren't made rather than trying to use my points to investigate the phenomenon. I'll admit I'm not explaining them terribly well - its been 4 years since I've taken active part - but there's enough information in there that you could use it as a starting point if you were truly interested, which I think you aren't.

by pbiggar 14y ago

smsm42 14y ago

I know that there are a lot of discussions - sometimes very long and tiresome - but what you mean by "no one would listen to other people"? I.e. what would happened if things went differently and somebody would listen, say in the thread about 5.3 scalar type checking? I regularly check the bug tracker and I haven't noticed any special aggressiveness - of course, some of the volunteers may sometime be impatient, especially with newbies, or trolls, some of which lately for some reason decided it is appropriate to publish their "php sucks" diatribes on the bugtracker - but I didn't notice any systematic aggressiveness. Some data would be helpful here - demonstrating the problem may be necessary for fixing it. Same for regard for other members of the community. Various members of the community regularly participate in the discussions, and once PHP moved to git they also submit pulls, rfc, etc. Yet still you describe the situation as "complete disregard" - so what you would say should be happening instead?

pbiggar 14y ago
When I say "no one would listen" I mean the long and tiresome discussions. I saw people just repeating themselves, without taking on board what other people were saying. I never saw these discussions end well. There was no consensus - the discussions eventually died out without any progress. I think there might be some Stockholm Syndrome there. The volunteers in the PHP bug tracker are dicks! Or were, it's been 3 years so things may have changed. And I'm not talking about responses to trolls, I mean to ordinary users. I mean they disregard the feelings of the other people in the community, not their code. I'm not really talking about how dysfunctional the coding practices were, I mean the actual community dynamics. It felt a lot like trolls feeding trolls.
- smsm42 14y ago
  There indeed was no consensus on the topic of strict typing and on some other topics - but it's only natural, people have different opinions and sometimes there's just no agreement between them. Especially if you are advocating wide regard for all people in the community, you have to accept that sometimes there would be no way to reach a decision that is agreeable to everyone. In the strict typing case that is what happened, there was no approach that was satisfactory to all, so the decision was to remain with the status quo. I don't think this makes PHP internals somehow hostile or "poisonous" - disagreement is a natural part of the process in such a diverse community, and in case there's no agreement on a new feature the natural way is to remain with the status quo.
  - pbiggar 14y ago
    My point is not that there should be consensus. My point is how the discussion went (and many similar discussions, not just one). Poison comes from how community members treat each other, not whether or not they can agree on something. I've spent major time in 3 open source projects, gcc, Mozilla and PHP. All of them suffered from similar disagreement, from old code, from old decisions they need to move away from. The difference was that Mozilla and gcc manage to do it without being poisonous.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what you mean by "poisonous". To me it sounds like "community is poisonous because discussions are held wrong, and the discussions are wrong because community is poisonous". Maybe it's just me but I have hard time understanding what exactly is the problem here except for the fact that you obviously dislike something about PHP community. But if somebody asked me what exactly you dislike and what you'd have fixed if you could - I couldn't really give any meaningful answer.
      - pbiggar 14y ago
        To be honest, I think you are trying really hard to pretend my points aren't made rather than trying to use my points to investigate the phenomenon. I'll admit I'm not explaining them terribly well - its been 4 years since I've taken active part - but there's enough information in there that you could use it as a starting point if you were truly interested, which I think you aren't.