[DannyBee]

"He'd better find one that respects him more than he appears to respect women."

I've read his responses twice now, and i don't see, in either case, anything that makes me think he doesn't respect women. Can you please point it out? I'm genuinely interested. The guy said like 7 sentences none of which said anything like "i think what is being done here is wrong" (instead, he said "i generally reject trivial doc fixes for X reasons") and is being crucified.

From where I sit, you have to add a lot of implications and subtext to what he said to get anything like that.

IE Do you not take him at his word for why he rejected the changes?

Or do you believe the very act of not being interested in these types of trivial doc fixes, when some of them change gender pronouns, makes him disrespectful of women?

(I've belonged to plenty of open source projects that would reject trivial comment/doc fixes like this when done en-masse, regardless of whether they were to fix spelling or gender pronouns or whatever, so i'm willing to take him at his word)

What am I missing?

[sampo]

> he said "i generally reject trivial doc fixes for X reasons"

But for people who do not consider the related gender issues trivial, it was not a trivial doc fix.

[DannyBee]

That's it? That's the reason to crucify someone? That seems insanely short sighted and stupid.

Without inserting any personal views here, crucifying people who appear completely ignorant of a cause, or don't understand the level of concern you feel about something, is not an effective method of advocacy. It's exactly the opposite.

If you don't understand how to be an effective advocate, you tend to hurt rather than help your cause.

Example: This whole thing.

[sampo]

Well, for a person who doesn't consider the fix "trivial", it's kind of easy to see some other (more sinister) motives behind the rejection of the fix. And then even more suspicious motives behind the act of labelling a clearly non-trivial fix as "trivial".

In my opinion, both sides of the debate overreacted, but I am just trying to explain you the viewpoint that apparently feels quite alien to you. Well, if you don't even want to understand that way of thinking, that's fine, too.

[DannyBee]

"In my opinion, both sides of the debate overreacted, but I am just trying to explain you the viewpoint that apparently feels quite alien to you."

Sure, but your description seems to kinda imply that everyone assumes everyone else are passive aggressive assholes :P. Maybe that's the case here, but i would hope not in general :)

[sampo]

Here [1] is a wonderful (rather long) essay on whether balrogs have wings in Tolkien's books, or not. The point of the essay is that if your prior belief is that balrogs have/don't have wings, it's very easy to interpret the evidence (whatever Tolkien wrote concerning balrogs) in a light that supports your original stand.

So in the same manner, if you don't consider the fix trivial, then everything else Ben did afterwards, seems quite suspicious really. Or if you do consider the fix trivial, then everything than ensued, seems seriously out of proportion.

[1] http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/b/balrogs.html under ‘...And Whether Balrogs Have Wings’