Contradictory justification for status quo

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/26/15 6:17 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 05:57:53PM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On 2/26/15 5:48 PM, Zach the Mystic wrote:
>>> I sometimes feel so bad for Kenji, who has come up with several
>>> reasonable solutions for longstanding problems, *and* implemented
>>> them, only to have them be frozen for *years* by indecision at the
>>> top.
>>
>> Yah, we need to be quicker with making decisions, even negative. This
>> requires collaboration from both sides - people shouldn't get furious
>> if their proposal is rejected. Kenji has been incredibly gracious
>> about this.
> [...]
>
> I don't think people would be furious if they knew from the beginning
> that something would be rejected. At least, most reasonable people
> won't, and I'm assuming that the set of unreasonable people who
> contribute major features is rather small (i.e., near cardinality 0).

Well yes in theory there's no difference between theory and practice 
etc. What has happened historically (fortunately not as much lately) was 
that statistically most proposals have been simply Not Good. 
Statistically, proposal authors have been Positively Convinced that 
their proposals were of Obviously Excellent. (That includes me; 
statistically most ideas I've ever had have been utter crap, but seldom 
seemed like it in the beginning.) This cycle has happened numerous 
times. We've handled that poorly in the past, and we're working on 
handling it better.

> What *does* make people furious / disillusioned is when they are led to
> believe that their work would be accepted, and then after they put in
> all the effort to implement it, make it mergeable, keep it up to date
> with the moving target of git HEAD, etc., it then gets summarily
> dismissed.  Or ignored for months and years, and then suddenly shot
> down. Or worse, get *merged*, only to be reverted later because the
> people who didn't bother giving feedback earlier now show up and decide
> that they don't like the idea after all.  (It's a different story if
> post-merge rejection happened because it failed in practice -- I think
> reasonable people would accept that.  But post-merge rejection because
> of earlier indecision / silence kills morale really quickly. Don't
> expect to attract major contributors if morale is low.)

Yes, getting back on a decision or promise is a failure of leadership. 
For example, what happened with [$] was regrettable. We will do our best 
to avoid such in the future.

I should add, however, that effort in and by itself does not warrant 
approval per se. Labor is a prerequisite of any good accomplishment, but 
is not all that's needed.

I'm following with interest the discussion "My Reference Safety System 
(DIP???)". Right now it looks like a lot of work - a long opener, 
subsequent refinements, good discussion. It also seems just that - 
there's work but there's no edge to it yet; right now a DIP along those 
ideas is more likely to be rejected than approved. But I certainly hope 
something good will come out of it. What I hope will NOT happen is that 
people come to me with a mediocre proposal going, "We've put a lot of 
Work into this. Well?"


Andrei