Re: Proposal: Proposals are the wrong approach [prose and long]

[Coroutines <coroutines@...>]

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 6:46 PM, Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@trms.com> wrote:

> There are other approaches, too. The point is that the proposal caused the
> drama and only after gracious patience was the meaning behind the proposal
> discovered.

That's a slanted and optimistic way of looking at it.

"And at long last, the young proposal made it's way into the wild,
where it joined the mother herd of great proposals in the changelog
that were released with the next major version of Lua upstream -- The
End."

The antogonists on this list know what they're doing, and they do it
under a polite guise so nobody calls them out on their behavior.  You
know what I'm talking about and an etiquette guide isn't going to
change this.  There are more receptive communities that still shoot
down just as many ideas.  What's maddening are the people who say
"read from the list from 2005!" -- because the needs and wants of the
[changing] community don't need to be revisited in 9 years, clearly.
You can't sugar-coat a terrible way of conducting discussion, even if
there are a few good examples of it working as a filter over misguided
ideas.

It's like saying World War 2 was a pretty good thing because after all
that happened we managed to curb the unsustainable population growth
for a few years.

If your really care about helping others out on list etiquette then I
commend what you are doing.  But from what's to be expected of people
here -- I originally thought this thread was a passive-aggressive
criticism of people like me who propose often.  (I'm such a romantic)

I am offended by those who are *never* receptive to change.  If they
don't like proposals they can just keep using the same version of Lua
and unsubscribe -- peace be with them.

I don't want to see Lua gain the sprawling standard library outfit
Python has.  I don't want it to have the elaborate and very
context-sensitive grammar that Perl or Ruby have.  I still have to
battle the counter-culture on this list, that [imo] does more harm
than good.  I knew before I subscribed that not all my ideas are good
ones -- do the others I'm referring to know they are antithetical to
Lua's cause?  Of course not, I'm just a newbie.  I've only been around
on this list in one identity or another since 2007.

The Linux kernel mailing list has less polite in-fighting than we do.  Zealots.

[/now-this-is-a-rant]