This is a classic example of a problem-seeking idea. Quite a lot of people post
to this list with some idea that they think will make a large impact on the
community at large, certainly far larger than a lowly patch in a subsystem it
would take weeks to understand. Typically the proximal cause is sleep
deprivation, a condition that afflicts many kernel developers and enthusiasts,
with the result being a decreased inhibition against ideation of reference and
ideation of grandeur. This causes the believe that you have "discovered"
something which is really quite well understood and is being addressed with the
priority it is due, and that as a result of your discovery you are uniquely
qualified to guide the community to its resolution.
I don't mean to throw stones here. If you dig through the archives, you can
find examples of some grandiose ideas I've posted that never resulted in a
single line of code, or turned out to be impractical generalizations of more
specific optimizations that have already been implemented. Invariably these
were posted while sleep-deprived, and I've been quite embarrassed by them the
next morning, and relieved that for the most part they were ignored.
If not for the importance of addressing this issue, I would leave this post
ignored as well. I have no qualms with the goal of improving civility on LKML,
but it's not something that's going to be solved by anonymously shaming people
on a blog. The goal of your blog appears to be to chastise kernel developers,
which is at best a needless escalation of hostilities.
If you want to improve the quality of discourse here, then get involved and make
good posts. Email makes filtering very easy, so if someone is a troll or is
posting on technical matters they don't understand, we can simply ignore them.
If you want to rebuke people for particular conduct, do it on the list, so the
people who read and post to this list can engage in a discussion of what is
acceptable here. The only people who will read a blog such as yours are
malcontents looking for reasons to dismiss those who have criticized or ignored
them.
My suggestion to you, and to everyone else who wants to improve the quality of
this community, is to become a part of it. Learn a subsystem. Post patches
that fix problems people care about. Listen to criticism and respond to it
constructively. This will make your posts relevant to the list, and give you
far more influence than a blog about a technical mailing list that has no
technical objective. Convincing other people to be nice is not a technical
problem that can be resolved by one person analyzing it and implementing a
solution in a late-night hacking/blogging session. Quite the contrary,
late-night hacking/blogging sessions tend to be detrimental to this goal.
-- Chris
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