From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Adolf Belka To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: I am taking a little break Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 19:08:36 +0100 Message-ID: <398f5016-9d76-fefb-c238-f97f87fd31de@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============6691065843386709012==" List-Id: --===============6691065843386709012== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hallo all, Unfortunately I think this is a reflection of how our society has been going = in the last 4 years. I think they are the minority but they are very vocal and so make a lot of no= ise that gets felt. For people who just vent into the forum, I believe that their post should be = closed or deleted and if the same behaviour is repeated several times then ma= ybe their account should be deleted. The Arch Linux forum implemented that ap= proach some time ago and you rarely see posts like that now. They are quickly= closed or deleted. Also if people post with a "I updated and now nothing works" they should be p= ointed to somewhere that gives guidance on the sort of information that is re= quired when posting. Arch Linux follow that approach and people who don't off= er specifics on the commands used or the error messages from the logs etc get= quickly directed to the Arch Forum Rules and the Newbie guide to posting. Th= ey have these as pinned posts in their Newbie category in the forum. The foru= m population now often inform a poster that he needs to provide more informat= ion or point them at the rules. It is no longer just the moderators. I think we need to think about more overtly thanking the community people who= have successfully helped someone. The like heart is there and is used but ma= ybe we also need to do something like an occasional thank you message in a th= read for. I suspect that whatever we do there will still be people who act with the wro= ng behaviour. I think that we need to remind ourselves that the problem is no= t ours it is theirs and we need to calm down and do something different for a= while. For me, walking my dog or going mountain biking help to get me back t= o a calmer frame of mind. I also had a quick scan through parts of another firewall forum and they also= have a similar set of forum questions to what we see. There was a post about= installing their firewall and download speed being reduced by 80%, There wer= e some with very little information provided. So I think it is not a problem = unique to IPFire. Regards, Adolf. On 11/01/2021 15:28, Michael Tremer wrote: > Hello all, >=20 > Thank you everyone for your kind words on this matter. I appreciate it very= much, although I didn=E2=80=99t know how to respond back then. >=20 >> On 26 Nov 2020, at 03:47, Jon Murphy wrote: >> >> Hi Michael, >> >> Sorry for the late reply to your note. I've been sick the past few days a= nd sleeping too much. All is good now. >> >> Sorry for what you are going through. It really takes the joy out of work= ing especially when working at something you love. Nobody should ever be sub= ject to this abuse. >=20 > Luckily, absuse has somewhat disappeared recently. I am getting rather kind= emails from users or people send me a nice email and said why they donated a= couple of bucks to the project. That feels really nice. >=20 >> I completely agree with taking a step aside. Take whatever time is needed= . You definitely deserve the time off! >=20 > Yes, many people told me that they can absolutely understand my - rather co= nfusing - reasoning, because they have considered the same. Various people ar= e popping in and out of the forum and are usually leaving with a feeling of d= isappointment. >=20 > I do not want that. >=20 > I want our community to be a nice one. Although this is not the lounge of t= he Internet and people come here to solve a problem, there is no need that th= is cannot be done in a nice way. >=20 > Two months ago, I was considering to simply shut down the community portal.= It has been a pain point for a long time, and the transition from the old so= ftware to Discourse has not really helped too much. I do not know really what= I expected but at least a change in dynamic. >=20 >> I would suggest never fully reading the nasty messages. Find a nasty part= - hit the delete key! It won't give you any insight to their problem and it= isn't worth your time. And it will definitely bring you down. >=20 > As I heard, more messages have been deleted without any further ado. Has th= at helped? I do not know. Did anyone notice change? >=20 >> After the November holiday I'll reach out to the Community moderations. I= have a few thoughts and suggestions of ways to make this better: (e.g., watc= hlist / sh**list of bad apples, flagging sh** messages ). It'll probably tak= e 100 little things that'll make the difference. >> >> Side thought: I use Apple Mail and SpamSieve. Maybe you can set its corp= us up with nasty words (e.g., arsehole) from nasty messages. Trash anything = nasty before reading it! The delete key is your friend! >=20 > People don=E2=80=99t use nasty language. After all, I am German and that la= nguage is a lot filthier than English. We say things as they are, and that is= not really what is bothering me. >=20 > What is bothering me more is that people are wasting my time, because I am = not really convinced that they are hoping to get their problem fixed with ema= ils like this. They want to vent. Maybe it is a sign of the times that they c= annot do it elsewhere, and maybe we are simply the first victim that they ran= domly find. It does=E2=80=99t really matter. >=20 > One of the recent public examples would be this tweet: https://twitter.com/= BaatorianPrince/status/1344704180913627141 >=20 > =E2=80=9CNothing works=E2=80=9D. Well, I am glad for you that you found bet= ter software. This software works absolutely fine for me. >=20 >> Hope you are able to get out and do something different! >=20 > The pandemic does not really help with this, but I found some time to do so= mething different :) >=20 > But now, I would like to talk about how we can fix this. The other day, we = got a message from another person who said that they gave up on the Community= Portal and I cannot accept that. Me not being a leading example here, it is = not what I want. >=20 > It is not a requirement in the project to read every single post on there, = and of course I cannot and do not want to force anyone to do things they do n= ot enjoy. >=20 > But if we want to keep the Community alive, we all need to engage with it i= n some way. >=20 > So I am here to ask for ideas on how we can achieve this? I would like to h= ave a conversation about what is going wrong (are we doing something wrong or= is it just the same everywhere else) and what we can do about it. >=20 > To me, engaging with the community is essential to good development and ult= imately to the success of the project. Right now, it does not give a very goo= d image of us and what are all doing. >=20 > How can we fix this? >=20 > Best, > -Michael >=20 >> >> Take care! >> Jon >> >> >>> >>> >>> Message: 2 >>> Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2020 19:17:32 +0000 >>> From: Michael Tremer >>> To: "IPFire: Development-List" >>> Subject: I am taking a little break >>> Message-ID: >>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3Dutf-8 >>> >>> Hello everyone, >>> >>> I would like to announce that I am taking a hiatus from the support forum= on community.ipfire.org. >>> >>> The main reason is not new, but I thought that it has been enough in the = last few weeks: The amount of abuse I receive is unreasonable. It comes in pe= rsonal messages, emails and on public forums and are often quite personal. >>> >>> I do not want to give any examples, because those people do not deserve t= hat their message is being singled out. There is no incident in particular th= at has caused me frustration, but you all have seen what is being posted publ= icly and that is good enough to work as a foundation to what I would like to = point out... >>> >>> We have a bit of a problem with our discourse. People have an entitlement= problem, put no work into their posts and expect - or even demand - people t= o do their job for them. >>> >>> I feel that reading those posts and writing a response which is not being= read by the original poster (let alone them trying to implement what I sugge= sted) is a waste of time. Of course it is up to them, but why would you ask i= n the first place? Usually the problem is that it was not understood what I a= nswered. >>> >>> Who would have thought that IT security is hard? >>> >>> I am tired of trying to educate people about the most basic things that a= re required to run IPFire. I am sick and tired of seeing IPFire being used wr= ong and therefore people complaining about things that do not work as they wa= nt them. I feel like I am explaining the same things over and over again. >>> >>> I am done with having endless debates about the same topics which are don= e already. Different people bring up the same arguments again but that does n= ot change anything. They complain when not being answered in length when they= are just too lazy to search for the answer in a previous post. >>> >>> I am being very frustrated and this is not good for neither me or the com= munity. >>> >>> Not coming across as my finest recently I believe that I am starting to a= ct unfairly towards people who have not done anything wrong and try to make a= difference in this project. It will be better if I invested my time into tho= se things than those outlined above. >>> >>> Closing the forum entirely was a thought that crossed my mind many more t= imes than once - and I know that I am not the online one who is thinking that= . It was in fact debated on our monthly team meeting before. >>> >>> I do not care about the offenders and bullies at all. Trolls are gonna tr= oll. There is only very little chance to point someone into the right directi= on and help them to help themselves. I would rather prefer to have a smaller = user base instead of having these people who are destroying the community - w= illingly or unwillingly. >>> >>> We are an open source project - one community. I do care a lot about that= - and I would not allow anyone to destroy what we have all achieved together= . It is sad to say, that it only needs very few people to spoil it for the re= st of us. >>> >>> My personal pride aside, those who know me in person can tell you that I = do not care much about any defamation towards me, or accusations, blame or be= ing called an arsehole. But I do know for a fact that others take them less l= ightly. >>> >>> Some things recently have stopped being fun and are now quite the opposit= e. To avoid ruining mine and other people?s days I have decided to stop readi= ng and replying on the support forum. I am not contributing anything useful f= or anyone and it has not given me any input that will help me to do my job be= tter. This won?t be a big loss to anyone. >>> >>> I would even encourage the rest of you who feel passionate about it help = to make that place useful again. It is the only place that we have where our = community can be. >>> >>> This announcement is just there to let you all know that my perception of= the project might vary from yours in the near future. I will of course be ar= ound on the development mailing list and get involved in the debates that we = have on here and would like to remind everyone to keep development talk on th= is list for that reason and avoid having that on the support forum. >>> >>> If anyone has something to say about this, I would be happy to read your = thoughts. If you do not want to disclose them in public, feel free to email m= e in private, too. >>> >>> And now I am going to focus on that massive pile of work I have to do? >>> >>> Best, >>> -Michael >>> >> >=20 --===============6691065843386709012==--