[Zope-dev] how to help Martijn (how can we have better discussions?)

[Martijn Faassen]

Hi there,

A meta-discussion, how dangerous! Let's see whether it can help us 
improve the way we work together, though.

I'll talk about how I think, from my perspective, we can improve the 
quality of discourse on this mailing list and be more constructive.

What lowered the quality of this discussion? I think it is because 
various people became quite upset and annoyed. That's because I reverted 
Hanno's changes to the ZTK trunk. I shouldn't have done that just like 
that, but I needed the subsequent discussion to come up with a better 
solution.

In the turmoil, my attempts to formulate a solution that would satisfy 
everybody's concerns fairly well seemed to have been overlooked a little 
bit. Instead we focused a lot of time on discussing bits we ironically 
enough actually more or less agreed about, such as the role of the ZTK. 
Nobody seemed to quite notice that I'm in fact in favor of a smaller 
ZTK, even though I said so repeatedly.

That's because I'm *also* in favor of maintaining the zopeapp bits a 
while longer and not just throwing those away. I want an exit strategy 
for those bits. A transition strategy. That is a legitimate topic for 
this mailing list at the very least.

Instead, we had endless debates about whether it was a legitimate 
concern for the ZTK maintainers. I'm of course still right that it is. 
I have wonderful and coherent reasons to support my position just like 
everybody else does who disagrees with me. It's not really very 
important anyway. We're here together on this list to work together 
beyond the ZTK itself.

So how can we have better discussions?

We can have better discussions by helping me.

How can you help me? Of course it helps if you agree with me. I realize 
that's frequently infeasible, but I certainly wouldn't mind. :)

If you disagree with me, I'd like you to try to understand my concerns 
as much as you possibly can. In addition, try acknowledge my concerns as 
much as you possibly can without feeling you're lying. This works beter 
than just rejecting them.

How else can you help me?

You can propose realistic solutions for how we as a community can take 
care of these concerns that I have. And still fulfill your concerns at 
the same time. Such solutions were entirely possible in this discussion.

Constructive debating is an art I'm still learning, but I had the 
feeling people enjoyed the rest of the debate too much to be very 
constructive this time...

Of course the way you'd help me is the way anybody would be helped in a 
discussion, as the discussion becomes more constructive.

Again, I know as much to blame as anyone else. I helped spark it due to 
my revert and my continued insistence that I am right. The revert 
shouldn't have happened. But I didn't know that at the time as I hadn't 
had time to think yet either.

So how else can you help me? Give me some space to think. I believe my 
concerns could have been easily taken care of if we'd stopped and talked 
for a little bit *before* drastic changes were checked in. So, you can 
help me by discussing things that you know are drastic changes before 
you do them.

I know we have had a lot of problems reaching conclusions in such 
discussions in the past, but we can't learn how to do better at that if 
we don't. And we are going to do better if I can help it.

Regards,

Martijn