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

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 09:43:26PM +0200, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
> 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).

by my counting this isnt the winner of the vote.


> 
> 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).

iam not strongly against 1st person if people prefer it.
Iam against adding a rule to the policy to require it, the
policy is complex enough.
It takes effort to comply to all rules, and more effort from non natives
who might not even know what impersonal form is.

[...]

-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

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