From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Tremer To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: I am taking a little break Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2021 14:28:03 +0000 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <6EBA3313-73D5-4F4C-B487-17A70156AD62@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1789801902569300311==" List-Id: --===============1789801902569300311== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello all, Thank you everyone for your kind words on this matter. I appreciate it very m= uch, although I didn=E2=80=99t know how to respond back then. > On 26 Nov 2020, at 03:47, Jon Murphy wrote: >=20 > Hi Michael, >=20 > Sorry for the late reply to your note. I've been sick the past few days an= d sleeping too much. All is good now. >=20 > Sorry for what you are going through. It really takes the joy out of worki= ng especially when working at something you love. Nobody should ever be subj= ect to this abuse. Luckily, absuse has somewhat disappeared recently. I am getting rather kind e= mails from users or people send me a nice email and said why they donated a c= ouple of bucks to the project. That feels really nice. > I completely agree with taking a step aside. Take whatever time is needed.= You definitely deserve the time off! Yes, many people told me that they can absolutely understand my - rather conf= using - reasoning, because they have considered the same. Various people are = popping in and out of the forum and are usually leaving with a feeling of dis= appointment. I do not want that. I want our community to be a nice one. Although this is not the lounge of the= Internet and people come here to solve a problem, there is no need that this= cannot be done in a nice way. Two months ago, I was considering to simply shut down the community portal. I= t has been a pain point for a long time, and the transition from the old soft= ware to Discourse has not really helped too much. I do not know really what I= expected but at least a change in dynamic. > 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. As I heard, more messages have been deleted without any further ado. Has that= helped? I do not know. Did anyone notice change? > 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., watch= list / sh**list of bad apples, flagging sh** messages ). It'll probably take= 100 little things that'll make the difference. >=20 > Side thought: I use Apple Mail and SpamSieve. Maybe you can set its corpu= s up with nasty words (e.g., arsehole) from nasty messages. Trash anything n= asty 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 lang= uage is a lot filthier than English. We say things as they are, and that is n= ot really what is bothering me. What is bothering me more is that people are wasting my time, because I am no= t really convinced that they are hoping to get their problem fixed with email= s like this. They want to vent. Maybe it is a sign of the times that they can= not do it elsewhere, and maybe we are simply the first victim that they rando= mly find. It does=E2=80=99t really matter. One of the recent public examples would be this tweet: https://twitter.com/Ba= atorianPrince/status/1344704180913627141 =E2=80=9CNothing works=E2=80=9D. Well, I am glad for you that you found bette= r software. This software works absolutely fine for me. > Hope you are able to get out and do something different! The pandemic does not really help with this, but I found some time to do some= thing different :) But now, I would like to talk about how we can fix this. The other day, we go= t a message from another person who said that they gave up on the Community P= ortal and I cannot accept that. Me not being a leading example here, it is no= t what I want. It is not a requirement in the project to read every single post on there, an= d of course I cannot and do not want to force anyone to do things they do not= enjoy. But if we want to keep the Community alive, we all need to engage with it in = some way. So I am here to ask for ideas on how we can achieve this? I would like to hav= e a conversation about what is going wrong (are we doing something wrong or i= s it just the same everywhere else) and what we can do about it. To me, engaging with the community is essential to good development and ultim= ately to the success of the project. Right now, it does not give a very good = image of us and what are all doing. How can we fix this? Best, -Michael >=20 > Take care! > Jon >=20 >=20 >>=20 >>=20 >> 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 >>=20 >> Hello everyone, >>=20 >> I would like to announce that I am taking a hiatus from the support forum = on community.ipfire.org. >>=20 >> The main reason is not new, but I thought that it has been enough in the l= ast few weeks: The amount of abuse I receive is unreasonable. It comes in per= sonal messages, emails and on public forums and are often quite personal. >>=20 >> I do not want to give any examples, because those people do not deserve th= at their message is being singled out. There is no incident in particular tha= t has caused me frustration, but you all have seen what is being posted publi= cly and that is good enough to work as a foundation to what I would like to p= oint out... >>=20 >> 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 to= do their job for them. >>=20 >> 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 sugges= ted) is a waste of time. Of course it is up to them, but why would you ask in= the first place? Usually the problem is that it was not understood what I an= swered. >>=20 >> Who would have thought that IT security is hard? >>=20 >> I am tired of trying to educate people about the most basic things that ar= e required to run IPFire. I am sick and tired of seeing IPFire being used wro= ng and therefore people complaining about things that do not work as they wan= t them. I feel like I am explaining the same things over and over again. >>=20 >> I am done with having endless debates about the same topics which are done= already. Different people bring up the same arguments again but that does no= t 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. >>=20 >> I am being very frustrated and this is not good for neither me or the comm= unity. >>=20 >> Not coming across as my finest recently I believe that I am starting to ac= t 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 thos= e things than those outlined above. >>=20 >> Closing the forum entirely was a thought that crossed my mind many more ti= mes 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. >>=20 >> I do not care about the offenders and bullies at all. Trolls are gonna tro= ll. There is only very little chance to point someone into the right directio= n and help them to help themselves. I would rather prefer to have a smaller u= ser base instead of having these people who are destroying the community - wi= llingly or unwillingly. >>=20 >> 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 res= t of us. >>=20 >> My personal pride aside, those who know me in person can tell you that I d= o not care much about any defamation towards me, or accusations, blame or bei= ng called an arsehole. But I do know for a fact that others take them less li= ghtly. >>=20 >> Some things recently have stopped being fun and are now quite the opposite= . To avoid ruining mine and other people?s days I have decided to stop readin= g and replying on the support forum. I am not contributing anything useful fo= r anyone and it has not given me any input that will help me to do my job bet= ter. This won?t be a big loss to anyone. >>=20 >> I would even encourage the rest of you who feel passionate about it help t= o make that place useful again. It is the only place that we have where our c= ommunity can be. >>=20 >> 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 aro= und on the development mailing list and get involved in the debates that we h= ave on here and would like to remind everyone to keep development talk on thi= s list for that reason and avoid having that on the support forum. >>=20 >> If anyone has something to say about this, I would be happy to read your t= houghts. If you do not want to disclose them in public, feel free to email me= in private, too. >>=20 >> And now I am going to focus on that massive pile of work I have to do? >>=20 >> Best, >> -Michael >>=20 >=20 --===============1789801902569300311==--