Goonhub
05-28-2023, 08:27 PM
Hey uhh, I dont know if this comment here counts as peanut posting or not. Normally its pretty clear cut because the feedback is about a specific event, but this one is about the community as a whole, and Ive participated in that a bit so idk. To avoid making this thread a free for all of everyone with their two cents, Im gonna focus on the bit that Im pretty relevant for (which is the thing relating to pr feedback). If this counts as peanut posting feel free to delete this post.
So for the like, average reader who may not know who I am, hi I'm Ikea, I do code stuff occasionally. In specific, Im interested in balance and all those other prs that have a tendency to be naturally controversial, I also watch and engage in the discussion regarding lots of prs. What I've found is that pr's rarely get closed with no feedback whatsoever. Even my first pr which made drills do csaber level damage (jesus I was not good at this balance stuff), got a paragraph in response explaining why that's a bad idea despite that being seemingly obvious. So why is there this perception of "the dev team never gives reasoning", I think this boils down to mostly two reasons, one actionable and one not.
The first one is that, while dev pr feedback is common, it's often dispersed. To a casual viewer, if they go on a pr, see two comments none of them from devs, then a dev closing it, it can look like that dev didnt give any reasons for closing, when in reality they just did it in the unlinked forum thread. Devs tend to be already okay about this, but I feel like going "closing due to reasons mentioned in discord" more would be an easy step that help here.
The second one is just willful ignorance. There are some people, some still here some no longer here, who for a decision they dislike, will intentionally ignore any reasons as to why someone would want that decision. You see/saw this a lot with mime. There was one person in particular who would go on about how arbitrary it was for the devs to not want roundstart mime, despite them very well having seen the reasons firsthand why people don't want roundstart mime many many times. People who are like this become a brick wall of negativity, there is nothing you can say that will make them go "Well I may dislike it but I see the reasoning" because they have already decided that there is no reasoning no matter how many times you give it to them. These people will often bring back up these changes constantly, just dragging chat down into arguments. This also has the effect of other people taking them at face value, thus reinforcing the belief that decision making is a black box. I do not believe there is any practical approach to these types of attitudes other then administrative ones.
So for the like, average reader who may not know who I am, hi I'm Ikea, I do code stuff occasionally. In specific, Im interested in balance and all those other prs that have a tendency to be naturally controversial, I also watch and engage in the discussion regarding lots of prs. What I've found is that pr's rarely get closed with no feedback whatsoever. Even my first pr which made drills do csaber level damage (jesus I was not good at this balance stuff), got a paragraph in response explaining why that's a bad idea despite that being seemingly obvious. So why is there this perception of "the dev team never gives reasoning", I think this boils down to mostly two reasons, one actionable and one not.
The first one is that, while dev pr feedback is common, it's often dispersed. To a casual viewer, if they go on a pr, see two comments none of them from devs, then a dev closing it, it can look like that dev didnt give any reasons for closing, when in reality they just did it in the unlinked forum thread. Devs tend to be already okay about this, but I feel like going "closing due to reasons mentioned in discord" more would be an easy step that help here.
The second one is just willful ignorance. There are some people, some still here some no longer here, who for a decision they dislike, will intentionally ignore any reasons as to why someone would want that decision. You see/saw this a lot with mime. There was one person in particular who would go on about how arbitrary it was for the devs to not want roundstart mime, despite them very well having seen the reasons firsthand why people don't want roundstart mime many many times. People who are like this become a brick wall of negativity, there is nothing you can say that will make them go "Well I may dislike it but I see the reasoning" because they have already decided that there is no reasoning no matter how many times you give it to them. These people will often bring back up these changes constantly, just dragging chat down into arguments. This also has the effect of other people taking them at face value, thus reinforcing the belief that decision making is a black box. I do not believe there is any practical approach to these types of attitudes other then administrative ones.