It's that time again

[Ian Malone]

On 2 August 2013 19:09, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 12:17 PM, Heinz Diehl <htd at fritha.org> wrote:
>> On 02.08.2013, inode0 wrote:
>>
>>> Failure to have your expectations met leads to demotivation and the
>>> easiest way to fix that is to change your expectations.
>>
>> It's free software, and therefore I'm not expecting that people find the
>> time to fix my bug. In 99% of all cases, the bug is reported elsewhere
>> and I fix it, recompile or work around it.
>>
>> The thing is: I take my time to elaborate and report the bug (and
>> occasionally even have the solution), but nobody answers - ever.
>> Would be enough with e.g. an automatically generated message
>> when one of the developers reads my bugreport, just to know that it
>> was worth the effort. Instead you are telling me that's me who has to
>> change.
>
> I understand. And another volunteer helps out by rewriting a poorly
> written page on the wiki. Nobody replies to him either. Another person
> sends out 100 home burned DVDs of Fedora at his own expense to people
> requesting help and none of them say thank you.
>
> It is your decision that what you are doing is or isn't worthwhile
> based on the reaction or non-reaction of someone else. I see much
> value in the contributions you are making as well as in the
> contributions other people make regardless of feedback. I'm not saying
> you have to change but I do think you'll be less annoyed by lack of
> feedback if you (a) don't expect it and (b) know what you are doing is
> valuable without feedback.
>

When you've gone through a couple of cycles of reporting a bug, not
having it replied to at all and the thing is not fixed in a new
release, to the point where ultimately it becomes obsolete because
you've given up on trying, you do start to wonder whether it's putting
any effort into filing the thing in the first place. Actually
compiling a useful bug report rather than a "this doesn't work" takes
time, why would you do that if you didn't think anyone would even look
at it? If I adjust my expectations to believe it's pointless then I
wont waste my time doing it.


-- 
imalone
http://ibmalone.blogspot.co.uk