by Hooray » Tue Oct 31, 2017 12:23 pm
I do think Thorsten got a point though, anyone following the forum does know that the two of us had literally dozens of debates, and clashes over the years (and even more so in private) - but this kind of language is inappropriate, even without having to be religious or particularly educated. It makes collaboration increasingly difficult, if not even impossible.
Apart from that, at times I've personally dealt with other contributors for a number months only to realize much later that I was indeed talking to a teenager or contributors much younger than that.
Obviously, these things can be taken more lightly if English is your first language, but if it isn't, it's hard to put a proper context around these kinds of "exchanges".
Like I said elsewhere, I am not easily offended, and I am familiar with colloquial English - but it's simply inappropriate, and ineffective, to deal with others like that.
I think it's about time for a reality check here to see for yourself - e.g. the fgmembers "founders" used to be using that kind of language and tactics all over the place, and it's basically not served them too well, despite fgmembers generally consisting of motivated and talented individuals with a lot of expertise that they could potentially bring to the table (DrDavid comes to my mind) - it's this kind of language, attitude and mentality that "tainted" their reputation in my opinion - and I'd say, that also goes for other people using similar tactics.
We've seen other, less dedicated - and sometimes even much less-experienced/skilled, contributors getting to shape the FlightGear project much more than people who ought to be in a much better position to do so on purely technical grounds - which goes to show that we're dealing with people here, not machines.
To be fair though, this also isn't unheard of even on the devel list - it seems things became a bit calmer over there once some of the more regular contributors began teaming up to meet at certain FlightGear related events (think FSWeekend/LinuxTag) - which kinda makes sense, it is unlikely for people to yell at each other on a public forum like this if they have actually met, and spoken to each other, in person.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a lesson to be learnt here ? For instance, maybe this would also be something that could work for people interested in T4T/combat related FlightGear development, or fgmembers as a whole ?