Re: 4.8 release announcement

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Anne Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
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> On 12/23/2011 04:19 PM, Carl Symons wrote:
>> I'm almost to the point of recommending that some kinds of
>> comments just get deleted. "That's fine that it runs faster. When
>> are those young, good-for-nothings gonna fix my bug? Fire promo,
>> get more developers." or (real comment)... "new and fancy view" is
>> very good stuff but what about idiotic random crashes of everything
>> on signal 11?...I see no purpose is such comments.
>
> Easy for promo guys to say.  What do you say to those who filed bug
> reports months and months ago, have seen no action, and not even been
> asked for more information?  No wonder people are frustrated.  This
> happens all too often.
>
> Anne

Well maybe we should have an outlet for that sort of feedback instead
of having people rage and insult pointlessly on Dot articles. On
several occasions, I have researched impolite, vague "how about my
bug" comments, only to find that there has been feedback on the bug or
other resolution.

I may have misstated my experience with comments. I read every
comment...if only by RSS. Seriously, many are vague and insulting,
nothing more than troll comments intended to stir people up and bring
KDE down. Those are the comments I'm referring to. Comments in which
someone writes, "I've been using KDE since version 1. I tried version
4 when it came out and (*(*^^* (&(^(* ^^$^^%. I switched to OtherOS.
And I'm never coming back. Why don't you do better?" What do we say to
that person?

So the question may be "What should be said to those people?" And it
should be done in a way that moves things forward. I'm all for finding
a productive way to deal with people who sincerely want to participate
in the community.

I--and several other people--have recommended that complainers do
something to make the situation better. Point them to KDE.GetInvolved.
Quite often, the response is either "So now there's rules that I can't
complain." or "I'm not a coder. And you guys always tell me that I
have to fix my own problems."

To clear up something...I'm not a promo guy. I'm a KDE user. All of
the Plasma Workspaces--Desktop, Netbook and Active. I teach other
people how to use KDE. I install it for them. I am SysAdmin for them.
I point them to KDE resources. I present at the local LUG about KDE. I
demo Plasma at conferences, quite a bit lately with Plasma Active.
When I solve a problem, I go to forums and post [solved] comments. And
I do everything I can to solve my own problems. If that fails, I post
politely in forums or mailing lists. and wait for someone to respond.
What I don't do is rail... at KDE, or Libre Office, or GIMP, or
Inkscape, or Scribus. I don't go on news sites and post nasty
off-topic comments bringing down the hosting organization. If a
developer tells me something can't be done, I don't argue with them.

Somewhere in Psychology Land, there has arisen this idea that people
need to let it out. To vent. Well, I don't believe that the KDE Forums
and News sites have a responsibility to provide this service.

So I'd be completely in favor of a communication channel for people as
you describe. I don't know what it is.
* Maybe a bug ombudsperson or group. Someplace where frustrated users
can be heard by someone who knows how to navigate KDE.
* Maybe an open bug assignment system

I'm not optimistic. Just looked at the latest post about 4.8. First
comment - Please solve Bug 275469, the most hated bug. Go to the bug
and comments...there are some people doing stuff. John Stanley seems
to be working on some ideas. (Is he a developer?) And also stuff like
this out of the blue...
"Um.. sorry to be whiny but this bug has survived embarassingly long
given its severity. 4.7.3 was just released and this still isn't on
the fix list :-S" This achieves nothing positive. It is useless noise.
Nagging. A string of these comments almost guarantees that no
developer is going to post to the thread and be chided for not getting
there sooner.

Another poster claims that a section in aseigo's blog says that this
has been fixed in 4.8. It actually says nothing even close.

"Is it getting to the point with KDE 4 that the left hand doesn't know
what the right hand is doing?  TDE is looking more appealing all the
time.  :(   " Please help me see how that does anything but damage.
Should developers go into that and try to respond?

Now John Stanley (comment #82) is trying to resolve things...
Could everyone seeing 'ghost' taskbar entries report the version of Qt
and X they are using ? (eg, use X -version, and qmake -v).

For _this_ comment on _this_ bug with 1465 most hated bug votes from
registered users who have the option of being kept informed, there are
12 responses until Adam Porter (comment #94) decides how it should be
handled..."This bug should be marked as a blocker for any future KDE
releases." In addition to his other IMO useless contributions.

Is this the typical frustrated user we should spend time and energy on? Not me.

I agree, Anne. We should find some way for sincere frustrated users to
communicate with us. I'm not optimistic that the current methods are
effective at this...although they are quite effective in other ways.

Carl

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