Steward of Bitcoin Software Explains Why She Nixed an Acrimonious Code Debate

The PR was additionally locked since all it was doing was generating noise. Bitcoin Core uses GitHub for code collaboration and it is essentially the developers’ place of work. When someone makes a bold claim on twitter that angers people, and then encourages them to leave comments on GitHub, they end up disrupting the developers. These comments often contain accusations of bad faith, poorly informed statements about the code, and demands for the developers to make major changes, which drag the developers into arguments in order to defend themselves and correct misconceptions. Since there are commenters in favor of both sides, there were also discussions amongst them that did not involve the developers at all, but still sent a notification to everyone. Overall, this has a negative effect on productivity, results in a more toxic environment, and drives away developers from their place of work.