On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Ryan Lane <rlane32(a)gmail.com> wrote: I said this on IRC in some form, but I'll repeat it here on the (hopefully permalinked ;) ) record: I think the concern MZ was raising is that initially (for quite a long time actually), there was total silence on #2. Daniel and other ops people posted to the list, but made no mention of attempts to fix the links or the feasibility thereof, it was all focused on #1 ("here's how we'll prevent this in the future, and BTW, mailman sucks"). While #1 is important (and bashing mailman for this is deserved), #2 was being completely ignored. Instead, everyone focused on how MZ's phrasing was hostile (which is fair enough, if people feel someone is behaving in an offensive manner, they should call that person out on it). Specifically, in the thread where Ryan called out MZ, the question "but what are you doing to fix this?" was repeated in some form or other in three posts (2 by MZ, one by Michel) before Daniel said he was working on it and Ryan posted the above. On the original thread, there were suggestions as to how the links could be fixed, but no one in ops responded to those posts, or acknowledged them, or even acknowledged that it's something that should be worked on until Daniel and Ryan did that just now. MZ's post complained about a lack of communication from ops about issue #2, and the response to it was a more active lack of communication from ops about issue #2. Hostile behavior has no place on this list and calling it out is a good thing. But what happened here is an anti-pattern that I've seen around here before: when someone says something in an inappropriate way, people call them out on it (which is good), but subsequently refuse to discuss the substance of what was said, to the point where whenever it's brought up it's either ignored or the conversation is steered back to the inappropriate behavior. In this case it was eventually addressed after repeated questions from multiple people, but that hasn't always happened. I've been in a situation where I wrote overly aggressive criticism and got called out on it, which is fair, but the substance of the criticism was never addressed and because the subject is apparently tainted, reviving the discussion is futile. I tried, and it went straight back to everyone piling on me for how hostile I'd been, so I gave up. I'm not complaining about being called out or even bashed for writing overly hostile posts. I've done that a few times and I hate it when I slip up and do it. If I get called out or bashed over that, I've deserved it, and I'll take it. But what pisses me off is that it's apparently impossible to get people to discuss real issues once they're tainted with inappropriate communication. That's unhealthy and needs to stop. So by all means, call people out on hostility. But don't ignore stifle discussion about real problems. Roan

Well, this is one more reason as to why hostile behavior should not be tolerated. It has the opposite effect as intended. Even when people don't get called out on bad behavior in a hostile post, the hostility itself tends to put everyone on the defensive, which makes solving the underlying issue much more difficult. In fact, in many cases threads tend to die out simply because they are hostile and the people who would do the work are tired of dealing with the drama involved and ignore the thread. - Ryan