On 13 January 2016 at 13:05, Regina Obe <lr@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Perhaps you could add something about valuing contributions from and making allowances for those with less expertise. > > I agree it's hard to even talk about just technical without hurting someone's feelings, I don't believe that it is: it just involves a little empathy. Remember how you felt the first time you posted a patch to a system you didn't know, or remember that people can easily misunderstand how stuff works, especially in a codebase as complex and large as this one, and that they're giving up the few hours a week that they can spare from their busy lives and aren't being paid to do it. Start out by (maybe just quietly, in your head) thanking that person for their efforts, before you explain gently how the work they've generously submitted can be improved. Just putting yourself in that frame of mind makes it more likely that you won't stomp over someone's feelings because their 30 line patch that they spent 2 months building doesn't take into account that some mechanism they've never heard of and isn't referenced anywhere in the code they've modified relies on the specific way the code worked before. > because then they'd expect preferential treatment because they don't know C and be constantly badgering everybody for help. Someone coming on to the mailing lists and asking for help with newbie stuff so they can spend their own free time improving the product? How dare they! :p Geoff -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
