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I guess the question needs to be -- will this inclusion actually drive more users to Harrow than the damage to goodwill/annoyance of including it. Personally, I

I guess the question needs to be -- will this inclusion actually drive more users to Harrow than the damage to goodwill/annoyance of including it. Personally, I'm less inclined to try Harrow now, but I admit that's just personal bias. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to build platforms to sustain work on great FOSS products - of which cap is definitely one (that I use every day! thanks!) -- in an ideal world this dependency doesn't exist AND harrow gets enough users to support further work on capistrano. But since this isn't an ideal world, I'm not going to second guess the choice too much, other than to say, I don't think it will make people choose to use Harrow that wouldn't otherwise, and maybe it is better to find other ways of reaching potential users than with a message during cap install.

codebeaker 11y ago
That's the question we're trying to answer now. We've been maintaining Capistrano with effectively zero data about our users since the project's inception. HN always has very extreme, and usually very negative reactions to any kind of tracking, integration, promotion, analytics, etc - and rightly so, with governments and corporations eroding our privacy at every step, we have to be on guard. That said, this isn't some coup to drive Capistrano into the hearts of it's victims, it's an experiment to see how to approach people and whether sitting on the front page of hacker news is a net benefit or a net loss. My gut feeling is that the reaction has been fair. The thread title is unfortunately misleading because of OPs miscomprehension of the message displayed, and I don't know how to reach the mods to request it be reviewed. > Maybe it is better to find other ways of reaching potential users than with a message during cap install. Almost certainly, we have to experiment a little bit and see where the threshold lay. I'm glad you're getting value out of Capistrano, I hope it can continue, and that Cap will improve at a faster rate once we better understand how people use it and optimize for those cases. Might I ask, how do you find the new default formatter?
- educar 11y ago
  > HN always has very extreme, and usually very negative reactions to any kind of tracking, integration, promotion, analytics, etc - and rightly so, with governments and corporations eroding our privacy at every step, we have to be on guard. My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. I mean HN is filled with slack, apple, github, google etc fanboys. None of these are opensource and they all track users.
  - codebeaker 11y ago
    > My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. I believe so too, we have much more positive feedback from new customers from the exposure this post has brought than we have negative. In either case I'm glad for the opportunity for HN to discuss how to monetize FOSS, to see what people consider fair and unfair and to learn a little bit more about people's standpoints.
  - dang 11y ago
    > My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. Definitely not only, but you've put your finger on an important point here: such people are far more likely to comment, making the threads a distorted image of the community. I feel like this is one of those phenomena that has a well-known name, but can't think of it. Anybody know?
    - pfg 11y ago
      Were you thinking of "vocal minority"? Seems to fit here.
      - codebeaker 11y ago
        I've had something on the tip of my tongue since seeing the parent comment last night - I think this is close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence but it doesn't seem to say too much about when the majority behave this way, maybe it's a disparity between perceived like-minded group size and actual group-size.
- llamataboot 11y ago
  Haven't upgraded any of our apps to use it yet, but I really like what I've seen. The default output always seemed heavy on verbosity for me, but managing it was always one of these things we often never got around to!

codebeaker 11y ago

That's the question we're trying to answer now. We've been maintaining Capistrano with effectively zero data about our users since the project's inception. HN always has very extreme, and usually very negative reactions to any kind of tracking, integration, promotion, analytics, etc - and rightly so, with governments and corporations eroding our privacy at every step, we have to be on guard. That said, this isn't some coup to drive Capistrano into the hearts of it's victims, it's an experiment to see how to approach people and whether sitting on the front page of hacker news is a net benefit or a net loss. My gut feeling is that the reaction has been fair. The thread title is unfortunately misleading because of OPs miscomprehension of the message displayed, and I don't know how to reach the mods to request it be reviewed. > Maybe it is better to find other ways of reaching potential users than with a message during cap install. Almost certainly, we have to experiment a little bit and see where the threshold lay. I'm glad you're getting value out of Capistrano, I hope it can continue, and that Cap will improve at a faster rate once we better understand how people use it and optimize for those cases. Might I ask, how do you find the new default formatter?

educar 11y ago
> HN always has very extreme, and usually very negative reactions to any kind of tracking, integration, promotion, analytics, etc - and rightly so, with governments and corporations eroding our privacy at every step, we have to be on guard. My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. I mean HN is filled with slack, apple, github, google etc fanboys. None of these are opensource and they all track users.
- codebeaker 11y ago
  > My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. I believe so too, we have much more positive feedback from new customers from the exposure this post has brought than we have negative. In either case I'm glad for the opportunity for HN to discuss how to monetize FOSS, to see what people consider fair and unfair and to learn a little bit more about people's standpoints.
- dang 11y ago
  > My understanding of this phenomenon is that only people with extreme views comment. Definitely not only, but you've put your finger on an important point here: such people are far more likely to comment, making the threads a distorted image of the community. I feel like this is one of those phenomena that has a well-known name, but can't think of it. Anybody know?
  - pfg 11y ago
    Were you thinking of "vocal minority"? Seems to fit here.
    - codebeaker 11y ago
      I've had something on the tip of my tongue since seeing the parent comment last night - I think this is close https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence but it doesn't seem to say too much about when the majority behave this way, maybe it's a disparity between perceived like-minded group size and actual group-size.
llamataboot 11y ago
Haven't upgraded any of our apps to use it yet, but I really like what I've seen. The default output always seemed heavy on verbosity for me, but managing it was always one of these things we often never got around to!