Too many lords, not enough stewards
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 3, 2018 0:41 UTC (Sat) by ttelford (guest, #44176)In reply to: Too many lords, not enough stewards by blackwood
Parent article: Too many lords, not enough stewards
For what it's worth, that is not the impression I got listening to the YouTube recording - I thought you were a native speaker.
> I did not say that silent contributors are complicit, since that would indeed be a rather silly notion.
I was actually rather puzzled, my thinking was along the lines of 'He just said those that don't intervene are complicit, and then gave reasons why contributors don't intervene?' In spite of my overall agreement of the ideas presented, that point stuck out to me as more than a little wrong.
This clarification changes my understanding significantly, and I do appreciate the time you spent in your response, and in the talk. Your talk was overall thought provoking and definitely worth my time.
For a bit of my own background: I originally come from a place where the culture has expectations of community involvement. It's common for people to come around asking for support in whatever their cause célèbre happens to be, and I faced retaliation when I din't want to get involved (or, even worse in their view, felt their course of action was wrong).
I still have deep scars from the experience, and it left me with a strong conviction that shaming people who just want to stay out of a fight can be deeply hurtful; to me, accusations of "complicity" are often a different flavor of manipulation and abuse.
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Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 3, 2018 6:51 UTC (Sat) by blackwood (guest, #44174) [Link]
>I was actually rather puzzled, my thinking was along the lines of 'He just said those that don't intervene are complicit, and then gave reasons why contributors don't intervene?' In spite of my overall agreement of the ideas presented, that point stuck out to me as more than a little wrong.
Ah I understand now why this wasnt clear enough, I didn't emphasis enough that I mean different people. And I also didn't emphasis enough that I think the problematic aspect of apologizing/excusing is when it's done by people with influence and power, like maintainers or very long-term contributors.
Trying to press the mass of general contributors (who don't have any real power to stand up) into supporting anything is indeed problematic, since it's essentially a flavour of victim-blaming. With your background I understand why you reacted strongly to that idea.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 3, 2018 16:34 UTC (Sat) by ttelford (guest, #44176) [Link]
I think we understand each other. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.