4 ms·

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 abou

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.
      - sampo 13y ago
        "Tiny changes" are his words. It was tiny in the amount of characters, but apparently some people consider it not so tiny in meaning, otherwise this whole storm would not have ensued. Some people consider it tiny, other don't. There is no consensus. Also, I don't think anyone can claim copyright over the change of 2 words (so in the intellectual property sense it was tiny), so if there was CLA- and other process-related complications, he could have done the same edits himself. Takes one minute, problem solved, shitstorm avoided. Would also have saved a lot of his and everyone's time.
  - smf 13y ago
    Exactly. Well said.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    The view forced was that the change was trivial. That's the same view you're trying to force here. But at least Noordhuis has the virtue of possibly believing that. You clearly don't; you've got 9 dismissive, rage-y comments on this article. That's not how people react to trivia, which you were helpful enough to define as of little importance. I think you correctly recognize the topic, which is the politics of gender inclusion, as important. It's just that you disagree with the people who proposed and support this change. I'd rather you were honest enough to say that, rather than trying to get us to swallow the notion that this this totally unimportant thing is totally important.
    - millstone 13y ago
      The change was not "let's make libuv comments gender neutral," but "here's this one thing I noticed in this one place." A one-off change like that has a trivial impact on the overall gender-inclusiveness of the project, and that's the case no matter what importance you attach to it. If gender-inclusive language in comments is deemed important, then it ought to be treated as important from the contributor side. For example, "comments must all be gender neutral" should have been incorporated into the coding standard for the project, along with a rationale, and the existing code should have been vetted for all uses of gendered pronouns. That would have made for a more serious contribution, and I bet Noordhuis would have treated it differently.
      - wpietri 13y ago
        Well, technically, it was two places. Your theory about Noordhuis is interesting, but there's no evidence for it, and some against. If he had thought it was a good change that just needed more in that direction, he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment. I think that's true for any change, really. If somebody had fixed a spelling mistake, would any reasonable project leader just have closed the pull request dismissively? I doubt it. Would have they refused to accept the patch until spelling was put in the coding standard and all spelling mistakes were fixed in one go? That'd be crazy.
        13y ago

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.
    - sampo 13y ago
      "Tiny changes" are his words. It was tiny in the amount of characters, but apparently some people consider it not so tiny in meaning, otherwise this whole storm would not have ensued. Some people consider it tiny, other don't. There is no consensus. Also, I don't think anyone can claim copyright over the change of 2 words (so in the intellectual property sense it was tiny), so if there was CLA- and other process-related complications, he could have done the same edits himself. Takes one minute, problem solved, shitstorm avoided. Would also have saved a lot of his and everyone's time.
- smf 13y ago
  Exactly. Well said.
- wpietri 13y ago
  The view forced was that the change was trivial. That's the same view you're trying to force here. But at least Noordhuis has the virtue of possibly believing that. You clearly don't; you've got 9 dismissive, rage-y comments on this article. That's not how people react to trivia, which you were helpful enough to define as of little importance. I think you correctly recognize the topic, which is the politics of gender inclusion, as important. It's just that you disagree with the people who proposed and support this change. I'd rather you were honest enough to say that, rather than trying to get us to swallow the notion that this this totally unimportant thing is totally important.
  - millstone 13y ago
    The change was not "let's make libuv comments gender neutral," but "here's this one thing I noticed in this one place." A one-off change like that has a trivial impact on the overall gender-inclusiveness of the project, and that's the case no matter what importance you attach to it. If gender-inclusive language in comments is deemed important, then it ought to be treated as important from the contributor side. For example, "comments must all be gender neutral" should have been incorporated into the coding standard for the project, along with a rationale, and the existing code should have been vetted for all uses of gendered pronouns. That would have made for a more serious contribution, and I bet Noordhuis would have treated it differently.
    - wpietri 13y ago
      Well, technically, it was two places. Your theory about Noordhuis is interesting, but there's no evidence for it, and some against. If he had thought it was a good change that just needed more in that direction, he could have easily said that rather than closing the pull request with a discouraging comment. I think that's true for any change, really. If somebody had fixed a spelling mistake, would any reasonable project leader just have closed the pull request dismissively? I doubt it. Would have they refused to accept the patch until spelling was put in the coding standard and all spelling mistakes were fixed in one go? That'd be crazy.
      - 13y ago