On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 01:50:37AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:Of course I speak for myself. And I am absolutely open about my belief that such _contribution_s_ need to be discouraged. Actively. Hell, a month ago I mentioned right-justifying text in comments as "we'll never reach _that_" kind of pointless idiocy. And there we are, much closer to that than I ever expected. I have nothing against contributors. I *DO* have a lot against a very specific class of contributions. Exactly because they actively prevent people from moving on to saner stuff. Rule of the thumb: if a pointless activity can be carried indefinitely long and creates an impression of busy doing something, it ought to be discouraged. Basically, something one could do as infinitely stretchable time-filler when one _really_ doesn't feel like doing anything that might require thinking. Think of this situations like "I need to write the next part of paper, but I just can't get around to starting it; anything but that - let's rearrange the order of references, rearrange the pencils, whatever". And that is where I believe Ingo is wrong - dropping the level of acceptable pointlessness of patches does *not* encourage meaningful contributions; it discourages them. Ladder doesn't become more accessible if you extend it down into swamp; there's a reasonable starting level from which one _does_ go up. It's impossible to define formally, but it's quite real and I'm very afraid that it's rapidly getting harder to find. Harder for newbies. Sheesh, indeed. --
