Comment by bebop
10 months ago
I work for a company that is open source and has a large community. I blows my mind (and often aggravates me) how rude some people can be.
For some reason people feel that it is appropriate to throw barbs in their issue reports. Please to everyone out there, if you find an issue and want to report it (hurray open source!) please be kind with your words. There are real people on the other side of the issue.
Always remember, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
> I blows my mind (and often aggravates me) how rude some people can be.
That seems to be a general characteristic. I strive to be cheerful and helpful whenever I'm asking for something. I feel like (sadly) it sets me apart from the crowd and helps me to get what I'm asking for. And IAC, with so little effort on my part I may brighten someone else' day and that makes me happy.
Just last week I asked housekeeping at a hotel for an old style coffee pot since I had brought my own coffee and filters. I started with "Can I pester you a moment?" and the conversation went up from there. Housekeeping was extremely friendly and helpful. Later I guessed this might have been her way to disarm some of the typical hostile interchanges she's been the brunt of.
I always feel like I'm imposing, and I have to remind myself that there are people who are eager to hear what I have to say. I try to set up my issue reports with appropriate background, and I always volunteer to, for example, submit a PR for a documentation change if the resolution requires it. And I have had some of the most wonderful interactions with complete strangers who had an idea, built a tool for themselves, and found other people had the same need.
There's a broader topic of ... just be nice to people. It doesn't cost anything. It does reassure me that this universe has been struggling with this for decades upon decades--witness the Malvin and Jim scene in WarGames. "Remember when you told me to tell you when you were acting rudely and insensitively?"
It always surprises me how happy people are when you submit a bug report with example code which demonstrates the problem. Like, irrationally happy.
I think I kind of get it. By the time someone actually gets to the point of filing an issue report, they are at the end of their rope. They have tried everything they can think of. They have googled and found no one else having the same problem, or fixes that don't work, or people saying "why would anyone need that feature". They feel like they're being gaslit, their time is being wasted, and that the developers are intentionally antagonizing them. And then the form to submit the issue has way too many fields and comes across as very adversarial.
That's certainly how I felt when trying to get my drawing tablet to work properly under Linux Mint, although in my case I skipped filing an issue and just gave up and went back to Windows.