I am amazed at projects that allow toxic people to disrupt and mistreat other project members. I'm amazed when people defend bullies because they've got some kind of oldschool hacker credibility.

Not having to listen to "a hacker with a deservedly excellent reputation" say he'd like to cut off your hands so you can't code any more is absolutely not a loss to the project. It's a proper and right kind of excision to remove toxic bullies like that no matter how correct was the substance of their report.

(And as it turns out, the overwhelming majority of his reports were duplicates of existing reports, so it's not even a loss of the actual bug reports, just the nasty name calling and abusive and threatening behavior. I call that a win for the project.)

" I'm amazed when people defend bullies because they've got some kind of oldschool hacker credibility."

I actually said nothing like this, did I?

What I actually said, a) he's has a reputation as a very smart individual, and for good reason, and b) his bug report specifically was not bullying at all, but was precise, accurate, and passionate.

For what it's worth though, I don't find his calling a developer to be a simian to be offensive, I find it funny. I don't find his imagery of reaching through a monitor to cut off the fingers of someone to be offensive, or threatening, I find it amusing, and illustrative of his frustration at being ignored once more.

I find your behavior in this forum, of repeatedly bringing up these lame examples of why he should be banned to be offensive. And more offensive in light of how you have not explained who you are.

But the truth is, I use Chrome. And when I need an alternative browser, I turn to Opera or IE. I rarely use Firefox products anymore, because they are horrible. And I understand why they are horrible, it's because you guys are off in your own world and have no time or need to actually listen to your users, us guys that have been telling you for years of your bloat and your feature creep and your memory problems, and all the other crap you've tossed in there.

There is a decided difference between emotion and reason. Frustration is an expression of emotion and has no place in a bug report.

A bug report should factually describe a problem and the steps a dev can take to reproduce them.

Your frustration is a symptom of your own unmet expectations. The problem with _any_ expectation is that (being constant) it is bound to be unmet, eventually, given that the world is in a state of continuous change. So you can either lose your cool, or understand that this is the nature of the world, adapt and move on.

The title of this post has "click bait" plastered all over it, and that single post takes the whole thing out of context. I'm sorry I fell for it.

Google _all_ his bug reports and understand in the context.

I agree with you that the title of this post is click bait, however, this statement:

" Frustration is an expression of emotion and has no place in a bug report."

Again, you're right, and again, you're wrong. Now we need moderators and rules and timeouts and bannination and more rules on how what as developers expect from bug reports?

It's hard enough for users to make bug reports.

What I want from bug reports is accuracy, precision, specification, and oh my god, a reproducible test case.

If after registering for a bug account, after taking the time to create a reproducible test case, after taking the time to enter that in my reporting system, if they want to call me a simian -- I'm okay with that.

I'm not sure how the effort required by a user to file a bug report entitles him to use that system in a way not intended by the system itself. Effort != entitlement.

I'm not suggesting rules/moderation/banning, but a little private introspection by individuals before they act.

He was being a complete idiot in his bug report. The moderator stated that he has been warned many times before. He completely deserved to be banned after being warned that his actions will result in being banned.

Sure, he is submitting bug reports, but his childish behavior shouldn't have to be tolerated because of this.

If this report is representative, I don't think a thousand similar reports would deserve a ban. There's some exasperation, some sarcasm, some foot-stomping while expressing strong opinions. But there's no profanity or insults. The strongest negative word used is 'stupid', and it's applied to a question in the UI, not any person. The details and rationale for considering the software's behavior an interaction faux pas are strong.

It's hard to even see which part of 'Bugzilla Etiquette' this report violates:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

If other reports are worse, that's another matter. But if so, it seems odd this relatively mild report would be the final trigger that brings down the banhammer. (If there's a reliable pattern of abuse, just wait for the next non-mild incident.)

You missed the reports where he called developers simians, shouted "screw you" and said he'd like to cut off a specific developers hands so he couldn't code any more. (by the way, bugzilla is totally searchable, so if you want, you can see this stuff for yourself before you step up to defend a bully.)

Then why not announce the ban after those blatant transgressions, or the next blatant one if they arrive reliably, rather than after a mild one?

BTW, a simple Bugzilla search for [Richard Mlynarik] returns "Zarro Boogs found". Similarly, a Google search for [site:bugzilla.mozilla.org Mlynarik simian] returns nothing.

I'm sure I'll find the right kind of search eventually – I did find a Mlynarik 'screw you' comment via Google – but if the action is justified by examples with exact quotes, you might as well supply links rather than leave many people searching.

And why personalize this by accusing me of "stepping up to defend a bully"? I've addressed the exact action and manner of action taken in the above-referenced report, with the caveat that other examples would change the analysis. I've defended the precise comment in the 'compact dialog' report, not the person's history.

He was given a warning and a second chance after the awful behavior in other bugs. When he failed to heed that warning he was banned. If you had read the report, you'd have seen that he had been given a previous warning. That's key information. Weren't you curious about the previous warning? Didn't it occur to you that he might have already been treading on really thin ice and continued misbehavior, even minor might be enough to tip the balance? It doesn't seem to me that you were. It seemed to me you were stepping up to his defense without all the facts. That's a dangerous thing to do because you might find that you're defending someone that's you'd rather not be.

"if you had read the report"? "weren't you curious"?

It should have been clear from my conditionals ("If this report is representative…"; "If other reports are worse…") that I was curious about the alluded-to prior history, and my analysis was contingent upon the (at the time unlinked) specifics.

The concern I still have is that this latest comment was so mild and non-insulting that one possible interpretation is that the previous warning(s) were working. He depersonalized his criticisms into the zone where, if judged dispassionately, they could be more more helpful than hurtful.

Now, you've also been quoting other incidents ("simians", "die die die") that might be more recent and salient. I can't find the context for those. (Searches only turn up this thread.)

But I am only opining on the exact comments and actions referenced here. I'm not defending any particular person (who I don't know), but one most recent comment. And I'm not criticizing a general policy of exiling recidivist assholes, only the act of pulling the trigger after a comment that, standing alone, is innocuous.

If someone else over the years posted a thousand comments with the same level of sarcasm and exasperation, but also the same level of actual useful info (and no insults), as in Mlynarik's most recent comment, would they get a ban? Or even a warning? I suspect not. They'd just be considered a cranky but useful bug reporter.

This, exactly. I don't know Richard but this thread has triggered my curiosity, so I've looked at a few of his bug comments and the pattern is that they are funny and strongly worded, but the strong language isn't directed at a person - it's squarely aimed at the problem.

Morendil, his comments are often very much directed at individuals and not at features or bugs.

Calling a developer a "simian" and shouting "screw you" and actually saying "You know, every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer] I just want to reach out through the intertubes and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any code" are all direct and personal attacks that should not be tolerated in any forum.

There's nothing "funny" about that. It's the behavior of a bully and someone who thinks that because he's big bad programmer with a long history that he can verbally abuse other programmers when ever he feels like it.

There's nothing funny about bullying.

I'm quite sensitive to bullying, having often been a victim, online and off.

Part of me wants to agree with you. Richard does "name names" and directly voice an opinion of another person's abilities and a judgement of their actions.

One of the comments in this HN thread reads: "Get off your high horse you fucking moron". That is abusive. Never mind that this comment is in response to someone I happen to disagree with.

On the other hand I did not find the "cutting off his fingers" comment abusive. It comes across an elaborate, possibly overwrought, way of saying "This guy is making me angry". It is OK in my book to give people feedback on how their actions are making you feel. The imagery is violent, the tone is not.

What I do find abusive is the phrase "people like you" which Richard uses in the same comment. So my considered opinion of these comments would be yes, they are somewhat abusive. But I would stop well short of "bullying".

Richard's attacks have a clear object-level target, which is not a person: he is clearly making legitimate (not necessarily true, but legitimate) claims about the TB development process - that it breaks features that worked, that the concerns of some users are being summarily dismissed, and that there is a pattern of these things happening over and over again.

Yes, the tone he uses for saying those things sometimes crosses a line. But on balance, the impression I'm taking away from this dispute is that Richard is being banned not so much for his tone, but more for saying things that are true and that the people wielding the power to censor him are unwilling to hear.

That aspect of the whole mess, the way the power asymmetry plays out, is what I suspect has people coming out in Richard's defense. People with ban buttons should usually err on the side of tolerance.

The success of open source rests on participation, and participation is a two-way street. When you open a bug reporting system, the intended message is "we care about your concerns". Marking a bug as "won't fix" sends the exact opposite message. That makes it, too, a power not to be used lightly: someone wielding that power indiscriminately can easily turn into what I'd not hesitate to call a "bully".

At some point these tensions stopped being about mere civility, and started being about the power politics of open source. At least, that's how it looks to this outside observer.

"the impression I'm taking away from this dispute is that Richard is being banned not so much for his tone, but more for saying things that are true and that the people wielding the power to censor him are unwilling to hear."

I'm saddened that you have this impression, given that most of the things he complains about are duplicates of bugs that other people were able to report in a civil manner. As a developer, I know my software has bugs, and am appreciative when users let me know what they are. As a person, I don't feel I should have to put up with sarcastic, snarky bullshit when finding out about the bugs, or when trying to fix them.

"The success of open source rests on participation, and participation is a two-way street."

I know of at least one Thunderbird developer who quit because the atmosphere in Bugzilla was hostile. I don't know how many people decided not to participate because of comments like Richard's. Participation isn't the same as welcoming everybody, no matter what their effect on the community.

Also, I would totally read a blog post about the power politics of open source. :)

No, if there's a track record of obscene bug reports, then the person involved shouldn't be given even the slightest bit of slack.

edit: if I were dmose, I'd have banned him a year ago for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579372#c2.

If they need to punish obscene reports, punish for those, specifically. When they happen. Don't punish a mild, non-obscene report some other time.

edit for your edit: Thanks for finding an earlier clearer example. That comment was unnecessarily personal and abusive. It deserved reprimand or censure. And if the reprimand(s) are responsible for the less-personal tone of the 2011-06-30 comment, compared to the 2010-07-21 comment, they're working to increase the signal-to-emotional-noise ratio. But the controversy of a hard ban for a lesser transgression now introduces new emotional noise.

While we might disagree on the exact mechanics, I think we can agree that any open-source community would be better without such people.

I couldn't agree with that. Imagine what the landscape of software would look like without all those abrasive "bullies" that Mozilla is wringing their hands about: no Theo, no Zed, no Steve, no Richard ... hell, no Linus, for that matter.

So any open-source community would be better without them, eh?

I don't know about other open source communities. Perhaps they thrive on toxic environments full of bullies. But I do know quite a bit about the Mozilla community and I'm quite certain that we are better off without him.

I expect my users to be thirteen-year-old immature brats with no concept of the effort required to write code nor the time constraints which adults generally have to work within, but I think I'm a special case. :3

Open-source community would surely be better without people being bullies. It's not like anyone's creative ability or technical excellence comes from bullying other people.

I prefer rehabilitation to exile, if at all possible.

Quip's like that don't help matters. I prefer peace to war, but it's meaningless.

How do you propose rehabilitating someone who has demonstrated no desire to be rehabilitated within this context?

Also, is it really the job of the developers to fix the bugs in a user rather than focus on the bugs in the product the user is using?

The worst thus-far-linked example of Mlynarik's Bugzilla comments is from July 2010, after which one or more warnings were made. The June 2011 example that got him banned shows him as sarcastic and excessively dramatic, but he refrains from personal insults.

So the idea that he is rehabilitating, after warnings, is one interpretation of the linked reports.

Asa Dotzler has mentioned other quotes, but without dates/links for ontext. Perhaps they were in-person incidents? If so, that would change the calculus a lot (in favor of hair-trigger banning).

But part of a fair "next strike and you're gone" policy is being clear about what a 'strike' is. Was he warned not to use sarcasm, CAPS-YELLING, and excessive emotion? If so, he had fair warning. If instead he was warned not to be uncivil and insulting, then this latest comment didn't prove his incorrigibility.

I understand what you are saying, and it sounds reasonable, but I disagree. Your basically suggesting that in every case of a banning, they need to publicly shine the light on every infraction. They also need to spell out an exhaustive list of "strikes," and beware if they forget to include CAPS-YELLING in the list.

No. This is an adult we are referring to here. We can reasonably expect that he knew exactly what he was doing, and was merely pushing the line as far as he could go, and just happened to cross it. This wasn't the first time; he was a repeated offender. This wasn't the start of the problem. It was the final straw (which, in my experience, is usually a minor straw when compared to the haystack beneath it).

Edit: Thank you for responding with a more clear comment than you original, btw. =)

We don't know the earlier instances where he was warned. IMHO, this particular bug report doesn't seem to be out of line with the rules here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

But you could look if you wanted to. How about when he called Thunderbird developers simians and said he wanted to cut off their hands so they couldn't program any more? Is that out of line enough for you? What about saying "screw you" and calling developers children. I consider all of that out of line. He was being a bully and he got banned for it. Good on Dan Mosedale. Bullies suck and we shouldn't let them pollute our communities with their abuse.

Yes, I saw one in a link posted above. Definitely out of line. No second thoughts on that. If the ban had happened in reply to one such post, it would have been unquestioned by many.

Yeah, unfortunately for everyone he was only warned on the worst of the interactions and given a second chance. Sometimes a ban on the first offense is better. Still, a ban after a failure to heed a warning seems completely reasonable. Heck, a re-evaluation of the original interaction with the knowledge of how he behaved after the warning would have worked too. But again, the important thing isn't where the ban happened, it's that the project rejected a bully.

The important thing is exactly when and why the ban happened. As others have pointed out, his latest bug report that got him banned was hugely better than his older bug report filled with personal insults that got him a warning. This shows that he took the warning seriously enough to stop the personal attacks.

Banning him now makes me think the developers of Thunderbird are ego maniacs.

Correct - it was a great bug report. Without the expression of frustration then the nature of the bug would not have been clear.

Reports like this from my customers would be brilliant.

Would you like your customers saying "screw you" and "I want to cut off your hands so you can't program any more"? I wouldn't.

Absolutely! His was the pefect bug report. A chef cooks for his patrons, and a performer pleases his audience, just as a programmer codes for the user. With his report you have a passionately described, no holds barred look into what you are causing the user to feel when using the software. Don't let it hurt your feelings, just take it on the chin and recognize that in trying to make something better, you have inadvertently forgotten the primary objective: user experience. Oftentimes bug reports like this may just be a rant without relevant technical details, but the wonderful thing about this report, is that he gives you the best of both worlds: You have extremely insightful user experience along with the relevant technical details on how to address the issue. Be grateful, and wish more reports exactly like this.

Of course not, but the one time they are acceptably civil isn't the time to bring out the ban hammer.

When they continue to be abusive after a warning it doesn't really matter where mechanically the actual trigger was pulled. It was the right call. It was a late call, in my opinion. I'd have banned him at the "cut off his hands" comment with no warning and now recourse. But again, late or not, it was the right call. No project should have to tolerate bullies. They are toxic to the project and they should be excised as soon as possible.

  What Richard is doing here is investing his time into
  making Mozilla better.

Unfortunately, no matter how awesome he is for investing his time and no matter how useful his bug reports are, his bug reports are also so offensive, unconstructive and discouraging that it's deemed better for the community to ban him. I can understand and support that decision, although I may have chosen otherwise.

No, if he was really "investing his time", he'd be producing good, well-written bug reports, and, since he's such an awesome hacker, writing patches.

Instead, he vents his frustrations on bugzilla and generally acts like an ass.

Agreed. Any bug report from a user is valuable - the fact that he was frustrated enough to report it means that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Almost everyone files a bug report in frustration because you're filing an issue about something that doesn't work the way you think it should. But most people are considerably more civil about it.

I really don't like to play the "free" card. Too often developers say "well, it's open source so fix it or stop complaining." I don't think that's right at all . . . especially if you've advocated people use your software. However, having been involved with a lot of OSS projects, I can say that the bugs that get fixed the fastest are the ones that affect the developers themselves. Anything that gets fixed above and beyond that is a developer being a nice person in volunteering his time to help someone else. More to the point: it's hard to get people to work for free when they're demoralized and bug reports like this are demoralizing. If I were involved with the project, he's about the absolute last person I'd try to please no matter how right he may be.

So, while I'm neutral on the ban, the bug reporter has to realize this is a very ineffective way to win friends and get his issues resolved.

That's not strictly true. If you've already got a report of the issue from other more helpful users, then someone coming in and calling you names and threatening to physically harm you, that isn't necessarily adding value.

We're very fortunate at Mozilla to have tens of thousands of but reporters who aren't bullies and who don't think because they wrote some GNU code once that they can threaten you and deride you. This means that the cost of kicking out the bullies is either trivial, or a net win.

It took Mozilla 10 years to get Sunbird to version 1.0, not to mention how long it took them to iron out Thunderbird's "imperfections". As for FireFox, if it weren't for the extensions and the "open source" sticker no one would care about FireFox. They need all the Richard Mlynariks they can get.

And I am..er... WAS a hard core FireFox user (switched to chrome a year ago) and still am a heavy Thunderbird user. Mozilla needs to haul ass.

> They need all the Richard Mlynariks they can get.

Only if each Richard Mlynarik they have increases the quality of the product. Do you have any reason to think it does? This particular Richard Mlynarik wasn't writing code for Firefox or Thunderbird (which is too bad because i hear he's an excellent hacker). He was submitting bug reports, most of them allegedly duplicates, full of inflammatory language.

If you believe that bug reports filled with inflammatory language make a project work better than bug reports without it, then do please present your evidence for that. My own guess is that being rude to people may be effective in getting them to pay attention in the short term to your needs or wants rather than someone else's, but that it doesn't do anything to improve their overall productivity and may well make it worse by reducing their motivation.

I've had complete strangers on the the street tell me to my face that I was ugly. That's life. Oh well. Rude-ass Bug reports are better than no bug reports.

Emotion 101: When people are pissed they curse. I agree with you, it would be beneficial for them not to but they do. I have a feeling a lot of the people who don't tolerate his language have never worked in customer service or with the public. Emotion happens, a LOT, learn to ignore it. Don't want to deal with it? Write a greasemonkey script that changes all the language you don't like into encouraging statements.

All the programmers I know are very logical, stable people and it seems as a whole they're not used to erratic emotional behavior that people in customer service are used to seeing.

Richard Mlynarik is one of the developers for XEmacs and has contributed to coreutils in GNU. open up your terminal and type in man whoami.

And that gives him the right to be a bully? To say he'd like to cut off a Thunderbird developers hands so he can't program any more? To call developers simians? Nothing gives anyone the right to come into Mozilla's Bugzilla and behave like that.

Simians include all old world monkeys and apes, including humans. While you might interpret it as being an insult, and it may have been meant as such, it is factually correct.

So because allegedly he is some "rock star", he should be allowed to violate their etiquette repeatedly?