[p2p-research] Slashdot | Alan Cox Quits As Linux TTY Maintainer — "I've Had Enough"

[Paul D. Fernhout]

I don't think this situation invalidates a peer production model (including 
since stigmeric contributions are different than socially organized ones),
   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=stigmergic
but there certainly are several interesting comments about open source 
community participation that ring true to me:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/1925224/Alan-Cox-Quits-As-Linux-TTY-Maintainer-mdash-Ive-Had-Enough
"After a stern criticism from Linus, the long-time kernel hacker Alan Cox 
has decided to walk away as the maintainer of the TTY subsystem of the Linux 
Kernel, stating '...I've had enough. If you think that problem is easy to 
fix you fix it. Have fun. I've zapped the tty merge queue so anyone with 
patches for the tty layer can send them to the new maintainer.'"

One comment poster linked to this topic:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227115.500-humans-prefer-cockiness-to-expertise.html
"""
EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic 
crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It's a consequence of the 
way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how 
people's self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice.
The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to 
the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues 
that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to 
increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for 
scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.
"""

Another linked to this:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
"The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which 
"...people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but 
their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". 
They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as 
above average. This leads to a perverse result where people with less 
competence will rate their ability more highly than people with relatively 
more competence. It also explains why competence may weaken the projection 
of confidence because competent individuals falsely assume others are of 
equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems 
from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly 
competent stems from an error about others.""

That's certainly something my wife and I have seen a lot of in business 
contexts. :-) When you try to be careful or conservative in your estimates, 
people often go for the confident sounding people who say it all will be 
easy and straightforward, or that key phases (like testing) can be omitted. 
Then, down the road, to save face, no one can admit anything and people just 
keep pouring money into a problem situation. No doubt that also explains 
some of the Iraq war fiasco too (the general who said it would take a lot of 
resources was sidelined and replaced with confident sounding people who said 
things would be a "cakewalk").

With that said, even the best managers can underestimate something badly, 
and sometimes things are much easier than you thought they would be. Or 
people good in one area of knowledge may make a big mistake about another 
area (e.g. the history of Europe post-WWII. :-)

Anyway, this situation brings up some fundamental issues that peer 
production has to wrestle with on a daily basis, though the same issues come 
up in hierarchical business production too.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/