From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-1.web.codeaurora.org [10.30.226.201]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6F2FB5237 for ; Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:09:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 871B9C433C7; Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:09:28 +0000 (UTC) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2023 12:10:01 -0400 From: Steven Rostedt To: ksummit@lists.linux.dev, tech-board-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org Subject: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainers Support Group Message-ID: <20230919121001.7bc610d4@gandalf.local.home> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.19.1 (GTK+ 2.24.33; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There has been several topics brought up already about maintainer burnout. A while back, I was talking with another maintainer that basically told me that they were ready to quit being a maintainer because it's not fun anymore. There's a lot of requirements and basically have to deal with crap from submitters. The Code of Conduct has been successful in helping to keep a more civil environment, but all the focus has mainly been around telling maintainers how to behave. But maintainers are humans too, and their work can cause a large amount of frustration to build up with no way to release that pressure. When that frustration boiled over, it use to come out with a nasty rant to at some unlucky submitter. Although this may have helped the maintainer, but in the long run, this was not healthy for the community in the whole, and the CoC has been created to prevent that from happening. The problem is that there's been no replacement for the maintainer to release their frustration. I brought up to the TAB a suggestion of starting basically a "Maintainer's support group". A place a maintainer, or even a submitter can go to when they are feeling frustrated. This is not a replacement for the Code of Conduct committee. This is more of a preventive measure. Ideally, the Code of Conduct committee members should be very bored where there are no submitted reports. That would mean our community is running in a very smooth way. But that's currently not the case. There's been a few cases that have come up where if the maintainer had someone to vent to, it could have prevented the violation of the Code of Conduct. The idea is this: When a maintainer is getting frustrated with a submitter or another maintainer, or even a submitter is getting frustrated with a maintainer, they would have a place to find a list of people that can help. They would pick one of the people and send an email to them with a subject of "[MAINTAINER SUPPORT]" (or something like that). This would let the supporting maintainer know that this email is about support and should be confidential and follow the guidelines. The email will include who and why they are frustrated with the other person. Again, this is *not* a Code of Conduct issue. This is not to point blame, just frustration. Sometimes people just can not work with other people. The supporting maintainer can be an outside POV and can possibly help with explaining why the other person is acting the way they are. Or the supporting maintainer can find another maintainer to work with this person. Several of us already do some of this. But its only a few. I would like to make it a more formal process where those that have not gone to conferences and such would still know who they can talk with. We discussed this within the TAB, but I would like to bring this up to a more general discussion at Maintainers Summit. I know some people would just dismiss this as unneeded, but I've talked to others that said this would be very useful. If it's useful for some, then I think it's worth it. If you believe it's unneeded, then you don't need to be involved with it (although someone could be submitting something about their frustrations with you ;) To recap what I'm asking: We would have a list of volunteers of support group members. There would be guidelines on how to interact. These guidelines will be public so that the submitter is also aware of them. One of the guidelines we discussed was what happens if the volunteer is just too busy, or they themselves do not want to deal with the individual submitting their frustrations. Both cases would have the same response, and that is to reply saying that they are not available and to please reach out to someone else on the list. Thoughts? -- Steve