Sj wrote:
Doors keep slamming of late... Alex, you were less abrasive and far more helpful than a lot of people who troll the mailing lists, but it did feel as though you were trolling for a while there.
Don't have such a thin skin! I'm not a dev, but I was excited to see your energetic input. There are many people who are thinking about ways to improve the site's performance -- people who spend hours a day doing exactly that. If you make your suggestions politely, especially if you do so on-wiki where they will outlive temporary local disputes, they will be heard loud and clear.
It seems to me that perhaps we need a "wikidev" equivalent of ESR's essay "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" on one of the wikis, in an appropriate location. Perhaps it could be called "How To Volunteer The Smart Way". A few of the most important points should be these:
* Rather than telling us your qualifications and how you'll change things around here, tell us your skills and make it clear that these skills are available at the discretion of those who come before. If that isn't acceptable to you, consider that you might not be a good fit for this volunteering effort.
* Be humble. We want helpers, not managers.
* Start by asking questions, rather than issuing recommendations. Many recommendations made by people new to volunteering here have already been considered and discarded for entirely sensible, but not immediately obvious, reasons. Many such recommendations are redundant, because we're already considering how best to implement them, or whether implementing them is feasible at this time. Many such recommendations have already been implemented or are being implemented now, and you just don't know about it.
I'm not sure where exactly such a document would go, or I might start working on it myself, but if it never surfaces anywhere else I'll at least stick it on my Wikipedia page eventually to give people an idea of how to approach me, personally, about offering help.