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Having maintained an Open Source project for almost 20 years now, there are some ways to deal with bad users. One is to not take it personally. Annoying peopl

by adekok 10y ago

Having maintained an Open Source project for almost 20 years now, there are some ways to deal with bad users. One is to not take it personally. Annoying people should get ignored or banned. They're just not worth the effort. Two, is to recognize that your time is limited. If the person filing the bug can't (or won't) help track it down, well... too bad. Maybe no one else runs into the bug, and your best response is "works for me". (Note that this is the approach taken by most commercial software vendors in my experience) Three, is to recognize that there are idiots out there, and you can't help them all. It's OK to be on the lower end of the bell curve, but sometimes it's like the kids rides: "You have to be THIS TALL to go on this ride". If the user can't comprehend something, perhaps he shouldn't be using it. And perhaps you shouldn't waste your time trying to get him to understand something he just can't understand. My general approach is to be nice to people who ask good questions, and who try. When people ask terrible questions, and make it clear that they have no interest in lifting a finger, but demand that you do all of the work... well... they get told in no uncertain terms to shape up, or get banned. You don't owe these people anything. If they had an ounce of human decency, they would understand that they got the software for free, and that they don't deserve anything. And that they need to put some effort into it on their end. The main response I have with these people is If you're too lazy to help solve the problem, then I'm too lazy to help, too.

impostervt 10y ago
20 years? Man. There are Saints that had less patience than that.
specialist 10y ago
Could you charge for support? Can you offer consulting services? H2 (h2database.com), one of my favorite projects, accepts donations. A close friend created a reasonably popular web framework. Books, conventions, etc. He got some good consulting gigs and paid travel. He regrets he didn't pursue that more (others stepped up to fill the void).
- adekok 10y ago
  Yes, I charge for support and consulting. But the Open Source side has huge value. Even if that includes the occasional whiner. The good people contribute features, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation, etc. The project wouldn't be as good as it is without them.
- greggman 10y ago
  none of my users could afford what I'd have to charge to make it worth my while. If some corporation with deep pockets needs support maybe they can pay but the majority of people that need support seem to be people that need everything to be free (noobs and students).
Bahamut 10y ago
Agreed - all of this is necessary to keep sane. I maintain UI Bootstrap (over 12k stars on GitHub), and I have to make decisions on bugs and feature requests. I prefer erring on inaction of response if I am not sure of how to decide, and I make it a policy to close support issues on the repository. Ultimately, if someone really cared about a particular issue, the person would make an attempt at a pull request to help contribute. I will even often help give most of the important abstract information needed for a contribution too to assist in the general implementation, but I can only do so much work for people. I am also inclined to help bad attitude people the least - it is the quickest way for me to take longer to reapond & implement, so be nice to your friendly open source maintainers people!
- rkangel 10y ago
  > if someone really cared about a particular issue, the person would make an attempt at a pull request to help contribute That's not always true. They may not have the necessary skills. That's no excuse for laziness in reporting problems though.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    Having the necessary skills does not mean they cannot make an attempt though. If they regress into whining instead of trying, then I'm less sympathetic & less likely to put my best effort forward since it's unnecessary stress.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    Ultimately, that's still laziness. Learn the necessary skill.
    - stinkytaco 10y ago
      Really? I might be able to report a bug in any number of roles (perhaps designer, perhaps administrator, perhaps user) and I may not have the knowledge or experience necessary to fix the problem, but certainly enough to report in a detailed way. If knowing software development is not my job, I can't be a user? What if I am a developer but not familiar with the code? Dismissing users because they do not have the skills to fix every problem is absurd.
namaemuta 10y ago
Apart from being notified with an email or similar when a new issue has been created, what other annoyances does a maintainer have to deal with? I mean, is the number of open issues raising what annoys you? or is it for not being able to keep organized the issues?
- goostavos 10y ago
  I have a project of medium popularity (~4k stars on github). A lot of the annoyance comes from _bad_ issues, or pushy people that want to know why X is done Y way -- after all, only morons do X _y_ way, or just answering the same questions over, and over, and over. Something like 70% of every issue/email I've ever received could easily be auto replied with "please provide version, platform, code to reproduce, etc.." the number of people that will post an issue that just says "it doesn't work" or "how do you do X?" wears on you after awhile. The open issues for a medium sized project are (I consider) a metric of the project's overall health. So, if you want to keep your tracker clean, you've gotta put on your administrative hat and spend time grooming things, which takes an energy toll. Developing is fun, fixing real issues is fun, repeatedly teaching people how to ask a useful question is not fun. Also, pull requests can be the most stressful of all. People are extremely entitled about pull requests. The number of reasons why something might not get merged in right away or at all is _massive_ (and often simple: I'm busy). However, a lot of people seem to take it as personal attack that their glorious work was not immediately commented on/reviewed/liked/pulled/etc.. All of that can add up to a lot of stress around a project from which you draw no income.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    > just answering the same questions over, and over, and over. Have you considered creating an FAQ? > Something like 70% of every issue/email I've ever received could easily be auto replied with "please provide version, platform, code to reproduce, etc.." Github has issue templates now. This could fix at least some of these incomplete submissions.
    - goostavos 10y ago
ci5er 10y ago
What does "get banned" mean in this context? I've closed two github accounts (and 4~5 related projects on each) because, well, all the stuff you say. I'm happy to toss something out there, documented, and let people do with it what they will - but supporting stuff in someone else's use case is not part of my agreement with the universe.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  > What does "get banned" mean in this context? I am assuming it refers to https://help.github.com/articles/blocking-a-user-from-your-organization/ https://help.github.com/articles/blocking-a-user-from-your-o...
- adekok 10y ago
  Banned from the mailing list, and from github.
Qantourisc 10y ago
"works for me" is imo a terrible way to close a ticket. The proper way to close it would be "cannot reproduce, please provide testcase/testsetup"
- khedoros 10y ago
  That's essentially what "Works For Me" means. Generally, the dev would ask for reproduction info, and if it can't be reproduced by them using the information supplied (maybe after a few passes, and after investigation of environmental differences), that's the proper way to close the ticket.
iaw 10y ago
I spent a few hours the other day trying to troubleshoot a problem with a Compiz interaction on one of my machines causing high temperatures at lock-screen. I finally found that the problem had been intermittently reported for the last 2-3 years without much traction in finding a solution. My solution? Bypass that lock screen. It's not an issue for enough people to be worth me bothering them about it, if it was then it would have a fix already.

by adekok 10y ago

impostervt 10y ago

20 years? Man. There are Saints that had less patience than that.

specialist 10y ago

Could you charge for support? Can you offer consulting services? H2 (h2database.com), one of my favorite projects, accepts donations. A close friend created a reasonably popular web framework. Books, conventions, etc. He got some good consulting gigs and paid travel. He regrets he didn't pursue that more (others stepped up to fill the void).

adekok 10y ago
Yes, I charge for support and consulting. But the Open Source side has huge value. Even if that includes the occasional whiner. The good people contribute features, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation, etc. The project wouldn't be as good as it is without them.
greggman 10y ago
none of my users could afford what I'd have to charge to make it worth my while. If some corporation with deep pockets needs support maybe they can pay but the majority of people that need support seem to be people that need everything to be free (noobs and students).

Bahamut 10y ago

Agreed - all of this is necessary to keep sane. I maintain UI Bootstrap (over 12k stars on GitHub), and I have to make decisions on bugs and feature requests. I prefer erring on inaction of response if I am not sure of how to decide, and I make it a policy to close support issues on the repository. Ultimately, if someone really cared about a particular issue, the person would make an attempt at a pull request to help contribute. I will even often help give most of the important abstract information needed for a contribution too to assist in the general implementation, but I can only do so much work for people. I am also inclined to help bad attitude people the least - it is the quickest way for me to take longer to reapond & implement, so be nice to your friendly open source maintainers people!

rkangel 10y ago
> if someone really cared about a particular issue, the person would make an attempt at a pull request to help contribute That's not always true. They may not have the necessary skills. That's no excuse for laziness in reporting problems though.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  Having the necessary skills does not mean they cannot make an attempt though. If they regress into whining instead of trying, then I'm less sympathetic & less likely to put my best effort forward since it's unnecessary stress.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Ultimately, that's still laziness. Learn the necessary skill.
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    Really? I might be able to report a bug in any number of roles (perhaps designer, perhaps administrator, perhaps user) and I may not have the knowledge or experience necessary to fix the problem, but certainly enough to report in a detailed way. If knowing software development is not my job, I can't be a user? What if I am a developer but not familiar with the code? Dismissing users because they do not have the skills to fix every problem is absurd.

namaemuta 10y ago

Apart from being notified with an email or similar when a new issue has been created, what other annoyances does a maintainer have to deal with? I mean, is the number of open issues raising what annoys you? or is it for not being able to keep organized the issues?

goostavos 10y ago
I have a project of medium popularity (~4k stars on github). A lot of the annoyance comes from _bad_ issues, or pushy people that want to know why X is done Y way -- after all, only morons do X _y_ way, or just answering the same questions over, and over, and over. Something like 70% of every issue/email I've ever received could easily be auto replied with "please provide version, platform, code to reproduce, etc.." the number of people that will post an issue that just says "it doesn't work" or "how do you do X?" wears on you after awhile. The open issues for a medium sized project are (I consider) a metric of the project's overall health. So, if you want to keep your tracker clean, you've gotta put on your administrative hat and spend time grooming things, which takes an energy toll. Developing is fun, fixing real issues is fun, repeatedly teaching people how to ask a useful question is not fun. Also, pull requests can be the most stressful of all. People are extremely entitled about pull requests. The number of reasons why something might not get merged in right away or at all is _massive_ (and often simple: I'm busy). However, a lot of people seem to take it as personal attack that their glorious work was not immediately commented on/reviewed/liked/pulled/etc.. All of that can add up to a lot of stress around a project from which you draw no income.
- majewsky 10y ago
  > just answering the same questions over, and over, and over. Have you considered creating an FAQ? > Something like 70% of every issue/email I've ever received could easily be auto replied with "please provide version, platform, code to reproduce, etc.." Github has issue templates now. This could fix at least some of these incomplete submissions.
  - goostavos 10y ago

ci5er 10y ago

What does "get banned" mean in this context? I've closed two github accounts (and 4~5 related projects on each) because, well, all the stuff you say. I'm happy to toss something out there, documented, and let people do with it what they will - but supporting stuff in someone else's use case is not part of my agreement with the universe.

steveklabnik 10y ago
> What does "get banned" mean in this context? I am assuming it refers to https://help.github.com/articles/blocking-a-user-from-your-organization/ https://help.github.com/articles/blocking-a-user-from-your-o...
adekok 10y ago
Banned from the mailing list, and from github.

Qantourisc 10y ago

"works for me" is imo a terrible way to close a ticket. The proper way to close it would be "cannot reproduce, please provide testcase/testsetup"

khedoros 10y ago
That's essentially what "Works For Me" means. Generally, the dev would ask for reproduction info, and if it can't be reproduced by them using the information supplied (maybe after a few passes, and after investigation of environmental differences), that's the proper way to close the ticket.

iaw 10y ago

I spent a few hours the other day trying to troubleshoot a problem with a Compiz interaction on one of my machines causing high temperatures at lock-screen. I finally found that the problem had been intermittently reported for the last 2-3 years without much traction in finding a solution. My solution? Bypass that lock screen. It's not an issue for enough people to be worth me bothering them about it, if it was then it would have a fix already.