Staff Complaint - Lord Fowl

[Zelmana]

BYOND Key: Zelmana
Staff BYOND Key: LordFowl
Game ID: Discord
Reason for complaint: Alright my dudes. I'm gonna be straight forward with this complete so we can stop fiddling our dicks and get back to staffing / moderating / beating graytide chromedomes in.

Lord Fowl posts a lot of controversial PRs and therefore receives a lot of criticism, as any Dev does. However, I believe that it is the responsibility and within the roles of a developer to take into account user-feedback and criticisms. Even before a PR or Test PR is rolled out, the creation of forum threads for feedback and discussion are often created by contributors. I believe in the intention of creating these threads, there is a responsibility for the individual to reply to genuine criticism or points given. There are, of course some exceptions to this, such as criticisms or points simply given out of spite, or those criticisms or points that fall entirely out of scope for the thread created.

 

This is a complaint regarding the "Departmental Security" project thread, in which the proposed PR is up for discussion in many topics such as balancing, impact on players, capabilitiy, etc.

I created a 958 word reply, separated by topic, on why said contribution would be detrimental and overall negative for the server and playerbase. Yes, I use the word "retard" within my critique. Knowing that I would most likely be ignored for this, I posted a request that contributors do not invalidate or ignore my critique based on the rare usage of "retarded" or calling the substance of the contribution "shit". I did not ad-hominem against the contributors, and focused solely on their creations, which, in my opinion, are bad.

I didn't get any response at all.

While discussing the topics within Discord (as one does) we often get pointed back to the thread of discussion (where one should shitpost and complain about PRs.) I mentioned that the developer does not intend to reply to my legitimate criticism. The following conversation happened:

If this was the case, they would not ignore me, and would address the points of genuine grievance that I have brought to the thread.

 

Since they refuse to acknowledge myself as an individual, they use this as justification for invalidating any genuine criticism I have for the changes being proposed. They are, in a way, judging my content on an ad-hominem fallacy. They refuse to address points of genuine concern and critique due to the individual making the points.

 

 

 

While the thread in question is not created by Lord Fowl's, it is the discussion thread being used for their PR. The fact that a developer ignores all criticism and critique within discussion threads of their own PRs, as well as the reason for ignoring being based in ad-hominem and not addressing the subject of the argument given by the one critiquing, is retarded. These are developers, yes their primary purpose is to develop. But that takes community feedback. I have been told many times that Github is not the place to discuss critiques of the PR, but purely mechanical / code related issues and bugs, and whether or not it implements correctly into the game. Continually, we are told to post to the forums (then linked to the thread) to discuss the topic when we are discussing it on the forums.

In conclusion,

We are told to post to Github only items pertaining to code / implementation ability.
We are told to take conversations about PR to relevant threads on the forums when discussing it within the Discord.
The developer in question is outright nonresponsive and does not engage in community-oriented development discussions on the forums.
Many times their reasoning, as evidenced in the above conversation, is purely ad-hominem based, and does not seek to address critique as critique, rather "I am ignoring you because you are <user>." instead of "I am not addressing you because of your points are out of scope."

I believe this issue has been brought up other times in past staff complaints, but I may be wrong.


Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[LordFowl]

Inevitably interacting with you just turns into a nosedive of discord shitflinging. You take pride in your argumentative and uncouth nature. And that’s fine. But don’t get uppity when that results in people secluding you, especially considering you’re latest trend of framing yourself as the victim in every argument.

 

That said, I do admit I blew up at you. But as my own nameflinging only occupies a small portion of this complaint’s real estate I’ll gladly address the misconceptions and falsehoods that occupy the rest of it:

 

“I believe in the intention of creating these threads, there is a responsibility for the individual to reply to genuine criticism or points given.”

 

I have no such responsibility. My responsibility is to facilitate community discussion, not necessarily to partake in it. I’m not a politician and my goal here is not to change hearts and minds. I read feedback and clear up misconceptions and then draw my own conclusions based on the points raised and the evaluation of my colleagues.

 

“The fact that a developer ignores all criticism and critique within discussion threads of their own PRs”

You still are too eager to misconstrue “I ignore you” and turn it into “I ignore everyone”. That’s not what I’ve ever said and it’s not what I do. I in fact read every post (Including yours so you can add “Is a liar” to this staff complaint). Doesn’t read != Doesn’t respond.

 

In short;

Yes, I blew up at Zelm on Discord.

No, I do not ignore feedback.

No, I do not have a “responsibility” to engage in active discussion. My only responsibility is to facilitate it, not to partake in it.

 

[Zelmana]

Well there you have it. You and I agree on something! I would call into question the role of a developer's responsibility to participate in community-oriented development. I do not like this trend of "i want to make a PR". You code it. You post it to pull. Users cannot talk about non-mechanic related things on the github, so we go to forums. Many of the controversial PRs posted do not receive any developer-feedback on the critiques made on the forums. 

 

I believe, that even when saying an idea is "retarded" or "dumb" that as long as the individual is not ad-hominemly attacking the developer, there should be a level of community-oriented development. There's no community involvement in many of your development processes. Maybe between other community members discussing things, but not that of the contributor. The very core of my complaint is revolving around the responsibilities of "developing".

 

Do developers have a responsibility to address feedback, in any form, regarding their developments?

According to Lord Fowl, as he explained above, he does not partake in discussion on the forum.

Discussion concerning it on the discord is directed to the forums.

Discussion about non-code on the Github is directed to the forums.

Lord Fowl does not respond to the forums.

Therefore, simply put, Lord Fowl does not at all address feedback or discussion during development. I would like clarification if this is expected or within good practices.

 

This is the core of the issue, but once again- a larger picture is how he handled me pointing this out to him. He stated his reasoning for doing so was because myself, as an individual, made those critiques. Not because my critiques were out of scope, not because he does not partake in discussion (in which i call into question the responsibility to above), but because it was Zelmana making those statements. That, in my opinion, is completely contrary to staff practices.

tl;read it anyway

Are developers expected to interact with the community, or do we no longer do "community-oriented" development?

Was the reasoning given behind not replying or partaking to critique to the PR in the only public and staff-enforced feedback area acceptable?

[LordFowl]

“Therefore, simply put, Lord Fowl does not at all address feedback or discussion during development.“

Again you conflate two entirely disparate statements. I do not need to actively partake in discussion to address or incorporate feedback, and indeed I have incorporated feedback without being part of the discussion that produced it. My participation in a discussion begins and ends with my thesis, and I will resist any attempts to “force” me to participate in a discussion as anything but an observer. I have no interest in defending or attacking ideas, no interest in changing people’s opinions. I only care to know what and why their ooinions are.

I also want to clarify another looming misconception; “He states his reasoning for doing so was because myself, as an individual, made those critiques”

I would like to clarify that my only foul was blowing up at you and stating this so harshly. I understand that that is poor conduct, but understanding it does not mean I regret it. As I said in my preamble you should not be surprised when your behavior ostracizes you, and while I have a responsibility to facilitate and hear out the opinions of the community, I also have the privilege of ignoring individuals who conduct themselves in a toxic and reprehensible  manner.

[Arrow768]

The thing I hate about these discord complaints is that there is always quite a lot of context missing.

Anyway, to address some of the questions / concerns raised:

Do developers have a responsibility to address feedback, in any form, regarding their developments?
No, they do not, especially not "in any form".
Developers have the responsibility to provide a feedback topic to facilitate a discussion about a PR if a PR is marked as feedback required.
But they do not have to actively respond to every comment raised in that Topic (or elsewhere).

The reason we do not have that requirement is quite simple:
The developers can not merge PRs on their own.
It requires two reviews and a maintainer to merge a PR into the master branch.
Before a PR is merged, the provided feedback is taken into account.
(This is also the reason why the Security PR will be testmerged with another feedback round after the testmerge)

He does not respond to my feedback / is ignoring me.
As LordFowl mentioned, there is a difference between ignoring and not responding.
I have absolutely no interest to force two people to work with each other if they do not want to.

And yes, there are also some people I avoid interacting with, because I believe they are generally a unpleasant experience to interact with.
However that does not stop me from listening to valid complaints raised by them and addressing that feedback if I believe they need to.

[LorenLuke]

4 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

Do developers have a responsibility to address feedback, in any form, regarding their developments?
No, they do not, especially not "in any form".
Developers have the responsibility to provide a feedback topic to facilitate a discussion about a PR if a PR is marked as feedback required.

Just a point of curiosity regarding this, if there is no need to do so, what then is their responsibility beyond 'develop PRs to custom tailor the game to their wants and needs'? How is there proof, without interaction, that they've not ignored feedback versus having evaluated it fairly and chose to not Incorporate it, especially if they do not reply? If two developers create an unspoken agreement to always merge each other's PRs, what does that do for any feedback, since conditions of merging are met and no discussion is had? In either of the above cases, would it not be negligent of developer staff to not, at least on some level, engage with feedback?

[Arrow768]

2 minutes ago, LorenLuke said:

If two developers create an unspoken agreement to always merge each other's PRs, what does that do for any feedback, since conditions of merging are met and no discussion is had?

As I explained above:

5 hours ago, Arrow768 said:

The developers can not merge PRs on their own.
It requires two reviews and a maintainer to merge a PR into the master branch.

The maintainers (who have the ability to merge things in) look through every PR and evaluate if this PR can be merged as is or needs further discussion.
Two reviews on GitHub do not guarantee that a PR will be merged.
(The current example would be 5975 and 5996)
While the PRs are technically fine, require additional consideration and have not been merged yet.

 

There are two extremes here:

• Developers have a responsibility to address feedback, in any form.
• Developers do not have to account for feedback at all.

Both of these extremes are unacceptable.
If we were ok with the latter, then why would we even bother to create feedback topics?

Regarding the question of "what prevents them from doing so".
Quite simple: The maintainers.
If valid feedback is insufficiently addressed for a merge, then it wont be merged.
(Again this is by far no requirement to address every single point raised, but the general direction of the points should be addressed)


Also, this entire staff complaint started over a PR that will be testmerged meaning it will be gone after a week or two after which additional feedback is gathered to evaluate weather this PR is suitable as is, unsuitable or needs further changes to be suitable.
The entire purpose of a testmerge is to evaluate how a PR fares in a live envrionment, so I do not see an issue at all if there are people questioning weather or not a PR is going to do fine or not if its merged.
The purpose of the testmerge is to find out just that.

[Arrow768]

No response from the OP, therefore considering this resolved and moving it to the archive