Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 23:26:01 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <underway@comcast.net> Cc: Peter Schultz <pmes@bis.midco.net> Subject: Re: To the Armchair Directors Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0403152251070.29913-100000@pancho> In-Reply-To: <7dd67dbgwa.67d@mail.comcast.net>
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On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Gary W. Swearingen wrote: > To paraphrase: Users should not bother developers with comments on > FreeBSD development. Users don't deserve to be heard and developers > don't need the comments anyway. Users who violate this rule should be > given a good flaming about pissing off programmers and making unworthy > demands and with a patronizing analogy about diners and chefs. > > I'm sure we all got HIS point, but you seem to have missed MY points > -- that this is a piss-poor way to deal with users and the situation > should (sic) be improved in several ways: If you feel that I missed your points -- which is what I was really *trying* to address, even if my fingers didn't say so -- I apologize. That what specifically why I sent that email. > First, users should be expected to want to voice their opinions about > FreeBSD development and should be given a FreeBSD forum in which to > do so. (I've seen this same situation even on chat@.) Well, chat@ is an anything-goes zone that IMHO is an much less friendly place than even -current. So I wouldn't recommend that. Have you tried -hacker and if so, what were your results there? (I subscribe to neither). > Second, if freebsd-current isn't the forum, the list's documentation > should say so in a polite but clear manner Perhaps, indeed, the charter should be amended to restrict it to very specific discussion, rather than more general ones. > Third, developers should (sic) not flame users for trying to help, > even if they are no help; it does more harm than good. The non-help > should just be ignored or a polite reference to the list docs should > be sent to the offender (only). I have absolutely no argument with this. In fact, I have been known to take developers to task for this very thing -- but generally in private email, under the theory of "praise in public, criticize in private". On occasion, out of anger, I'll criticize another developer in public -- and whenever I do it, if I don't cancel the posting in time, then I myself just become a further part of the overall problem, which is not what I want. At the risk of repeating myself, the reason why I replied to your posting, as well as any number of postings in the most-recent 'future of FreeBSD' thread, is an attempt to bridge this user vs. developer gap. It's very frustrating to attempt to do that, and then read: > (And I could expand on [these reasons] to explain why I've > pretty-much stopped even bothering developers with what they > claim to want, here and in the PR database. If you don't want to use these two options -- especially the latter -- then what would you suggest as an approriate way? I am not asking to bait you: I really have no clue how to resolve this problem from here. Perhaps we really do need some separate list such as freebsd-users or something similar. What would you suggest for its charter? How can your concerns, and those of others, best be addressed? mclhome | help
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