On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 01:56:57PM -0400, Hal Vaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was
heard to say:
> On Sunday 12 October 2008, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> > Regardless, I don't see his mail as being at all impolite; just
> > a little terse.
>
> I'll ask you to read in this context: 1) You know very little about how
> packages in Debian are maintained, 2) You know nothing about the
> internals of apt, 3) You do not know Christian at all, have no idea
> what he is like, and do not know what to expect, and 4) You have just
> found what has every appearance of a severe bug: Upgrading some files
> can keep a system from booting. While your problem is resolved, you're
> trying to help the distro you prefer keep that from happening to anyone
> else.
I agree that this sort of bug report reply is annoying. I'm just
saying that so far in this thread I've seen Christian accused of
various forms of trying to make users feel like idiots, being someone
who "shouldn't be handling bug reports", a developer who is "full or
air", someone who has "no sense of social ettiquite", etc, etc, etc. [0]
This is not true. I don't know what was in his mind when he wrote
the bug report to which you referred (obviously), but I don't think
he was trying to blow you off. I don't think there's any point in
further retreads of this ancient bug, we're just going in circles.
[0] his name may not have been used, but his reply to this bug report
was being held up as an example of this type of individual.
> > It's hard, when replying to a bug, to figure out the level of
> > detail to include. He included enough information for someone to
> > figure out what was going on if they were familiar with the Debian
> > system.
>
> With what degree of familiarity? I couldn't figure it out. Now you can
> go on and call me an idiot, but I test well into the genius range, have
> depended on only my income from my business based on my own programming
> for 7 years, and have basically taught myself all the programing
> languages I now use (I'm not counting BASIC, FORTRAN, and VAX 11/780
> Assember that I learned in college, since I no longer use any of those
> languages). While I fixed my system, I was left with no idea of what
> was actually going on and wasn't sure what to do if I wanted to make
> sure someone could prevent this kind of thing from happening again.
I didn't say he was right! My point is that this is a judgment call
that sometimes gets made incorrectly. You cannot realistically expect
us to never make mistakes.
> > I can see the point that more information would have been
> > helpful, but this is an easy mistake to make and I'd hardly call it
> > an insult.
>
> Who said it was an insult?
"I don't know if he's just trying to dazzle me with bs or to make me
feel like an idiot because he knows so much and I know nothing."
I took that to mean that you thought he was insulting you. Apologies
if I misunderstood.
> Maybe it's from the jobs I had along the way, but I cannot imagine being
> part of an organization and someone coming to me for help and
> saying, "It's not my problem," without doing my best to give them SOME
> clue on where to go next.
Like I said, I don't think there's any more point in discussing the
history here. When I handle misdirected bugs, I usually reassign them
to an appropriate package. I don't know why Christian didn't;
obviously it was a mistake on his part.
> Rude is a subjective term. Being terse isn't always being rude and one
> person's rude is another person's terse. However, as you point out,
> there are times when a developer is tired or out of sorts. That's not
> a particularly good time to respond to "the public" (or whatever term
> you want to use. True, you don't have employees, but was there a
> deadline hanging over his head so he *had* to respond at that time?
Personally, I try not to reply to bug reports when I'm not in the
right state of mind. However, I've also found that there's a strong
correlation between lacking the judgment to reply to bug reports and
lacking the judgment to decide whether I have sufficient judgment to
reply to bug reports. :-/
> > I can see why you might feel it was frustrating. Particularly if
> > you automatically assume that the guy on the other end is a
> > malicious, arrogant jerk rather than someone who's overworked and
> > trying to deal with a bug that's clearly misdirected.
>
> Where did anyone automatically make that assumption? I don't see where
> anyone said there was such an assumption or why there's a need to bring
> it up.
This is the general impression I got from reading your emails in this
thread, the same way you got a general impression that Debian developers
are hostile and uncooperative. e.g., and I bring this up only so you
know what I'm talking about, take this comment:
"I'll go even farther: In most cases they've been outright hostile and
I've had times where they've "told me off" to justify closing the bug.
I'm a geek to the core, but the stereotype of programmers or geeks that
have no social skills seems to come from something and my experience,
over the past 10 years or so of working with FOSS, tells me that filing
bug reports is just a good way to invite personal abuse."
The "they" refers to FOSS developers, not Debian developers, but
Debian developers are the specific FOSS developers whose behavior
was being discussed in this thread.
Anyway, I accept your statement that I misunderstood you.
> > Please remember that we are volunteers. I spend between 5 and 20
> > hours, tops, on my Debian work, depending on how much I can squeeze
> > in around my other activities in my free time. I have spent one hour
> > of it this week writing this reply to you. If I answered every user
> > question in enough detail for the most naive user I can imagine to
> > understand what I meant from my first reply, I would never have time
> > to do anything else.
>
> But you also have to remember that you never know much about each user.
> Today's naive user could be a developer in a few years. Or they could
> be someone with a large bank account that might be donating soon. In
> the very least, as you point out, developers are only human, but so are
> those filing the bug reports.
I don't make a habit of deliberately abusing users and I try to be
helpful. But whether I want to or not, I simply *don't* *have* *time*
to educate every user about every aspect of the Debian system. All I
have time to do is provide the information that I think is relevant to
their problem and hope that they'll ask for more details if they need
them. This doesn't work if they disappear because they think I'm
holding back information for some perverse reason.
You said later that I said "it's not our fault and here's why". If
that's the case, I failed in communicating my point. Of course it's
my fault when I screw up. And of course you can find a few people who
have had negative interactions with developers, because we all screw
up sometimes. (and there are probably a few developers who really are
unpleasant to deal with) I'm not disputing whose fault it is, I'm
saying that unless [0] we create a support department and have people
whose full-time, paid job is to be nice and helpful to users, developers
will occasionally make these sorts of mistakes. I don't think it's fair
to take a few examples of less-than-stellar emails from developers and
hold them up as grounds for condemning the individuals involved, let
alone the entire project. The practicalities of the situation mean
that we all need to be a little forgiving here for things to work.
That may not have been your intent, but I hope that this time I at
least made myself clear. :-)
[0] and even if we had a paid support department, that would only
reduce the problem, not eliminate it.
> One other point: You mention you spent an hour on this reply. What was
> the intent? I made a point: The responses of some DDs encourage people
> to stop filing bug reports. That's the point under discussion with one
> report as an example. Some people said it's not at all true, but
> others have said that in their experience it is true. That others, not
> many, but some, have had the same problem and don't bother with bug
> reports anymore, is a clear indication that there is something to what
> I'm saying.
The intent was mainly to defend Christian from the unwarranted
attacks on his character that I thought (perhaps wrongly) were flying
around this list. A secondary goal was to suggest that assumptions of
good faith are essential to keep our social interactions well-lubricated.
Clearly I have failed miserably at both. I hope that this email is a
little clearer.
Sorry,
Daniel
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
