On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Ryan Lane <rlan...@gmail.com> wrote: > Indeed. The really difficult thing here is that every time a bad idea > is WONTFIX'd it makes a community member feel that they are being > ignored.
In fact users filing bugs feel really ignored when nobody reacts to their reports. Getting a WONTFIX means that someone cared enough in a context where there is no lack of issues to deal with. Making this point clear to anybody getting a WONTFIX is a first step toward a happy ending. > Do it too many times and you have a lot of community members > that feel this way. Don't do it enough and and the product suffers and > then there's complaints about it being bloated, difficult to use, etc. > It's difficult to win either way. Most people filing bugs do understand this, specially after someone explains this point to them once. They usually understand it even better when such explanation doesn't come necessarily from the powerful professional maintainer but from another peer with just a little more experience. >>>I think the major problem with the Op-Ed is that he points the blame >>>fully at the foundation when the blame is a combination of the >>>foundation and the community. A major part of the problem is that the >>>feedback from the community is almost always purely negative, and this >>>Op-Ed is another example of that. The expression "the foundation and the community" is at the core of the problem. If there is one problem and two sides then it's too easy for any independent contributor to be in a different page than a WMF employee. In practice what everybody wants is one community and a myriad people with different levels and tonalities of engagement, expertise and focus. Engaged and skillful developers not working for the WMF are as important for this biosphere as motivated ambassadors willing to test and follow new developments. In many or most cases they are in a better position to tell other contributors why something deserves a WONTFIX or more constructive criticism, and get a positive response. Of course this only works when core developers are sharing, discussing and working together at least with those most engaged contributors. And when those contributors feel informed and entitled to answer more junior (or more upset) community members. In the context of the http://maemo.org community we have got plenty of chances to fall into non-productive fights between @nokia.com developers and upset users. Having some layers of empowered community members in between (including a Bugsquad team entirely made of volunteers [1]) helped a lot to build a common understanding and more constructive discussions. [1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Bugsquad -- Quim Gil /// http://espiral.org _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
