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I thought basic etiquette was issue to discuss before PR?

Starting with a PR seems to me like saying "you have nothing to tell me about how your code works, I know exactly how your code should be changed and if my changes conflict with what you're working on you should throw your code out because mine is better".

Is that wrong?



I agree that should be the basic etiquette.

Perhaps it needs to be said more clearly on project pages and codes of conduct and participation.

(Of course, it is not reasonable to demand that an already-overworked maintainer-for-free find extra hours to have the pre-PR discussion either. It needs to be exploratory and respect the maintainers' timescales. Luckily, if you don't get the response you wanted, you can fork and hire someone else or do it yourself, and keep your fixes in the queue for others to review eventually, if they want, at whatever timescale suits them.)

Unfortunately, there seem to be quite a lot of people who would, rather than discussing ideas respectfully, instead prefer to bully and shame the maintainer.

Such as, for example, calling out perceived issues in the code publically (sometimes incorrectly), and making out how unskilled the maintainer must be, in order to put pressure on the maintainer to sacrifice their personal life and do what the bully wants.


> Of course, it is not reasonable to demand that an already-overworked maintainer-for-free find extra hours to have the pre-PR discussion either. It needs to be exploratory and respect the maintainers' timescales

I absolutely didn't mean to imply that. I also think that a pre-PR discussion can be useful because if the maintainer doesn't have time to say they want a PR that's a decent hint they won't have time to handle the PR.


Sorry if you thought I thought you were implying pressure. Not at all.

I thought your comment was helpful and supportive.

I just wanted to clarify, for readers, that expecting anything at any stage from a maintainer can be expecting too much sometimes. It is time and work for them after all, and usually it's in their limited personal time, for free.

Sometimes, they have already exhausted all the time they could put into the project; even a brief "thanks" email is too much when you have too many for whatever available time and energy you have. People don't always realise that, when they say "the maintainer should just [...]". A lot of people wanting [...] adds up.


> Sorry if you thought I thought you

No problem at all.

> I thought your comment was helpful and supportive.

Thank you. I'm glad you saw it that way.

> A lot of people wanting [...] adds up.

It sounds as though you've had some tough experiences with this. I'm sorry to hear that.


For what its worth I agree with you




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