[kde-community] Proposal: KDE Manifesto wording revision

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, November 11, 2013 11:46:20 Eike Hein wrote:
> * Improves the situation.

a) by removing language whose literal wording creates an us/them wall, 
something that is the opposite of inclusion.

b) by replacing it with something that is clearer to understand on first read

as has been noted elsewhere, this document is used not only by us but also by 
people currently not part of KDE to determine whether they would want to be or 
not.

do we really wish to paint an “us/them” picture?

does legalistic language  (ONLY versus ALL) belong in such a gateway document?

you are focused on creating gateways into the KDE community, and that is 
awesome. the Manifesto is such a gateway in itself. it not only codifies the 
creation of other gateways, it *is* a gateway.

additionally, the Manifesto is also a form of security for those already *in* 
the KDE community: the more forthright and clear it is, the less it looks like 
it was written by lawers, the better. the Manifesto is not simply about 
recruitment; in fact I would suggest that it is even more useful as a means of 
participant retention.

so while i agree with your desire to keep the gateway to contributors via the 
patch-then-get-an-account method, the Manifesto document is not the right 
place for this particular approach.

> * My concerns are not warranted?

it isn’t that your concerns are not warranted, it’s that the concerns you have 
are out of scope for this kind of document. 

“what are the pathways / gateways to contributor recruitment” can never be 
appropriately covered in the Manifesto. if anything, they require treatment in 
a document of its own.

> So far all I understood is "proxying changes still results in
> code getting in, so the 'direct' in 'direct write access'
> doesn't matter", which I think is an angle that completely
> ignores the psychological side of things.

it helps if we keep things in context. there are two effects the Manifesto 
wording has:

* the literal: which is what people will reference and follow. if that wording 
leads to nonsensical results then the Manifesto is not useful as it requires 
additional (and non-obvious) interpretation. the reason i pointed out the 
proxying changes issue is that it demonstrates how the literal wording is 
broken in that it *does not reflect accurately what KDE does right now*

* the social engineering aspect. the ‘proxying changes’ thing does not touch 
on this in the least.

while i understand there are psychological aspects to this, i’m also offering a 
broader view that includes the intended social consequences as well as the 
impact of the actual wording as written in the Manifesto. we can cover both; 
in fact, we must.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo