Worse than impolite

[Paul Backus]

On Tuesday, 26 December 2023 at 18:03:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Proposals may fail for all kinds of reasons, but it's 
> inevitable that the person behind every proposal feels it is 
> best for D, and will be disappointed if it doesn't make it. 
> I've proposed language improvements to other languages, and 
> have had 100% of them rejected, and so know how it feels.
>
> (Some of my proposals have reappeared submitted by others, and 
> made it into the language!)
>
> I know that it can appear as an unfair and unreasonable 
> process. All I can say is we do the best we can with it.

The main thing I hear people complain about is not that their 
proposals are *rejected*, but that their proposals are (or appear 
to be) *ignored*.

When you put a bunch of work into a DIP or a PR, and then get 
"left on read" for weeks or months, it can feel like a slap in 
the face--like the project maintainers are saying, "we have so 
little respect for your work that it's not even worth our time to 
look at it." It can be a very discouraging experience.

It is inevitable that not all contributions can be accepted, but 
ideally, even the contributors whose work is ultimately rejected 
should come away from the process feeling as though they have 
been treated with respect.