[ModernMech]

> Those people talked to each other. Everybody talked to everybody. The grapevine was large and healthy and full of juicy grapes, and all those grapes contained the juice of the same message: Jarred was a stinky manager.

There’s a big gap between corpo speak and “stinky manager”. That’s nowhere close to professional writing. And he’s not giving us his personal opinion, Kelley is telling us the conclusion of the “grape vine” - he’s reporting on rumors and gossip, and agreeing with it.

[27183]

[flagged]

[em-bee]

he doesn't owe it, but his writing reflects on him and the project. personal blog or not, the writing shows his personality, and that in turn affects how comfortable i am using a project led by this person. if this was just one of many zig developers then it would not matter as much, but as this is the founder and leader, his personality has a major impact on the project as whole. especially in how it attracts contributors, and how long those contributors will stay around.

[27183]

Maybe it's just filtering for the right contributors? More isn't always better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ebilgenius]

The kinds of contributors you "filter for" by acting like a petulant manchild on your personal blog are going to ruin your community and then your programming language and then blame you personally for all of it

[Ar-Curunir]

Yeah, and the kind of contributors you attract with this kind of writing are just assholes

[27183]

I'm not sure if you're intentionally branding an entire language community that way or not but it might be less broadly offensive to tone that down. You could make a similar point by saying something like "I don't like the message he's sending so I won't participate" without labeling anyone who associates with him an "asshole".

[Shorn]

> You could make a similar point by saying something like "I don't like the message he's sending so I won't participate"

Sooo.... "be more professional in your writing"?

Why does this person owe you "professional writing" on their personal comment?

[em-bee]

the point is that such language attracts people who have a high tolerance for such language. not all of them are going to be assholes, but tolerating assholes is also bad.

[ModernMech]

He doesn't owe me anything. But his community deserve better than this.

[27183]

If they want better than that the fork button is up and to the right.

[ModernMech]

I mean you’re not wrong, the only power his community has is to vote with their feet, and that’s what will happen. We’ve seen it before in other languages where the BDFL had an unchecked ego problem. Others brought up Elm and Evan and I agree. We all saw how that turned out.

[orangedog]

He's not operating personally as the leader of a major project.

[27183]

> He's not operating personally as the leader of a major project.

What? So let me get this straight--if my open source project which I have given away for free becomes "major" (for some definition) then all of a sudden I have to filter my writing through some kind of average acceptableness test? Come on. [edit] It would be one thing if this was published on Zig letterhead, but it was the guy's personal blog...

[orangedog]

You have to if you give a shit about the community you are leading, yes. You're not operating as a private figure in that role, everything you do affects the community and it is blind or selfish to act otherwise.

[27183]

This is so deeply wrong. This person owes you nothing. You're accusing them of "selfishness" after they've given away thousands of hours of their time... Your entitlement is just breathtaking.

[ai_critic]

I dunno man taking 60KUSD a year only to be catty about the donor is a bit entitled as well.

[em-bee]

giving away thousands of hours of work does not entitle you to be abusive to your users and contributors. i am entitled to walk away from your project if i don't like your tone.

[deanCommie]

Look, I get where you're coming from, I do.

In the last decade, we've seen rampant abuses and exploitation of open source projects and of maintainers. So much individual good will and generous efforts wasted because of corporate malfeasanse.

AND YET. If you "open source" a project, if you actually invest in BUILDING a community, you then become a PART Of that community - with the benefits and obligations that come with it.

You don't want the obligations? Fine. But then you don't really get to keep participating in the community. And if you act like "This is MY community, I get to do whatever I want", people are free to shrug, and say "maybe i'll go find a different community".

Which is exactly how I see people reacting to Zig right now. They're seeing that an active member of this community (which, as you said, keeps insisting "he owes them nothing because the community wouldn't exist without them") treats people he doesn't like, and they think "Oof i don't want that to one day be me."

[em-bee]

you have to if you want to continue to attract users and contributors. if you don't care about that then feel free.

[smohare]

There are fundamental realities associated to being a public figure or representative. When you are even privately held sentiments or actions reflect upon the larger organization. This reflection isn’t a purely social construct, but itself an acknowledgement of human cognitive flaws and biases that inevitably leak through to decision making.

For example, you don’t want the director of a science outreach organization to privately uptake all manner of pseudoscience, because they cannot be trusted to carry out the organization’s ostensible mission. When these sentiments come to light, said directory is morally obliged to step down.

A personal blog is definitionally public, ergo by extension reflects upon whatever organizations that person is a member of.

I say all this as someone that does not even feel the posted article is particularly incendiary.

[newaccountman2]

Why do we owe him the withholding of criticism for what he writes on his blog he puts out there on the internet in the hopes that people will take his side/adopt his opinion?

[nsagent]

Treat it as a data point and make your own decisions (he does back it up with several sources that indicate a workaholic mentality with that expectation for others). Hiding it ends up perpetuating the behavior unseen.

*Below is an aside that explains why I think it's better to air these things even if it seems like "rumors and gossip."

I know first hand how toxic some people are irl compared to their public persona. There was a professor in my department during my PhD who was known to be a slave driver, but there are no accounts of it outside of the department. We would have to warn incoming students about working with her, though sometimes they wouldn't believe it could be as bad as we said. I spoke with one of her students after she left the lab due to being hospitalized for exhaustion from overwork: the professor contacted her while she was still hospitalized and asked her to complete a task ffs!