[FFmpeg-devel] [VOTE] 1st/3rd person doxy

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Friday 2010-07-09 14:12:38 +0200, Michael Niedermayer encoded:
> On Thu, Jul 08, 2010 at 08:49:02PM -0700, Mike Melanson wrote:
> > On 07/08/2010 06:43 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> >> 5. add a 1st person perogative rule to policy
> >
> > Spelled "prerogative", believe it or not.
> >
> >> also there are 2 contradicting viewpoints, first being that it should be
> >> decided by our best english speakers and the second is that everyone
> >> has to work with the documentation and thus should decide.
> >> also theres the question if we need/want another rule or not
> >
> > What's wrong with the de facto policy of everyone adds documentation as 
> > best they can and the native speakers clean it up after the fact?
> 
> i have no problem with language cleanups by natives.
> What the problem is, is that not every change done to english language
> is a english language cleanup.
> 
> 
> and for things that arent language cleanups other de facto nettiquette
> exist, for example:
> 
> when one knows that other developers are against a change then one should
> not just commit without prior discussion and patch. Thats pretty much 
> a requirement to avoid long flamewars. And pretty much should be common
> sense, part of de facto standard politeness and nettiquette.
> And in extension to this if one changes peoples code below their fingers
> in ways they do not want then these developers leave and develop where
> the troubblemaker has no write access. We need all developers and we
> dont want people leaving due to some bikeshed thus maintainer borders
> have to be respected in line with discussion and wishes of people involved
> Of course as long as a maintainer is perfectly fine with someone else
> making some kind of change to his code theres nothing wrong at all if
> others do such changes to his code.
> 
> Noone is going to say anything against a typo fix or an improvment of
> how something is expressed. And i dont remember anyone ever saying anything
> against such changes.
> But for example the removial of rants from source code documentation
> is not a language cleanup nor something one can just commit without asking.
> Such commits are nothing but provocative.
> Nor is when the agreed form of doxygen comments is by past discussion
> supposed to be consistent with the official doxygen/javadoc style.
> A change from this to another style any less provocative.
> Such changes can be done but they need a bit more politeness and nettiquette
> a patch and a nice and friendly email on the developer list.
> 
> If people skip that they provocate others (and often knowingly and intended
> for their political agenda but lets not drift off topic)
> and when one is provocated, one complains, asks for reverts and a long
> flamewar starts that goes far beyond the 1 or 2 mails a polite question
> would have needed. Besides that a polite question and patch can in
> many cases lead to improvments to the change by considering suggestions
> of others
> 
> And that all is of course seperate from plain wrong changes, such are
> unacceptable, and if done by mistake (which happens) then they have to
> be reverted, theres no way around this.

While I am not sure the vote process in itself can be considered
successfull (people mostly complained about the vote rather than
express it), I believe we can agree that most people who expressed
their opinion are in favor of the change:

* change the doxy official verbal form to impersonal (as currently
  implemented).

Michael himself doesn't look to be against this decision, so I believe
we can close this discussion and apply the attached patch (or at least
a similar variant of that).

Regards.