[Savannah-hackers] The way things work (was Re: subversions.gnu.org now OK)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Joel N. Weber II <address@hidden> wrote:

> It's unfortunate that people decided that they were going to make
> drastic changes without discussing it on system-hackers first, so that
> folks could discuss things, and maybe we could have better remembered
> all the places the baud rate would have needed to be changed.

It's not necessarily unfortunate; it's just the way things work.  Not
every change in system configurations can be discussed on system-hackers.

Sometimes a team appointed by the FSF will work on a particular project.
That team will report on what they did.

In this case, mhw and rao (and to some extent, I) worked on installation
of the new hardware at Global NAPS.  The process was documented, and sent
to system-hackers.  In time, that documentation will be incorporated into
sysadmin.texi.


Anyway, we can still change the baud rates to 9600, if mhw and rao think
it is necessary based on the advice and discussion that has been given
here.  I leave that decision up to them.


>  (We've also observed things like ``I don't know how to contact the
> people in France about problems with fr.fsf.org'' being sent to
> system-hackers, for which the answers are in sysadmin.texi, and
> ``francisco-franco and benito-mussolini were down, and therefore no
> kerberos servers were available'', when sysadmin.texi mentions
> quantum-bogodynamics too, as do the DNS files.)

(In these specific cases Joel mentions, I did know better, but was in a
 hurry---I should have said I was in a hurry, and perhaps it would have
 been more clear why I didn't look in the canonical places in proper
 detail.)

However, in general, I believe it is better to report what one knows about
a problem, even if there is a mistake in the report due to lack of
knowledge of the problem reporter.

I encourage everyone on system-hackers to feel comfortable contributing in
this way, even if as they are still learning the details of our systems.
I encourage everyone to ignore Joel's nasty flames on this matter and all
other topics.  The only way people are going to learn is by making
mistakes [0], and by more experienced people treating the newer volunteers
kindly when mistakes are made.  Joel, it often seems that you aren't able
to do this, and I must genuinely wonder whether your net effect on
system-hackers is positive or negative.



[0] And much better that they make mistakes by posting something wrong to
    system-hackers.  As it stands now, people are afraid to post for fear
    of mistreatment.  That fear can lead to them (a) not helping at all or
    (b) helping without saying so first, and the mistake not being caught
    until the person takes an action.  Both (a) and (b) have been known to
    happen here because of the poor treatment that newer sysadmin
    volunteers receive here.  We must change that culture of
    system-hackers if we want to have a sysadmin volunteer culture.


   -- bkuhn

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