On Fri, May 24, 2024 at 1:50 PM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> Bruce, just about everyone seems to disagree with your current approach. And
> not just this year, this has been a discussion in most if not all release note
> threads of the last few years.
+1.
> People, including me, *have* addressed your criteria, but you just waved those
> concerns away. It's hard to continue discussing criteria when it doesn't at
> all feel like a conversation.
At one point on this thread, Bruce said "I am particularly critical if
I start to wonder, "Why does the author _think_ I should care about
this?" because it feels like the author is writing for him/herself and
not the audience."
Whenever this sort of thing has come up in the past, and I pushed
back, Bruce seemed to respond along these lines: he seemed to suggest
that there was some kind of conflict of interests involved. This isn't
completely unreasonable, of course -- my motivations aren't wholly
irrelevant. But for the most part they're *not* very relevant, and
wouldn't be even if Bruce's worst suspicions were actually true. In
principle it shouldn't matter that I'm biased, if I happen to be
correct in some relevant sense.
Everybody has some kind of bias. Even if my bias in these matters was
a significant factor (which I tend to doubt), I don't think that it's
fair to suggest that it's self-serving or careerist. My bias was
probably present before I even began work on the feature in question.
I tend to work on things because I believe that they're important --
it's not the other way around (at least not to a significant degree).
> In the end, these are patches to the source code, I don't think you can just
> wave away widespread disagreement with your changes. That's not how we do
> postgres development.
In lots of cases (a large minority of cases) the problem isn't even
really with the emphasis of one type of item over another/the
inclusion or non-inclusion of some individual item. It's actually a
problem with the information being presented in the most useful way.
Often I've suggested what I believe to be a better wording on the
merits (usually less obscure and more accessible language), only to be
met with the same sort of resistance from Bruce. If I've put a huge
amount of work into the item (as is usually the case), then I think
that I am at least entitled to a fair hearing.
I don't expect Bruce to meet me halfway, or even for him to meet me a
quarter of the way -- somebody has to be empowered to say no here
(even to very senior community members). I just don't think that he
has seriously considered my feedback in this area over the years. Not
always, not consistently, but often enough for it to seem like a real
problem.
--
Peter Geoghegan
