RE: https://hachyderm.io/@ekuber/116585853572401757

One of the virtues of big open source projects is that little happens behind closed doors. However, since 99% of what they discuss just isn’t interesting to downstream end users, they forget that downstream end users *can* read this stuff and *can* post very angry comments on a discussion that they feel invited and entitled to, *as users* who are perceiving their role here as *delivering accountability.*

Github PRs are a nightmare edge case for attracting unplanned attention, because even most people who got past the first paragraph of the post about policy everyone was mad about never actually saw *the policy itself* due to github’s unhinged UI. Mastodon’s overall success rate for walking away with good, clear information about the policy itself was… low. Very low.

On the one hand, I think that anticipating the nature of the issue would attract public attention, and putting effort into framing it in a way more ready for public non-contributor consumption, would have reduced the misunderstandings and blowup once it escaped containment. On the other… nothing can fix the fact that a rando who’s been linked to a comment on a github PR in an active project is going to be lost and confused.

So, contributors: “How does this come across to someone who’s not intimately familiar with our process and involved in our ongoing discussions?” Might save you a lot of notifications one day.

And, non-contributors: that big project that definitely existed more than five seconds before you found a hot link to a hot post? Spend more than five seconds figuring out what’s going on before you deliver accountability. And if you don’t have the time or energy, that’s fine! But then don’t push the angry comment missile strike button for something you’re not willing to follow up on.

If you’re trans & born before 2000, when asked who you are you can legit answer:

“Do not ask me for a single title, I have crossed millennia under different names and worn more than one form besides. Revered by some and feared by many, I have seen the fall of nations and am remembered differently in each age that survives me.”

Genuinely one of the worst things for me about the vibe coding apocalypse is that it is steadily eroding my patience in code review.

It used to be that if you identified issues with someone’s code, you could explain why, and help your coworker learn and grow as a professional. And sometimes they’d respond by explaining why they did it that way, and then you get to learn and grow as well.

Now a lot of the time when I do code review, I feel like I’m not actually investing my time in learning, just giving them something to copy paste into an AI chatbot without engaging with either the code or the feedback.