I am aware that this applies only to certain people, but what they do affects how we are seen as a community.
Recently I have become more active community member and I am getting frustrated when I see the frequency !patchwanted is thrown at people on our IRC channel.
Now, I’m not talking about the situation when someone is flooding the channel with “FIX IT CUZ ITZ BROKE AND I WANT IT TO WORK”. I’m sure such individual would be (and should be) kicked or banned.
But if someone is pointing out that we need improvement and immediately @puckipedia comes out with “!patchwanted” followed by “The thing is, complaining will do nothing” and “either be silent or fix it yourself”, that is annoying.
Well, guess what, throwing “!patchwanted” at everyone who comes to general channel also will do nothing. Worse, it will scare people off. We must accept the fact, that people who come to general channel may not have the skills, and that’s OK, because it is GENERAL channel. What is happening now is us (the community) telling them that either they fix something or they can GTFO because they’re useless.
…
Even though I can code, I am not always knowledgeable enough to fix some issues. Most people aren’t. Yet everyone who criticizes something can expect he will get “!patchwanted” (necessarily with an exclamation mark) as an answer.
On the general channel. Nice.
While I can’t speak of particular individuals, I would agree with the general sentiment of your post. Most times this trigger is invoked (that I have seen), it does not fulfill it’s purpose: informing a developer that Haiku accepts patches. That doesn’t help a non-developer, and it’s likely to induce anything from mild annoyance to rage rather than assist them.
I’m sure many people would be happy to provide patches were it within their capability, the reality is that persons with such skills are only a minority of the Haiku users out there.
is a command to epigraph, an irc bot that then immediately responds with something like:
username haiku is free and open source software …
eventually linking to a page on haiku-os.org regarding submitting patches.
The net result is that it looks like the recipient is being ganged up on by haiku devs because they mentioned something that may need attention. The usual result is to see the recipient of this abuse leve the channel, and probably the haiku community. This is not what we need. epigraph should be banned from the irc channel, this will force the worst offenders to be less rude, knowing that the automatic back-up reply from epigraph will never follow.
Yeah I have to say that isn’t very nice… if you don’t have the time to make a response personal and polite why are you on IRC anyway? I mean isn’t the point to meet new people and talk about Haiku?
I’m only on IRC intermittently with vast absences but the Haiku channel has seemed pretty nice to me in the past … not too much drama etc…
If you’ve been in IRC long enough (like say, 10-20 years), you recognize a pattern. People show up out of nowhere, demand you change something in your project, and then get pissed when you don’t immediately do it.
These are generally known as “trolls”.
You’ll see there everywhere, here, mailing list, IRC, etc.
“Patches Welcome” is usually the diffusing statement for such demanding individuals - reminding them that the people working on the project are not slaves, not doing someone else’s bidding. They are volunteers like everyone else, doing what they WANT to do, not what someone else wants them to do.
So, therefore, if you want something done in a FOSS project, the best solution is to do it yourself. Too often people forget this, and spend all their energy complaining that someone else isn’t doing it for them.
Come on guys, this is reality in open source… using a bot to say things that have to be repeated often is standard IRC tactics, and if you can’t handle it, I suggest you don’t idle there.
And that’s all I have to say.
Edit: and besides, what do you want us to do, ban everyone from talking there?
I have seen !patchwanted targetted at users asking for support, lately, and I think that’s where the problem lies. Maybe we need a !ticketwanted or something for people who can’t (or don’t want to) write code.
I think banning the bot is not going to fix the underlying problem (people will find other ways to say the same thing anyway). Improving the message it sends, or adding more appropriate messages for different situations (with the relevant links) sounds like a better idea to me.
So... !patchwanted. Please submit your improved messages so we can add it to the bot.
[quote=PulkoMandy]I have seen !patchwanted targetted at users asking for support, lately, and I think that’s where the problem lies. Maybe we need a !ticketwanted or something for people who can’t (or don’t want to) write code.
[/quote]
Agreed. !patchwanted should be targetted mostly to developers, with at least some knowledge of Haiku’s inner workings… Maybe it could also be given the option of adding a ticket number, for example, say you would like developer “baron” to work on #10767 or you want you to suggest him to work on it, you could do: !patchwanted baron #10767.
I also think it’s a good idea to add a !ticketwanted, but it should mostly be targetted at testers, even though we see normal users creating tickets, that shouldn’t be so, BUT, for the time being, given our small community, let it be.
I also agree with this, even though I can’t think of better messages right now…
I don’t think kicks/bans of persons or bots is a viable solution. I hear what umccullough is saying about trolls. However, treatment of trolling should be an exception, rather than the de facto response. In such cases (and of course, purely in my opinion), a troll can be expected to be treated the same way they’re treating others: I wouldn’t have a problem with !patchwanted’ing a troll.
!ticketwanted: I like this idea.
In my opinion, this could be the de facto trigger used in most instances. Once a ticket is issued, the person (if they show interest) could be shown !patchwanted arfonzo #31337 as suggested above.
My half-submission:
--> !ticketwanted arfonzo
<-- arfonzo: [somethingsomething Haiku community relies on community feedback to improve somethingsomething]. Please create a ticket for this issue at http://dev.haiku-os.org/newticket.
I mentioned trolls in my post, I think they deserve !patchwanted and even kick or ban in extreme cases, but it is not a situation I have in mind.
My point is some individuals overuse !patchwanted, to the point of being rude. That makes harm to the whole community because we’re seen as unfriendly by newcomers and is against netiquette, too.
What I want is to deal with such people in proper manner. What is going on now is that some people misbehave and OPs just watch.
I am aware of that. I wanted to point out that I think an exclamation mark works on a subcionscious level making the message come off as stronger and more aggresive (and I know why it is there, what about people who don’t?)
I am aware of that. I wanted to point out that I think an exclamation mark works on a subcionscious level making the message come off as stronger and more aggresive (and I know why it is there, what about people who don’t?)
I was not arare that epigraph was a bot when !patchwanted was thrown at me. I was discussing troubles with getting haikuporter to work for a recipe I was working on and mentioned, as an aside, that in english information is both singular and plural, and there is no such word as informations. This came up because informations was used in the error message I was getting. Then BAM
!patchwanted bbjimmy
Then this other user comes in with an obviously pre-prepared response. I felt like throwing the computer at them.
lI was just about to wipe HAIKU off my computer and out of my mind when I checked out who this epigraph was that jumped in and nailed me to the wall. This was when I figured out that it was not a gang-up on anybody that insults the haiku devs by mentioning a problem, but one person acting badly.
If we don’t ban epigraph entirely, then we should at least insure that it identifies itself as a bot when it makes these rude responses. Otherewise it looks like a gang-up and bullying that is neither acceptable nor required in these situations.
Hm. Do you know why everyone says “!patchwanted”? Because a large number of the (hard)core developers have families and aren’t as active as they once were.
We legitimately want patches. If someone has an idea in IRC, great! Submit a patch and we’ll add it! That’s how you get active as a contributor, and get commit access.
That’s how open source works. If a stranger walked into your house and said “There really should be a wall right here. It should be blue in color, made of gold, and have 10 doors in it.” and then left… what sane reasoning would that person have to expect it to be complete the next time they return?
You ask someone to paint the wall blue, they may do it… they may not. It all depends on if they have the free time and motivation. The fastest way to get it done would be to do it yourself. (or at least get the paint bucket out and clean some brushes)