[kstenerud]

It's about managing user expectations, which David has done rather poorly.

People have short memories. When you're going to shut something down, you really should put up a HUGE javascript timer at the top of the page saying:

83 days, 14 hours, 23 minutes, 11 seconds until this site shuts down. Contact me if you can take over maintenance.

Unless it's constantly in their face, they won't feel the urgency, and so they won't act.

However, now that Dave's said "time's up", the urgency is felt, but there's nothing people can do, thus their frustration.

You can say "The users should have known" till you're blue in the face, but so long as you fight against human nature rather than guiding them in ways reinforced by their nature, you have only yourself to blame for the fallout. Such is the responsibility that comes with leadership.

[bigiain]

I'm not sure I agree with that at all.

Someone retiring from participation in any particular community has no obligation to enforce any sense of urgency on the remaining people.

This all reads to me as though the "fight against human nature" is revealing more about the currently-offended section of the Scala community that about David. From my reading, he let them know he was out many months ago, and their reaction was "Whatever. We'll just keep freeloading on his time/hosting-costs/sense-of-responsibility." Now their "human nature" lack of urgency has bitten them on the ass, and they're trying to make out like that's not their own fault... Not classy...

[snprbob86]

> has no obligation

Maybe so, but it would have prevented (or at least reduced) the backlash. Many people don't follow all the mailing lists or core-contributor communication channels, so a badge on the page to alert the casual users would have been a nice thing to do. Sure, he has no duty or obligation, but he knew people were using it, so he knew people were missing it, so he could have facilitated a more graceful transition if he wanted to maximize good will.

[smashing]

I couldn't agree less. User's are ultimately responsible for managing their own expectations. The real lesson is about boundaries and that is what David Pollak is establishing in his blog post.

[kstenerud]

The problem is that this goes completely against human nature.

A leader's primary responsibility is stability. If he can't do that, he's considered by his followers to be a poor leader. It doesn't matter if that's unfair; that's how we've evolved because a leader who brings and maintains stability has historically brought the best chances of survival for the group.

David can post whatever he wants, but so long as he goes against human nature, he might as well try to make a river run uphill for all the good it'll do. All he's doing now is ruining his own credibility in the eyes of those who followed him. It may not be fair, but that's how things work.

One should never take upon themselves the mantle of leadership unless they're prepared to go all the way. That's the real lesson here.

[smashing]

Define going "all the way" in this situation and cite specific examples when this worked. And write about what he did that "he goes against human nature".

[kstenerud]

"going all the way" means bringing the endeavor you are leading for to a stable conclusion. A leader is most strongly judged based upon his ability to bring and maintain stability. David failed here because he didn't keep his followers' minds upon the inevitable instability that was on the way, so as to prod another leader to step up to the plate. He did "kinda" with a few posts, followed by talks with a couple of individuals who didn't work out, but it comes off as half-assed at best. This was followed by an "I don't owe you a thing" rant which only makes things worse.

An example of good leadership would be Joseph Stilwell, who led an entire Chinese village through miles of jungle so that they'd be out of the way of the advancing Japanese army. He didn't have to do it; standard practice was to just get the hell out of there and leave the collateral damage behind. But he did, and he suffered greatly for it trying to herd along a group of people including elderly, pregnant, sick, and miserable, who slowed the whole thing down, with a serious risk they'd be overrun. He technically didn't owe them a damn thing, and could have at any point said "screw you guys, I'm going home". History wouldn't have judged him for not leading them to begin with, but it would have judged harshly if he'd only led partway and then abandoned them.

David went against human nature by only posting about an impending end a few months before it occurred, and not giving constant reminders that the end was coming. Technically, he already did more than he was "required" to. But people forget, or people are not privy to the communication at the time it was broadcast, or some other number of things happened where the urgency of the message was lost. That's technically their own failing and David technically doesn't owe them a thing (as he points out repeatedly in his rant), but leadership demands much more of a person than is technically "owed". A leader must cater to all levels of his followers, including the stubborn, the stupid, the lazy, the uninformed, and the unlucky, and bring most of them stability.

In this case, stability means a transfer of leadership to another leader in order to avert the inevitable instability of the site just ending.

[smashing]

A site shutting down seems like a very, very stable ending. Anyway his post didn't seem to me like a rant at all. In fact it read as a very mature and well-thought out article. Odd, that you would be offended. Maybe you have some skin in the game?