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If you read the github thread, you'd see that Ben actually never participated in the drama/discussion until it blew up. Ben essentially rejected the pull reque

If you read the github thread, you'd see that Ben actually never participated in the drama/discussion until it blew up. Ben essentially rejected the pull request, then a giant PR nightmare blew up overnight with blog posts from Joyent & Strongloop. He decided to leave because of the whole ordeal from the companies.

wpietri 13y ago
I read the github thread. Ben closed the sincere and well-meant patch, saying, "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." He didn't just participate in the drama; he started it. Non-drama options would be things like: asking the contributor more, asking a colleague to look it over, asking a native speaker why it mattered, and just moving past the pull request and leaving it for somebody who cared.
- malandrew 13y ago
  It was a trivial change. It didn't help me nor anyone else understand the code being commented on any better, nor did it change any executable code. That's about as close to the definition of a trivial[0] change that I can think of. Pronoun choice is of little value of importance since this is a open source project, not a college gender studies class. If you think that's not trivial, then take it somewhere where it's not considered trivial and spare everyone else the bikeshedding. [0] definition of trivial: of little value or importance.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    I understand you believe it was trivial. Maybe Ben Noordhuis still does too. Others disagree. Using power to force one's own view because one can is a problematic behavior in open source projects. It needlessly costs contributors. And respect.
    - malandrew 13y ago
      Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community, because I do not think the view you and others nerd-raging here is aligned with reality. Ben was forcing the view that the commit policy had not been followed, which is a view that the rest of the community agrees with. This all got blown out of control when someone misinterpreted Ben's actions and started a bikeshedding tempest in a teacup instead of figuring out why Ben considered it a trivial change. I don't know about you, but everyone who went off the deep end in that thread basically joined a lynch mob based on misunderstanding and failure to seek clarification for the commit reversion. The burden was on those who were upset to seek clarification instead of brandishing pitchforks and torches. I don't think anyone who has contributed to the NodeJS repo joined because they wanted to bikeshed over gender issues. I'd be surprised if anyone (other than the author of the commit that started all this) joined to commit with that as a primary intent (or secondary, tertiary, etc.).
      - sampo 13y ago
        > "Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community The view that the improvement to the documentation text was trivial.
        malandrew 13y ago
        Nope. At best that's a partial explanation of the view. In Ben's own words: "... Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc." Put yourself in Ben's shoes. You come across a commit that clearly doesn't fix a bug, add a feature or clarify some confusing comments (it's may not have been PC, but it certainly wasn't confusing). Next you check who is submitting the PR. It's from some user you don't recognize because they've never submitted a pull request before. Well before you can accept the commit, you need to check if they have signed a CLA. Well that's a pain in the ass to do. So you ask yourself, "Is it really worth my time to go look all this stuff up or should I just close it and move on to a pull request that actually contributes something valuable to the project?". I would expect the overwhelming majority of people who have been committers of a large active open-source project to have done what Ben did. It's called triaging and it is in the overall best interest of the community.
regularfry 13y ago
The way I saw it, there was one blowup when bnoordhuis rejected the initial PR, but it magnified hugely when he then reverted isaacs's commit applying the patch from the PR, "chiding" him in the process. According to the IRC log, isaacs made the commit "acting fast to prevent it from blowing up further into a whole big thing." Looking at the IRC log, here's a weirdery: The initial patch (47d98b6) and the merge commit isaacs made (5812e19) both appear in the IRC log. bnoordhuis' revert (804d40e) doesn't. In fact, the revert isn't discussed at all.

wpietri 13y ago

I read the github thread. Ben closed the sincere and well-meant patch, saying, "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." He didn't just participate in the drama; he started it. Non-drama options would be things like: asking the contributor more, asking a colleague to look it over, asking a native speaker why it mattered, and just moving past the pull request and leaving it for somebody who cared.

malandrew 13y ago
It was a trivial change. It didn't help me nor anyone else understand the code being commented on any better, nor did it change any executable code. That's about as close to the definition of a trivial[0] change that I can think of. Pronoun choice is of little value of importance since this is a open source project, not a college gender studies class. If you think that's not trivial, then take it somewhere where it's not considered trivial and spare everyone else the bikeshedding. [0] definition of trivial: of little value or importance.
- wpietri 13y ago
  I understand you believe it was trivial. Maybe Ben Noordhuis still does too. Others disagree. Using power to force one's own view because one can is a problematic behavior in open source projects. It needlessly costs contributors. And respect.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community, because I do not think the view you and others nerd-raging here is aligned with reality. Ben was forcing the view that the commit policy had not been followed, which is a view that the rest of the community agrees with. This all got blown out of control when someone misinterpreted Ben's actions and started a bikeshedding tempest in a teacup instead of figuring out why Ben considered it a trivial change. I don't know about you, but everyone who went off the deep end in that thread basically joined a lynch mob based on misunderstanding and failure to seek clarification for the commit reversion. The burden was on those who were upset to seek clarification instead of brandishing pitchforks and torches. I don't think anyone who has contributed to the NodeJS repo joined because they wanted to bikeshed over gender issues. I'd be surprised if anyone (other than the author of the commit that started all this) joined to commit with that as a primary intent (or secondary, tertiary, etc.).
    - sampo 13y ago
      > "Please explain to me what view you think Ben was forcing upon the community The view that the improvement to the documentation text was trivial.
      - malandrew 13y ago
        Nope. At best that's a partial explanation of the view. In Ben's own words: "... Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc." Put yourself in Ben's shoes. You come across a commit that clearly doesn't fix a bug, add a feature or clarify some confusing comments (it's may not have been PC, but it certainly wasn't confusing). Next you check who is submitting the PR. It's from some user you don't recognize because they've never submitted a pull request before. Well before you can accept the commit, you need to check if they have signed a CLA. Well that's a pain in the ass to do. So you ask yourself, "Is it really worth my time to go look all this stuff up or should I just close it and move on to a pull request that actually contributes something valuable to the project?". I would expect the overwhelming majority of people who have been committers of a large active open-source project to have done what Ben did. It's called triaging and it is in the overall best interest of the community.

regularfry 13y ago

The way I saw it, there was one blowup when bnoordhuis rejected the initial PR, but it magnified hugely when he then reverted isaacs's commit applying the patch from the PR, "chiding" him in the process. According to the IRC log, isaacs made the commit "acting fast to prevent it from blowing up further into a whole big thing." Looking at the IRC log, here's a weirdery: The initial patch (47d98b6) and the merge commit isaacs made (5812e19) both appear in the IRC log. bnoordhuis' revert (804d40e) doesn't. In fact, the revert isn't discussed at all.