Sigh, sorry this is so long. I'll say my piece and call it quits, obviously nobody is going to have their mind changed here. I wish you good luck with your bitcoin user group. Although I think this whole argument is a tempest in a teapot, diversity of organization could do us some good.
Since you are pulling quotes out of context from a 3-day discussion, let me quickly address them one by one:
At least I link them, that's more context than you've been giving.
1) Written after the end of the whole pull request and in response to your ad-hominem. Not taken from the actual discussion
Lol, it's not an ad-hominem when your response does exactly what I accused you of doing. Also, it was written here where they could read it, unless you intend this to be your "secret" place to organize against them, which is exactly the kind of thing you accuse them of doing. You are right overall though. My claim is that you are actively bullying or trolling developers, so I think it still stands as representative of your attitude. I think there's plenty of other abuse within the actual discussion, and I do concede it comes from both sides, although I would say the developers are not unprovoked. You
came up with ways to insult/"critique" jgarzik solely to further your agenda. That's not constructive, it's destructive. You didn't do it to help bitcoin.org's press section, you did it to spit in the devs' faces.
2) Title was changed late today, after the @gmaxwell called me a jerk for using the veto he said I had. Before it read "Add more press representatives to the Press Center. Compared to "jerk", I think calling the appointees "pets" is mild.
Fair enough, but you and your cause will be judged based on what it says now. I don't even think there's a way to see the historical title in github. Cue the derision for using github. I'll take this moment to say it would be well-deserved, but that I don't think it was a very conscious choice in the first place. People like you pulled github into politics, not the other way around. There's a
5-week old thread on this forum that was specifically made for the Press Center contacts, but nobody's used it much. I don't think the website administrators were prepared for the turmoil this would cause, so the initial response was, "Uh, we'll hash it out on github, like we do with all changes to code" (a list of people on a website is made of code; it's not all that bizarre of an idea to do it on github.) That obviously hasn't scaled well, but no thanks to everyone creating multiple pull requests for their favorite intellectual/political exile and spamming all the threads.
3) I retracted the part about the @gmaxwell closing the pull request one post later and apologized. I had confused the two user IDs (I mistook him for @saivann). You didn't quote my apology and retraction, even though it was two posts down and less than 30 seconds after the original post. Also, no one else apologized or retracted anything, so mine was the only such act on the entire thread. Even @gmaxwell who misquoted Matonis, didn't apologize to anyone.
Sincere apologies, I didn't see that. I will amend my original post. You are right, although "one post later" is a little disingenuous, as there are actually several intervening posts from other people and that's why I didn't connect what was going on. Also, if you hover over the (current) "13 hours ago" text in the two posts, the timestamps are in fact "2013-04-28 15:31:58" and "2013-04-28 15:49:32", meaning it was
not "30 seconds later." This isn't really ironclad evidence (edits could throw the timestamps off?) and it's a nitpick, but you're the one who got self-righteous about how quick you were. I hope it was mis-remembering and not fabrication. It's also ironic and hypocritical that you didn't edit your original post once you discovered you were mistaken, since that's what you demand from others:
5) "Look at the mess in the Press Center" is sarcasm. I was implying that nothing had changed from my pull request or the many many pull requests that preceded it. Status quo is a choice, one that rewards the appointees of the developers at the expense of anyone excluded by decree.
How "many many" unmerged pull requests? I count your 2 about Matonis, a still-open one about Roger Ver, and the one for removing the Press Center (which I don't think you can count because you seem to prefer adding to the Press Center). So, basically the only unique non-merged pull-request made by someone other than yourself are still in the "open" state, which seems to be your standard for whether the devs are "accepting input." Meanwhile, several additions have been made to the press page since it started. Call this a "closed" process if you like, but it's definitely not stagnant (the "status quo" if I may read into your words a bit) just because your own changes haven't been accepted. At least this seems to be somewhat your argument, but I may be reading too much into it.
6) Factual
You took apart a 2 day discussion. You saw no problem with the serial slander against Matonis, name calling against me (jerk, git-troll, leech, etc) or the tone of any of the other posters. You just selectively quoted me digging up what you call bullying, and this is all you could find in that heated discussion?
You're right, I was selective. I think you are being selective too. While my reading wasn't all that exhaustive because I was only seeking to show why I believe you to be unfair (I'll admit it), I'll agree there is a tone problem throughout. I'll still assign a lot of the blame on you, for laying on the inflammatory rhetoric by calling this from the beginning a power-grab by capricious non-transparent authoritarians instituting a "git-literacy" test for their "vote." Again, nobody said this was a democracy. You still haven't shown me where they did. On that basis alone, your entire implicit argument that
anybody should give a hoot about what
you think, falls apart. Yes, they solicit suggestions because they know that can be effective, but they reserve the right to turn them down. Giving a reason for saying "no" or allowing multiple chances to pitch an idea is merely being polite, not required.
I'm not going to re-argue the whole process with you. I argued it when I had some hope that the process offered was real and it wasn't.
Again, what process was offered that turned out to be fake? I haven't seen anyone with the authority say, "we'll count the ACK's and the NACK's and the ACK's will win." You're more familiar with all this, so please hyperlink if this has been said.